Achievement Unlocked: Discovered Piece Of Media At Exact Right Time In Your Life To Experience Maximum

I love how Thomas is an unreliable narrator in the sense that he never notices how other people react to his appearance because he is so self-conscious and has a rather low self-esteem regarding his physical appearance.

It takes Alastair to tell us that, apparently, people are ogling Tom because he looks so good.

On the other hand, we never actually see people reacting that way in any of the other character's POVs, and that can mean 2 things:

A) The others don't pay that much attention to Thomas because he is just kind-hearted Tom to them

B) Alastair in a way overinterprets other people's looks because to him, Thomas is so beautiful, how could other people not see it, how could they not want him?

Addition: In ChoG, Cordelia actually describes Tom as handsome, but not beautiful as James or Matthew (several times). Clearly, the Carstairs siblings have different tastes.

Pause you who read this, and think for a moment of the long chain of iron or gold, of thorns or flowers

calling it right now! the short story collection will be called chain of flowers

maybe this is just copium but...maybe MAYBE cassie left so many unanswered questions because she wants to release what will essentially be book 4.

Just saw this pickup line "Are you a tower? Because Eiffel for you" and it just screamed Thomastair to me. Specifically, I think Alastair would say this to Thomas because

1) Thomas is a giant and towers over everyone

and 2) they were specifically talking about the Eiffel Tower in ChoG

And now I just headcanon that Alastair said this to Thomas at one point who just laughed himself to tears.

If Chain of Thorns doesn’t end with:

Lucie and Jesse engagement

Cordelia and James honeymoon to Constantinople

Thomas kissing Alastair in front of everyone at a party

Ariadne and Anna finally dancing together

Grace and Christopher working on science-y stuff together

and Matthew drinking water

imma riot

THE FORESHADOWING!!!

Pierre Curie died young, she outlived him by several decades.

My heart 💔

Christopher and Grace did end up collaborating like the Curies and revolutionizing communication for shadowhunters

And he fell in love with Alastair who is very good with words (footnote: I love the way of speaking and the extensive vocabulary Cassie chose for him) but quite often manages to fuck up when using said words. Just because he knows how to string fancy words together so that they sound nice it doesn't mean that Alastair gets his meaning across very well.

They really complement each other

Can we talk about how Thomas keeps on saying he doesn’t have a gift for words and he wouldn’t be able to charm Alastair or anyone with his words but with Alastair, he manages to say the most simple yet most important things that Alastair needs to hear

Cast Long Shadows:

"You do not know what he [Alastair] said to me the day we were expelled."

Tom shrugged. "Some nonsense, I expect. He always speaks the most shocking nonsense when he is overset. You shouldn't listen to him."

A couple of lines later: "Oh well," said Tom. "I like his nonsense." He looked wistful. "I think Alastair masks his pain with cleverly turned phrases."

Can we talk about how Thomas knew Alastair extremely well, even back then? And how Matthew could have saved himself (and Thomastair) a lot of drama if he had just listened to Thomas? Now I just want a novella with each conversation in which Thomas got to know Alastair so well.

I also hope that Tom will remember his own advice in CoT... Not that I want him to stop listening to Alastair

seriously I had some little TikTok teenybopper burst out laughing on my tour because I said that a historical figure was “most likely what we’d now call gay”

like

listen

you’re free to take a ouija board out to the cemetery and try to explain the dizzying array of current queer terms and get a solid answer as to how he identifies within that framework but 

until then, I’m going to continue NOT definitively assigning someone identity terms they didn’t self-identify with, and might not have even known, when I’m responsible for representing them faithfully and they’re not here to correct me. even more so when they’re part of my own community

I mean, you know, as long as that’s okay with you. Bestie.

I sometimes have a few issues with facial expressions, especially if there's no words being said. In that scene where Illya shocks Rudi for the first time he looks at Napoleon, but I can't tell if it's from Napoleon still having his hand on Rudi or from seeing how strong the electric was. Can you break down his expression for me, please?

