Soc Spinoff - Tumblr Posts

The piano scene in S2E3 is somehow talked about SO MUCH but also not enough, and I know that doesn't make sense but hear me out. Wylan has been in the Barrel for how long with nothing from his life before, only the decency he stubbornly clings to (hence why he initially refused to make bombs for Kaz, but his desperation got the better of him) and, if we use the information from the books, his flute. And we know the significance of music in Wylan's identity: he used it to hide his disability by setting whatever was read aloud to him to a melody in his head; the music room was the only place in his father's house he was ever happy in; and, in Crooked Kingdom, he recalls sitting at the piano bench with his mother, and it's one of the few memories he has of her because she "died" when he was young, so of course his memory of her is going to be a bit foggy.

Music wasn't something he got so good at to win his father's approval the way science and maths were - music was always his. It's what makes him Wylan and not Jan Van Eck's son, and being in the Barrel has tried to separate him from that part of his identity. Yes, he plays his flute in S2E1, but he plays it out of desperation. How long has it been since he's played music because of how connected he is to it, not because he needs money? It's something he yearns to do, and so when he and Jesper break into Pekka's country estate, Wylan doesn't take his eyes off the piano when he notices it - not even while Jesper is talking to him. He yearns to feel the press of the piano keys beneath his fingers, for the comfort playing music always gave him, and I think this is beautifully signified in that frame where presses the broken piano key: he so desperately wants that comfort and security, but can't have it.

Even though it looks like he sits at the piano to encourage Alby to keep playing, it's more so because he couldn't pass up the opportunity to do what he's yearned to do for so long. It's only 30ish seconds, but he loses himself in the music he plays, in that security he's sought since he first arrived in the Barrel. He's reliving sitting at the piano bench with his mother, and a show headcanon I have is that this little piece of music was something Marya taught him or wrote for him or something he wrote for her. Either way, it's made him lose himself in those happy childhood memories of him playing the piano with her.

Then that momentary peace and comfort is snatched away from him as he snaps back to reality. He's not at his father's house playing piano with his mother: he's in the Barrel, wrapped up in the company of literal criminals, and his mother's been dead since he was eight (well, we know she isn't dead, but he doesn't). His guard goes back up, and he goes back to being Wylan Hendriks, the demolitions expert keeping a privileged past and childhood traumas close to his chest, the boy who was desperate enough to start playing criminal with a band of thugs and thieves.

(gif by me, scene credits go to @/autumnspacks on ig)

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 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.

Something I don't see anyone speak about (if you have and I just haven't seen it... I'm sorry :( ) is how Wylan not only reclaims his identity by the duology's conclusion, but he also reclaims Marya's. I feel like we as a fandom overlook just how much J*n put Marya through in an attempt to erase Wylan from the public memory: he had her declared insane as a grounds for divorce and institutionalised her, leaving her "abandoned along with her defective child" in order to "forever rid himself of any evidence that Wylan had existed". This transcended to J*n not allowing Wylan to grieve his mother's 'death' because, as he put it, "it didn’t pay to dwell on the past" - and Wylan tells Jesper that J*n never brought Marya up after breaking the news of her finality to his son, confessing "we just stopped talking about her".

What we also need to remember is that the Van Eck mansion "had belonged to Wylan’s mother’s family for generations before Van Eck had ever set foot through the door". (Edit: I didn't mean to write that the mansion belonged to the Hendriks - it was part of the property under the Van Eck name. Sorry about that!) Just like how J*n separated Wylan from his mother, he simultaneously took so much from Marya - first her home, then her name, her fortune, her own child. This is why Marya was admitted as Marya Hendriks, not Marya Van Eck: this is J*n quite literally stripping her of her name to permanently erase her from the public memory. The nurse addresses Marya as "Miss Hendriks", to which Marya mutters "Van Eck" in response, because "she was not Marya Hendriks, she was Marya Van Eck, a wife and mother stripped of her name and her fortune." So why is it that Wylan says, "I am Marya Hendriks' son" if Marya Hendriks is the woman who's left after Marya Van Eck had her name and her life taken away from her? Because this is Wylan reclaiming his mother's identity.

If we examine the moment Wylan visits his mother at Saint Hilde, Marya's first words to him are "did you come for my money? I don’t have any money" to which Wylan replies that he doesn't have any money either. The money neither of them have comes to signify the lack of autonomy they have over their identities, which have spent so long confined by J*n's contempt as he gradually works towards making them vanish entirely. J*n tried desperately to erase Marya's memory as a means of gradually erasing Wylan's - however, Wylan is the only one who keeps his mother's memory alive, just like how Marya keeps her son's alive. Upon arriving in the Barrel, Wylan detaches himself from his father's name and, instead, uses his mother's maiden name. Yes, he's doing it to not draw attention to himself (because what would the child of one of the richest men in Ketterdam be doing in a place like the Barrel?), but he's also preserving Marya's memory, clinging to it like a lifeline without even realising it. In a way, it's saving him.

Before I go on any further, I'm taking a brief detour to discuss the transition in Wylan's motivations upon discovering what really happened to his mother (it's relevant, I promise). Wylan completely breaking down when he realises that his father is indeed evil is such a pivotal moment that marks a major transition in his motivations. Jesper comforts Wylan during his breakdown, assuring him that "Kaz is going to tear your father’s damn life apart" - a sentiment that "felt like cool water cascading over the hot, shameful feeling of helplessness he’d [Wylan] been carrying with him for so long". His continued contribution to the Dregs’ mission is no longer about making the money to “get out of town and never speak the name Van Eck again” - now, he's "here for her". Now, it's about punishing his father, saving Marya and returning all J*n took from her: “what am I doing here? But he knew the answer. Only he could see his father punished for what he’d done. Only he could see his mother free.” He realises that J*n's life falling apart means that, with his money, "he could take his mother from this place. They could go somewhere warm. He could put her in front of a piano, get her to play, take her somewhere full of bright colors and beautiful sounds. They could go to Novyi Zem. They could go anywhere." He could save her, liberate her from the confines of J*n's contempt - and only he can do it, because who else would?

