• sparrow like birds
• thrupenny sixpence sparrows and doves
• what is the different between a dove and sparrow?
• sparrow eye recipe
• family of dove and sparrow
• sparrow with black bib

Come one, isn’t there ANYTHING in the incoming searches that isn’t sparrows?

• english pubs cross stitch patterns

FINALLY.

British pub names are well-known for being mundane and fantastic (and often archaic) in equal measure, and for tending to fit a few quite rigid patterns: “The Coloured Animal”, “The Monarch’s Symbol”, “The Item and Item”, “The Old Thing”, and so on.

So designing some cross-stitch designs based on English pubs should be fairly easy!

Dove deserves most of the credit for this one – many of the cross-stitch designs are based on her ASOIAF patterns. Also, she did the horse from scratch when she got frustrated with my attempts to turn a stag into one. THANK YOU.

Red Lion (and White Lion, Gold Lion, Blue Lion, Black Lion…)

Aww, what a lovely lion.

White Horse

Neigh!

White Hart

Deer me!

Unicorn

Not the last, hopefully.

Rose and Crown (and Rose, and Crown…)

I know the rose is a little small, but hopefully they look ok together. Why yes, that is a Tudor rose!

Green Dragon (and Red Dragon, etc… It could be George and the Dragon, if you feel like drawing a George)

Based on an unused design for the Targaryen dragon, before Dove realised Westeros dragons don’t have front legs.

Royal Oak

Named after the oak tree that King Charles II hid up, apparently.

So there you go! English pub cross stitch patterns, and not a sparrow in sight…

• cross stitch sparrow

DUN DUN DUNNNNNNNN

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One of the recurring reblogs is this piece by an anonymous fan who finds Clary annoying, and Clare’s response. Clare’s response is measured and sensible, I’m not going to say it isn’t. It’s good, and feminist, and clear. And yet. Something about it does rub me wrong. Annoyingly (oh noes) I found a good counter-response detailing exactly what someone finds problematic about Clary’s (and Jace’s, actually) character, but it seems to have vanished from the internet.

I guess I don’t like to have my opinions squashed by “It’s just your internalised misogyny”? (Wow that’s totally just what someone with internalised misogyny would feel!) Because then I feel like I have to justify myself (but I like Isabelle! and I don’t like Jace! and I write female characters!) and you know, none of those things count because so much about Clary is not what I love in a main character. Her willingness to believe the worst of Luke after a single sentence that he said which was obviously a lie to keep him safe in a dangerous situation, her likening Madame Dorothea’s mother to a mule right in front of her, the way she just ignores everyone around her when they’re trying to have a conversation/help her for ages at a time (hey, I used to be super dreamy too! Then I learned – learned – how to pay attention to people other than myself!). All of this outweighs for me the fact that oh yeah that one time she threw what she thought was a magical mobile phone at a demon and it happened to kill it. Sorry.

I’m not going to say “I hate some male characters too!” even though I cannot stand Wolverine because my god it is NOT HARD to work in a team for like TEN MINUTES and not be a raging jerk and ruin everything, because it doesn’t make a difference, and really, I just want to talk about this book. I like to critique the things I love as well as the things I don’t love. In the one case it helps me identify what I didn’t like, and in the other, sometimes there are parts of things I love that aren’t perfect, or I would have done differently. I think these conversations are worth having, always.

I don’t really know where I was going with this. Authors having Tumblrs and interacting with audiences adds another complicated layer to the act of reading, I guess. I don’t want to let my liking of someone as a person (or as a perception of a person through social media) cloud my reading of their books. Basically I’m making things hard for myself. But I just wanted to let you know that I’m not against freedom or love or justice or anything. I don’t even have any readers, so if I was, I’d be doing a terrible job.

But anyway, let’s learn about THE CIRCLE AND THE BROTHERHOOD!

We last left Jace after he identified his father’s killers. Understandably, Clary isn’t sure what to say to this, but Jace is like WE SHOULD GO so it’s all moot. They head to the train, and Simon witters on about whatever until Clary shushes him, and she’s perversely glad that the guys who took her mam are the guys who killed Jace’s dad, because now he’s invested in sorting them out. So far so good.

They get back to the Institute, Simon COMICALLY MISUNDERSTANDS the word “glamour” for a FUNNY ONE-LINER and Jace doesn’t think he’s “sensible” of the honour being done to him, by being the only “mundane” ever to go in.

Wow that is not how teenagers talk.

You can tell me “oh it’s because they’re Shadowhunters raised in isolation from the real world” all you want, because it’s bullshit. None of this is backed up in the way any of them have talked so far. Clare throws in an archaic word here and there to remind us how different the Shadowhunters are, but it’s inconsistent. It jars. Jace knows enough about pop culture to make snide remarks about how he’s super hot, and all of a sudden he’s using the word “sensible” in a way no one has used it for fifty years. It’s not done well, is what I’m saying.

So Clary recognises some runes now, and she thinks of Luke and is sad because he was TOTES EVIL ALL ALONG. and Jace asks Church (the cat, remember) where everyone is. While they’re following him, Simon’s like what even is this place and Clary explains (Shadowhunter research facility etc). Simon’s like wait I thought this was a church and Clary finds herself in a position where she has to explain “no it’s INSIDE a church”, which Simon finds confusing.

Better keep him away from Leeds and Boro and the old churches that are now nightclubs and gyms! His mind would explode.

So Simon doesn’t trust Jace and Clary asks him to try, and then… oh wow. Then they come to the kitchen, where Isabelle is cooking.

Now, there is literally nowhere I can think of that this trope comes from but anime, but Isabelle turns out to be a shitty cook. And not just that she burns things and ruins recipes, but that she thinks throwing together “tomatoes, chopped garlic and onions, strings of dark-looking (? explain) herbs, grated piles of cheese, some shelled peanuts, a handful of olives, and a whole fish” makes SOUP. Anyway, she’s annoyed that Jace brought another “mundie” (have I mentioned yet that the Shadowhunters all pretty much need to learn manners? It’s at the stage where I don’t know if this is just a time-honoured way of introducing things in the Normal Person Finds Out They’re Magical plot or if these characters really are this rude) and Jace is like CHURCH I WANTED TO SEE ALEC NOT ISABELLE.

So he explains about his encounter with the murderers and Simon unashamedly gawks at Isabelle (I take it back, every single one of these characters is rude, call them names all you want). Clary is kind of jealous of Isabelle and fantasises about throwing the soup abomination at her. Disclaimer: I love Clary and Isabelle’s friendship. It’s one of the things I think Clare really does well. So although we know deep down that it’s unfair to want to throw soup at people because of the genetics that they didn’t have any choice in, I think she gets away with it.

