Shadowhunters and Downworlders: A Mortal Instruments Reader(50)

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 Herondale 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.

ALINE: Yo, Wayland-Herondale-Morgenstern-Lightwood! That’s a mouthful.

JACE: That’s what all the ladies tell me.

ALINE: Good straight-to-the-filthtastic point! I hear you’re foxier than the Fantastic Mr. Fox.

JACE: And the rumors are true!

ALINE: I don’t see it myself.

JACE: Maybe if I turned to the side? I’ve been told my profile is allu—

ALINE: No. I’ve also been told you’re quite the Casanova.

JACE: Well, not to brag, but I’ve nova’d a few casas in my time.

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

JACE: Oh. Ohhhh. Oh I understand, I have an adopted brother who’s…

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

JACE: Challenge accepted!…

ALINE: 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.

JACE: …Thanks. But objectively, I’m totally an eight, right?

ALINE: Later, dude.

JACE: Seven and a half ?

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

JACE: Ahahahahahahahaahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha!

ALINE: …I’m going to leave you to laugh hollowly and psychotically on your own.

JACE: Good luck with your complicated love life.

ALINE: 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. (AUDIENCE: 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.