Any-corrie - Kornelia.

thinking about how, as a child, kaz’s favorite trick seemed to be watching something disappear, and then he grew up and fell in love with a girl who could vanish into thin air, and how we’re told that when he looks at inej, he feels like a boy again and believes that there’s still magic in the world. imagine loving magic all your life, and then discovering that magic loved you too.

a the amazing devil song each for the shadow and bone characters *this is based off of the netflix series versions of the characters

Kaz Brekker - The Old Witch Sleep and the Good Man Grace 'Cause when I stand, oh all those folks will run And tell the tales of what I've become They'll speak of me in whispered tones And say my name like it shakes their bones

Inej Ghafa - The Calling And I promise you I'll write I love you With my fingers on your sleeping hand And when that fox howls I'll howl with it, in its cries I'll find an end And when I think I'm fine you'll visit And then you happen to me, you happen to me all over again

Nina Zenik - Ruin I will bring you ruin in everything I do It's never my intention but it happens all the same It starts with love and comfort Becomes a strength of will But all that strength made rubble of those towers we built

Matthias Helvar - Blossoms And my saint she is dancing As every step I choose to take begins to set the world aflame And the soldiers march behind me I can hear them beat their spears And for the first time in all my life I know I'm more than what I fear

Alina Starkov - Inkpot Gods Oh what these? These aren't tears It's just the rain that wasn't brave enough to fall And what they hear isn't laughter after all It's just your voice learning for once to stand up tall

Aleksander Morozova - The Horror and The Wild Think of all the horrors that I promised you I'd bring I promise you, they'll sing of every Time you passed your fingers through my hair and called me child Witness me old man, I am the Wild

Malyen Oretsev - Farewell Wanderlust Because farewell wanderlust, you've ever ever so kind You brought me through this darkness but you left me here behind And so long to the person you begged me to be He's down, he's dead Now take a good long look at what you've done to me

Nikolai Lantsov - That Unwanted Animal And you rip my ribcage open And devour what's truly yours And our screaming joins in unison I cry out to the lord 'Cause if we join our hands in prayer enough to God I imagine it all starts to sound like applause

Genya Saffin - Fair "'Cause outwardly," he says, "I try so hard to make you laugh at me" And she, she does, she laughs as though she's not heard the joke ten thousand times before And he adores her, he watches her get dressed as though she's hurtling through time "Oh darling, please be mine"

Jesper Fahey - Welly Boots And when you scream that it's not fair It's like I've gone off to the coast Left you behind just standing there Pretending not to see your ghost

Wylan Van Eck - Secret Worlds 'Cause I will suffer silence for the strings you tune And I'll withstand what's written for the writer in you Write me well my love, write me weird Write me willing, write me well

Why is it always “ILY” and never:

SL.AIHCHBTSAGDOIENHWH.ITH

my standards are too high for fictional men

Kaz Brekker, bastard of the Barrell, Dirtyhands being described in everyone else’s chapters

Kaz Brekker, during his own chapters internally simping over Inej Ghafa

only a tiny bit disappointed that the 2nd season didn't include how uhh you know

how young kaz actually got back to the shore

“he’s so kaz-coded.” no, he’s just an intj. we are brooding and hot and here to win. you love us.

Bunny by Mona Awad (Spoilers!!!)

okay so bunny by mona awad succeeded in areas I think my year of rest and relaxation by otessa moshfegh failed in which she created a satire that actually had something to say. the way awad deals with the concepts of loneliness (both incidental and self inflicted), female friendships, class and the pretentiousness of New England college culture actually feels purposeful. and the reason I compare it to moshfegh is because both books are satires with unlikeable protags but while moshfegh is too busy kissing her own ass and hiding behind “oh all art is apolitical” bc shes to scared to admit that she actually cares about the topics shes talking about, awad cares very deeply about what she’s writing which made it unsurprising to see she based it on her own experiences at brown university.

Samantha is not the most likable character and you’re either gonna cone away from the book hating her and her pity parties or deeply understanding why she throws them (especially if you read her as a woman of color like I did). there’s a constant theme of her being obsessed with her own otherness and its true especially when you consider (Spoiler) She created her best friend Ava from a swan in the pond . Ava is Samanthas ideal friend but also the ideal form of herself: cool, self assured and beautiful. If Ava is the good part of herself, then Max is the bad. Her dark thoughts, negative impulses and hatefulness. But he is also how she sees herself as well, or at least what she thinks Ava would find attractive, he’s smooth, attractive in a dangerous way, poetic without being pretentious (he’s a literal vessel for her to say what she feels about Ava all of which is written in her diary) and what I think is very very important he can fuck Ava. Something the bunny-boys couldn’t do.

there’s also the sense of how we lose ourselves in our friends, as female friendships tend to be all consuming to the point we really do melt into a hive mind and I think even the friendship with Ava is tinged with co-dependency. Samantha dehumanizes the Bunnies calling them by nicknames she gave them, robbing them of agency because of their perceived perfectness but once she is invited to the Smut Salon she begins to call them by their real names until finally in honestly the most disorienting section of the book they all become Bunny, to the point its hard to tell who is talking and I loved that I wish we got more of Sam as a Bunny.

