#kaz rietveld

[cryptidstealingyourcreditcard]

i think the fandom collectively tends to forget how much kaz actually smiles in canon. like he’s not some stone-faced immovable shadow who wouldn’t know humor if it shanked him in the ass, he’s a bratty 17 year old who constantly makes jokes and snide comments at people. he has, at least once, been described as “grinning like a fool”. his lips quirk and he smiles and smirks and sometimes even grins like any other edgelord high schooler would

[goddamnit-its-me-again]

I absolutely despise pretty!Kaz Brekker as a concept. That boy looks like a corpse, he looks half-dead and sleep deprived at all times. Fanart where he looks like he works out every day and has clear skin??? Not my Dirtyhands.

That boy is 17 years old, living in KETTERDAM, which is the smokiest place in godsdamned Kerch, has the shittiest haircut known to mankind (verified by Nina Zenik) and cosplays as a dramatic edgelord crime boss.

He is a gangly, traumatised teenage boy two seconds from passing out at any given moment, not a sauve mafia boss. Let pretty Kaz die out, please.

[leftontheforestfloor]

Kaz may have a body count, but at least he doesn't make fun or mocks a child because that child is dyslexic

In fact, he's quite considerate and understanding about it :)

[southdiamond89blogging]

Ranking the crows based off of how good I think They'd be with babies:

1. Matthias - his backstory with his baby sister?? You know he practically helped raise her. Babysitter of the century

2. Inej - big family means she had to become VERY familiar with babies. She probably has uncles and aunts younger than her (speaking from personal experience)

3. Jesper - had a good childhood (until his mom died) probably had at least interacted with babies before, and has an easygoing fun personality that babies enjoy

4. Kaz - also likely a good childhood (before The Horrors) though he likely isn't fond of babies as of now (and they wouldn't be fond of him either), he technically understands how they work

5. Nina - girl was barely allowed to be a baby herself? She learned war and espionage at an extremely young age, and so likely has trouble grasping how normal babies behave and what they know, but was in an orphanage so has at least seen a baby before

6. Wylan - grew up incredibly sheltered and then isolated. Has no idea what to do with a baby, probably never even SAW one until he was in the barrel. Would hear one crying and mistake it for the plague siren.

[aconfusedspoon]

Maybe an unpopular opinion given how I don't see a single soul talk about this, but the notion that Kaz actually did try to overcome his fear of touch before he met Inej and even then the catalyst was a girl he used to like is actually so important to me.

It doesn't even take away anything from Kanej since that failure, the humiliation and frustration of it, is part of why he is as unforgiving and violent as he is and how he eventually got nicknamed Dirtyhands, so it's a little surprising to me how this never seems to be brought up in character discussions- at least not from what I've been able to see (I had a full year of spoilers for the duology before I ever got to read the books).

Knowing that Imogen existed at some point for Kaz, that receiving and giving physical affection isn't something he just point blank gave up because it triggered his trauma- rather, he always saw it as a worthy reason for him to try to overcome that pain... knowing that what made him ultimately gave it up wasn't really the very same repulsed reaction he gets from skin to skin contact in the first place but what failing the attempt to best it costed him, what he understood that yearn for affection would entail for him, how hard it was for him to crawl back from the shame of it which he never really did because otherwise he wouldn't have been so deeply hesitant to try it again...

I think it really puts into perspective just how self aware Kaz is of both his own suffering and the way he treats others, and of how those two things correlate. It's such a relevant part of his character.

[incinerated-vestiges]

kazzle dazzle

[iamafkrn]

Wylan “commit to the bit” Van Eck

Kaz “how many ribs did you break” Brekker

[privateerandking]

We actually don’t talk enough about how at his roots Kaz is a farm boy. Like he moved to Ketterdam when he was 9? He spent a not insignificant amount of formative years growing up on a farm. I need all the headcannons about the ways his farm boy upbringing still shows through despite his best efforts to put up the facade that ‘his mother is Ketterdam. She birthed him in the harbor’

You can take the boy out of the farm but you can’t take the farm out of the boy.