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SIX OF CROWS: we are all someone’s monster

She'd laughed, and if he could have bottled the sound and gotten drunk on it every night, he would have. It terrified him.

The first of 4 endpapers I got to illustrate for Illumicrate’s special edition of Six of Crows!! So happy I finally got to draw this scene!!

this age discourse around the six of crows characters is so interesting to me. i’ve seen a lot of people over the years say that they feel like the characters should have been older, but as someone who read it at 16 for the first time, at no stage did i feel like the characters could not have been my peers. if anything, now as an adult, when i reread them now i feel like i’m older than them, even if i am still undeniably more sheltered than them.

six of crows is a peak example of the ya coming of age conflict where they, in many respects, are being disrespected and suppressed due to their age. even kaz, who is probably the character easiest to age up, is irrefutably different from pekka rollins and per haskell because he is still on the front lines of the barrel conflicts. he doesn’t have that privilege of sitting down and ordering others around at the beginning of the duology, because he doesn’t have that experience! he’s still too young.

and it’s the characters emotions and relationships that really cement the fact they’re teenagers! i actually don’t think nina and matthias’s relationship would have worked if nina was any older, because she would have had too much experience with fjerdan violence and oppression to consider him in any capacity. alternatively, matthias being mentally indoctrinated into an ideology and having actually physically undertaken it in his life are two very different positions to be in. the youth and inexperience that allows for their relationship to develop. the naive conviction both characters exhibit is something i strongly related to as a teenager, which as an adult doesn’t resonate to the same extent - despite only being in my mid 20s.

idk, i just think that six of crows is such a masterful young adult novel, and this attempt to remove it from its genre is really strange, and is harming the quality of the story.

#six of crows #kaz brekker #nina zenik #matthias helvar #helnik

avvilo

the removal of all mentions of the crows ages from the dregs editions is genuinely one of the worst choices leigh bardugo has ever made. the youth of every character is so crucial to their stories.

kaz is not an angry adult man who can’t let go of a grudge, he’s a teenager who lost his brother only a few years ago who’s still grieving, but is still naive enough to believe that fathers must love their sons.

inej is not a strong adult woman, she is a child still, forced to grow up too fast and fend for herself. her optimism despite the shitty hand fate dealt her has so much to do with her youth.

jesper is not an adult man who can’t control himself. he is young and reckless and grieving his mother and suppressing one of the most important parts of himself.

wylan isn’t a grown man too sheltered to leave his fathers house despite being well past the age he should’ve left by. he was sixteen when his father tried to kill him the first time, young and still hopeful that his father must love him enough to send him to school to make music, the one thing he truly loves.

and nina and matthias were carefully groomed by their countries to maintain their biases from a young age, but they are still young enough to change.

and kuwei?? a literal child being held captive by the fjerdan government for the actions of his father, frightened and too intelligent.

it infuriates me to strip these characters of their youth when their age is so tightly woven into their personalities and character arcs.

vilecemetery

leigh bardugo has massively edited and rewritten the six of crows books and no one has noticed

or has for some reason decided not to mention it at all or let anyone else know.

I just found out something insane today. in the new dregs editions that came out for the 10th anniversary, leigh bardugo has removed any and all mention of the crows being teenagers, cut out whole sentences and completely changed quotes that are classic and very well known by fans of the six of crows duology. she’s replaced any mention of words like ‘children’ ‘boy’ ‘girl’ and ‘kids’ with ‘man’ ‘woman’ ‘grown’ etc

this is concerning, bewildering and just feels wrong for so many reasons. but besides the obvious —which is that the six protagonists of the duology being young is essential to many aspects of the plot, seeing as their world weariness and competence is a result of their experiences as children and survivors who are victims of their environment—besides even that, editing a piece of literature that’s been published and on shelves for 10 years is objectively not a good idea at all, and doesn’t at all take into account the new contexts and connotations the new wording brings.

above is an example of the original scene we know verses the new version. lots of it has changed, namely their ages, but the sentence at the end in matthas' pov doesn't even sound like him at all. her writing quality has declined noticeably and she sounds like she wrote that sentence in a rush. it makes no sense, and it's not something matthias, who knows practically nothing about the barrel, would be thinking.

