#an amalgamation of every older!first year I've seen

[notcrypticbutcoy]

[1/2] Hey Lu! This is kind of a strange ask, but I've loved Malec since the books first came out, and have recently been getting into writing for the pairing. My issue is, I don't watch the show, and I don't... really enjoy watching TV, and especially drama (yay social anxiety!), so I have no desire to watch SH. A lot of the Malec stories are from people who watch the show, and while I've read enough to get a gist of the storylines,

[2/2] and I have nothing against Matt or Harry as the characters, I still have a mental image of Malec from the books’ description. I’ve also seen that a lot of people are Opinionated about book descriptions vs show descriptions, and as someone who’s written for both the books and show, do you have any recommendations for how to deal with writing for a strange amalgamation of both?

I don’t know quite why, but I’m really pleased you sent me this ask. Don’t get me wrong, I adore the show, it vastly improved upon many of the books’ issues (of which there were SO MANY) and the exponential growth of the fandom is wonderful. But there seems to be a common misconception that everyone who used to be in the book fandom (people like me!) just, like, blindly loved the books. And that’s not true! At all! In fact, I spent a lot of my time in the book fandom whinging with other people about canon, and analysing its issues, and someone wrote their damn dissertation (? the American equivalent, whatever that is?) on double standards in straight writers’ treatment of LGBT characters in YA fiction, using Alec as their main example. It was iconic.

But I digress. The truth is, to be completely honest with you, I ALWAYS write a strange amalgamation of book and show canon, with a little bit of a “fuck all canons to hell and back” thrown in. I have written my physical descriptions of the characters in line with show canon for the last few years, but that’s just because I haven’t read a SH book for years, so in my head, Alec and Magnus now look like Matt and Harry, not whatever I imagined when reading the books.

So my advice is this: someone will always tell you that your characters in your fic are out of character. Don’t worry about it. Someone will tell you that they simply could not possibly continue to read your fic because Alec had blue eyes. This is a strange squick, imo, but each to their own. I understand that it can be jarring to read a description that contradicts the image in your head. (Leaving a snide comment about it is attention-seeking and looking for a fight. Ignore it.) You’ll see people analysing how Magnus should always be written like THIS, or how Alec should never be written like THIS, and anyone who does is a BAD writer and a TERRIBLE person. Scroll past it.

And sometimes people won’t like your fics for other reasons, and that’s fine! As long as they’re not being rude about it, it really does not bother me if someone decides they don’t like how I write Alec so they stop reading my fics. That’s up to them! I’ve certainly done the same, sometimes.

(A side note: analysing a character’s canon characterisation is completely different and fun and I always love reading that kind of meta! Passive-aggressive subtweets about certain writers who write characters in certain ways is boring and unnecessary. Scroll past it.)

(Although, side note number 2: sometimes people are talking about more important things, like how certain stereotypes in fics can be harmful - e.g. the “tiny Magnus” trope. This is entirely different and is definitely something that you should pay attention to. Critical discussion is good!)

Truthfully, as much as the show differed from the books, Magnus and Alec are, at their core, the same characters. They’re not the same, by any stretch of the imagination, but I don’t think they’re quite as different as people sometimes make them out to be. Alec is a bit of a dick and he adores his family and Magnus is pleasantly disarmed by his honesty. Magnus hides his centuries of hurt and vulnerability behind power and sass and beautiful clothes and Alec turns into a disaster gay in his presence. (For example.) Conversely, Magnus is less morally grey in the show. Alec is more confident in the show. (Alec is also OLDER in the show, which I think is relevant. And also segues into a whole other discussion 😬). The show characters are more developed have have more depth to them, I think.

Pick and choose. Write the things that best fit whatever world you’ve thrown the characters into. Write the traits that you find interesting, or fun to write! I’m sad that Magnus lost his sass a bit after season 1 - cue me sometimes writing an overload of Magnus’ snarky comments and flagrant innuendos. Sometimes I want to write some h/c, so everyone gets more angsty and traumatised. Sometimes I need more detail/backstory (particularly true when the show was only a season or two in) so I steal from book canon, or completely make it up. Fics are fics for a reason - canon can be embraced in its entirety or you can ignore the whole damn lot of it, and both are completely valid.

