you’re a thief, kaz

liv | 18 | art blog: @crankycripple

[sictransitgloriamvndi]

[vilecemetery]

these are my friend klare’s thoughts on the recent content changes in six of crows.

[the-angry-acrobat]

okay so my best friend, my older sibling and I just found out something insane. leigh bardugo has rewritten and edited massive parts of six of crows in the new editions, erasing any mentions of the crew being teenagers and chopping other random scenes. it seems incredibly random and somewhat rushed, and genuinely confusing and more then a little distressing to me for many reasons.

to start, six of crows as a book was revolutionary to me, to my older sibling, to our friends, and so many people that we’ve met. the crew of highly skilled, world-weary, humorous, loveable, tragic, vibrant, criminal teenagers changed me fundamentally, taught me so much, and have never left me since the first time I was introduced to them (when I was ten years old, with these characters being only six or seven years older then me). 

their stories—their dark pasts, their finding each other and surviving insane jobs and near deaths together, saving each others lives and finding themselves and their causes, purposes, and homes again side by side, bound together for reasons not even they truly understood—are such a large part of my heart and always will be. 

when I first saw the netflix shadow and bone show I was honestly heartbroken. to see the book that is so important to me and so important to people I love be butchered beyond recognition in an adaption that felt a little like a purposefully damaging, harmful, and offensive piece of media makes me so angry and so upset. the six of crows characters literally saved my life and brought me back from hell on multiple occasions and it made me physically sick to see them portrayed in such a way.

kaz brekker, a seventeen year old, disabled teenager with severe, debilitating trauma and touch aversion, that walks with a limp and uses a cane, and who means so so greatly much to me—was portrayed by a thirty year old, able-bodied, ignorant man, who alongside the showwriters turned kaz’s character, his story, even his disability into what felt like an ableist, degrading parody. kaz is a character I see myself in and a character who means the world to me and I was so hurt by the casting and anything to do with the show. 

they portrayed inej ghafa, a sixteen year old girl from a marginalised community who is haunted by her trauma from the horrific experiences of her past—as a woman who is owned, forced to return to the menagerie numerous times, and who in the end joins the crew of some random man with a ship instead of being the captain of the ship that she owns, and pursuing the cause that is all hers. I love inej so much, she is my greatest inspiration, and knowing that they did this to her character is such a source of anger for me.

jesper, nina and wylan were all turned into shallow, blank cutouts of queer stereotypes in turn. jesper was made into something further then comedic interlude and nina was treated similarly. the importance of their young ages in the story was stripped away and the plot and the characters were completely changed and emptied of meaning and of essence and of the message behind six of crows as a result. they were pathetic, comedic, completely butchered tryhard replicas of the characters that book fans love and relate to, and on top of that they were portrayed incredibly harmfully in the sense of disability, queerness, and other such topics. 

I am barely scraping the surface of my issues with the adaption and the casting here but anyway. all of their relationships, friendships, connections, and what makes them all special and unique and interesting and complex and beautiful were liquidated and butchered. the show was warmed-up hell and felt like a fever dream of the worst adaption someone could think up. 

however, what made it better was just having the books. the beautiful and intricate books, with the real characters that I love, the teenagers that pulled off suicide missions and survived hopeless situations, finding friendship and love in each other after the world left them alone, left them for dead. 

kaz, the deadly, unafraid, boy of black glass that was the first physically disabled teenager with a mobility aid that my sibling and I had ever read about, who changed my relationship with my disabilities fundamentally. inej, the girl that didn’t need a crown or a title to be held in high regard, whose character gives me strength and confidence. the books that couldn’t be touched by the netflix adaption or anything no matter what.

so it hurts, probably even worse then the show, to know that something so important could be erased from the books, that the texts are being altered at all. that this is an attempt somewhat to pull the characters further and further from their original, timeless beauty and turn them into what the show did, and make them like the characters in the adaption. 

