Kaz/Inej
| Pairing | |
|---|---|
| Pairing: | Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa |
| Alternative name(s): | Kanej |
| Gender category: | het |
| Fandom: | Six of Crows, Grishaverse |
| Canonical?: | yes |
| Prevalence: | main pairing |
| Archives: | |
| Other: | |
| Click here for related articles on Fanlore. | |
This article or section needs expansion. |
Kaz/Inej or Kanej is the most popular pairing in Six of Crows fandom. Kaz Brekker and Inej Ghafa's relationship is canon in the book series.
History
The earliest Kaz/Inej story on AO3 was posted on Dec 29, 2015. It was a relatively small fandom for a number of years, appearing in the Yuletide gift exchange for small AO3 fandoms.
The pairing's popularity increased sharply after the release of the Shadow & Bone Netflix series in April 2021: as of 24/08/2021, there were 1870 works tagged with the pairing on the archive, about 1000 of them were posted after the show's release.
Books vs Show
In the books, the relationship between Kaz and Inej is very slow to develop due to Kaz's PTSD/touch aversion and Inej's trauma from being forced into sex work after being kidnapped as a teenager. The canon insists on how near-impossible a physical relationship between the two would be, and on how much work will be involved to overcome this. Many stories based on the books therefore center around this slow, rocky process.
The show hinted at each of those issues but did not explicitely delve into them, prompting some book fans to wonder how new fans of the pairing might write them.
This is examplified by the following meme, posted on Tumblr on april 25, 2021, a few days after the show's release:
The post had 1.611 notes as of 24/08/2021
Common Tropes
- Slow Burn due to the characters' respective trauma, which makes touching each other and having a sexual relationship extremely difficult
- Hurt/Comfort
- Post canon
- Virgin!fic, in which Kaz is a virgin
- Mutual Pining
Example Fanworks
Art
- Hook and Crook, a papercraft work by rosiethorns88
- "I can best this." digital art by artscapade
Fic
- kiss me on the mouth (and set me free) by blujamas (2016)
- I'm crawling on your shore by victoria_p (2016), podfic by greedy_dancer
- shaking the wings of their exultant and terrible youth by lovebeyondmeasure (2017)
- Dealing with Our Demons by ravenyenn19: an epic WIP which started posting in 2020, with 475k+, 114+ chapters, 270k hits and 5700+ comments as of 08/2021 (Kaz/Inej)
- Stories About Crows by marycontraire, Kaz/Inej, Jesper/Wylan, a series containing 19 connected stories and 76k words, posted over the summer of 2021.
Podfic
- scared rituals (podfic) by Ashling & flowersforgraves (8 minutes, 2021)
- (Podfic) Paint a thank-you on my palm by greedy_dancer (21 minutes, 2021)
- Podfic: 'something in me understands the voice of your eyes' by bostonjupiter by peasina (11 minutes, 2021)