#the blackthorns

[bluesadansey]

Mark and Julian’s relationship makes me so insane the first time I read the books I don’t remember feeling that way about it? I think I payed most attention to Ty&Livvy + Ty&Jules + Livvy&Jules out of the dynamics so those stuck out most in my memory there are also shifts in what’s focused on most in LM vs Qoaad so that’s part of it but like… Mark and Julian is so funny and compelling to me because they do not understand each other at all! No scene encompasses how much Mark does not get Julian like the scene post whipping where Jules goes on that speal about how he wouldn’t want to live if Emma died and knows it’s not healthy but he might do what Malcolm did for Annabel if she did did and Mark is like “no my baby brother you are too good a person you would never ever do something like that ik you don’t mean any of it” had me in stitches ajdjdj as a reader who’s been in Jules’ head and knows that yes, he absolutely did mean all of that (codependent king love him for that <3). And then in LoS there’s a scene where Mark is tasked with watching the kids and minor things go wrong (well I mean someone does get injured. But for Shadowhunters that is still p minor) so he’s like “oh my god Julian would Never have let things go wrong like this he would know exactly what to do” bestie no… he wouldn’t have known better he would have just faked it till he made it and never let anyone know he was struggling to begin with lolz. That’s not even getting into the Emma thing which is just a whole cycle of them projecting their own feelings onto the other person Mark assuming Julian loves her platonically because he does and Julian assuming Mark’s would be in love with her because that’s normal existence to him usually I don’t care for set ups like that but this one is fun somehow.. and that scene after Emma and Jules argued and then fucked in that cottage so Jules comes back in a good mood and notices that Mark is constantly on edge around him because he’s accidentally been so snippy/cunty to him since the fake dating started and he’s like “oh have I been that bad?” And then tells Mark he’ll be cool now because he knows they weren’t really together Andjjd. also they’re both sooo bad at being teenage boys in completely different ways so the juxtaposition of their traumas is fun “I don’t understand how to be a teenage boy because I’ve been raised to be a “feral” (only using the word because they use it to describe Mark so many times in the books) creature and feel trapped by being among humans” vs “I don’t understand how to deal with teenage boy emotions or think through that aspect of life so I repress all of them while clinging to my responsible adult mask + using my political strategist wiles to get through life”. Idk why but I just really like their whole thing…

[softboyshaven]

My boyfriend is reading TSC for the first time and he knows the Blackthorns are my favorite so we talk about them,their personalities,and their funny moments and things that are non spoilerly (on my end) as they come up. Uhm but anyway 😭 he's getting really attached to Livvy and especially Livvy and Ty's sibling relationship and Uhm am I an evil person for encouraging this?

[moonyscoffeestains]

the blackthorns, jace, alec, and izzy all being descended from the same person is crazy

[kaitcreates]

The Blackthorn Family running a restraunt

Julian: The head chef barking orders at everyone and analyzing every dish.

Mark: The dishwasher who basically fills the whole kitchen in a cloud of steam

Helen: The bartender because she's the only one legally allowed.

Aline: The hostess who sits people she doesn't like by the bathrooms

Dru: The rollerskating waitress balancing 8 hot plates on her arms and smiling through gritted teeth

Livvy: The finance guy drowning in receipts because people can't be bothered to add their own tips

Ty: The pastry chef who actually knows the difference between macaroons and macarons

Tavvy: They legally can't make him do anything except wipe down the menus

Emma: The customer who's there so often she's on a nickname basis with everyone else

[margareturtle]

I feel like we know the most and the least about TWP

Like unresolved plot — a lot between QOAAD, SOBH, and GOTSM

But this is unknown territory bc we have no base institute 😭

Like TID, TLH - London, TMI - New York, TDA - Los Angeles (London + Idris too but base LA)

But TWP ?!!!!

Helen, Aline, Tavvy - LA

Dru + Thais - Upstate New York (Academy)

The Consul/Clave - Brooklyn

Blackstairs - part time London/LA

Kiearktina - part time NYC/Faerie

The Herongraystairs - Devon

Ty + Anush - Scholomance

Ash - Faerie

Jaime - who tf knows

THEY COULD BE ANYWHERE

MY BBYS ARE SO SPREAD APART

I feel so untethered 😭

(I hope we get all the main institutes then) + a new institute (omg if they went back to Thais’ home institute ahhhhh))

[lislgtwd]

i don't like the main couple, but i love the trilogy. thanks, cassie, for making me lose completely my self-respect and my sanity.

[the-dark-artifices-trees]

Jace: then they kicked me out because I’m a “liability” and “recklass” and “Jace”

Jace: now I know that the last one is my name but you should’ve heard their tone

[thebigbookfanboy]

Do you guys wonder what Kit and Ty’s first proper, one-on-one conversation will be about?

Like, it could be about family, and how hard it is keeping things from them and how terrible they both feel about doing that.

