#shadowhunters essay

[emmalovesfitzloved]

Last question, who are your fav downwolders and why?

Ahh… well it has to be….

The one….

The only….

💫Magnus Bane! 🥂

(Art credit: @cassandrajean )

Queue the music!

Now. Reasons reasons reasons. Where to begin.

I took my time thinking about this question bc there are quite a few downworlders I have an affinity to. But the showdown where it was REALLY hard to pick one or the other was the battle of the warlocks…

Tessa or Magnus.

On the one hand, I love Tessa So much (wrote a piece on why you can find here hehe) and I truly think she is a timeless character (well before she became literally timeless ie. immortal) and her influence throughout the shadowhunter world is iconic, relevant and enduring.

(Art credit: @giannyfili )

However… her choices and inner narrative became a bit clumsy dealt with and a bit inconsistent unlike Magnus’s, as the shadowhunter novels went on. Of course, characters are allowed to change, grow, develop at any age, but her character felt slightly manipulated in the writing? All for the sake of peddling the plot. Not to get TOO into the whole herongraystairs touchy topic but I do think as I’ve grown up and done over a handful of rereads I do spot the slight manipulation that started then, which kind of set a precedence in her character throughout. I adore Jem but he as well was felt a bit clumsily. Topic for another time.

Meanwhile Magnus, while through his own self discoveries and through his own immortalities feels more cleaner in plot. He’s necessary, vibrant, witty and is that character that you ALWAYS look forward to reading. He is That character that just lights up a room and you wait with baited breath on what he’s going to say next. His air of lightness that he brings into every interaction makes you be able to read and listen to him all day long. With long promises made of laughter, sage advice, experience, history and adventure.

“I've got a stele we can use. Who wants to do me?""A regrettable choice of words," muttered Magnus (City of Ashes).

And because of this, when he is being serious, his words strike you when you least expect it and leave you stunned.

“You endure what is unbearable, and you bear it. That is All” (Clockwork Princess).

His bisexuality was handled wonderfully, and was truly one of the first stories I think our generation read where the sexual identity wasn’t about coming out but already at the stage of acceptance and fun loving. He remains respectful and doesn’t want Alec to rush out of the closet but rather does the best thing- inspire Alec to be the best version of himself in life which is finite. That’s the best thing a partner can really do for you.

However he isn’t a Mary Sue bc in every series he stars in the reader sees his vulnerabilities in pure daylight. And also has a plot line that challenges his Yodha immortal dogmas. Will being one weakness of his in TID, Camille and how she mistreated him and being alone in a very sad world. I don’t think these topics were explored nearly as well with Tessa.

“You left me. You made a pet out of me, and then you left me. If love were food, I would have starved on the bones you gave me” (City of Fallen Angels).

And of course, his relationship and development with Alec is my top 3 relationships in all the shadowhunter world. It felt natural, wonderful, sizzling, exciting and steadfast. Didn’t feel too young or naive like I sometimes feel when reading Clace, but new enough to feel like the honeymoon will never end. And I think in part it’s because of Magnus bringing out the best in people, and how Alec chose him. Of all the people Magnus helps out, he actually doesn’t really ask much in return. But for once Alec did a double take on him and let Magnus take the reins of where their relationship will lead them. With great readership payoff 🥹💍

“You could give me the past,“ he said a little sadly. “But Alec is my future” (City of Fallen Angels).

(Art credit: kasirose)

In fact, he has SO much to offer we got standalones, his own mini series with his partner and constant features in further novellas stories. There is no other character in the Shadowhunter chronicles who has been that centre stage as him. And he deserves all of it.

Favourite Swiftie songs that r HIS:

• BEJEWELED

• Begin Again

• Welcome to New York

• You’re in Love

• Karma

• You’re Not Sorry

• Ours

• I Know Places

• You’re on Your Kid

• Castles Crumbling

• The Last Great American Dynasty

• The 1

• Hoax

So yeah the superlative for the best Downworlder has to go to the delightfully and wonderfully written…

Magnus Bane <3

(Art credit: kasirose)

So yeah! I hope the answer makes up for the wait @imabitchforjemcarstairs ILY! And thank you so much for the lovely ask!

