Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader(26)

Farmer Ted and Simon have less in common than Duckie and Simon, since Farmer Ted isn’t technically Sam’s best friend. He does give Sam a shoulder to cry on and throws her an emotional life preserver when she needs one. But anyone who has ever harbored a monster crush knows a shoulder to cry on is no match for hundreds of class periods spent combining your name and your crush’s (especially if you added his last name to your first name just to “see how it would look”). This is particularly true of young women in literature and film, who suffer extreme cases of the grass always being greener on the other side. They seem to be more interested in the unattainable than in the boy who’s busy adding his last name to theirs.

Exhibit B: Simon is the grass on this side—the known quantity.

Simon is the boy Clary confesses her hopes and fears to in the auto shop, not the boy whose name she writes over and over in class—or, in the case of Shadowhunters, the boy upon whose skin she draws runes.

Clary isn’t the only one who needs an emotional life preserver. In City of Bones, Simon admits (though Clary denies it), “I’ve always been the one who needed you more than you needed me.”

This brings up another important distinction between Duckies and guys who get the girls: The guy who gets the girl avoids showing both physical and emotional vulnerability, except to the one girl he cares about.

Exhibit C: Jace bleeds and battles demons and still has enough energy to make a smartass comment afterward, while Simon just bleeds.

Unlike Simon, Jace doesn’t seem to lean on anyone. He suffers silently, hiding the pain of losing his parents, his insecurities, even his feelings for Clary at first. As the series continues, we learn Jace’s secrets along with Clary, and discover that he is more vulnerable than we could’ve imagined, which only makes him even more wounded and irresistible. To their detriment, Duckies are never wounded and irresistible (physically wounded maybe, but that’s not quite as sexy).





Case Study 3: St. Elmo’s Fire (Joel Schumacher and Carl Kurlander, 1985)


Another common denominator best friends in film and literature share is pining. You know, silently brooding over the girl you’re madly in love with year after year without saying a word.

The ultimate case study in best friend pining is Kevin, Andrew McCarthy’s character in the movie St. Elmo’s Fire. In the film, seven best friends graduate from college, and their lives slowly fall apart, tearing their friendship apart along with them. Almost everyone in St. Elmo’s Fire seems to have hooked up at some point, but Leslie and Alec are an actual couple. The turning point in the movie occurs when the lives of all seven of the characters are spinning out of control, and Leslie confronts Alec about his “extracurricular love life.” Alec throws Leslie out of their apartment, and she ends up at her best friend Kevin’s place.

They both drink too much, Leslie finds a box full of pictures Kevin has secretly snapped of her over the years (can anyone say stalker?), and Kevin admits that he’s been in love with her since they met. But viewers know Kevin is in love with Leslie long before she figures it out. The way he seems uncomfortable when Leslie and Alec are together, the awkward glances and longing looks—it’s all right there on the screen.

In the case of Simon, it’s right there on the page as soon as the Mortal Instruments series begins.

Exhibit D: Simon has been in love with Clary for years.

The boy who gets the girl never pines. He kisses her in the hall and takes her breath away, or he kisses her in front of the Seelie Court, even when he thinks she’s his sister (a fact made less creepy by the fact that we know it doesn’t turn out to be true). In City of Ashes, everyone watched when “Jace [took] Clary in his arms with such force Simon… thought one or both of them might shatter” and “held her as if he wanted to crush her into himself.”

Another similarity between Kevin’s relationship with Leslie and Simon’s relationship with Clary is that when both guys seem to “get the girl,” the spark is short-lived. The only thing that’s more obvious than Kevin’s pining in the first half of St. Elmo’s Fire is Leslie’s lack of passion for him when they are finally together in the second half. Like Simon in the beginning of City of Ashes, Kevin has the only thing he’s ever wanted—the girl he’s secretly loved for so long. But it’s a crushing revelation (Alec’s infidelity) that brings Kevin and Leslie together, not genuine interest on Leslie’s part, just as Simon gets a chance with Clary only after she learns that Jace is her brother.

In both cases, the girls are emotionally devastated by the realization they can’t be with the guys they truly love. So whom do they turn to? The guys who love them so much they are willing to be the rebound guys. It’s easy to fall back on someone you know is waiting in the wings, especially if your heart and self-esteem are in pieces at your feet. Who better to glue you back together than your best friend? Unfortunately, gluing you back together isn’t usually enough to turn friendship into attraction.

Exhibit E: The proof is always in the pudding, or in this case the kiss.

In City of Ashes, Clary describes kissing Simon as “a gentle sort of pleasant, like lying in a hammock on a summer day with a book and a glass of lemonade,” while kissing Jace is the opposite of pleasant, “like opening up a vein of something unknown inside her body, something hotter and sweeter and bitterer than blood.” Hmm…let’s see, “a book and a glass of lemonade” or “hotter and sweeter and bitterer than blood”? Which one would you choose?