KitTy High School / Fey Market AU Chapter 20 is up! Also, a thought about Kit's personality?
Yay, a Towards The Sun update! It's one day later than I wanted again, but uhhh I realized there was a Plot Relevant continuity error in chapters 20-23 and didn't want to publish ch. 20 until I had fixed it to the best of my ability. Kit and Ty are a little freakier in their flirting this chapter, hopefully that's fun for everyone! I've noticed that the more complicated I make the plot, the more I in turn push their relationship and their thoughts and actions to balance it out, without even intending it. My hope is that even if the plot isn't your thing, you'll enjoy watching their feelings develop :) I am pretty excited about the plot though ngl I was thinking, due to chapters 20-23, that I made Kit a little bit...cuter, than in canon? But not exactly? And I got hung up on his personality a little bit, and whether I was being honest to who he is. And it made me think about how I write Kit, based on a few things a few things:
The Lady Midnight prologue/opening, which is our first POV from Kit
Outside POVs from the other Blackthorns that mention him being quiet, observant, quick to disappear, and not prone to complaining
Kit's own POV after his father's death
Jem and Tessa's dynamic with Kit For the sake of this topic, I'll mostly focus on the implications of the prologue versus the execution of Kit's personality throughout the rest of TDA and SOBH.
I think it's worth noting that the Kit we see in Lady Midnight's prologue isn't like the Kit we see in the rest of the books. Granted, this is because Kit's life has yet to be turned upside down by watching his dad get murdered in front of him, by finding out he's a Shadowhunter AND a Herondale on top of that, by suddenly being excluded and cast out by the only community he's ever known (the Markets), by falling in love with Ty, by participating in a necromantic ritual he didn't actually approve of, by finding out he's the First Heir, and all the other stuff this poor boy is going through. So of course he changes a lot. This is also why I value that very first POV so much. That is who Kit thought he was, who Kit had grown up to be (well, at 15 years old, anyway). But even still, I find it very confusing. I think maybe Cassandra Clare was having a hard time balancing the genuinely fucked up backstory she wrote for 'a thief boy in hiding who grew up in a magical black market' with the well-practiced Herondale personality traits she was probably trying to foreshadow. Kit is flirty, casual, and comfortable in the prologue, a classic and confident Herondale. He's also cautious of being enchanted and he observes his father and Emma very closely. At the same time, he seems to know less than Wren about the Market or reading people's faces and their desires (mind you, in canon he remembers being in the Markets since he was seven years old, and we know that Johnny Rook was teaching Kit to steal since around this time, so why does he feel inexperienced?), he's not particularly interested in rumors or information despite his dad being an info broker, and says things like "even Kit knew that much" about knowing that Jace and Clary have parabatai, like he wasn't the type to "know much" in general (admittedly, there's a few different ways to read that). In the rest of the books, Kit is basically not really flirty or casual at all, not even with the twins, and in his own head, he's actually extremely awkward. But we also know he'd kissed people even before Livvy and that he felt confident in that regard when we first meet him. Frankly, I never quite know where canon wants to take his personality. Is he a cocky Herondale, is he an awkward teenager, is he a jaded thief? He's definitely all of them all at once, and maybe that's the point when he's someone who grew up as a Sighted Mundane only to find out he's a Special Shadowhunter and then the Specialist of Downworlders, but like. Like who is Kit? When we write him, who are we writing?
I try and give each of these personalities equal weight as well as my own spin--even if Kit is kept in the dark by his dad, I see no reason why he would have been written as someone uninterested in the criminal world around him, or even naive. He still grew up in the Markets. CC kinda...defangs/declaws him? Because in the end, in TDA, Kit is not a master negotiator, or good at sneaking out/around, good at stealing without getting caught, or even particularly stealthy unless his only goal is just "don't look at me" aimed at people who, frankly, aren't looking for him (Julian, Emma, Cristina, Mark) (granted they had bigger fish to fry, so like, understandable if unfortunate).
I think in an effort to balance the fact that he isn't physically trained like a Shadowhunter and won't know all the Shadowhunter-y politics, CC took someone that is supposed to be trained in surviving the criminal underworld, who the characters imply behaves like someone raised in the criminal underworld, and then doesn't really ever have Kit think or actually act like that, and it's a little strange. His mistrust in others seems to mostly stem from the fact that his dad lied to him, and nothing else? How? He grew up in a black market! At the same time though, she only makes him a Herondale to make him cocky OR depressed--he rarely ever gets the chance to be genuinely charming or clever, which are other more positive Herondale traits. So she kinda introduces all of these ideas of who Kit is and what he's like, and most of it doesn't fit together at all. In his POV, this works out--I love Kit! I'd say almost everyone who read TDA also really enjoyed Kit's POV and Kit in general! And he's in the midst of his discovery journey, so it's fine that he doesn't know who he is. But, maybe you've noticed this if you've read a lot of Kit-centric fanfic or Kit x Ty fanfic, there's a lot of different versions of him out there. Even the fandom isn't always sure who Kit is or what he's like. In the end I don't think we actually have a many personality traits we can confidently point to and rely on, other than maybe "overwhelmed", "awkward", "likes sweets", and "enjoys looking at pretty people". And unless that, in of itself, becomes a part of how Kit is written in TWP (that is to say, someone who is aware that they keep changing personalities and who is unsure of who they are even in terms of their own behavior), it's just gonna be...a bit weird? I think Kit is one of the most interesting character premises CC's ever written based on his backstory alone, but I'm still not sure she even knows who she wrote. I guess we'll have a whole trilogy to figure it out though! As a writer, I totally understand that Kit is 15, that Kit wasn't doing most of, if any of his character development in TDA, and that Kit's entire point as a character is that he's everything all at once. As a reader...I'll admit I (If I'm being so for real with y'all, Kit is, frankly and genuinely, more like Simon than literally any other character. And this is great! Kit knows Mundane culture, like Simon, thought he was a Sighted Mundane, which Simon experienced for a while before becoming a vampire, and Kit is also a special Downworlder, like how Simon was the Daylighter vampire, and now Simon is a Shadowhunter and Kit is a Shadowhunter. Frankly, these two should be besties in canon and Kit should be given the opportunity to bond with Simon, who might GENUINELY be the only person who gets anywhere close to understanding Kit's position. I think such a strong focus was placed on Jace having another Herondale family member and the whole "didn't know they were a Herondale" thing that we maybe overlooked that there are other characters who could be bonding with Kit). (Also, Kit behaves, strangely, much more like Simon than he does like Jace? Like. Consistently. Kit has behaved how Simon has behaved WAY more often, except for the Simon Jealous Of Jace subplot, and hey, there's still technically room for Kit to display jealousy in TWP). (Actually, my thesis is that we're being sold that Kit is like Jace, whilst reading a Kit that is, frankly, a lot more like Simon both lore-wise and behaviorally, BUT THAT IF WE'RE BEING HONEST, Kit should have written to be more like Raphael Santiago (RIP), Will Herondale, and Matthew Fairchild put in a blender, and not even because Will is a Herondale btw). (Thank you for coming to my TedTalk). All this to say that I write Kit rather cutesy with Ty sometimes and it's not really canon but it's also not canon because possibly every single personality trait you can think of is lowkey a personality trait Kit has portrayed at least once. And who's to say Kit wasn't cute before the trauma?