SHADOWHUNTERS AND DOWNWORLDERS

SARAH REES BRENNAN

As you will see below, Sarah Rees Brennan has a very active imagination, which happens to writers sometimes. She also has some very, er, unique opinions on what’s going on in my books. But her heart is absolutely in the right place.


WHAT DOES THAT

DEVIANT WENCH

THINK SHE’S DOING?

OR, SHADOWHUNTERS

GONE WILD

THE DIRTY SIDE OF DEMON HUNTING



“So, technically, even though Jace isn’t actually related to you, you have kissed your brother.”

—Simon Lewis in City of Glass, telling it like it is

I hope, with this saucy title, that everyone has flipped right from the table of contents to this essay. Hi, guys! Almost every other essay will be more coherent and intelligent than this one, but if you want dirty jokes, you have come to the right place. Welcome to Sarah’s School of Deviant Literary Analysis, where everyone gets to canoodle, including Magnus Bane’s magnificent self.

And since I invoked Magnus Bane’s name because I was shamelessly cribbing off a phrase he used in City of Bones (nobody canoodles in his bedroom but his magnificent self), let’s begin my list of shameless debauchees (otherwise known as Cassandra Clare’s cast of characters) with a look at Magnus: warlock, Downworlder, fashion icon. Though the angel Raziel says that Downworlders have souls, warlocks are looked down on by the Shadowhunters. They would probably be looked down on by most people: It’s a shady enough thing to have a parent from Hell and to know that you are born via a nonconsensual demonic arrangement. Magnus’ mother was violated, and his birth had far-reaching tragic consequences, resulting in the deaths of most of his human family; no wonder Magnus does not want to talk about his father. In lesser books, Magnus might be a villain: doomed and damned by descent, by his sexual preferences, by who he is.

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.

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

JACE AND CLARY: We’re related.

FAERIE QUEEN: 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 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.

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:

ISABELLE: You should bite me.

SIMON: Well, I never.

ISABELLE: It’s cool, bro, I’m consenting, and consent is sexy!

SIMON: 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.

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

SIMON: 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.

ISABELLE: I believe it. Noted pervert, our Jace. Now fang my brains out.

I swear, my hand to God and Girl Scouts, that the events I have just related actually occur in the book, just as written (Isabelle-fanging in City of Lost Souls and Jace-fanging in City of Ashes, to be specific and precise about my fanging). I admit that the dialogue is pretty much 100 percent Sarah-produced made-up. I couldn’t resist: I love a make-out scene.

I will segue from talking about making out (only briefly, I swear) to talk about family. (Family who aren’t making out, guys; come on, work with me here.) The Mortal Instruments and Infernal Devices series abound with examples of nontraditional family units. Jace was adopted at the age of twelve, and there are strains from both sides—fear that Jace’s allegiance belongs to his birth parent, parental fear from Maryse Lightwood that her sins or the birth parent’s sin will taint Jace. But Maryse loves him, and sings him the song she sang the children she gave birth to, because he’s hers. Charlotte, much too young to be a mother, is nevertheless placed in loco parentis to Will and Jem: While it’s not motherhood, it’s guardianship, and there’s love and respect there on all sides. Mortmain, the villain of the Infernal Devices, clearly adored his adoptive warlock parents. Even Valentine, the chief villain of the first Mortal Instruments trilogy, whom we find out in City of Glass adopted Jace (OR DID HE? Sorry, no, he did, go on), genuinely loves his son:

VALENTINE: My boy. My sweet boy. I could not love thee, dear, so much did I not love megalomania-cally taking over the world more.

JACE: I’m going to be in therapy forever.

VALENTINE: I stab you to death now. With a heart full of love! Know this: I would still totally stab you if you were biologically mine. It makes no difference to me: I am devoted to you, and immensely crazypants.

JACE: Call a doctor and a psychiatrist…

VALENTINE: Stab, stab, XOXOXO, Daddy.

