everybody should be a fan one of at least one objectively bad media at any point in their lives

tsc's greatest love story? oh you mean church and jem's story

floating down the river styx on an inflatable donut and high-fiving all the lost souls i pass. i'm on vacation

If you’re looking for a good queer Y/A book (that’s actually written by a queer person) with both LGBT and neurodivergent rep please read The Extraordinaries by TJ Klune! Here’s a quick run down:

- GAY SUPERHEROES

- Best friends to lovers <3

- Genuinely really funny writing that doesn’t sound like a 40 year old trying to seem hip and cool

- The common struggle that is falling for a superhero that you’ve never even met before but it’s cool cus you’re MEANT for each other

- Microwaving a cricket in order to gain super powers

- MC writes insert fanfiction because. Obviously

- Did I mention the hot best friend?

- Bad ass lesbians with abandonment issues

- Some heartthrob moments that me and many ppl who are ND can relate to (the fear of being “too much” and that people wished you were normal)

- A lot of second hand embarrassment so I’m warning you here

- A really fun plot you’ll get invested in, I binge read this book in a day cus I had to know what the hell was going to happen

The fandom is almost non existent pls y’all

Some of you have not microwaved a cricket, jumped into a river wearing nothing but a rhinestone and tried eating goo off a meteorite in order to get super powers and it shows.

Emma To Bruce

Dear Bruce,

Oh, Bruce, Bruce, Bruce. You don’t even know (because you are a diary and you never leave the house). I have spent the day among the mundanes. Not just mundanes. Tourists. All things considered, I’ll take the haunted cursed mansion, thanks.

When last I wrote we found out Ghost!Rupert thinks there’s a cursed object in this Herondale house on Curzon Street here in London. After that we have no idea, which is going to be a big problem because ley lines are, you know, lines, so objects could be anywhere along them. But one thing at a time.

It turns out the National Trust operates tours of the Curzon Street house—and I assume some Herondale in the past was smart enough to get rid of, or at least glamour the heck out of, anything too Shadowhuntery there. It’s advertised as being a recreation of a “typical Edwardian home,” which is close enough to the right time period for our purposes. So we got dressed up in mundane costumes—Jules found an excellent vintage Sex Pistols t-shirt in Arthur and Andrew Blackthorn’s Groovy Chambers of Love —and bought tickets for the 2:00 tour the next day.

What we learned from the house tour is that Edwardian décor mostly would look pretty okay in a modern house! It’s light and airy, lots of soft colors, cool patterned fabric, and so on. Oh, and we also learned the Edwardian movement missed Tatiana Blackthorn entirely, since everything about Blackthorn Hall is the very opposite of light and airy. Julian pointed out that she probably left it the way it was when her father died. Whereas I liked the feel of Curzon Street a lot, it was homey. I actually took a photo of some wallpaper and want to ask Tessa if she remembers who made it and, uh, whether they’re still in business I guess. What’s happened to us? We’re renovating a house. I feel so old.

The tour was fine, I guess, lots of detail about eras and maker’s marks and furniture. People asked ridiculous questions—one of the American couples demanded to know where the piano was and when the guide said sorry, no piano, they got angry and told her that all Edwardian homes had a piano so there must be one, and she had to kind of apologize and move on. It was awkward and I did not feel great about the people of my land.

But mostly I was tuned out of all that. The house was interesting enough. Persian carpets everywhere! An ivory chess set! A pewter-clad bathtub! Oh, there was a framed playbill from the time period that was obviously from some Downworlder nightclub, that was kind of cool. But most importantly, none of these were things enchanted by Tatiana.

I spent most of the time looking for anything that made it clear Shadowhunters lived here. The only thing I really saw was that there were a bunch of weapons used for decoration, which the tour guide noted was not appropriate to the period. Of course you and I know, Bruce, that weapons are always appropriate décor. But it’s like Julian always says, sometimes you don’t even need glamours, because mundanes don’t see what they don’t want to see. Like, the tour guide went on and on about a beautiful jadeite sculpture atop one of the mantels and said nobody knew what the shape was meant to represent. And it was obviously meant to be displaying a sword that is long gone.

Anyway we

Oh, wait.

It’s not long gone. I know where it went. It’s on the dressing table on the other side of the room. I can see it from where I’m writing this.

