Shadowhunters and Downworlders (22 page)

But Magnus is one of the good guys. He is the only character to appear in all of the six Mortal Instruments and three Infernal Devices books. (I know they're not all out yet, but trust me, he's in 'em.) Indeed, in the Infernal Devices books, there is another demon's child: Tessa, our adorable book-loving heroine, is a warlock too. The presence and prominence of Magnus Bane, a bisexual, flamboyant, part-Asian, part-demon character, in the Mortal Instruments
novels says: You can be very different, genuinely and obviously different. You can love as you will and have whatever kind of fun you like. You can be banned from Peru because of that shocking thing you did involving a llama, and you still can be one of the kindest, most decent and dependable people in the world.

Magnus in the Infernal Devices helps one of our heroes, Will Herondale, for no reason other than that Will needs help. Magnus is shown as hurt by a lady he loves, and in the Mortal Instruments, he is shown as entering into a committed relationship with a dude he loves and who loves him back. Said dude, Alec, takes a while to love Magnus back, so almost from the start we see Magnus as pining and rejected as well as deeply snarky…we empathize with his longing just as we do with Clary and Jace's longing for each other.

Speaking of Clary and Jace's love for each other: It is forbidden. Nay, it is taboo. No, I mean, they think they're brother and sister for several books, and yet they can't quite stamp out the feelings they had for each other before this dreadful discovery. Their Facebook relationship statuses say “IT'S COMPLICATED!!!!!!”

Fortunately, Jace and Clary turn out not to be related. (I mean, if you buy Valentine's story and don't think to yourself: Hey, so this hot devoted-to-Valentine young lassie Celine Herondale [Jace's mom] was in an unhappy marriage and lived next door, and Valentine was also having marital difficulties [“You never take out the trash and you always put demons in our son!”] and then Celine got pregnant and Valentine adopted her kid as his own—sure, okay, normal behavior, that Valentine, he's a giver—and he
could have
popped the Herondale scar on the baby real quick so nobody asked any awkward follow-up questions
in the future. That's a personal theory. Nobody tell Jace and Clary: They might get upset. I may have already told Cassandra Clare, who said, and I quote, “You're sick, dude,” and, “There's something very wrong with you.” So I cannot call this theory author-approved. ) This does not change the fact that Jace and Clary believed they were in the wrong and could not help feeling what they felt anyway.

Cassandra Clare is on record as saying she was inspired by the real-life story of a couple who were going to get married and found out they were brother and sister. (Most awkward “actually don't save the date” notes ever, am I right?) I can completely see why she was inspired. It is a horrible thing to happen to two innocent people in love, and books are all about horrible things happening to people. So you become involved with someone, you find out something terrible, you can't entirely crush your feelings: That is a tragedy. That is nobody's fault. Human beings are complicated.

And if you give in to your mutual (
mutual
is important, kids) desires and act on them, that's okay, even if in the last analysis you decide pursuing the relationship is a bad idea. Clary and Jace never decide to date even though they're related because holy complications, Batman. They do, however, make out wildly twice. Admittedly, once when Jace is in a fit of self-loathing, and one time the Queen of the Faeries makes them do it.

F
AERIE
Q
UEEN:
Faerie Queen says kiss. Basically, being Queen of the Faeries is 70 percent voyeurism, 30 percent crafting giant flowers to wear on my head.

J
ACE AND
C
LARY:
We're related.

F
AERIE
Q
UEEN:
I know! I love me some
Flowers in the
Attic
shizz.

Just because they enjoyed it doesn't mean you didn't violate them, Faerie Queen! And they're not bad people for enjoying it, or for feeling the way they do. The reader sympathizes with them.