the atmosphere and aesthetics of the novel were so fun a candy colored dark academia where we even see that the bunnies also put on airs around each other like how Kira’s voice deepens when she thinks shes alone, no longer concerned with sounding like. bunny. I like how each of the women have a genre assigned to their writing and personal style showing how even though they are indistinguishable from each other, they were their own people beforehand but they allowed themselves to get sucked into a vacuous pretentious bubble.

the commentary on class was great, especially with how sam is said to be too obsessed with being poor to have been poor her whole life and I think thats a very accurate representation of someone who’s financial status has been precarious for much of her formative years and why despite herself shes so intrigued by the bunnies and feels out of place in her writers cohort. rich people love to blow smoke up each others asses, which allows the bunnies to write horrible work because at the end of the day they’re rich it doesn’t matter they’re never gonna have to improve themselves. its also why sam feels reluctant to speak her true feelings on their work because she doesn’t have anyone to rely on lest she gets ousted

the usage of the all female writing cohort with the singular teacher was a great nod to the secret history honestly the whole book was

I loved how it was a creation horror story as well as coming of age the horrific parts were truly gross and the way the cannibalize themselves (metaphorically) towards the end was satisfying as fuck

and a lot of ppl hate the ending but sam choosing Jonah was honestly cathartic, she isn’t healed things aren’t sweet and nice but she makes a connection with someone who has been reaching out to her instead of being obsessed with her own otherness

Kaz Brekker: A Character Study

Eyes bright, hair wild, Lips curved in a little smile. Scraped knuckles, bruised knees, Tousled gently by the country breeze. "Jordie, look, I made a friend!" Did all good things have to end?

Eyes wide, hair bristling, Lips parted in a whispered "No." Trembling fingers, racing heart, Blood like blossoms on a sunlit floor. "Jordie, quick, I think he's hurt!" Could things ever get any worse?

Eyes hopeful, hair combed neatly, Lips spread in a tremulous smile. Mittens folded over steaming chocolate, Gazing at the promise of a new sunrise. "Jordie, I think we might make it." Who knew the best way to be happy was to fake it?

Eyes waxy, hair limp, Lips closed over chattering teeth. Aching ribs, aching heart— It had never been so hard to breathe. "Jordie, please, please, wake up." They'd come too far to give up.

Eyes unseeing, hair unseen, Lips blue, dying, dying. In a pile of festering bodies, The only one who was still alive. "Jordie, wake up, please, I'm sorry." It was the only way to survive.

Eyes dull, hair pushed back, Lips pressed into a flat line. They would pay for what they did, Languish in suffering of his design. "Jordie, I promise I'll avenge you." Why wasn't he sure if that was true?

Eyes wild, hair on end, Lips trembling over trembling breaths. Crouched against a locked bathroom door, Drowning till he'd died a thousand deaths. "Jordie, please, go away." He could feel the bodies, smell the decay.

Eyes hard, hair neat, Lips in a mocking smirk. Death was dealt out far too easily, Condemningly common in his line of work. "Jordie, now I'm a monster too— What, now, would I think of you?"

Eyes caught, hair tousled, Lips frozen mid-sentence. Gazing at her, silhouetted by the sun, He could almost believe in magic again. "Jordie, I'm scared my walls are falling down." For once, he was defenseless, and he wasn't going to drown.

Eyes shy, hair straight, Lips forming words he didn't want to take back. Broken boy and broken girl— His defenses were about to crack. "Jordie, not all good things have to die." He wondered if he should straighten his tie.

FINISHED BUNNY!!!

Ok so honestly i didn't cry, and I'm happy she didn't kill them but killed max instead. She took away what they desired the most, what they were destroying themselves for. And she freed herself contemporary. Also it might be me projecting but at some point this book was so trans coded when she drew all the parallels between herself and Max. ||

It's all in the simbolysm i think, this book is not about revenge, actually Sam is angry at the world for most of the book, by killing him. She killed a part of her that she needed to let go off. Or maybe to make peace with. Wich was also what made the Bunnies seek her out and hate her because they couldn't make her like them.

Like we never get an actual description of Samantha, but then she says that she sees her face in Max and to me then she just looks like max, maybe with her hair longer. Max is a mix of all her ex lovers yet it feels a purely aesthetic thing, a very "I don't know if i want to kiss him or be him."

|| I think that her blockage with writing is like a symptom that something is wrong. Because she is not focused on actually writing, she is writing Ava, she is creating her as she goes and therefore she can't write anything else. When her and Ava get back together she is immediately able to write again because Ava is a complete character now that can make her own decisions (like thell max to leave) and so she can actually go back to writing.

||There is also the fact that she doesn't have her narrative language. Every other girl has a narrative language, that they exhaust and re use to the nausea, because they are too scared of being anything else (another commentary on genred and their use extreme of femininity) while Sam doesn't have a language like that, she doesn't have a comfort subject that she can keep using to hide the fact that she doesn't know what to write, because she has no identity, no home, no face. She is a blank page and that's why the other girls immediately want to grab her. Because that way they can write her as they want, eliminating an adversary and erasing any changes of self descrivery on her part.

honestly, it's embarrassing how much my inner horse-girl is enjoying this

Remember how after season one of Shadow and Bone we were all so Freddy Carter deprived that we binged all of Free Rein…. or was that just me?