🤍

happy birthday, clary fairchild! and me!

But, as someone who has disliked a couple of TSC books in the past (LoS and QoAaD, for curious parties), I also think BiB feels like a whole different, new animal. With the other books I disliked, I didn't feel betrayed like this. They were advertised as exactly what they were, and while I didn't like them for various personal reasons, I got what I paid for.

Better in Black is different because it's not that I or others disliked the direction of the stories. It has nothing to do with contradictions to our headcanons. (In fact none of the stories I cared about actually contradicted with my headcanons at all).

It's the fact that the stories were advertised woefully incorrectly to the point that we didn't get what we bought.

"Ten tales of Shadowhunter romance" and "cute fanservice stories about your favorite ships" does not mean This.

It doesn't mean one of the ships (Herondaisy) in the book being full-on sidelined in favor of another character and having no meaningful dialogue besides a Fandom Callout.

It doesn't mean retconning everything about the ship in the epilogue of a past published book in one of the stories (Arianna's.)

It doesn't mean one of the ships (Blackstairs) having an OOC cheating plotline in supplemental materials that didn't need to be published.

It doesn't mean getting a full story (Kierarktina's) about faerie court politics involving the king that barely features the king's consorts besides as a plot device.

This collection was not what we funded or bought. It was something totally different. And that's where all this anger is coming from, and that's what makes the anger valid.