#bc i just know. it’s so ridiculously flowery and emotion-y

[padfootastic]

Sunday Snippet

tagged by by @narcissa-black-supermacy and since i’m incapable of anything except our first cousins au rn, here’s a lil sneak peak.

“Now, I realise Walburga has a—different style but—“

“You can say gaudy, Atta, it’s okay,” Sirius adds cheekily.

“—but it isn’t right that you’ve not been taught how to take care of all this,” she runs a gentle hand down Sirius’ tightly braided hair. “A girl’s hair is, after all, one of her most precious possessions.”

“Take care of all this?” Sirius echoes, wondering what she meant by that. Of course, she knows that most of the reason her hair is the way it is for convenience’s sake. Tying your hair in a loose ponytail or a messy bun only works if you’re a white girl with silky straight hair. Less than ten minutes of keeping her hair unbound and it became pricklier than a thorn bush. She also knows that there’s ways, if she so chooses, that she can look different. She’s seen the other brown girls in her schools noticed their intricate styles that looked nothing like her own strictly ordered, slicked back hair.

Euphemia cups Sirius’ chin with her thumb and forefinger, guiding grey eyes to brown. “You’re beautiful as you are, Sirius, but you shouldn’t have to fight your body, not now nor ever. It’s an extension of yourself, don’t forget treat it as such.”

And as Sirius sits there, still horribly confused, over the course of the next hour, she gets a crash course in the art of taking care of curly hair. Not waves, like she’d always thought, but curls. She’d never realised how similar their hair types were—Effie atta preferred clipping it in the back, daringly open—but after the time they spent together, Sirius was amazed.

Because her aunt was right—she had been fighting parts of her body for her entire life. Hair too unruly? Shove it into a brain or bun tight enough to cut off circulation. Breasts not cooperating? Squeeze into an extra sports bra on top, no matter the strain on her shoulders. Pimples? Popped on sight, no mercy. Not one thing was easy, or gentle.

She never realised her body could be made for gentleness, that she could learn to be so. Sirius had to grow up strong—kids were both cruel and thoughtless, a terrible combination for anyone who looked the way she did and spoke in the accent she had. Mama tried, but she had to spend so much time on her own self that it left little for her. Besides, she’s glad she didn’t learn from her mama; no one wants to be like Walburga, not if they didn’t severely hate themselves. What Sirius knows, she scraped together herself.

open tag for anyone who wants to show off a lil ;) go for it!

#euphemia potter #desi potters #(yes i realise i am stretching the meaning of sunday here but. well. gotta do what ya gotta do) #so it’s cheesy bc i was so high when i wrote this #i wrote like 1k yesterday #most of it for FoD and i’m scared to even touch that one #bc i just know. it’s so ridiculously flowery and emotion-y #ngl tho i do write better when i’m smoked up 💀 things flow much smoother #but yes #this might be my first snippet of this here? #so far i’ve only written potter family moments bc it’s somehow so easy? #(don’t look at me don’t perceive me) #but i really wanna write the bollywood style j/s moments too #anyway enjoyyyy this unedited mess #pen’s writing #first cousin sirius and james au when

[humanmosquito]

this is definitely gonna be a ramble-y post but i’ll neaten it when i’m done. (edit:  didn’t really but I’m sick of this sitting here already)

I’ve put this under a cut for obvious reasons. There’s more things I didn’t like about this book but I forgot most of the plot immediately after reading it.

Given the usual time skips in Clare’s work you’d think this would be 6 months down the line and Livvy would have been completely forgotten about and is mentioned sporadically to motivate the main characters. 

I’m not really buying the shock of Livvy’s sudden death i would say Clare’s done a job here and she’s certainly tried, but i’m not buying it.

Her treatment of Gay Characters (capitalisation necessary) is bad but so much worse with Alec than any others and i hate reading about her Alec bc of the way she infantilises him. Also has Clare seriously not found any way to solve problems in her own fictional universe without constantly reintroducing the same guy??? (who is also just a bunch of stereotypes of queer men) (Magnus)

you don’t need to use two separate images to describe people moving in the background, it’s fine.

why is Christina using Spanish pet names when we’ve never seen her using Spanish conversationally before? also, ( and this is a very specific thing to to be so worked up about like 4 years after i read it the first time) but why do whatshisname and Christina have to talk in English instead of implying the conversation was in Spanish but had been translated or even mention it at all? (okay, coming back in later to say that she does use Spanish randomly in this book, Clare has a habit of making Latine characters use Spanish randomly to show they’re Latine.

isn’t Mark 20 or something? I’m legitimately confused about these lines.

there’s no need to suddenly start using fancier language for two whole sentences. also you can just say she visited a wax museum or even Just Madame Tussaud’s (which i’m guessing is the place we’re talking about). also: why is all the dialogue in this book so stiff and overly formal? I know they’re in shock and some of them are functionally strangers but it’s still so off from how people normally speak. (I’m willing to excuse the faerie characters because everyone who writes faeries makes them speak super flowery but that’s it)

there’s no break between Mark and Helen’s POV.

