#i miss the ccs interacting irl in general

[heavyhandedhex]

height difference!!

[sims-half-crazy]

Tag Game for Historical Simblrs!

Thank you @antiquatedplumbobs and @sasaofastora for the tag!

1. What has been your favorite time period to play in or which one are you most excited for?

Oh gosh... This is really going to take some thought. I have really enjoyed the 1890s because of the labor reform and industrial revolution aspects of the time, but there's also the 1920s and 1930s when there was a massive amount of science discovered and environmental damage that will affect future generations.

2. Do you have a favorite piece of historical cc? (CAS or BB)

I really love @linzlu's retro sinks, but I also can't function w/o a lot of @gilded-ghosts's outfits.

3. Who is your favorite sim currently?

 So it's actually little Gordon. His future is heavily inspired by my own interests and emotional events that shaped and altered me. I'm very excited to develop his story.

4. What is your favorite world?

I love all of them for different reasons, but Brindleton, Windenburg, and Granite Falls are probs my favorites.

5. Are you more gameplay or story focused?

I play the game to get to the good parts of the story I want to tell. Sometimes the game throws me for a loop though and I need to alter my story to fit the gameplay, but the story definitely drives a lot of how I play.

6. Do you like to play with pets in your historical saves?

I do, but not cats. I like having dogs, but I a dog person IRL so its just a natural fit. I miss the dog from Gen 0 but it hasn't felt right in the story to have a dog again.

7. What’s your biggest immersion breaking pet peeve with the game?

The weird outfits on the pets in Brindleton. I can't seem to find a mod or anything that will make pets not wear clothing.

8. What’s your favorite in-game historical item? (CAS or BB)

... Probably the boots from Vampires or the lace-up boots that came with GTW.

9. What would you like to see as a new pack or asset to the game?

I would like to see more free swim areas. The areas in Britechester and Sulani are cool, but Brindleton could use some free swim areas along the coast.

10. What pack do you think is invaluable as a historical simmer?

Obvs, Cottage Living, but I have to agree with Get Together or Vampires for their build mode items.

11. Do you have a favorite mod to enhance historical gameplay?

So many, but MCCC, Better UI, Better Exceptions, TOOL, BBB, Timeless, Home Regions, Language Barrier, and I know I'm forgetting some.

12. What’s your ideal family size for playing?

4-5 people. I hate when the dice dole out 5-6 children. I really dislike the new newborn phase and the toddler phase is something to just tolerate.

13. Do you use poses?

All. The. Time.

14. Do you use any overrides in your game?

I had a crib override at one point, but infants broke it.

15. Do you, or did you, play off-the-grid during your game?

I played OTG all through the 1850s to the 1880s. 1880s including plumbing being added. Electricity was added in 1890.

16. What lifespan do you play on?

I play on normal lifespan, but with the days in each stage altered slightly. In my game, 2.8 days equals 1 year; so some years are 3 days long and some are only 2. 28 days = 10 years

17. What inspired you to start playing a historically?

I have always loved history and learning about it. For about half a second during my junior year, I thought about becoming a history teacher until I remembered that I don't actually like interacting with most people. I have, thankfully, learned the skills to deal with people on a daily basis but some (most) days it's exhausting.

Thanks again for tagging me, this was fun! I’m going to tag @alainas-sims, @jenplayssims, @sims-through-the-decades, and @simadelics. 

[alexanderwesker]

