So I Just Finished Reading The Song Of Achilles, And Forgive Me If I'm Stating The Obvious But . . .

So I just finished reading The Song of Achilles, and forgive me if I'm stating the obvious but . . .

About two thirds of the way in, Thetis tells the boys that there is a new prophecy, that "the best of Myrmidons will die before two more years have passed." And at first they're afraid that it's Achilles, but then Thetis tells them that he will be alive when it happens

The first time I read this, I didn't understand. It was only when I read that passage again, after knowing what happens, that I realized the prophecy was about Patroclus

The book even acknowledges it later on, when Briseis is saying goodbye to him . . . "'Best of men. Best of Myrmidons.' She places her fingers to my lips, stopping my objection. 'It is truth,' she says. 'Let it stand for once.'"

In the first half of the book, a lot of Patroclus's pov is dedicated to describing how beautiful and amazing Achilles is. And when you see how ordinary and pathetic Patroclus makes himself look in comparison, you almost start to wonder why Achilles loves him in the first place

But Patroclus was the best of all of them, even better than Achilles. No one else had his kindness, his tenderness, his unwavering care for others

And Achilles knew this. Further on, Briseis says that Patroclus was worth ten of him, and Achilles doesn't disagree

An interesting thing about Kaz is the way he views a hierarchy within everyone he meets, an attitude probably defined in him by the Kerch culture of trade and the environment of Ketterdam. Kerch is a country that in many ways is designed to reflect the American Dream as it is portrayed in classic literature such as The Great Gatsby: as an ultimately unattainable and useless lie, designed to control and quell the masses in the danger of extreme capitalism. The social hierarchy in Ketterdam is well-established and discussed throughout the novels, though mostly in Crooked Kingdom since the plot stays almost entirely within city limits, and the attitude of viewing a miniature hierarchy amongst those around you as part of the overall societal structure is evidenced in Kaz, and possibly reflected in Wylan; a link both to their different upbringings within the Ketterdam social structure, and their position as literary foils. (I wrote a whole long thing about how Kaz and Wylan had/have the potential to become each other, so feel free to check that out for more detail if you want it). The city’s hierarchy and the unattainability of joining the rich upper echelon of society is cleverly hinted at from the very beginning of Six of Crows, when Kaz is jumped and then wakes up in what he expects to be the deb of a rival gang. He instead finds himself in Councilman Hoede’s Manor House, which I believe is on the Geldstradt, and the way he makes the distinction is by realising that the decor in the room he’s in “takes real money”. We know that people like Pekka Rollins or Tante Heleen have become truly rich from what they do in the Barrel, and so it’s strange to suggest that you’d need “real money” for this since we would generally use that phrase to refer to a large amount of money. What Kaz actually means here is “old money” or “family money”; you need the kind of money that the Merchant Council have been hoarding for generations, making supposedly risky trades when they have millions of savings to cushion the blow if things go wrong, not the kind of money that comes from the popular gambling dens and brothels of the Barrel. He means the kind of money that Daisy and Tom have in Great Gatsby, people who’ve never worked a day in their lives and yet like to think of themselves as very successful at life when all they’re truly succeeding in is spending their parents money, not the kind of money that Gatsby scraped and saved and began to chase through undisclosed illicit means. Even when men like Gatsby and Rollins make their money, and their name, they are never equal in the social hierarchy to people with old money. (To be clear, not that this is a defence of either character, I have criticisms of both, especially Rollins).

But the hierarchy Kaz places upon himself and upon the others is slightly more subtle, and arguably subversive. He looks down on Matthias because he “stinks of decency” and because he supposedly hasn’t struggled, arguably gaining slightly more respect for him when he learns of him losing his parents and baby sister but still maintaining the idea of ‘everyone has a sob story and you were clearly more lucky in your options to deal with it than I was, it’s not my fault if you made the wrong choice’. We as readers obviously know that Matthias had no options but to go with Jarl Brum and spent the next 6 years of his life (I think that’s the right amount of time, please correct me if I’m wrong) being emotionally manipulated and abused by him, but Kaz simply refuses to accept has suffered because it would be psychologically damaging to him to admit that Matthias was able to go through that and still come out a good person, when Kaz sees himself as having become truly demonic. Matthias looks down on Kaz for the exact same reason, unable to understand - especially since he knows far less detail about Kaz’s trauma - how someone who ever had a core of decency couldn’t maintain it through their pain, he assumes Kaz was never a good person, or never had the potential to be one. Kaz also looks down on Wylan, arguably far less for his attempt to maintain a core decency but because he views Wylan as having had the option to do so. Kaz seems to have more respect for Wylan in Crooked Kingdom than in Six of Crows, when he knows more about (but never, it should be noted, the full extent of) Jan Van Eck’s abuse to his son, once again showcasing that he struggles to accept the idea of someone feeling bad when they have supposedly suffered less than him. His trauma has clearly warped him in many ways, and one of them is losing the ability to see relative pain and how different things can affect different people in different ways; he effectively views everything in the manner of ‘I had it worse, and I’m fine so you need to get over yourself’. He labels Nina “a snob” for staying away from the Crow Club and the Slat despite being a Dregs member, and her response is “she didn’t much care what Kaz Brekker thought”. I think that Nina is possible the person Kaz holds the most respect for in his platonic relationships, and that is mostly because she simply couldn’t care less whether he respects her or not.

