sof ☆

🇮🇹 16 she/her 𖹭

[aafterglvw]

my actual son i love him

[wikitpowers]

THEY ARE FINALLY BLOODY TOGETHER MY SUN AND MOON I WILL CRY 💔

[aafterglvw]

can November 3rd come faster please

[mayaheronthorn]

Kit: I never wanna see you again after this

Ty: …ok

Kit: *5 minutes later* I lied, I was lying, I am a fucking liar, I will never lie again in my life, that was a fucking lie, wow, wtf Kit, u fucking liar, why would you lie like this, I was not telling the truth, far from it, actually it was the opposite, I’m a fucking liar

[cassandraclare]

hi cassie!! can you PLEASE give us a kitty snippet i swear it can be a one word snippet!!!!!!!

soup

[aafterglvw]

she's playing with my heart here

[cassandraclare]

hi cassie!! can you PLEASE give us a kitty snippet i swear it can be a one word snippet!!!!!!!

soup

[cassandraclare]

Hi Cassie! I am such a fan of your books, they mean a lot to me and I’m currently rereading TMI and Tales from Shadowhunter academy. This is only like my hmmm 7th reread probably!

Anyways, my question is does Ty “regret” what he did, like does he understand he unbelievably messed up by trying to raise Livvy? Or will we see all this unfold in TLKoF?

In Qoaad, Thule!Livvy encourages Ty to let her go and he says that’s not his Livvy, his Livvy would want to be alive. Not that this should hold him back in a way, but I think I would be sick with guilt and grief if I changed my twin sister’s soul in some Limbo like that and had to face it every single day.

Thank you so much—and seven rereads is amazing!

I don't know if "regret" is the word for Ty in this situation. He absolutely understands that trying to raise Livvy had consequences he could never have predicted or controlled, and that Livvy is now caught in a state neither of them would have chosen. He has to live with the knowledge that his grief and desperation played a part in that. But.

But I don't think he regrets loving Livvy, or wanting with every part of himself for her not to be dead. Those feelings were never wrong. Ty was a grieving fifteen-year-old who had just lost his twin, and he convinced himself that if there was something he could do, then not doing it would be the real betrayal. He wasn't thinking clearly about what a future Livvy might become or what it would mean for her; he was thinking only that death was unbearable and perhaps, somehow, reversible.

His response to Thule Livvy reflects that. He can't accept her argument because, to him, accepting it would also mean accepting that Livvy truly wanted to leave him—and he simply isn't emotionally capable of believing that yet. "My Livvy would want to be alive" is partly something he believes and partly something he needs to believe. Think of Will's response to Tessa telling him she's engaged to Jem. "My Jem?" Just like "my Livvy," it's an expression of how much that other person is a part of you, how much they aren't supposed to be a source of pain and how could that happen? Even though of course neither Livvy nor Jem is at fault, the response is still disbelief. Not my person; that couldn't happen.

I also don't think guilt always produces a predictable response. Sometimes guilt makes people cling harder, because admitting the full extent of the mistake feels like losing the person all over again. In Ty's case, that's even stronger. He doesn't just have to let Livvy go in an ordinary way. He'd have to believe what he did was wrong — even if not morally wrong, the incorrect solution — and that keeping her around is wrong. And it's hard and complex for anyone to believe that kind of thing without believing they are at fault, and the idea of being at fault here is horrific. It might blow apart his entire sense of who he is as a person and a brother and a twin. "I love my sister and so I cannot hurt her" is a very normal human way of thinking. "I love my sister but I hurt her anyway" is much more complicated.

I guess I'm saying that Ty would be sick with guilt and grief if he accepted your premise — that Livvy is stuck in limbo, that maybe she doesn't have a place in a world where almost everyone who ever loved her believes now that she's dead and gone — but he hasn't. He's accepted a Livvy that goes everywhere with him as a ghost, that is cheerful, that seems happy, and he thinks, surely better this than death? And he spends 99% of his time with people who don't know she exists; there isn't someone else to weigh in. That's what changes in TWP, when suddenly there are Kit, Dru and even Ash to observe the situation from the outside, and that's why Ty's journey with Livvy to some extent restarts there so we can follow it to its conclusion. Whatever that may be!

[cassandraclare]

Hi Cassie! I was wondering what your relationship with your characters is like. Do you view them as your friends, your children, your creations or something else? I feel such a deep connection as a reader and I can’t imagine how much deeper that goes as an author!🩷

This is such a lovely question.

I don't think my relationship with characters is quite like having children or friends, because those are relationships with real people. Characters are something stranger than that. They're part of the toolkit of telling a story, but they're also repositories for things I've observed, experienced, wondered about, or imagined. They often contain pieces of people I've known, pieces of myself, and pieces that are entirely invented.

Sometimes I think they're a bit like diary entries: snapshots of thoughts and feelings I had at a particular time. Sometimes they're more like the imaginary friends I had as a kid. I traveled constantly when I was young, and I spent a lot of time inventing companions. I knew they weren't real, but I invested enough imagination in them that they became deeply meaningful to me. Characters feel a little like that. I know they are not real but the work put into them makes them important.

My relationship with them is also very different from a reader's relationship. Readers have the wonderful ability to experience a character almost as though they're meeting another person. I don't, because I know how they're built. People often ask me, "How's Ty doing right now?" and my honest answer is that he's not doing anything unless I'm writing him doing it. He's not lonely or waiting for me; he's simply not in motion until the story begins again.

