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 renovatingahouse.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

Jem to Emma

Dearest Emma,

Thank you for writing to keep me apprised of the situation at Blackthorn Hall, and this haunting in particular. It means a great deal to me that you’re willing to share what’s going on. I’m glad we’ve moved beyond the days when you felt you had to conceal your more wild schemes from the older generation, myself included. I hope you know that you need keep no secrets from me, no matter how outlandish those schemes are. Secrets have caused you and Julian so much heartbreak in the past, I want you to know that you can tell me anything and I will not judge you.

So you say you are helping a ghost? That could be a noble pursuit, and a compassionate one, but I must urge you to be careful. Blackthorn Hall has a history that at times involved unsavory characters and sinister magic, and if a spirit truly is haunting the manor, it may not be benevolent. The fact that Magnus sensed no ill will eases my mind a great deal, but I would still urge you to think carefully about what this ghost asks of you in seeking its freedom. It may not mean you any overt harm, but that does not mean that no harm will come to you.

As for the Devil Tavern—I do indeed know it. It has been a Downworlder haunt for many centuries, and for some time, at the early part of the last century, it was something of a refuge for people Tessa and I cared about very much. I do not want to tell you too much about them — it is painful to cast our thoughts back to that time, for it is a reminder of so much that has been lost, and of those we could not save. But I also think it may not help you — it seems to me best that you go into this search without preconceptions or expectations of what you may find.

Why do I feel this? I can only say that during my many years of being a Silent Brother, I felt a great kinship for shades: for the dead and those who haunted, and for the memories that tethered them to earth. I too was tethered by memories in those times. They were what kept me human and able to return to this life I have now, that I love so much.

So I will not tell you of names, or personalities — they may not be relevant to your search at all, but you must go forward, to find that out. And that is why I will tell you this: you saw only a little of the Devil Tavern. There are a set of rather blackened stairs behind the bar, and up those stairs there is a secret room, one that was closed off decades ago. It is possible that whatever your ghost is looking for may be in there. If you wish to gain entry to the hidden room — and a warmer reception at the Devil in general — show the bartender your family rings. Say the names: Blackthorn. Carstairs. They will matter.

I hope you will keep me apprised of what you discover, and the next steps in your adventure. I wish to know, though there is some part of me that fears what you might find in that room, and what it may say about the fates of those I loved in the past. I hope that I am wrong. I hope that this tale will have a happy ending. I know this much—this ghost is lucky to have determined souls such as yourself and Julian helping it to find rest.

Church has informed me that it is, in fact, time for dinner, and naturally I must attend to his every whim. I hope that you and Julian are having a good time settling in at Blackthorn Hall, in spite of the restive ghost and the many years of neglect the place has suffered. You are correct that it does not surprise me that a ghost is there. The past haunts that place, a story of things done and things left undone. It is possible that by bringing love and warmth into that place, you will close that chapter of neglect, and open a new one, of infinite possibility.

I believe in you, Emma. When I see you, I see Carstairs past; I see bravery, and the flame of Cortana. Remember that you are of the steel and temper of those who have gone before you. I hope that I will see you again soon, and that when I do I will have the strength to tell you of some of them, of a girl with fire-bright hair, and her brother, and those who came before and after them.

Love,

Jem

FIRST IMPRESSIONS – Halo episode 1 “Contact” (2022)

An exciting and near-solid premiere, Halothe series straddles a difficult line between fidelity to the source material and telling its own story. For the most part, aside from some nitpicks and one particular trip up, this first episode works as an introduction.

rorschach3d:

Angle One Angle Two

Uploading some of my backlog.

Bread’s Game Journal 01/17/22: Oh My God They Actually Shut Off Halo 3.

I’m not being even a little facetious when I say what I’m about to say: It just hit me that they turned off the Halo 3 servers, and it’s going to take awhile to get over it. I know this happened days ago, I know you can still play Halo 3 multiplayer looking better than ever on the Master Chief Collection, and I know local multiplayer will always work…..but they shut the servers off. I spent so much time on those servers and now they’re just gone.

At the peak of it’s popularity I must have spent hours on Halo 3 every single day after school. I was a high school freshman and pretty much all me or my friends would talk about was this game. We’d compare screenshots we took, brag about games we did great in, mess around in Forge. Even before the game released we all obsessed over Halo 3 in a way I don’t think I’ve even come close to doing again with any other game, and probably never will. Now all of that is just….lost.

Again, I know I could go back and play the game in it’s updated form, but all my original playtime, stats, armor sets, it’s all gone. All the pride I had finally managing to get the Overkill achievement (A borderline preposterous task that required you to kill every other player in a ranked Free For All Match at essentially the same time) has evaporated when they flipped off that switch. This is far from the first time a game I liked to play has had it’s servers flipped off for good, but this time, sitting in bed at nearly 11 at night….this time it feels really bad.

Online gaming was still pretty new back then, and frankly it’s absurd the servers were on as long as they were, but it still feels bizarre knowing it’s gone. I’ll always have the memories at least. Big Team Battle on Valhalla, good times.

djemsostylist:

still my crowning achievement of turning you from the mocking ‘ohhhh whats that about maaaaaster chieeeeeef’ into honest to god crying and headcanon fanficcing post Halo 4 stories

Cordelia and Cortana