it makes me so upset to know this. I can scarcely believe it. changing who the characters are and their ages changes everything. it is not the same story, message, meaning, impact, and it doesn’t make the same sense. and it is also fucked for so many moral reasons on many varying levels. 

making them adults throws everything off balance, and the entire plot, the characters motives, what makes them them and their stories are entirely hurled. the books shouldn’t be being changed and edited. they have been the same and solid for 10 years. they are a separate entity and so far removed from the show and from everything related to it. the books are not meant to be reprinted and taken out of their original contexts and story and characters. how this can possibly be happening is beyond me, as well as how it could possibly be beneficial. it genuinely makes me physically ill.

their young ages are SO important, as is everything in the books. they are children that have been exploited and abused and are victims of their impossible situations. they are mirrors of our own world and the teenagers in it. they’re like me, and my sibling, and my friends. it is so essential to their plot that they are children. 

and it makes zero sense for them to be adults, less and less sense the more I think about it. their being adults alters the entirety of the storyline and the timeline as well. 

insane that no one who owns this book has noticed this which does prove a theory I’ve had for a long time that performative fans fuelled by glittery consumerism don’t even read the books properly and just want to have the new editions for the sake of it, but that’s not relevant right now 

[vilecemetery]

what’s insane to me also is that out of all the people I’ve seen buy these new special dregs editions, (namely tiktokers so what do you expect), a lot of which even got their new copies signed by leigh bardugo, none of them even opened them the fuck up or if they did were so unfamiliar with soc that they didn’t notice any of the very obvious changes.

[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.

[existennialmemes]

It's important to remember that Luigi Mangione is being framed for murder. The "evidence" they have on him is absolute clown shoes absurd.

They're trying to win this by swaying public opinion. That's why they're doing movie deals about it and staging ridiculous photo ops.

They're gonna try to give this kid the death penalty to cover up for their own gross incompetence and in the hopes that they scare the working class out of trying to fight back.

Please don't help them do this by using his name as a synonym for political assassinations. Please do not perpetuate the idea that he's guilty.

[frailgrl-deactivated20161128]

i need like 9 cigarettes and a gunshot to the face

[the-angry-acrobat]

pov it’s anywhere that pekka rollins turns up at

[nostalgia-is-a-bitch-ah]

when i became disabled i lost the fundamental privilege of being invisible. my body is constantly under the scrutiny of strangers: invalidated, pitied, mocked. i do not resent my body but oh how i wish sometimes to go back to being invisible.

[heritageposts]

with tumblr suppressing the palestine tag and pushing pro-zionist propaganda through their ads, the least people here can do is disable their checkmarks/badges and stop buying more

[nourtarts]

poor inej. your crush ragebaits people for a living :/ (i miss them so unbelievably badly)

[timelyenigma]

Republican Sen. Mike Lee's pornography ban is moving forward in the Senate

Utah Senator Mike Lee's bill that would ban all pornography federally is advancing within the Senate.

Hey if you hadn't heard, now you have.

I don't post photos of myself publicly online often, but I think this is important. Under this legislation, these random photos of me would be considered pornography solely because I'm a transgender woman.

This ban hasn't gone through yet, it's in the senate right now, so please call your senators and urge them to shut this down. Aside from a ban on pornography being ridiculous in the first place, this is about targeting trans people and having our lives made a living hell.

[ebb-is-learning]

being anti ai is making me feel like in going insane. "you asked for thoughts about your characters backstory and i put it into chat gpt for ideas". studies have proven its making people dumber. "i asked ai to generate this meal plan". its causing water shortages where its data centers are built. "ill generate some pictures for the dnd campaign". its spreading misinformation. "meta, generate an image of this guy doing something stupid". its trained off stolen images, writing, video, audio. "i was talking with my snapchat ai-" theres no way to verify what its doing with the information it collects. "youtube is impletmenting ai based age verification". my work has an entire graphics media department and has still put ai generated motivational posters up everywhere. ai playlists. ai facial verification. google ai microsoft ai meta ai snapchat ai. everyone treats it as a novelty. every treats it as a mandatory part of life. am i the only one who sees it? am i paranoid? am i going insane? jesus fucking christ. if i have to hear one more "well at least-" "but it does-" "but you can-" im about to lose it. i shouldnt have to jump through hoops to avoid the evil machine. have you no principles? no goddamn spine? am i the weird one here?

