The Crows As Olympic Athletes

the crows as olympic athletes

kaz

hear me out — table tennis

he'd definitely be one of the more precise players

nicknamed "dirtyhands" for his use of unconventional techniques and trolling his opponents with snake shots and hidden spin

his role models include natalia partyka and ma long

like partyka, he competes in both the olympics and paralympics (classification 9)

inej

i think the obvious choice is artistic gymnastics; she'd be absolutely unbeatable in beam with her amazing balance

her fans have started calling her "the wraith", alluding to the way she twists through the air with unbelievable grace and strength

her biggest rival, dunyasha lazareva, is one of the only gymnasts who can match her in skill

jesper

skeet shooting

ithink the variability of the sport would definitely be something jesper prefers over something like air rifle/pistol

he's a star in the sport shooting world and made his olympic debut at 17 after switching sport from equestrian

(he met wylan at the riding club and the rest is history)

wylan

modern pentathlon

there was a brief scandal with his father and former pentathlete which put him in the public eye, but now he's famous only for his performance in the modern pentathlon

he first appeared at the youth olympic games where he claimed gold by a large margin

now at his first olympic games all eyes are on him as the favourite to win

nina

at tokyo 2020 she's just a random competitor in judo, unknown to most of the world — and then suddenly she shocks the entire world with a gold medal that almost looked easy

now everyone knows not to underestimate her, as she looks to defend her olympic title

matthias

i mean, he's made out of pure muscle, so is it really a surprise to see matthias in olympic wrestling?

he has made a name for himself as six feet and four inches of pure strength and power

he makes the team for the second time, up against competitors like jarl brum, three time olympic gold medallist

"love is love" until it doesn't include sex

"love is love" until it lives in separate beds

"love is love" until it is queer platonic

"love is love" until it does not comply with compulsory sexuality and amatonormativity

love IS love, for aspecs, for sex sepulsed folk and for platonic relationships

"love is love" apply to more than same-sex relationships in a world where romantic and sexual relationships are considered more valuable

Remember to advocate for Asexuals and Aromantics this pride. Because we are also here, and we are also queer

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

As a non-binary fan of SoC, I like to think about the implications of this scene a lot:

“Is Inej Ghafa your real name?”

A strange sound escaped Inej’s throat, part sob, part laugh. A weak, embarrassing sound. But it had been months since she’d heard her own name, her family name.

“Yes,” she managed.

“Is that what you prefer to be called?”

“Of course,” she said, then added, “Is Kaz Brekker your real name?”

“Real enough.”

Because it shows that Kaz understands the weight and importance of being called a name you want and being regarded/addressed in the way you need to be. (Inej is heavily connected to her birth name and so hearing and going by it means so much after having been called a false, objectifying one. And Kaz’s original last name is one he has a complicated relationship with and so goes by another.)

And I think about this scene a lot because it really strongly supports the fact that were Kaz ever to hire or work with a trans or gender-variant person, he wouldn’t bat a fucking eye. 

I mean, if you think about how trans people have historically been pushed to the margins of society and work/live in poor areas and have a high rate of sex work, you can bet your ass it’s SUPER likely the Barrel has its fair share of trans residents. And as Kaz has declared himself on multiple occasions, he knows everything that goes on in Ketterdam. He’d be in the know about all of it.

When he was hiring Inej on he literally asked her if she preferred to be called her birth name or not! Like, talk about a trans-inclusive question.

I mean, Kaz is in a gang with someone people routinely call Teapot for god’s sake, you really think he’s gonna get hung up by a name that’s traditionally gendered one way or another? The knowledge of someone’s trans identity would be something Kaz would just file away like any other fact about someone, same as their favorite coffee house, the things they spend their income on, what languages they speak, etc. It all goes in a little folder in his devious head to pull if he needs it.

