#well “manipulated” is just another name for seduced and you know it jac

[hereliesvsobsessions]

wait

OH

[bytheanchorarchived]

DEAR JO.HN AND J.ACE AND VAL.ENTINE:

ok so. last night i was telling @runedalexander​ cy about the song “dear john” by tay.lor s.wift and how it explained jac.e’s journey through abuse and overcoming it  and his relationship to val.entine. and cy told me: you could write a whole post about this. well. i did.

so a few warnings: this obviously deals with abuse, but it focuses on methods and how jac.e realizes what was done to him WAS abuse and how he started to overcome it, without ever stopping to love the father who abused him. this explains in detail every little thing valen.tine ever did to jac.e. it’s long. it’s winded. it’s full of me screaming in caps. but it’s detailed and thought through and i truly hope there aren’t that many typos. this encompasses mostly everything i feel about jac.e’s journey in relation to this, though only up to val.entine’s death and doesn’t go onto how it continued after that, because the post was already too long. maybe one day i’ll write about that too. but yeah, if you’re interested in knowing what jac.e went through, book and show wise be my guest.

another thing: i don’t mention cl.ary or al.ec EXCESSIVELY by name in this post, because cl.ary’s and ale.c’s influence on jac.e and his identity and self love would render another entire post just as big as this one. so for this we’re gonna focus on val.entine and when i say “family” and people he “loves” i mean all of them, clar.y, al.ec and the lightw.oods. we’ll just work with symbolism here so bear that in mind. cl.ary and al.ec deserve their own separate posts one day. this focuses on the light.woods in general and mary.se as an opposite polar parent to val.entine. for the size of this intro you can guess the size of the post. let me know if you enjoy this. 

we start at ja.ce’s childhood, if you know a bit about it from the books you’ll understand this, “long were the nights when my days once revolved around you.” 

when jac.e was a child every one of his days until he was ten revolved around va.lentine and v.alentine only. jac.e never knew anyone else. take that in. for the first ten whole years of his life, ja.ce never knew another person that wasn’t val.entine. v.alentine was his one and only parameter for life, truth, moral, society, love, happiness, pick anything you like, why is the sky blue? either va.lentine had an answer or he had a book he’d restrictively allow j.ace to read about it on. va.lentine was his one and only source of knowledge for the first ten years of his life. so for the entire time he was forming his consciousness and sense of self, and constructing the world in his head, and starting to tell himself the story about who he was, the only other human being he knew, was v.alentine, and for that whole time, he didn’t even know the man’s name, because he thought his name was mich.ael w.ayland. 

so for TEN YEARS j.ace knew only one person and that person was a fabrication. i don’t think i need to explain why long were the nights, the nights here represent punishments, the times ja.ce was left alone with his thoughts and regrets, the times he was left in the dark, the moments of panic, nightmares and anxiety over the ways he’d failed val.entine during the day and could still come to, the next day. it represents his restlessness and emotional and mental vulnerability to valen.tine. anyone that has lived through something like this, knows that the nights alone wondering what will come next day are the worst.

“counting the footsteps, praying the floor won’t fall through, again.” 

ok so, this one hurts af, still dwelling in his childhood, like i started to mention above if you’ve ever suffered emotional abuse you know that the one thing someone under such abuse fears the most in the entire world is the instability. one minute everything is fine, and the next you find out you’ve made a mistake through unexpected, blindsiding punishment, whether that be screams, disappointed words, corporal punishment, it’s never expected, it leaves your heart frayed, it sets you off into a panic before you even know what it is that you did, because the guilt and panic and feeling o failure are so programmed into you, you know that even if you do everything right you can still make a mistake, even if you give your all, you can still fail them, and if you do you are gonna PAY for it. one moment you’re on solid ground, and you’re even happy, and a blink of an eye later you’re falling through. 

some times even a subtle change in the person’s mood can set you off, as you started to panic in advance and count in your head everything you’ve done that day, yesterday, that week, and all the little things you might have done to be responsible for their mood, whether that be anger or just being quieter than usual, you know it’s gotta be your fault and suddenly things feel unstable and you can’t breathe because the floor is shifting, even if you try your hardest to stay strong because falling apart will only make things WORSE.

