In celebration of I wrote a Thing for the first time since 2025 here, have a snippet from (the second draft of) the next Immortal Instruments installment!
“Well,” Clary can’t help but breathe, “you sure know your stats.”
“Yeah, there’s a project from the Beijing and Moscow Institute to digitalise and mutualize our information so they’re accessible to every other Institute at once, and I’m part of the team that sorts through what gets compiled and makes it searchable… Basically I do a lot of metadata organization, tagging books, all that stuff. It’s a bit grueling, but it’s already helped solve some tough cases. Part of the reason Mama retired from helming our Institute this year is so she can help with the project full time—that’s why she and Baba are in Istanbul with our brother right now. Mama’s attending committee meetings to decide how they’re going to handle the database—I lost you.”
There’s not really any room to deny it, so Clary doesn’t even try. She’s never really gotten into computers beyond what she needed to host her art, and so far her blog has been more than enough for it. The whole notion of data archiving is nothing she usually thinks about… Izzy sounds passionate about it though, so Clary decides she’ll try and ask more questions about it next time they broach the topic. Right now, she wants to get back to the original topic:
“So how do you become parabatai with someone? Or parabati, I guess.”
“Oh, there’s a special rune for that,” Izzy says, her shrug immediately giving way to a look of fond exasperation. “Jace will happily show you his if you ask. He’s very proud of it. I remember when he got better after he got it—”
The whisp of affection that had started to grow in Clary’s chest over the concept of parabati freezes.
“What do you mean, he got better? Does it hurt to get?”
“Yeah? I mean, I assumed so—I was only five when they did it so I don’t have all the details, but I remember they were both in the infirmary for a while, after… But I don’t know, maybe it was just Alec who didn’t take it too well.”
Right. Because Alec, as they all found out less than a day ago, would have been… What, ten? Less than that, when Izzy was five? Which means he would have been at most five years out from when men whose faces had been peeled off barged in on his mind and metaphorically ransacked the place for information he didn’t even have. Maybe Clary would have needed time off, too. She suppresses a shiver, then tries to redirect the topic:
“So why don’t they need parabati in Idris? Do the demons just not go there?”
hello!!! so a couple of weeks ago i saw someone posting on twitter that they couldn't believe tsc fan's willingness to love and adore male characters while disregarding the female ones and my istant thought was: fork found in the kitchen! blame the author for that. the same thing happens with manga + anime fans because the girls portrayed in those media come off as flat and shallow while the boys have layered personalities, goals or something that makes you love and feel for them. why would someone willingly choose, let's say, tessa over will when she's an unexplored character who got overshadowed by the male deuteragonist? some fans are quick to resort to accusation of misogyny when in reality they should point their fingers at the author first. for some there is truly a misogyny problem at the root of it all but i'd say that for the large part is clare's fault for not exploring her female characters and underusing them. take emma for example: she's supposed to be the female lead, the heroine, but in the end she got lost in all of the blackthorn drama and all of the romantic relationships (she truly had a case of enmeshment with her parabatai). same goes for clary and tessa. cordelia got a chance to shine more but again, there were too many love stories to focus properly on her arc
Helloo! Fork found in the kitchen, indeed. Though anime and manga are different beasts in their own context to discuss, it's notable that when female characters are portrayed as multifaceted or just in any way better in the manga, somehow the anime adaptation comes along and removes scenes or character traits and/or changes important details about the character, and so ruins that original portrayal completely just because. Orihime in Bleach and Sakura in Naruto as major examples.
It’s unfortunate but comical that Clare herself as well resorts to accusing readers of misogyny when they are unable to connect to her female characters that she constantly utilizes just to observe and explore the male characters and obsess over their looks and the attraction they have. What is Clary’s identity as Morgenstern and Fairchild to Jace’s ever-going identity crisis (and obsessing over his looks)? What is Tessa’s identity as a Downworlder surrounded by the supremacist Nephilim when Will needs constant coddling and rescuing from his self-destruction (and also obsessing over)? What is Emma’s journey from loss to revenge to healing when Julian’s problems and Blackthorn family issues eventually overshadow her and take over her story (and also her obsessing over Julian)?
Clare seems barely interested in her own heroines, at least nowhere near with the equal intensity as their romantic male counterparts, but I do believe she thinks she is writing them deeper than apparently some readers are able to comprehend as her go to reason for people disliking her main female characters is always misogyny. As if her very lacking capabilities as an author have not caused readers to find her heroines vapid, aimless, soulless, and sometimes even mean-spirited husks. Before I got to the end of your message, I thought too that Cordelia is somewhat an outlies as she does in some ways escape that mold—she outshines James every time. Outshining James is not difficult, though, as he is as exciting as raisins in cookies, and sometimes it seems that Clare thinks giving more limelight to her heroine means describing her curves and breasts to a disturbing degree.
What this reminded me of is when I wrote this post on Sebastian’s character, I read a discussion thread about him. A similar thought process of completely removing the responsibility of the author from the equation repeated itself there. One of the commenters was angry at other readers for creating a dumb narrative, not understanding the rules of his demon blood or his complexity as a character and thus breaking the lore, when this entire impression is solely based on Clare’s own contradictory portrayal of the character and any rules surrounding him. It’s just as unfortunate but comical to ascribe no blame to the one creating and writing this and blame readers for being dumb for not understanding when the entire narrative hasn’t seen an intelligent day in its existence.
I’ve previously said that on paper the heroines are badasses, their abilities exceeding those of the physical prowess of the main male characters, and thus it’s easy for Clare to deflect the criticism on the subject. Clare just seems to forget that concepts (Clary’s Rune powers, Tessa’s shapeshifting and maybe magic, Emma and Cordelia being chosen by Cortana and their own skills with the sword) are all fine and dandy but mean nothing if they don’t matter in terms of the narrative you create. Like, any of these heroines can be as powerful as you make them, technically over-exceed anything the male characters would be capable of, but when you treat them as lesser, underuse them, ignore their inner lives, motivations, goals, or anything that makes them actualized and well-rounded characters—what do their powers then matter?
