just thinking about the line "he doesn't say goodbye, he just lets go" in reference to kaz at the end of crooked kingdom, because this line is actually quite ironic.

yes, kaz tends to not have a tendency to say goodbye to people or to anything, as seen in the both the books and the show (I know he came to say goodbye to inej, but like when did he actually utter the words??? that's right, he didn't). so, the first half of this quote still somewhat stands.

it's the second part of the quote that gets me. "he just lets go." because this could not be more untrue when it comes to kaz. when inej tells him she isn't going to stay in Ketterdam and is going to leave and hunt slavers, does kaz resign himself to her leaving and let go? no, for once in his life he voices his real feelings and asks her to stay with him. after the events of the 2 books are over, does kaz let go of his time with the crows and move on? well, he kinda has to a bit but actually no, because he names his club "The Silver Six" and continues to ask after them (i.e. telling Jesper he is missed at the slat). in fact, Kaz's entire motivation throughout the past 8 years of his life has been rooted in vengeance of something he still hasn't moved on from that happened when he was 9! poor kaz has only ever had good things ripped from him, and I think this caused him to develop a tendency to not just "let go" of anything. I could maybe even get metaphorical and argue that kaz holding onto Jordie's body is representative of his inability to let things go....but I won't cause I haven't thought that through yet haha. anyway, just food for thought.

I never fail to find it funny when Matthias tells the Crows not to eat snow (Soc chapter 19) because it’s just so completely unprompted and I know it’s because he’s trying to just keep talking and not think about Nina but it just comes out of nowhere and every time I just imagine all of them glancing at each other to try and figure out who was eating the goddamn snow when they’re all freezing and if you’re thirsty then a) that’s not gonna help and b) you have a perfectly good water flask (they were probably all ready to suspect Jesper, except Jesper who was probably prepared to suspect either Nina or Wylan) but then it’s also such a stark horrifying juxtaposition that they find the pyre within the next two seconds and now that I’m writing this maybe that’s partially the point because that is exactly how it feels for them and the distinct horror of one moment thinking about eating snow and the next seeing that and Jesper having to shoot one of the victims and oh now I’m sad

The fact that Jesper is like. a mid-tier fabrikator at best is actually so important to me.

So much of this story centers around the fact that these people are not chosen ones, that they have no sacred destiny or otherworldly power, but that they're children doing the best they can in a system that doesn't care about them, and all they have are their wits and each other. Jesper isn't an especially gifted grisha, and he has no formal training, but he takes that teaspoon of unremarkable talent and applies it to a skill he spent years perfecting to make something even greater and wholly his own. He isn't special because he was born that way, he's special because he made himself special.

"You're passable at demo. You're excellent at hostage." That was cruel, but that was Kaz. And the Barrel was a far rougher teacher than Kaz could ever be.

-Page 120 (directed at Wylan, Jesper's POV)

"You'll manage," Kaz said, though he knew asking Jesper to spend the night in a gambling den without placing a bet was a particular kind of cruelty.

-Page 131 (directed at Jesper, Kaz's POV)

Karma's a bitch, but nowhere near as big a bitch as Kaz Brekker.

Snark aside, it's hard to know if this is exactly a parallel when there's a lot of cruelty flying around whenever Kaz is... Kaz.

But it does demonstrate how Jesper doesn't really fit in the Barrel.

Oh, his skill set is great, he's valuable and useful and having fun, but deep down he acknowledges on the Ferolind that he's been more and more anxious, and pages 130-131 are just a cluster of Kaz needling Jesper emotionally. In Kaz's first narrated chapter (chapter 3, page 36) he has an exchange with Jesper--the first one on one conversation in which we see Jesper, and it's clear he's upset. Kaz knows that. Jesper doesn't like being kept in the dark--he feels slighted. The danger isn't the problem, the interpersonal exchanges, the mistrust, the Kaz of it all? That's the problem.

