#sh meta – @faejilly on Tumblr

faejilly reblogged

i find it kinda silly that warlocks have marks but nephilim don’t, considering the fact that angle blood is potent as fuck

Thus the eternal popularity of wing!fic/wing!art, yes? 💘

On the one hand, this could just be because angels and demons are opposing forces, one cancelling out the other, diametrically opposed on a metaphysical/magical level, so their powers manifest in different ways in their children.

(They're mostly all rather absurdly beautiful after all. Maybe that's their angel mark? *snickers*)

On the other hand, in a slightly more jilly likes making up magic lore point... maybe nephilim aren't half-angel in at all the same way warlocks are half-demon?

And this got long and rambly, so:

#jilly reblogs herself again #sh meta #I just really liked this one #shadowhunters #eldritch angels #and grace as curse not inheritance #or something like that

faejilly

Anonymous asked:

Hello! I have recently landed in the fandom and just took a swan dive into your tags and ramblings :D they are fabulous.

I read a fic a few weeks ago (alas can’t remember the title) and one of its concepts has been eating my brain since, so I have to drop this in your inbox to see what people thought of it!

It’s a conversation between Asmodeus and Magnus, during which Asmodaddy said that other Princes of Hell had all offed their children to gain more power in their war with each other.

This setting could further complicated their relationship! Like, the knowledge that Asmodeus could just take what he wants, but somehow still insisting that Magnus come down to rule with him. The closest thing a demon has to love, even.

asdfjklgh, why thank you! I am verklempt and blushing and always pleased to ramble 💖

That description sounds familiar, I may have read that fic!

(Or that may be a thing in the books that more than one person has run with? idk, I only troll the wiki for facts. I think there is a thing somewhere about how demons feed their children to their realms too, as demonic realms have fallen and are no longer self-sustaining so they need external power to fight off the entropy, or something like that? IDK, there's lots you could do with why demons have children with humans, with what that means for them in terms of power and desire and who knows what else.)

My personal opinion, re: Asmodeus wanting Magnus to come rule with him rather than just feeding him to Edom for power as most Princes do with their offspring, is two-fold.

One, I think you're right, and in the TV-verse at least, he does 'love' Magnus in so much as demons can claim such a thing. (I mean, Lilith loving Jonathan required eternally burning him almost to death so he'd survive Edom, so like. This is not a good thing for anyone who is part human.) This would mean he wants what's good for Magnus' demonic heritage not his human one though. Asmodeus was never human, after all.

Two, a lot of fanon (& mythology) posit Asmodeus as the Prince of Princes, so to speak, possibly the most powerful of the Fallen Angels (beneath Lucifer himself). This is why he can maintain a balance with Lilith for eternity, for example. I think the only way he could keep that sort of balance is if he's very very good at playing the long-game.

And Magnus is extraordinarily powerful, canonically, even for a child of a Greater Demon. It seems likely that he's powerful enough that managing to tie him to Edom would grant Asmodeus more power long term than just that one big surge from a singular sacrifice. Asmodeus is powerful enough on his own he can wait.

He's very good at waiting.

He would also be completely willing and able to explain how he's SO MUCH BETTER THAN THOSE OTHER DEMONS, because of course he does just want his heir by his side, and he's not killing him, that must mean something, musn't it Magnus? I am keeping you alive, I only want you safe, do you know what that means?

/it just means he's smart

//still a demon though

#jilly answers #Anonymous #shadowhunters #sh meta #my sh rambling #asmodeus #demonic heritage #is a fun thing to ramble about #the lore says NOTHING USEFUL #except that bloodlines are legit a thing #so after that?

faejilly

forever-nox asked:

i find it kinda silly that warlocks have marks but nephilim don’t, considering the fact that angle blood is potent as fuck

Thus the eternal popularity of wing!fic/wing!art, yes? 💘

(They're mostly all rather absurdly beautiful after all. Maybe that's their angel mark? *snickers*)

On the other hand, in a slightly more jilly likes making up magic lore point... maybe nephilim aren't half-angel in at all the same way warlocks are half-demon?

And this got long and rambly, so:

#jilly answers #forever-nox #my sh rambling #sh meta #shadowhunters #jilly plays with lore again #but cannot remember any of her tags #and tumblr killed the auto fill #*sighs forever*#eldritch angels #are infecting people to fight demons for them #not having children with humans #just saying

faejilly

Anonymous asked:

i’m rewatching season 3 and i’ve remembered how much i fuckn hate heidi

I believe that was the goal? She is a melodrama villain after all.

