Monday 23 April 2018

City of Ashes Chapter 12: there was some wine involved

So I might have got a bit tipsy and decided to write (some) of this recap--maybe it'll make me funny? Maybe it'll just make it more difficult to edit, who knows!




Chapter 12 actually begins with Simon's POV! I'm too drunk and also don't care enough about this fucking series to go check if the POV shift has happened before (I feel like it never has), so this is an interesting choice. I'm gonna bet you one million dollars it's so Simon can angst about how beautiful he finds Clary and how much Jace and Clary are in lurve~

Don't take that bet, you're 100% going to lose.

Often he forgot how small she was, how light-boned and fragile, but at times like this—times when he wanted to put his arms around her—he was restrained by the thought that holding her too hard might hurt her, especially now when he no longer knew his own strength.
Jace, he knew, didn’t feel that way. Simon had watched with a sick feeling in his stomach, unable to look away, as Jace had taken Clary in his arms and kissed her with such force Simon had thought one or the both of them might shatter. He’d held her as if he wanted to crush her into himself, as if he could fold the two of them into one person.



I feel like I've already ranted at length about why I hate the whole male protags viewing the female lvoe interest as fragile and small and fucking light-boned but it keeps happening? The thing that is so frustrating about it is that we (and by 'we' I mean female writers) obviously internalise these tropes, because I used to write fiction this way! It's like we have to have the male protagonist reassure the reader that despite our heroine being a strong character (which, for the purposes of this argument, I'll allow this descriptor to be used for Clary), she's still just a Small Fragile Girl who Needs Protection which means she's allowed to be in a relationship--which is fucked up

I'm sure I can speak for a lot of taller and bigger girls when I say how harmful that is to everyone who doesn't fit into that defintion--the notion that inspiring a man's desire to protect you is what ultimately makes you desireable as a woman and will help you find a relationship is nothing new, but that it's being repackaged as this 'rah-rah fake-feminist' bullshit is, and that's harmful! Quite frankly, Simon's opinion about Clary and how 'fragile' she is should serve to immediately turn the reader away from him, because I'm sorry, I don't care how much that character ~loves~ the main character, you've just told me as a reader that he doesn't fucking respect her as an equal.

This is followed by

“Simon.” Her voice brought him back down to earth. “Simon, are you listening to me?”
“What? Yes, I am. Of course.” He leaned against the sink, trying to look as if he’d been paying attention.
Sorry, Clary, he wasn't; he was too busy thinking about how much he wants to bone you and how mad he is that you want to bone your brother.



This whole chapter seems to be so the reader can understand the changes Simon is going through which is great except... this isn't his story. I'm not reading this book because Simon is the protagonist, and I frankly don't really care about his new Edward Cullen superpowers--this didn't really warrant a POV-shift at all. If CC had really wanted to tell us this, she could have just had Clary ask Simon how things were different for him now that he had changed.

BUT WHAT DO I KNOW, RIGHT?

Clary asks Simon to call Jace and let him know that Maia (remember, she's in this story now for some inexplicable reason) has been injured, because apparently she can't bring herself to call him. But of course, she has Simon use her phone, so we get this nauseating exchange (and yes I'm copying it in full so you can roll your eyes as hard as me):

“Clary,” he said, startling Simon until he realized that of course Clary’s name would have popped up on Jace’s phone. “Clary, are you all right?”
Simon hesitated. There was a tone in Jace’s voice he’d never heard before, an anxious concern devoid of sarcasm or defense. Was that how he spoke to Clary when they were alone? 
Almost like people are different around someone they have an emotional attachment to or something, right?

“Clary.” Jace again. “I thought you were avoiding me—”
A flash of irritation shot through Simon. You’re her brother, he wanted to shout down the phone line, that’s all. You don’t own her. You’ve got no right to sound so—so—
Brokenhearted. That was the word. Though he’d never thought of Jace as having a heart to break.

OKAY, SO, LISTEN: I kind of agree with Simon, but I hate that CC is forcing me to. The reason I'm having a hard time with this is that this is not coming from a place of anger that Jace has hurt someone he (Simon) loves--it's from anger that Clary is in love with someone that isn't him; the fact that Jace is her brother (I cannot believe I have typed this sentence so many times) is secondary to him. That's why CC having Simon supposedly voice what the reader is meant to be thinking (which is what I think she might have been intending here) rings so false: Simon does not give a damn that Jace loves Clary; Simon only cares that Clary seems to be reciprocating that affection.

Also, bit rich to have Simon think "you don't own her" when he has literally all but peed on Clary to mark her as his territory.

They have a conversation about whose dick is bigger (okay, not really, but that's the subtext of the exchange) which is completely unremarkable except for terrible prose:

Jace’s voice was crisp and cool as autumn leaves
and

Jace’s voice was still crisp and cool but with an edge to it now, autumn leaves frosted with a sheen of hard ice.
Because that's not the same thing at all.


In the next room, Maia is still getting healed or whatever (because why pay attention to that when we have Clary and Simon's twu luv~ to focus on) and they go into the living room where we discover that werewolves and vampires hate each other because of some innate demon energies--no, I am not fucking making this up:

"The demon energies change us, make us different—you can call it a sickness or whatever you want, but the demons who created vampires and the demons who created werewolves came from species who were at war with each other. They hated each other, so it’s in our blood to hate each other too. We can’t help it."

