Me again. So, I come clean now – I’ve been following some YA authors on Tumblr recently (by which I mean just reading through their archives because I am NOT going to give in to the Tumblr craze), and it’s been an interesting experience. They’re all really sweet, smart people and write interesting and thought-provoking things and reblog lovely pictures. Some of them are people whose books I’ve read and liked (Leigh Bardugo), or read and disliked (Veronica Roth), or not read at all (yet) (Sarah Rees Brennan). Through these Tumblrs I’ve come across other YA authors who are friends and friends-of-friends, Beth Revis (don’t get me started on Across The Universe. Let me just say that if I had access to this blog while reading it, I wouldn’t be ripping into City of Bones.), Maureen Johnson, and, yes, Cassandra Clare.
One of the recurring reblogs is this piece by an anonymous fan who finds Clary annoying, and Clare’s response. Clare’s response is measured and sensible, I’m not going to say it isn’t. It’s good, and feminist, and clear. And yet. Something about it does rub me wrong. Annoyingly (oh noes) I found a good counter-response detailing exactly what someone finds problematic about Clary’s (and Jace’s, actually) character, but it seems to have vanished from the internet.
I guess I don’t like to have my opinions squashed by “It’s just your internalised misogyny”? (Wow that’s totally just what someone with internalised misogyny would feel!) Because then I feel like I have to justify myself (but I like Isabelle! and I don’t like Jace! and I write female characters!) and you know, none of those things count because so much about Clary is not what I love in a main character. Her willingness to believe the worst of Luke after a single sentence that he said which was obviously a lie to keep him safe in a dangerous situation, her likening Madame Dorothea’s mother to a mule right in front of her, the way she just ignores everyone around her when they’re trying to have a conversation/help her for ages at a time (hey, I used to be super dreamy too! Then I learned – learned – how to pay attention to people other than myself!). All of this outweighs for me the fact that oh yeah that one time she threw what she thought was a magical mobile phone at a demon and it happened to kill it. Sorry.
I’m not going to say “I hate some male characters too!” even though I cannot stand Wolverine because my god it is NOT HARD to work in a team for like TEN MINUTES and not be a raging jerk and ruin everything, because it doesn’t make a difference, and really, I just want to talk about this book. I like to critique the things I love as well as the things I don’t love. In the one case it helps me identify what I didn’t like, and in the other, sometimes there are parts of things I love that aren’t perfect, or I would have done differently. I think these conversations are worth having, always.
I don’t really know where I was going with this. Authors having Tumblrs and interacting with audiences adds another complicated layer to the act of reading, I guess. I don’t want to let my liking of someone as a person (or as a perception of a person through social media) cloud my reading of their books. Basically I’m making things hard for myself. But I just wanted to let you know that I’m not against freedom or love or justice or anything. I don’t even have any readers, so if I was, I’d be doing a terrible job.
But anyway, let’s learn about THE CIRCLE AND THE BROTHERHOOD!
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