P.s. if any artist doesnt want to be affiliated, kindly DM me and I’ll remove your lovely art and mention from the post :))

[confusionmeisss]

percy jackson and julian blackthorn are essentially the same in the sense that both their fatal flaws are personal loyalty, and in this essay i will-

[garvalhaminho]

the way most tid characters don't feel whole or like they belong.....tessa being just as much a demon as she is a demon hunter, she will never be fully "pure", will making himself unlovable and feeling like he'll never able to let himself be and feel loved, jem knowing he is doomed and slowly dying, fated to die young, jessamine rejecting everything about being a shadowhunter, even the people she was raised by/with, as it is not what her parents wanted for her, as a lady should not fight this way, as she wouldn't really be her idealised version of being her parents' daughter, an idea she preserves w her dollhouse. and this could be extended to the other series, but i feel this is the one where it is most prominent (translation: it is my favourite series in this universe and i will talk about it as much as i can)

[icyberrydoesthat]

reasons why i think my parents pissed off a fairy before i was born (why i think im cursed)

cursed pieces of media always seem to find me

im not exaggerating when i say ive seen more than my fair share of fucked up stuff. it always seems to land on my cellular device or my piece of paper. ill be simply enjoying a show or consuming a book as one does and the most heinous thing will happen and ill be expected to just carry on. and now i do just that, i keep calm and carry on. more specifically theres one topic that seems to pop up a lot (tw!!) incest.....now now you may be thinking "what!? incest....id drop whatever it was and go reconnect with nature...weirdo" now now lets not jump to conclusions, 9/10 that movie/book/manga/whatever is actually really good (the other 1/10 lands you in therapy) and the incest or whatever never progresses the plot at all, but is a big enough plotwist to give me whiplash. and dont you worry, ive got an example. last year, i needed a book so i went to my schools library with a friend. about 10 mins of searching resulted in no book i felt inclined to read....until my friend gasps, a book in her hands..."Shadowhunters"?? i had never heard of it but apparently it was a big part of her childhood, something that soothed the gaping hole Twilight left...okay ill read i said. reading the first few chapters was great, i could practically smell an enemies to lovers and the big mystery of who and where mc's brother is was lingering in the back, my type of book i thought happily. little did i know....mc and ml were infact revealed to be siblings......i dropped my book. i had already thought it was weird that ml's adoptive brother had a crush on him but that gets crushed quick and now this...? now you may be thinking isnt it illegal or sum to promote incest..? and yes u are right, so you can imagine my deep sense of relief i felt when mc and ml were infact not related... because i didnt know how much more i could take of the ml yearning for his literal sister..(he was relentless...). but it doesnt stop there, for all you sickos out there, the author still managed to weasel some incest in. when the ml and mc are still believed to be siblings by them and everyone, another ml enters, this boy is perfect, maybe even a better fit for mc, girl is feeling it too. turns out this second guy is none other than.....her brother !! shocked you didnt it...(hes completely sick and knows the entire time....he wants his sister). but dont worry guys other than that, Shadowhunters is really good, character development? chefs kiss. i luv isabelle.

all my pens perish

im not exaggerating when i say i probably go through 6 pens a week, either they explode in my school blazer, completely new pens dry out in my pencil case, snap or most common cause, i lose them. i try pencil and the lead snaps in the middle so now matter how much i sharpen it, it will never be useful again. this is a cry for help, any stationary reccs??

i lose everything all the time

would you believe me if i said ive lost my keys a total of 5 times this year? well dont. because ive lost them 7 times and only 3 of the times have they been returned. im a regular at the keymaker.... how many of you can you say that??? i hope none, i wouldnt wish this on my worst enemy. i think this 'losing stuff' thing ties in rather nicely into my fish memory too, im pretty convinced ive got a rare amnesia that hasnt been discovered yet. its almost impossible, scratch that, it is impossible for me to remember everything for school the next day, ill always forget at least one thing. my friends will try referencing a supposedly funny/memorable thing that happened and ill just stare. theyll stare back and then do everything in their power to try to make me remember...nothing works.