Hello,this is what if anon revealing itself on the aftermath of the AToL ending chapter. I have read from 166-170 chapters. And I got to say I am slightly sniffling and tearing a little cuz, I couldn't believe that A Twin of Light is finished, you have written the finale bittersweet ending. And man it's kinda gut wrenching. I have first interacted on you're blog around August 13, 2021 which is around 2 years ago and man surely time flies by... Now let's start with 166 I thought for a second that Soot gonna continue to his plan on exploding the country of L'mnaberg even with The General. Phew i take a sigh of relief and you got me hooked on that scene you know. You one little chaotic writer. Also I didn't knew that cc!George and c!George is the same. Like holy shit what a plot twist. I wish both he and Clay also known as the Hunter to have returned to our world and dimension. Now i kinda find it funny that Soot and The General have accidentally created a somewhat cult of personality for leading their nation. Thank god they immediately passed the presidency to Tubbo and Tommy. Cuz i couldn't bare to read the citizens worshipping their leaders as somewhat a god. And The Sovereign is imprisoned on the Courthouse. I best wish King Eret to ruled the Greater Kingdom to be benevolent and enlighten ruler. A ruler who was gonna dedicated their time on improving the lives of his subjects and such. What else oh right. The General and Soot getting their happy ending of retiring and living off the cottage and Awww... someone gone clingy on their duo lol. What is the General or Soot? Sorry if I couldn't remember who is was. What else oh right. Philza returning to our world and have being reunited to his wife Kristin, I am happy for them and kinda felt a little sad for Tommy well cc!Tommy to be honest. He never gonna be with The General again. But alas he got a bittersweet ending. Overall I am so fucking satisfied on the overall conclusion and ending of the story. After all the trials, wars, enemies and such. Almost all of the characters have gotten happy or bittersweet ending. And i think the Modern IRL Soldiers Squads are gonna gotten their endings. I have decided that whole of the squad gonna return to our world. I think i let it to mystery how their families gonna react when they returned just like cc! Philza and thank you Alexis for the two years of my life reading this fantastic, breath taking and action fic you have made. I also left Kudos to you're ao3 fic. So yeah Goodbye and have a great day or night. This is What if anon...

Hey! ^^ I'm happy to hear you felt comfortable enough to go off anon for this last comment.

It makes me very happy to hear that you enjoyed the fic so greatly and that you liked how it ended for both our world and the other one, with Tommy getting a closure and the Burs being able to be happy finally as they deserve.

I see, I'm glad to hear the ending of that AU we have been talking about for so long(I'm going to miss it honestly and I'm sorry I don't answer all of the asks yet)

Thank you for having been reading along to this wild ride of a fic that I wrote. 💙

I'll miss talking about the Modern Soldiers AU.

[balillee]

heres a hot take for you.

i feel like everyone always makes it seem like c!niki n wilbur have this meaningful friendship n stuff but i....genuinely do not see it, at all. like, yeah, cc!niki n cc!wilbur have a very good n meaningful friendship, but thats just not the case with c!niki n wilbur, imo.

i mean, the only two important times that they interact canonically (at least the ones i remember/stand out to me) are when hes welcoming niki into lmanburg for the first time and when he tries to protect her during the red festival. both times just feel like “this is just something wilbur would do and isnt indicative of their relationship”, and everyone Acts like it is,

and it is SO frustrating bc it makes c!nikis actions (taking the pogtopia coat, getting upset over ghostbur, etc) just so WEIRD and bizarre. like it kind of feels like c!niki is a fangirl in a parasocial relationship with a dead ex-president. which is REALLY funny, but i hate it,

you can correct me if im wrong, maybe im just missing something bc i dont watch every stream (i haven’t actually sat through n watched an entire stream/vod since nov 16th), but thats just how i feel.

i don't remember too many specific interactions between them, but honestly, that might be the point you're making here lmao. c!niki's only really close relationship with anyone from what i remember is c!fundy, and that was from the pet war. she was meant to have a proper role following the manberg festival with c!tubbo and c!tommy, but she disappeared and made a reappearance at the coup. the two characters were friends, but from what i remember, their friendship wasn't anything of note and their canon friendship was definitely just their irl friendship, unlike how bench trio both have cc! and c! friendship dynamics (in which their c! dynamics have context through canon experiences such as doomsday and the festivals).

a big problem i have with c!niki in general is that her character is completely inconsequential - her actions have no consequences on anyone else, whether positive or negative. her entire thing on doomsday has had no narrative significance, nor has her city (which was started during tubbo's presidency, meaning she left l'manberg long before she pretended she ever gave a shit about it at the second festival), she was inconsequential in the nuke plot (and basically only served to give jack manifold someone to talk to) and her only contribution to the syndicate was telling c!techno and c!phil the name of snowchester and leading them there, which all could have been done by c!ranboo, and she had no effect on the red banquet whatsoever, and literally left the event early because there was nothing for her to do and no reason for her to be there (especially considering that this was literally her first ever interaction with the egg and the eggpire). there was literally an opportunity for some puffychu lore considering puffy was live, but we got more awesamponk lore and neither of them were streaming. her entire character is just aimless, bland, inconsequential, and a missed opportunity. it's gotten to the point where if c!niki shows up i just think - oh, you again. why are you here? you add nothing to this.

