Shadow and Bone Erased Kaz and Inej’s PTSD. Stop Ignoring That.
This article contains mentions of sexual abuse.
He isn’t a cane user, she’s well over five feet tall, he isn’t wearing brown colored contacts to cover his piercing blue eyes, her hair is in a slick low ponytail instead of a braid, the walking stick prop he fake-limps with is gold instead of silver, she has fourteen knives instead of six, they’re both well into their twenties, but okay, okay, okay, none of that matters — what matters is that they are able to play the characters we know and love so dearly. With the right script, these two master talents will bring Kaz Brekker and Inej Ghafa to life like we’ve spent half a decade dreaming of.
When Jesper Fahey (Kit’s Version) places his hand on the shoulder of Kaz Brekker (Freddy’s Version), the latter stops in his tracks and glares. Oh, Saints! book fans cry gleefully, there it is! The touch aversion!
Sure. Fine. Now where else is it? On the show, did Kaz appear even remotely uncomfortable sitting in a tight train compartment with two other people? Did this closeness of human bodies bother him? Yes, of course, can’t you see how, via Freddy Carter’s well-researched portrayal, Kaz looks to be on the brink of throwing up or passing out or both as memories of his brother’s rotting flesh threaten to drown him like the harbor’s frigid waters? What about the time he hesitates to help Inej with her wounds? It’s there, okay, it’s hinted at subtly, as a popular Tumblr set of gifs claims. This edit references the camera panning away from Kaz’s bare hands as he washes them, which someone in the replies called a “smart cinematic choice” — something I ponder upon recalling the fourth chapter in the first Six of Crows book, when Kaz’s bare, very normal, very human hands are revealed to the audience in a mundane and nondramatic scene. The book takes its time disclosing the reason behind Kaz’s touch issues through flashbacks, but it consistently emphasizes he has a problem. It does not rely on cheap suspense to hold the mystery of Kaz’s gloves back from the audience. I have always believed a lesser book would do the literary equivalent of panning the camera away from his bare hands before revealing them at the end in an epic plot twist moment. I am yet to be convinced Eric Heisserer’s masterpiece won’t do just that.
Inej. Oh, Inej, my queen, my girlboss with blades. In the books, Inej Ghafa was kidnapped from her home by human traffickers at the age of fourteen and spent a year in the Menagerie, where she was raped by countless men and physically abused by the pleasure house’s owner, Tante Heleen. On the show, Inej (Amita’s Version) is actually still employed in the Menagerie while also working for Kaz. I am not going to unpack the implications of removing Per Haskell and making Kaz the leader of the gang. I am not going to dwell on the idea that Kaz, a grown man, quite literally owns a woman and lets her continuously return to her place of abuse. (Of course, she might not be getting abused at the Menagerie, who’s to say.) I am not going to wax poetic and furious about his “not like other girls” line that translates roughly to “you’re the only sex trafficking victim I care about because you have skills that are useful to me.” Romance, Book Twitter, romance! OTP! I will only focus on the show’s depiction of the Menagerie and how Inej reacts to it.
Early on in the first book, Inej is merely walking past the Menagerie when she has to keep herself from a panic attack. I do not know how the sixteen-year-old girl in Six of Crows would survive entering that building again, taking off her knives, and conversing with Tante Heleen. But the sleek assassin on Shadow and Bone with the dark eyeliner and berry lipstick doesn’t seem to mind. She’s handed a note beckoning her to Heleen’s office and looks like she has to speak to her annoying manager at her exhausting retail job. The show never clarifies what exactly the Menagerie is. If you haven’t read the books or talked to anyone who has, I sincerely wonder how you could know she is being beaten and raped at the place Jesper jokes she needs company.
Shadow and Bone fans insist they will get to it next season. There just wasn’t enough screen time — due to the ingenious idea to combine two book series that could not possibly be less alike in theme, style, and quality — to explain throwaway details like the debilitating childhood trauma integral to understanding two characters’ personalities and motivations. Perhaps this works with Kaz; next season they’ll put him in more triggering situations that will make his phobia apparent. But how is Inej supposed to suddenly develop severe PTSD from long-term sexual abuse when she was just removing her knives and casually chatting with Tante Heleen? Inej having a panic attack simply being near the Menagerie building would blatantly contradict what was established in season 1: that she is fully capable of talking to the woman who abused her, in the building where she was abused.
When I was in middle school in the early 2010s, everyone started really caring about mental health. Just as important as physical health! Tumblr cried. Don’t be afraid to ask for help! I have begun to realize the only illnesses anyone actually cares about are anxiety and depression, and on top of that, the only anxious and depressed people anyone wants to help are those who aren’t annoying. Those who hide in their rooms and don’t cry too loud. Those who don’t trigger others’ issues — remember, being vulnerable with your friends more often than not equals trauma-dumping. If you are loudly mentally ill, visibly mentally ill, bothersome in your mental illness, you need to figure that out on your own because no one wants to hear about it.
If I were a little bit braver and a little more healed, I would explain my own issues. I would explain the symptoms I have that are not subtle, that are not easily hidden, that are not merely hinted at, that are so incredibly triggering to those around me. But I’ll stick to the made-up people. Kaz’s symptoms include vomiting, fainting, and having visual and tactile hallucinations upon being touched. Inej often dissociates when a friend hugs her or a man smiles at her on the street, vanishing from her body like she did to survive her abuse. These symptoms are not subtle. They are not hinted at. They are visible and messy and disturbing. They are not something you can only see if you squint or read two novels beforehand. And that’s too bad, because Shadow and Bone does not want to actually portray two teenagers’ mental illnesses; it wants to hint at them just enough that fans can feel good about defending the adaptation. I have begun to think, since the release of this show, that most people want Six of Crows to be a little smaller. They want a fun fantasy heist story starring a Badass Power Couple. Six of Crows is a fun fantasy heist story, but it is also about teenaged mental illness and disability and knowing that you can work to make your life whatever you want it to be, that you can seek justice in a world that has hurt you.
So now it is January 13th of 2022 and Wylan’s actor has been announced. He is a baby-faced 26-year-old, and no, stop, don’t question why the gay disabled character everyone infantilizes is the only one played by an adult with a baby face. Hush so we can hear the celebrations, the squealing over how perfect he is, and do not fret about that pesky little problem, his inability to read. Do not fret that it will be merely hinted at. It will be there, blink and you’ll miss it, our precious Merchling’s learning disability portrayed subtly and beautifully like the trauma of Badass Power Couple. Oh, Badass Power Couple, sociopathic monster and angelic knife wife, stab me, oh please, hit me with your cane.
