Book Addict

[the-otaku-rulebreaker-deactivat]

So Kit’s officially reached true Herondale levels of angst

[rosqles]

so ur telling me kit, the boy whose been taught to lie, con and steal all his life,,, has given his heart so freely and openly to a boy with nothing but the most honest of intention ,, im sry i need a minute 

[sherlockedkit]

If Ty doesn’t kiss Kit first in TWP then wHatS tHe pOinT

[rosqles]

we’re REALLY getting the “i havent seen you in years and its awkward and holy when did you become this attractive” trope with kit and ty in the wicked powers 

[loweana-deactivated20211112]

The Dark Artifices characters part 1

Just wanted to doodle a bit today so I decided to draw all the main characters from The Dark Artifices

Next part tomorrow I guess ;)

[loweana-deactivated20211112]

“I love you Ty, I love you!”

The scene that broke all our hearts 💔

Ty and Kit from The Dark Artifices series by @cassandraclare

[cassandraclare]

Detail of Jem and Tessa from A DEEPER LOVE, book five in the GHOSTS OF THE SHADOOW MARKET SERIES. Wait till you see the whole cover! Art by @dibadavood

[cassandraclare]

More Cassandra Jean sexytimes — Jem and Tessa in Clockwork Prince. 

[dayscrazed]

“The search for the lost Herondale, Jem refusing the demon Belial’s temptations, Jem being turned away and then called back by Rosemary Herondale, had all led to this. Rosemary’s child was Jem’s now. It was Jem’s job to teach Kit how to fight as well as he could.”

- “Forever Fallen” Ghosts of the Shadow Market, page 605

[cassandraclare]

once more, with feeling

rorochan92 said:  the last two GoTSM short stories were SO GOOD! I loved them! I’ve seen a bit of “negativity” online: it looks like some people think it’s unfair that Jem and Tessa had a child, and they’re upset because it looks like Will and Tessa only have one scene together in TLH. Sigh, I feel so sad. I wish people could just see how amazing Will, Tessa and Jem (all of them!) are.

I think a lot of people do — negativity is often a small group of people who are loudly complaining, but most of my asks have been lovely warm-hearted questions about Mina’s wellbeing and whether Will is looking down on her from the afterlife. Which is really sweet!

I think there’s a couple misunderstandings at work here: one is the idea that Will and Tessa only have “one scene together” in TLH. They have one scene alone together from their points of view in the first book.  (And I had to fight and fight to get it, because my editor thought it was inappropriate to have any scenes from the point of view of “the parents” in the book at all.)

As I’ve said a gazillion times, I’ve kept the POVs in Chain of Gold limited to the three mains, because there are so many characters and I was working hard to keep the focus on the central storyline. I am somewhat surprised that the reaction to hearing that Will and Tessa have a love scene together from Tessa’s POV in the first book was not being pleased to hear it, but feeling upset that the whole book isn’t about poor James and Lucie being trapped in a room while their parents make out. I feel this would turn everyone in the world off Wessa, me included. 

There are also two more books, and we don’t know what will happen in those; there’s also the extra short story about Will and Tessa’s wedding that will be special content, i.e. an entire short story just about them. I have seen the complaint that Wessa has to “share” the TID series with Jessa, as if that somehow compromises their intimacy or romance. I don’t believe it does — and I believe this kind of point-scoring is damaging to readers and tends to undermine and destroy the pleasure of actually experiencing stories. They can’t be broken down mathematically —Will and Tessa don’t have “1.5″ books about them because Jem was also in TID. They have three books about them that Jem was also in, in which they had a powerful romance. We got to see their POV’s, we got to see the first time they slept together, Will proposing to Tessa, etc and so on. We never even got Jem’s POV and his and Tessa’s first time is in a Tumblr post that most of my fans have never read or seen.

Which is part of the reason I wanted to create Ghosts of the Shadow Market — to get a glimpse into the head of a character whose POV we hadn’t explored before. And while it’s true there’s a good amount of content about Jem and Tessa in Ghosts, that’s because Jem is the main character, not because anyone — including me — hates Will. It’s because part of the story of Jem and Tessa is that they both lost Will, and loved him and missed him, and from the fourth story in Ghosts on, he’s no longer alive. When I write present-day content, Will is dead in it. That’s a reality of writing these books, and is why trying to create a false idea of “parity” — measuring the page time each couple gets in an attempt to sort of pointlessly score for an OTP — is pointless. The content of stories is often dictated by the time period they take place in or the POV they’re told from. The idea that it’s entirely shaped by whether the author likes a character or a pairing more than another is just not true. 

