Seige And Storm - Tumblr Posts
Whether you dislike Darklina or not, you gotta admit, their dynamic was amazing. I mean, dark and light as equals ruling the world? C’mon, y’all can’t tell me that ain’t cool
If the Darkling and Alina ended up together, they would’ve been the power couple. Literally.
The Drakling and Alina’s ship name is literally Dark Alina.
Aleksander is just like a moth circling around a lightbulb cause he likes it and is attracted to it.
Don’t talk to me I’m thinking about immortal power couples with opposite powers ruling the world together.
5 DAYS. 5 DAYS AAAAAAHHHHHH
IMAGINE —
MAL and the BIG BAD Darkling having their guys night after telling ALINA, that they can only promise that they won't rip each other's throat out ...
ALINA : hey guys I'm bac- WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING !???
DARKLING *Nervously Putting Away The Controller* : Well you see-
MAL *Points at Darkling* : He suggested we play video games...
DARKLING *Clears throat* : NO I did no-
MAL : ...and bake cookies afterwards
ALINA :
ALINA *Sighs* : why am I even here
DOES IT EVER DRIVE YOU CRAZY JUST HOW FAST THE NIGHT CHANGES
If there's one thing you should know about me it's that these two simply exist and suddenly it's no thoughts head empty just *cricket noises*
Nina: So here's the tea.
Kaz: For the last time, it's called a report.
Nina: Do you want the tea or not?
The next time I see someone call Wylan "boring" because his trauma isn't "as bad" as the other Crows' (namely Kaz and Inej's) I'm going to throttle someone. Firstly, trauma isn't comparable: trauma is trauma, regardless of what traumatic experience a person goes through. The point of Six of Crows is that all the Crows are traumatised but find comfort and solace within one another and galvanise each other's healing process.
Secondly, Wylan is a victim of ableism and emotional, mental and physical abuse - which is traumatic - and his story makes me feel physically ill whenever I think about it. As a disabled child, Wylan needed accommodations that his father refused to give him: instead, J*n treated him as something that needed fixing, and treated his disability as pure stubbornness that could be forced out of him with punishment and abuse. He "tried specialists, tonics, beatings, hypnotism" - which are traumatic. J*n also manipulated Wylan into believing that it was his fault by constantly shifting the blame to him (a behaviour very typical amongst abusers). As a result, Wylan never acknowledged his father's behaviour as abusive, which is why he tells Jesper in Crooked Kingdom that "he isn't evil" despite J*n literally trying to kill him twice. In fact, Wylan tries to justify how his father treated him, claiming that he "had done his best to care for his son, and if he’d failed, then the defect lay with Wylan." He also takes it as a display of affection and the desire to protect him, claiming that "his father might sound cruel, but he wasn’t just protecting himself or the Van Eck empire, he was protecting Wylan as well."
Wylan blaming himself for his father's actions doesn't stop there: in the period after Inej is kidnapped by J*n, Wylan feels responsible for what happened despite knowing that "he couldn’t have prevented his father from double-crossing the crew and kidnapping her. He knew that, but he still felt responsible". The guilt is eating away at him because he's so accustomed to taking the blame for his father's wrongdoings. Even after finding out the truth about his mother, which was really the catalyst for him recognising that J*n is indeed evil, his initial response is him blaming himself for it: "it was me. I caused this. He wanted a new wife. He wanted an heir. A real heir, not a moron who can barely spell his own name." This is only made even more sickening when we learn that Wylan would hear how his parents "fought all the time, sometimes about me", which would only amplify his feelings of responsibility for his father sending Marya away, stripping her of her life, family and fortune.
This is all without him not being allowed to grieve his mother's "death". This is all without the imposter syndrome and self-loathing Wylan experiences as a result of all of this, the fear that the Crows would see him as worthless and defective the way his father did and abandon him.
tl;dr: stop overlooking Wylan's trauma because he too has deep mental and emotional scars.