my friends always have the same crushes as me

you may be thinking, well thats kind of normal for a group of girls that hang around eachother to have the same taste in people and i i thought so too, until it was such a regular thing i just stopped telling them about my crushes. i do have a story, start scene-its the end of a history lesson and im really happy, its been good lesson and i love history. im abit tired because its P5, the end of the day, for that reason, im lagging just a little, i leave my book usually at school because ive got two and my bag doesnt need any added weight . as im packing, a boy, a desk away from mine, walks over and takes my book to the cabinet, some thing he really did not need to do. and i don't know why but i guess im attracted to people being nice, even if it was just a decent human being doing just decent things... the next day, i realise i do want this boy, sadly. i had noticed him before, hes the kind of pretty that doesnt need to exist in a boy but if it does, he unfortunately becomes an object of envy. long lashes, blonde hair, droopy kinda eyes that make him look sleepy all the time. we had just never talked, seeing as we never had reason to. the next day, in a maths lesson, my friend says, "hey don't you think so and so is cute..." as shocked as i was, partly because this friend had been gushing about a different boy an hour ago and partly because it had happened again, i think i played the "really? maybe if i squint really hard he's meh" role really well....long story short, they're dating now....

now youve read my reasoning, there are more...but i just cant remember, i just know you see what i mean. my parents deffo pissed off some magical being and in return it cursed their firstborn daughter.

xoxo

A

ps: this is actually my second time re writing this because i accidentally deleted but the world just needed to know...ty for reading to the end <3

[fish-gutssz]

random thing but I was just watching twilight for the first time ever (not bc I like it but bc I thought it would be funny BELIVE ME PLLSLSS) and idk I just got that feeling that I get whenever I watch a movie or show that was originally a book (or visual novel type thing like class of '09)

like it just makes me wanna write smth so good that people genuinely want to see it move and come to life

it always makes me just wanna randomly make ocs just for the purpose of writing a book then getting a movie

I want people to complain about the movie not being correct to what was in my book(s) because they liked it better that way

idk but also im thinking about forcing my bsf to write smth with me :33

[jemsbitch]

Tennyson and Hallum is so heronstairs coded and In Memoriam by Tennyson is the proof

[antitheticaldreamgirl16]

after about a week or so of thinking over chain of thorns, I think my main problem with it was that there was too much happening, and not enough time for it to happen.

I’ve seen a lot of people saying this, but there are so many scenes that really should have happened (Christopher’s funeral, Matthew talking to his parents , more idris pov) as well as so much more development that characters needed to have. The development thing was mostly why I think the book felt a bit unfinished to me.

For example, I hated Anna in coi for how she treated Ari, but Cassie just suddenly fixed her character in this book. In the end, I didn’t mind them together, but we didn’t get to see Anna really changing and learning from her mistakes. I don’t think the two of them really had a conversation about it at any point, so they didn’t feel fleshed out at all. I love ari and think that her and Anna’s relationship could have been really interesting if it was given more depth.

Also there are so many characters, and of course I love that abt tlh, but I needed to see a lot more interactions between them. Lucie and Cordelia needed to make up sooner, because I felt their fight was kind of useless to begin with, and have more moments between them. There’s definitely a gap in Cassie’s writing for really close female friendships, and I loved Cordelia and lucie’s dynamic, but in this book their amazing friendship was marred by their useless fights that could have been solved so much more quickly if they had just sat down and talked (and also probably the fact that I didn’t love either of their characters this book, but that’s another post, this one is getting too long). Also I would’ve loved more merry thieves interactions, because they’re just so special to me, and of course we got the scene with them sleeping over at Matthew’s, which was amazing and made me cry, but it wasn’t enough. Especially would have liked to see their dynamic after Christopher’s death.

Which brings me to the fact that there wasn’t really time to show the characters mourning Christopher. The most we got honestly was that one paragraph about Thomas and christopher from Cordelia’s pov. Everyone is saying this, but like he meant so much to everyone, and he didn’t even get a funeral??

There’s probably a lot more I could say, but all in all so much more needed to happen in tlh for it to really feel complete to me. Plot-wise, I think it was pretty good, the actual plot and fighting and stuff was pretty typical from a Cassie book and it wasn’t too much for me. But the characters needed more. More development, more interactions, more povs. I know that chain of thorns is already a very, very long book, and if she had added everything it would be well over 1000 pages, but idk. I know she likes to write trilogies, but I think the series could have benefited from a few more books. I feel like she should write a book just to solve all the many problems between the characters.

[sarascamander]

Ranking the Shadowhunter male protagonist:

1. Julian Blackthorn

His story is my favourite and he is so complex, so tortured, incredibly cunning and smart. Literally he's perfect. (I can write an essay about him and we'll be here forever).

2. Will Herondale

I don't quite like him in the first book because he was acting like an asshole but god his character is so good. I cried for him, I laughed at him, and his love and devotion for Jem just — my heartttt.

3. James Herondale

I think I have a soft spot for him since we literally see him growing up from little baby to an adult. I will always cherish him.