 Did I mention that Maia attacked Simon because of this and Clary somehow knew how to throw a knife so well that she could pin Maia's sleeve to the couch to stop this attack? Because that happened. We haven't had any explanation as to why Clary is suddenly this skilled Shadowhunter, she just is, now, and why? Because seeing her transformation from Mundane to Shadowhunter is apparently less interesting than watching her fall in love with her brother and lead along her sad vampire boyfriend.

WHY ARE WE DEDICATING SO MUCH TIME TO THIS WHEN THE PLOT IS RIGHT THERE

Jace, Magnus, and Alec arrive (y'all, where's Isabelle? Why couldn't she have come instead of Jace) and mention that Luke went outside to move the truck and hasn't returned in a while, so Jace goes out to check on him and Clary volunteers to come with him. I'd copy the argument they have about her not coming along but honestly it's the same one they have every fucking time so I'm not gonna bother.

Though it does give us this:

“At least I’m not wasting my time standing here flirting while we don’t know what’s happened to Luke.” [Simon] gestured for her to move aside from the door.
Simon, PLEASE, sometimes I love you so much but mostly you're the absolute worst.

Turns out Luke is missing (the truck is idling, there's 'demonic action' that Jace can somehow sense because he's a human EMF reader now apparently), and then they realise that he's actually been attacked by demons not far from the house and has probably been screaming this whole time.

Let me repeat that: while this whole rest of the chapter above has been happening, Simon and Clary angsting over Jace, Jace and Clary flirting, arguments about who is stronger than whom, all of that... Luke has been outside being eaten alive by these things.

Also there's a fight where Clary somehow, again, just knows how to wield a seraph blade and scares the demon away with her specialness once she's wielding it.

And again, I am not making this up:
To her surprise, the demon skittered backward, tentacles waving, almost as if it were—but this wasn’t possible—afraid of her.
[ ... ]
“What—happened?” [Jace] demanded between gasps for breath.

“I don’t know,” Clary admitted. “It came at me—I tried to fight it off but it was too fast—and then it just left. Like it saw something that scared it.”
Let me explain something about writing here: when you've given the reader no explanation as to why the protagonist is strong all of a sudden (this is book two, remember), and you've also made her inexplicably amazing at doing whatever magical thing she's been chosen for, you're killing your story's suspense. What I mean by that is, I don't know how Clary is going to survive any of these situations because I have no idea where her strength or skill is coming from, but I know she has to survive because these books are about her, which means you now have a protagonist that can do anything, which means I'm not worried that she's somehow going to die in any of these battles. Hell, I'm barely worried she'll get injured because I have no scope of her skill or what she can do, so I can't even imagine those things; I essentially have to go through every fight scene with Clary knowing she'll survive because she's 'special', and that is so boring.

Also, when did we shift back into Clary's POV? Because that happened, which just proves we only had Simon's because CC wanted us to hear about how 'fragile' Clary is.

This is another fanfiction vestige, by the way; it's a pretty common trope and something we all used to do when we were dumb pre-teen writers but we weren't publishing novels with this in it.

In case you were worried about Luke, don't: Magnus is there to heal everyone (how? Who the fuck cares! Why would we put that into the story?) and effectively quash any worries that people might die, so instead we can have Jace out his brother to a roomful of people:
No,” he said now, “but you are the only warlock we know who happens to be dating a friend of ours.”
For a moment everyone stared at him—Alec in sheer horror, Magnus in astonished anger, and Clary and Simon in surprise. It was Alec who spoke first, his voice shaking. “Why would you say something like that?”


You guys, I'm so tired. Poor Alec has been outed against his will like three times in this series already--can he just have some happiness, please? The fact that this gets treated like such a non-issue and not a learning opportunity (not that it should exist for that reason, either) for any of the main characters is baffling, and it is just so... exhausting.

Luke wakes up, and that whole exchange up there is swept under the rug so we can focus on what CC clearly views as the 'real' romance in the story: Clary and Jace. Or, more specifically, the fact that Simon is pining after Clary and Clary is pining after (her brother) Jace. We have two interactions between this love triangle that happen so quickly I want to sue CC for whiplash:
I don’t hate you, Jace.”
“I don’t hate you, either.”
She looked up at him, relieved. “I’m glad to hear that—”
“I wish I could hate you,” he said. His voice was light, his mouth curved in an unconcerned half smile, his eyes sick with misery. “I want to hate you. I try to hate you. It would be so much easier if I did hate you. Sometimes I think I do hate you and then I see you and I—”
And then Simon interrupts them, tells Clary he's leaving before sunrise, and we get this one:
“But I get the feeling you’d rather pine over someone you can never possibly be with than try being with someone you can.”
There was no point pretending. “Just give me time,” she said. “I just need some time to get over—to get over it all.”
“You’re not going to tell me I’m wrong, are you?” he said. His eyes looked very wide and dark in the dim porch light. “Not this time.”
“Not this time. I’m sorry.”
DOESN'T ANYBODY CARE THAT TWO PEOPLE ALMOST JUST DIED? WHAT IS HAPPENING IN THIS NOVEL?

actual footage of me doing this recap right now

I know that this novel is plagiarised and everything, but don't you think we could at least have a compelling plot in here somewhere? It's a goddamn feat to plagiarise so many interesting stories and end up with... this.

Unbelievable.

PS: editing this while sober in the light of day was a trip.

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