I also think the idea that “equality” or parity equals content that can be measured is wrong — a book is not a seesaw or a set of weights. The Shadowhunters series is also constantly in flux. While people may feel now that they’ve gotten a lot of Jessa content because of Ghosts, they will feel completely differently after three books of Will and Tessa being married and readers spending a huge amount of time with their children and in their family. 

If I could make one request of the universe, it would be that readers who prefer one ship in these books over another would try not to approach the experience of reading as the acquisition of a set of points that are being collected in favor of one couple or another. Jem and Tessa’s baby — who we’ve known about for a long time — is not a point scored against Will. There is no one who would be happier about little Mina than Will would be;there is no one who would rush out to read Ghosts of the Shadow Market faster than Will would, and there is no one who would be sadder about the negativity carried out in his name than Will would be.

And I can’t imagine it’s that much fun for you guys either.

[thomastair]

I’m still not over the fact that Tessa quotes Jem in everyday life when she gives relationship advice

[harrietcarstairs]

“I don’t know how to live in the world as a Shadowhunter without Will. I don’t think I even want to. I am still a parabatai, but my other half is gone”

— Jem Carstairs, Clockwork Princess

[harrietcarstairs]

“Jem. My Jem?”

— Will Herondale, Clockwork Prince

[harrietcarstairs]

“A parabatai was a friend who had chosen you to be their best friend, who had made their friendship permanent. They were that sure about how much they liked you, that sure they would never want to take it back”

— James Herondale, Tales from the Shadowhunter Academy

[forepop]

Why the shows treatment of Yin Fen bothers me

*spoilers for if you are not up to date with either the show or infernal devices*

In the show you are introduced to yin fen as if it were any other recreational drug. Izzy gets hooked on it and displays the typical drug addict symptoms: cravings, fever, jitteriness, ect.  She is shown to be addicted to it, she is willing to do anything to get more of it; she is shown to be a very typical, unflatteringly painted, drug addict.

This completely destroys and undermines Jem Carstairs’ entire character arc.

It is immediately established in Clockwork Angel that Jem is not a drug addict in the common sense. Yin fen is not a metaphor for meth or cocaine or any other recreational drug. It is a metaphor for the wasting, cureless diseases of the day, such as consumption or typhoid or something:

A hero […] who was condemned to die young of a fatal demonic illness, no matter how desperate the efforts were to save him, just as in reality victims of consumption sickened and died without penicillin(Forward of Clockwork Princess, pg. 4) 

Clare states it clearly herself, yin fen is not a recreational drug like the show made it to be.

By giving Izzy this plotline, they have ruined any chance of Jem’s arc making any sense at all. People would see that Jem is addicted to yin fen and not be able to understand why he can’t just kick the habit. It wouldn’t make any sense that the drug is killing him, turning his hair and eyes silver and paling his skin, because this very obviously not what happens to Izzy. Izzy isn’t dying, she just feels like she is. 

It is made very clear that Jem hates what yin fen has done to him. He hates that he must rely on it, he despises how it has stolen his life from him. And while he compares it to the Opium in China and himself to the addicts(thus offering a compelling metaphor about colonialism and racism):

The British bring opium into China by the ton. They have made a nation of addicts out of us. In Chinese we call it ‘foreign mud’ or ‘black smoke’. In some ways Shanghai, my city, is built on opium. It wouldn’t exist as it does without it. The city is full of dens where hollow-eyed men starve to death because all they want is the drug, more of the drug. They’ll give anything for it. I used to despise men like that. I couldn’t understand how they were so weak.

[…]

There was one thing they couldn’t fix, though. I had become addicted to the substance the demon had poisoned me with. My body was dependent on it the way an opium addict’s body is dependent on the drug.

(Clockwork Angel, ch. 15, pg. 339-340)

He also makes it very clear that the drug is more of an bastardized medicine:

After weeks of experimentation they decided that nothing could be done: I could not live without the drug. The drug itself meant a slow death, but to take me off it would mean a very quick one.