and not to mention the famous line 'brekker's eyes were ancient, but he couldn't be any older then matthias' — cut out of the book completely. I do wonder what impact, effect and influence these changes will have on new readers.

this is another example. such a classic line and they cut it completely.

the entire books are like this. inej saying kaz looking seventeen is changed to kaz looking like someone's apprentice. the boy of the barrel changed to man. criminal prodigy changed to just mastermind. inej described as a woman in place of a sixteen year old girl. wylan changed from boy to young man. full scenes cut. 'jesper is zemeni but don't hold it against him' changed to ‘don’t let him wax sentimental about it’ which sounds way worse then the original.

and I don't actually own the new copies of these books, my best friend was looking at them in a bookstore and that's when we first noticed all of the changes. so I truly have no idea what else could possibly be changed besides the things I noticed as I cannot look at them for reference - the crow's physical appearance, more of the plot, other famous scenes just being cut completely, etc. if nothing else has changed, then it’s still way too much and massively changes core aspects of the books. but I do wonder. if you own the dregs special editions, I suggest looking for similar differences. I might have to write examples to express how messed up the new connotations are.

leigh now implies that jesper, an adult black man, made the right choice by handing over his share from his job to his white father to keep for you, as he cannot control himself and isn't ready to receive his own funds, as he is a mindless gambler. this is extremely different to a reckless irresponsible teenager grieving his mother and making stupid mistakes, and then deciding to make better decisions in the future with help from his parent. I'm sure you can see without me spelling it out how awful, racist and problematic the new context of jesper being a grown man makes this situation sound.

another example is matthias' childhood centrally seeing him be groomed, manipulated and indoctrinated by a nazi coded witch hunting organisation that targets grisha, an oppressed community, with the intention of torturing, burning, hanging, raping and eradicating them from the world

matthias is just turning 18 when he meets nina. he has not yet done any of these terrible things himself. he is fresh out of training and still basically a child. his views are first challenged, and he eventually breaks out of the brainwashing and mental manipulation that has been taught and instilled in him with repetition. it's not an excuse, but it's more understandable. matthias, now a grown man apparently way older then 18, has no excuse for these bigoted views as he is way more mature, has way more experience, and would have had to have done these horrific things to grisha at some point.

it feels like some sort of fever dream that six of crows was edited and re published so that these famous teenage characters (who were first written so obviously— in dialogue, actions, pov, - as teenagers) and their criminal prodigy leader were made into poorly written adults. I can put into words how much this has deeply bothered and distressed me and many other readers I've spoken to.

it's such an odd choice and makes me think it was done to soften the backlash the shadow and bone adaption received from some fans for aging up the characters in the first place.

I cannot stress this enough- leigh bardugo would edit iconic lines and change core aspects of her characters that have been around for 10 years to justify a cancelled netflix adaption of these incredibly popular and well loved books. it's odd and uncomfortable.

now, these books mean the world to me, they have quite literally got me through physical, mental and emotional childhood abuse, suicide ideation and self harm, the everyday ableism and oppression, chronic pain and disability experience, severe depression and anxiety, absolute hopelessness, work and life, etc) but the sheer absurdity of this all just outmatches my distress that it happened. it feels like some sort of hallucination becasue it's lowkey just insane. she never even mentioned she was going to do something like this?

there is just no conceivable reason for leigh bardugo to have done this secretly and quietly other then to have stopped people negatively critiquing the show or some other deeply odd notion. and with all of these changes, the new books absolutely are not the 'dregs' editions— the heart of the dregs is the young blood, 'the kids like kaz who he had brought in a organised, who worked the hardest and took the worst jobs'

they are the bad netflix adaption editions. the sympathy for terrible adult cast editions. it's troubling, clearly not a well thought out decision, and deeply bizarre. tell me others agree.

carswells

url edits: @ketterdame he had often wondered how people survived in this city, but it was possible ketterdam would not survive kaz brekker. → want one?