Jace goes off to get something from the fridge, which is full of Hodge’s tupperware containers, and Clary follows him (Simon is still staring at Isabelle. I think we’ve cracked the case of The Simon Who Inexplicably Couldn’t Get A Girlfriend) and snaps at him for eating?! Jace is like what I don’t get it, and then Clare wanders off on a tangent and this is never explained.

Like, I assume Clary is being all dude you just saw two guys who murdered your father in front of you when you were ten! How can you have an appetite at a time like this? Which, honestly, isn’t cool. Sorry Clary, you don’t get to be angry at a guy who you barely know because he’s not dealing with a traumatic experience the way you think he should be.

So Jace and Clary are off to see Hodge and Isabelle offers them all soup, which they refuse, except Simon. Jace actually calls him out on wanting to get into Isabelle’s pants, which seems to amuse Isabelle. Then Jace is a massive knobend and tells Simon to hurry up and get rejected so they can all get on with their lives and Clary finally stands up for him. So they head off, but Simon stays sheepishly (I WONDER WHAT HE WILL DO) and Jace is like you know I was only saying all that to save him the trouble, because Isabelle is a heartless succubus (come on, he does basically say this: “Isabelle will cut out his heart and walk all over it in high-heeled boots. That’s what she does to boys like that.” Boys like WHAT? Boring human boys? Boys who stare at her as though they’re entitled to her body? WHO KNOWS.

Anyway, then Clary APOLOGISES for snapping at him, because whatever, he MEANT well.

Then we have this really weird little bit. Jace explains that Isabelle doesn’t usually cook, Maryse, her mother, does. Clary asks why she never taught Isabelle how to cook, and Jace says it’s because women have only recently started to be allowed to be Shadowhunters. Maryse was apparently the first generation of women who were trained to fight as a matter of course, and she didn’t teach Isabelle anything domestic because she was worried Isabelle would be relegated to the kitchen. Sounds pretty reasonable, right?

Shenanigans!

1. The Clave is full of women. You don’t know that yet, but it is. The highest Clave post is held by a (quite old) woman.

2. No one, not even the super conservative bad guys, has a problem with this, ever.

3. It’s never mentioned again.

Bonus question: Why didn’t she teach her sons how to cook? Why didn’t HODGE teach any of them how to cook? He’s the herb man, and that goes hand in hand with cooking. Look, it’s a glamoured church full of men, and yet it’s still Isabelle who’s in the kitchen, and when it’s not her, it’s her mother. The boys make no effort to cook. Despite the fact that she is a shitty cook (apparently she got this recipe from a water sprite, which seems like a terrible choice for human-edible food) she is still the only one interested in cooking.

Clare does this quite a lot. She’s ambitious, and in a good way! These books are filled with interesting premises – the relationships between Downworlders and Shadowhunters, between Shadowhunters and humans, between Downworlders and humans, all kinds of stuff I’m not going to spoiler you for – but Clare can never really pull them off deeply enough to be convincing. They never have the kinds of consequences that similar issues have in the real world. When they get solved, no one ever makes a backwards step.

And in case you think I’m just shitting on her work for no reason, I will confess to you that the reason these things stick out to me and I bring them up again and again is that I am trying to write them myself. I want to do it justice, and that means both learning from when other authors do it right, and when other authors do it wrong.

Anyway, Jace says that Isabelle is an awesome demon-hunter, and Alec has never killed a demon ever, which is kind of a surprise. He posits that maybe it’s because Alec spends more of his time protecting than killing. Fair enough, and then they go up to the greenhouse where Hodge spends most of his time. They explain to Hodge what’s been going on, and he’s like damn IT IS AS I FEARED, the Circle is back!

Hodge shows them a book, and reads out a weird oath thing about protecting bloodlines. Clary’s like omg sounds a bit fascist and it totally is! Turns out that a while ago, the Shadowhunters had a bit of a kerfuffle with fascist extremists, led by Valentine, who wanted to start a war between humans and Downworlders so they could exterminate them all and basically bask in glory, adored by Muggles mundanes. Then Jace is like wait, why did you have a copy of that oath?

Turns out Hodge helped write it.

Oh shi-

Actually, lots of Shadowhunters were in the Circle!

Including Clary’s mam!

WHO WAS VALENTINE’S WIFE OMGGGGG

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OK, gentle reader, choose your WEAPON OF CHOICE.

We last left Clary after her stupid yet predictable decision to jump through the five-dimensional door at Madame Dorothea’s. She falls through space, she lands, someone lands on top of her. Obnoxious Shadowhunter, you came! How nice!

So they snipe at each other, Jace is like GOD YOU’RE SO INEXPERIENCED I HAD TO COME AND PROTECT YOU, and I am duly reminded of the great love story that is Twilight, and how we know these characters love each other because they’re awful to each other.

Was that a spoiler? Don’t lie, no it wasn’t. You already knew.

So it turns out they landed at Luke’s bookshop, and Clary’s kind of freaking out because why would her mam run away to here? But Jace tells her the door just takes you to wherever you’re thinking of. Which seems kind of unlikely, seeing as Clary’s mam wouldn’t have run away to here and Clary clearly isn’t thinking  “WOW WHAT A COINCIDENCE THAT WE ENDED UP HERE”

Anyway Clary’s like “I wasn’t even thinking of here!” and Jace is like “you probably were” (is she going for a “Clary was thinking of Luke’s house subconsciously” routine? Because that seems incredibly dangerous when it comes to five-dimensional doors, if there’s a chance it could pick up on involuntary mind-waves as well as voluntary ones.) Clary decides reluctantly to leave, since Luke told her to stay away from him, but Jace is like whatevs I’m going in. Clary follows him, and Jace lands down on something which turns out to be our favourite guy Simon! Joy!

They also snipe at each other as Simon’s identity as secret prowler is revealed, so who knows? Maybe they love each other too.

So Clary aks what’s going on, and Simon snaps that he hasn’t seen or heard from her in days and Luke’s been lying for her (wait, HOW DID HE KNOW WHAT WAS GOING ON? Don’t worry, none of the other characters will ever be interested enough in this to find out!) So he’s angry that she also has her hot new “dyed-blond wannabe goth” boyfriend, and Jace is like omg my hair is naturally blond. Seriously, I hope you enjoy contrived one-liners, because we have not yet even begun to scratch the surface. Who describes someone as “dyed-blond” in a potted insulting description? No one.

So Simon says he saw Luke packing a bag full of weapons which he implausibly remembers and even more implausibly thinks is relevant to his story as a “green duffel bag” and he asks Clary if she’s going to dismiss him, as [t]he last light of sunset struck gold sparks from Jace’s eyes, and Clary’s like hey Jace can I tell him the truth? Jace is like I’m bound to the Covenant not to tell, but you’re pretty much free.

