Cassandra Clare

So Cassandra Jean has finished the complete Shadowhunter Tarot, so for the next … seventy-something days I’ll be posting a card a day (okay, maybe not every day — I tend to get distracted!) in order, from the first card to the last. Some will be under spoiler cuts; some you’ll have seen before — I’ll explain why each character has the card they have.

We’ve moved on from the Major Arcana to the minor Arcana — the first suit is the suit of Rings, which takes the place of the suit of Pentacles. The Ace of Rings shows Meliorn and the Seelie Queen: the rings are the gold leaf rings the Seelie Queen gives to Clary and Simon in Lost Souls so they can hear each other’s thoughts.

All the Rings in this suit are family rings except this card, and one other.

Atop the wings was a folded piece of paper, addressed to the New York Institute. After splashing water on her face, Maryse had taken the letter and read it. It was short - one sentence - and was signed with a name in a handwriting oddly familiar to her, for in it there was an echo of Valentine’s cursive, the flourishes of his letters, the strong, steady hand. But it was not Valentine’s name. It was his son’s.Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern.She held it out to Brother Zachariah. He took it from her fingers and opened it, reading, as she had, the single word of Ancient Greek scrawled in elaborate script across the top of the page.Erchomai, it said.I am coming.

Atop the wings was a folded piece of paper, addressed to the New York Institute. After splashing water on her face, Maryse had taken the letter and read it. It was short - one sentence - and was signed with a name in a handwriting oddly familiar to her, for in it there was an echo of Valentine’s cursive, the flourishes of his letters, the strong, steady hand. But it was not Valentine’s name. It was his son’s.
Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern.
She held it out to Brother Zachariah. He took it from her fingers and opened it, reading, as she had, the single word of Ancient Greek scrawled in elaborate script across the top of the page.
Erchomai, it said.
I am coming.

Bad Angels by *Street-Angel

I just love this illustration of the scene from City of Lost Souls.

From Cassandra Jean’s Shadowhunter Tarot — there were just so many requests for Simon/Izzy it had to be done. They take the Ace of Swords/Blades which can mean unity and breakthroughs. Also Simon is holding Glorious which is definitely worthy of being the Ace of Blades.

“So i just finished clockwork Princess in 7 hours (it was aca-amazing), and i was just wondering which year COLS is set in?? — the-pointless-blog-of-a-teenager”

I am warning you now: I am going to start answering questions about Clockwork Princess soon. I WILL put them all under a read-more tag unless they are absolutely not spoilery (as above). Even if they are even slightly a tiny bit spoilery I will put them under a read more tag. I will also tag all replies with cp2spoilers . Please be careful about reading and clicking!!!!

Thank you for all the responses to Clockwork Princess so far too: they have been by and large amazing.

On page one of chapter one of City of Lost Souls, it says: Outside the window a November storm was in full bloom.

City of Fallen Angels mentions that it is the end of October, City of Glass that it is the middle of September, City of Ashes that it is the beginning of September, City of Bones that it is August.

All of this takes place in 2007, the year City of Bones was released.

Clary with a badass sword!

terriblenerd:

I got totally distracted by silly things today, so we’re a little late tonight, but here’s a Clary a la Glorious.

Wow, very cool!

the-manila-institute:

Between the locked bookshelves were glass display cases. Each held something of rare and beautiful workmanship

- page 55 of City of Lost Souls

About villains

People email me a lot and ask if it makes them a bad person if they like fictional villains.

I think the answer is: no, of course not, it doesn’t make you a bad person if you like fictional villains. 99.9% of people consuming media know that fiction is fiction, and they don’t apply the rules they would apply in real life to fictional characters. The other .01% have problems a lot bigger than fictional characters, their opinion of.

People like villains because villains move the narrative along. If there was no Loki, the Avengers would have no reason to assemble. If nothing much is happening, you can rely on the villain to show up and set off a bomb or threaten the universe, thus causing your heroes to have to do something.

You don’t have to apologize for villains, or find some way to explain how what they did isn’t so bad, to like them. You can be like, “Loki, he is a mass murderer, but if it were not for him and his planet-sized Daddy issues, there would be no Avengers movie, and then what would we make gifs of? Moriarty, also a homicidal maniac, but if not for him, Sherlock would never have discovered his humanity, because he would have no impetus to do so, so hey.” That is why the trailer for Into Darkness is narrated by the villain — because it immediately sets up stakes: something is happening, as opposed to having Kirk narrate by saying “Here we are in space, I love space!” Benedict Cumberbatch’s VO doesn’t tell you what’s happening, but it does tell you that something is happening: i.e. conflict (the gasoline that runs the engine of every narrative.)

Villains provide impetus and prevent stagnation; that is what we actually like about them. In real life, we have no need of villains to show up and provide impetus for everyone to do things, because in real life it, is okay if everyone is happy - in fact, preferable - but real life does not have to entertain bazillions of people.

Anyway. More specific questions about Sebastian under the cut; read more for spoilers for CoLS.