This actually carries on to Jesper's interaction with Inej (pages 61-62) when she fires Rojakke. Jesper doesn't act Barrel. He doesn't think Barrel. Inej knows she needs to handle this conflict herself and be seen as strong (which she is), but Jesper starts to get up because someone he cares about is being threatened. He never treats her as less or weaker for being a girl, so it can be assumed here that this isn't a gendered thing, it's just Inej, who's his friend, who shouldn't have to be alone right now.

Part of what's so fascinating about Jesper is that he genuinely doesn't fit in. He's exceptional and charismatic (some might argue that book characters can't be, but you tell me Jesper's dialogue doesn't just sparkle on your heart!) so it's easy to overlook how little he belongs.

Jesper's feelings for Wylan eventually do lead him to get in Kaz's way--hesitantly and minimally, yes, but those little steps have big echoes. And it's interesting to see that little split starting here, with Jesper acknowledging but hand-waving Kaz's cruelty mere pages before being barbed by it.

I was listening to Rosalia’s A NINGÚN HOMBRE - Cap. 11: Poder and you know she says “I’m going to tattoo you initial on my skin, because it is also mine, so I forever remember what you did to me”…

And if that doesn’t scream Kaz getting an R tatto for Rietveld or maybe also Rollins who’ll he’ll hold a grudge against forever, I don’t know what does.

Like I used to relate that song and that whole album to Inej, but that song belongs to Kaz

Things Kaz canonically does in the two years between Crooked Kingdom and Rule of Wolves:

(presumably) massively expands the Dregs' territory

buys Pekka's old club (the Emerald Palace) and completely renovates it, turning it into The Silver Six

massively expands the Crow Club to the point where it's "three times the size of every other establishment on the block"

builds an underground tunnel that goes from the Crow Club to the Geldstraat, where the Van Eck Mansion is

takes Jesper out on jobs with him often enough that Wylan has jokingly banned Jesper from answering the door when he knocks

learns about Ketterdam's Suli laborers and picks up additional knowledge of Suli culture

keeps up with Inej's whereabouts and helps her take out slavers

expands his information network to the Kerch colonies

is on friendly enough terms with the King of Ravka that he taught Nikolai how to pick locks and Nikolai feels comfortable personally writing him a letter when he needs to steal the titanium from Kerch

disguises himself just to follow people around on the streets

was planning to steal the titanium from the military base anyway just for fun

And that's just the stuff we see from Nikolai's and Zoya's incredibly limited perspectives during their Ketterdam sidequest

I 100% agree with Zoya when she thinks that "maybe Kaz was like Nikolai, a boy with an unquiet mind, a man in perpetual need of challenge" because ROW makes it so obvious that Kaz is bored and incredibly restless in his success. Someone get our boy a new life's purpose and a subscription to a long-running unsolved mystery podcast stat

When the Crows are at the breakfast diner in season 2, episode 2, Nina pulls her stunt shocking all of them by going to the waitress and saying, "Excuse me, but I have a delivery and I can't read the directions."

All of them -- Kaz, Jesper, Inej, and Wylan -- are floored by her brilliant plan that immediately finds the room they need.

But think about what Wylan just heard. She admitted that she went up to total stranger and told them she couldn't read something. She asked for help reading (even though she really can read and it was a act). To Wylan, that had to have been one of the most shameful, taboo things he could ever do. Yet she did it without hesitation, without fear. And someone just ... helped her?!

Imagine how mind blowing that must have been to Wylan. No wonder he spends the scene staring at her.

the darkling said i have loved and lost and i can bear it no longer, i will close my heart to anyone who is not like me, love is weakness, love is heartache, the joy of loving them is not worth the pain of losing them and i would spare her from this pain even if she hates me for it

and alina said i have loved him and i will lose him but not today, i have sacrificed everything but i will not sacrifice him, not again, i will bring him back to me no matter the cost, even if i have to let him go in the end

and mal said i have loved her my whole life but i don’t know who i am without her, i want a life of my own even if it means i have to leave her, but i will go trusting that i will be able to find my way back to her as i always have

and genya said i have loved him and i do not regret saving him but it came at a terrible cost, i have wandered underground in the dark with only the sound of his heartbeat guiding the way, i have survived unimaginable horrors and i am strong enough to survive losing him too

