Also, I do have so many feelings about Downworlder media, because it’s got to exist. They have restaurants and networks of connection, they probably also have musicians and writers and artists creating works just for their little community.
Spoken word poetry, mocking limericks about Shadowhunters that get passed along in whispers. Eulogies for the fallen in pentameters that fell out of fashion centuries ago. At the Spiral Labyrinth poetry night is a battle between the slam poets and the haiku purists, but everything is about how complicated immortality is. Jokes get told at the Hunter’s Moon, about the three vampires who walked into a bar, about how many Shadowhunters it takes to change a lightbulb. Warlocks and vampires have a particularly wide historical repertoire, while werewolves are more up to date on the modern how-do-you-say, “memes”. Seelie and Unseelie senses of humour are the weirdest. There’s a lot of long form story telling and complex not-lying.
Books, cheaply bound and enchanted to react to their demon blood, so no outsiders can accidentally read them. To mundanes, it’s just a knock off romance novel. To Downworlders though.. it’s still a knock off romance novel, though one about a vampire and a werewolf from rival clans in the 1500s, pulling their families together through the power of love to defend themselves from the threat of the Clave. There are more technical texts as well, spell books, histories from the perspectives of Downworlders, autobiographies and memoirs. Sometimes the line between truth and fiction is quite thin. Ragnor anonymously wrote a satirical pamphlet back in the 1700s that got quite popular in Downworlder circles. Other times it’s very obvious. There’s a sci-fi epic being passed around the Parisian Downworld in printouts and binders that gives faeries lazers and puts werewolves on the moon.
Music is one of the things that’s easiest to pass as mundane with. No one questions a song that gets a bit fantastical, and lots of musicians and artists have been Downworlders in the past and have made their struggles part of their life. Newbies always get handed little playlists, as a reminder that they can still make it, can still use their new strange life to create something beautiful. Not everyone’s a pop star though, there are open mic nights at Downworld cafes and sometimes someone will come up with an original song, and it’s often bad, but everyone loves it all the same. It’s theirs, it speaks to them, and that is personal and special.
And art! Warlocks are known for commissioning Downworlder artists to do portraits of them unglamoured, in all their true magical glory. Seelie and Unseelie gentry alike enjoy a good bit of art, they tend to have trouble with it themselves. Young werewolves and half born children and sighted mortals can find some small place in artistic world.
Video is the most complicated, and the most likely to get you in trouble with Shadowhunters, because the proof of magic is right there on film. Therefore the Downworlder film community is the most closely guarded. It exists in black box theaters and tinny cell phone videos shared among friends and pretentious avante-garde films about warlocks falling in love with young men in Brazil. Sometimes a password protected youtube video will pop up, a song parody with the secret code shared among friends until everyone has it and can laugh. The production values are surprisingly good, thanks to magic. One young vampire has been labouring over a faux tv series about the adventures of a young immortal and his crypt mates for years. It’s posted on MySpace, which does hurt it somewhat, but Magnus always makes sure to share it with his friends.
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