Hmmm… Heartrender Kaz who subtly uses his powers every day. To detect when people are lying, to make each hit hurt worse and do more damage, who is able to push himself further by stitching the damaged muscles in his leg back together just enough to get through the job.
And in turn, Heartrender Kaz who grows more and more powerful without even noticing. It only adds to his reputation as the demon who just won’t die. Mortal wounds seem to never be quite fatal enough. Dirtyhands can kill a man just by looking at him. They die of pure fright (or so they say).
It’s only when it becomes evident that he isn’t aging quite as he should, that Kaz realizes the consequences of his actions. He should be 60 now, but he looks the same as he has since the day he turned 20. The horror that seeped into his veins as he watched the years appear in lines on the faces of his lover and his friends.
The boy who always regretted surviving would outlive them all.
Torn between laughing and crying because I’m Looking at The Sunshine Court content??? Why am I doing this to myself???? I have yet to get my hands on a copy but I literally cannot stop looking at Things. If I’m this obsessed with snippets and commentary now, I can’t imagine how I’ll be when I can read it. Heaven help me, because rn I feel like I’m gonna start vibrating like I chugged 23 coffees in a row, and it’s only going to get worse better
So, this may not be the typical iteration of this character that people would have expected, but I’d like to introduce my own version of our beloved Fjerdan, Matthias Helvar!!
Now, I’m neither 6’4” nor super hench like Calahan Skogman, so I kind of took that as the go ahead to make this version of Matthias completely my own. I was inspired by a lot of different fan art and then some specific details about druskelle taken from the books (and of course I had to fit Trassel in there too!!)
Getting to meet Freddy and Amita in this cosplay at MegaCon was so wild, and Freddy recognising it as Matthias was really really special. When I though it couldn’t get any better, I got to show Danielle pictures of the cosplay at the play she and Freddy were a part of, and she LOVED IT!! She even took photos on her phone to show to Cal!! (My friend managed to get some pictures of her reaction and it was the best thing ever!!!)
And to top it all off, Leigh Bardugo herself has now seen and liked my photos on Instagram… I don’t think I’m ever going to get over how WILD these last few days have been!
So with that being said, hope you all enjoy my Matthias as much as Leigh and the cast have :)) 🐺🤍
maybe I'm reading into this too hard but... we clown on kaz for the sheer irony of “the trick is not to love anything, rollins", and considering this is not long after the bathroom scene, yeah lol, HOT bit of irony there. but... kaz said the trick.
yes, the overt meaning is the strategy, the way to do it, but... kaz said the trick, and this is kaz 'nothing up my sleeves' brekker, the sleight of hand magician. I think he meant that it only has to look that way. you'll see what kaz damn well wants you to see; he knows how to constantly turn up the face of the dirtyhands card while never letting you get so much as a look at kaz rietveld, even if he's somewhere in the deck. it's all about illusions, street magic, trickery! rollins' mistake was not loving his son, it was making it too visible, accidentally showing his hand. you only have to think the coin has disappeared; you can't see the coin, or the card, or the woman in the box, but they haven't really vanished. they're still there, somewhere, slipped away to maintain the illusion. kaz's love isn't visible, anymore... but that doesn't mean it's nonexistent.
(incidentally, what is kaz's greatest trick, if not finding the girl who seems to have vanished?)