okay like i used to not like pregnant!emma but like,,i love the idea of blackstairs being happy and having kiddos but i just cannot get behind people who are like,,sure that by the end of the travel year emma will be pregnant with triplets like no calm down anasjkqlskdjh but i love emma and julian being happy and having kids down the line so i give you some short and improvised pregnant!emma headcanons that actually became more family/parents!blackstairs:

quick disclaimer beforehand that we know next to nothing about the birth control rune and i just made something up so just go with it thanks

also disclaimer 2.0 these were going to be short but i dont know who i think i am of course they’re not

so julian and emma are married for about 2/3 years when they decide to start having kids

emma is nervous to breach the subject because she wasn’t sure if julian would want kids after already having raised four kids from the time he was twelve years old 

so she does the sensible thing and decides to put off the subject until she cant anymore and, well

the time comes when she cant anymore 

she knows exactly when it happened and she hadn’t realized that the rune was half faded until the next morning and at the time she’d figured it wasn’t completely gone so they were probably fine but that quickly proves to be untrue

she’s so nervous to tell julian but of course she has to

julian is mortified that emma was so reluctant to tell him and assures her that there is absolutely nothing he wants more than a family with her 

she asks if he’s sure and he tells her how yes, being responsible for raising four kids so young was hard but he absolutely loved it and wouldn’t trade it for the world and he imagines that having kids with emma would be a million times that and he’s so happy oh my god

he kisses her stomach a thousand times and she cant stop smiling as he tells her i love you i love you i love you i love you while peppering kisses all over her stomach, face, arms

this is kind of going to become more parents!blackstairs/focus on the kids from this point forward but i would gladly write about pregnant!emma beyond just her getting pregnant if that’s something you guys would want to see but im just making this parents!blackstairs for now just since that’s what was in the ask idk sue me

anyway it turns out emma was pregnant with twins 

a girl named livia(with full permission from ty who was over the moon with the idea) and a boy named noah

both with the last name carstairs and the middle names cordelia and andrew respectively 

livia has wavy/curly brown hair and blackthorn eyes and noah has curly blond hair and blackthorn eyes(which highkey also become carstairs eyes now)

emma and julian have never loved anything more then they love these kids 

julian has already had to walk the strict parent path so he adopts the official role of fun parent with no question surprisingly leaving emma as the “strict” parent but they are honestly both pretty chill 

they are constantly so scared of messing up since they only have the very distant memories of their own parents to go on 

lots of phone calls are made to diana, clace, malec, etc. asking for advice even despite their past experience with the blackthorns

at this point the gang has kind of all had to go their separate ways in life and of course they all see each other and talk all the time but they put aside one weekend of the year for them to all go back to the institute with their families and chill

the twins love uncle ty who always has fun animals to show them and cool facts to teach them

he always reminds them that there is nothing more important than having a twin and they get the most serious looks on their faces as they agree

they love their older cousins(haline’s kids) and their younger cousin’s(kierarktina’s kids) but they hate being the middle cousins aszdfghj

emma and julian have two more kids but not for like five years because having twins is a lot

but anyway back to visiting the la institute anually

the kids always love visiting the institute but they especially love it when everyone visits at the same time

julian and emma take them around and show them their old rooms, where they used to play together, the shelves they used to get yelled at for climbing in the library

they also love their strange uncle kieran who is only here sometimes but talks and dresses funny

they all play at the beach and it’s a fun time

aunt dru spoils them rotten she literally buys them anything she thinks they would want and they know they can ask her for anything and she will comply

they love playing with uncle tavvy who absolutely adores them

uncle tavvy is also their babysitter and they always ask emma and julian when they’ll go out again so uncle tavvy can come back

diana also loves the children more than life itself and is the backup babysitter for when tavvy cant make it

cristina and the kids are bros

she always sneaks them extra treats and she has a code with the kids where they tap the side of their nose when they want to play for longer and cristina delivers by talking to emma and julian for ten more minutes at least

they love having sleepovers with their cousins at aunt cristina’s house

youve already gotten some top tier responses about this issue that i wholeheartedly agree with but! i’ll try

i feel like a lot of it comes down to a misunderstanding of his character to be honest. ive seen a lot of people say they used to like or not mind julian, but as the series progressed and he started getting somewhat morally questionable that declined. when you understand the full capacity of julian’s actions and the reasons behind them, it seems perfectly reasonable that he’d be willing to lie and go to extremes for his family. however, without grasping the full weight of his situation, it’s easy to say “he’s evil” or “he shouldnt be doing that” when, compared to someone who sees the difficult spot julian has been put it, it seems more logical and makes more sense. 