Do you ever think about just how powerfully symbolic Matthias killing the wolf in Hellgate at the beginning of SOC is? How him killing the animal sacred to Djel is a representation of him "killing off" the values imposed on him? Of him "killing" his old self, the drüskelle who'd sworn an oath to his country and to its cause, the boy who'd been manipulated and had his grief and pain exploited to fuel hatred, forced to drink the poison Brum had forced down his throat his entire life? Of how he recognises that "the life you live, the hate you feel – it’s poison. I can drink it no longer", but then there's the bitter irony of how that poison still kills him in the end as he's shot by another drüskelle, as he's "killed" by his past and the boy he'd been? Because I think about that a lot.
Going back to this, I want to address the way the show handled it: Matthias choosing not to fight the wolves in the finale shows is symbolic of how, due to the point he's at in his story, his arc hasn't begun yet. He's still holding onto those values imposed on him, still drinking the poison. He hasn't started "killing" that part of him, thus it's still too early to start foreshadowing his arc.
I think that having him fight alongside them now will just create more angst regarding killing them in the spin-off (for the sake of this post, I'm acting as if it's been greenlit). Redoing this scene with Matthias killing the wolves instead of fighting alongside them again would actually make it more painful for him because he’d probably be thinking about how he was able to stop fighting them once, why not again?
Do you ever think about just how powerfully symbolic Matthias killing the wolf in Hellgate at the beginning of SOC is? How him killing the animal sacred to Djel is a representation of him "killing off" the values imposed on him? Of him "killing" his old self, the drüskelle who'd sworn an oath to his country and to its cause, the boy who'd been manipulated and had his grief and pain exploited to fuel hatred, forced to drink the poison Brum had forced down his throat his entire life? Of how he recognises that "the life you live, the hate you feel – it’s poison. I can drink it no longer", but then there's the bitter irony of how that poison still kills him in the end as he's shot by another drüskelle, as he's "killed" by his past and the boy he'd been? Because I think about that a lot.
The GV fandom clamouring for a video of Kit and Alistair's Uptown Funk karaoke performance is just us once again clamouring for the photo of Freddy eating a banana with his Kaz gloves on.
Someone: what are you thinking about?
My brain: in Crooked Kingdom, Wylan tells Jesper that his father "places a high value on learning", to which Jesper replies with "higher than money?" that prompts Wylan to tell him that "knowledge isn't a sign of divine favour. Prosperity is." This obviously has religious undertones by referencing the belief that financial prosperity is a sign of the existence and aid of Ghezen, the god of industry and commerce worshipped by Kerch citizens, but it's also representative of certain facets of Wylan's character. J*n never valued his son's mind (the "knowledge" component of this analogy) because he thought that the "prosperity" of the Van Eck empire was impossible with a "defective" child, hence why he would refer to Wylan fulfilling the role as a mercher's son as an "impossible task" due to him not being able to read despite his other strengths in science, maths and music. He believed that Wylan not being able to read makes him "some fool who would make the Van Eck name a laughingstock", which would ultimately hinder the prosperity of the empire. This is why J*n "finally had to accept that Ghezen saw fit to curse me with a moron for a child": no matter how smart Wylan is and how much "knowledge" he has, his disability prevents the "prosperity" of the empire and, thus, there was no sign of divine favour. However, this ironic when you consider how Wylan becomes the reason for the empire's prosperity at Crooked Kingdom's conclusion. In this case, "knowledge" refers to his ability to read in the way his father perceived it: that it defined his intelligence and worth. His lack of knowledge (according to his father) may not have been a sign of divine favour - at least, not in the way J*n thought - but the prosperity of the empire under Wylan, his "defective" child, can be read as such. The fact that this line takes on a whole new meaning by the end of the duology is so representative of Wylan reclaiming his identity as he finally accepts all of himself - including the parts he'd learnt to hate and tried to outrun.
Me: ...beautiful weather we're having today, isn't it?