 I’m pretty sure than Simon is secular, why is he suddenly sprouting hebrew? (CC makes no effort to show him engaging with judaism in any form and has him Christmas shopping at one point in tmi)

wouldn’t that make it much easier to break in? (this is needlessly pedantic, I know)

A lot of people said that Emma just becomes a way to talk about how amazing Julian is and I’m beginning to see that. She focuses on the sound he makes walking along a hallway way too much. (Also: coming back a week later to add that Julian just gets worse and worse and for a character that we’re supposed to love(?), he has absolutely no redeeming qualities.)

Doesn’t witchlight only light up when a shadowhunter is holding it? I remember that from TID.

The rally with Dearborn feels like an attempt at the bit at the beginning of 1984 where they’re watching the propaganda video and the woman is crying out for big brother. also, there’s no way to write people chanting someone’s name that doesn’t make it feel like mediocre fanfiction, huh? The whole scene is very over the top and not at all like the actual process of radicalisation. 

who thinks like this? Who thinks about themself like this?

The descriptions of the shadowhunters at the funeral are weird. Emma is described as putting on gear then wearing a dress, Christina has a gear jacket over a dress and Ty is in full gear.

she’s not even being subtle about stealing plot points from the tv show, is she?

why does she keep choosing random words to translate into Spanish? It isn’t necessary unless the word also means a specfic type of that word. A vela isn’t a specific type of candle, that’s just the Spanish word for candle. 

Doesn’t Jonathon Shadowhunter creating runes go against tsc canon? No one could make new runes except Clary because of her extra angel blood. (I should know, I read the fucking Shadowhunter codex). (there are more instances of CC creating thing that go against canon but i kinda got bored of making this list after here)

(I know the answer to this one is just CC’s incest fetish but) Why did everybody just let Christina get engaged to her cousin?

I have to say that my suspension of disbelief lasted longer than I thought it would but it ends with Julian killing a Rider with a D&D figurine.

The whole Thule bit feels like it was copy-pasted from ao3 (While we’re on the subject of copied from ao3 “Ragnor Fell lives” is such a “saw it on Tumblr” cop out)

how did the cohort get Jaime? It’s not explained and I wish it was.

Julian sucks. capital-S Sucks. For the guy Emma is facing Losing her Shadowhunter life for and going into exile for, he’s a dick, with emotions he comes off as creepy, over-sexed and obsessed. Without he’s somehow even worse.

Zara calling Cl*ce disgusting and being called wrong for it is such an obvious dig at the people who criticised Clare when she wrote them nearly fucking in a ditch when they thought they were bio siblings. (I’m p sure they’re also adopted siblings and they consider the same man their dad, so it would still be incest.) 

Also, she’s so one-dimensional and every scene with her, especially in the last 1/2 of the book was exactly the same. (emma attacks her but decides to let her go which was a ~mistake~ with consequences (consequences being “we see Zara again”))

It's not even a subtle D*mbl*dore's Army rip-off, huh?

I take back all the things I thought about Clare improving as a writer, chapter 33 makes literally no sense, also cannot do dialogue or consistent characterisation. (how did any of these get published, TMI especially)

Once again, Clare seems to be stealing plot points from the TV show. (Of course there’s going to be some overlap between the show and books even after it diverged from book canon but it’s getting pretty ridiculous at this point, isn’t it?). 

Okay, every woc in this book is here to further the white protagonists’ story (which i guess is the purpose of supporting characters but the white supporting characters do fuck all) And i get they have their own love interests but it was super forced (don’t @ me for this, Kierarktina had potential but it was all rushed in the second half of this book because Clare realised what a cash cow it was)

Diana gets a little tropey (Speaking as a trans person) but her treatment b Vlare and the other characters was okay. I do wish she was allowed more personality than “no one can love me or know me because I’m trans” (it’s stupid and overused) and “helps the Blackthorns and Emma”. (also Clare knows that you don’t stop taking HRT, right? it isn’t a limited course, it’s not Gender-Changing Antibiotics.)

My final thing is that it went on way too long, like, insufferably long. (you’d think long enough to explain some plot holes, but no.)

#cursing out 12 yr old me for picking up clockwork angel now until forever #the dark artifices #tda #cassandra clare #anti cc #this was an experience i would not wish on anyone #book review