and david said i have loved her without knowing how to show it but i would like to try, i know metal and she is stronger than steel and more beautiful than rubies or emeralds, i have never known anyone braver and i regret leaving her side before, but i will do it just once more if it means i can save her

and wylan said i have loved him even knowing it might never be anything more, i left him the first time but i’m not leaving now, i want to hear about his day and i want to tell him about mine

and jesper said i have loved him all while hiding a part of myself but i will hide no longer, i do not know where this journey will lead us but i would like to find out, i have spent my life gambling and i will take a gamble on this

and nina said i have loved him even as he hates me, i have condemned him to save him and i will not rest until i am able to free him

and matthias said i have loved her despite a lifetime at war against her people, i should have known better than to trust her but i let myself anyway, she betrayed me and i should hate her but it’s not just hatred that i feel when i dream of her in the night

and inej said i have loved him as his shadow, close enough to be near but never touching, i want more for us and i will not settle for less, i will have him completely or not at all and i will not wait, i will live my own life with the freedom he gave me and we will meet again one day when i choose to return

and kaz said i have loved her when i could not love myself, i do not believe in saints but i believe in her, i have lost my brother and i would do anything to make sure she doesn’t have to suffer the same, i have given everything so she could have her freedom and i would rather watch her walk away than ever hold her back, i will wait for her and i will miss her every moment she’s not beside me, but i will try to make myself a better man by the time she returns

and sankta neyar said i have loved and lost and i will gladly do it again, i once closed my heart but no longer, i will endure the pain of losing my husband by cherishing the memories of the life we shared, may you all find a love that brings you joy that will outlive the pain, my love is my strength and my universe, i have lived for hundreds of years and what i have learned is this: there is only love, it is the only thing that matters and it is enough

I think about Kaz's mother a lot... not the Ketterdam harbour lmao, his actual mother. Wylan asks if he remembers her, and gets slapped with the infamous 'my mother is Ketterdam' response, but bc the interaction isn't from Kaz's POV, we're also blocked from an honest response.

Kaz seems to hold Jordie in much higher importance than his parents; he thinks of his father literally once (he was a farmer; he died in a ploughing accident), and his mother not at all. We can surmise he either doesn't remember her, or doesn't care to... so either she died or left when he was very young, I suppose? My personal interpretation is that she probably died in childbirth, since they seemed to live pretty rurally, and if she died in childbirth with Kaz, it makes Nina's 'you probably bargained your way out of the womb' comment kind of true, albeit accidentally. A life for a life...

But her death/departure is the first domino falling, in that it means Kaz and Jordie are left uncared for after their father's death. If she had lived or stayed... Well, I don't think Kaz would have ever gone to Ketterdam. I'm sure Kaz would say it doesn't matter, but everyone else's mothers are important to to them and remembered fondly. There's everything Jesper remembers about Aditi, Inej thinks often and fondly of small things about her mother, there's Matthias's mother who wore her shoes on the wrong feet when she was pregnant with his sister, and there is of course Marya Van Eck... this sort of puts Kaz in a weird position where he's in parallel with Nina, who's also an orphan, but the difference is Nina was raised in an orphanage from, presumably, a really early age, and Kaz had at least his father until he was nine. But the boy who remembers it all... doesn't seem to remember his mother? I wonder if he even knows what her name was. It's not plot relevant, but I still wonder.

Jesper “guard against pain” vs Wylan “guard against joy”

Jesper’s jokester and confident façade was to protect himself from feeling pain, but inside he’s insecure and vulnerable. He hid his grisha nature because the only person who ever treasured it was taken away from him, and grew up being told that it was a curse. So instead he acts like he doesn’t need it. He acts like he takes all the losses and all the hurtful things in good stride but deep inside he’s feeling lost and guilty all the time. That boy is always bouncing on his feet with guilt all the time in the duology. Guilt for disappointing everyone: his father, Kaz, Inej, his mother, and himself. When he thought about Wylan at the end of SOC he thought Wylan wouldn’t want to hang out with criminals like him anymore once he got the money and that had stung more than he thought: it’s the boy inside him feeling abandoned again, the boy that does no good to anyone other than in a fight. And he cope with all that pain, that guilt, with his addiction and his gunslinging - which no one really paid any mind until Wylan saw through his façade.

