Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader(39)

But if you’re queer and reading about Simon, you’re still performing the kind of negotiated reading that Borsellino describes. You’re thinking about the ways Simon being a vampire is like being queer—and arguably there are some, but it’s not like there’s an exact equivalency. For the queer reader, Simon is still more of a window than a mirror.

You can find another cue and clue in Aline Penhallow, who, it turns out, kissed Jace only because she wanted “to figure out if any guy is my type.” It’s not that much of a stretch to deduce that if guys aren’t, perhaps ladies are. (And indeed, we find out in City of Lost Souls that they are. Or at least one lady, Helen Blackthorn, is.)





Obvious Avatars


But by the time Simon becomes a vampire and has to “come out” and by the time we meet Aline, you don’t actually need to negotiate to find queer avatars, because Clare has given you Alec Lightwood, serious-minded, teenage Shadowhunter, and Magnus Bane, style-conscious, centuries-old High Warlock of Brooklyn.

You meet Alec Lightwood in the very first chapter of City of Bones.But all you find out about him then is that he, along with Jace and Isabelle, is hunting a demon and that Clary can see them all but Simon can’t. As the narrative progresses, you see Alec through Clary’s eyes, and what she notices, most notably in his interaction with Jace, leads her to ask Isabelle if Alec is gay. The way Isabelle reacts is telling. She’s rattled enough to mar the eyeliner she’s putting on Clary, and while she confirms Clary’s guess, she also makes her promise not to tell anyone. And it’s a nice bit of foreshadowing by Clare, since Clary asks it as she and Isabelle are getting ready to go to the party given by the man who eventually will become Alec’s boyfriend.

Magnus Bane appears first in City of Bones simply as a mysterious phrase that Clary learns while she’s in the Silent City, a phrase that’s linked to the block on her memories. Then, shortly thereafter, his name—or half of it, anyway—appears on an invitation from “Magnus the Magnificent Warlock” that Isabelle mysteriously obtains. Then, finally, he shows up in person, but his warlock qualities are not immediately on display; he’s simply the glamorous host of a loft party in Brooklyn. Clare’s first description of Magnus merits quoting in full:

The man blocking the doorway was as tall and thin as a rail, his hair a crown of dense black spikes. Clary guessed from the curve of his sleepy eyes and the gold tone of his evenly tanned skin that he was part Asian. He wore jeans and a black shirt covered with dozens of metal buckles. His eyes were crusted with a raccoon mask of charcoal glitter, his lips painted a dark shade of blue. He raked a ring-laden hand through his spiked hair and regarded them thoughtfully.

It’s clear from this description that Magnus enjoys flamboyant self-presentation—spiky hair, exuberant use of makeup, jewelry, and a shirt that references both straitjackets and SM-style bondage. And this is a prolonged description, a whole paragraph, which tells you that the way Magnus dresses is likely to be particularly significant to who he is as a character. Specifically, Magnus’ fashion choices strongly suggest that he’s not straight and also that he’s comfortable and secure in that aspect of his identity. As Shaun Cole writes in Don We Now Our Gay Apparel: Gay Men’s Dress in the Twentieth Century, “Many gay novels or novels dealing with a gay subject have utilised descriptions of dress to form a picture of the physical appearance and also the personality of gay characters…clothing, along with adornment and demeanour, has been a primary method of identification for and of gay men.”

Not all Magnus’ romantic liaisons over the centuries have been with men—indeed, in City of Lost Souls, he describes himself as “a freewheeling bisexual”—but his self-presentation and affect in the Mortal Instruments is most often a sort of glam-camp style that places him in a gay tradition that dates back at least to the supremely suave Victorian-era writer Oscar Wilde (whose many elegant epigrams include “If I am occasionally a little over-dressed, I make up for it by being always immensely over-educated”). As scholar Shawna Lipton writes on the blog Ironing Board Collective, “Making yourself stand out rather than concealing self-perceived flaws…[is] part of a queer aesthetic. From the time of Oscar Wilde, gay style has been associated with artifice and self-creation (Wilde wore a dyed green carnation to symbolize his preference for man-made beauty).” So if standout fashion choices are part of how you claim a queer identity, Magnus can be a particularly inspiring mirror.

But maybe you can’t quite pull off identifying with Magnus, who in addition to his taste for glitter, sequins, and vast quantities of hair products has the swagger and easy sophistication that comes from his eight centuries of living. Maybe when you look in the mirror, you see someone more like Alec—still living under your parents’ authority and their expectations about how you should live your life, knowing you’re not who they want you to be, and unsure what to do. Maybe, in fact, you’ve even got a crush on someone you’re pretty confident isn’t ever going to reciprocate those feelings, like the one Alec has on Jace.

In City of Glass, frustrated with Alec for using his crush as a reason to avoid Magnus, Jace says to him: “I know how you think you feel about me. You don’t, though. You just like me because I’m safe. There’s no risk. And then you never have to try to have a real relationship, because you can use me as an excuse.” Then Jace challenges Alec to kiss him, and Alec’s response is to stare at him in horror. “If you’re blowing off Magnus,” says Jace, “it’s not because of me. It’s because you’re too scared to tell anyone who you really love.”