I will never move on from how not only did the Crows steal the tank from the Ice Court, but the entire time Wylan is smiling to himself and then absolutely LOSES IT once they've escaped. Like the crew has just stolen a tank from a high-security prison, narrowly escaping death, but Wylan physically can't stop laughing and is quite literally snorting with laughter at the image of the Fjerdans firing uselessly in the tank's direction with the Fjerdan might banner caught in its treads. He could have died but he's laughing hysterically at how stupid the Fjerdans look as they failed to prevent literal children (who have STOLEN ONE OF THEIR TANKS) from escaping their high-security prison. This has got to be one of my favourite underrated Wylan moments.
to the bone ━━━ a six of crows one-shot.
spoiler warning: this is not a safe space for fans who have only watched the show and do not want to have wylan's story spoiled for them in case we get the spin-off. this one-shot is based off a scene that is referenced in six of crows, and contains heavy spoilers for wylan's backstory which hasn't yet been explored in the showverse (I say "yet" because I'm holding onto hope that we'll get that spin-off asdfghjkl).
summary: ever since jan van eck had hired him for the mission at the ice court, kaz intended to use wylan as leverage against his father. but wylan had known from the start, from the moment that kaz had told him that he'd be excellent at hostage, that that wouldn't be effective. not when he'd been nothing but a disappointment to his father. not when van eck was hellbent on forgetting that he ever had a son. wylan couldn't keep it hidden anymore. kaz needed to know the truth. (or: the scene where wylan tells kaz about his disability.)
author's note: this work is a submission for grishaverse disability pride day by @gvdisabledpride that will also be available on ao3, so if you also see this work there... that's why :)
content warning: descriptions of ableism, mentions of past child abuse, ptsd
ABOARD THE FEROLIND after the battle at the Djerholm harbour, Wylan lay curled up in his cot below deck, waiting for the moment the sway of the ship would lull him to sleep.
Except he knew it probably wouldn't. He'd been lying in his cot for what felt like hours, tossing and turning, desperately trying to silence his racing thoughts and just fall asleep. He tried to focus on the sound of the sea muffled by the hull of the Ferolind, on the sway of the ship as it journeyed closer and closer to Ketterdam — but the freezing cold wasn't doing him any favours, and neither was that anxious gnawing in his gut.
The mission had been, considerably, a success: they'd escaped the Ice Court in one piece, with Kuwei Yul-Bo stashed away in one of the other cabins and the promise of thirty million kruge awaiting them back in Ketterdam. Wylan would get his share and leave this life behind. He'd journey somewhere far away, never having to speak the name Van Eck again.
Van Eck…
Wylan swallowed the bile rising up inside him. Kaz had intended to use him as leverage against his father, lest the plan go awry and Van Eck was suddenly uncooperative. “Wylan isn’t just good with the flint and fuss,” he'd announced that first day on the Ferolind, right before he'd revealed Wylan's true identity to the rest of the crew. “He's our insurance.”
Wylan shut his eyes, curled up tighter in his cot. His heart was starting to beat a little faster, a hummingbird trapped inside a cage, and he forced his breath slowly through his chest — a deep breath through his nose, shattering the silence that had thickened around him. Kaz had kept him close to use him as leverage against Van Eck, but one thing the older boy wasn't aware of was that Wylan couldn't be their insurance. Not when his father wanted him to disappear. Not when he was attempting to forget he ever had a son. Not when his new wife, Alys, was bearing the heir of the Van Eck empire — a proper hier, not the defective one he’d received in Wylan. Not the one who’d turn the Van Eck name into a laughingstock.
I have to tell Kaz.
Instinctively, his fingers reached up to touch his neck. He could still feel Prior's meaty hands clasped tightly around it, his grip firm and relentless as Wylan grew dizzy and black spots slowly filled his vision. He sat up, hoping the feeling would subside if he got up and let more air fill his lungs — and yet, the feeling of his throat constricting persisted, and a suffocating, uncontrollable panic welled up in him.
He hugged his knees to his chest and slowly rocked himself back and forth with his head buried in his arms, horrified by how his breath was coming out in short, shallow whimpers as the memories came flooding back, by how the tears prickled the corners of his eyes as his father's voice echoed in his ears.
A child half your age can effortlessly do what you cannot.
I've tried everything I possibly could. I've tried tutors, specialists, I've tried forcing that stubbornness out of you and yet you refuse to be taught.