i'm so confused as to why everyone likes and cares about her character so much bc i just,,,, don't. i genuinely think she's a bad character, she's not that redeemable, her plotlines are half-assed and reachy at best and i wouldn't even know how to rewrite her to make her better. she seems to be stuck in some limbo between being vengeful and having a villain arc, or caring about her friends and being kind to them uwu 👉🏻👈🏻 JUST PICK ONE AND STICK WITH IT don't pretend you care about kindness and making the world a better place and then siding with the people that blew up your home and killed c!wilbur, and who murdered your friends without any sort of remorse. c!niki is actually like, an awful person lmao and her relationship with c!wilbur is not at all developed so it's weird to me too that there's no much of a focus on a friendship that wasn't even there.

[papirfecni]

Hello Azra!

I hope you're having a great day 😀.

Look, i don't mean no harm nor want to be hateful to you or anything you do..(but i might actually be), what i'm about to say might be mean and it's probably gonna look like a hate comment or something 😅 but i assure you, i have nothing against you 🙂.

I'm getting this out of my chest bcs i want to, and since you don't reply to your DMs or anything else i thought my last chance is to tell you anonymously..here ...tbh, bcs humans are weird 😒 .

So i was one of your followers/fans and i really liked your work, you were funny and you were entertaining in every way..you might still be (i dunno tho') i even liked your taste in music and i thought it matches mine in a weird way.. i, like any other fan thought highly of you and did anything to be noticed by you 😂 which sounds silly now that i say it.. but it's something that we all do and i'm sure you have done this yourself 😉.

I tried my best to cut you some slack bcs you are famous and i don't know your circumstances or anything about you... but at some point you had me and gave me some of your time and i thought to myself .. 'why did she? i am just as any other excited fan who did everything to be noticed.. why give 𝓂𝑒 the time?'

Don't get me wrong, i knew you were just being nice 😆... but i thought to myself 'does she do that with everyone then? voice chat, play games, share informations...? which is odd.. bcs isn't she scared of creeps and weirdo who maybe have bad intentions...'

I'm a humble one but just like a normal person i got greedy and i felt like we might be friends lol 🤣 i even start talking to some of your close friends and i wished to be as cool just to be friendly with you all (not just you...no offence) bcs for some reasons i found a lot in common between me and you all, but i was too normal and too boring for you maybe a little too nice too 🙃.

The point is, after that you started ghosting me after telling me that we would do it again (play and stuff).. you never reply.. you don't see my comments nor msgs... i know i wasn't special but i really wanted to play more and have fun while i still could at that time 😅.

I just wished you never gave me a chance to look forward to an awsome friendship with such great and fun people like yourselves...

Once again, don't get me wrong.. clearly i have issues 🙃 and if i don't adress them the proper way then they will come and bite me in the butt 😆.

What i'm trying to say here is .. as much as i liked your spirit, your humour but more importantly your 𝒜𝑅𝒯 ofc, now i don't even want to see nothing that has anything to do with you... even your name makes me cringe (the fact that my mother has the same name isn't helping -.-') and i hate that bcs i missed how despite being so invisible back then .. i enjoyed everything you did..

I wish i never made that piece of art that made you follow me which made me feel so guilty for not following you back which is the one thing that led to another until it became no fun no more...

I missed your art and it feels bad now to interact with it after you belittled me and basically made me feel like sh*t (sorry..) when you ghosted and rejected all my requests..

I wish you read this and i wish you don't hate me for being ..umm weird and mentaly disturbed obviously 😅lol despite being anonymous i feel so seen..

you are a great artist and a .. well uuh a funny person? lol (that's all i could think about 🤣) i was a fool to think that you thought of me differently and for being greedy to have more fun time with you and your friends.. so umm i hope you take my honesty as .. umm a point that needed to be ..umm adressed and not as a hate comment or ..umm a speech at this point 😬 hehe

Just a word of advice.. don't say things that you don't mean to fans no more 🤣 they will be excited and they will feel special and it will be disastrous if you don't meet their expectations haha.

Despite feeling guilty for being too honest ..maybe to the mean point, i am 𝑔𝓁𝒶𝒹 that i got that out of my chest, i am trying my best to talk about this silly subject as civilized as possible so you don't get me wrong 🤠.

Good luck with whatever you're doing in your life and i wish you all the best 😺.