This is borne out again by the fact Valentine does not love Clary, who actually is biologically his daughter. He blames her for her mother leaving, which, putting aside the surface crazed-demon-hunter-on-mission-to-take-over-world issue, is relatable again: the parent who resents a child for taking up the other parent’s attention and affection. In return, Clary doesn’t love him: In fact, she murders him for being a big boyfriend-killing world-take-overing speciesist jerk. He’s not her father in any real sense: Luke Garroway the werewolf is her father, if anyone is. And it is Luke who says perhaps the truest and most important thing in the books, making explicit their message, in City of Fallen Angels: “Be what you are. No one who really loves you will stop.”

Love is acceptance, and treating people right. Sebastian, Clary’s bio brother (whom she totally also makes out with, and who is also a bit demonish, and whose real name is Jonathan but I’m sticking with Sebastian because my motto is once you murdered someone and assumed their identity, murderous finders’ keepers!), is actually related to Clary and Valentine, and in the Infernal Devices, Tessa and Nathaniel are somewhat related, and Benedict Lightwood is definitely Gabriel and Gideon’s father. Doesn’t really work out well! Sebastian, Valentine, and Benedict are bad people. (Except that Sebastian is my baby demon honey lamb, but that’s not what this essay is about, however: Don’t blame the demon-blood-infested player, hate the demon-blood-infesting game.) Simon is blood related to both his mother and his sister, but his mother rejects him in City of Fallen Angels and his sister accepts his vampirosity in City of Lost Souls. Embracing people for who they are is the key.

The portrayal of all these untraditional families and strange friendships conveys this: Blood doesn’t matter. Tradition doesn’t matter, and following the accustomed forms and rules of family doesn’t matter. Love is what matters. Love is the song you hear even while you sleep, and you know you are healed, and safe, and where you belong.

So what does all this talk about love and desire and strangeness really mean, in the larger scheme of things rather than in the personal-opinions arena? (Example of a possible personal opinion: “I Read This Book of Essays and I Really Think Sarah Rees Brennan Is a Demented Sex Fiend.”) I’m not saying: These books are a lot about desire, keep them away from children! I’m saying: These books are a lot about desire in all its forms and about not condemning it, and I think that’s valuable for teenagers—for everyone.

Let’s examine what Cassandra Clare has actually done, through this addressing of love and desire. She’s written one of the very few (I count two1) young adult books with an Asian character important enough—Jem Carstairs, via being one of the romantic leads—to get his own cover, to hit the bestseller list (Clockwork Prince). She has written what I would say is the most popular gay relationship in the whole YA fiction realm. And is popularity important? Yes, yes it is. A book is more likely to be popular if it’s heteronormative; it means there are fewer obstacles in the book’s way (stores and festivals refusing to stock the book, less fancy marketing for the book). Consider how nobody’s gay that we know of in Twilight or the Hunger Games… consider Dumbledore being revealed as gay—but not, crucially, in the books themselves—in Harry Potter. Think about what a book being popular really means. (It doesn’t mean the author gets to buy a golden helicopter.) It means that a lot of people read it—a lot of people get the message that, for instance, gay relationships shouldn’t exist by reading books where they don’t exist. I wish none of this were true, but it is; and since it is, I’m so happy that Cassandra Clare’s books are in the world, and that they have been so wildly successful and beloved.

Cassandra Clare has achieved an enormous amount, because she’s been able to send out this message to so many readers: Whoever you are, whatever you want—it’s okay, and you are okay. You can be better than okay: You can be a hero.

We need more scandalous books by deviant wenches to tell us that.



Sarah Rees Brennan was born and raised in Ireland by the sea, where her teachers valiantly tried to make her fluent in Irish (she wants you to know it’s not called Gaelic) but she chose to read books under her desk in class instead. She is the author of Team Human and the Demon’s Lexicon trilogy. Her new book is Unspoken, a romantic Gothic mystery about a girl who discovers her imaginary friend is a real boy.

1 Lili Saintcrow’s Betrayals, sequel to her Strange Angels, is the other. You’re welcome, curious reader!





ABOUT THE EDITOR

#1 New York Times bestselling author Cassandra Clare created the Mortal Instruments in 2004 with City of Bones (Simon & Schuster, 2007). Since then, the series has grown to five books, with a sixth due in 2014, and been joined by two spinoff trilogies and an upcoming film starring Jamie Campbell Bower and Lily Collins. Clare’s books have earned her numerous awards, including the American Library Association Teens Top Ten Title.