I think it’s open to many interpretations, but I’ll try to break down his facial expressions as I see them.

First, I think I need to consider where Illya is at mentally. He’s just been “betrayed” by Gaby and his first priority is, not contacting his commanding officer and telling him the situation or trying to find the bomb, but finding Solo. Illya had been listening to the conversation between Gaby and her Uncle Rudi; he knows Uncle Rudi “needs to make a telephone call” and that’s likely to tell Victoria that Solo is CIA—Illya knows Solo is in trouble and needs to get to Solo before it’s too late (although from his perspective, it might already be too late, but he’s going to try to save Solo anyway—which I think says a lot. Perhaps he felt he owed Solo since Solo had been in a similar situation of not knowing if he was still alive after the boat incident but Solo went to save him from drowning anyway?)

Let’s assume that Solo is being held at the Vinciguerra shipping facility since that is most likely and the design of Rudi’s lab matches the design of that facility. This gives Illya some advantage because he’s already been there before and knows about the hidden button to get to the basement, however, the facility is heavily guarded.

Illya would have to find a way to sneak past, or probably fight off, all these guards to get to Solo. This is probably why, although Uncle Rudi and Illya were at the same location (Vinciguerra’s Manor) when Gaby exposed them, that Uncle Rudi got to Solo before Illya.  So Illya has done all this work to find Solo although he has no way of knowing if Solo is dead or alive. Fortunately, Solo is still alive. Now here’s where it’s a bit confusing for me, does Illya know that Solo was being tortured by electrocution? I don’t see how he cannot given that there are no other physical signs of torture. Solo is sweating, blood is streaming from his nose, and there are tears along his cheeks. Illya is also a skilled tech with proficiency in computer programming languages FACT and COBOL, so he would be able to recognize how the chair is wired up. Yet, after he’s strapped Rudi’s right hand, when he comes to the front of the chair, he looks curiously at the contraption with a foot pedal.

Although, perhaps he’s merely looking for the on switch? Either way, he’s startled when Rudi is electrocuted.

Interesting thing, though, is that he checks Solo’s reaction, not Rudi’s. Is this realization of how badly Solo was tortured? Or surprise that it is an electrocution device? (Which I don’t think makes sense, again because of his specialities… but he was also surprised to see an aircraft carrier… while flying over the ocean… which is also confusing but I guess you can argue that he didn’t expect the British Navy to get involved? I digress.)

Illya’s expression does change from surprise to this expression:

He’s looking more intensely at Solo. Perhaps this expression is deep concern over Solo’s welfare. This realization of what this chair does, if you want to call it realization, is unsettling to him. Perhaps he’s realizing how close Solo would have been to dying if he hadn’t gotten to him in time. Or perhaps he was worried he’d injured Solo again because he hadn’t been paying attention to the fact that Solo was still touching the chair. In this angle, Solo is still touching the chair when Illya presses the pedal:

I think you can make a lot of arguments on what Illya’s reaction means, but either way, he’s not happy. Once he knows what this chair will do to Rudi, he’s quite keen to torture Rudi with it for information. The second time he presses the pedal it’s in response to Uncle Rudi being willing to testify against anyone, even his own niece. The third time, he’s taking his anger for Gaby betraying him (“It’s not the same”) out on Rudi simply for the sake of doing it, but the pedal doesn’t work that time, but he keeps jamming his foot on the pedal anyway until Solo tells him it has a glitch. Illya is clearly disgusted by what Rudi subjected Solo to and angry at Gaby for endangering Solo as well. Which is probably why he fights against believing Gaby didn’t betray them and learning that Gaby is a British spy working for Waverly (“You’re wrong. […] You’re wrong. I saw her betray us at Vinciguerra.”) It takes Waverly telling him that he told Gaby to betray them for Illya to accept what had happened and forgive her. He realized she had no choice in the matter, that she had to obey Waverly, even if it meant possibly getting her teammates killed.

A difficult situation that Illya probably knows all too well.

In the end, he would have done exactly the same thing in her position.