i think this may be an issue for people who hadnt read tmi in a while, or never had at all, who never saw innocent and loving jules that just didnt want his family to be separated. without seeing how he was forced to kill his own father, how desperate he was to keep his family together and the weight that running an institute and raising four kids carries, it may all seem inconsequential and as if he’s just doing “bad” things for the sake of it. 

something else that plays into this is perhaps his more undercut actions. there are a handful of other characters (kaz brekker, kell maresh, victor vale, to name a few) that are considered morally gray as well and yet are widely praised for it. these characters commit their “morally gray” (but honestly borderline evil in some cases) actions much more obviously. they do it through murder, through flashy acts of violence, etc. the way in which julian is morally gray is through plans and schemes that all happen in his head and are never physical. although what he’s doing is nowhere near as bad as what these other characters do, his mental capacity frightens people and maybe seems worse because of the thought that goes into it. not to say that kaz brekker doesnt think before killing someone, but it is clearly less of a process and not as obvious.  

another factor i would say plays into it is rosastairs, which i recently discussed as well. i think sometimes when people ship something noncanon, they look for it in canon and try to read between the lines to find it. as a result, i find that a lot of rosastairs shippers wound up not liking julian under the thought process that emma didnt actually love julian and that his manipulative nature had only made her think so, which is a clear contradiction of the text, something that is irrelevant to people looking to push aside julian so their ship can be complete. 

something else that seems to be true is that julian hate seems to spread like a disease. people who were neutral about or even like julian sometimes curve towards disliking him after seeing such strong negative opinions on him. people see words like “manipulative” or “problematic” and their instinct is to lean away rather than accept a morally gray character because they want what’s easy. it’s much easier to pass off julian’s actions as being blatantly evil or wrong, but it’s much harder and takes much more thought and effort to say “hey, maybe this was his reason” or, “he didnt have much choice because of x, y, and z” and truly analyze the depths of his character. it’s easier to peg someone as being just good or bad rather than acknowledge the area in between just because no one has really figured out what exactly that area entails yet. 

a good example of people misunderstanding julian in general would be him killing his father. that sentence alone sounds awful without context, but when you get the full scope of how his father had become endarkened and was trying to kill julian and all of his younger siblings, it seems much less horrible on julian’s end, and even makes the reader sympathize with him instead of his endarkened father. so many of julian’s so called “questionable” decisions can be broken down like this when you take the time to look and understand that not everything should be taken at face value. 

lastly, i think it comes down to the fact that he is a straight white male. to begin with, people are turned off to characters that fit this description, something that is understandable to a degree. most of the time im wary of characters with the aforementioned attributes however i do try and keep an open mind. in julian’s case and with many other characters, it did not seem that people did that. when it comes down to it, if julian was a girl, if julian and emma’s roles were reversed, if julian was actually the father of the blackthorn kids, no one would hate him the way they do now. they would “understand,” they would make excuses, they would praise a morally gray female character. in julian’s case, they just see an asshole male teenager who’s horny for his best friend and creepily paints pictures of her, never mind the way he was forced to grow up through his responsibilities, genuinely loved emma and yet kept it a secret, clearly struggles w mental health etc. 

at the end of the day if youve really taken time to read this whole thing it seems safe to say:

i think we ALL love julian blackthorn 

i would do the super basic and tropey they were from different kingdoms but they always played together as children at boring royal functions. emma is the heir to the throne in her kingdom so as she gets older they make julian stop playing with her because it’s “childish” and so she can get more in depth kingdom-running training and so julian just stops visiting her kingdom since none of his other siblings go anyway. one day he has to go negotiate on behalf of his kingdom when theyre older and after seeing emma again for the first time in years he starts visiting more using petty excuses and alas: they fall in love. emma obviously wants to marry julian, but her parents want her to marry cameron ashdown who is the heir to a neighboring kingdom to expand their power. what happens from there? not even i know

i know i was yelling when it said she kept seeing white kasjdhfghyurei