“and my mother accused me of losing my mind, but i swore i was fine.” 

when v.alentine returns, and jac.e learns the truth, m.aryse gets scared for him, she kicks him out of the institute, because she knows the cl.ave will come for him and she has no way to protect him since he’s not legally her son. when ja.ce does go to val.entine she gets worried, she even thinks jac.e might betray them but because she knows val.entine not because she doubts jac.e. she “accuses him of losing his mind” a.k.a. she is honest with him when she says she doubted him for a moment because she knew valent.ine’s power and val.entine had seduced and betrayed them all once, so why couldn’t he do it to j.ace his own son? maybe he’d reach through ja.ce and hurt them and hurt her children. only what she didn’t say right away and ja.ce didn’t understand was that she considered jac.e to be just as much one of her children that val.entine could hurt as the other three. and she dreaded both perspectives with all her heart. she dreaded she might lose the little boy she used to sing lullabies to, to vale.ntine’s influence, and though jac.e tells her he’d never do it, not five days after he goes to valent.ine because he feels desperate and alone. something she later recognizes was her own fault and fights for him and claims him as her son so he finally knows how she truly feels and that he’s not alone.

“you paint me a blue sky, then go back and turn it to rain.” 

so this one is very easy and it’s something valentin.e did to him his entire life, not only in childhood but as they re-met and it’s an abuse technique to hold control over the abused person. jac.e for instance, tells clar.y that “michael” was  a very good father, that he’d let j.ace have “anything he wanted” as long as he behaved (let’s not forget such good behavior was subject to daily rule changes and nuances tied to valen.tine’s mood and how he felt about jac.e’s progress and how he felt about jonath.an that week). anything he wanted consisted  of pre-approved books, weapons or the infamous spaghetti bath that is one of the few good memories jac.e has of his childhood. so vale.ntine would let jac.e indulge in a few selected pleasures, at rare times even ludicrous wishes, as long as jac.e was a good child and behaved during his testing and grooming to be a murderous weapon one day. another example of this is how vale.ntine never once told jac.e he didn’t love him, or that ja.ce wasn’t special ( he just told him that what made him special made him cursed - again with the good and awful together ). not once even after j.ace knows the truth does val.entine says jac.e is not his son, or that val.entine is not his father and doesn’t love him. on the contrary. in their every interaction he says, you’re my son, i love you, i only want what is best for you. one of jac.e’s fondest memories of his entire life is being picked up and held by va.lentine as a kid, and he says it was the safest he ever felt before his father’s death and he never felt that safe again. 

so val.entine was BOTH jac.e’s worst and best memory. that is very telling and very appropriately portrayed as to a real situation of abuse and love. which resulted in jac.e both loving AND hating him. more examples: gives him a pet, kills said pet. gives him a family to love him, tells him that such love for him is gonna ruin them, get them killed and cursed and destroyed. lets him bathe in spaghetti, but leaves him without any food enough that another child notices how “skinny” he is once he goes to the institute (a.lec). shows him the end of the world swallowed by demons that he “HAS to bring into this world for the greater good” but promises jac.e can be safe if he just gives him his loyalty. or show wise, beats the crap out of him, then makes him dinner and talks to him like a loving father who only wants what’s best for him. you’re too weak to kill me, you’re weak, but you’re my child and i love you. you’re just like me the person you admire, and because that you’re cursed.  you’re loved but only i can love you without being destroyed by you. etc etc. 

“and i lived in your chess game, but you changed the rules every day.”  

again with the instability and the taking the floor from under you. i believe val.entine did this often just to TEST jac.e. because why not? see if he could adapt, how quickly he could learn new rules not to get punished, or just because val.entine was raisin an experiment and his experiment changed as jac.e grew up and rules had to become more and more constricting, the punishments harsher. also this was also shown in the way in which val.entine changed his speech to jac.e constantly, “you are weak” - “you are my son and i’m proud of you” - “you’re my failure” - “you’re my greatest achievement” etc. every time ja.ce thinks he knows how to deal with him, val.entine changes his speech and his methods and leaves jac.e spinning. it’s easier to manipulate someone who doesn’t know the rules but still tries to fulfill them. jac.e ws compelled to oby val.entine’s rules since he was a kid, but he always learned new ones through punishment or emotional manipulation. val.entine changed his rules at will a lot of times during the book to manipulate jac.e’s loyalty and love and try to corrupt him or regain control over him.

