Two updates in less than a week and a half?! It’s like I’m Father Christmas or something.
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| this is like the most obscure friends reference ever but I have faith SOME OF YOU WILL GET IT. |
It’s Fairy’s birthday and Jace is taking her on a midnight picnic in the greenhouses while Simon slumbers blissfully unaware in Fairy’s bed.
When Jace opened the greenhouse door, the scent hit Clary, soft as the padded blow of a cat’s paw
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| cats are the weirdest/best things in the world |
Does CC actually own a cat? Because I do and ‘soft’ is not something I would use to describe a cat’s paw. This is the kind of stuff I wrote when I was 13 and trying to figure out new ways to write metaphors or similes.
Sidenote: Why does this kind of stuff always take place at midnight? Don’t our protagonists ever get to sleep? Why must you torture your characters like this!?
“Wow.” She turned slowly, taking it in. “It’s so beautiful here at night.”
“But during the day it’s fucking ugly as sin—nature and sunshine? Ugh, disgusting.”
Jace grinned. “And we have the place to ourselves. Alec and Isabelle hate it up here. They have allergies.”
Well isn’t that just convenient. Also, they probably won’t come upstairs considering it’s like midnight.
“You just need to know how to kill things?”
He looked up at her and smiled. He looked like a fair-haired angel from a Rembrandt painting, except for that devilish mouth. “That’s right.”
THIS IS AN ACTUAL SENTENCE IN THIS NOVEL. We have reached peak unaware-ness of how characters are coming across. Why the hell would you put the description of a character’s appeal right next to him admitting that he’s great at killing stuff and that’s all he needs to know? I know it’s a ‘joke’, but it’s also really not, because his job is essentially hunting things, so basically we’re just laughing at the fact that this guy kills things but is also super gorgeous.
Great characterisation.
From one of the innumerable pockets inside his jacket, Jace produced a bone-handled knife that looked capable of disemboweling a grizzly. He set to work on the apples, carving them into meticulous eighths.
THIS SOUNDS LIKE THE WORST PICNIC IN THE WORLD. I can’t stop laughing at just how awkward this is—why do I need to know how he cut the apple into sections? Did you think I was just going to assume that if you wrote “He cut the apple with the knife” or something to that effect I would assume that he hacked at it willy-nilly?
The apple tasted green
They start talking about birthdays and we find out that Jace had every desire granted to him on his:
“Well, when I was five, I wanted to take a bath in spaghetti.”
“But he didn’t let you, right?”
“No, that’s the thing. He did. He said it wasn’t expensive, and why not if that was
what I wanted? He had the servants full a bath with boiling water and pasta, and when
it cooled down …” He shrugged. “I took a bath in it.”
Is this real life? Is this actually happening instead of plot right now? I’m laughing but I might also be crying.
He met her look steadily. “The first time I saw Alec,” he said, “when I was ten years
old, that was the first time I’d ever met another child my own age. The first time I had a
friend.”
This is a huge reveal of abuse in Jace’s past (seriously, what kind of parent alienates their kid from everyone their own age) but I feel pretty comfortable saying this is the only time it’ll be brought up and Fairy will somehow make it about herself.
They talk some more and discuss their families (I wish it could say it was interesting or things I hadn’t heard before but... alas...) and then midnight hits and it’s officially Fairy’s birthday. Apparently he brought her to the greenhouse to see this like, flowering shrub that blooms at midnight only, and then he gives her a goddamn rock:
He dug into his pocket and brought out something, which he pressed into her hand. It was a gray stone, slightly uneven, worn to smoothness in spots.
“Huh,” said Clary, turning it over in her fingers. “You know, when most girls say they
want a big rock, they don’t mean, you know, literally a big rock.”
It’s a rune, and it’s also a nice stand-in for a Dumbledore quote:
“It will bring you light,” said Jace, “even among the darkest shadows of this world and others.”
They do have a cute little exchange here that I honestly think is the right way about dropping little anecdotes into the novel:
“Maybe. Although I doubt most Shadowhunters get a tattoo of Donatello from the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on their left shoulder.”
Jace looked baffled. “You wanted a turtle on your shoulder?”
“I wanted to cover my chicken pox scar.” She pulled the strap of the tank top aside slightly, showing the star-shaped white mark at the top of her shoulder. “See?”
This? This is cute, creates a little bit of intimacy, and tells me something about the protagonist without shoving it down my throat. It’s going so well....
The next words tumbled out of her mouth without any volition on her part. “Have you and Isabelle ever—dated?”
“She hates me,” observed Clary.
“No, she doesn’t,” he said, to her surprise. “You just make her nervous, because she’s always been the only girl in a crowd of adoring boys, and now she isn’t anymore.”
“But she’s so beautiful.”
“So are you,” said Jace, “and very different from how she is, and she can’t help but notice that. She’s always wanted to be small and delicate, you know. She hates being taller than most boys.”
WHY CAN’T I HAVE ONE FEMALE CHARACTER THAT ISN’T DEFINED AND UNDERMINED BY THE MALE CHARACTERS IN THE NOVEL. WHY. WHY DO YOU HATE HAVING NICE THINGS, CC.