[vilecemetery]

I’d really like to know what everyone’s opinions are on this weird grishaverse world building aspect. while it would be nice, I’ve never understood how there’s meant to be no such thing as homophobia in the grishaverse when pretty much every other form of oppression exists. racism, sexism, classism, ableism, anti-semitism, ageism and heterosexism all come from the same system and are all intrinsically linked because all involve a negative prejudgement whose purpose is to maintain the supposed “norm” through control and power. suzanne pharr defines these social phenomena as each having the ability to control and destroy lives. they all work to establish a standard of ‘rightness’ under which everyone is judged. the defined norm is backed up with both individual and institutional violence which makes the oppression possible. the fjerdans have strict gender roles and misogynistic views. fjerdan women are in an economic, social and political hierarchy where they are considered subordinate to men. queer relationships (such as lesbian relationships) which do not fit the pattern of the man as head of a household would be considered a threat to that traditional order. those roles are maintained through violence and power. they would not accept queerness in their communities. if there are roles for the two genders, they wouldn’t accept or believe in any others. people who have sexist or racist (nazi coded) tendencies are less likely to have empathy or interest in other minorities. the ravkans evict the suli because they believe that races have distinctive cultural characteristics determined by hereditary factors and that this endows some races with an intrinsic superiority over others; they have abusive and aggressive behaviour towards them. racism like this has always played a significant role in framing and scaffolding queer issues. interracial marriage was often used as an analogy for same-sex marriage. racial and gender equality have been offered as precedents for expanding the rights of self-identified sexual minorities. so how are ravkans racist but not homophobic? especially when race originally meant ‘a people of common descent’? anyway I’m interested on people’s thoughts on this because removing one oppression never made any sense to me in any fantasy world.

[vilecemetery]

me, who wears a binder and a scoliosis brace daily in a place that often gets up to 40 degrees celsius in temp: you underestimate how little I need to breathe to function

[vilecemetery]

me: (talking about an anti sab tumblr post I saw) like I understand that people are upset kaz didn’t have brown eyes but there’s so many other relevant things they could have been criticising, like how the actor was able bodied, etc. like whether or not he had brown eyes isn’t really that impor- my sister, half asleep: he has beautiful brown eyes. like baby cow. me: ..good point. forget I said anything.

[vilecemetery]

soc characters as things my sister has said part 2 (part 1)

kaz: when I die, I want jesper to lower me into the ground. so that he can let me down one last time.

kaz: (opens the car door and smashes it into pekka rollins car, which is parked next to theirs) wylan: oh my god did you just hit his car?? kaz: only once!

jesper: my friend, you are fucked in the fucking head

inej: (completely unprompted??) how dare you live your life in fear that others may see

kaz: hey if you want people to not walk close to you just walk with your hands on your hips so then they’ll walk around you lest they get elbowed.

wylan: (about someone on the merchant council) he’s disgusting. if he was a food he’d be…he’d be drooling rat toast.

random man: (walks past) kaz: don’t piss me off

kaz: can you live with just one lung? jesper: it’s…possible. I think the remaining lung can overcompensate. kaz: and one kidney, obviously. jesper: yeah. you can. kaz. what about your liver? probably not, it is called a live-r after all. (laughs like this is so funny) jesper: ..

jesper (to kaz): always glad to see you’re alive, despite your efforts

wylan: he’s coming over. quick, say something smart jesper: something smart wylan: I will kill you and feed your body to ducks

nina: currently in my this isn’t normal but I’m rolling with it era

kaz: (to another car, while driving) come on you can do it, good boy, it’s called merging