So...I know people really DONT like Cassandra Clair and her books but in case anyone DOES there is a canon bisexual character in Lady Midnight and a canon autistic character and of course in her shadow hunter series we have. Canon pansexual and gay character
Hello anon! Those are very valid things, so to my followers, these series do exist, and they do have representation - I don’t want to act like they don’t.
However while I haven’t read Lady Midnight, I have read Shadowhunters, and there are many problematic aspects to CC and her books, which is why I personally cannot support her book series. Obviously I cannot stop anyone from reading her books - especially if they find representation in there - but I don’t want to pretend like I support the books, and I do want to give people warnings before they read the series:
Magnus and Alec are canon bi & gay characters (not pansexual, as the ask says, but we’ll get to that in a second). However, Alec was consistently biphobic to his boyfriend, expressing distaste that Magnus dated females before, and claiming, “Is there anything you aren’t into?” with disgust. Magnus is the second character to be slut shamed - the first being Izzy, who is also shamed for her clothes (and her TV counterpart was also slammed by CC, who has tweeted disrespectful things about the show in general).
Here’s a post that puts in the problems with Malec (and also compares it to the show).
The character of Magnus Bane is bisexual in the books; however, Cassandra Clare tweeted that she thinks he’s pansexual but currently identifies as bi (the question was if he would date a nb person, and when asked if that would make him pan instead of bi, she stated “yes”, and as a bi woman that is frustrating, because bisexual people can be attracted to non-binary people).
She does this to another character - Raphael is asexual purely through “Word of God” (and while this blog does accept Word of God as canon, and Raphael’s situation is fine, it can be problematic in situations like Magnus’s where a sexuality is changed by the author after the fact, even though he had been bisexual in the entire book series).
*SPOILER ALERT* Raphael (one of the few POC characters in the books, and asexual from CC’s own word) gets killed off.
Major coddling of the abusive character Jordan - he often gets more sympathy than Maia, the one he abused.
Jace himself, who has been abused, can be extremely rude and prejudiced towards others.
There’s also emotional abuse between him and Clary after a while and it can be triggering for people to read.
While it does not relate to representation, there are reports that CC plagiarized her books.
Besides plagiarism, those are the issues that relate to CC’s Shadowhunter series that relate to representation, and there are more that go beyond that. I won’t ever stop someone from reading the books or even submitting the characters from the books (as long as they mention the problems in the “issues” section), because yes, there is representation. Maia and Jace are abuse survivors, Alec is gay, Raphael is asexual, Magnus is bisexual. However, there is a difference between having diverse characters and actually treating them - and by extension, the audience who relates to them - well.