Really? There are no little addenda about “BY THE WAY, YOU SHOULD NOT LET ANYONE NOT BOUND BY THE COVENANT TELL RANDOM PEOPLE ABOUT OUR EXISTENCE EITHER”? And you’re telling me that no one before has spilled the beans? This is the first ever time? Okay!

So she tells Simon everything, and Simon’s like so he’s a what? A Shadowhunter, says Clary. ACTUALLY A DEMON HUNTER, says Jace, because he is incapable of shutting the hell up. He makes an offhand comment about killing “naughty” werewolves and warlocks as well (hey remember Madame Dorothea and her with mother? feeling uncomfortable yet? i really would have liked this series more if there had been more examining of how well-deserved the reputation of Shadowhunters among Downworlders is).

Simon thinks the whole thing is great anyway, because he loves D&D, and there is some weird male bonding over hurr hurr some of the vampires are total babes hurr, and they all go into Luke’s house together. Jace uses his stele to unlock the door, and calls them mundanes, and Clary, in a rare moment of perception, thinks huh, I don’t think Simon’s ever going to like Jace really, despite the aforementioned ~*~vampire babes~*~. Well no shit, Clary, I wouldn’t like anyone who referred to me as a “mundane” either. Because I have self-respect.

So they poke around and Jace uses witchlight to light it up, and they see manacles in the wall (omg Simon don’t say they’re kinky!) and there’s blood on the insides which comes away in red-brown powder (weird) and it turns out someone tried to pull them out of the wall. So Clary’s like “wow it’s weird that the place hasn’t been torn apart like my apartment!” and she finds some of her clothes she kept here. For some reason, now Isabelle’s clothes are too big for her even though we keep being beaten over the head with how skinny she is and how “normal-siiiized” Clary is. They find the bag full of weapons and come across a chakram, because god forbid we don’t have an assortment of exotic weapons in this series. If Shadowhunters are so cool and mundanes are so crap, you’d think Shadowhunters wouldn’t be using mundane weapons at all, BUT WHATEVER.

They also find the photo frame that Clary threw at the demon, so Luke’s clearly been back to their apartment, and then they come to an epiphany!

Luke was the last person to use the five-dimensional door, and they came here because Clary wasn’t thinking of anything (again, super plausible but only because it’s Clary)! Madame Dorothea didn’t tell them because I dunno, I guess it’s more suspenseful this way even though she apparently knows Luke then I guess? So why was she always talking about him like she was a bit batty and he was the landlord at her beck and call? I… Just… oh whatever.

Also, in what seems to be a really stupid rule, the five-dimensional door which is totally built on like physics and string theory, stays tuned to the last place it went? That seems very unlikely to me, but then again, I am not a physicist, so ask Spuggy about that.

Jace is like hmm I guess she trusts him more than she trusts us, which means that he might not be-

He’s interrupted, but I am pretty sure he wasn’t going to say “a bad guy”. Classy, Jace. Classy.

So Simon’s like LUKE’S COMING AND THERE ARE TWO GUYS WITH HIM and Jace is like no, not guys, WARLOCKS! So they hide behind a screen in the office and Jace makes it one-way glass with his stele. So Luke and these two guys have macho conversation in which nothing is really said but it’s clear they don’t like each other, and it turns out they arent warlocks, just wearing warlock cloaks that they got from a couple of dead warlocks. Someone says “all the myths are true”, which is one of those things that sounds deep but I still don’t like. Anyone can invent a myth. Something like “all the myths are true” is meaningless unless it comes with rules. Only myths of a certain age, only myths with X believers. You can’t just be like “Slenderman is real now” because someone made him up on a forum and since then histrionic teenagers everywhere have made up sightings of him.

Blah blah Valentine sent them, they’re looking for something Jocelyn hid, this is plot so pay attention. Jocelyn is confirmed to be alive at least.

Clary’s like WOW ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT MY MAM because maybe Luke knows a load of Jocelyns, I don’t know.

She’s also confirmed to be a Shadowhunter, as is Luke, albeit in exile.

They ask about Jocelyn’s daughter, and Luke’s like eh, probs dead, they did send a demon after her, and conveniently demon poison makes people crumble away to ashes so you wouldn’t have found a body.

They threaten him but Luke bats the threat away easily (omg maybe there’s more to him than meets the eye!) and they leave. Clary, unable to conceive of lies, is obsessed with the idea that Luke doesn’t care about her mam.

OK, let me lay out straight one of my least favourite protagonist traits. Gullibility. I have no patience for characters who take everything they hear at face value, especially when it’s clearly a lie to protect them. Sure, lying to protect protagonists never works and always backfires, but when the protagonist suddenly turns around and believes that oh no, this guy who basically raised me has turned out to be a baddie because of a single thing he said, weighed against a lifetime of kindness, I just lose it. What a horrible way to think of people, that a single bad word can erase all their goodness. Being fooled by people’s kindness is different – I understand that we all want to believe people are inherently good, so when people appeal to that it’s easy to be drawn in, even draw ourselves in. IDK, I hate the idea of believing the worst of people.

Jace is like OK so they’re after the Mortal Cup and they think your mam has it, and Clary’s like yeah, seems legit. NOT. Jace says well anyway he seemed pretty friendly with those guys, and Simon for once has to be the voice of reason.

Really, Jace? You thought that was friendly? I can see now why you have no friends.

So Jace is like well they didn’t kill him, which means THEY’RE CLEARLY ON FRIENDLY TERMS, also they think he knows more than he’s telling.

Clary is  like well maybe they just didn’t want to kill another Shadowhunter, and Jace basically laughs in her face.

OH, CLARY, SO NAIVE.

OF COURSE THOSE MEN WILL KILL SHADOWHUNTERS.

THEY KILLED JACE’S FATHER!

*lightning crash*

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But interestingly, the squirrel seems to have noticed our bird camera, and though it doesn’t know it actually is, there’s nothing it likes more than staring into it. It even likes doing that more than it likes eating…

Aww.

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See?

I’m vaguely obsessed with this sign, and yet I’m actually stumped about how to translate that into English. The best I can do is “An example to the children, only when it’s green” (“den Kindern” being the dative of “die Kinder”, which why it’s “to the children”). German sentence structure is pretty loose which they take advantage of a lot when they want to emphasise part of the sentence.

But isn’t it great? Look at that guy, being ein Vorbild den Kindern (if it’s currently bei Grün). But of course he’s bei Grün, it’s right next to him in giant letters!

But more than that, it sums up something deep about German road etiquette. By and large, Germans will not cross the road when the light is red, regardless of whether anything’s coming. The crossings around Hauptbahnhof are something of an exception, but in general people will wait for da green man to come on the sine. If you believe this story (and to be fair, I think it’s spurious as all get-out), they’ll even block people who jaywalk it. Because they’re not being a good Vorbild.