P.S: drink more water instead... it's very important to stay hydrated 💧 ✌️

i wasnt gonna respond to this originally but youre getting people i dont even know involved in this fsr so.

sending me shit anonymously expressing why youre mad at me is one thing but going around and telling random people in their fucking CCs about it (and naming me too) like its a warcrime not to respond to your dms personally is really fucking weird. im an average ass person with a hobby who uploads their work online, i’m not a fucking celebrity or “famous” for this or any other reason, i sure as fuck dont have any fans and i genuinely dont understand your obsession with that concept??? why am i the one getting blamed for making you feel special for simply talking to you and being friendly when youre the one acting like i have paparazzi following me around lmao i have classes to attend and study for, i have friends irl and family that i spend time with, i have a tiny group of online close friends i talk to regularly, i eat and sleep - a day is 24 hours for me too lmao. on top of that im generally bad at responding to dms as im very introverted with a terrible memory; it’s never anything personal, i’m simply busy or just forget to text back which my friends are aware of and have no problem with. i seriously had nothing against you, you’re very sweet and talented but you don’t know me, we hung out once for an hour as friends and that was it, i’m confused as to how me not responding was such a traumatic event for you when it’s a normal thing that happens with everyone especially if you’re not close friends. if youre trying to befriend someone you should behave like it and not like youre chasing someone unreachable lol. anyway im glad you got free therapy out of this i really loved the random cursive letters you added for dramatic effect as well as the subtle drags 10/10

[tinydemondragon]

thinking about dreamsmp instead of my homework and what annoys me about the fandom specifically and how it compares to what annoys me in book fandoms, particularly when it comes to character and character treatment.

so, bare with me here as this may not necessarily be coherent as I'm just mainly organizing my thoughts here. for comparison I'm going to be relating this to all for the game, henceforth aftg, as it's the book series I've been most obsessed with recently.

first, let's talk about story, particularly point of view and how it impacts a viewers thoughts/feelings on certain characters. for a book, you tend to only get one characters pov (in this case neil). you get to know this character and their thought processes really well, because that's all you know. but generally these characters aren't always right (if the story is good, anyway) and they often work with either a) not enough information or b) information that they believe to be true but isn't.

this means that these characters thoughts and feelings on a different character may not be fully fleshed out. more than that, as these characters don't know what they dont know, they often don't do care to dive into why someone is the way they is. and that's awesome! because it gives your mc nuance! it gives conflict! and sometimes they do actually learn more about that character and their view changes, which is a great way to show growth!

for example, Neil, at the beginning of the series, fucjing hates Andrew, and the audience totally gets why. I mean, their first interaction is neil being thwacked in the chest with a racket. not a great first interaction. not to mention, the violent rumors that are really only being reinforced by this interaction.

so neil, and by extension most of the audience, fucking hate Andrew. this is further reinforced by seemingly monstrous and over the top actions (drugging, breaking and entering, pulling a knife) that really don't put Andrew in a good light.

but over the course of the series, Neil sees the horrors Andrew had to face to be the way he is. Neil begins to understand Andrew, begins to like him (and love him, but thats a whoooole other convo within the fandom itself given the way love and healing from trauma is in the series it self). by the end of the series they're dating(? again, kind of hard to explain given the source material.)

point is, how the person you're reading the pov of impacts how you see the other characters. you start to develop ideas on these characters on the information presented to you in the emotional light given to you. I adore Andrew for example! but I also know if I had met him irl I'd probably hate him. because I wouldn't know him.

but the thing is, the opposite is true, too. you see this in Aaron, Andrew's twin, who neil really does not like. I wouldn't say he hates him but they get into more than one verbal fight, and they get into a physical at one point. and most of the fandom doesn't like him either! and this gets to the point I'm trying to make here.

the fandom doesn't like Aaron because neil doesn't. if you actually care enough to dive into his backstory, past the emotional veil that neil gives the reader, he's actually a sympathetic character who's just as deserving of redemption than Andrew if not more so imo

apply this to the dream smp.

for dsmp the best part about it is the wealth of character information you get due to the wealth of streams/content you get. for the most part people tend to pick one or two ccs/characters and stick to them for the sake of time and simplicity, but that doesn't mean that other information doesn't exist. unlike with book series, you can actually go and see their pov or read recaps or watch clips and get an actual sense for their motivations, without the cloudiness of you preferred characters emotions and the false or missing information they're working on.