“wondering which version of you i might get on the phone, tonight.”  

this i think would apply perfectly to the michael x val.entine debacle. mic.hael is the father in his memories, the one that jac.e loves, the one that loves him, the one jac.e never doubted and thought for sixteen years that was a good father that only wanted what was best for him, the one that taught jac.e everything he knew and taught jac.e to be strong and how to be a fighter and how to survive, the one jac.e ignored all the misdeeds from, because he was not a BAD father he just had a temper, he just wanted what was best for jac.e, he just wanted to make jac.e strong etc. val.entine though, val.entine is the monster jac.e learned to hate even before he met him. val.entine is the man who fooled him for ten years, who killed michae.l wayl.and twice, who stole a murdered boy’s identity and slapped it on jac.e without a second thought. he’s the man that wants to burn the world alive and kill everything jac.e learned to love. he’s the one that taught jac.e to be loyal to shadowh,unter society and now wants jac.e to join him in destroying it. who gave jac.e a family and now wants to kill it.who did all those horrible deeds in the past and present against everything jac.e stands for. 

so when he meets him he never knows if he’s gonna get mich.ael - you’re my son, my greatest achievement, i taught you to be strong, i love you - or val.entine - you’re so weak i had to discard you because you were no good for me. and later on he learns that val.entine is both: yes you’re weak, but all the reasons why you’re weak are reasons why i love you and couldn’t stand to keep twisting you. and that is one of the hardest lessons jac.e has ever had to learn. that he DOES LOVE AND HATE valenti.ne and that neither makes him a bad person. that mich.ael was his father and val.entine killed him and it’s okay to miss and hate both of them. both his versions.

“well, i’ve stopped picking up and this song is to let you know why.” 

 alright, one thing you  gotta understand is that jace’s loyalties didn’t shift in one night. in fact, it wasn’t until he found out that his father had lied to him his entire life that it STARTED to shift. until he found out about valentin.e, he loved and was completely loyal to mi.chael. it didn’t matter that he now knew there were other ways of parenting. it didn’t matter that he knew what al.ec and iz.zy thought of mich.ael, it didn’t matter that when he met cl.ary she outright told him that he was a horrible father, he didn’t see it that way. because it was done to HIM and jac.e genuinely believed that he deserved all of those things,  that they WERE for his own good, and it’s not logical, of course not, because he could never do it to someone else (say train max in the way he was) but because it was about HIM, the cursed child, he genuinely believed his father was just doing his BEST. also because he always knew, and never doubted it, even after he found out the truth, that val.entine/mich.ael LOVED him. he knows that. that is one thing he never doubts, even as he begins to see it was a twisted love. it goes to show how genuinely loving, forgiving and just GOOD, ja.ce is. 