I think that's probably the biggest difference between being the author and being the reader. Readers get to believe in the reality of the characters. Authors can always change those characters in a way actual people cannot be changed or altered and that power over them is a constant reminder that in fact, they are not real but serve the same thing you, the writer, do: the story overall. In some ways it's a bit sad we never get to experience them like you do!

[cassandraclare]

Hi Cassie!!!

If you had to assign a song to each of the twp protagonists (dru, kit, ty and ash), what would they be? 👀🫶

I do have a playlist for the book, so I'll put it in the next newsletter, how's that?

[aafterglvw]

everybody start panic

[cassandraclare]

Hi Cassie!!!

If you had to assign a song to each of the twp protagonists (dru, kit, ty and ash), what would they be? 👀🫶

I do have a playlist for the book, so I'll put it in the next newsletter, how's that?

[cassandraclare]

Hi Cassie! I hope you're having a great weekend!

I was wondering, since Ash is the only protagonist of twp whom we haven't really properly met yet (unlike kit, Ty and dru whom we got to know pretty well in tea), I was wondering how would you introduce him in order to get people excited about his character? I see a lot of people hating on him which is crazy to me but I can understand those who are mainly indifferent to him since we haven't seen much of ash yet. Maybe you can share something nonspoilery to give us a better feeling about him?

Okay, first, if you want one fun thing about Ash, I'll give you a quote from my Italian translator. "I love how you can never tell where he stands. I love that he loathes lies, and yet must lie all the time. I love that he can be such a TEENAGER (affectionate)." That made me laugh, he's definitely no less teenagery than the other characters, as even when you are immortal and eighteen, you are still eighteen.

Second, I wouldn't worry about people hating Ash. They don't know him. There's nothing to hate but potential, just as there's nothing to love but potential. We've actually spent so little time with him! He's still a mystery.

One thing I've learned over the years is that readers can be enormously protective of the characters they already love in a way that often expresses itself as suspicion of the new. I remember when The Infernal Devices was announced, how much people absolutely hated the idea of Will, Tessa, and Jem. They despised them. Because they wanted more Jace and Clary. Will, Jem and Tessa were the new characters, and to some readers they felt like they were taking the place of characters they were already invested in, even if they didn't exist in the same time period. Will was a Herondale, so he was hated because he might replace Jace; Jem was hated for replacing Alec (a Herondale's parabatai) and Tessa was hated for replacing Clary.

At the time, it really freaked me out, but many years have passed since, and I have seen this happen so many times I am inured to it. I have learned that it is impossible to know how you (my readers and everyone else!) will feel about a character you have not yet met in the same way it is impossible to imagine a new color or a new geometric shape being introduced to your world.

Protective love for the characters you do know often turns into a kind of terror that a new character will take space from them — like the fear Ash will take space from Kit and Ty. He doesn't. If he wasn't in the book, and Dru wasn't in the book, it would just be a shorter book. There wouldn't be more Kit and Ty because without Dru and Ash, there would just be much much less for them to do, much less for them to feel, and much less opportunity for us to know them better.

(It's interesting because some of the people who are scared of Ash taking up space ask whether Kit will spend a lot of his time thinking about his bio-dad, his bio-mom, Jem and Tessa and Mina, Jace and Auraline. Even though Kit spending a lot of time thinking about them would, in fact, technically remove time from pondering Ty. It's just that it would add to our understanding of Kit, which adds weight to who he is and how fully characterized he and Ty are. People know that; they know Kit and Ty are in fact only compelling if they are fully realized characters with other interests besides each other. Ash's existence does the same thing in terms of adding weight, but it is not something people can yet picture, so the idea of Kit thinking about long-dead Auraline is less unimaginable than him thinking about his complex relationship with a potential rival for the Faerie throne he may or may not want, even though the second one is a lot more signifiant to who he is now.)

Looking back at TID, it's almost impossible even for me to imagine people hating Will and Jem as "nothing characters, boring and blah", because we know those characters so well and most people do not find them to be any of those things. Once you've spent hundreds of pages with someone, they stop being "the replacement" who might suck in a variety of imaginary ways, and just become themselves. That's one of the lovely things about fiction: you can't really know whether you'll love or hate a character until you've actually gotten to know them so you can always be surprised. Before that, the character is mostly an idea. The Wicked Powers is really the first time readers will get to spend time with Ash, and I'm excited for people to meet him properly and decide what they think of him, rather than the idea of him.

The unknown is a threat until it is known. That is the much shorter version of this very long post. I have to get back to Dru and Ash clothing-shopping in the mortal world now; potentially Ash would enjoy a fake leopard-skin jacket? Or one of those bowling shirts that has the name "Dave" on it? A t-shirt that says IF YOU MET MY FAMILY YOU'D UNDERSTAND? Probably everyone in the Shadowhunter world should have one of those.

[cassandraclare]

Hi Cassie.

Is Ash what Valentine wanted Jonathan to be in terms of power?

Valentine's feelings about Ash would be mixed. He's powerful, he can do some things Sebastian couldn't do, but he does have that filthy faerie blood.

[anxietyproblem]

[gracieabrams]

I loved seeing some of you 🗽it really honestly made me so happy. DFH is out in less than a week and I just want to say how much I appreciate you caring about it. Electric Lady Studios love you. Thank you for hosting us <3 I have not changed ! 👹

[locketnote]

sleepless in the onyx night but now the sky is opalite

[gracieabrams]

My album is out in 9 days and this song is on it📆📆📆📆📆📆📆📆📆📆📆📆📆📆📆📆📆😙❤️ http://gracieabrams.lnk.to/DaughterfromHell

[stillgotscars]

last kiss - taylor swift