this is where my grievance comes in. because I hate the fact that people can absolve Andrew of his actions but refuse to understand that you can do the same for Aaron. but at least I can understand that. most people don't want to analyze a story and analyze why they feel the way they do about a book character and you know what? more power to them! you're not required to do that to enjoy a book and you're allowed to find joy however you please.

and sometimes that means people do analysis of these characters and they don't separate the truth from what neil percieves to be true and its frustrating but damn if it isn't understandable. they're only working with one pov after all.

but dsmp? where (most) of the other povs are right there? where recaps and clips are right there? and you're still not bothering to see past what your preferred characters pov is? when even the ccs themselves admit they've got flawed views on what's happening and that their characters aren't always right (again, as it should be in any good story). no. im sorry but no.

again, I want to reiterate that you do NOT have to like these characters. I'm not a huge fan of Tommy's character tbh, but you know what? you also won't see me doing in depth character analysis of his whole character arc. maybe an interaction (see my post on trauma and his reaction to dream being in the house at technos) but I won't go in depth on his character motivations because I don't watch his pov! i don't watch clips or read recaps or any of that! so I know that my information is flawed and often incorrect!

you can still do these character analysis I suppose, but at least say from x characters pov this is how this character seems. because to not at least mention that is to do that character and that story a disservice and frankly I don't want to see it.

[dandylion240]

Check In Tag ✔️

Well I am probably late for this as well then, but thanks for the tag @izayoichan

Why did you choose your URL? – My mom always called me her dandeolion child because I always picked her bouquets of dandeolions for her. She always put them in a vase like they were the most beautiful flowers she'd ever received. Since she passed away I still use the nickname she gave me. The 240 was added because Dandylion was actually taken.

Any side blogs? None

How long have you been on tumblr? Too long....I think since February 2015

Do you have a queue tag? I have no idea what that is

Why did you start your blog in the first place? Hmm if I remember right I started it because a I joined a BC that a friend had started on here and I wanted to keep up with the sim I had entered. After that it opened up a whole new world of CC and sim stories. I had no idea there was such a thing as simblr

Why did you choose your icon/pfp? Currently it's because I love the picture and it's my favorite family. My Icon pic changes periodically so who knows how long it'll be the same.

Why did you choose your header? Hmm I think it's based upon which stories I'm most invested in. It may change.

What’s your post with the most notes? Generally my posts get very few notes so I think it was a failed BC entry. A sim you will never see again.

How many mutuals do you have? Hmm if I counted right there are like 200 but out of those there are inactive ones and those who followed but never interact with my posts. So like maybe 20 actually interact with me if I'm lucky.

How many followers do you have? 701 followers which sounds like a lot but most aren't active or interactive.

How many people do you follow? 319 but that also includes nonsimblrs as well.

Have you ever made a shitpost? maybe. Not really sure what makes a post a shitpost.

How often do you use tumblr each day? periodically. I'll check my favorite blogs on my work breaks. It's always up but if I'm busy I know I miss things and it takes me a while catch up.

Did you have a fight/argument with another blog once? who won? Hmm I don't think so. I've had some individuals that I've disagreed with and we no longer follow each other. I don't see the need to air grievances and make everyone take sides. Handle the situation quietly and move on.

Do you like tag games? Yes I do especially when I have time to do them. Not so much when I get behind. Once I get behind I sometimes delete the oldest ones unfortunately. I try not to get behind but it all depends upon what's going on in IRL

Do you like ask games? I love ask games but it seems like not many ask and it's kind of depressing to not get any asks. So I've found I don't reblog that many anymore, plus I sometimes don't have enough time to answer them like I used to. I try to send asks if I see others reblogging them. I know how much it means to get them.

Which of your mutuals do you think is tumblr famous? I honestly have no idea. I never put much thought into it.

Do you have a crush on a mutual? Not really. I have blogs that I love but I wouldn't say I have a crush on them.

I'm not gonna tag anyone. i think most everyone has done this already. I'm little behind.

[jcmorgenstern]

Rambly not-review of QOAAD

Lol so tumblr is on fire and so am I so here’s Some Thoughts on QOAAD, mostly about the not-crispy boy, not as annoying and bitter as I usually am:

Bottom line: CC did right by me, y’all. Whether or not she did right by everyone else I can’t really say, but half of the time reading this book I felt she was catering to me personally, and y’all know how esoteric ‘catering to me personally’ is. There is some Wild Fuckening Shit in this book, and I for the most part loved it. A lot of my old gripes still apply, but tbh? for a kid’s book CC has really delivered some absolute gems and as critical as I often am, I really enjoyed reading this book.