let me break this down for you. val.entine lied to him for ten years of his life. but not only that. no. when he exited jac.e’s life, he made sure to leave an impression. how? he made jac.e at TEN years old, watch his own father’s murder. yes. he made jac.e watch the only father and person he knew until that age be attacked and MURDERED in front of him by his own men. NOT ONLY THAT, think about this, jac.e was a child, no? he had no way of knowing the faces of people in the circle. the names. i doubt he even knew what the circle WAS or if he did, it was certainly not portrayed the way it really happened. but val.entine is such an evil mastermind, he gave jac.e away but not before he made SURE that jac.e would ALWAYS have a connection to him, the real and the fake him. he made SURE that jac.e would spend the next six years of his life, living, getting stronger, working on himself, for one purpose only: to avenge his father’s death. and here’s the kick: he made sure his men would SAY WHY they were killing mic.hael and WHO they were, so that jac.e would not only grow up with revenge on his head, but with a PURPOSE and his purpose? to avenge his father’s death by killing valen.tine. insane isn’t it? the person jac.e hated half his life until then, he finds out was no one other than his own FATHER, the very own he loved and was trying to avenge. val.enting made absolute SURE that jac.e would go back to him. and even after jace finds out about HIM, he STILL can’t hate him. he tries, oh he tries HARD, but he loves his father, loves him so bad he almost goes with him and if it wasn’t for cl.ary being there in the exact same moment he found out “the truth”, valentin.e’s plan would have worked, and jac.e would have joined him, because again: 1. he loved him and he was the only person jac.e knew for 10 years of his 16 of life. 2. jac.e still believed v.alentine when he said they belonged together and val.entine was the only person that could love him back, and they were equally cursed, and jac.e couldn’t be with anyone else, family OR otherwise. 

and here’s the kick, val.entine for almost sure didn’t mean to lie to jac.e again once they found each other, he had no reason to EXCEPT that cl.ary suddenly got in the mix. and val.entine with ONE look, realized that they were in love. he realized that jac.e was starting to ESCAPE his lessons and the mind control he’d done on him for a decade, for clary, and that’s when he tells them they’re brother and sister. not because he gives a shit about cl.ary, but to retain his power over jac.e by proving he’s cursed once and for all and isolating him from his entire family and society in one strike. it’s genius and evil and disgusting. 

so when does j.ace finally “stops picking up”? it takes seeing, meeting jona.than, it takes learning the truth AGAIN, it takes realizing he wasn’t the only child val.entine was corrupting. it takes meeting the monster val.entine made of his own SON and realizing that could very well be him. he meets seb.astian and seba.stian tries to kill him and yet all jac.e feels is EMPATHY, he feels bad for seb.astian, he feels guilty even as he kills him because he understands this isn’t seb.astian’s fault, this is what val.entine made of him, and that is the very first time jac.e starts thinking of himself in similar terms. that maybe he DIDN’T deserve what was done to him and he ISN’T weak and just like seb.astian he is what val.entine made of him. that is a very important moment for him. more than that, he realizes that val.entine never LOVED this boy like he loved him, and if he hadn’t, jac.e would be exactly like him. he recognizes val.entine loves him but for the first time sees it for what it is, sick and twisted, and that val.entine doesn’t KNOW who he really is. how fucking MAJOR, for the first time in his life he realizes val.entine doesn’t know him better than anyone else, that val.entine doesn’t know who he is, that clar.y, that the love of his life that he now CAN love, might be right about him, and that vale.ntine had to go to the lengths he did just to keep jac.e under his wing, and that at the end jac.e WON, so who was the strong one here? and why did jac.e win? what made him strong enough? because ISAB.ELLE CAME AFTER HIM. so family, real family the family he’d come to know as real love and support and real bonds was what saved him, love was what saved him, made him strong enough to kill seb.astian. love made him push through death and get up again even as he was DYING to save isabel.le back because isa.belle is family, because she is the new life ja.ce got when he was sent to the light.woods, she is everything that new life entailed and she is everything val.entine planned to destroy.

do you see how IMPORTANT that is? why is it so SYMBOLIC that it’s isab.elle, the one sparring partner that could keep up with him, yes, but also the one that most EMBODIES this new family he’s a part of - because al.ec, ale.c is his soulmate, so al.ec represents himself, and the stakes are different, much more complex to be that simple and symbolic-, is.abelle who REPRESENTS his new life with the light.woods saves him, and he pushes THROUGH DEATH to save her back.that is the very moment jac.e FINALLY understands what real family and love is. seeing his double whom was never loved by val.entine, seeing val.entine’s monster side so clearly reflected in the twisted form of his real son, knowing he was capable of love, yes, but that he was also capable of unspeakable cruelty, and having is.abelle of all people come and save his life and give him a reason to FIGHT again when he’d given up, that means EVERYTHING. that is the very moment in which jac.e finally stops picking up. the moment when jac.e KNOWS he is strong enough to face val.entine and even if it’ll HURT because they still love each other, he knows he won’t fail this time. because as much as he loves val.entine, he loves this new, REAL family much more, and more than that, he loves himself, the self that he learned to be with the light.woods that would fight for them with his life more than he loves the boy he used to be with val.entine. that is the moment he finally sticks firmly on his own feet and he stands up to val.entine and he can finally SAY to him, “i am not weak. love did not make me weak. love made me stronger. and i have won over your other creation because of love and i am here now to take your life in the name of family and justice and even if it kills me i will do it because i know i am strong enough now.” CHILLS.

