SHADOWHUNTERS AND DOWNWORLDERS

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.”

The scene in City of Glass where Alec finally encounters Magnus again is very popular with fans. Magnus is ably fighting off Iblis demons but is imperiled. While Magnus is occupied with the demons that are within his line of sight, Alec kills the demon that’s about to attack him from behind.

“Did you just—did you just save my life?” Magnus asks.

Alec’s response is decidedly irrelevant to their immediate circumstances: “You never called me back. I called you so many times and you never called me back.”

It’s a wonderfully vulnerable moment, one that fits with Alec’s age and inexperience with relationships. But he’s not the only one who’s vulnerable. Magnus tells him, after calling him an idiot: “I’m tired of you only wanting me around when you need something. I’m tired of watching you be in love with someone else—someone, incidentally, who will never love you back. Not the way I do.”

Even with his eight centuries of experience, Magnus can’t see what’s obvious to Jace: Alec is in love with him—Magnus, not Jace.

Now that they’ve both revealed themselves, the reader might anticipate that it’s time for at least a kiss. But no, instead there are more demons—damn those supernatural threats and their interference with an epic romance! Alec does, however, make a vow: “We live through this, and I promise I’ll introduce you to my entire family.”

Google “Alec Magnus ‘You never called’” and you get over 80,000 results. As I said: It’s a popular scene. I suspect one reason why is because of the way it connects with queer readers’ own relationship experiences. Queer readers’ relationship struggles might include fewer instances of demon fighting, at least in the literal sense. But the idea of having to get through a tough situation before making a public declaration of a queer relationship is, unfortunately, one that still resonates.

(N.B.: Alec’s raw vulnerability in that scene is also present earlier in his and Magnus’ relationship. But if you’ve only encountered them within the pages of the Mortal Instruments, you’d have no way of knowing. There’s a scene that includes their first kiss, but Clare didn’t write it for the books. It exists solely as bonus content on her website, written as a reward for fans when she reached 30,000 Twitter followers. And it’s definitely rewarding: fanservice in the best sense of the word. Alec asks Magnus if he likes him likes him. Magnus responds, “Are we twelve now?” Somewhat later, there is kissing. If you’re a fan and you haven’t read the scene, go read it—Google “Kissed: Magnus and Alec’s First Kiss”—and come back. I’ll wait.)





Malec Is My OTP: Fan Engagement


Google further mentions of the couple—use “Alec + Magnus” or simply the affectionate fan designation “Malec”—and you’ll see tens of thousands of results. Ditto for “Malec OTP.” OTP, a term of art from fandom, stands for “one true pairing,” meaning that Magnus and Alec are many fans’ favorite couple from the series. Start browsing those results, and you’ll see readers responding in multiple ways to Alec and Magnus: highlighting significant quotes suitable for framing and/or using as a desktop background, creating fanfiction, fan art, fan videos and songs, and cosplaying.

Of course, you don’t have to be a marginalized reader to be a fan of Alec and Magnus or to engage in fannish activities related to their characters and relationship. Maybe you simply like relationships where one partner is more experienced or where the couple has very different senses of style and hijinx ensue, or you enjoy the way the couple teams up for maximally efficient demon dispatching.

But if you are queer, the fact that Alec and Magnus are part of a fictional universe as popular as Cassandra Clare’s—where, based on those depressing statistics about how few YA books have been published in the last decade with LGBT characters, you might not have expected to find any queer characters—is a significant one. Their presence alone, in a series that has been translated into multiple languages, may make you especially inspired to create your own responses to them. And communities form around these acts of creation and interpretation. Become part of one, and maybe that person who posts great photos under the effyeahmalec username will become a new friend, boyfriend, girlfriend, or other significant person in your life.

But wanting new friends and/or action isn’t the only reason to involve yourself with characters from a fictional universe. You can also use the details the author provides about the characters as a jumping-off point to learn more about—well, in Clare’s books, any number of things, from anime, to Muay Thai, to Northern Renaissance painting, to the poetry of Ted Hughes and William Butler Yeats. And when an author gives you characters with whom you identify, then removes them from the narrative for long stretches, their very absence can be, paradoxically, a way for you to connect with them even more closely.

I keep saying “you,” but here’s where I come clean, or out, as the case may be: I identify as queer, so I’m one of those marginalized readers I’ve been talking about. And when I read the Mortal Instruments series, it struck me that significant portions of Magnus and Alec’s relationship take place off the page. Which makes sense—after all, Magnus and Alec are part of an ensemble cast, with world-saving responsibilities that often preclude sexytimes. But I kept thinking about how little of their relationship the reader actually sees and how that, surprisingly, didn’t annoy me but instead made me wonder a lot about what was going on while they were offstage. (Not like that.Well, maybe a little like that.)

What I wondered about the most was this, based on their vacation as described in City of Fallen Angels: If you were a warlock who’d had hundreds of years to travel, what would make you choose particular destinations for a trip with a new lover who’s also newly out as gay?

Here’s an example of the kind of interpretative strategy that can enhance the experience of a queer reader who’s interested in connecting to Magnus and Alec as a couple—and, perhaps even more specifically, in connecting to Magnus’ fabulous outfits.





Magnus and Alec’s European Vacation (with a Bonus Stop in South Asia)


We know from the text that Magnus takes Alec to Paris, Florence, Madrid, “somewhere in India,” Berlin, and Vienna. For each location, we also learn what Magnus wore—or at least one outfit that he rocked, anyway.

As we know, Magnus is hundreds of years old. He’s been around for any number of dramatic cultural shifts: in politics, in fashion, in the way same-gender relationships are perceived. And since I find history, queerness, and fashion equally compelling—and, of course, they’re all connected—I decided to consider each of the destination/ outfit pairs as a way into what Magnus might want Alec to know about that place and what Magnus himself might have experienced on earlier, perhaps much earlier, visits.