Spoilers for the entire TDA trilogy, especially QOAAD, below.

Okay so for those of y’all who have read the book: let’s just get that whole thing out of the way. Yes she did in fact write three chapters of an AU where Sebastian won, is shacking up with a deeply unhappy Jace, and yes, I did in fact die irl. Like honestly I understand that’s problematic, and that the whole situation was about as fucked up as it gets, but honestly? I don’t give a shit. I was Thriving and even though I had to read Seb’s dumb ass dying again it was totally worth it 10/10.

Also Ash? Dark Jace? Biggest nut.

Basically, my criteria for liking the book were: (1) Ash can’t be a carbon-copy of Sebastian (2) Kieran doesn’t die and gets with Mark/Cristina (3) Diana and Gwyn stay together and (4) Kit and Ty keep being adorable. Bonus points were for (1) Dru and Ash interaction (2) more Dru content in general (3) Aline and Helen (4) that hint of Sebastian content she kept teasing that I never believed would actually materialize and (5) Julian and Emma breaking up so I never had to read another word about their “true love” at age 16 ever again (I’m a bitter asshole).

I honestly expected to get pretty much none of these and I was shocked to get everything except (5) from the list and so much more. So without further ado:

The whole Thule thing was a lot, tbh, starting with Maryse’s execution (I won’t lie, when Sebastian says “I killed my mother for Jace, and now he can return the favor” my dumb ass did in fact squeal out loud in a public bookstore) and ending with Sebastian’s really, really, really bad parenting skills. As a side note, the show must have had an advance copy of the book, because you may recognize the song little Jace sings with Izzy in....whatever episode they go into Jace’s head as the song Maryse sings before she dies. As far as I recall, that hasn’t been mentioned before (as well as the Malachi Configuration) so clearly the show got confused with the book release date. I’m sure that made CC very happy.

Like honestly Thule!Seb is just COHF!Seb taken up to 11, which is honestly a terrifying and hilarious thought, complete with a still-kicking designer clothes fetish and an inability to dream up a setting that isn’t a club. Sebastian’s designer suit fetish never really made much sense to me in terms of his personality--it always seems to remind me that I am, in essence, reading The Draco Trilogy with the names changed. But there are a lot of little details that recall COLS, which is always a plus for me, but also seem to indicate that he’s never really progressed or ‘matured’ beyond that. The return to the club setting as a callback to club in COLS, dressing Jace like a paper doll. While Thule itself is an imaginative setting, Sebastian’s presentation and behavior hasn’t changed at all, which shows that ultimately CC’s view of him is one of being completely static and inhuman.

I always really hated that, but here it works--it gives the impression that even though he’s won and destroyed the world, he’s living in the past, attempting to recreate COLS best he can. That mind-controlling Jace, going for a romantic murder or two with him, and chatting with Clary about how much she hates him is the happiest he’s been, the closest thing to family he can conceive of.  I think one of the most fucked up parts of COLS, and one of my favorites, is that the Magic House is a darkly genteel reflection of the warped view of family Valentine has, that Sebastian has symbolically completed.

Valentine’s wardrobe full of clothes he’s bought for Jocelyn for “when she returns,” all with the tags still on, is possibly the most chilling part of the entire book. He views his family--Jocelyn, Jace, Clary, as a thing to accomplish, to control, to collect and arrange in a seemly manner. He truly seems to think, or at least want to believe, that after he’s destroyed the entire downworld and the entire shadowworld government that they can all go play happy families. That his family would want to play happy families with him, or even be anywhere near him. It’s both terrifyingly cruel and self-aware and completely naïve, that he believes he can make his family love him, or at least pretend.

It’s that same mindset that Sebastian inherits--“I will bend him to my will and teach my sister to love me” pretty much sums it up, although he manages to be a bit more petulant about it. Although he seems to emphatically reject Valentine, he’s become Valentine, inherited his sword, his ring, his creepy shrine-to-Jocelyn house and his mindset and view of family. The same entitlement and sense of ownership Valentine displays to Jocelyn (and in a different way, Jace), Sebastian shows to Clary (and again, to Jace).