You can't be sent anywhere because your defect might be revealed.
“Get out of my head,” Wylan whimpered, grabbing fistfuls of his hair as he continued to rock himself back and forth. “Get out of my head.”
Once you reveal yourself to be defective, they'll turn your back on you. They'll leave you as you were: the wayward son of one of the richest men in Ketterdam.
“Get… Get out of my head.”
But the voice was persistent, unwelcome. You worthless fool. You soft-pated idiot.
He pressed the heels of his hands to his eyes, blinking back the tears that formed a painful lump in his throat. He swallowed, trying to force it down to no avail, and a fresh flare of panic swelled within him. Someone could walk into his cabin at any moment and see him in this state: rocking back and forth with his head in his hands, chest shuddering over and over as he gasped for air, begging the voice in his head to lapse into silence. And yet, there was nothing he could do about it. He felt detached from his own body, as though he were watching himself from the perspective of an outsider, helpless against the wave of shame overcoming him.
He stayed like that until the jittery feeling coursing through him had subsided enough for him to think rationally again. Above that irrefutable voice in the back of his mind, he once again thought about revealing his greatest shame to Kaz. What would happen if he just stayed there on his cot, if he never told Kaz that he couldn't be used as leverage against his father? And what would happen if Van Eck double-crossed them, and there wasn't any good enough insurance to ensure that the six of them would get their money? Their efforts would have been futile, and none of them would get what they'd initially sought — and it might as well be his fault.
His body starting to tremble, Wylan forced himself to stand up from his cot. Just do one thing at a time. Just like his tutor had taught him in order to stop him from getting overwhelmed by the page. Stand up. He slid off the edge of the cot, straightened as his feet touched the ground. Take a deep breath. He closed his eyes, took another deep breath through his nose. Open your eyes. He opened his eyes and forced himself to walk. Go find Kaz. He assumed Kaz would be in his own cabin, scheming away, concocting backup plans for their backup plans in case anything went wrong.
He quietly left his cabin, making his way down the Ferolind's lower deck to find Kaz. He found the older boy sitting on the cot in his own cabin, staring intently at the floor with one hand gripping the crow head of his cane.
“Kaz?” Wylan swallowed frantically, his skin burning hot as he fought the words to come through. “I… I won't be leverage enough against my father. I know I'm supposed to be your… insurance, but I can't be. It won't be enough.”
Kaz sat up straighter, his free hand curling over the head of his cane as he looked up at Wylan. “And why is that?”
Something about Kaz's cold glare, his rock-salt rasp as he asked the question, sent a chill rippling over every inch of Wylan's skin. He wanted to scream. He wanted to bolt back to his cabin, hide beneath the paper-thin covers until he vanished completely. He wanted the floor to open up beneath him, to be dragged by the rolling waves into the depths of the sea. He wanted to disappear, just like his father wanted him to.
I have to tell him.
“I…” The roar of blood in his ears was deafening, drowning out the murmur of the waves outside the Ferolind's hull. That shameful helplessness was taut in his belly, a knot incapable of coming unravelled.
You just have to say it. You just have to say you can't read.
His father's taunts reverberated in his mind. Defective. Imbecile. Worthless. Broken. Disgraceful. Idiot. Useless. He was choking on them. They pressed against his throat like Prior's iron grip closing around it all those months ago, dirty fingernails digging into the skin of his neck. His cheeks burnt with shame despite the cold sweat that had broken out over every part of his body. His heart was a war drum beneath his ribs, his chest too tight, his breath too short and shallow. Take a deep breath. He couldn't. His clothes felt tight around his body — too tight, as though they stuck to him.
“I… I have an affliction.” Uttering those words aloud was enough to send a violent roil through Wylan's stomach, and he had to stop himself from throwing up. This was it. There was no taking back those words: he was halfway there.
Kaz merely sat there, looking rather impatient with his gloved hands folded over the crow's head of his cane. Wylan couldn't imagine what he looked like in this moment: red-faced, a trembling hand near his lips as if he were about to bite his nails, his eyes not meeting Kaz's.