“dear john, i see it all now that you’re gone.”

ok, so, when does jac,e STARTS to see or even realize there is or might be ANYTHING wrong with what val.entine did to him? first, when he leaves him, abandons him - and it’s so interesting because jac.e FEELS that way, he “knows” that mich.ael was murdered but he feels abandoned, as though part of him knew the truth somehow - when michae.l dies, when the micha.el identity dies and jac.e first meets other people, other children, specially and other parents, other ways of parenting. he mentions to mar.yse “i used to watch you sing for al.ec and izz.y” and even though he doesn’t recall she did the same for him, because he never believed he deserved it, he still watched it. he watched what a parent could BE and he CRAVED it for himself. ma.ryse is the first time he sees what a real parent could  be like, and that is only after mich.ael is “gone”. AGAIN, he starts seeing it even more, to the point where his loyalties first start to change when he learns the truth about va.lentine and val.entine leaves him for idr.is. so again, valetin.e is gone. the parent he knew as michae.l is gone, and then once more when he learns about jonath.an, and realizes he was never val.entine’s biological son at all, which makes yet another part of him disappear. so val.entine slowly abandons him bit by bit and those moments are the crucial moments where jac.e starts seeing things for what they are.

“don’t you think i was too young to be messed with? the girl in the dress cried the whole way home.”

pretty easy, childhood, jac.e first realizing that maybe what vale.ntine did to him as a child WASN’T okay, WASN’T for his own good, WASN’T for any other reason other than val.entine’s own sick plans. and that he DID have a reason to cry for all the times he didn’t before, after the murder of his falcon. also notice this, val.entine made him watch the death of two things jac.e loved in ten years, the falcon, and then he goes and stages a very similar thing for his own death after he knew what the death of the pet had caused in jac.e, made him stop crying, made him “stronger”, shifted him, and he hoped his own death would do the same. but yes, jac.e finally allowing himself to cry for what val.entine did to him is/would be a very important moment. recognizing he was just a child and val.entine didn’t have the right to do to him what he did.

“i should’ve known.”

the moment when jac,e realizes is also the moment where he thinks he should’ve known what val.entine did to him, should’ve been stronger from the beginning, should’ve killed him when he got the chance. remember what he tells cl.ary? “i wasn’t strong enough, i had the chance to kill him and i didn’t and every death he’s caused since (max’ included) is in my hands”. he thinks he should’ve known better that he should’ve known BEFORE that val.entine would never be the father he hoped he’d be and that jac.e should have been stronger earlier and killed his own father to protect the innocent lives he took later. jac.e is half out of his mind when he tells clar.y this, and thinking “he should’ve known” is the reason he decides to go after val.entine after all, and even though he doesn’t think he’s strong enough to SURVIVE it, he still thinks it’s his duty to end it, whether it costs his life or not, because he should have known and he should had saved all those lives when he could, when he had the dagger to valentin.e’s throat and let him go. 

