#lockwood & co book series

[sunnylemonss]

it should be illegal for netflix to print their little "now a netflix series!" circles DIRECTLY on the cover of books that inspired shows they've cancelled

[vryfmi]

soft worldbuilding in L&Co is so special to me especially how telling talents are:

Sight is associated with with people who look after others, who are always at the look out for danger, the ones who constantly see death and are tied to it no matter what (kipps (with talent and then with goggles), lockwood, skull (in life))

Listening is the warning sign, the haunting before haunting ever began, it gets into one's head and makes you trapped in there with voices of times long passed (lucy, kat)

Touch, in the world where one touch kills, is the most high risk, a conscious decision to put yourself into one's shoes and feel what they felt, ache with empathy all alone in a world of constant pain (lucy)

and having a bit of every talent makes one less vulnerable to psychic effects, but that means that you are fully submerged into haunting, into the past, once you are confronted by it, and in this profession it's constantly there and around you (george, holly, flo)

[wylansvanhendriks]

the way that jonathan stroud wrote lucy and lockwood as characters that directly parallel each other in everything!!! she Listens and he Sees. he’s the title character and she’s the narrator. she has this great power and he wants to build a great agency. when apart she’s just as reckless as he is. even down to their likes and dislikes: she hates orange juice pulp and he loves it if only to pretend he’s a whale. she leaves to protect him and he comes back to protect her. she wants to communicate with ghosts and he wants to fight them. they have matching white streaks!!!! they are the most alike and the most different and that is why they work. literally no one has ever created such a compelling relationship with such compelling characters!!!!

[killerfrostisme]

Not to be dramatic but Jonathan Stroud's letter announcing Lockwood and Co's cancelation literally broke me.

Like "Portland Row is always open for business"? "Drop by any time"? "It's your home too, after all"?

HOW DO YOU EXPECT ME TO BE OKAY AFTER THIS

[krash-and-co]

not to be insane about her on main but you know I never stopped thinking about jessica right. you know I never stopped thinking about jess lockwood

shes like. she's JESS.

shes haunting the narrative. she's haunting lockwood. shes haunting nothing at all, in the literal sense, which is rather strange. shes in Lucy's face and the way she stands at the door. shes got lockwoods eyes, or maybe hes got hers. she's burned into her bedset. she's burned into her house. she's burned into wood. she's a broken pot. she's a clumsy rapier. she's waiting at the apple tree. shes sleeping under her covers. she likes stickers. she's a kid, she's a guardian, she's not going to take off the baby wallpaper in her bedroom. she's clung to youth. she's forced to grow up. she's younger than her baby brother. she's the world. shes important enough to die for. she's important enough to live because of. she's blue and swollen and on the floor and dead. she's pale and smiling and holding her brother in her lap, immortalized, shoved in a dresser drawer because somebody couldnt handle seeing her face.

she's that important. she's that important.

she's a lockwood, she's a mirror, she's lucy joan carlyle and anthony john lockwood and a reminder and a child and doomed, doomed, doomed in such a way that she could save everyone else.

she's the boxes lockwood couldn't open. she's the right time. she's warm feathers and stitches purposefully undone.

in her childishly wallpapered room, she is sitting, watching, cross legged on her bed.

[redrobin-detective]

I finally read the Screaming Staircase book and while it's been fun to compare and contrast it against the 3 episode Netflix arc, there is one book moment that is clearly superior.

At the end of episode, when Skull speaks to Lucy for the first time. Lucy is so overcome by the psychic connection that she full on faints requiring George and Lockwood to carry her upstairs. I'd accepted that until I read the novel in which Lucy hears this gross this ghost man whisper weird shit from within his glass prison about life and death and whatever. And Luce - who'd just run downstairs to grab extra treats for their impromptu celebration - says "nah I'm not dealing with this today" closes the jars speaking valve and leaves.

I will always support Lucy Carlyle being That Crazy Bitch and I love her So Much.

[alexiethymia]

Lockwood takes care of her wound for her and patches her up. Lucy helps him through his panic attack and snaps him out of it.