It felt like the walls of the cabin were closing in on him, Prior's hands tightening around his throat as the latter half of his confession choked him. The waters he'd leapt into all those months ago were rising around him, filling his lungs and numbing his limbs with its icy grasp. He tried to fight against it, but the water was weighing him down, his limbs useless against the tide as he drowned in the murky waters of the Ketterdam harbour.
He drew another deep, shuddering breath.
Spit it out.
“I… I can't read,” he finally gasped, and the water receded.
There. He'd said it. He'd revealed his shame to Kaz, his voice barely above a whisper lest the sea around them carry his shame across its rolling waves and let the whole world know about Jan Van Eck's defective child.
Kaz's piercing glare was still on him, as if expecting him to say more. His expression remained as cold and calculating as ever — had he known about this too, just as he'd known about Wylan's true identity? Did Wylan have any tells that gave away his shame — his face growing pale at the sight of the tangled scrawl of words across a page, staring at it for too long hoping that he'd recognise the shapes of the words? Or had Kaz been surprised? Had this been the one thing he hadn't seen coming? His gaze was piercing and unreadable, but Wylan sucked in another breath and continued, trying to keep his voice steady.
“It's not that no one tried to teach me, lots of people did. But I just can't do it. It's like something in me refuses to do it.” That was what his father used to drill into him throughout his childhood, and the memory filled him with a sickening dread.
“I'm…” Wylan moistened his lips thoughtfully, trying to phrase his next words carefully without having the entire shameful story out in the open. The story of his father sending him away, supposedly to study music in Belendt. Of his Miggson and Prior trying to kill him, of him leaping into the murky canal with nothing but his satchel, fake enrolment papers and a soaked-through stash of kruge. “To him, I'm not worth losing. You can't use me as leverage if I'm not good enough insurance. There has to be another way around this, because this won't work. I know it won't.”
Kaz averted his gaze thoughtfully, then shrugged before standing up, leaning on his cane. That was his only response — a shrug. Had Wylan not been so afraid, so shaken by that shameful helplessness, he would have burst out laughing: he'd just revealed his defect to Kaz Brekker — the Bastard of the Barrel, the boy they called Dirtyhands in the grimy streets of the Barrel — and he'd merely shrugged. Shouldn't he be concerned with what to do with Wylan, now that he'd found out that his demolitions expert was just a useless fool evicted from his father's home?
“We'll have to work around that, then,” Kaz responded in that low, raspy voice. His eyes met Wylan's, boring into him as though searching for some semblance of worth within him, something that would compensate for his other failings. A pinprick of discomfort shot up Wylan's spine at the prolonged eye contact, but Kaz's eyes left his as he scanned Wylan from the top of his head down to the tips of his toes and back up again.
Wylan just stood there, completely stunned. He'd expected Kaz to sneer at him, or laugh at his affliction and refuse to give him his share of their reward once they'd reached Ketterdam. He'd expected the knot in his stomach to tighten, the shame growing, but he felt it loosen ever so slightly with the odd sense of relief and liberation that came with revealing his condition to Kaz.
“And how do you suppose we do that?” Wylan asked, his voice a low croak. “What other leverage could we possibly use?”
Kaz looked towards the door of his cabin, then back at Wylan. Kaz Brekker saw the world as though it were a puzzle, and he studied Wylan like he was a piece of that puzzle that didn't fit where he'd thought it would — but now, it seemed, he'd found another place he could slot that piece into without having to tear the entire project apart. “Lest Van Eck double-crosses us, we'll have to stop him from getting what he wants.”
Wylan's brow furrowed. “And how, exactly, would we do that?”
“Nina's a passable Tailor at best — but, under the influence of parem, she could achieve something that shouldn't be possible. Not even in the hands of the most gifted Tailor.” Wylan swallowed thickly as Kaz continued. “We'll have her tailor you to look like Kuwei, and hand you off to your father.”