Like, obv I wouldn’t put it past Kaz to be shitty about gender occasionally because we’ve seen that, if anything, Kaz Brekker is not sensitive about personal shit. He pokes at and makes comments about Inej’s and Matthias’ closely held religious beliefs, Nina’s devotion to her problematic country, Jesper’s gambling problems. But not in the way of reducing them to it. He makes jibes at Inej’s Suli proverbs and beliefs but he’s never fucking racist about it. His insults and remarks always have a personal slant to them. They’re always about the person and their relationship to the identity, never the group of people at large. That’s the thing, it’d be just like any other factor about someone. He’s insensitive about aspects of identity but he’s never mercher-level shitty and cruel. Take how Kaz treats Wylan’s learning disability and illiteracy, for instance. He’s like “so what? that’s just how you are. You can still make explosives, why should I care?” Which is how he pretty much treats anyone and regards anything. 

Kaz would be more likely to have the attitude of: “Does being genderfluid throw off your shot? No. So I’m not gonna fucking worry about it.” and “You wanna be referred to by they/them pronouns? No problem. That’s good, actually. More ambiguous. Gives away less info when people overhear things about you.”

I mean he wouldn’t be a super great ally or anything, let’s be real here. Take for example how he addressed Inej’s situation when she first joined the Dregs and moved to the Slat, being a young girl and a person of color. He told her that he wouldn’t be around to defend her against the disrespect she’d face and she’d have to watch her own back. Yet he still in words and actions shows that disrespect toward her because of her gender or ethnicity is never validated or welcomed around him. He’d probably be that way about gender identity and pronouns too. Like, he wouldn’t go out of his way to correct people if they misgendered someone but he’d make super witty burns on the person being shitty, he’d used correct words, he’d generally gain the intellectual upper hand in that way he has. He’d make it known that shitty comments and attitudes aren’t welcome or appreciated.

And Kaz would almost NEVER misgender anyone. Think about it. Kaz prides himself on knowing everything about everyone, about seeming like he’s mastered everything, and having a mind like a steel trap. He’d see calling someone by the wrong name, gendered word, or pronoun as a sign that he was somehow not as on top of things, forgetting information and details. He’d see it as a sign of a personal failing and as broadcasting something slipping through the cracks of his iron hold on information and so he’d be the last person to slip and call people the wrong things. Kaz’s pride is a fucking force to be reckoned with and to have that on the side of him getting somebody’s pronouns right is a hell of a thing.

Like ??,? The fact that my favorite thief crew would be inclusive gives me so much life. I mean @lbardugo has already woven such a beautifully complex world that is so truly detailed when it comes to diversity and the way personal identity is held by the characters when it comes to race, ethnicity, religion, sexuality, and class. And so for me to fill in that final gap myself as a reader with so much canon evidence to support that my fictional faves would be super chill with someone like me is my everything. Honestly.

tl;dr: Canon supports the notion that Kaz Brekker–scariest, cruelest, most hardened criminal in Ketterdam–wouldn’t be a transphobic shitbag, what excuse do you have?

Why are chronic illnesses always buy one get four free? I didn’t want the first one to start with let alone a handful more?!? 😂😭

need a fic where Kaz gets stabbed by Oomen rather than Inej and we get to see feral protective Inej and Jesper over him bc I’m sucker for when the protective character gets protected and it would catch the other crows so off guard bc at this point they never would’ve witnessed such violence coming from Inej and Jesper of all people like there aware there both dangerous but they never would’ve seen them like that

this would definitely change Matthias’s and Wylan’s initial relationships with all of them bc not only would they both realize Kaz isn’t infallible (which is how they sort of unconsciously perceive him) but also realize that, despite how they (Jesper and Inej) seem, they are just as capable of violence as the rest of the barrel

plus we could get a line like “ask the saints for me” from the show to Oomen or even her telling Jesper she’s “not going to waste her prayers” on Oomen 🤭

(also the horror of them realizing just how much they’re willing to do for Kaz, how much they both love him)