The Red Ribbon {Kaz Brekker X Reader}

Author's Note

>>> ABOUT ME + THE STORY <<<

*SPOILERS IF YOU HAVEN'T READ THE FIC YET*

Hello to any readers interested in this!! This was such a fun fic to write. I read Six of Crows/Crooked Kingdom last summer, and after joining wattpad to read some fics, I decided to write one of my own.

A little bit about me: I write so much random shit in my free time. I thought, why not write something on Wattpad so that other people can enjoy it? And I am very glad that I chose to do so. I am also a big fan of the performing arts, and just art in general. My phone memos are full of ideas ranging from songs lyrics, to poems, to story plots. If I could travel back in time and live in the Renaissance, trust me, I would.

Some fun facts about me: Grishaverse Edition
- I am a Genya stan. Always have and always will be. I tried my best to be subtle about it in this fic, I promise.
- If I were a Grisha, I would most likely be a Squallor or a Tidemaker. Hard to choose but I know for a fact that I would be Ethrealki. I know that you can't exactly choose, but I like to have hope.
- If I could live anywhere in the Grishaverse, it would be Novyi-Zem; it seems like a very peaceful place. I would like to be cool and say that I could live in Ketterdam, but I admit that I would not survive a day in that city.
- My personality type is INTJ, the Architect, which is also apparently the same as Kaz Brekker??? My apologies. I promise I don't call girls investments 🤩. I actually relate the most to Wylan, but beggars can't be choosers 😔✊.
- I am in love with every cast member of the Netflix Shadow and Bone series. That is it. Send tweet.  

Now, about the story: I thought about a way that I could make my SoC fic unique, and an idea came to me: what if Kaz never got his revenge on Saskia? What if, unbeknownst to him, she was his right hand man, and her own story continued beyond the hands of Jakob Hertzoon?

I created a vague plot online that only reached Kaz's betrayal during the Ice Court heist, when he realizes that Y/N was Saskia all along. Upon writing the background and first few chapters, I was just freestyling, making everything up as I went. Then, I weaved the plot of the original books into the fic and used those as an outline, and it all became clear. I have a phone memo titled 'Plot Babayyy' just for this story, where I added dialogue and planned out each chapter in more detail as the story went on. It is 40 pages long. 😍👍.

I can confidently say that my writing has improved by writing The Red Ribbon. I've learned how to properly write dialogue and all of the punctuation that goes with it, and the more I wrote, naturally the chapters got much longer. At first, I decided to make my chapters 4k words long, but halfway through the story, the chapters got up to almost 7k! This story was pretty informal for me, so I can't imagine how long my chapters would be if I really focused on all of the details.

I have only read the books once last summer, as previously stated. So everything in this fic is a pleasant mixture of my patchy memory and Grishaverse Wiki summaries 😭, especially when it came to the Crooked Kingdom plot. Kaz Brekker really decided to make all of his plans really complicated and I am happy that he is big brain but damn I was lost. I didn't know what was happening or why sometimes, but then I figured it out 🕺.

Two of my favorite things about this fic is the dialogue and the fact that I knew where Y/N was going to end up, but the readers didn't. With the dialgoue, I could add my own spin to the story and also show the characters personalities, while sprinkling in some of my own.
To be honest, I didn't know that Y/N was going to end up in Ravka until I started writing the Crooked Kingdom plot. I really did want her to end up with Kaz (duh) but at the same time, her powers were not something I wanted to throw away. So now, she happily trains at the Little Palace with other Grisha like her, and Kaz goes about his business like usual an ocean away in Kerch.

But don't worry, Kaz always sends Y/N letters because he is a simp, and she and Jesper plan on visiting Novyi-Zem together soon. Their stories aren't ever over.

// If any of you are interested in an extension of this fic, picking up from where the story ended, let me know!! It would be like a second book, and the plot would be completely original, with more involvement of the characters in Ravka, along with our favorite Kerch criminals. Let me know if that is something that you readers would want 🤟🤟🤟//

Again, thank you for reading my fic and leaving comments!! I love you all 🥳🤟.