Wylan, whose joy and hope was taken away from him by his father, was always made to feel less than, shared the same constant feeling of guilt for just being who he is. His father made sure of it, that he knows he’s not allowed to feel anything but anxious and guilt, and his joy was to be choked out of him (metaphorically and literally). Wylan in the show couldn’t even believe when Jesper told him he was smart, thinking it was just a trick to coddle him into some false sense of joy before it would be taken away again. Wylan in the books still holding on to the last shred of decency for his father until that moment at Saint Hilde, instead blaming himself for it, maybe because it would give him a false sense of control over his own pain. Until Jesper saw his own guilt mirrored in Wylan, and helped him to his feet.

Both Jesper and Wylan were able to keep some part of goodness in the face of everything that happened in their lives: Jesper with his good spirits, Wylan with his morals - standing up against Kaz again and again despite being threatened every time. In Jesper, Wylan learned to accept joy again, and that this won’t be taken away from him. And in Wylan, Jesper knew that he has a safe space where he can accept his pain and heal from it in a healthy way.

“You can love something despite seeing all of its flaws.”

Anyway, Wesper is each other’s safe haven.

Something that is sad but also that I hugely appreciate about CK is that by the end, most of the systems that harmed the crows are still in place, but their relationships with themselves have grown and changed. I find this particularly interesting in the cases of Jesper and Wylan (shocking I know). Their identities still put them in danger of being exploited or harmed - Grisha indentures are still the norm in Kerch, and the auction scene made it very clear that if the Council knew Wylan's illiteracy was true, they would treat him much the same as his father did due to the culture surrounding productivity and ability. This might seem disheartening, but the hope lies in the shift in how these characters see themselves and their role in the world. By the end of the book, Jesper and Wylan are beginning to put away their internalized shame surrounding their identities. They may still have to hide who they are from the world to survive, but they're no longer hiding it from themselves - their true selves are no longer this crushing burden they have to turn away from to function. A general theme of the series is how, in accepting who they are and what has happened to them on a personal level, the crows place themselves in positions to make change on a systemic level - Inej and her ship, Nina and her mission, Kaz and his Barrel empire, Wylan and Jesper with their political, high-society empire. None of them are all the way there yet by the end - they're still healing, and both the loss of Matthias and the weight of those oppressive systems are going to weigh on them for a long time - but we get to see the very beginnings of that process. I'm going to bite someone.

It’s one in the morning let’s talk Six of Crows analysis - it feels like it’s been ages since I did any analysis, which is like the entire point of this account so sorry about that but here we go: We should talk more about Adem Bajan you guys okay because first of all he effectively comes to represent the vast majority of everyday people in a clear juxtaposition to both Inej and Van Eck, but he also is in a position of far less choice than I think we give him credit for.

As a reminder, Bajan is a young Suli boy (presumably somewhere around 19 but we have no confirmation of that) working in the Van Eck household teaching Alys music. He is highly implied to be having or to have interest in having as affair with Alys, and was Van Eck’s chosen jailer for Inej at the beginning of Crooked Kingdom. Van Eck claims he made this choice because he thought “a Suli boy would be most conspicuous” when he was attempting to lure Kaz into a trap to save Inej, but it was also an inarguably smart decision in that, as Inej even comments herself, Bajan was easy to talk to, made her feel nostalgic, homesick, and alone, and very nearly succeeded in drawing information out of her without having to restore to torture. If anything, resorting to torture was Van Eck’s major mistake at this point but that’s really a conversation for another time. Bajan is a really interesting character because he doesn’t want to hurt Inej and specifically encourages her to tell him things so Van Eck won’t escalate things further, but when Van Eck does escalate things Bajan is unable - or possibly unwilling - to stop him. For this Inej calls him a monster, and when he claims he did nothing replies “no, you’re the man who stands idly by congratulating himself whilst the monster eats its fill”. She draws a Suli phrase on him that effectively means he’ll be rejected by the community forever and his spirit/soul won’t be accepted, and she describes it as the worst fate or something along those lines sorry I can’t remember exactly. But what’s the most interesting thing is that even though he claims not to believe in any of it Bajan gets noticeably upset by this and says “that’s not fair”. Inej is surprised that he’s this soft, and there’s a very clear juxtaposition between the lives they have lived.

