⊱⋅papaya thoughts⋅⊰

Ash planted his hands against the wall on either side of her head, caging her between his arms. “Look at me.”

Dru looked up reluctantly. Partly because she was sure she had dust bunnies in her hair, and partly because his green eyes were like daggers; she would have sworn she could feel their cutting edges. There were shadows under them, though this close up, his skin was perfectly smooth, unmarked by even a freckle. Faerie beauty was so unfair.

“Dru,” he said, and there was urgency in his voice, a mix of impatience and desperation. It made her want to touch him—to put her hand on his shoulder, to tell him that it wasn’t just his father who had been a monster, that Janus was a monster, too, and Ash was being manipulated by him.

Maybe that was just what it felt like to have Ash’s magic work on you: Maybe it wasn’t only that you wanted to please him, but that you wanted to help him.

Gracie Abrams, "I Knew It, I Knew You" - Ty Blackthorn / Kit Herondale relationship

Julien Baker, "Appointments" - Janus about Clary

Amelie Farren, "Unsweetened Lemonade" - Dru Blacothorn about herself

Matt Jaffe, "Air That I Breathe" - Simple mystery is solved, it's about Kitty☝️

Hey Violet, "Unholy" - about Ash and Dru's relationship

Conan Gray, "The Cut That Always Bleeds" - Well OF COURSE it's about Kitty✋

Gracie Abrams [again!], "I Told You Things" - Ash/ Dru, Cassie is so tragic tiktok edit coded these days🕯️🪦

Livingston, "Shadow" - about Ash

Jessia, "I'm Not Pretty" - about Dru

Taylor Swift, "The Great War" - Kitty Kitty

Lord Huron, "Wait By the River" - Ty only

LEW, "It's Not Like I'm In Love With You" - Kit about certain someone, who can it possibly be?

Saturn, "Sleeping At Last" - Livvy

Manchester Orchestra, "The SIlence" - Ash

RAAAAHHH

And:

6th House is on mercury and 9th House is on pluto so they're on the opposite ends of the dominicus system

9 is 6 uspide down and 6 is 9 upside down

the Ninth House and the Sixth House are religion vs science

Gideon and Harrow are (were) childhood enemies, Camilla and Palamedes are (were) childhood friends. Gideon and Harrow had a hard time trusting each other, Camilla and Palamedes trusted each other with everything.

Gideon and Harrow are all about forgetting ("But I don’t even remember about you most of the time", the whole lobotomy situation), Camilla and Palamedes are all about remembering ("I’ve carried you, Warden. And I’ve carried your memory … I’d rather carry you", "Palamedes remembers everything: That was his problem. I always remember him. That’s mine")

Gideon and Harrow are water (the Pool Scene, Gideon being in the "well" in Harrow's mind, Harrow deciding to stay in the River and Gideon "dying" in the River), Camilla and Palamedes are fire (Palamedes's first death, Palamedes and Camilla's lyctoral ascention)

in griddlehark's case the necromancer carried their cavalier's soul, in campal's case the cavalier carried their necromancer's soul

Gideon and Palamedes sacrificed themselves, Harrow then carried Gideon's sword even though it was killing her and Camilla carried Palamedes's bones even though boe electrocuted her for it

Gideon and Camilla are both "devotion's casualties"

Harrow and Camilla risked permanent brain damage to save the souls they carried

Gideon barely had any training for her position and Camilla trained her whole life, but they both didn't normally use their rapiers and were both set on fighting rather than on traditional duelling

the 6th and the 9th are both poor, underestimated, dying houses. Harrow and Palamedes have been leading them since they were very young and they do anything to try to improve the situation

Harrow fell in love with the Body when she was 10, Palamedes began writing to Dulcinea when he was 8. both into old dead chicks (as Gideon phrased it) while also loving their cavaliers

Camilla watched Gideon impale herself to force Harrow's ascention, Gideon watched Camilla light herself on fire during her and Palamedes's ascention

"This was your shell but it was all filled up with me" & "It's not you. It's me wearing you"

"I keep turning around to find you, and there’s nobody there." "I know the feeling." & "You’d touched that letter, and I—you know it was killing me twice that you weren’t there, right? You must know it was destroying me to be there in your body, trying to keep your thumbs on, and I couldn’t even hear your damn voice?"

"Kiriona Gaia was staring politely at the side of the truck, as though there were something really interesting on the paintwork" & "Even Camilla, who had turned away to politely investigate something on the opposite wall, wasn’t there"

"It was just her and Harrow and Harrow’s bitter, high-boned, stupid little face" & "Palamedes said, and now Nona knew he wasn’t speaking to anyone else in the universe"

AND

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My question is: Will Kit ever find out what his mother was like? I mean something beyond just descriptions—perhaps a photograph?

I’m also curious about Kit’s opinion of his mother. It feels like, considering all the sacrifices Rosemary made for him, Kit doesn't really know much about her; he doesn't even own anything that belonged to her—nothing to keep her present in his daily life (except for the heron necklace, but Ty has that, not Kit). It's like Rosemary’s presence in Kit’s life has been somewhat sidelined, which I find a bit sad. Will we see him thinking or talking about her in TLKoF?

Thanks for your answer! ♡

Hi! ❤️

As of right now what Kit's relationship to Rosemary's memory will look like in TWP seems a bit spoilery! — but it's an interesting question (though indeed when you are in a fantasy adventure and always running you don't get to introspect as much as you might like.)