Unless you mean you think the character is poorly executed? Which, tbqh is all of them, I just mostly don't care because they meant well and achieved a very precise hit upon my id so I go a little feral for most of them.

(Even Camille tbqh, she's awful but she's SO INTERESTING, like, she's not WRONG ABOUT WHAT IT TAKES TO SURVIVE IMMORTALITY. She isn't any better at actually doing it than Magnus is though! She just swung hard in the opposite direction and convinced herself she was fine, it was fine, everything was fine, she was too smart to have fucked it up that badly. It was Not Fine. And no one is too smart to avoid emotional fucking-up. But wow, did she go hard for what she thought was the right thing for her. Kinda admirable really. I mean. I wouldn't want to meet her, she'd probably eat me, and then complain I tasted bad, but still. She's got panache.)

BUT BACK TO HEIDI

I think we're supposed to feel she's kind-of tragic. She just, embraces her fall from humanity and decides to go full-on-monster. But it's the first actual CHOICE we see her get to make!

Heidi may or may not have actually wanted to be a vampire, and she definitely didn't sign up to be tortured afterwards, and Lilith is supposed to be magically compelling even beyond her unnatural charisma being bestowed upon someone who no one ever bothered with before... I'm not sure Heidi had much of a chance to be anything other than awful, and I gotta say, being told that you should never kneel before someone ever again after death and violence and torture and rejection? Would be pretty convincing for most people.

Is any of that really in the show though? Not really, but it extrapolates pretty easily for me, so.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

#jilly answers #Anonymous #shadowhunters #heidi mckenzie #my sh rambling #sh meta #gods I miss a functional tag autofill #I can never remember if it's rambling or ramblings

faejilly

Anonymous asked:

one thing i hate in fics is when they say that alec is less flexible than magnus, matt being less flexible than harry? absolutely.

but ALEC LIGHTWOOD accomplished warrior, master archer, and much more, being less flexible than magnus just doesn’t make sense to me,

like i’m my mind all shadowhunters are crazy insane flexible bc it just doesn’t make sense that they’re not, so that whole notion is bullshit to me and once i would love to see alec being more flexible than magnus

12/10... I would say no notes but actually I have SO MANY NOTES so the meme dies with me. (This is not a new thing. 😅)

There are a lot of different types of 'flexible' but I will agree that like... Magnus' physicality is absolutely partly about knowing he can handle any situation thrown at him, is part self-defense and psychological armor and health, strengthens his magic and his mind and his mood, but it's also for FUN and dancing and teasing and playing!

And all of that, even the self-defense & fighting when necessary, is entirely different than the physicality of a trained soldier who fights every single damned day of his life and has since he was (at least) ten, and probably younger.

#jilly answers #Anonymous #my sh rambling #sh meta #eldritch angels #shadowhunters #idek how to tag this ramble sorry not sorry #there is of course the fact that #if you're close enough to a nephilim who ISN'T FIGHTING #but does still wish to show you what they can do #you're probably in for a good time #dancing or rock-climbing or fucking or whatever #but it might be a little disturbing if they're not careful #because that's still not RIGHT that a body can do that

faejilly

forever-nox asked:

i think the fandom doesn’t capitalize on the fact that Alec is a older brother, that man probably has so much more black mail on Izzy and Jace then they do on him

#mood

Izzy and Jace have nothing they can use on Alec.

One: They didn't think they'd ever need to because they thought they knew what he'd do in most situations (say no and then begrudgingly help them anyway, and tbf to them, they're mostly not wrong pre-Magnus)

Two: He is so aggressively self-contained for survival reasons that the only 'secrets' either of them has on him are the facts that he's gay and he and his mother have a fucked up relationship and THOSE ARE NOT THINGS YOU CAN USE FOR 'friendly family blackmail'.

Three: Alec is a tactician, he is observant, he is ruthless. He knows everything Izzy and Jace have ever done and the fact that he (as far as we know) never uses any of it is amazing and a little heart-breaking because he could have manipulated and threatened the fuck out of them and made his own life so much easier and he never ever did.

faejilly

Anonymous asked:

a while ago i watched someone react to 1.03 and were praising izzy for being an ally and like i love izzy but almost every time she brought up alec’s sexuality it made me super uncomfortable bc who would really want to be constantly in fear that your sibling is going to out you in a very homophobic society while trying to be supportive? and like there’s no way that izzy doesn’t know that the clave is homophobic and she still brings up it up all the time, it just seems weird that she can understand that the clave is racist but can’t comprehend that it is also homophobic, and she never really dropped the topic despite alec being uncomfortable with it

#mood

HOWEVER

The question arises... was Alec uncomfortable, or were pretty much all the queer viewers uncomfortable?

