Cassie Clare on Tumblr
Well, it’s not Will’s birthday, but it is the anniversary of the day he died…which is extremely sad! But one of the wonderful things about fictional characters, is that they live forever on the pages and in our hearts — we can always pick up the book they’re in and find them there, just the way they always were. So here’s a birthday portrait of Will, by Cassandra Jean, from the tenth anniversary edition of Clockwork Angel — coming in November!
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.
June snippet!
A bit of an Anna excerpt from Chain of Gold for Pride month! I do love Anna. (I looked for a Anna and Ariadne excerpt, but those are all VERY SPOILERY so will have to wait!)
Chain of Gold:
“Good work, Cordelia,” said Anna, swinging her legs off the edge of the settee. “Arabella, how are the drinks coming on?”
Cordelia turned to see a faerie woman with tumbling blue and green hair standing by a sideboard at the far end of the room. Her hands waved in midair like fronds in water, unstoppering decanters and crystal vials full of red liquid, and busily pouring them into a variety of goblets and flutes.
“Just ready, darling!” Arabella said, and walked over to distribute drinks. Matthew accepted a drink with alacrity. Cordelia noticed that Arabella walked with a rocking, unsteady gait, as if she was a sailor unaccustomed to treading on the land.
When Arabella gave Anna her drink, Anna pulled Arabella into her lap. Arabella giggled, kicking up her French heels. Her long legs were shockingly bare, and covered in a faint iridescent pattern of scales. They flashed in the golden light like a rainbow.
A mermaid. So this was Hypatia’s “friend from the seaside.” They were rarely seen on land, since their human legs caused them pain to walk on.
Arabella noticed Cordelia’s gaze and shrugged, shoulders moving fluidly beneath her heavy masses of blue and green hair. “I have not been on land for many years. The last time I visited this city, the Downworlders and Shadowhunters were trying to form the Accords. I was not much impressed with Nephilim then, and I have not been fond of Shadowhunters since. Still, exceptions can be made.”
Before the Accords were formed. The faerie woman had not been on the land for more than thirty years.
Arabella leaned into Anna as she spoke, and Anna’s scarred fingers drifted gently though the waves of the mermaid’s hair. Tiny fish, small as sparks from a fire and bright blue, stirred when disturbed and leaped from strand to strand chasing Anna’s graceful movements.
“My lovely, your hair is like a beautiful stream,” murmured Anna. “Because there are fish in it.”
Arabella blushed. Apparently Anna could seduce multiple people in one evening ..
Lara Pulver