So, that is my cross-stitch. If you’re good, perhaps I’ll post some of the others…

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But for a while I’ve wanted to have a go at crafting my own. So, without further ado, here’s my first full attempt at a cryptic, hosted by the lovely Across Crosswords:

SPOILERS from here on down.

For the most part, it’s (hopefully) fair if not quite Ximenean. 16a however is a shameless Zelda reference (I’m not sorry), and 9a and 18a are both rather lumpen (I’m trying to think of ways to prune them down and tidy them up). 3d is bad, but I worked myself into a corner there. 15d is a triple definition, which some solvers consider unfair, so be warned?

7a I’m quite fond of. 4d was the first clue I came up with. Any comments?

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Had a very good weekend at the German iaido nationals over the weekend, and feel somewhat better about my hobby of being mean about people’s work on the internet.

So, without further ado, let’s go through THE FIVE-DIMENSIONAL DOOR!

Our intrepid heroine and obnoxious hero have just entered Madame Dorothea’s apartment, after said hero was a huge douchebag to her.

Because Madame Dorothea makes her living as a fortune-telling witch, I can forgive her for having decorated her apartment with bead curtains, incense, tarot posters, crystal balls, palmistry posters, and everything else you’d expect. Clary gawks a bit, as you’d expect (though, as you’d expect from Clary, her gawking takes the form of literally just a description of everything in the room, no thoughts or feelings or human emotions) and Madame Dorothea asks if she’s interested in chiromancy (because why use “palmistry”, a word people will have heard in their lives, amirite) or just nosy. Clary replies that she’s neither, and to be honest I believe her. I really think Clary is capable of looking at things she’s never seen before and not feeling any curiosity or interest at all.

That’s not a compliment, Cassandra Clare.

So we learn that Madame Dorothea kind of knows she’s a fake, though her mother was a super cool witch and taught her some tricks. She offers Jace tea, and he’s like “what” and she’s all “Tea. I find it both settles the stomach and concentrates the mind. Wonderful drink, tea.” Like. Is she meant to be from the UK? Or is this just weird Tumblr-style Anglophilia to draw in the fans? Or does this pass for characterisation in Clare’s world? That’s two characters who have a weird love of tea.

Now, don’t get me wrong, I also love tea. I just don’t treat it as the mystical nectar of the gods.

So Clary says yes to tea and Jace is like fine as long as it’s not Earl Grey because I hate bergamot man you feel me? which makes Dorothea cackle and leave.

Clary is for some reason hugely impressed by this fact. OMG, a boy who knows what bergamot is! How refined!

And how does he know what bergamot is? I’m sure you’re dying to know. Well, it isn’t from anything as dull as just knowing what’s in Earl Grey. It’s because he has to take lessons in medicinal plants at the Institute. Clary shoots off a halfhearted one-liner and Jace calls her “Fray” and then she remembers Xander Simon, sorry, it’s been a while since we last heard from him. She gets all weird about it, and Jace changes the subject to how stupid mundanes are. Clary snaps that “just because it’s not your type of magic…” and Jace is like NO WE DON’T USE MAGIC OMG

So what about the seraph blades?

WE USE MAGICAL TOOLS, IT’S TOTALLY DIFFERENT!

Oh, OK. Runes are tools now. And making seraph blades, or whatever he was doing to them, doesn’t count as using magic either.

Anyway blah blah rigorous training, stay away from my weapons. Clary makes a half-arsed joke about selling them on eBay, which she describes as “a mythical place of great magical power” which I guess is meant to be a joke? But it backfires, because Jace, who apparently can’t tell when he’s being trolled, is all SEEMS LEGIT, MOST MYTHS HAVE A GRAIN OF TRUTH TO THEM.

Luckily Madame Dorothea comes back to spare us from any more of this witty sparring, and they make fun of her parlour (but where else would she entertain, Jace? Did you ever think of that??)

Whatever, she confounds him with a riddle! “If you were half as funny as you thought you were, my boy, you’d be twice as funny as you are.”

No, really, he doesn’t understand what this means.

They go through more cliches to the tea and sandwiches laid out. The sandwiches are cucumber, which also offends Jace, though it’s not explained whether this too is due to his super special demonhunting lessons. Clary likes them anyway, and Madame Dorothea is like I ALWAYS THINK CUCUMBER SANDWICHES ARE THE BEST FOR TEA, DON’T YOU?

Yes, this is Tumblr anglophilia all over.

Joke’s on you, Cassandra Clare! Any true Englishman would tell you that cucumber sandwiches are for funerals! Or maybe picnics!

So Jace, the model of politeness, is like YOU’RE A LIAR and Madame Dorothea is like what, my mother was a witch.

NO THAT’S IMPOSSIBLE

Why? asks Clary to move the plot along.

Well, Clary, Jace is glad you asked! Witches and warlocks are all human/demon crossbreeds, and are sterile. Not infertile. Sterile.

Oh, says Clary, LIKE MULES. BECAUSE THAT’S APPROPRIATE.

You guys, Madame Dorothea is RIGHT THERE. WHY ARE YOU ALL SO UNGODLY RUDE?

So we get the potted explanation of werewolves and vampires (afflicted with demonic diseases) and faeries (of course it’s spelt with an e), who are either fallen angels (Satan is a faery – you heard it here first!) or the offspring of angels and demons, which, how would that happen if they’re nowhere near each other.

Dorothea’s all well, I don’t care about magic anyway, I just need to GUARD SOMETHING.

Ooh, is this plot? Are we actually getting to some plot?

Madame Dorothea dashes our hopes by changing the subject. Clary has eaten all the cucumber sandwiches, which pleases her. “It’s good to see a young woman eat her fill. In my day, girls were robust, strapping creatures, not twigs like they are nowadays.”

Subtle, Clare. Subtle.

Then Clary thinks about how skinny Isabelle is and feels massive.

Madame Dorothea starts reading her tea leaves. While she’s doing that, let’s go back to this “real women have curves” thing. Like, I am totally on board with having more larger female role models, both real and fictional. I just think that there’s a way of doing it without alienating thin women. I know this is controversial and all. But honestly, I think we’ve all been told we’re anorexic, we’ve all been told to eat a sandwich, we’ve all been told we fall outside the range of “real women” sizes, and we’re unattractive because we don’t have any meat on our bones, and it’s just irritating.

And in the context of the story, Clare has Madame Dorothea be supportive of Clary’s size, and then has Clary feel self-conscious. So the reader’s already on her side (aw Clary don’t be embarrassed, you’re a STRONG BEAUTIFUL WOMAN) and then Clare brings it all back to Isabelle, the skinny, pretty girl who is the personification of the twig-women Dorothea’s on about. So the reader thinks “omg Clary don’t think about her, she’s not even that pretty anyway omg” and all in all it’s just underhanded and unnecessary.