A real chill just went up my spine, thinking of that. At the house today I was thinking about the people who lived there, James Herondale and Cordelia Carstairs, but to be honest I didn’t really feel an emotional connection to them while I was there. Maybe it’s just that all the really personal stuff would have been taken out of the house before it became a museum. But also, just…I didn’t know them. Tessa and Jem did, of course, and Magnus, and heck, maybe some of the other warlocks, I don’t know. But I didn’t, and I never will.

But you know who else knew them? Cortana knew them. I wish I’d brought it with me to the house today. (But nooooo, Julian said only weapons that could be completely concealed. And what if the tour guide had turned out to be an Eidolon demon lying in wait for us? I would have faced it with a bootknife smaller than I’d use to peel an apple with. Though it would have been an Eidolon demon that knew a lot about turn of the century furniture. ANYWAY, we were there to find an object, so let me finish that story.)

We were in one of the spare bedrooms, looking at the scrollwork on the bed or whatever. The tour guide was showing off some of the objects on the bedside tables, and the Sensor went off like crazy.

The tour guide gave us an evil look. “Turn off that phone,” she said to me, and the whole tour group flounced off to another room while I pretended to be trying to find my phone in my extremely ugly waist pack. Jules grabbed the Sensor, and it led us to —  a music-box on the windowsill. A very ugly music box. Well, maybe not ugly. Very overdecorated, just covered in bits and bobs and, like, way too much for a music box. There was a monkey figurine involved. It was a lot. Anyway, it was an excellent example of the mid-Victorian etc etc but also it was an object Tatiana cursed and, I guess, someone liked it enough to find it and bring it back here???

After that it was just a matter of waiting till the tour moved on, glamouring up, grabbing the music box, sneaking back out of there, and hoping nobody who worked there had the Sight. Which they didn’t. So now we have a music box to show Rupert in the morning and ask Tessa about. I hope it wasn’t hers or anything like that. I think of her as having better taste.

Okay, that’s it for now, Bruce. I’m going to go get Cortana so I can reach out and touch it from the bed. Julian always teases me when I do that but tonight it feels right. Catch you later.

Emma

Julian to Magnus

Dear Magnus,

Mark this date down! For once I am writing to you with answers instead of questions. I know you probably felt a sinking sensation when you saw the letter is from me, and considered going into the Witness Protection Program (Warlock Protection Program?) but I’m actually only writing to give you the latest updates. And the great news is, we know a lot more than the last time I talked to you.

First: the ghost in Blackthorn Hall is Rupert Blackthorn, Tatiana’s husband. He’s stuck in the house because of the curse. As near as we can tell, his spirit was floating around Blackthorn Hall anyway, because he died here (according to Tessa and Jem, in quite violent circumstances). But then the curse was fading after Tatiana’s father’s death, since it was tied to him, and Tatiana started to have to do regular maintenance over the following years to keep it working. We have no idea if Tatiana even knew Rupert’s ghost was here in the first place, or knew that the curse was keeping him here—but it clearly did, and has been all this time. He’s observed a lot over the years, I suspect.

The curse works, it seems, by being embedded in objects that are placed on ley lines that interact at Blackthorn Hall. (This was very clever of Benedict, since the objects themselves were not at the house and thus the curse wouldn’t be detected by Shadowhunters searching here. He didn’t make provisions for faery contractors, lucky for us.) Also, because Tatiana had to keep the curse up, she periodically replaced the objects with new things she’d taken herself. And she took things belonging to Herondales, Carstairs, Lightwoods…the people she hated and their kids. Maybe she thought her hatred would make the curse stronger, maybe she just liked stealing from those people and using their possessions for her own purposes. Hard to say, but it doesn’t really matter. Find the (remaining) objects, lift the curse, free Rupert, and get back to refurbishing the house so we can live here curse-free.

ADDENDUM: It is the next morning, and I have a bit of good news. Rupert knows where one of the objects is! Or at least he has a place he wants us to go. Communication with Rupert still includes a lot of interpretation. In this case we came down to breakfast today to find a very antique envelope we had never seen before in the middle of the kitchen floor. Whatever correspondence was in it is long gone, and the writing was smudged, but we could make out the address, which is on Curzon Street in central London. Some quick fire-messages and we learned that Tessa’s son James lived in a house on Curzon Street a hundred-plus years ago. It still belongs to the Herondales, in fact, but years ago, pre-Jace, probably pre-Jace’s-dad, it was given to the National Trust. So it’s open to the public as a historic building but I guess Jace still technically owns it. So off we go, some tourists who just want to visit a historic home, hoping we find something. Tessa said as far as she knows it hasn’t been inhabited by Shadowhunters for a long time, and if there was some antique thing put there by Tatiana, it could easily have been sold or put in storage or who knows what. Rupert wouldn’t know that. There’s also the question of how much of the house is open to the public and how we might search the parts that aren’t. Emma suggests we get Kit on the phone and have him tell them that as a Herondale he gives us permission, but I’m not sure that’s how it works.