“maybe it’s me and my blind optimism to blame.”

what does val.entine tells him? you were too GOOD, too KIND, too SOFT HEARTED and that is the reason why i sent you away. those things that made you YOU, also made you WEAK and not strong enough for my plans for you. jon was too strong because he didn’t have kindness at all, you were too WEAK because kindness was all you HAD. so let’s ponder on this because this is important. val.entine, in his sick, deranged mind, of a man who thinks was doing everything right, is able to recognize and more than that learn to love a kind heart, enough to CHANGE HIS PLANS for this love. think about his. jac.e was actually so GOOD, so “optimistic” he managed to be SOLE, ONE AND ONLY QUESTION MARK on valent.ine’s grand plans. joc.elyn didn’t manage that even though val.entine loved her, his own SON didn’t manage that, even though val.entine used to love him. but jac.e that small child, that BABY valenti.ne cut out of his dead mother’s womb, that child so pure and full of LOVE, managed to be so KIND he made val.entine question part of his plans. he made val.entine STOP and CHANGE his plans if only to save jac.e and you know the importance of this??? valentine never thought he was wrong or that what he did to anyone in his life was wrong because it served a higher purpose he never doubted himself. and yet he couldn’t go through with his twisting of jac.e because he loved him so much, jac.e was so good, he sent him away to be loved by a “real family” to a place where he knew he would be taken care of. jac.e made vale.ntine for that single time, see the wrong in his own doings. cyb this??? so yes, at first jac.e considers, he takes in val.entine’s words and they hit him HARD, and he thinks, as said before, he wasn’t strong enoough when he had the chance, and maybe his  father is right and his SOFT HEART, “his blind optimism”, kept him from saving lives and being stronger. 

“or maybe it’s you and your sick need to give love than take it away.” 

this is the important moment it SHIFTS. yeah, maybe it was me, maybe i was -too weak, too gullible, too kind, or you know what? maybe it was YOU. maybe it was all your games who TWISTED  me. maybe it was never me AT ALL because that kind heart? that kind heart is the reason my REAL family loves me, is the reason i pushed through death to save my family who saved me back, and is the reason i have someone like cl.ary as pure as her, love me. so screw you. maybe it was you and your love games to blame, never me. vale.ntine made love a weapon, he brandished it, either saying he did what he did because he loved jac.e or saying jac.e’s love - even jac.e’s love for HIM - made him weak. so it’s either the reason behind all the hurt he put jac.e through or jac.e’s downfall. it’s either the most essential thing linking them, or the reason why jac.e will never defeat him.

“and you add my name to your long list of traitors who don’t understand.”

this is so fucking interesting because val.entine DOES feels this way. he is RIGHT, he is trying his BEST, he is trying to SAVE the world because if he doesn’t NO ONE WILL AND YET, people BETRAY HIM. he does nothing but work to make their lives better and they stab him in the back. he loved them, tried to save them and they betrayed him. this starts with lu.ke and jocel.yn, goes to the former circle members who left him, turned on him (i.e. the lightwo.ods) and finally, jac.e’s name is added to the list at the very final moment. when valentin.e begs jac.e not to “make him kill him” because that is how he feels. he is doing the right thing, and jac.e leaves him no OPTION other than to add him to the list of traitors and end his life, when val.entine had hoped jac.e would SURVIVE this and join him finally in the new world. he doesn’t care that much that jonatha.n is dead, but he BEGS jac.e not to turn against him and then holds jac.e through it, and importantly, apologizes for what he had to do. so again, jac.e is his one TRUE regret. does he regret what he did to jon? sure, but because it came out WRONG, because val.entine’s experiment failed, NOT because he feels guilty. he regrets jac.e because he loves him. and that is a key difference. at the end, the one thing val.entine genuinely loved is the one thing he has to truly sacrifice to get his ritual going. 

“and i look back and regret how i ignored when they said run as fast as you can.”

jac.e dies in valentin.e’s arms, and knows once and for all that val.entine’s love for him could never be bigger than his plans, than his pride, than his complex of savior. this is the moment jac.e sees val.entine for what he is, a deranged man that truly believed his delusions that much, he sees him clearly, right before he dies, and it changes him. that is the moment where it changes from “i am my father, i am just like him” to “i don’t WANT to be like him, i don’t WANT to be val.entine and i will FIGHT to not end like he did.”

“dear john, i see it all now that you’re gone. don’t you think i was too young to be messed with? the girl in the dress cried the whole way home.”