It could be about their friendship; what they miss about each other, how they view each other and what news and little bits of information (things that are actually big bits but they don’t want to be ‘annoying’) they have missed while they were apart.

It could be about Kit’s confession and his decision to move away.

It could be about Ty and why he felt bringing his sister back was the best decision.

It could even be about the gun

It could be about anything and we wouldn’t even know it. 

How crazy is that???

[alex-iltempo]

It makes me sad that after Chain of Thorns we, probably, won't see our fav babies...

We see Will a little bit in TLH. We see TMi characters in TDA and we'll see all of them in TWP.

Tessa, Jem and Magnus, thankfully, are in every time periods throughout TSC from start to finish.

But I will miss immensely "the Merry Thieves" and their close circle

Although we know "The Wicked Powers is meant to be connected in some way to The Last Hours series."

But what exactly that means?..

Lilith?..

Again?..

[herondaleminds]

In Chain Of Gold, when Tatiana and Grace attend the London Institute Ball:

Tessa: Will, why did you invite the Blackthorns? We hate them and they hate us

Will: *picks up popcorn and throws it in his mouth* Because of the drama, Tess. Because of the drama

[edwardianbookwhore]

cristina and diego didnt know the blackthorns at all huh

[bookishjules]

blackthorn sibling group chat where

[diana-bookfairchild]

But the Symbolism. . . (II)

This isn't exactly a continuation, more just me ranting about how amazing and perceptive Jace is.

Firstly, to add onto the previous post, another significant thing Jace gave someone was the toy soldier he gave Max. I'm fairly certain it was a relic from his own abusive childhood with Valentine, and he gave it to Max, his younger brother who - while his family certainly had its own troubles - had a happy and fairly idyllic childhood.

And Max died holding it. That's how much it meant to him.

Pretty sure I don't need to elaborate on that.

In City of Heavenly Fire, in Edom, when Simon feels the burst of pain in his chest from when Raphael was killed, Jace knew what it was instantly.

“Raphael,” Jace said finally, in a flat voice. “He’s your sire, the one whose blood made you a vampire.”

But he didn't tell. He kept it all to himself, instantly changing the subject and pretending the cause for Simon's discomfort was something else.

He knew that at this stage, Alec and Clary would absolutely fall to pieces if they thought Magnus and/or Luke and Jocelyn were dead.

And Jace cared for Magnus, if not for his own sake (though they were absolutely friends at this point) then for Alec's. We know he sought comfort from and confided in Luke in the past.

He kept this knowledge to himself. How much agony do you think this must have caused him? Keeping such a vital thing to himself - that the people they sought to rescue could already be dead. He mustn't even have known they were alive until he got there and Sebastian mentioned they would pay for that.

And sure, maybe it was a tad unfair to the others, but I'm not focusing on that right now. Jace's need to protect the people he loves, even at the cost of their own independence, is so obvious in every action he takes, in the tiniest details spread across the books. I love this.

“Clary,” Jace said, a warning in his voice.

Jace wants to stop Clary from giving too much information about his family to Mark, in the tunnels below Faerie to Edom. Why?

Because:

"—My family? Do they know—” “What’s happened to you? A little. And no, they’re not all right.” His eyes closed.

Jace knows the pain of knowing the people you care about, the people you love, are hurt because of you, and yet even knowing that you can't do anything about it.

Jace empathizes with Mark. Clary even thinks it:

Jace didn’t answer her; he looked stunned. She wondered if Mark, brittle and orphaned and alone, reminded him somehow of himself.

Jace was brusque at the beginning, demanding to know about Mark's time with the Fair Folk, but as soon as he realizes the torture and imprisonment and hopelessness of his family being somewhere he could no longer go Mark'd gone through he became sympathetic. He gave him a witchlight, one he'd always had, the symbolism which I talked about in Part I.

It was Mark's 'I'd rather die' that spurred him on. I think that also reminded him of himself, his impassioned speech to Clary as he went back under Sebastian's control.

“They took you because you have faerie blood, but also because you have Shadowhunter blood. They want to punish the Nephilim,” Jace said, his gaze intent. “Show them what a Shadowhunter is made of; show them you aren’t afraid. You can live through this.”

Mark wanted to feel and be useful. Jace gave him a purpose, something to do. Mark saved Idris and all the Shadowhunters there. A lot more would've died if the precautions against Faeries hadn't been put in place.

Jace was a war tactician and a friend at the same time: he gave Mark hope, was kind to him, and even then ruthlessly used his sense of being lost and the same kindness to make him do something for the war effort.

I can't stress how much I love this dichotomy, and how much it reminds me of Julian (also reading City of Lost Souls Julian - the troublemaking wax melting kid, knowing how much he goes through and how much pain is waiting for him, is just awful).