Besides the fact that they heal each other and all of the intimate touches involved (fingers lightly intertwined, him weaving his fingers through her hair while she cradles his neck and face etcetera), I also love the slight subversion of gender roles. It’s Lockwood who nurses Lucy, when usually it’s the other way around. At the same time it’s Lockwood who becomes emotional and suffers a panic attack while Lucy grounds him.

[bookwyrm35]

You know what line is spoken so casually but breaks my heart every. single. freaking. time?

Lucy: She's in pain...

Lockwood: Of course she is, she's dead.

Lockwood believes that any afterlife ghosts (and possibly all people) experience is agony. From this simple line, we see into his mind and find that he thinks his parents, his sister, any agents or friend or anyone else he's lost- he thinks they're suffering.

...as someone who's lost a close relative recently, I can't imagine how hard it would be to grieve properly and healthily if I believed that they were hurting. My grandpa was in a lot of pain before he passed away, but now that he's on the other side (the true other side, not the limbo we see ghosts trapped in), I know he's at peace. I personally believe he's in heaven, the literal best place anyone could ever be, and that thought, that knowledge, brings me so much comfort.

No wonder Lockwood has such a hard time letting go, he must think that holding onto his family's memory is the only way he can make their supposed suffering somehow worth it.

To anyone who's in the same boat as him, I just want you to know it's okay to let them go. They're okay now. Holding onto what they went through in life or right before their life ended is not going to help them, it's only hurting you. It's hard to let yourself grieve and harder to let yourself heal but I promise it's worth it. We saw Lockwood do it with the help of his new friends and family and I know you and I can do it too.

[bobbys-not-that-small]

I really love the bit between Flo and George on the boat in the show. From the books we know that George sees through physical appearance and likes Flo for who she is, but the main interactions we actually see between them (i.e. not Flo tending to him when he’s injured) are very awkward but cute stilted conversations.

But the show gives us this gorgeous scene where George is not in his right mind due to the bone glass and Flo immediately clocks what’s going on and treats him like I’d imagine you’d seriously/firmly but lovingly speak to a friend struggling with mental health. Because she knows what it’s like to not be ok. She just cares for him so deeply as a friend first and foremost, walks him to DEPRAC, reassures him repeatedly that he’s strong enough.

This has just turned into a Flo appreciation post. We all need a Flo in our lives.

Bonus massive shoutout to Hayley Konadu for nailing the Look™ of someone who immediately sees and understands.

[flythesail]

There needs to be a rule that if you cancel a show, you lose the rights to it after a (reasonable) amount of time

[slimyshield]

lockwood & co is great bc you have a group of teenagers who are all at this point in their lives highly trained individuals and capable and experienced and it shows in how they operate. but they are also teenagers and chaotic and disorganized and struggling with altogether too much pressure on their shoulders and it shows too. they're marching around London acting like they know what they're doing and they do but at the same time they don't, because they hunt ghosts and have for years but they're only sixteen and that is so young. you don't know anything when you're sixteen. and they have the health and safety of a nation resting on their shoulders, and they squabble over who gets the last cookie.

[teaalover]

do you get the vision?

[wackachewbacca]

I thought that the Lockwood and Co. fandom was pretty small here on this site but then I see Quill Kipps wiping the floor on the tumblr favorite character bracket and suddenly I have to reconsider my worldview

[aroaessidhe]

2024 reads / storygraph

Our Lady Of Mysterious Ailments & The Mystery at Dunvegan Castle

books 2 & 3 in the Edinburgh Nights series

paranormal mystery set in a climate-ravaged future Scotland, plagued by ghosts and magic

follows a 15yo Black girl who’s finally gotten an in to learn scientific magic properly - but it turns out to be an unpaid internship, so she has to take more jobs delivering ghost messages and investigating mysteries to take care of her gran and little sister

in book 2 she’s investigating a strange illness centred on a magic school for boys

and in book 3 she’s attending a global magician conference held in a creepy castle - when someone’s murdered, and they’re locked in until she figures out the culprit

Zimbabwean magic, friendship, disabled characters, no romance (so far)

[all-too-unwell-13]

just finished the empty grave.

now what am i going to do with my life?

[redrobin-detective]

Skull 👏 was 👏just 👏 as 👏 much 👏 a 👏 member 👏of 👏 the 👏 agency 👏 as 👏 the 👏 humans 👏