Fairy freaks out over the fact that he called her beautiful, which is fair I suppose, if someone I had a crush on when I was 17 called me that I would flip out, too. They start to leave the greenhouse and then this really awkward bit of writing happens:
The moon, directly overhead now, lit everything nearly to daylight brightness. In between one step and another she saw a white spark struck off something on the floor: It was the knife Jace had been using to cut apples, lying on its side. She jerked hastily back to avoid stepping on it, and her shoulder bumped his—he put a hand out to steady her, just as she turned to apologize, and then she was somehow in the circle of his arm and he was kissing her.
???
Why would you jump back? How cramped is everything in this greenhouse? If it’s a knife isn’t it flat/couldn’t you step to the side and avoid it? How big is this knife that you can’t step around it or stop in your tracks and pick it up? Doesn't Jace know proper knife safety since he's been using them since like fucking birth?
Of course, we get a paragraph description of their first kiss, filled with gems like:
She could [ ... ] taste the sweetness of apples still on his mouth.
Not the green-ness of those apples, Fairy?
She wound her hands into his hair, as she’d wanted to do since the first time she’d seen him.
FINALLY she gets to touch his hair well thank God for that!
They leave the greenhouses and get back to her room and start kissing in front of her door so I bet nothing else is gonna happen here and no one is gonna catch them nope no sirree!
He bent to kiss her, cupping her face with his free hand. Their lips touched, lightly at first, and then with a stronger pressure. It was at precisely that moment that Simon threw open the bedroom door and stepped out into the hall.
WELL COLOUR-ME-SHOCKED. GOSH DANGIT, NEVER SAW THAT ONE COMING.
Clary couldn’t think of a thing to say. Why hadn’t it occurred to her that this might happen?
Because your author hasn’t given you a single bit of brains or autonomy and you’re a sad self-insert character?
The answer was as simple as it was awful: She had forgotten about Simon completely.
Forgot About Dre: 37845789290484783
So both of the guys are mad at her now—Simon because she was kissing Jace, and Jace because Simon was in her bed? Which... Jace why, she was with you the whole time it’s not like anything happened. But of course he has to be stoic and manly (translation: a total fucking dick that any self-respecting person would punch in the jaw) so that our heartstrings are tugged:
“Maybe you should have thought about that before you kissed me,” he said.
She looked at him incredulously. “I kissed you?”
He looked at her with glittering malice. “Don’t worry,” he said, “it wasn’t that memorable for me, either.”
Sidenote: I’m totally stealing the bandname Glittering Malice because it’s just used way too much in everything.
Her sketchpad, open to the drawing she’d been doing, the one of Jace with angel wings. “Nice,” he said. “All those Tisch classes must be paying off.”
Normally, Clary would have told him off for looking into her sketchpad, but now wasn’t the time. “Simon, look—”
FAIRY WHY ARE YOU NOT TELLING PEOPLE OFF FOR SNOOPING THROUGH YOUR THINGS JUST BECAUSE SIMON IS UPSET DOES NOT MEAN IT’S OKAY THAT HE’S DOING THIS I JUST—
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“Details,” said Simon dismissively. “He’s an asshole. I thought you were better than that.”
Clary’s temper flared. “Oh, and now you’re pulling a high-and-mighty trip on me?” she snapped. “You’re the one who was going to ask the girl with the most ‘rockin’ bod’ to the Fall Fling.” She mimicked Eric’s lazy tone. Simon’s mouth thinned out angrily. “So what if Jace is a jerk sometimes? You’re not my brother; you’re not my dad; you don’t have to like him. I’ve never liked any of your girlfriends, but at least I’ve had the decency to keep it to myself.”
Possibly the only time I will cheer Fairy on, now let’s hope she doesn’t fuck it up.
“I was trying to make you jealous!” Simon screamed, right back. His hands were fists at his sides. “You’re so stupid, Clary. You’re so stupid, can’t you see anything?”
I mean... Simon, have you been following this whole series because no, no she can’t.
“Because,” he said, so bitterly that it shocked her, “I’ve been in love with you for ten years, so I thought it seemed like time to find out whether you felt the same about me. Which, I guess, you don’t.”
He might as well have kicked her in the stomach. She couldn’t speak; the air had been sucked out of her lungs.
HOW IS THIS NEWS TO YOU. I don’t even wanna touch on this I can’t believe how obtuse Fairy is being.
Also, using people to make other people jealous is gross and Simon, you’re officially dead to me.
Fairy has a weird (unimportant) little breakdown, and then discovers that she can make things come to life out of her drawing if she draws a rune next to them? I think, I’m not sure.
If it turns out that her special power is drawing things I’m officially done with this novel (just kidding I’ll always be back for more).
Anyway, as usual, the only thing that happened in this chapter is that Jace kissed Fairy, and Simon saw it and confessed something we all saw coming, and that was it.
But it was 9 pages; I’m starting to think CC might just be a regular college student since she’s so good at getting a high word count out of fuck-all.
I’m officially 101 pages from the end! We’re so close, guys!
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