Kaz/Inej

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Pairing
Pairing: Kaz Brekker/Inej Ghafa
Alternative name(s): Kanej
Gender category: het
Fandom: Six of Crows, Grishaverse
Canonical?: yes
Prevalence: main pairing
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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

Spoiler Warning: This article or section may contain spoilers. If this bothers you, proceed with caution.


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:

NO FEAR -- people who haven't read the books writing kanej/kaz (sic) smut -- ONE FEAR

The post had 1.611 notes as of 24/08/2021

Common Tropes

Example Fanworks

Art

Fic

Podfic

Resources

References