Patricia: When I was younger, I had a crush on a boy, and I didn’t know how to express my feelings, so I just wrote him a letter that said “get out of my school.”
Two is Company - Chapter 61: A Bracelet For Your Birthday
Summary:
When the truth comes out about Amber’s bracelet switch, Victor goes on a rampage. Meanwhile, Joy organizes open day, the twins have a little heart-to-heart, and Mr. Sweet gets a secret holiday surprise.
「decided to make this after seeing @anbubisibuna ’s most recent headcanons post about dha」
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⊰ Patricia and Joyce are childhood friends, with the Soeters and Van Bodegravens having been neighbors since the girls were 6 years old. When the two were in 5th grade, Joyce and her parents moved away abruptly without saying their goodbyes.
⊰ Being identical twins, Mara and Yasmine occasionally switched places, be it for a school test or just to mess around. With Yasmine being the more mischievous one of the two, she was usually the one that came up with the ideas, but Mara is guilty of a few herself.
⊰ Although she is the younger twin, Yasmine acts more like the older sister and is very protective of Mara.
⊰ Amber lost her mother when she was still a toddler. With her father being an extremely busy man who had to constantly travel for work, and her refusing to stay home and be looked after by her stepmother, Amber grew up having to go from one boarding school to another. Being tired of moving, she told her father to let her just stay at a boarding school in The Netherlands, her mother’s home country. She eventually ended up moving into the Anubis House at the age of 10.
⊰ Jeroen and Appie attended the same private elementary and secondary school. They were close friends despite being part of different cliques.
⊰ After his father received a life sentence, Jeroen lost his popularity status along with all of his friends. Appie was the only one that stayed by his side, not caring about the insults coming his way. A few months after, Jeroen’s mother remarried, and his relationship with her worsened. In grade 8, she send him away to live in an internaat¹. Jeroen and Appie stayed in contact.
⊰ Amber has been in the Anubis House the longest, having lived there since the summer of 2000. Mick and Mara came in 2001, with Fabian and Patricia joining the three in 2002. Jeroen came along a year later, at the age of 13. Having heard of their friends’ stay in an internaat, Appie and Joyce insisted, non-stop, to their parents to let them live there as well. In 2004, the two of them officially became a part of the group, to the surprise and delight of both Jeroen and Patricia.
⊰ Joyce’ father is a high-profile prosecutor. The case he was involved in when Joyce was in grade 5 went completely south, forcing him to flee the country with his wife and daughter. A similar case took place a few years later, in the year 2006 (the canon, witness-protection plot with Rufus).
⊰ Fabian was the first person that Patricia befriended in the house. After his “death” in season three, she felt like a part of her died along with him.
⊰ Mick and Amber’s fathers are business partners.
⊰ Just like Jeroen’s, Appie’s family is part of the upper class as well. His strict parents, who want him to follow in the footsteps of his older, successful siblings, put a lot of pressure on him. He is smart, clever and does his best in school, so as to not disappoint his parents. Lacking the desire and enthusiasm to continue studying business, he eventually gives up trying for it. And although some regard him as the “black sheep” of the family because of it, most of his relatives adore him for his free spirit and his positive outlook on life.
⊰ Noa’s adoptive father is aware of her background. She also has two adoptive older siblings who are fiercely protective of her. They were strongly opposed to the idea of her studying abroad, but Noa stood firm in her decision, so they eventually caved, albeit reluctantly.
⊰ Rufus Malpied is well-known in the criminal underworld, having been a part of it since he was a teen. He grew up in an orphanage, never having met either of his parents. With the atmosphere in the orphanage growing more bleak by the day, he made the decision to run away at the age of 13. While he occasionally takes on a job that involves causing harm to another individual, he is best known for being a messenger and a middleman.
⊰ Sarah, Zeno and Victor Junior attended the same schools throughout their childhood and teenage years. Zeno was best friends with Sarah, and had a sort of frenemy thing going with Victor Jr.