There's a thing with most media, but TV shows & movies especially, which have so many people involved in making them, and so many constraints behind the scenes that we the viewers may or may not know anything about, that sometimes the way a scene appears to the viewer is NOT the way it was intended/the way the characters take it.

Shadowhunters is a particularly egregious example of this, being a (relatively) cheap YA melodrama on a third-rate network whose entire production staff got swapped out between seasons 1 and 2, so 'lol what is consistency or planning?!?' is visible everywhere.

SO.

Is Izzy in-universe actually clueless/dangerous Straight People™️or were the writers/showrunners clueless Straight/White People™️who had no idea that half of their 'rule of cool' / 'quick banter' / etc. came across as micro-aggressions to the audience?

You can go either way, it's all a question of which you think is more fun/interesting/necessary for your own peace of mind/enjoyment of canon. (Fandom is supposed to be fun after all.)

A lot of people settle on 'they are that bad in canon' and write a lot of fix-it fic or 'nephilim have to deal with CONSEQUENCES!' fanworks, and those are great! A lot of other people go with "clearly everyone else in canon acts like they have positive relationships, so this is a failure of execution and I'm going to write fic/make art assuming that these people are who they SAY they are, and figure out what that looks like to me" and those are also great!

Just decide which one you're doing when you start, because combining both in one fic gets... a little weird? Hard to follow, at least. 🤣

SO: Is Alec uncomfortable? How does he deal with that, what does that say about his relationship with Izzy, with other nephilim, with the Clave & Council & Alicante? How does that contrast with how he feels interacting with the downworld, which is canonically a lot more self-aware and accepting of queer people and minorities?

If Alec isn't uncomfortable with Izzy's behavior, if no one else seems to pick up on it, why? Do we go with other people's reactions in canon and assume that she is in fact very careful with what she says where and it seems overt to us the viewers because we're allowed to see it? (Much like inter-party banter over comms in heist movies or tv shows; no one else ever hears it or sees it, so we can see and hear it for storytelling purposes, not for 'reality' purposes.)

If that's the case, what does their relationship look like to people in public? How different are public-facing Alec & Jace & Isabelle from what we the viewers see of their private relationships to each other?

Do you want to assume some mish-mash of both? It's more subtle in the setting than it seems so we can see it, and also Alec knows she means well even if we don't? OR SOMETHING ELSE ENTIRELY?

IDK, I have no conclusions here. I mostly assume that the show is a disaster, and these people all seem to like each other, so how can I write them that fits the results rather than all the dumb-ass details? (I like a lot of authors/artists who go the other way though.) This is encouraged by the fact that the technical/magical worldbuilding is nonsense so I'm making up shit all the time anyway, might as well add characterization to that too! 🤣🤣🤣

#jilly answers #Anonymous #sh critical #my sh rambling #isabelle lightwood #alec lightwood #lightwood family feels #shadowhunters #tangential tuesday #sort of #sh meta

faejilly

Anonymous asked:

i absolutely love your sh meta so i was wondering what are your thoughts on Alec’d relationship with his sexuality bc i always sort of read it as him knowing that he was gay but absolutely not saying it out loud

absofuckinglutely nonny

There's an excellent post by amorverus that I cannot find the original of so have my reblog HERE that articulates it really well

I even wrote a fic about it! #shameless self promotion [tumblr / ao3] (That is, in fact, one of my favorite things I've ever written.)

I do strongly believe that Alec knew that he was gay, and felt no shame about that in and of itself. He is not offended by Magnus flirting with him, would not, I think, be offended by anyone else flirting with him, regardless of gender. (Tho prior to Magnus I also think he just... wasn't interested, but that's a separate conversation.) He knew, however, that it was not allowed in his culture and it would hurt his family and not just him if it came out.

(This is why Izzy makes me so uncomfortable in s1 regarding Alec, tbqh, because she lives there too, but refuses to see the danger to herself and, more egregiously in Alec's mind, because obviously she can chose to risk herself for him if she wants, for all he doesn't like it, but she's causing risk for their little brother if Alec is outed, and that's unacceptable. Even if I'm quite sure Max would agree with her priorities.)