BUT - let’s look at this from Bajan’s perspective. And remember - this is important - Bajan is not described as an employee of Van Eck’s, but an indenture. An indenture. So Bajan is a young boy indentured in a foreign country to a man as high up in the country’s government as you can get and who has clearly been illustrated to the reader as a terrible person on several different levels that I won’t dissect in too much detail right now. He appears to have acclimatised himself to Kerch surroundings and acts with elevation above his status, because that’s what he has to do to survive in the upper echelon of a deeply classist society that actively diminishes and disapproves of his culture. (<<if anyone wants references for that let me know and also I’ve written about it quite a bit before so that’s kicking around on my page somewhere) He refuses to speak to Inej in Suli because “it makes me maudlin” and my question to you is: is he rejecting the language to further attempt to fit in and as a product of internalised prejudice, or because it’s so incredibly painful to be half-connected to a culture not only that he has forced himself to reject but also that he feels he can never safely return to? Probably both. He tells Inej he doesn’t believe in Suli superstition, religion, or culture, and yet is deeply upset when she uses it against him. Is this because he actually does believe, or wants to believe, in the Saints and the Suli interpretation of them but has rejected them for survival and the supposed betterment of himself? Possibly.

Bajan strikes me as very similar to Jesper in the way he presents himself as free, flirty, and casual, but had a considerable weight to almost everything he says and considerable pain hidden closer to the surface than he may have realised. I think there are parallels between him and Inej if we want to see them, but also a very stark difference in the way Kerch and Ketterdam have treated them. Bajan may not be privileged but even as an indenture he has - or at least as far as we know has had - a far safer and kinder experience than Inej has. This could be related to gender since the hyper-sexualisation of Suli culture is mostly centred on women - “the Menagerie always stocked a Suli girl” (I’ve intensely analysis this quote before so I won’t now but ugh there’s so much to say) - but we do know there are young boys captive at the pleasure houses as well although less commonly and it’s also possible that this difference is linked to Bajan’s decision to turn his back on Suli culture in order to appeal more to Kerch society whilst Inej continually embraced her culture and arguably became more religious in response to her experiences.

This is complicated because I’m not entirely sure how I feel about Bajan. I understand and support Inej’s perspective and everything she saw whilst in a far more dangerous position that he was, but is it possible that this was a lonely boy who saw someone he thought was like him and tried to communicate with her the only way he thought was safe? You are completely isolated in a foreign culture and hate yourself for having suppressed your own upbringing in order to survive, but now you meet someone else who yes, is in more danger than you, but who you might be able to help so that she can help you in return. You aren’t safe to speak freely and so you subtly tell her that you are an indenture, hoping she acknowledges that none of this is of your free will and because you know that she was indentured too (and remember from a societal pov there is very little understanding of what indentured girls at the pleasure houses actually go through and although that doesn’t excuse ignoring Inej’s trauma it may explain why he doesn’t fully acknowledge that their positions aren’t equal), you tell her that speaking your own shared language makes you feel maudlin, hoping she realises that you desperately miss your homeland and using your language makes you feel even further from your family than you already are because you can’t share it with them. She doesn’t seem to be taking any of it in, your employer has every intention of hurting her and you don’t know what else to do, so you make a last plea: you ask her about home. You think you’ve already made it clear that speaking about home is painful, so you ask her about it to invite that pain, to share it, so you both understand. But it fails, because she only sees your employer puppeteering you. You openly beg her to tell him the truth so that he won’t hurt her but she refuses to comply, and after all of your efforts and your desperate attempts to connect and beg her to help you both go home, her response is to turn your home against you and banish you from it for eternity. So when you see her the next morning, how could you possibly look her in the eye?

Bajan did not make all of the right choices in his brief time on the page. He didn’t. But maybe he was trying really hard, and he had no other options left.