⊰ Sarah and Zeno have always been more like siblings, and have never thought of one another as a potential romantic partner.
⊰ Ewout Winsbrugge-Hennegouwen, Zeno Terpstra I (Zeno’s father) and Van Prijze (Raven’s grandfather) were childhood bestfriends. I have a whole story going on about this particular headcanon with these three, involving Victor Senior, his older brother, Ewout’s older male cousin and the great-grandmother of Nienke (the latter three obviously being characters that I made up because I liked the idea of them).
⊰ Not wanting to keep the secrets to himself any longer, and in desperate need of advice, Ewout confided in his butler, Victor Jr’s grandfather, who began to accompany him on his expeditions to Egypt soon after. Ewout built the underground tunnels and tasks with his assistance.
⊰ Victor Senior moved his two children, Victor Jr. and Marijke, into the house after his father’s death, the cause being a sudden heart failure. Marijke ended up taking Sarah’s original room, who, in turn, was forced to move into the attic, previously her father’s study. Junior, being the less favored one of the two children, got one of the smallest rooms in the house.
⊰ The Anubis House was turned into an internaat in the ‘60s. So, it goes without saying that there had been many kids and teenagers who had called it their home at some point. One time, when Amber was still a newbie in the House, a couple of the older kids dared one another to go up into the attic and spend a night there, having heard the rumors of it being haunted. They got caught by Victor Jr, who from then on made it a restricted area.
⊰ When Victor Senior was still alive, he used to use the attic as a form of punishment. Those who broke a rule were forced to stay up there for 24 hours. Senior never shied away from using corporal punishment either.
⊰ As we all know, the kids are not allowed to have any pets. But in a rare show of sympathy, Victor Jr. made an exception for 10 year old Amber, allowing her to have a little pet for company.
⊰ While her parents were very loving and tried their best to spend as much time as they could with Nienke, they were also very busy people. This resulted in Nienke having to stay at her grandparents’ for days on end. With Nienke being just four when they passed away, and staying at her grandparents’ place being the norm for her, she didn’t fully grab the situation at first. She would ask about her parents’ whereabouts every other day, which devastated her grandparents. When the truth finally hit her, instead of crying and expressing her feelings, she withdrew, making her grandparents even more sad.
⊰ Despite his reputation as a soft-spoken, respectful guy, Fabian is no stranger to physical fights, having been involved in a number of them against the bullies of his younger brother.
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¹A Dutch-Belgian type of residence for children and teens whose parents cannot provide full-time care of them due to wide-ranging circumstances. Unlike a boarding school, educational activities generally take place outside of an internaat.
This is an appreciation for season four of Het Huis Anubis, because the fandom doesn’t give it the love that it truly deserves.
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Not only does this season tie with season two as their best. It also has the best subplots out of all the season finales!
While I still enjoyed the subplots of the other three seasons, I don’t like them anywhere near as much as I love the two from season four.
I appreciated how Marijke actively tried her best to stop the Club from getting out of the house. Like, sis was getting PHYSICAL with them kids! When the Club did eventually manage to get out, she lost the will to go after them and pretty much gave up.
After that, when she finally realized that Jacob lied to her and that the kids were telling the truth all along, you could see the regret written on her face as clear as day.
Then came the part with Danny having found Victor and bringing him back home, after Marijke had kicked him out for lying to her and helping the Club instead. It was very obvious from the moment she saw him again that she regretting doing that to him, that she felt really sorry for the state he was in, despite still being sad and angry, having felt betrayed by her own brother.
The best part of that subplot, of course, came at the end, with Victor telling Marijke that the Anubis House means everything to him, that it’s basically his whole life.
And then that scene with Marijke handing the papers, with the will written by their father, which said that Marijke could claim ownership of the house whenever she wanted, over to Victor, and him ripping them into pieces and becoming the owner of the House once again, was MARVELOUS. I also loved that he agreed to Marijke’s request to let them stay at the house until they could find a place of their own again. It was another testament to how much he has changed throughout the series, how he had become a much better person, despite how horribly he was treated since his childhood by those around him, including his whole family.