I could wax poetic about how awesome Jace was in the Blackthorns' interrogation. He wasn't as outwardly biased towards them as Magnus and Clary, but he was unequivocally on their side. His arguments were the ones that convinced Robert.

He agreed with Robert at first (and God, I love Julian's thought process about him):

“He has a point.” Jace smiled at Julian and Emma, and the smile was like gold melted over steel. You could see how the softness was a disguise, and how what lay under it had won Jace the title of best Shadowhunter of his generation.

But then, immediately next switched it around. You can see the way it changes Robert. For Jace, it became personal, and if it was personal for him - he would have done the same - it would be so for Robert, his adoptive father. He goes from stern to exasperated, more willing to be pliant.

He's the one who finally convinces Robert to let Julian speak. The final masterstroke. Robert complies immediately, despite reluctance. I doubt Jace planned how the entire thing went down, but this was a clear show of his loyalty and his brilliance. We see how Jace's strategizing mind works. He remains unreadable throughout, even to Julian - master liar and manipulator.

And when he spoke to Mark later on. He tries to put Mark at ease - doesn't succeed fully, of course, but it does sort of work. He reminds him of the witchlight. And of course, he's understood that Julian is the one running the Institute. I'm guessing it's half the official correspondence he gets from running the New York Institute, and half listening to Julian spinning his tale and helping him out there, but still. He guessed something which not even Emma, the love of Julian's life knew about him. It's kind of ridiculously OP, but also really amazing.

In Lord of Shadows, when he first met Kit, Jace knew exactly what to say. We, as readers, know that Jace would love meeting his blood family and as Alec put it, wanted Kit to like him, but to KIt, he seemed simultaneously someone impressive, and someone he wanted to be far away from.

And this:

-- "You’re fifteen years old. You might think you want to die, but trust me—you don’t.”

Am I the only one whose heart is breaking from the PARALLELS? And the certainty with which Jace says it? Jace-Death-Wish-The-SIze-of-Brooklyn-Lightwood-Herondale? This is as cathartic as seeing Jace finally calling Valentine abusive in The Lost Book of the White.

The 'Herondales Can't Resist a Challenge' thing is definitely part of the reason Kit decides to stay at the Institute. There's also, of course, Ty and Livvy and revenge.

Kit felt a sudden tightness through his body. Talking to Jace earlier had eased some of the anxiety he’d felt ever since his father had died. Jace had made everything seem like maybe it would be easy. That they were still in a world where you could give things chances and see how they worked out.

(The 'I didn't hear anything' at the kids' spying antics?? Jace totally did stuff like that with Alec and Izzy when he was younger).

(Also, like he's not the one who convinced Robert to listen to Julian and then present the testimony without involving the kids. This is canon to me.)

Clary leaves Jace alone in the room with Mark, when they're asking him for advice on Faerie. Playing on his prior connection to the Blackthorn. And Jace gets Mark to cooperate within a minute, revealing some information, but not all of it.

Also, the thing with the Herondale ring. Jace got it from Clary, who got it from Tessa, right when he was beginning to accept that he was a Herondale and took the name. To me, his giving it to Kit - and through Clary no less - was an expression of hope that Kit would be able to find the home and family and love and identity he had. And maybe a subconscious subtle manipulation on the fact that Kit never knew his mother and would therefore be vulnerable to Clary, whom everyone - from Emma to Julian - seems to regard as maternal.

And the way he intimidates Kit into not selling it just cracks me up.

(I love him making sure Emma and Julian have Magnus and Alec's numbers in case they run into trouble. He absolutely recognizes the 'chaos follows me around' tendency he has in them. And that he and Clary asked Magnus to help them. I could talk about that for days.)

Just - the way Jace's sarcasm, his charm, his ability to get people to talk and manipulate them, sweet-talking, humour, superhuman fighting abilities, kindness, emotional sensitivity and perception all meld together is genuinely breathtaking. I get why some people don't like his character - but I love him.

[kaitcreates]

*Monopoly night at the Los Angeles Institute*

Dru: I HATE YOU!

Mark: OH, WELL NEXT TIME DONT STEAL MY MONOPOLY!

Julian: Dru, give Mark his $200. You landed on his property.

Dru: NO! He’s in jail, I’m not giving my money to a criminal!

Ty: That’s not how you PLAY!

Tavvy: Emma, why is Ty screaming?

Emma: Shut the fuck up Tavvy! You don’t get to talk after stealing my last railroad!

Helen: I wish I was never born!

Julian: Me too! You think I wanted this!

Dru: AHHHHH!

[margareturtle]

Sooo something I love to do is combine my fav things

Which includes musicals and the dark artifices

So I wrote a musical song for when Kit finds out he’s a shadowhunter

If you’re interested it’s here :)

[lislgtwd]

theorizing about twp and the possible (and probable) deaths that could happen is ruining my ability to think in my general life.