Anyway I’m not saying this is definitive one way or the other it’s just an interpretation but I find him a very interesting and very sad character and I although I support all of Inej’s actions in these scenes from her point of view I do find myself wondering how she appeared to Bajan and how he felt in the aftermath.

One of the things that fascinates me about the end of the Crooked Kingdom is how it almost seems to reverse the roles between Kaz and Inej.

Inej already thinks their relationship is over before it could even truly begin, she's the one withdrawing now...but Kaz meets her bare-handed and vulnerable. For the first time, he does things that are entirely and truly selfless, without any ulterior motive. He buys her a ship. He brings her her parents. He makes her laugh. And despite his incessant paranoia—his need to manipulate/control/ensure that things go the way he wants—he buys a berth out of pure, blind optimism for if she might return, not when.

And Inej is the one on a mission for revenge. I know people tend to ascribe very pure motivations to this quest—and its true that Inej will save many over the course of her sailing career—but it's funny to me how Inej herself doesn't talk about it in terms of saving people or freeing slaves. In fact, she doesn't mention that aspect of it really at all. She says to Kaz, "I'm going to hunt slavers." (SOC 432).

And in the incinerator, she first conceives her dream she talks about violence. About destroying the system that hurt her:

"She wanted a storm—thunder, wind, a deluge. She wanted it to crash through Ketterdam's pleasure houses, lifting roofs and tearing doors off their hinges. She wanted it to raise the seas, take hold of every slaving ship, shatter their masts, and smash their hulls against unforgiving shores. [...] She would hunt slavers and buyers. They would learn to fear her, and they would know her by name" (SOC 311).

Even when she discusses her dream to Kaz here at the end, she reiterates that her goal is to tear it all down.

"It's not just the slavers. It's the procurers, the customer's, the Barrel bosses, the politicians. It's everyone who turns a blind eye to suffering when there is money to be made." [...] "That could be half the people in Ketterdam—and you want to fight them all." "Why not?" Inej says, "On the seas and in the city. One by one." "Brick by brick" he [Kaz] said (CK 526).

Inej is the one dismantling now, brick by brick. In the barrel, she had to kill people to survive. Now, she's going to be killing for retribution.

Not to say that ending slavery is not a noble pursuit—it 100%, absolutely is. Fuck slavery, all my homies hate slavery. I just think it's fascinating how bloody and violent Inej's chosen path is. And how she doesn't talk about the more noble aspects of her goal—saving people—even once in the duology.

Just...Kaz's story ends with him reuniting a family. Inej's story ends with her threatening to kill Rollin's innocent child. It's not what I would have expected from them.

P.S. I've only read the duology, though I have heard that there are mentions of the crows in some of the other books. I don't know if there's any more information on Inej's time at sea or how Kaz fares in Ketterdam without her? But I don't mind spoilers, they might even motivate me to pick up the other books lol, so feel free to bring up whatever if you feel like commenting :)

don't you ever just think about how kaz said "i'm a cripple. that's my tell. no one's ever smart enough to look for the others." the others. i think, especially with the show, a lot of us forget that and think his only real weakness is inej. but it isn't. it's definitely jesper too, the brother he cannot lose again. and i know he means the other crows as well. because that's kaz's character. deep down the way to hurt him is to hurt the people he cares about. he's extremely loyal and his revenge plot against pekka was to avenge his brother. his biggest motivation isn't money, it's the protection and security he can give the people he cares about with it. and those people are his tells

crying every time when I think of the layers of implication in that scene where Inej says "Is there anyone to protect you?" and Kaz answers with, "Was there no one to protect you?" Kaz's answer indirectly saying I'm sorry I wasn't there to protect you and I'm here to protect you now and subtly, very subtly, can you be the one to have my back, protect me? The fact that Kaz is quite literally behind her back and willing to control his touch aversion for HER while saying this. Kill me now my kanej heart

I love your thoughtful SoC meta! I would love to know your thoughts on Kaz and Jesper’s relationship. Specifically, I adore Kaz but one thing in particular that always seemed so dark to me was that he enabled Jesper’s gambling addiction even though he obviously does care about him. Kaz is obviously willing to do a lot of fucked up things in service of his goals, but this one in particular, toward his own brother figure, I find sad. It’s kind of addressed during their fight at the end of CK but still feels a little unfinished.