So the situation is still far from fixed, but we’ve made a bit of progress, at least. And Emma likes to point out that things could be way worse. Rupert could be a vengeful poltergeist constantly destroying things or trying to drive us out, but instead he seems to recognize that the way to get what he wants is to help us. I don’t think we can depend on him to find some piece of hundred-year-old trash that will point us to all the objects, but we have a place to go next, and we still have Tatiana’s diary and Ty’s Ghost Sensor. And I feel much better having a concrete goal.

And you may be thinking, well, okay, so what do you want from me? And the answer is, nothing at all!

Thanks again, and our love to Alec and everyone there.

Julian

Emma to Bruce, partly Tatiana’s diary

Dear Bruce,

Ah, it’s good to get back to the dank, gloomy ruin that is Cursed Blackthorn Hall. You know, I’ll almost miss the curse, when it’s gone. Just kidding! Cirenworth proves you can have an old manor house with hundreds of years of history and it can be warm and welcoming and friendly.

We got back yesterday night, and then this morning Hypatia came in with a few more translated bits of Tatiana’s diary. (Don’t worry, Bruce: you are my One True Diary. Tatiana’s diary means nothing to me, I swear, nothing!) She was a big weirdo about it as usual, of course; the translations are all on these large parchment pages that look like movie props but no, Hypatia just likes to use ancient yellowing vellums for her normal work here in the twenty-first century. Warlocks! She said something about treated pages, demon language, and so on. And she was wearing kind of a 40s burgundy dress with a matching hat and Bruce, the brim of this hat was so wide I thought the wind would carry her away. (Oh, I should have said, we were outside. Julian was on the roof with the builders, not my favorite thing, so I was watching from the front gates while I tried to cut back the briars, which grow here at like ten times the rate of anything in California despite the much worse weather. I pointed this out to one of the faeries and he looked at me and said, “Black. Thorn.” And then walked away as though he’d made a great point. But it was Lightwood House first, I yelled back, and he ignored me. Which is for the best, really.)

I’m pretty sure the briars had grown another few inches while we talked, but they would have to wait. I got Julian down from the roof and we went in to read.

It looks like Hypatia has started actually thinking about what she’s translating; instead of doing every entry, this time she had snippets from a bunch of entries put together (she dated each one). Which is a little bit of a shame because I kind of liked seeing Tatiana talk about her clothes or her brothers or whatever in between all the, you know, evil demon stuff. But I admit that evil demon stuff is what we are here for. Like the old Shadowhunter motto says, “Shadowhunters: That Evil Demon Stuff Is What We Are Here For.” But in Latin probably.

Some translated highlights for you, Bruce. I won’t include the dates, but they stretch over a matter of years. The first one is from 1878 and then most are in the 1880s, but then there’s a jump and the last one is from 1903. (Sometime before then she seems to have found a “patron” of some kind, but she doesn’t say who it is. Or why anybody would want to be the patron of such an unpleasant person…)

Father is dead and Rupert is dead. I cannot speak of what happened; when I try, the words will not come. It is the fault of the London Enclave, many of whom were present for their deaths. Not only did they not save either of the men I love most, I daresay they hastened the disaster. I shall be, at very least, registering a formal complaint with the Clave, but I have little hope of justice, of course. The corruption among the Nephilim here in London goes all the way to the roots.

I cannot believe I have been left all alone. My mother, gone. My brothers, gone. The walls of Lightwood House are my only companions, their silence a terrible reminder of how much I have lost, in such little time. Today I went from room to room, and wherever I found a mirror, I smashed it. The glass I left where it fell, a reminder that everything bright and good has been destroyed.

I have Rupert’s ring. It is all that remains of him. I know I must have felt happy, to stand beside him and recite the vows of marriage. I cannot dredge up the memory of that feeling. There is blood upon the ring. His blood. I shall never clean it.

To honor my father’s memory, I have begun going through the books in his library. Not the library the Clave knows about, of course, the one they pillaged after the incident involving his death, but the other one, Father’s sanctum, which the enchantment hides. I wish to learn what he knew. To seek power that will help me, who now has been left with nothing. I have found only one thing that causes my heart to beat in my chest: because of his violent end, far from his own home, it is not unlikely that the spirit of my Rupert may still be present here in the house. If he is here, I will find him. I will see him, and I will know that our love is more powerful than death.