I do, however, think Alec felt a lot of shame regarding his attraction to Jace. Jace was hurting and was supposed to be his brother and yet... Alec felt an attraction that he knew Jace wouldn't return. So he's got all the societal pressure on him not to be gay, and all this personal pressure not to manipulate or abuse someone in a vulnerable situation (because Jace was, even if he wouldn't admit it), PLUS all the normal human issues with feeling attraction for someone who is important enough to you that you can't lose them, and you can legitimately be terrified that if you can't get it under control you MIGHT... (Even more so for him than a mundane romantic vs platonic situation, obviously, because there's questions of command and exile and punishment, not just ruining an interpersonal dynamic in a way it never quite recovers from.)

Plus Alec's kind of also Jace's commanding officer which is yet ANOTHER unequal power dynamic, and he's supposed to be protecting an entire Institute, not just this one person, but he can't stop thinking about it because it's fucked up and he knows he should stop and he can't.

(Because, he realizes with the benefit of hindsight after he meets Magnus, by fixating on Jace he was safe, he was never going to fall in love for real with someone he might have a chance with, would never have to actually choose between his culture and his personal desires, while still telling himself that he already had, that he'd chosen his family and it was fine, he was FINE.

(He was so not fine.))

And so, even though he truly believes there's nothing wrong with being gay in general, he does believes there is something Very Wrong with him specifically being gay.

But he still never has any doubt about it. He never tries to project heterosexual interest in anyone, is very up front with Lydia about the terms of their engagement. (It seems clear, even if we never see that conversation, that they're both aware that their marriage would never be romantic or sexual unless they mutually decided to go the so-called traditional route for children.) And she agreed to it! She, unlike Jace & Izzy, had zero illusions about her relationship with Alec, and I ADORE HER FOR THAT.

And I've totally lost the thread of this rambling, I'm not sure I have a conclusion for you? 😅😅😅

Alec is, imo, refreshingly self-aware about most things, and many of his issues are legitimately external stupidity punishing him into a life of self-recrimination rather than him having internal bigotry or biases against his own sexuality in and of itself.

#jilly answers #Anonymous #the saga of #alec lightwood #honor vs duty vs shame #is really his life pre-canon #he throws away the shame tho #and I'm very proud of him for that #shadowhunters #my sh rambling #sh meta #queer as in #fuck you

faejilly

nadeen-the-spore asked:

Any random headcanons/theories about sh warlocks? The spiral labyrinth, how magic even works, why Magnus is the best (what I'm not biased, it's the objective truth, how dare). This isn't really a fic prompt, but i won't complain if you turn it into one 🩵

And a reminder to take care of yourself! If you need water or meds or a good nap

I HAVE SO MANY THEORIES!

(and also I got good sleep last night and just made a yummy drink! I even did remember all my meds with breakfast, too. AND MADE MY BED! It's a good self-care day. Thanks for checking in, that's very sweet of you. 😘)

I am IN FACT writing a "fic" that is full of all my weird lore/magic/worldbuilding thoughts called "The Down World For Dummies" By The High Warlock of Chicago. Who I made up, obviously, I don't care about canon for this. Her name is Runa Pryce, and the current draft is full of footnotes because I am easily amused and also #GNU Terry Pratchett. HERE ARE SOME ~~(too many)~~ HIGHLIGHTS BENEATH THE CUT (that do include the Spiral Labyrinth & why Magnus Is Best!):

Theory 1: Angels & Demons have nothing to do with religion/spirituality and are just multi-dimensional beings who get along like matter/anti-matter. This means that yes Angels are frequently assholes and Demons can in theory be fine because they're just weird individuals from other planes of existence. (Demons are mostly assholes too, because the things you have to do to travel dimensions basically disconnects you from your own world and that fucks most people up, even people who aren't human people.)

Theory 2: "Demons" are bad for our plane of existence because they basically eat it just by visiting, and if they're trying to get here in particular it's because they find our negative emotions especially delicious, so then they are generally very nasty to make the visit tastier.

"Angels" can't get anything resembling power/nutrition from our dimension, but can kind of scorch the edges of our reality if they're not careful. Which is boring for them, so that's why they're mostly not ever here.

HOWEVER, if angels accidentally break a dimension/realm, or the demons eat one all the way up, it screws up the balance between all the dimensions/realms, (and is possibly how some previously mundane realms 'fell' and became demonic ones) so the angels try to stop the demons when possible.