Speaking of reader sympathy, I once read a review of one of Cassandra Clare's books online that said that her talent would trick you into believing Magnus and Alec's relationship was beautiful instead of wrong. I found that sad, of course, because it is sad that in this day and age there are people, genuinely good and well-meaning people, who think that (a) love is wrong and (b) what consenting adults get up to is any of their business. I found it inspiring too, though—if even people who think like that found the relationship beautiful, perhaps it dropped a seed of tolerance and love there. And for those who didn't start from the place of “This is wrong, terrible and wrong!” but who started from a place of being undecided or ignorant or oblivious…well, maybe Magnus and Alec's relationship made them aware and accepting. In the words of noted philosopher Lily Allen, “Look inside your tiny mind/and look a bit harder.” These books encourage everyone to do that, simply by presenting a world that has all kinds of people in it. Presenting such a world is a risk, of course: Many readers, like the reviewer mentioned above, find a diverse world perverse in some way. But that diversity is also something that makes the world of the books richer, the books themselves better, and the minds of those reading them broader.

Which might just be a long way of me saying, “Rock on with your bad selves, you deviants.” And speaking of deviants…

Not many gorgeous young heroes of YA novels share a kiss with warlock dudes, unless their wanting to share a kiss
with dudes is the entire premise of the novel. Will Heron-dale of the Infernal Devices got snogged by Magnus Bane and then wandered off in a slightly drugged-up haze. It was not the most scandalous thing that had ever happened to Will. It was not even the most scandalous thing that happened to Will
that day
.

Jace Wayland-Morgenstern-Herondale-Lightwood (Jace has three daddies, okay, and they're all varying degrees of evil) is like Will in that this is a dude who's probably straight but open to new experiences. It's not all running around naked with antlers on his head and adopting the alias Hotschaft von Hugenstein: Jace also offers to kiss Alec to address the question of Alec's attraction to him, and does make out with Aline Penhallow on request to ascertain her orientation. I wonder how that conversation went.

A
LINE:
Yo, Wayland-Herondale-Morgenstern-Lightwood! That's a mouthful.

J
ACE:
That's what all the ladies tell me.

A
LINE:
Good straight-to-the-filthtastic point! I hear you're foxier than the Fantastic Mr. Fox.

J
ACE:
And the rumors are true!

A
LINE:
I don't see it myself.

J
ACE:
Maybe if I turned to the side? I've been told my profile is allu—

A
LINE:
No. I've also been told you're quite the Casanova.

J
ACE:
Well, not to brag, but I've nova'd a few casas in my time.

A
LINE:
Excellent. So you feel you could arouse a lady, if a lady was capable of being aroused by a dude.

J
ACE:
Oh. Ohhhh. Oh I understand, I have an adopted brother who's…

A
LINE:
Do something more useful with your mouth than talking, I feel like I'm getting gayer by the second.

J
ACE:
Challenge accepted!…

A
LINE:
Thanks, man. You have confirmed for me beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am super, super gay. I cannot describe to you how intensely I am not attracted to you.

J
ACE:
…Thanks. But objectively, I'm totally an eight, right?

A
LINE:
Later, dude.

J
ACE:
Seven and a half ?

A
LINE:
Awkward when your sister walked in. Well, could've been worse, it could have been a girlfriend of yours.

J
ACE:
Ahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

A
LINE:
…I'm going to leave you to laugh hollowly and psychotically on your own.

J
ACE:
Good luck with your complicated love life.

A
LINE:
Same, dude. Same.

Oh, Jace Herondale-Wayland-Lightwood-Morgenstern, Shadowhunter by day, Shadowhunters' sex therapist by night. Our hero, ladies and gentlemen.

It's not like we're lacking perversion in other relationships. There's also Simon and Maia, who date even though he's a vampire and she's a werewolf and they are destined enemies, and Simon and Isabelle, the vampire and the Shadowhunter (shark and shark hunter is coming, I know it!).