His relationship with Jesper is more complex; he judges Jesper for his addiction and yet continually eggs him on, giving him a line of credit to play cards at the start of Six of Crows and having the first step of his planning in Crooked Kingdom to make Jesper play all night, although it’s unclear whether Jesper has ever shared anything about his mother if anyone knows then the most likely parties are Kaz or Inej and yet Kaz forces Jesper to give up his revolvers in Crooked Kingdom, his most treasured possession and his constant connection to his late mother, he consistently infantilises Jesper, but mostly in his head and this is possibly an interesting link to the final nail in the coffin of their relationship; Kaz sees Jesper as a substitute to Jordie. I think it’s possible that he likes to see him as younger because that’s how he remembers Jordie - it’s also important to remember that Kaz is now several years older than his elder brother ever was so seeing him in someone his own age is possibly even more painful because that’s a point Jordie never reached (he was only 13 when he died). Jesper is someone that Kaz feels the need to keep at arms length, not because he doesn’t respect him but because he fears having a close relationship with someone who could so easily slip away from him like Jordie did. I think we can also arguably see aspects of Jordie within Jesper, the naïveté of thinking you can make it Ketterdam followed by the city swallowing you whole, killing Jordie and driving Jesper to his slow self-destruction - “I’m dying anyway, Da. I’m just doing it slow”. (If y’all have read many of my analytical posts you may have begun to notice that’s one of my favourite quotes)

Then we have Inej. Kaz places Inej on a pedestal whatever she does. I’ve spoken before about how she claims to be bad at picking locks whilst he claims to have done “a shoddy job at teaching her to pick locks” because he’s incapable of accepting that she is incapable of something; if there are flaws, they must be his because she cannot have any. In a lot of situations this can be harmful, going back to the romance of Daisy and Gatsby where Daisy is placed on a pedestal and idealised so much that she become more of an image than a person, so when she does not live up to his every high expectation Gatsby is destroyed by it. But with kanej this seems only to elevate their position, possibly because Kaz isn’t claiming that Inej is flawless, but rather that she is capable of working on her flaws in a way that he isn’t; it is almost a form of envy. For example, Inej also has a fear of touch and human contact, but she purposely forced herself to cope with small amounts of it, such as allowing Nina and Jesper to hug her even though it makes her flinch, because she fears it becoming a debilitating condition, as it has done for Kaz (not that she knows that initially when it’s first implied that she too fears contact). In the bathroom scene when she admits to him that she also struggles with touch, it has such a massive effect on Kaz not because he refuses to accept that she has flaws but because he sees her as so much stronger than himself and wishes that he could be more like her. Although both of them are ultimately unable to go any further than a few light brushes of contact, it’s suggested that what trigger Inej more than the touch itself is the sexual implications of those touches based on everything she went through at the Menagerie. Kaz doesn’t see Inej aligned with with himself or the other gang members, but as above them - and not in the way he labels Nina as a snob, but in a genuine manner he refuses to acknowledge her as low in society because he sees her as deserving of so much more. He notably never refers to her as “a canal rat” and he never even comes close to defining her by her time at the Menagerie, a start contrast between him, the supposed low of the hierarchy, and Van Eck, the supposed upper, he yells at her “you little skiv! You little whore!”. However, there is one way in which Kaz arguably looks down on Inej and it’s in a similar way that he looks down in Matthias: how dare she still try so hard to remain truly good, and decent, and to find her Saints and to politely ask them for forgiveness, when it would be so much easier to let the world beat that out of her? Arguably, it’s not that he judges either of them for their faith, but it’s that he fears them judging him for losing his, be that in religion or in the world at all. (I don’t think we know if Kaz was raised in a religious household or not, but based on societal structure in Ketterdam and the way most of the population in most of the countries are religious I think it’s safe to assume he at least grew up with an understanding of Ghezen). Kaz fears that they’ll judge him for failing to maintain his core of decency, which is exactly what Matthias does, and so he aims to offend or challenge them before they can him.