#jilly answers #nadeen-the-spore #my sh rambling #tangential tuesday #the downworld (for dummies)#shadowhunters #this got Very Long #I am Not Sorry #also I have no idea how to tag this?#that I am sorry about #sh meta #sh worldbuilding well beyond the bounds of canon meta?

faejilly reblogged

faejilly

Anonymous asked:

Prompt maybe? Or just thoughts/headcanon needing an out -- Magnus thinks of himself too much, still fears that he is actually still too much for Alec, but Alec fears that Magnus will find out, with a sort of heartbreaking turnaround, that Magnus unknowingly instilled that fear into Alec. That Alec himself thinks he is too much, takes for granted, asks and asks from Magnus, that he can be and is at times, too much for Magnus.

faejilly answered:

They’re so perfectly balanced sometimes, aren’t they? Magnus’ particular style of self-defense, the so cautious parting of layers and layers of caution and deflection, hits a perfect bulls-eye against Alec’s overdeveloped sense of personal responsibility. Because any time Magnus metaphorically flinches from confrontation, from conversation, from their relationship, it has to be Alec’s fault, right? (Everything’s always Alec’s fault, if you ask Alec.)

Magnus has centuries of history that taught him over and over again that no one else could be trusted to protect him and that he had to do it all himself. But it hurts Alec each and every time it doesn’t occur to Magnus that he could let Alec in rather than protecting himself, by himself, for himself.

On Magnus’ end it’s never because he doesn’t trust Alec, but because he doesn’t want to burden him, because he’s just used to there not being someone there in the wings waiting to help brace him up before he steps out on stage again.

But Alec’s entire self-worth is based on the fact that he does brace up people, that he’s a better support in the shadows than a performer in the spotlight; even when he’s in the spotlight he’s cautious about it, steady and studied, never flamboyant, never a show. So every time Magnus pulls himself together on his own, it is, to Alec, on a visceral emotional (entirely illogical he knows this but he can’t help it) level an overt rejection of everything Alec feels he can offer.

Alec’s issues with Magnus’ immortality have nothing to do with being jealous of Magnus’ past or future, but on this further evidence that, to this person who means more to him than anyone else in the world, he is fundamentally useless.

And Magnus is so used to other people judging him on his own use, his power, his skills, his knowledge, his history, that it never occurs to him that Alec desperately needs the opposite of Magnus’ dramatic and performative competence. Especially since he does let Alec take care of him in a way he’s never let anyone do before; it’s just it’s in ways that Alec doesn’t recognize, because Alec does not value his own sincerity and stalwart appreciation of those he loves as anything beyond basic humanity.

Magnus is in love with a man who sees him, not his magic or his heritage, and is delighted to be able to offer his skills because he wants to, not because someone else expects it of him.

And every single time he does Alec’s heart breaks because he cannot offer the same sort of protection back to Magnus.

#I had this saved in my drafts #like I wanted to be reminded of it #for some specific reason #but I have no fucking clue what that was #but maybe one of you #will remember me mentioning something #and will brain for me!#I can always hope #shadowhunters #sh meta #my sh rambling #redux?#who-tf-knows #malec #magnus bane #alec lightwood

faejilly reblogged

lightwormsiblings

bytheangell

I’ve been thinking about the advice Hodge gives to Alec early in season one, when he says “You remind me of me, a loyal friend standing in the shadow of the chosen one. Don’t make the same mistakes I did, look where it got me.”

There’s just so much meaning to it once we know about Jace’s connection to Valentine, and how direct that parallel really is. But there’s also the fact that Hodge knows Jace is actively working against what Valentine would want, and so Hodge is actually subtly pushing Alec towards actions Valentine would approve of more by standing up to/against Jace’s wishes.

I wonder how much of that is Hodge genuinely feeling for Alec a bit and wanting to look out for him and actually spare him from the same sort of fate of following someone he’ll probably sacrifice himself to protect, and how much is Hodge following his secret directives and trying to push for Alec to make moves in Hodge/Valentine’s favor.

I love the layers to the little hints of information we get throughout season one that are so interesting to look back on knowing what they reference and the bigger picture we didn’t know (or at least I didn’t, watching season 1 without any book knowledge) back then.

faejilly

I always took it the other way, that it was as close as he could get to apologizing for what he was going to do... look at whose shadow is covering me, I have no way out.

I mean, it does seem clear that Hodge did care for the Lightwood children, that in many ways he raised them more than their parents, but he had to know at that point that he was going to betray them, and I think he knew it would hit Alec hard when he found out.