4. Jace Herondale

Jace's humour is top tier, I absolutely love that about him but he pissed me off a lot while reading. I don't even remember what he did, I just remember flipping him off a lot. 😭

[emmalovesfitzloved]

Tell me a few things you love about Wessa!

Ahhh another ask from my fav Shadowhunter blogger! Wohoo! These are the first two things that comes to my head. But there are MORE ;)

Their dark academia aesthetic

The Dark academia aesthetic of their relationship. Now while this may come across as superficial, its more then just "loving books". It's the chaise and adventure they find in books that they then live by in their real lives. How they challenge each other in a conversation and insider jokes they share tethered in the novels they consume. Let the other rant about their favourite things and celebrate novels that invite the reader into more journeys beyond just their own. And the way they talk about characters, morals and plots as experiences and people they know almost intimately. How their choice of words matters, and they are economical about their feelings. Dark over light academia bc London is a dank dark city ahaha. And they feel well deep rather than feather light.

Their timeless love

Somewhat still related to novels, but I feel like what Cassandra Clare did with Wessa was the melting pot of all our favourite literary tropes/heroines in classical literature. Which gives it a sense of timelessness and makes them feel like they are 'endgame'.

I wrote previously that Tessa is the perfect blend between Jane Eyre and Elizabeth Bennet. She retains Jane Eyre’s contemplativeness, slight shyness, physical features, dry sarcasm and strong sense of self-actualisation. But also Elizabeth’s wildness, snappiness, boldness, passionate love and will for happiness, all without the arrogance that came with Austen’s heroine.

Meanwhile Will's darker side reminds me of Mr. Darcy in how he pushes those he loves away. John Thornton from North and South who is set in his ways slightly stalkerish (i'm a sucker for the stalker trope sorry not sorry) Will retains the mystery of Edward Rochester, where there is more depth to him that meets the eye and heck even Tessa says at one point that his mood swings remind him of the treacherous Heathcliff. Most of all he reminds me of Alexander from The Bronze Horseman (which only came out in the 90's but technically it came out before TID and is already considered a classic). Alexander and Will overlap in how they sacrifice their love and longing for a greater peace (War and to not upset a family) all for the love of their other one. They are deeply flawed and challenge the reader on their tolerance for forgiveness .

“I love you. I’m blind for you, wild for you. Sick with you. I told you that our first night together when I asked you to marry me, I am telling you now. Everything that’s happened to us, everything, is because I crossed the street for you. I worship you. You know that through and through…” (The Bronze Horseman)

“Alexander, you broke my heart. But for carrying me on your back, for pulling my dying sled, for giving me your last bread, for the body you destroyed for me, for the son you have given me, for the twenty-nine days we lived like Red Birds of Paradise, for all our Naples sands and Napa wines, for all the days you have been my first and last breath, for Orbeli- I will forgive you. ” (The Summer Garden).

And you find you can, because their love and longing for their partner is almost holy and like a religion to them. Those we love the most, hurt us the most, but in turn, they are also those who deserve the most grace and Mercy. If not for them, then for who?

"You are not the last dream of my soul. You are the first dream, the only dream I ever was unable to stop myself from dreaming. You are the first dream of my soul, and from that dream I hope will come all other dreams, a lifetime’s worth." (Clockwork Prince).

This, coupled with the stakes of their relationship then as a unite (and also separately) echos a timber that reminds me of the setting we find in 19th century Russian literature (but with an HEA tysm CC my heart can't take it). This tragic longing we see in Anna Karenina where any choice Tessa makes she looses something in the same breath. The high apocalyptic war torn feel of War and Peace alongside the feeling of doom you get right at Chapter 1 in Clockwork Angel like we did in Crime and Punishment, when Raskolnikov kills a man, and it's all downhill from there.

Conclusion

CC wrote these two with the aim that they remain true to the history of their time, but blended it in with fresh modern air for us to be able to relate to and TRULY succeed. Who knew a historical romance about two book lovers could escalate so highly in the ranks? Now while they are so high up in the ranks of GOAT-ed couples in literature, they aren't without their flaws. Mainly not bc of the narrative or the character's choices but more to do with CC's discontinuation of their story linearly past TID. But that's a different ask for another time and tbh, that's where I seek out lovely fanfictions like the ones you create in order to fill in the blind spots CC didn't fill.