Demons, Shadowhunters, vampires, and werewolves are not real. (A
UDIENCE
: Glad you've cleared that up for us, Sarah. This is such an insightful essay!) No, really, but listen, this is important, because supernatural creatures have
often been used as analogies for those seen as the Other—people of color, people with religious beliefs different from Christian, people who aren't heterosexual—because it was seen as taboo to actually represent them. It is not taboo anymore—or at least it shouldn't be—and this means that supernatural analogies for representation and actual representation exist in the same books, often in an overlapping way. Maia is half African American and a werewolf, Magnus is half Asian and a warlock, Jem is half Chinese and a Shadowhunter, Simon is Jewish and a vampire.

I like the supernatural as analogy fine—for instance, I love when Simon is trying to come out as a vampire using the language of coming out from a gay pamphlet—but analogies work only up to a point. Having a supernatural character “come out” isn't actually the same as a character coming out as gay, and can't be treated entirely as if it is. Simon shows this is an imperfect analogy by how he adapts the language. He cannot leave it as is because that won't work. “The undead are just like you and me…Possibly more like me than you” (
City of Ashes
). The lust of a vampire for blood and a person for sex are ultimately different, and that has to be clear. Being a person of color and being gay are different things, though, again, they can overlap—in Aline's case, for instance—and that has to be clear. Fancying people of both sexes and fancying your sibling, also two very different situations! Hella not the same.

There are, however, commonalities. Stretching over both the supernatural and the real in these books is the issue of desire as a forbidden thing. There are rules of desire in this imaginary world: Werewolves are not meant to feel desire for vampires, and Shadowhunters are not meant to feel desire for Downworlders. Also accurately represented,
however, is the attitude of some to desire in the real world. Tessa in the Infernal Devices worries that she shouldn't be feeling hot in the pantalettes for a guy—let alone, oh horrors, somebody pass me the smelling salts—TWO guys. Some think women should not feel desire at all, or if they do should feel it toward One Man to Rule Their Lady Parts Alone. Some think women should feel no impulses toward violence. Some think that people should not feel desire for people of the same sex, and Shadowhunters actually have a hidebound attitude about that. Some think people should not feel anything more than desire—should not feel love—for those of a different social class or a different race.

We see all of that in Cassandra Clare's books. By showing us a myriad of different desires and by showing the people who have them as, in most cases, good and heroic people, these books let people who have desires condemned by others know they can and should be part of stories. They let those who have conventional desires put themselves mentally into the position of characters who do not. We have Magnus “Freewheeling Bisexual” Bane, and we also have Isabelle “Nothing Less Than Seven Inches, That's My Motto” Lightwood, an expert fighter who has been around the block and underneath the kitchen table, baby, who loves boys and loves pink and loves weaponry. She is no less heroic than any of the male Shadowhunters: She is never shamed for her desires. She is not elevated above all other women as the sole badass babe, though: Clary is not a trained fighter, but she brings other skills to the table. Clary, Isabelle, and Maia are all shown as having different strengths and growing slowly closer because of them. And Clary, Isabelle, and Maia all have sexy desires that they sometimes act on and sometimes do not, and either way, it's okay.

The message of all these different portrayals of all these different desires is that we cannot control our desires and that no desire is inherently bad. Some desires should not be
acted
on (my desire to murder everyone I see before noon, I definitely have to get a lid on. I'm going through postmen like nobody's business), but nobody should be condemned for what they feel. And if the people involved are both enjoying themselves and want to act on those feelings…that's fine too. Take Isabelle and Simon's first time at the all-youcan-bite buffet:

I
SABELLE:
You should bite me.

S
IMON:
Well, I never.

I
SABELLE:
It's cool, bro, I'm consenting, and consent is sexy!

S
IMON:
But surely I should not treat my lady friend as a handy snack! You are not string cheese! You are not a fruit cup! You are not a macrobiotic yogurt drink!…Sorry, I miss human food sometimes.

I
SABELLE:
No, you should totally bite me. The conflation between the vampire bite and sex is totally a literary archetype.

S
IMON:
But I never fanged a girl before. I mean, I fanged Jace that one time, but I was all dizzy and we were on a boat—you know how wild those cruises can get—and it meant nothing and he was honestly more into it than I was.