#and they wouldn't do something groundbreaking when they could put in half the effort and still make bank

[captainkirkk]

Sometimes forget that I've carefully cultivated my tumblr experience so it's full of people who have seen the rise and fall of a hundred fandoms and their associated drama, so now they want to just sit in their corner of the internet like a grandparent that's raised 10 kids and just wants to spend their golden years feeding birds and doing sudokus

And then I go on tiktok and see people who are fully convinced that massive media corporations are going to make their gay OTPs canon, who fully believe that the fandom's nuanced theories about the next season must be true, and I realise how new the fandom over on tiktok is. The light is still in their eyes. Makes me feel like a kid again.

[ladyhindsight]

I'm not sure if Jem is strictly related to Emma (I think Jem's father - who was white - had a sibling, and Emma's line starts there, so I don't think she's supposed to have Chinese genes), but it would have been so cool for the Carstairs to be an Asian family.

It was mentioned several times that Ascended mundanes take SH names, so potentially Clare could have entire families of color and still use her precious English names.

Or she could have written that Jem had a brother who passed on the Carstairs name, and all the heirs married Asian people, thus making the bloodline Asian.

There were so many options smh

It would have been so powerful to finally have two fully POC families (Rosales + Carstairs) in one series!

Or at the very least have Emma mention her Persian heritage.

Instead we got a Jace copy cat and a token religious latina to support her 🙄

Clare wouldn't be half as popular if she didn't play with nostalgia and used old characters to promote new series.

Yet she seems to believe that a mere name is enough to inspire affection.

She made Emma a Carstairs because the name would hit readers in the feels, but did not carry on the narrative of half POC Carstairs because it wouldn't be aesthetic enough and it would be too hard to write. Effort? What's that?

A Jace copy cat though? Much better right?

(It's something that I hated about Kit's storyline, too. Once people find out he's a Herondale, they start calling him Cristopher (even though he HATES it! that's not his name!) and expect him to give up his previous life for them. A mere name is enough for the SH to FORCE someone to join their ranks. Familial bonds? Never heard of them, but you have the right last name so you MUST be with us and readers MUST love you. It's particularly heinous in Kit's case because his father (idc about what Clare says, your family are the people who raise and love you, not the ones who fetishize your last name) was a Downworlder and lived in fear of the SH)

Clare is so attached to names she doesn't realize the narrative she creates around them are very toxic and racist.

And she uses them to manipulate readers and promote sales, without putting in any effort to create likeable, relatable characters.

Readers are beaten over the head with: You Must Love These Characters Because of Their Family Name.

She uses the names for the nostalgia factor but won't put in any actual effort for representation.

Yet people hail her as the queen of rep 🙄 (tbh it's like 99% white people who do that, because for them a character of color being in the story is omg so groundbreaking! consider yourselves lucky that she even writes these characters! who cares if the story is problematic!)

As someone who didn't pay much attention to family trees before, I was SO disappointed when I went from TID to TDA: from half Chinese Jem... to white, blond, golden eyed Emma.

The name was supposed to make me nostalgic and bond to the character immediately (because that's how shallow Clare is) when it actually made me angry lol

(You can probably tell by my anger that I'm Chinese myself 😂 this shit really hurt me, and my friends too)

Tbh I feel no connection between the TID and TLH characters, and the TMI and TDA characters. Even though they're supposed to be related and family is oh so important for Clare...

Cloning characters does not a family make. It makes for terrible storytelling.

Yeah, Jem and Emma have a common ancestor, like you said, and both are thus from different branches. And it’s definitely Clare’s love for “Shadowhunter” names. But you’re just using compound names, essentially just combining two words, surely you could try to do that with different languages instead of keeping them strictly English? There is, of course, Bellefleur and Morgenstern, but they are still rather Eurocentric for being French and German.

Then not all family names even seem to go by this “rule”. There is Mendoza, Rosales, Delgado, Ke, Wang etc. Cristina, Diego, Jaime, and Manuel are all named according to Spanish naming customs where the given name is followed by paternal surname and maternal surname, most commonly in that order: Cristina Mendoza Rosales, Diego and Jaime Rocío Rosales, and Manuel Casales Villalobos.

It was noted under Rosales Family etymology that “Rosales is not exactly a composite word like English Shadowhunter names, its translation (rosebush) is.” So I went to go see the Ke family, and Ke translates to “stem” or “axe handle” in English. So, I don’t get any comprehensive idea behind the Nephilim naming customs, because if the names of some of the Shadowhunter families aren’t following the compound word custom, then why there has to be such a thing as “Shadowhunter names” at all? The English names are heavily underlined and central to the series as a whole. Rosales Family that is mostly Mexican is rather recent compared to the main quartet—Herondales, Carstairs, Lightwoods, and Blackthorns—and hasn’t had (or doesn’t have) such a major role in the series compared to them.

The character should bring the essence to the name, not the other way around.

The series stresses too much the importance of one’s name. Simon can’t continue on being Lewis and must change his name into a Shadowhunter one. But like, why? Why can’t their names be just anything they happen to be? Sure, there can be old and notable families, crème de la crème of the Nephilim, but to limit the possibilities of someone’s name because it is not an English compound one is way too restrictive and merely forces assimilation. You shouldn't have to give up who you are in order to be other things as well.

I so hated that the name was forced in Kit when they found out he’s Herondale. It began to define his character too much. Clare is so incredibly unwilling to let the name thing go. She seems unable to let these families go. Instead of coming up with a completely different Shadowhunter family in another country and telling some other story entirely, she keeps writing about the same characters and things over and over again. Because, yeah, effort? What is that?

When I read CoHF for the first time, I was annoyed with Emma’s chapter because she meant nothing to me, her name meant nothing to me. Oh, she’s Carstairs? So what? Her character was dull to read about. I wanted the final plot to progress, not read a setup for another trilogy through a character that was not interesting.

The Ke family members apparently appear in The Lost Book of the White. But there is no series dedicated to them as there isn’t series dedicated to the Rosales family. In grand scheme of things, it’s never really about any other family at all. All Clare’s representation stand in the sidelines when the pain of Clary and Jace, Tessa and Will, Emma and Julian takes all the space in the story. And they are given it by Clare.

What is Cristina’s complicated feelings about her love life to Emma’s who is about to blow up the world because of her love for her parabatai? Who cares where Maia disappears after having her life threatened as long as Clary and Jace’s story is finished? What about Maia’s own peace of mind and sense of safety when Jordan Kyle needs to have a “redemption arc”? What is Jem’s part in the contrived plot that heavily favors Will Herondale still?

It’s like Clare is unable to create compelling characters that didn’t need their family names to be liked and loved just for who they are as characters. It's lousy, this narrative and the fixation on names, because all they do is end up spoiling everything else. Especially when the author herself doesn't seem to even realize it or care to realize the disrespect her readers feel and the hurt it is causing.