Thank you for this ask! I hope this was worth the read ILY @ibrushmyteeth-donttellanyone♡

Artistic Credit: Cassandra Jean

[moonysmoothies]

if i wrote essays about everything wrong with each season of the shadowhunters tv show would anyone read it?

[garvalhaminho]

ik next to nothing on how the official art works in tsc or who does it but whoever got the idea to pair up the characters w flowers w meanings relating to the characters just know that i am in love w you

[danrifics]

15 years is a long time...

I've been lucky enough to be here for about 13 of those years and while I didn't get myself too involved in the phandom until 2019, outside of religiously watching phan proof when i was 16, Dan and Phil have been there on my screens since i was a teenager. Their videos quite literally raised me. I would sit and listen to the radio show every week and my friends and I would post about it on facebook, those post still haunt me to this day and make me feel incredibly old every time memories tell me how long ago it was.

I think today is really fitting for me to write a little personal essay on my journey and my feelings here, so i guess if you're interested then you can click the read more <3

I don't know if i fully have the words to describe properly what Dan and Phil and the Phandom mean to me, but i'll try. (I'm gonna do this in context of the last 5 years because that's when i've been most active and when I think they've impacted my life more than they ever did before.)

In 2019, I'd previously been in the Shadowhunters fandom, but as that show finished in May of that year I'd basically lost any form of fandom I had and I felt lost because fandoms are always a big part of my life and to suddenly feel like I didn't have one was hard so in June 2019 when Dan posted his coming out video everything suddenly clicked into place.

This was a community i'd loved from afar for many years and there was an opening for me to jump in. So I did. That was the best thing to ever happen to me. I'm not exaggerating, finding a place in this fandom changed my life for the better.

For the first time in my life I felt like I had friends online, from the first discord server i joined (TY LY Trashcans/ the phannie pack you'll always be famous) to Kris and Leo and to all the amazing mutuals I made, 2019 was really a cool time for me. Unfortunately a lot of these people have come and gone from my life but I often think back to what an impact they all had on me.

And then to my group now, the Rat Relaxation Chat (RRC!!!) without the hiatus ending I wouldn't be friends with any of you guys. See thats the thing, Dan and Phil didn't just bring themselves back into my life. They did something even better, brought the community back. The hiatus was hard, i've seen many of my mutuals just stop posting one day and never come back, it felt like every week we'd get smaller and smaller but then DAPG came back and so did a bunch of people and we even got some new faces and the community picked itself back up again.

As a result of that the RRC was born. For the first time in my life I was meeting my friends outside of discord, from WAD to TIT, Im literally gone end up having met all my best friends <3 (as well as so many mutuals)

I've loved so much over the last 5 years making gifs and memes and video edits and heartbreaking text posts. I'm so grateful for all the people who have ever follewed me, interacted with me, sent me hate messages, All the people who helped me make it possible for so many people to watch the WAD premiere, The people who help me with DGPdaily and the TIT blog.,The other amazing artists and gif makers and writers and archivists and anyone who has ever called themselves a phannie.

The Phandom is special, it's a community like no other. We really are a family, Dan and Phil really are our dads.

It's funny I stared this with full intentions of saying what Dan and Phil meant to me, but in the end it became all about the community they let us build. This is why I can't come up with enough words to tell them what they mean, because they mean the entire world to me because they created that world.

Dan and Phil are my friends, my best friends. They're my heros, the people I look up to most in the world because they make me feel safe and loved and I feel that love now more than I ever have before. Watching them grow older and gayer, watching the confidence grow over the years, watching them find themselves. Its a feeling like no other.

They deserve everything good in the world and i'm so glad to see them so happy and honest and open.

I don't know what the future holds for us but I know whatever it is is gonna be amazing and I hope I get to do this with you all for many more years to come.

15 years is a long time...

[apricusapollo]

teen wolf but it's shadowhunters au and the raeken siblings are the lightwood siblings variants, in this essay i will-

[lawsofchaos1]

Promptlet: Malec Early Meeting

Izzy and Jace start clubbing early because Shadowhunters consider themselves adults around fourteen when they begin full mission status at the Institute. So, sixteen year old Alec just sighs and brings his Advanced Clave Law seminar work to Pandemonium and sits in the corner of the bar with a thick legal text and his battered spiral notebook for his rough draft essays. He doesn’t care if Jace and Izzy are taking field assignments, they’re still his little siblings and need a chaperone.