Let’s think about Isabelle for a moment. She lives in a magical church-school, with a cat, an unimaginatively-named raven, a sarcastic British librarian and her brother and adopted brother, who are formal demonhunting BFFs. This is the only company she has, and she even misses out on the magical BFF bond of the parabatai.

But it’s OK, we can hate her because she’s skinny and pretty.

Back to the story, Madame Dorothea can’t read Clary’s tea leaves, so she reads Jace’s instead. We can assume that this will be totes meaningful to the story because these things always are. So, what does the story have in store for Jace?

1. Violent future

2. Blood will be shed by both Jace and people who aren’t Jace

3. He’ll fall in love with the wrong person

4. He has an enemy

None of this is really interesting apart from the love one if Jace isn’t too obnoxious for you.

They both move on to Clary’s cup, which is apparently jumbled and meaningless, much like a random assortment of tea leaves in the bottom of a cup OH YEAH I WENT THERE, and Madame Dorothea is like “IS THERE A BLOCK ON YOUR MIND?”

Let’s take a moment to appreciate the stupidity of asking someone whether their mind has been wiped by magic.

Clary’s like duh no but Jace isn’t so sure. Skip the terrible “late developer” joke and Dorothea breaks out the tarot cards and tells her to pick one that feels special. None of them feel special in any way, so Clary’s like whatever I choose you, pikachu Ace of Cups. By a twist it turns out that Clary’s mam painted the whole pack as a gift, and Jace is like HOW DID YOU KNOW CLARY’S MOTHER

BECAUSE IT’S LIKE

NOT LIKE YOU LIVED IN THE SAME BUILDING OR ANYTHING

FOR YEARS

YEAH

Turns out they knew each other’s magicalness, and Jocelyn asked Dorothea to keep an ear out for Valentine’s name, and she was also a Shadowhunter (“one of the Clave”, so please explain what that is at some point Clare). Clary’s like NOOOOOOO and Jace finishes Madame Dorothea’s sentences, talking about how the house is a Sanctuary. He calls Downworlders “criminals” and says that the Shadowhunter motto is “the law is hard but it is the law”. Madame Dorothea is like yeah it’s TOO HARD and Jace is like I’LL TELL THE CLAVE ALSO EXPLAIN THIS DOOR (he rips off a wall hanging to display the door, btw).

This is of course the five-dimensional door of the chapter title. Let’s listen to Madame Dorothea’s explanation, shall we?

“It’s a five-dimensional door [...] Dimensions aren’t all atraight lines, you know [...] There are dips and folds and nooks and crannies all tucked away. It’s a bit hard to explain when you’ve never studied dimensional theory, but, in essence, that door can take you anywhere in this dimension that you want to go. It’s-”

And then Jace interrupts her YET AGAIN to say IT’S AN ESCAPE HATCH THAT’S WHY YOUR MAM LIVES HERE.

You know, maybe this book isn’t as badly written as I thought it was. If this isn’t just Clare being terrible at writing exposition/explanations and dialogue, and she just wants to really show how much of a knob Jace is about Downworlders, she’s doing a good job. He becomes the most horrible person ever around them. He’s just so unflinchingly rude. He gets worse btw.

But that’s a story for another day.

Right now, Clary has just realised that her mam didn’t go through the door because she didn’t want to leave Clary. So Clary forgets all about what she just heard and is like I MUST SEE WHERE MY MAM WAS GOING TO GO and runs right through the damn door.

Take a shot if you didn’t see THAT coming.

-fin for now-

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So, due to that and work reasons, I couldn’t make iai tonight. And what’s the next best thing?

Making fun of other people’s hard work, that’s what!

Let’s get… FORSAKEN!

In the last chapter of City of Bones, we learned that the Covenant is some kind of treaty between Shadowhunters and Downworlders, and the Clave is… I’m sure the Clave is something. It’s something Hodge is writing to, and it’s something with blood, because Jace was talking about Clary having Clave blood, so… it’s… something. I guess.

Anyway.

Clary goes to the weapons room, a room filled with obsolete weapons (not like guns would be useful or anything) to see Alec the inexplicable knobend and Jace the obnoxious. She tells them Hodge is writing to the Silent Brothers and Alec is like EW without volunteering any more information.

See what I mean? This is the only way Clare seems able to worldbuild. I guess she’s trying to show not tell, but this really isn’t how you do it. And I’m not sure if I’m relieved or infuriated that Clary never bothers to ask about all this namedropping idiocy.

So anyway Jace is making seraph blades, and Clary’s like HOW’D YOU DO THAT? MAGIC? and Alec freaks out. Like he just looks mortified. And Jace is like GOD YOU MUNDIES (hate that word) DON’T KNOW ANYTHING.

Well tell us, oh wise one!

Nope.

The closest we get, after he tells Clary that she only thinks she knows what magic is, after not bothering to find out what she thinks magic is, is “Magic is a dark and elemental force, not a lot of sparkly wands and crystal balls and talking goldfish.”

Oh goodness, a dark and elemental force? That’s a new one. I’ve never heard of anyone portraying magic that way before! But worry not, gentle reader! Your mind won’t be too blown, because Clare chooses not to put her money where her mouth is and show/tell us what magic actually is in her world.

He makes some confused analogy about calling an electric eel a rubber duck, by which I think he means that calling a dark and elemental force “magic” is somehow making it less dark and elemental, because that’s totally how words work, I don’t even.

So Clary’s like whatever, you’re a jerk, let’s go raid my house and find out if my mam was a Shadowhunter or whatevs, and Jace goes. As she leaves Alec gives her a death-glare, but everyone in the Institute is so crazy that I don’t even blame Clary for having no emotions about it. She gets all coy and “Tell me how you knew I was special~~” and he’s like “eh, a guess, I was 90% sure.”

Then, I kid you not, she slaps him, and says “That’s for the other ten percent.”

WTF. As obnoxious and vain as he is, even Jace doesn’t deserve a slap for not being psychic. See, Clary, this is why no one likes you. I mean, can you imagine if it was the other way around? Jace slapping Clary for not being 100% confident on a decision? This is Cassandra Clare’s idea of a feminist character, guys. Explains a lot.

They take a train, some girls stare at Jace, Clary’s like GOSH I GUESS HE IS QUITE GOOD-LOOKING!? in her Vulcan way, and thinks about how she doesn’t like girls with fake tans and jelly mules (SO FEMINIST AND EDGY OMG WHAT A FREE SPIRIT) and then turns “instant traitor against her gender” by telling Jace the girls totes fancy him. Wow, I bet they just can’t live with themselves knowing that he knows.

He probably noticed anyway. Given how incredibly ~astute~ Clary is, they were probably dancing up and down right in front of him, waving placards saying “we <3 u jace”.