I have searched and searched, performed spell after spell. I have not seen any ghost, not of Rupert, not of Father. Not even of some Lightwood relation long dead who might have been haunting the place earlier. Is it my father’s enchantment that keeps the dead from this place? Or does it only prevent my finding them? But I am the master of that enchantment now, as I am the true inheritor of the house. (If G and G attempt to take it from me, they will find there is more than an enchantment that will work against them.)

Father’s protection is fading. I can feel it, as I remain here in the house, and it becomes a part of me, as I become a part of it. Someday my son will inherit the house—the last gift that Rupert ever gave me—and I will not have Blackthorn Hall made unsafe for myself and my family. I have been reading extensively on the topic of the enchantment and I place the blame on the urn containing mother’s ashes, which fell from its location in the Lightwood tombs in the countryside and chipped terribly. It did not shatter, but since then I have felt the eyes of the world more upon me. But I believe that the objects themselves can be replaced, as long as the magic is renewed, and so instead of the urn the enchantment now inhabits Father’s mourning brooch, with its locks of Mother’s hair, and I have put it in the place of the urn. The spell has been rewoven and renewed. Father would be proud of me. He was right to make me the inheritor of all his works.

Rupert is here, I know it, though I cannot see him or hear him. Where else, indeed, could he be other than close to me, where he belonged, where he was meant to dwell before his life was cut so short by the machinations of the Enclave. Sometimes in the night I feel I can almost see him, as though he is hiding just behind a thin curtain that divides the living realm from the dead. And now I have made sure he will stay with me.

I realized that the objects of the protective enchantment on the house are things that would be important to Father, when he was master here. But now I am master here, and having studied more fully Father’s research, it was a simple matter to place his ring in a location of power. It will be part of the spell from here on, protecting the house as Rupert would have protected me.

You can see, Bruce, the way the last entry seems…different?

Vengeance. Vindication. They are close.

But the power of the house fades. At the worst time.

I appealed to my patron. He said the magic was of my own doing and that only I may repair it. But—for he is perceptive beyond any other—he saw that I had repaired it before. He asked me what objects held the enchantment and I told him: the brooch, the snake skin, and so on.

And as I spoke he only had to look at me in his knowing way, for me to understand him. The objects were of my Father’s time, and while his memory and honor will never fade from my mind, more than twenty years have passed.

I comprehended my patron at once: it was time that I replaced the foci of the enchantment with my own. Not only Rupert’s ring, but new things.

What could I use? I have been alone so long. I have lost a child and there has been no help for me. I have only one thing remaining: my vengeance. And so I will take the things of my enemies. I will take them from under their noses, from their own homes. Their sorrow, and my satisfaction in it, will be the force that keeps Blackthorn Hall safe—safe from them! It is the kind of cunning that my patron is known for, and that he loves best.

And once my protections have returned to their fullest strength, they will finally pay for their sins. They will pay in their blood.

Eesh. Makes me shiver just reading it. I guess she didn’t actually make them pay in their blood or Tessa and Jem probably would have mentioned it. (They would have been some of the blood-payers, I’m pretty sure.) So let’s summarize, Bruce: the ghost is Rupert Blackthorn, Tatiana’s husband. He died in some kind of tragedy and she blamed the families Tessa and Jem talked about—the Herondales, the Carstairs, the Lightwoods…So she stole their stuff.

So I guess we know what we need to do next.

Cristina to Emma

Some angry kittens to bless your dash 🌟

so this shyness thing doesn't go away with age huh

gun to your head, you HAVE to make an R-rated scooby doo movie. What do you do

completely normal silly movie but shaggy hits a bong in every scene

and we see Daphne's dick

fred finally gets to say fuck

give velma a gun

Shaggy smokes weed

yeah shaggy smokes weed

Scooby fucking dies

the line was right there and you just stepped over it like it was beetle in the sun

remember when you were 10 and you would hang out with your friends in order to Look At The Computer together like you went to their house and experienced the information superhighway together. and then leave

How fucking old are you people?

normal amount

And sometimes you’d switch to your house so you could look at a different computer like you couldn’t find the same things on their computer.

Nina and Jesper are sitting on a bench

Matthias: Why do you guys look so sad?

Nina: Sit down with us so we can tell you.

*Matthias sits down*

Jesper: The bench is freshly painted.

Dru To Kit