Wylan's heart stuttered at that. He was no stranger to Kaz's elaborate and unbelievable schemes — after all, they'd stolen a tank from a high-security prison — but this was different. This was absurd. Wylan agreeing to be tailored to look like Kuwei was a death wish: the Shu boy was valuable, certainly with large bounties on his head. He held the secret to the world's greatest threat, one that could wreak havoc if it fell into the wrong hands. Wylan could have refused — he should have refused, if he wanted to make it back to Ketterdam alive. Instead, he cleared his throat and responded with an assertive, “I'll do it.”
For a split second, a surprised look flashed in Kaz's eyes, but disappeared as quickly as it came. He expected me to refuse, Wylan thought as his cheeks heated with embarrassment once again.
“It may be permanent,” Kaz warned him.
Wylan shook his head. “I need to know. Once and for all, I need to know what my father really thinks of me.”
Kaz cast him an almost pitying look. “Surely Van Eck would have some qualms about ending your life—”
“He wouldn't,” Wylan asserted, picking at the skin of his lip, that ill feeling returning as the reality dawned on him. Van Eck had tried to kill him once, what would stop him from trying again? “I'll bet you that.”
“How much?”
“Ten kruge.”
Kaz's lip curled in a grin. “Surely your father wouldn't be so callous.”
Wylan shrugged. “You'd be surprised.”
“Nothing surprises me, merchling. That's why I'm still alive.” Kaz walked past Wylan and made his way to the cabin's entrance. “I'm going to fill Nina in on the plan. Go to her cabin within the hour.”
Wylan nodded as Kaz left the cabin, leaving Wylan alone with nothing but his own racing thoughts. When he'd finally gotten himself to move, he walked back to his own cabin and propped himself down on his cot, his body still trembling with the aftermath of confessing his greatest shame to Kaz. His fingers itched the way they always did whenever he yearned to play his flute or the piano in the music room of his father's house. Ghezen and his works, he wanted nothing more than to snatch his satchel up from the foot of his cot and grab his flute. He wanted to close his eyes and bring the instrument to his lips, letting the world disappear around him as the notes wrapped him in his own story — one free of the shame and fear he'd carried for so long, one that made his heart flutter with joy as the music flooded a soothing warmth through him. But he couldn't bring himself to even glance in the direction of his satchel.
He thought back to Kaz's unchanged expression at his admission, the light, dismissive shrug of his shoulders. The shame still gnawed at Wylan, but there was also the strange relief of getting something off his chest despite it, as though telling Kaz had freed something in him — something that had been encased in the chains of his father's contempt for as long as he could remember.
It's not too late to decline, pressed that voice in the back of his mind.
He shook his head assertively — if this is what had to be done to ensure the crew got their money, then so be it. And yet… he was terrified and horribly anxious.
He looked down at his hands, his eyes tracing over the creases of his slender fingers, the little scars with no clear origin along his skin, the crescent outlines on his palms from digging his nails into them. Within the hour, they weren't going to be his hands anymore — they'd be Kuwei's. Slowly, he buried his face in his hands, sighing deeply as his fingers raked through the tufts of hair that brushed his forehead. The face in his hands wouldn't be his anymore, and neither would the hair between his fingers. With Nina's power, he'd soon become the most valuable person in the world. He was terrified, but that wouldn't stop him from doing what he needed to. From ensuring that he and the rest of this crew got their money.
From finally learning what his father truly thought of him.
Van Eck had made it clear as Wylan grew up that there was no space for his son in his household. He'd made it clear that he wanted Wylan disappear for as long as it took him to forget that he ever had a son. And yet, a part of him hoped that maybe he'd misunderstood everything. That his father did indeed love him unconditionally just as any father loved his child.
Wylan lifted his head from his hands and started gnawing at his thumbnail. He wouldn't know for certain until the rest of Kaz's plan was carried out, when his face and name were no longer his.
I could give you a list of reasons why I need the spin-off but one that's high up there is that I need to see Calahan Skogman saying "bing bong bing bing bong. No, wait, bing bing bong bing bing" in his Fjerdan accent with a straight face and completely deadpan.
Oh I’m going to be absolutely INSUFFERABLE when the promo videos start coming through.