Anyway, Jace is thrilled to have some attention AT LAST, and winks at them, which pisses Clary off even more. Then he starts humming and Clare tries to write cleverly and Clary eventually apologises. This for some reason leads to an explanation of “parabatai” (reminder: warrior BFFs who are “closer than brothers”, totally not an invitation to slash fans) and he explains his family situation (he lives with the Lightwoods as a kind of adopted family?) and then thank god they get to Clary’s house.

Jace breaks out his MacGuffin Sensor and learns that there are no demons around, so they head on in. They find wet blood on the banister (don’t expect this to ever come up again) and you should be thanking me right now from sparing you the cheap suspense tricks before they actually get into the house. The house is, as we knew, empty, and the open, empty cupboards “[remind] her of a nursery rhyme“. Let me guess, is it Old Mother Hubbard? Do I win?

Seriously, though, it’s just such a weird thing to say. Why should we care? Why is it interesting?

So she goes to see her room, and the door opens super slowly and then BOOM, a giant man! OMG! Peculiarly, he smells of “poisonous sweat” which, wow.

Anyway, he’s a big evil zombie, and Jace calls the seraph blade forth. They fight, Jace gets knocked around a bit, unfortunately I don’t like him enough as a character to care a whole lot, and it really does just feel like Clare, having created robotic feelings girl and pointlessly hostile boy, is trying to force Clary to feel sympathy for him and start liking him more. I mean, he;s a Shadowhunter. He’s fine.

The zombie giant is not so lucky. Jace kills it with the second seraph blade, because I don’t know maybe it’s a fashion faux pas to use the same sword twice in Shadowhunter land. He’s like MAN MY ARM’S BROKEN, but don’t worry, Clare doesn’t want to burden her characters with such mundane things as injuries, so he draws on himself with a “stele”, the same weird thing he drew on Clary with to hide her from the demon!police, and he’s totes fine again.

At this point, Clary remembers her mam’s back, covered with scars exactly like the ones Jace is making on himself. “Her mother’s back didn’t really look like that, she knew“.

WHAT

BUT XANDER SIMON JUST TOLD YOU ABOUT IT AT THE MEXICAN PLACE, OH MY GOD. WHY THE HELL WOULDN’T YOU REMEMBER SOMETHING LIKE THAT. IT’S CREEPY, IT STICKS IN YOUR MIND. IT’S ONE OF THE ONLY THINGS IN THIS BOOK WHERE I WAS LIKE “WHOA, NICE ONE, CLARE.”

AND THEN CLARY PROMPTLY FORGETS ALL ABOUT IT.

So yeah, even though she remembers it now, after Simon mentioned it for the first time, after Jace and Hodge told her she’s probably got a Shadowhunter parent, after Jace makes the exact same marks on himself as she remembers seeing on her mam, she’s STILL like “lol how silly!” and pays it no more mind.

How is this not an annoying character? She is devoid of curiosity, of realistic emotions, of the ability to put two and two together and even IMAGINE that it’s POSSIBLE there’s more to her mam than meets the eye.

So she literally forgets all about it AGAIN and Jace explains away his magical, convenient healing abilities (and by the way, how the hell is Shadowhunter ~magyck~ really that different from what a normal human would imagine it to be? He writes runes on himself and then he is magically healed. How is this hard for anyone to wrap their head around in the context of magic?) and explains that the zombie giant was a Forsaken, which is a normal human who’s had too many runes. Then Madame Dorothea, the hedge witch next door neighbour, appears, and is like “so I see you guys have been killing Forsaken and not cleaning up after yourselves! TYPICAL” and Jace is like “BUT YOU’RE A MUNDAAAAAAYYYYYYNE”

FUCK Jace, why do you always have to be so rude!?

So he’s like WHY DIDN’T YOU TELL THE CLAAAAAVE and she’s like oh hell no, they’ve done nothing for me and I don’t owe them shit.

Incidentally, the Downworlder/Shadowhunter relations and tenseness is one of the parts I really do like about this book. Mostly because teh Shadowhunters look like huge douchebags.

So Madame Dorothea is like btw Clary your mam’s gone, so yeah, and Jace is like TELL US EVERYTHING and she’s like dude can you not hear and he threatens her with the Silent Brothers (Cassandra Clare, the reader will not care about this threat because you haven’t explained what the Silent Brothers ARE) and she’s like OK fine Jace Wayland.

And Clary doesn’t care about anything because now she knows Jace’s last name, so she knows what to doodle on all her sketchbooks.

<3 MRS CLARY WAYLAND <3

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See? It’s scientific fact. And 23 of those are variants on “is sparrow and dove same thing?” So, what does the mailbag have for us this time? (Please don’t be sparrows, please don’t be sparrows)

topless jamaica

red light district in frankfurt on map

rob liefeld wallpapers

… On second thoughts, let’s go with the sparrows.

sparrow in maths sets

Aww, who wants to learn some maths?

So, the maths you learn in school – arithmetic and algebra, mostly – represents only a very small part of modern mathematics. Numbers aren’t the only things used in maths; there are fields of maths where the objects being studied are directions, networks, knots, spaces, games, relationships, and mathematics itself, among other things.

One of the most important fields – the foundation of modern pure mathematics, in fact – is set theory, the study of objects which can contain other objects. For example, let’s create a new set, which we’ll call B. What is B? Why, it’s the set of all birds, of course!

(Did you know WordPress supports LaTeX typesetting? I DIDN’T! If the formulas don’t appear (so in other words, it looks like “\text{house sparrow}”), press F5)

So, “house sparrow” is a member of B. In shorthand (mathematicians are lazy people), we would write:

So, that’s a sparrow in a maths set! Ah, but the searcher wanted more than that. They wanted sparrow in maths sets, plural. Naive set theory places no restrictions on the sets we can create; any “well-defined” collection of objects we can name is a set!* So, let’s create another set! S, let’s say, is the set of birds called “sparrow”:

All sparrows are birds. This… should be common knowledge, I hope. In mathematical terms, the “set of all sparrows” is contained within “set of birds”, or for short:

But, as we’ve already explained, not all birds called “sparrow” are true sparrows! So let’s be bird hipsters, and put the true sparrows into their own set, T:

All true sparrows are called “sparrow”, but not all “sparrows” are true sparrows. So, again, we can write

Now we can get a bit clever. All true sparrows are sparrows, but as we’ve already shown, all sparrows are themselves birds:

So, all true sparrows are also birds!

This useful property of set relationships is called transitivity, which simply means that you can collapse the relations down so that you skip the middle parts. Most of the familiar mathematical relations obey this – if a = b = c , then we immediately know that a = c – but there are plenty of every day relationships that are not transitive. Rock beats scissors, and scissors beats paper, but rock does not beat paper.

Anyway, now that we can relate sets to each other, let’s have a go at a bit of set maths! Don’t worry, it’s not as scary as it sounds.