Meanwhile, Marya clings to the memories of her child even though J*n took him away from her. While institutionalised, Marya would paint - and in her paintings, "repeated again and again, was the face of a little boy with ruddy curls and bright blue eyes". We know that J*n wanted Wylan to disappear "the way he’d made Wylan’s mother disappear" - what we don't know, however, is what J*n told Marya during the time she was institutionalised. Did he visit her after sending Wylan away, supposedly to study music in Belendt, to tell her that Wylan is dead? Did he ever visit her before then and tell her that her son is dead to expunge his memory from Marya? We can only speculate - but what we do know is that, regardless of whether or not she thinks he's dead, Marya is grieving the loss of her child.

Something that Wylan fears if the Dregs’ mission is unsuccessful is that he’s “going to die and there will be no one to help her. No one to even remember Marya Hendriks” - and the same could be said about Marya’s feelings of responsibility for preserving the spirit of her child. Amidst her grief is the strive to save him and his memory, because she’s really the only one who’s willing to remember him. At the asylum, her paintings are thrown out “every six months” because “there just isn’t enough space for them” - but that doesn’t stop her from continuing to paint the face of her child and, thus, remembering him, making sure he doesn't disappear. Wylan confesses to Jesper that his parents “fought all the time, sometimes about me”, revealing how Marya has always fought for Wylan - and her being institutionalised, having her paintings thrown out every so often, won’t put an end to her fighting for him. She's hellbent on ensuring he doesn't vanish, because there’s no one else who would. (Think of this in relation to the meaning behind “no mourners, no funerals” - if Wylan disappeared, “no one would come looking”, as is the case with the rest of the Crows.)

Now, let's examine how, by the end of the duology, Wylan not only liberates himself from the pain caused by his father's wrongdoings, but also saves his mother. He'd "chosen to use a portion of his newfound wealth to restore his home", exemplifying how inheriting his father's fortune represents him reclaiming his identity from the pain and abuse J*n's contempt inflicted upon him. However, I mentioned earlier that the Van Eck mansion didn't actually belong to the Van Ecks in the first place - it belonged to the Hendriks. (Edit: again, not the mansion, but part of the property under the Van Eck name.) Thus, Wylan's position by the end of Crooked Kingdom also comes to represent him reclaiming his mother's identity as he returns everything J*n took from her. By "restor[ing] his home", he's also restoring Marya's.

Wylan's wide-eyed reaction to Kaz calling him his demolitions expert is even funnier when you realise that Wylan actually has no idea what he's doing, like he canonically agreed to do demo work for the Dregs without even knowing the first thing about demo and now he's suddenly being called an expert at it and he just has to go along with it because this is his job and therefore he needs to at least act like he knows what he's doing (even though he has absolutely no clue and he's only doing this because he's desperate).

I'm sorry but there's absolutely no way you can look me in the face (not in the eyes because eye contact is uncomfortable) and tell me Nikolai Lantsov wouldn't be a theatre kid.

I do not and will not tolerate any form of Matthias Helvar slander.

Okay but when we get the spin-off and see Wylan apologising to Inej for his father kidnapping her and Inej hugging him and reassuring him that "we are not our fathers" then what?

I can’t stop thinking about how Inej tells Wylan that “we are not our fathers” after he apologises to her for J*n kidnapping her. Wylan has spent his whole life believing that he's the problem, taking responsibility for his father’s wrongdoings due to how much J*n shifted the blame to him (a behaviour typical amongst abusers). For instance, his immediate response to Inej's abduction is self-blame 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 J*n’s actions, then Inej reassures him that he isn't the man his father is and it's like something inside him shifts. Imagine the relief that would have flooded through him hearing Inej’s words: for the first time in his life, someone isn't dumping that responsibility onto him. Instead, someone is telling him that he isn't the problem, that he has no debts to pay, that he's only human and not defined by the faults of his father. All he's ever wanted is to do something right, to not be the problem he's been constantly told he is and believes himself to be. It's as though this suffocating weight he's been carrying with him his whole life has been lifted off his chest and he can finally, finally breathe.

(That's not to say that those words alone heal him entirely, because trauma doesn't work that way - nevertheless, it's a start. It's given him a gentle nudge in the right direction of his path to healing.)

We as a fandom do not talk enough about how Jesper once bleached a swear word into his father's jurda field in all caps because he was bored.

I’m once again thinking about how Kaz and Inej had become twin soldiers, marching on, pretending they were fine, hiding their wounds and bruises from the rest of the crew and how Nina and Matthias were twin souls, soldiers destined to fight for different sides, to find each other and lose each other too quickly.

THE SPIN-OFF??????????????? WAS GOING TO GIVE US WYTTHIAS??????????????? AND NETFLIX JUST DECIDED TO SCRAP IT???????????????

WHAT DO YOU MEAN I’LL NEVER SEE KUWEI YUL-BO ON MY SCREEN

Hey Netflix… I just want to talk 🙂🙂🙂

I literally want to scream every time I remember Netflix cancelled Shadow and Bone

But sure, netflix prefers quality over quantity

When i first started using tumblr i was going through a soc phase and its literally all i used it for so i followed a bunch of random tags that had to do with the grishaverse and now i occasionally have the crows pop up in the middle of my kpop fanfics