Magnus, obviously, starts hearing gossip from his bemused bartenders about the young nephilim downing club sodas with lime while frantically highlighting a battered copy of the Accords and decides he needs to figure out what's going on. Immediately.

So, Magnus ends up chatting with Alec (who, as it turns out, really likes the Shirley Temple Magnus snaps up for him in what was supposed to be a joke) and starts flipping through Alec's latest homework assignment. Magnus blinks, snaps up another Shirley Temple to keep Alec busy, and carefully reads the essay twice over, pulling out his own notebook (bound leather and fountain pen with a gold nib of course) halfway through. Alec found a loophole, a big loophole, that would exempt Downworlders from being questioned without notification to their faction leader. 

Alec is an absolute disaster of a baby gay whenever Magnus so much as says hello or looks in his general direction, but, once he starts arguing the Law? He is vicious and ruthless and sharply concise. (Although Magnus becomes a little bit of a disaster himself when Alec absentmindedly starts chewing on his cherry stem while debating the finer points of interpreting The Clave vs. HOTI-Beijing, 1823.)

Ragnor comes over all the way from England just to see Magnus utterly lose his cool at this now seventeen year old shadowhunter who is literally drinking Shirley Temples and eating his weight in the extra cherries the bartenders slip him because they adore him too. Also, in terms of relationship dynamics? I think it would be kind of fun to explore Alec having a gigantic crush on Magnus (and Magnus just kind of utterly adoring Alec in turn between his obvious looks and, more importantly, his intelligence and his sharp humor and just .. everything) but also realizing that Alec is seventeen.

Alec is much more open (not that he had a snowball's chance in hell of hiding his Gigantic Crush on the High Warlock from anyone in Pandemonium except his siblings), and wages what amounts to pretty much open warfare to get Magnus to date him. He's insistent that Shadowhunters don't mature as slowly as mundanes (which.. fair) and makes bulleted lists and actions plans for every reason Magnus tries to say he deserves better/Magnus is too old/Alec is too young/etc.

And.. just how the Downworlders slide a stray Shirley Temple across the table for advice? Alec starts bringing little vouchers for a certain amount of advice time (or maybe little cupcakes or chocolate chip cookies that he makes for Jace and Izzy or something?) and slides them furtively across the table.

"Where might one take the High Warlock of Brooklyn out on a date?"

And then somehow two days later Magnus ends up in Central Park responding to a call from one of his warlocks and instead Alec is waiting there with a picnic lunch and a blanket and looking very, very smug.

This teenage Shadowhunter is outsmarting him. What even is this?

Also, Can you imagine the first time an old fling of Magnus' portals in to Pandemonium for the evening, expecting a night of fun, and the moment they ask where Magnus is at the bar, every Downworlder in hearing distance is glaring? Suddenly a good dozen wolves and vampires put aside their decades old fights and start running interference to keep this brazen interloper away from where Alec is holding court ranting about the Clave's shoddy grammar and lack of consistent position on Oxford commas (which, how dare) and how that can be used to interpret their latest ruling in three different ways, depending on what side you want to fight on.

(Magnus is sighing and staring dreamily from across the table.)

One day, Camille starts her usual nastiness and trying to get Magnus to come crawling back and Magnus feels .. nothing for her. The only thing Magnus feels is rage that Camille would try to interfere when he's clearly ... dating someone now.

And Magnus blinks wildly internally because holy shit he's dating Alec. WHEN DID THIS HAPPEN MAGNUS DOES NOT KNOW

I do think Magnus would hold off on anything physical until Alec was what Magnus considered of age, so think how fun it would be to explore how the two of them date when their primary love language can't include sex?

Think of all the cuddles and the literal sleeping together and the hand holding and the forehead kisses and, excuse me but did I mention the cuddles? I really want Magnus and Alec cuddling on Magnus' throne at Pandemonium after a hard patrol and Alec falling asleep and all the Downworlders just kind of cooing at their very favorite nephilim.

(I also imagine an impressively oblivious pair of siblings who don't realize their brother isn't just moping in a corner while they dance for literal years.)

When Alec is older maybe Jace and Izzy start trying to subtly tell him it's okay to be gay, he doesn't have to hide it - they'll still love him, and Alec is just .. like .... 'what are you talking about?' as he smugly claims his gorgeous boyfriend.

[witchlingcirce]

I don’t know how many of you read this, but it’s basically a collection of essays submitted to Cassandra Clare about shadowhunters and she edits them.