I mean, I’ve never written a particularly in-character Jace or Clary in my entire life, because they annoy me so frequently in canon. (Both canons.) So I cherry-pick the traits I enjoy writing, and toss the rest out of the window.

So, TL;DR:

- I am apparently incapable of answering an ask in a helpful, concise way, lol

- write whatever you enjoy! if it feels authentic and if you’re having fun writing and you’re excited by (or at least interested in) what you’re writing, then people will read it, I promise.

- people will always find something to complain about. you can follow every rule that one half of twitter gives you, and then the other half will go ballistic. there’s no right and wrong. people have opinions on things, and that’s fine! but there are always going to be differing and conflicting opinions, so you can’t please everyone. if you try to, you will drive yourself mad and you’ll stop having fun writing fics. trust me - I’ve been there! just enjoy yourself - that’s what fandom is for!

An important one:

- tag your fics with TMI/SH chronicles and the SH show in the fandom section. that way, if somebody is really determined not to read anything containing any hint of book canon (or show canon) they can avoid it

I hope that helps! Have fun writing!

[ashleerahne]

Inktober Day 11: Pride

Happy coming out day!

This is a post that I have wanted to make for quite a while now. I've always held back before now because sharing pieces of myself has always been hard but it's even harder when you know that, for some people, it has the potential to change how they see you and treat you.

The first time I ever question my sexuality I was 11 or 12 years old. I wondered, very briefly, if I was gay. Then I thought about the few crushes that I had had on boys and thought "well I can't be gay if I like boys so I must be straight". When I was young that all I thought I had for options; either you were gay or you were straight, there was nothing in between.

As I got a little older I occasionally heard the term bisexual. But I was lead to believe that bisexuality was something that never really existed. It was a label used as a stepping stone by gay men who were too afraid to say they were gay or by the college girl who was "experimenting" but ultimately came to the conclusion that they were straight. Otherwise it was a word that was avoided at all cost, a label that was treated like a dirty word, not fit for public consumption. Or at least that was how it was portrayed in every piece of media that touched on the subject that I consumed before I turned 18.

Over the 5 year period between ages 18 and 23 I did a lot of research and learning about the LGBTQ+ community. I had always resonated with the stories that I heard from the community and for a very long time I didnt understand why that was. I hadn't yet realized that I was part of this community that I was putting so much time and effort into understanding. Over the course of those 5 years I had learned so much and dismantled so many of the misunderstandings, ignorance, and inherent prejudices that I held towards the LGBTQ+ community because of the corner of society that I was raised in.

Right around my 23rd birthday I had a really shitty mental health episode that forced me to deal with a lot of things that I had refused to deal with, repressed, and internalized. I got very honest with myself about a lot of things in my life over the following 6 months and one of those things was my sexuality.

I had been questioning my sexuality off and on for over a decade at that point and because it wasn't as simple as one end of the spectrum or the other I would just bury it because it was just too complicated. Between the end of June and the beginning of August of 2015 I did some serious self reflection and work to figure out how my experience with attraction fit into a label of my sexuality. And in the end the label that fit best was bisexuality.

My personal belief and definition of bisexuality was a bit of an amalgamation of a few definitions that existed. Then I stumbled across Robyn Ochs definition of bisexuality from her 2005 anthology "Getting Bi: Voices of Bisexuals Around the World". And it was like I had found the words that I had been missing my whole life. Like someone had looked into my heart and really seen me for the first time.

It took me just over 3 years from the time that I finally figured out that I was bisexual to tell someone about it, to say the words "I'm bisexual". It took me 4 years to attend my 1st pride events. 4 years to be comfortable enough and to find someone that I felt comfortable enough with to talk about my sexuality. And just over 5 years to make this post, almost 2 years to the day that I came out for the 1st time.

I have never been more sure of who I am than I am at this point in my life.

So...Hi! My name is Ashlee. I wear glasses, I like to dye my hair purple, I'm a dog person, I like both tea and coffee and I'm bisexual. I was bisexual yesterday and I'm still bisexual today. The only difference between yesterday and today is that now you know.

“I call myself bisexual because I acknowledge that I have in myself the potential to be attracted – romantically and/or sexually – to people of more than one gender, not necessarily at the same time, not necessarily in the same way, and not necessarily to the same degree.” - Robyn Ochs