Valentine never saw his “vision” through, but Sebastian symbolically completes his father’s vision of their family, not as a son but by becoming his father, and Clary her mother. CC emphasizes and repeats this over and over, how Clary looks like her mother and Sebastian like his father, exactly like his father. Sister Magdalena even comments on it (“Why, you look just like your parents,” when Clary expects her to comment on their difference or wonder why Clary is in the company of a murderer). One can suppose that given his feelings towards Valentine and how he always resented Valentine’s lack of approval towards him, Sebastian craves “love” more than anything--or at least, his conception of love, which we all can agree is pretty fucked up. The completion of the “family” is thus probably what Sebastian sees as fulfilling, that control and coercion is as close to love and belonging as he can understand, or that he’s experienced.

There’s a very interesting sense in which in creating the Endarkened and going on a path of world destruction, Sebastian himself loses all sense of self or free will. It always bothered me that Lilith’s blood is used to abnegate free will in the Endarkened when Lilith herself is often interpreted as a symbol of free will (and feminism--that’s a rant for another day). But there is very much a sense that the Battle of Burren is Sebastian’s moral event horizon, that in trying to rape Clary or force all free will out of her and others he cements himself as ultimately irredeemable. I’ve often complained that his motivation for destroying the world is...well, non-existent, but in a sense it reflects an erosion of person-hood, that he is less a person in himself with his own self-directed wants and goals than a shadow or echo of Valentine embracing senseless (demonic?) destruction.

I know I’m going completely off the deep end, but I recently studied Milton and although it seems pretty clear that CC is more a Virgilian than a Miltonist (tbh I really don’t think she’s read Paradise Lost because if she had, she wouldn’t stop quoting it), Milton’s conception of Lucifer is really a prototype here. One reading of Satan in PL is that the personified Sin and Death (his “offspring” so to speak) are really just solipsistic echoes of himself and his hubris, and I think there’s a very interesting sense in which Sebastian could be read in a similar way to Valentine. In many respects, to me, Jonathan represents a sum of Valentine’s greatest sins--bigotry, hatred, cruelty, pride, and really bad use of the experimental method.

I get the impression that CC struggled with Seb’s characterization in COHF, and in large part that’s because he has no character, no motivation beyond destruction and a certain rapaciousness towards Clary. As I’ve derisively said before, wanting to fuck your sister is not a sound core personality motivation for a character. The way he’s written in the books, there’s not a lot of poignancy in his character, and although people do seem to feel sympathy for “green eyed Jonathan” (uwu), he doesn’t really exist any more than Sebastian does. Although CC claims through Clary that Sebastian wants to destroy the world to make it something that can love him, what she misses is that Sebastian in COHF is not really a character but an Endarkened version of himself--a shadow. He doesn’t seem to be much of anything.

Thule is the result of that hollow destruction, an Endarkened shadow of canon, and for that reason it completes COHF in that we truly see what CC means when she says there wasn’t enough good in him left for him to live--what I think she could also mean is that there isn’t enough of Jonathan left, or there never was. Valentine aborts his development (in...many ways: stay tuned for reports from the frontlines of developmental psychopathology, which I am taking) and what’s left is a solipsistic reflection or echo not of Jonathan’s demonic parentage but of his human father. And there’s something understatedly tragic about that cycle coming to a close with Ash, with Sebastian behaving the same way towards his son as his father did to him--with callousness and a desire to exploit. CC explicitly calls this possessive, which is of course a callback to how he treats Clary, but I think he’s more reflecting the father role he inherited from Valentine.

And Ash closes that cycle by killing Sebastian--just as, I would argue, that Sebastian in some sense wanted to kill Valentine. More and more I’ve been leaning towards a reading (and I hope with absolutely no confidence that the show leans towards this reading as well) where Sebastian’s obsession with Clary is at least partly due to the fact that she has done the thing that would symbolically complete him--kill Valentine. Sebastian hasn’t killed Valentine, literally or symbolically, and the cycle repeats; in this way, Ash as a Morgenstern takes more after Clary than he does his father.

Is this edgy, pseudo-academic, piss-poor, completely incoherent bullshit? Absolutely. The point is, god is dead and if I want to compare Paradise Lost, one of the eminent works of the English canon to a YA series based on fanfiction I can. Also, Thule may suck but Sebastian did canonically destroy the world financial system so is he really that bad? (Yes).