I love Kaz and Jesper's relationship. There's sooooo much to dig into there (way too much for a single meta); it's super juicy and complicated, and one of the best complexities of it is that they often enable and feed off of each other's trauma. The pre-canon status quo is a situation where Kaz and Jesper are, in many ways, using and abusing each other as a way of avoiding dealing with their own trauma. It's a fascinating push-and-pull dynamic because neither of them are pushovers and yet neither one is particularly interested in facing their Issues™ head-on, and they both seemingly recognize that in each other and give each other an uncharacteristic amount of grace in helping the other avoid dealing with it.

In Kaz's case, that most often looks like enabling Jesper's gambling addiction and then repeatedly bailing him out of trouble under the justification of "he's loyal and competent, it would be wasteful to let the other gangs kill him." In Jesper's case, this looks like ignoring Kaz's countless and extremely obvious issues in favor of playing the loyal second. Basically, it's not just Kaz enabling Jesper's gambling addiction; it's also Jesper enabling Kaz's unhinged ruthlessness with little pushback other than a few snarky comments.

They also project a lot of their own issues onto each other! Kaz pushes Jesper away in part because he's projecting the grief and blame he feels over Jordie's death onto Jesper, but Jesper is using Kaz's ruthless pragmatism to escape the crippling disappointment of returning home to face his father's judgement for being a college drop-out, gambling addict, and gang member. And Kaz withholds praise and verbal declarations of trust from Jesper because he hates acknowledging that he cares about people, but Jesper uses Kaz's emotional detachment as a crutch to avoid dealing with his own commitment issues by pining after a boy he knows will never reciprocate his advances. This status quo is, of course, insanely unhealthy for both boys long-term, but where would we be if any of the Crows actually dealt with their issues in a healthy way?

That dynamic, imo, is also only possible because Kaz and Jesper have known each other for longer than anyone else in the main crew; Kaz may have let Inej in further, but he let Jesper in first. As far as we know, Jesper is the first person Kaz genuinely lets past his mile-high walls since Jordie died...but he very deliberately holds him at arms' length in a way that he does not with Inej (something that Jesper notices and is jealous about!). Being "the first" in this case unfortunately comes with a lot of baggage, and Kaz and Jesper would both lowkey rather die than talk about how much they care what the other thinks of them.

Kaz clearly didn't recruit Jesper looking for a friend or someone who reminded him of his dead older brother; he recruited him because he saw someone with a useful skillset who he preferred to be at his side rather than in a rival gang or dead in the canals. It's to Jesper's credit that he managed to break through those walls anyway, but there's only so much he can do in the face of Kaz's armor. And like Inej, Kaz's closed-off personality and actions hurt Jesper repeatedly. But he stays anyway, because he (like Inej) sees the boy underneath the mask that Kaz wears and cares a little too much to let him go:

“He wouldn’t—” Jesper stopped short, and then he laughed. “Of course he would.” Jesper flexed his knuckles, concentrated on the lines of his palms. “Kaz is…I don’t know, he’s like nobody else I’ve ever known. He surprises me.” “Yes. Like a hive of bees in your dresser drawer.” Jesper barked a laugh. “Just like that.” “So what are we doing here?” Jesper turned back to the sea, feeling his cheeks heat. “Hoping for honey, I guess. And praying not to get stung.” Inej bumped her shoulder against his. “Then at least we’re both the same kind of stupid.” “I don’t know what your excuse is, Wraith. I’m the one who can never walk away from a bad hand.” She looped her arm in his. “That makes you a rotten gambler, Jesper. But an excellent friend.” “You’re too good for him, you know.” “I know. So are you." -Ch. 17, Six of Crows

Kaz is unused to verbalizing the trust he places in others and actively in denial about how much he cares about them until Crooked Kingdom; he spends his time deliberately being cruel and pushing people away even as he proves over and over again that he doesn't actually want them to leave him. This casual assholery hits those closest to him (Inej and Jesper) the hardest because they are clearly trusted with his life but not with his heart, and that hurts them both.