“dear john, i see it all now that it was wrong.”

again, realizing for the first time, TRULY realizing that what valentine did to him and to everyone wasn’t for the best, wasn’t because he loved him, wasn’t to benefit anyone but valentine himself and it was, in fact, as he struggled 16 years to believe, WRONG, very wrong. not what a true parent should do. ever.

“don’t you think nineteen’s too young to be played by your dark twisted games, when i loved you so?

despite everything, despite finally realizing what was done to him was WRONG, jac.e never stopped loving him. jac.e loved him through every bad thing val.entine ever did to him and he finally recognizes that, and it hurts, and it makes him wonder if he’s a bad person for doing so, if he’s betraying his real father - stephen - if it makes him weak, but he can’t ever deny it, he loves val.entine even after his death even after his own death, he loves him, and though he can change everything else, and his perspective, he can’t change this. 

as for val.entine’s games this doesn’t even need to be explained. val.entine did all sorts of games with jac.e’s mind all in favor of retaining control over him. 1. lied about his identity. 2. made him believe he was dead, and made him watch such murder, then blame his own REAL self for it. 3. made sure jac.e would find him to avenge his father and always come back to him at the end. 4. when he realize jac.e was finally moving on from his teachings, with cl.ary’s help, he taints that relationship and again isolates jac.e from everyone like he did when he was a kid, and lie to him making him believe he as his biological son all along and cl.ary his sister. 5. taunts jac.e with the possibility of joining him because they will always be both cursed and the same, as evidenced by jac.e loving his sister. 6. shows him the end of the world, swallowed by demons and tells him if he’s GOOD, if he joins him, he and his family will be saved, when he knew all along that his wish to the angel would effectively kill every runed shadowhu.nter aside from himself and the children. 7. when jac.e doesn’t join him, he tells him he has demon blood and even if he can help loving cl.ary he will never be saved, and his family will never be SAFE with him, because he will never be anything more than vale.ntine’s experiment. 8. even at the very end, he tell jac.e they can still rule the new world together even though he knows jac.e is runed enough that the wish will drive him mad too. even though the alternative is him sacrificing clar.y instead, though he never tells jac.e that. 

also as a cameo, in the show, if we follow book canon which i do, clar.y being 18, makes ja.ce 19, so he was 19 when val.entine took him to the ship and spent the entire time playing dark twisted games with him, where he beat him unconscious and back to consciousness then freed him only to have him kill a fake val.entine to try to escape, then trap him and beat him again, only to treat him like a loving father later and cooking him dinner before beating him once more. so there you go. dark twisted games at 19. 

“i should’ve known.”

“and you are an expert at sorry, and making lines blurry.”

do i even need to explain this? valent.ine was so GOOD at this, he made jac.e still think he did what he did out of love even when he was sixteen and learned val.entine had done nothing but lie to him his entire life. even at the end, where jac.e held a blade to his throat it hurt him to do it even if he was finally sure of it. val.entine is the master at blurring lines and brainwashing, which he did to jac.e masterfully so. and why jac.e is so important for having been able to escape it.

“never impressed by me acing your tests.”

in the same breath val.entine would call ja.ce his biggest achievement and call him weak. at the end jac.e realizes val.entine never truly believed jac.e could win over jona.than because he never believed  jac.e could be strong enough. that is the moment he knows val.entine thought he was weak for once and for all, and then it doesn’t MATTER because JA.CE KNOWS NOW HE IS STRONG and that is a MAJOR IMPORTANT POINT in his life. standing up to valentine and saying: you were wrong about me, you never thought i could do this but i did, i am not weak, i am strong, and i am here to take your life.” let’s pretend this wasn’t screwed up. because this is a major important moment for jac.e and abused children all around. standing up to your abuser. the moment when val.entine’s approval NO LONGER MATTERS. this is, i cannot stress enough how IMPORTANT AND MAJOR THIS IS. he no longer needed, craved, or was interested in valentin.e’s approval, he no longer believed val.entine was the measure of him, he no longer gave val.entine power over his life, decisions and self value. he no longer needed val.entine to tell him he was strong. he decided he was stronger than val.entine thought and he proved it to him, this is so fucking. fucking. important. so. fucking. important. never forget this. jac.e fucking herondal.e died standing up to his abuser and deciding his abuser was no longer the measure, master, or owner of him, and he could decide the kind of man he would be ON HIS FUCKING OWN THANK YOU VERY MUCH.