Ok I’m not gonna lie to you guys it’s like quarter past one in the morning as I’m writing this, and oh my god it just got so long out of nowhere… I might have lost my point somewhere in there, I don’t even know, this came from one quote I was thinking about and I’m not sure I even wrote that quote in there so, yeah, I guess. If you bothered to read this far the tysm I hope it made sense

before i leave for school today i want to say something: i think a point that a lot of myth nerd people miss is that at the end of the day it doesn't matter what you want to label achilles and patroclus' relationship as because it will always be fundamentally queer. these are two men who love each other so intensely one is willing to risk his own life to protect the other one's glory and reputation and the other one is willing to sacrifice his godlyhood and immortality to avenge the other's death. their love for each other breaks almost everything that the people expected from heroes and demigods as we see in plato's symposium -- achilles killing hector and not caring that it meant he had basically been reduced to any other mortal person is the most shocking part of it all, even for the people back then, since he's been fighting to maintain his glory and honor for so long, for the entire iliad in fact, but is willing to throw it all into the air the exact moment his beloved patroclus is killed. it doesn't matter if what they felt for each other was platonic, familial, queerplatonic or romantic, the story in itself is queer in its very roots and has always resonated with the lgbtq community and to try and make it seem like we are foolish for thinking of them as lovers is to disregard the importance that their story has to all of us.

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about Jesper Fahey and religion.

Whilst we know that Matthias follows Djel, Inej follows the Saints, Nina was raised with the Saints but is atheist because of her understanding about Grisha, and that Kaz and Wylan adopted atheism based on their childhood experiences, we don’t get a lot of information about how Jesper feels about religion. We know he was raised with the Saints and that when he swears he says “Saints”, as does Nina, where Wylan says “Ghezen”. It’s notable to me that Matthias and Inej either rarely or never invoke a name in vain; I think Inej may say “Saints” in that context the odd time I can’t remember, but I’d argue in that case it’s probably because she isn’t specifically naming them to do so whereas Matthias would have to but I’m working off memory there so please feel free to correct me. But Jesper’s actual relationship with the Saints is arguably quite ambiguous, with no particular passages that point us in either direction. (Show!Jesper is highly implied to be atheistic in season 1 when Inej asks him what he thinks about Alina and he says he doesn’t care whether she’s real or not so long as they get paid, but there isn’t really anything like this in the books to my recollection) I think that might be because he has a far more complex and painful relationship with religion than we see on the surface level, and this has particular links to Nina’s belief that the Saints were possibly real people but were simply powerful Grisha not religious saviours/martyrs.

When Jesper was a child, his father would read him bedtime stories “from his Kaelish book of Saints”. At the same time, Colm was unintentionally damaging Jesper’s view of Grisha power and of himself by forcing him to hide it and telling him “that’s what killed your mother. That’s what took her away from us”. Alongside the self-hatred this cultivates in Jesper, seen mostly in Crooked Kingdom since he’s most open about it in the beautiful, heartbreaking chapter 24, I think it may have also impacted his relationship with religion. To be told as a child that these people are worshipped and valued for the things they could do, the same kind of things he saw his mother do and that he could be capable of, but that his power is a curse and a shameful secret that has to be hidden from the world is so damaging. It effectively raises the question: If it’s different for me than it is for them, what’s wrong with me? Why am I less worthy of love?

When Jesper already had these feelings growing inside him, feelings that went on to massively impact all the relationships in his life (most notably his relationships with Kaz and Wylan but I would also argue his relationship with Inej is affected by this as well) and actively endanger him when he began to try and fill the void he felt with gambling, to emphasise these emotions with something that could have been so beautiful and given him so much comfort by turning it into something that can be used against him by labelling him as less than others is so heartbreaking and honestly painful.

Obviously this is just an interpretation or a theory but this is how I feel about it when I reread, if anyone else has thought about this please feel free to add anything or contradict it with your own interpretation I’d love to read it.

Once again thinking about a Six of Crows musical featuring delightful hits such as:

Overture (Instrumental)

Ketterdam [Capitol of Capital] (Ensemble)

The Bastard of the Barrel (Kaz's song)

Stars and Saints (Inej's song)

Trigger Finger (Jesper's song)

Son of the Council (Wylan's song)

Welcome to Hellgate (Matthias's song)

To Hold a Heart [To End a Life] (Nina's song)

Two Step Plan (The Crows)

Tainted (Kanej Duet)

The Ice Court [Infiltration Destination] (The Crows)

Up the Incinerator (Ensemble)

Dance of the Dignitaries (Ensemble)

Two Pair (Wesper)

Hands of Flame (Ensemble)

Waters of Djel (The Crows)

Escape [We Have a Tank] (The Crows)

Jurda Parem (Ensemble)

Stay Afloat (Helnik Duet)

Bastard's Lament [To Lose a Spider] (Ensemble)

No Mourners, No Funerals (Ensemble)

Exit the Crows (Instrumental)

Now if only I knew how to compose music...

The fact that so many countries came together to intercept the Iranian missles before they hit Israel proves that those countries absolutely could prevent more strikes on Palestine; they simply choose not to. Even the ones who have called for a ceasefire.