The other subplot I want to talk about is the one with the schoolpaper competition between Sofie and Mick. I liked this plot as a kid as well, but having re-watched the last few episodes of this season today, I have come to love it, a lot.
While I got annoyed with Sofie back then, I have now come to really like her character as well. Her stubbornness and refusal to admit defeat is actually entertaining to watch. The fact that she went to visit this paranoid, recluse of a man for an interview for the schoolpaper, despite having a bad feeling about it all, says a lot about how far she is willing to go to win. He could have been somebody dangerous for all we know, and yet she still went to visit the man that the whole neighbourhood is cautious of.
And she mainly did this just to piss off Mick.
Being an avid reader myself, I loved the reveal of this man being a famous writer who disappeared without a trace a few years back.
His story about how he got recognized everywhere he went, and not finding any peace because of it, was honestly really sad to hear. The only place where he could sit down and write in peace was some depressing room with just a desk and a lamp, away from any prying eyes. And that eventually drove him crazy and turned him into a recluse. A recluse that hated journalists in particular, what Sofie basically is.
Van Ginkel’s popularity pretty much led to his complete downfall.
I’m still very bitter that B.J. Van Ginkel’s supposed books, ‘The murdered writer’and'The clouds that ate themselves’, aren’t actually real. 'Cause you can be damn sure that they would be on my bookshelf if they existed.
I love this little paragraph of the latter book that Sofie recited, with Van Ginkel finishing that last sentence:
“Behold, an empty sky.
A sky as it was intended at the beginning of creation.
A sky without clouds, like thoughts without hatred.
Sadly, just a fantasy.
The sky is perpetually riddled with holes, like the clouds that themselves.”
I don’t believe my translation brings any justice to how beautiful it sounds in Dutch.
Then we had that part with Mick and Robbie getting very worried about Sofie, going back to school in the middle of the night, finding out where she went off to and then going after her, thinking she was in danger.
I really loved the scene with Mick admitting to Van Ginkel that it was all his (Mick) fault that Sofie visited him, and that he should take him instead of Sofie, after he and Robbie had broken into the house to ‘save’ her.
Another scene I want to talk about is the one with Sofie accidentally saying the man’s real name, revealing his true identity to Mick and Robbie, and Van Ginkel not getting mad at her for it. If anything, he was happy to hear that someone referred to him by his real name, after having lived with a fake identity all these years.
And then the best bit came; when Van Ginkel handed the last page of his last written book, ‘The murdered writer’, which had never been published, over to Sofie, giving her the permission to put it in the schoolpaper. Something that Van Swieten was all too happy to read about later in that episode, being a big fan of the book himself.
The romance in this was so minimal, almost exclusively restricted to that bit with Mick and Sofie in the very end, that it seemed more of a background thing in this finale, unlike with the other seasons, where it played a bigger role. With them not spending an unnecessary amount of time on the romance, it gave way for other, and imo, more mportant, things, like family issues, friendships and, of course, the whole mystery.
Speaking of, I’m not going to spend my time here talking about how good the mystery plot was, ‘cause I could write a whole essay about that.
What I do want to say is how this was the only finale with the possibility of a character death.
Not just one (Noa), not two (Noa and Rosa), not three (Noa, Rosa and Nienke), but SIX (including Fabian, Amber and Appie) possible deaths. The latter four could have easily drowned if they hadn’t found a way out of that closed swimming pool in time. And who knows what Jeroen would have done if Noa and the whole Club ended up dead. The death tally could’ve been up to eight, because there is no way that he would’ve let Jacob and Matthijs get away with it, dude was losing his mind as it was already.
Jacob van Den Berg was legit ready to kill fiveteenagers just to get his wife back. Matthijs and him would’ve given their lives without a second thought if they could have, but that never was a possibility because of the curse of immortality that Anchesenamun had placed on them.