“all those girls that  you’ve run dry with tired lifeless eyes cause you burned them out.”

countless examples of this. val.entine made an “impression” in every life he touched. no one was left the same. joc.elyn felt broken as a mother. lu.ke felt so worthless he never confessed his love because val.entine convinced him he was nothing more than a monster and not good enough. mar.yse doubted herself so much she closed herself off from jac.e’s love for a while because she thought she was only being deceived by val.entine through him again. etc etc etc etc. val.entine screwed up every person that ever loved him, and seeing that is when jac.e starts to see his reach and reflections of what he did to him, himself, on others. recognizing that is majorly important. with the most important example being jon.athan which as explained above is a grand shifting point for jac.e.

“but i took your matches before fire could catch me, so don’t look now. i’m shining like fireworks over your sad empty town.”

AGAIN. as said above, jac.e DIED STANDING UP TO VAL.ENTINE. he recognized: I LOVE YOU BUT I NO LONGER BELONG TO YOU. I LOVE YOU AND YOU LOVE ME BUT YOU ARE NOT THE MEASURE OF ME. I LOVE YOU AND YOU LOVE ME BUT YOU DO NOT GET TO DECIDED WHAT KIND OF PERSON I AM AND WHAT I DO. YOU NO LONGER HAVE AGENCY OVER MY LIFE. YOU ARE NO LONGER THE OWNER OF ME. I AM THE OWNER OF ME AND I CHOOSE MY FAMILY, I CHOOSE CL.ARY, I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE IN GOOD, AND BELIEVE THE WORLD CAN BE SAVED WITHOUT SLAUGHTER, I CHOOSE TO BELIEVE PEOPLE CAN CHANGE, AND I CHOOSE TO STAND UP TO YOU AND SAVE THOSE WHO TRULY CARE ABOUT ME, NOT LOVE ME JUST BECAUSE I LOVED THEM, BUT LOVE ME BECAUSE OF WHO I AM, AND YOU NO LONGER GET TO DECIDE OR TELL ME WHO THAT IS. YOU HAVE PLANNED THIS AND TRICKED PEOPLE YOUR ENTIRE LIFE BUT I AM STRONGER THAN YOU EVER THOUGH I COULD BE AND I AM THE ONE THAT IS GONNA END YOUR PLANS HERE AND NOW.

“dear john, i see it all now that you’re gone. don’t you think i was too young to be messed with? the girl in the dress cried the whole way home.” 

“i see it all now that you’re gone: don’t you think i was too young to be messed with? the girl in the dress wrote you a song.” 

“YOU SHOULD HAVE KNOWN.”

how fucking fantastic, bombastic, AMAZING is this??? it goes from i should have known better, i should had stopped you. to YOU should had known. YOU SHOULD HAD KNOWN BETTER THAN TO BREAK ME AND ALL OF THESE PEOPLE. you should had KNOWN WHAT YOU DID WAS WRONG. YOU SHOULD HAD KNOWN YOU WERE WRONG.  WRONG ABOUT ME. WRONG ABOUT THEM. WRONG ABOUT YOUR DAUGHTER. AND THAT IS YOUR DOWNFALL. YOU SHOULD HAD KNOWN BETTER THAN TO BELIEVE ALL YOUR DERANGED THOUGHTS. YOU SHOULD HAD KNOWN BETTER THAN TO TRY AND BREAK ME BECAUSE NOW I AM GOING TO BREAK YOU. I AM GOING TO END THIS. and at the end he did, because his love, his bravery, his courage, his standing up to val.entine was what gave cl.ary the ultimate STRENGTH to do what she did, to do what she did FOR JAC.E (and she SAYS that, that jac.e would have wanted her to FIGHT) and follow his example, and BELIEVE IN HERSELF like he believed in HER AND IN HIMSELF now and end it. and they did.