The yin fen is what keeps Jem alive, and he despises that. He wants to burn bright like Will does, he wants to live to grow old with Tessa(though not for her but that’s another rant). This why he throws it in the fire in Clockwork Princess, why he was taking less of it. He loathes relying on it. 

This is not the case with Izzy. Izzy, like most drug addicts, craves how good the yin fen makes her feel. She actively wants more of it. It is not a unavoidable and cruel medicine, it is a recreational drug. 

But the worst aspect of this is that it plays right into the negative and degrading view the other Shadowhunters have of Jem and further causes and creates Jem’s greatest fear. 

The books works extremely hard to make it very clear that Jem Carstairs is not a drug addict. It is consistently referred to as his illness, the other characters work hard to combat this kind of thinking in the novels themselves. This plays into the vilification of the Lightwoods especially, with Gabriel constantly saying awful and derogatory things about Jem:

“You’re a decent Shadowhunter, James,” [Gabriel] said, “and a gentleman. You have your–disability, but no one blames you for that.”

(Clockwork Angel, ch. 9, pg. 206)

“I think,” Gabriel said, “that perhaps you might consider whether jokes about opium are either amusing or tasteful, given the…situation of your friend Carstairs.”

Will froze. Still in the same tone of voice, he said, “You mean his disability?

Gabriel blinked. “What?”

“That’s what you called it. Back at the Institute. His ‘disability’.” Will tossed the bloody cloth aside. “And you wonder why we aren’t friends.”

(Clockwork Angel, Ch. 11, pg. 269)

Not only this, but the scenes during and after Jem retrieves Will from the Drug Den, are extremely telling.

When Jem drags Will out of the den, the reader sees him lose his temper for the first time:

“You did not have to come and fetch me like some child. I was having quite a pleasant time.” 

Jem looked back at him. “God damn you,” he said, and hit Will across the face, sending him spinning. Will didn’t lose his footing, but fetched up against the side of the carriage, his hand to his cheek. His mouth was bleeding. He looked at Jem with total astonishment.

(Clockwork Prince, ch. 9, pg. 195)

In this moment, Jem is so blindingly angry at Will, even Tessa observes herself how this was so utterly unlike him, because he feels as if Will is mocking Jem and his addiction by going and getting high on a drug when Jem is literally dependent and dying because of the yin fen.

“There’s no cure,” […] “I will die, and you know it, Tess. Probably within the next year. I am dying, and I have no family in the world, and the one person I trusted more than any other made sport of what is killing me.”

[…]

“He knows what it means to me,” he said. “To see him even toy with what has destroyed my life–”

(Clockwork Angel, ch. 9, pg. 200)

Because Jem has to battle against the label of a drug addict everyday, and his biggest fear is that he is just a addict, that that’s all anyone sees. He hates that label. Which, as seen, is openly talked about in the books. This is such a big deal that Will actually apologizes for it:

“I went to that den because I could not stop thinking about my family, and I wanted–I needed–to stop thinking,” said Will. “It did not cross my mind that it would look like I was making a mockery out of your sickness. I suppose I am asking your forgiveness for my lack of consideration.”

(Clockwork Prince, ch. 11, pg. 247)

Even though Will makes a point to never apologize about anything so that others will hate him. He apologizes to Jem for this thoughtlessness because he realizes how royally he messed up. 

All of this is totally disregarded in Izzy’s storyline. People entering into TID after watching the show will be confused and not understand how Jem is sick and dying and is not really a drug addict at all. In short, they will enter into the novels with a prejudice and misunderstanding of Jem, and see him just like the other Shadowhunter’s do: a weak drug addict.

tl;dr: the show totally ruins and misconstrues and mocks Jem’s character arc by giving Izzy such a typical(and utterly incorrect) recreational drug addict storyline and I am furious about it.

[just-something-miraculous-deact]

Gabriel Lightwood: Wait, I’m confused. Are you in love with Tessa Gray or James Carstairs?

Will Herondale: Yes.

[blackthqrn]

DONT WHITEWASH CORDELIA CARSTAIRS

DONT WHITEWASH JAMES CARSTAIRS

DONT WHITEWASH MAGNUS BANE

DONT WHITEWASH RAPHAEL SANTIAGO

DONT WHITEWASH MAIA ROBERTS

DONT WHITEWASH LILY CHEN

DONT WHITEWASH ALINE PENHALLOW

DONT WHITEWASH