We’ve got T, the set of all real sparrows. But what about the fake sparrows?! They’re important too! The definition of a fake sparrow is obvious – it’s any bird called “sparrow” that’s not a true sparrow. Intuitively, it’s easy to see how you’d get a list of fake sparrows – you’d take a list of birds called “sparrow”, and then take out all the true sparrows. With set theory, we can do just that, by subtracting T from S:

Of these birds, the hedge sparrow is really an accentor, and the rock sparrow and yellow-throated sparrow are both petronias. The set of petronias, P, is:

Some of these petronias are also sparrows.** In other words, these birds are found in P, but they’re also found in S. The objects shared by two sets are its “intersection“.

The intersection is really easy to visualise – the picture on the right (conveniently in the public domain – thanks Wikipedia!) shows the intersection of two circles, as you’ll remember from all those Venn diagrams in school (they were teaching you set theory, and you didn’t even know it!

The intersection of S and P is written as:

We can also intersect P and T. We already know that no petronia is a true sparrow, so there are no birds common to both sets. This means that if we intersect them, we should get nothing. And so we do:

The Ø symbol is the empty set, a set containing nothing at all. It’s the set theory equivalent of zero – any set subtracted from itself gives you the empty set.

Finally, let’s put all the petronias and the sparrows together into one big friendly group of cute little birds (C, for “cute little bird”). To that, we use the “union” operation.

Union, illustrated on the right, gives you all objects that are in at least one set. Effectively, it’s like adding the two sets together, although it does make sure that you’ll never end up with two copies of the same object where the two sets overlap.

So, when we take the union of P and S, we get:

Aww, all those cute birds!

And, because the house sparrow is a cute little bird,

So, there you go. Sparrow in maths sets. I hope you’ve all learned something!

*This however leads to problems like Bertrand Russell’s famous paradox – suppose we create a set which contains all sets that do not contain themselves. Does this set contain itself as well? If it does, then it does not, and if it does not then it does. To get around this, mathematicians have created the much more rigorous Zermelo-Fraenkel set theory, which is far more complicated, but which contains lots of clever tricks to stop people creating self-referential sets. Mostly, this consists of a rule saying “You can’t make self-referential sets”.

** Yes, the “yellow-throated petronia” and “yellow-throated sparrow” are different birds, even though they’re both petronias and neither of them are true sparrows. TAXONOMY, EH?

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So, in other news I’ve been to a few iaido seminars recently, which have cut back on stitching/blogging time. And on the 16th/17th March, at Bad Homburg Hochtaunushalle, I’ll be competing in the German nationals, so, you know, there’s that! If you’re in the area – come along! It’s free!

Slightly related to this, I’ve been having shoulder trouble recently. Long story short, I have hypermobile joints, and my shoulders have been grinding (more than usual) and giving me some pain. I eventually went to see someone, terrified that my mother was right and I finally had arthritis to show me right for freaking out shoe shop assistants and classmates etc with my “party tricks”, but the orthopaedic guy reckons it’s muscular, not joint-related, which was a huge relief. Still waiting to find out what to do about it, but at least it’s looking manageable/fixable. Take that, hypermobility. Still got some years in my joints yet.

So that’s the life update, I’m sure it was fascinating. Let’s get on with the ~scholarly analysis~ of City of Bones.

Chapter five. Hold on to your hats, kids.

Clave and Covenant. Ominous. And alliterative!

We last left Clary being poisoned by a demon when she went against all common sense and ran home after her mother wasted what sounded like her last moments explicitly telling her not to, and being carried away by the super obnoxious dreamy Demon Hunter Jace.

We open this chapter with her waking up. She hears a snippet of conversation above her, of Isabelle talking about how easily the boring mundanes die, and being patronised by someone else, probably Alec, about how “they don’t have runes to keep them strong like we do“.

Her thoughts run as thickly as blood or honey, because those things have similar viscosity, and she has some ridiculous prophetic dreams. Isabelle and Alec talk over her some more about how she’s super special for killing a Ravener (yeah, with Jace’s phone thing, guys, it’s not like she actually did anything herself. She threw a magical phone at it. It practically killed itself.) and Isabelle gets in a cheap shot about how she’s not pretty, because girls are always jealous of each other. It is the law.

So she wakes up for realsies and only Isabelle is there, so they talk. Isabelle’s like “You killed that thing, but you’re so dull!” and Clary’s like “I KNOW RIGHT.” They kind of bitchily dance around each other some more, throw some more names around, and Clary calls Jace rude (which he is) but seemingly for burning her bloody, poison-soaked clothes (what?) Isabelle confirms that he’s a dick to everyone, which is “what makes him so damn sexy“, holy shit, does anyone actually talk like that? Who the hell thought it was a good idea to conflate douchebag with sexy?

Oh, Cassandra Clare. Of course.

OK, let’s take a short break. Check this out. Notice how she all but comes out and says her female characters are totes feminist, yo, and anyone who doesn’t like them is either a misogynist or dealing with internalised misogyny.

Then back to the book, where she actually just made one female character tell the other female character that guys being rude and obnoxious makes them sexy.

It really doesn’t. As someone who’s known rude people in her time, it is not sexy. Why am I even having to say this. Someone being patronising and deliberately mysterious and disrespectful is not sexy.

Anyway, Jace has also killed the most demons of anyone his age, which also makes him sexy? (Yay murder…? I know they’re demons, but later on you’ll see that things aren’t as black and white as us = good, them = bad.) Also he’s an orphan, and not Isabelle’s brother.

So Clary toddles off to have a wash and change into the clothes that Isabelle has kindly lent her, only to whine through the narration that they look ridiculous, presumably to make us feel bad for her being an ugly duckling some more, and then goes walkabout through the Institute, which is a giant church or something. She can hear a piano being played with desultory but undeniable skill, which, how can skill be desultory? and I almost had to drop the book to keep my eyes from rolling out of their sockets.

OMG JACE PLAYS THE PIANO SO HOT AND ORIGINAL.

I know, I know, I can’t really bitch because omg he plays piano, but seriously, guys. You guys. Seriously. Obnoxious, socially-stunted male leads should be BANNED from playing musical instruments. I just do not associate it with good things anymore. Blame YA lit.

She interrupts him and he’s like “OK let’s go see Hodge” after she makes a snide remark at him for burning her clothes. Dude, they were full of demon poison. For fuck’s sake. Were you really going to wear them again? No. So drop it already.

As they walk through this ridiculously opulent place, Jace explains more about what it is, an embassy for Shadowhunters, and Isabelle, Alec and unseen younger brother Max are children of some “diplomats”. No more is explained about what they actually do, as far as I remember, or why they need diplomats, who they visit, what they talk about, etc. Enjoy the not knowing. I mean, they’re hammering out some “delicate peace negotiations” in Shadowhunter country right now, but on behalf of whom? THEY ARE SHADOWHUNTERS. WHO ARE THEY REPRESENTING?