I have to say, this is probably one of the worser TSC books I’ve read. I read this like three years ago I think and I had SO many thoughts.

Some of the essays are really good. There’s this one called “The art of war” which in my opinion was the only one I thought that was really worth a read and worth the length. I had problems in this story about they talked about some of the other characters (Isabelle, Alec). But I really enjoyed the comparison between Valentine and Clary. Valentine being a very rule (of his own makings ofc) following man, and Clary being a dreamer. It mentions how Valentine consistently loses to Clary’s creativity (her making runes). And I think that’s such a wonderful thing to point out. I liked how it actually discusses Clary’s relationship with art I thought it was sweet.

Other ones I thought where good was the one about Simon, there’s one called “why the best friend never gets the girl” very 2012 but it’s pretty funny lol. Another one of these essays is about Malec, I would say the main thing wrong about this essay is that you can tell it was written in 2013 lol. Anyways, I thought it was really cute. I had no idea Clare got hate for making malec gay when the books were coming out!

Now let me get onto the NEGATIVES of this essay thing. So many of these essay points are literally just repeating things stated or so clearly evident in the book. You know for an English essay and when you can be bothered for it you pick the most boring topic and the most easiest and basic example from the text?? That’s what half these essays are. I don’t think some of these needed to be re-stated, when it’s SO Cleary present in the book?!

So many of these essays as well went onto certain tangents to the point when you where wondering when it would get back to the shadowhunter topic. Like there was this one which discussed woman not being allowed to get tattoos, which in of itself is an interesting topic but, it didn’t even relate back to TSC. It started off with talking about it and than went on this whole other tangent??

There is also one segment on this essay where it talks about incest… in a positive light?? It was so odd and borderline disgusting. I’ll never forget when whoever wrote that essay said that Izzy calling Jace “damn sexy” in the first book SPEFICALLY to push Clary’s button was worse than Clary and Jace kissing when they thought they where siblings… yeah let w settle in. There was also a bit where they said the incest between clary and Jace almost didn’t count because they didn’t grow up together, WHAT? I don’t know HOW this was approved… AT ALL.

Anyways, if u guys saw my Og goodreads review or this book you’d literally think I’d gone mad with rage. Worse book that resolves anything with TSC I gave it 2 stars

[mistninja]

Hello!! I'm here to do a little self-promoting!

What you can find on my Substack:

Essays on media I enjoy, like:

Fire, Blood and Nature's Vengeance: thoughts on how George R. R. Martin (A Song of Ice and Fire) and Robin Hobb (Realm of the Elderlings) utilize dragons in their work.

Grief, Fatherhood and Tragedy in AMC's Interview With the Vampire: a look into Louis, Lestat and Claudia, in relation with the main themes of the show.

My Realm of the Elderlings Name Series where I analyze the meaning of some characters' names:

Part 1: "Taker his name was" Characters featured: Shrewd, Constance, Desire, Chade, Verity, Regal, Chivalry, Shine/Shun, Lantern/FitzVigilant and Dutiful.

Part 2: "Sacrifice of her people" Characters featured: Kettricken, Patience, Molly and Elliania.

Part 3: "The Pariah of Bingtown" Character featured: the Liveship Paragon.

Part 4: "A bastard's bastard" Characters featured: Nettle, Hap and Bee.

Part 5: "I called him Beloved" Character featured: Beloved (the Fool, Amber, Lord Golden, etc.).

Part 6: "What do they call you, boy?" Character featured: FitzChivalry.

Reviews:

Manga and comics, like The Summer Hikaru Died and Hellboy.

Books, like Mary Shelley's The Last Man, Sir Terry Pratchett's Equal Rites, and more.

Shows, both live action like The Fall of the House of Usher and House of the Dragon (season 2) COMING OUT THIS SUNDAY, and anime like Tokyo Revengers (season 3) and Jujutsu Kaisen (season 2).

Each month, I post short reviews of everything I read and watch.

My Shadowhunters Explained Series, where I explain the plot of each book in Cassandra Clare's YA universe, and the complicated relationships that she comes up with:

Part 1: City of Bones.

Part 2: City of Ashes.

Part 3: City of Glass.

If you are interested in any of this, consider subscribing! And if you want to support me doing this, there's the option to become a paid subscriber for just $5. Starting next month, I'm planning to include paid-only posts on the schedule, but free subscribers are still going to get regular posts every Sunday.