Rosemary’s story intersects with Jem’s, and with Tessa’s — they only go looking for Kit when Rosemary dies, and they don’t immediately tell him about her because it would be devastating to find out your mother had been alive without you knowing and then died extremely recently. At that point Kit is not ready to hear it. It becomes clear in TWP though that they've discussed Rosemary with Kit and he is aware of her story.

It's worth keeping in mind that these are Kit's own thoughts regarding his mother, before he really finds out much about Rosemary. "Maybe there was something wrong with him, Kit thought as he followed Alec into the hallway. Maybe he didn’t have the right kind of feelings. He’d never wondered that much about his mother, who she was: Wouldn’t someone who knew how to feel properly wonder that?"

So in some sense the issue is what Kit thinks of his own emotional capabilities. It is clear to us he doesn't have the "right kind of feelings" because that would be too painful. And that becomes more complex for him when he learns the story of his mother. The fact that she sacrificed herself for him would make him more likely to want to hold his feelings at a distance, not more likely to want a photograph or a keepsake. She is also tied up in his mind with him being the Heir which he hates and regards as something that has almost ruined his life.

We do know now that he has blurry memories of her singing to him. But that isn't the same as knowing her. What Kit would be mourning, if he let himself really mourn Rosemary, isn't the loss of someone he remembers. It's the loss of the chance to ever know her at all. For someone in that position, being surrounded by reminders of a life that barely intersected with their own might be comforting, or it might simply emphasize what was lost before it could ever exist.

“It's like Rosemary’s presence in Kit’s life has been somewhat sidelined, which I find a bit sad.”

You’re not wrong; it is sad, and that's okay, because the situation is sad in a way that cannot be undone. Tessa cannot have Will back. Will could not have Jem back. Julian can't have Livvy back. Jocelyn never got her son back. The Merry Thieves don't get Christopher back. And Kit does not get to have a life with Rosemary in it. That is one of the recurring themes throughout the Shadowhunter books when sad things happen and cannot be reversed. The question the books keep asking isn't, "How can this be fixed and made not sad?" It's, "How do we go on after loss and how do we understand that it can be part of our history without becoming our entire present? How can we understand that moving on is not a wrong done to the people we lost but is rather what they would want for us? How do we understand that acceptance is not erasure, and how do we, as Shadowhunters, keep doing what needs to be done instead of being ourselves undone by sadness?”

These are all things that Kit needs to think about and has deliberately not thought about. Rosemary’s presence is minimized in Kit’s life because he never really knew her and he doesn't want to think about her or really about Johnny either. Whether he can keep all that up without cracking is the part that seems spoilery.

I would address one thing about the heron pendant, though, because I think it's interesting that people might look at him giving it to Ty as him sidelining Rosemary. I think about it the opposite way (and this does come up in TWP) — Kit’s mother’s legacy was one of sacrificial and protective love. Kit has given this necklace to Ty as a gesture of protective love. Ty having that pendant is the thing — the first thing in TWP — that Kit thinks of as connecting him to his bio-mom. When he sees Ty with the necklace, he thinks that his mother protected him and in turn he has honored that legacy by giving something that symbolizes her to the person he most wants to protect. He thinks she would be pleased. It's pretty much the only thing he's let himself think about as regards her. So I think of it as connecting him to Rosemary rather than putting her aside.

“Every night, no matter what has happened during the day, no matter if I am torn or bloodied or so bone-tired I wish I were dead, I look up at the stars and I give each star a brother’s name or a sister’s face. I will not sleep until I remember every one. The stars will burn out before I forget.”

The Blackthorns described by Mark in Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy.

AND FOR THAT I’LL MAKE YOU BOTH SUFFER UNTIL YOU NO LONGER UNDERSTAND THE MEANING OF THAT GODDAMNED WORD

HIM I’LL KILL QUICK BECAUSE SHE ASKED ME TO AND BECAUSE THAT MUCH HE HONESTLY DESERVES BUT YOU TWO MUMMIFIED WIZARD SHITS I WILL BURN AND BURN AND BURN AND BURN UNTIL THERE IS NO TRACE OF YOU LEFT IN THE SHADOW OF MY LONG-LOST NATAL SUN.

WILL REMEMBER THE FIRST TIME YOU KISSED ME—YOU APOLOGISED—YOU SAID, I AM SORRY, DESTROY ME AS I AM, BUT I WANT TO KISS YOU BEFORE I AM KILLED, AND I SAID TO YOU WHY, AND YOU SAID, BECAUSE I HAVE ONLY ONCE MET SOMEONE SO UTTERLY WILLING TO BURN FOR WHAT THEY BELIEVED IN, AND I LOVED HIM ON SIGHT, AND THE FIRST TIME I DIED I ASKED OF HIM WHAT I NOW ASK OF YOU

I KISSED YOU AND LATER I WOULD KISS HIM TOO BEFORE I UNDERSTOOD WHAT YOU WERE, AND ALL THREE OF US LIVED TO REGRET IT—BUT WHEN I AM IN HEAVEN I WILL REMEMBER YOUR MOUTH, AND WHEN YOU ROAST DOWN IN HELL I THINK YOU WILL REMEMBER MINE

THE ONLY THING OUR CIVILIZATION CAN EVER LEARN FROM YOURS IS THAT WHEN OUR BACKS ARE TO THE WALL AND OUR TOWERS ARE FALLING ALL AROUND US AND WE ARE WATCHING OURSELVES BURN 

WE RARELY BECOME HEROES.