Whatever, so Shadowhunter land is called Idris, and it’s full of Harry Potter-esque spells so no one can find it and it’s on no maps. Jace is so smug even Clary notices, and he’s all like “For our purposes you can consider it a small country between Germany and France.”

Now I’m not sure if he means it’s actually there, or if he’s giving a hypothetical answer. As far as I’m concerned, neither the author nor any of the characters are smart enough for that.

Clary, ever the brightest crayon in the box, says, “But there isn’t anything between Germany and France. Except Switzerland.”

NO YOU DON’T SAY. IT’S NOT LIKE THAT WAS HIS POINT.

Also, really? Nothing but Switzerland? That’s your final answer? Don’t want to phone a friend? Belgium and Luxembourg, sorry, you no longer exist.

Unless… Idris is Luxembourg.

SHOCK TWIST!

Jace was brought up in Idris, Clary muses that it’s like Mecca or Jerusalem (dude) and then they’re at the library, where there’s a cat called Church and also Hodge, who you can consider for our purposes to be a small country between Germany and France Giles, the sarcastic British librarian. Clary looks around the library, which is as luxurious as everything else ever, and Hodge is like “HEY JACE YOU NEVER TOLD ME SHE WAS A BOOK LOVER”.

1) How is Jace meant to know this, as it would require him to actually know Clary at all, and also require him to stop thinking about himself for two minutes.

2) I’m sorry, you can’t tell someone is a book-lover by how they walk into a library. Maybe she’s an architecture fan and was checking out the room. Maybe she was looking at the wood carvings. OMG this book annoys me.

Blah, Hodge has a raven called Hugo (I’m going to cut the bullshit and tell you that YES, he is named after Huginn, because that’s totally not overdone or obvious at all, GOD JUST STOP TRYING TO BE CLEVER). Hodge (Starkweather) is all self-deprecating and admiring of how Clary killed a Ravener, and Jace is like “She threw my Sensor down its throat and it must have choked on the runes I guess, because that sounds like a plausible thing that would happen” so that’s one mystery solved, I guess.

She sees Alec, who seems to hate her for no reason, even weirder when you consider that he was the good cop when he was talking to Isabelle over her poisoned body, and is predictably pretty. Blah he insults her being from New Jersey (“OMG I’M FROM BROOKLYN YOU SPOILED BRAT”) and Jace is like “lol poor people” and Alec is like “why are you letting her be mean to me, we’re parabatai!” which means they’re hunting BFFs which means Cassandra Clare is fandom-baiting!

Cassandra Clare, much like Thanfiction of DAYD fame, is very familiar with fandom. It doesn’t surprise me that she baits hers now that she has her own. But it’s so lazy. Just as Thanfiction’s “Oh I wrote this ambiguously gay duo COMPLETELY UNINTENTIONALLY! What is this human emotion you call slashfic?” rang utterly hollow, I refuse to believe that Clare didn’t know exactly what she was doing when she wrote this parabatai stuff. Laying out a little trail of breadcrumbs for the slashers. Now, instead of character dynamics, they have this made-up word to spark the fanfiction! Much easier!

Jace and Alec argue over whether Clary killed the thing or not (Jace on her side, of course) and then Alec’s like “But Raveners are search-and-destroy machines! [Stellar writing, there, Clare. Keep it up] What were they doing in a mundie household?” and insinuates that they were after Clary’s mam for ILLEGAL DEMON SUMMONING and Clary’s like “doubt it, it ws probably Madame Dorothea downstairs”, but that turns out to be a dead end, because Jace has already checked her out and she’s a fake. Apparently.

So they talk about informing the Clave (don’t know who they are? That’s because they haven’t been explained. Cassandra Clare seems to know only one way to worldbuild, and it’s by namedropping to confuse the protagonist and then explaining it clumsily later. Get used to it) and Jace is all NO and Hodge is like but she’s the first mundane to cross our threshold in five hundred years and Jace is like NO, SHE IS NOT A MUNDANE.

Dun dun dun.

Then Jace confesses that he drew a rune on her and it worked, whereas if she was a mundane she would have just died or turned into a zombie, and Hodge is like WHAT ARE YOU CRAZY. Clary’s like well I guess Luke would know OMG MUST CALL LUKE!

So she does, and he’s a massive dick. He tells her not to go to his place because it’s too dangerous, which, OK, and then not to bother him with her problems again because he’s got his own.

Now actually at first I was like “Wow, harsh.” But then I thought, maybe this is the only way Clary will get it through her thick skull not to go running to places she’s told not to go. You have to admit, she has no sense of self-preservation.

So she’s all I WILL NOT CRY and Alec and Jace bog off to the weapons room, because OF COURSE they have a weapons room, and Hodge is like “Most people don’t cry when they’re upset or frightened, but rather when they’re frustrated.”

Are you serious? Do you know ANYTHING about human emotion?

Hodge offers her tea and she’s like “NO I WANT TO KILL WHOEVER TOOK MY MOTHER,” and he says “Unfortunately, we’re all out of bitter revenge at the moment, so it’s tea or nothing.”

Maybe this is me being paranoid and holding the sins of the past against Clare, but… did she steal that? It sounds like something she would have stolen.

So she tells Hodge what happened, tells him her mam didn’t even like her reading manga (of course) because she was so against stories of the fantastic, which Hodge thinks is super weird probably because he hasn’t read Harry Potter. Dursleys, much?

Then she mentions Valentine and he’s like OH MY GOD NOT VALENTINE.  BUT HE’S BEEN DEAD THESE FIFTEEN YEARS GONE and it turns out the Accords are the peace negotiations Isabelle and Alec’s parents are involved in, which is for peace between Shadowhunters and Downworlders. So why they need their foreign diplomats to go home to work on this is still not explained.

So Downworlders are like werewolves, fairies, anything supernatural, and Shadowhunters are the Nephilim. Spare me. Are the Nephilim the new thing now? Can we not, please?

Blah Nephilim legends, a load of men drank the angel Raziel’s blood from the Mortal Cup and now the cup can be used to create more Shadowhunters. But there is no more cup, because Valentine, a rogue Shadowhunter not unlike the Forsworn in Eragon, burnt it. He hated Downworlders, blah blah, Hodge is all “BUT DOWNWORLDERS ARE TOTALLY ENTITLED TO LIVE IN THE WORLD AS MUCH AS WE ARE” and he’s like wow this is probably really boring for you, sorry, making him the only self-aware character in this whole book. He sends her off to see Jace in the weapons room, and the cat leads her there.

The chapter ends with Hodge writing a letter and remembering some battle in Idris and bleeding on the paper.

What will happen next???

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