For Inej, resolving that behavior looks like giving him an ultimatum ("I will have you without armor or I will not have you at all") and telling herself to walk away unless he meets her challenge. For Jesper? That looks like duking it out on top of the Geldrenner when they're both at rock bottom, because of course that's the only way either one of those boys is ever going to verbalize the tension that underlies their relationship. There's just a lot of baggage and mutual toxicity and unsaid words that neither of them are very interested in dealing with until everything comes to a head during the Clocktower fight.

I think we also forget that the Kaz-Jesper dynamic we see in the majority of the duology is not their normal dynamic: it's how they interact when Kaz is mad at Jesper. And a mad Kaz is, within the scope of canon, a pretty cruel Kaz, which is something that I think a good portion of the fandom likes to handwave away in favor of pointing towards Kaz's active attempts to be better in the back half of the duology.

Ultimately we only see the "normal" Kaz-Jesper dynamic for the first 12 or so chapters of Six of Crows (when the Dock Fight/Eyeball Incident happens) and the last few chapters of Crooked Kingdom. Those chapters are a really interesting look into what that relationship looks like when they're on good terms. It's clear that they're good friends, trust each other a hell of a lot, and joke around with each other quite a bit (the "saves ammo" joke in the parley chapter, their interactions during the Hellgate breakout, the "man with a knife!" "man with a gun!" exchange immediately after Kaz throws Oomen overboard, etc), but we also see the stress points: Jesper getting mad at Kaz for not telling him about Big Bolliger's betrayal, Kaz sending Wylan with Jesper during the prep chapters to keep an eye on him, and Jesper's bee and honey conversation with Inej on the Ferolind, for example.

These stress points are what fracture and crack in the aftermath of Jesper accidentally alerting the other gangs that they were headed out on the Ice Court Job and nearly causing Inej's death, and further buckle under the stress and pressure that Kaz and Jesper deal with during the following month and a half: the Ice Court job, Van Eck kidnapping Inej on Vellgeluk, Colm showing up in Ketterdam, and the Sugar Silo/Auction scheme.

In this way, I think Kaz enabling Jesper's gambling addiction is less about Kaz being actively cruel towards someone he sees the ghost of his brother in and punishing Jesper for the sins he percieves Jordie to have made (which is also true, and a meta for a different time!) and more about the weird balance of toxic mutual leniency Kaz and Jesper have allowed the other to provide for them for over two years...and how that leniency breaks down once it's not just Kaz's life or time on the line when Jesper fucks up.

Put more succinctly: for a long time, Kaz and Jesper existed in a toxic balance of enabling each others' worst impulses and behaviors, which was only able to be verbally addressed when they were both at rock bottom, desperate, and seemingly had very little left to lose. This conflict is somewhat addressed and resolved in the conversation where Kaz refuses to give Jesper the last of the parem and offers up a tiny bit of information about Jordie—showcasing his own growth and how he's finally trying to break the cycle by refusing to enable Jesper's self-destructive tendencies—but that level of tension is unable to be properly resolved in one single blowout argument. And I think it's deliberately left a bit unfinished because neither of them are really in a place where they're ready to address everything they've left unsaid for so long, even in the epilogue chapters.

However, we do see the beginnings of that reconcilitaion (Kaz asking Inej to tell Jesper that he's "missed around the Slat") and the story ends on a hopeful note regarding Kaz's commitment to removing his armor, which implies a lot about the resolution of that dangling thread. And of course, we know that by Rule of Wolves they're back to being thick as thieves and fucking around as usual, so clearly they hashed it out at some point in the in-between (and personally? I don't think it took either of them very long after the CK epilogue chapters to do that hashing out).

tl;dr: I love it when two traumatized and emotionally constipated teenage boys use each other to avoid facing their own personal problems and then get into a fistfight to avoid talking about how much they care about each other. Top-tier dynamic. Chef's kiss. I could talk about them for hours.