i think the narrative should explore the fact that clary is valentine’s daughter.
by which i mean – clary is dangerously charismatic. even alec, who hated her and has been forced to pick up after her, becomes close to her in the end. clary has stomped on every tradition and rule he was raised with, endangered countless lives – but still in the end he forgives, thanks her for saving isabelle’s life when she’s the one who endangered it.
maybe it is jocelyn’s daughter that saves the little mage child. but it is valentines daughter that went marching to magnus’s in the first place. jocelyn went to magnus when she was ready to hide – clary went to him when she was ready to fight. and when she brings the vampires and werewolves together – that type of leadership and manipulation is valentine. jocelyn helped save the downworlders by running from valentine and stealing the cup – clary doesn’t run. from the beginning she doesn’t run.
she fights, but not alone. she draws people to her, like moths to a flame. even meliorn is impressed by her, grants her a favor he’s granted no other. she negotiates with vampires, with simon’s help yes, but on her own.
and speaking of simon – valentine turned his best friend into a werewolf, and clary turned hers into a vampire. granted he was trying to kill luke and clary was trying to save simon, but still. jocelyn left luke wounded in a barn to make his choice, but clary made simon’s choice for him.
valentine and clary act – jocelyn only ever reacts. jocelyn may be a fighter, but she’s not a leader. she’s a soldier. luke is a soldier. but valentine and clary are smart enough and charming enough and ruthless enough to be generals. clary is always convinced she’s doing the right thing – even when lives are in danger and people are getting hurt she thinks she’s making the best choice for everyone. and she can usually convince most of everyone that she’s right. this is dangerous.
she’s not the same kind of leader that valentine is now. valentine is hard and violent and makes you walk over coals for his approval. but once upon a time he did what clary did – was kind and charismatic and told people that he knew what was right, that by listening to him they would be saving the world. clary has been in this world a couple of months and already she draws her inner circle around her, already she has allies that no one else has ever had before.
people are right to be wary of clary for being valentine’s daughter, but not for the reasons they think. clary will die before she joins her father, but she has the potential to succeed where her father failed. clary doesn’t like the clave, doesn’t agree with the clave, and she is valentine’s daughter more than she is jocelyns. those who knew valentine must see all his best and most terrifying qualities shining out in her. she may succeed where her father failed, and if she decides the clave is doing more harm than good – what’s to stop her in leading her allies in tearing it to the ground?
she is joan of arc, she is julias caesar. people believe in her, are willing to fight and die with their worst enemies for her, break oaths to their queen for her.
the only way to get rid of people like her is to stab her 52 times in the senate or burn her in a holy fire. but then she becomes a martyr and then shes more dangerous dead than alive.
there is someone in the clave who’s seeing clary and is seething, panicking, because this little girl is her father’s daughter, and she has the potential to amass an army that will destroy them all.
clary is valentine’s daughter.
her enemies should fear her – including valentine himself.
Not only did Rick Riordan make one of his most popular, biggest heartthrob characters gay, but now he’s casually given him a boyfriend, as if it ain’t no thing at all for a character in a middle-grade novel to be in a same-sex relationship (because of course it isn’t)?
And BESIDES EVEN THAT, he’s also openly and nonchalantly addressing Apollo’s mythological bisexuality and referring to his male partner Hyacinthus as the love of his life??
And then this beautiful paragraph: “Perhaps you are wondering how I felt seeing [Will] with a boyfriend rather than a girlfriend. If that’s the case, PLEASE. We gods are not hung up about such things.” So basically standing up to everyone who protested Nico with that oh-you-can’t-put-that-in-a-children’s-book shit and saying, as us military cadet folks say “I have three words for you: GET. OVER. IT.”
Rick Riordan, you are the author us gay geek kids deserve. Thank Olympus for your existence.
What I really really want is for Jack Zimmermann to be doing PR and meeting fans and there’s a person in line who is just vibrating in excitement.
Jack sees them down a few people back in the line and mentally starts preparing himself for this encounter (he dealt with Chowder for a year, he can do this, right?)
So when the person gets to the front of the line, Jack smiles his media smile, all big and fake, but inviting and the person is all, “OH MY GOD! YOU’RE JACK ZIMMERMANN!”
and Jack starts to say something, but– “OH MY GOD. YOU KNOW ERIC BITTLE!
And Jack has an internal freak out, because random person knows my boyfriend, what do i do? WHAT DO I DO?
And person is all, “CAN YOU GIVE ERIC BITTLE THIS ROLLING PIN? Please? I won my county fair pie baking contest from watching his vlog and he’s amazing and my hero and omg!” *breaks into tears because they met someone who’s met their fav* and is basically #nochill
All the other Falconer’s are looking at the scene like, wtf is even happening right now? Why is there a rolling pin and a crying person in front of Zimmermann? (Tater went to the bathroom or something)
(or alternately, he’s like, Zimmboni? Why do you know so many bakers, your gf, this eric bittle? and then, in the back of his head, he’s all, oh. maybe its just one person?” The seed has been planted.)
(Basically, I want Tater to figure it out and be super supportive. But, I digress.)
Jack, meanwhile cannot keep the largest, most genuine grin off of his face because this is so adorable, Bitty has a FAN. *Heart eyes*
so then he’s all, yeah, I know Bittle. I talked to him last week. (*sweats* don’t be too obvious jack. It was really 20 minutes ago.)
So Jack takes the rolling pin and the person just keeps thanking him profusely and is so gracious that Jack asks if they’re on twitter.
Imagine twitter-inept Jack Zimmermann painstakingly taking down their twitter info so he can give it to Bitty, because he knows that Bitty will want it.
or BETTER YET, Bitty (and the rest of SMH) will be at the game and Jack tells a manager or whoever to put this really cool person on the guest list for after the game because, damn it, Bitty needs to be appreciated, but Jack wants to see it!
Also, this is grade A chirp material, and Jack Zimmermann is a lot of things, but willing to pass up an opportunity to chirp his bf is not one of them.
Jack hands the rolling pin back to the fan and tells them to hang around after the game, he has an idea.
And that’s the story of how Eric Bittle met his number 1 fan. (But not in a creepy, stalky kind of way. Homie is chill when not fangirl/boying everywhere.)
And Bitty signs his first rolling pin, which eventually becomes a thing when he becomes famous for his vlog/cooking show.
Everyone from Taylor Swift to Obama covet an Eric Bittle Rolling Pin.
Bitty almost dies when he gets a message from Beyoncé.
She really wants one of those pins (and maybe a lemon pie to go with her lemonade).
sometimes i think about how much of our mass media portrays romantic relationships as grossly unhealthy (this is like, double true for married couples on TV) because apparently the only way to write ~drama into a relationship is to have them be assholes to each other and I just get so mad like, listen, do you know how many frickin fanfic writers can stretch mutual pining and self-sacrifice and putting the other person first and small acts of caring and utterly destroy their readers and keep us hooked for 100k? but the people getting paid for this shit think that petty insults and infidelity and fighting and one person treating the other like shit is what’s going to keep us interested?