#shadowhunters #sh meta #meta appreciation #bytheangell #my sh rambling #I weirdly love Hodge idek how to explain it

faejilly

@oranges8hands replied to your post:

lol. ok how abt this since I have a LOT of thoughts abt how well the show did Nephilim culture (answer: not very) - what is the biggest flaw you think the show did re Nephilim culture? what is the major change you would have made?

asdfjklgh

that’s not any better than the broad strokes META?! question the first time

I think, in relation to the show and also my last post, so my brain’s kind of going along in one direction, is that the show didn’t settle strongly enough on the militaristic/child soldier/righteous duty thing that’s the whole point of the Nephilim.

Like, they said it, but they didn’t show us the structure of the society that supports that, they didn’t show the gaping holes still left behind by the Uprising twenty years ago that could lead to someone barely more than a child left in charge of an entire Institute. (Because Alec’s clearly been “Acting Head” for longer than is reasonable, even for a world where children start going out on carefully curated missions at 12 and 14.)

You can’t have an army without a chain of command, and we have no idea how any sort of hierarchy remotely functions, and that’s hard to parse when world-building or writing or meta-ing or even just watching. Like, who’s really supposed to be responsible for what? Does no one know that, and that’s why everything’s such a mess? Have the Nephilim just sort of been acting by whim and impulse for 1000 years?

There’s no sense of scale, of how many soldiers they have, and how many Institutes, and how big the Council is, or how many children they have, (how big the Academy was, back when it was open). When interrogating Clary, Jia talks about their people a bit like they’re under siege, and if it’s true that “killing” a demon just sends it back to its own dimension, while killing a Shadowhunter kills them, then they are in an eternally losing battle, there’s no way to reach even, much less win, unless demon incursions are much smaller and less frequent than the show led us to believe.

(How small is the Warlock community really? Since they require the violence of demons to exist. Is the lack of info/structure we got re: their society because there isn’t any, because there aren’t enough of them to bother? That’s strongly implied by the books, and the fact that Magnus just sort... declared himself High Warlock of Brooklyn because why not? and no one countered it with anything else. Is he now the High Warlock of Alicante because, again, why not?)

Who does what and what does it mean if they don’t do it?!? IDK! No one knows! (In theory the people in the show-verse know, but they certainly didn’t tell us...)

There are lots of interesting pieces, but none of them fit together right, and apparently my solution to that nonsense is that I need an org-chart for The Clave. 🤣

#shadowhunters #my sh rambling #sh meta #oranges8hands #jilly replies

faejilly

Anonymous asked:

ohhhhh can i ask after the wing!fic (which is one of my FAV TROPES EVER)? what it's going to be/any lore you'd like to share?

SO YES

When trying to write magical wing-fic about people who are capable of going incognito, I had to decide how they’d hide them. (And how Clary could grow up without hers, because hiding a magical Shadow World would be entirely impossible if you had wings.)

I have this theory that part of the reason the Nephilim raise their children so quickly is that, when they’re young, full of angelic power and blood that they can’t yet control, they are especially tempting to demons, easier to sense (and obviously also easier to kill, if they’re caught). For all the Nephilim are terrible to their children, the show did a good job of showing that they love them, so they have to believe that raising generation after generation of child soldiers is necessary.

(This is emphasized by Maryse’s line in 3b, about how she raised her children to survive. She has no illusions now that she did it badly, but the only way she could have done what she did in the first place is if she truly believed they needed to be raised that way.)

So. Nephilim children are full of a wild, almost feral magic. Angels are eldritch, beyond comprehension, are so much more and other that it’s not easy to balance that and being human. Nephilim have to be trained, physically/mentally/emotionally to have control so that they can get that first rune as young as possible, because it is that enkeli rune that shapes their angelic heritage enough that they can survive it without losing themselves to it.

(This is also part of why I will never be on Team Immortal Husbands in terms of what I write; it’s important to me that Alec & Magnus choose to be human as much as possible rather than something other. I feel like that’s rather the whole point of Alec’s arc, that he truly believes he is not, cannot be better than the Down Worlders, that he’s forcing himself to admit that just because he defends Mundanes it doesn’t mean they’re lesser, just... different. Otherwise humans turn into pets rather than people, and how much easier is it then to believe Down Worlders are pets gone feral, wild animals that have to be put down? Each piece lends itself to each next one, enforcing the idea of Nephilim Superiority, when they’re still supposed to be human. They’re supposed to be protectors, not supremacists, that’s where the Clave goes wrong, where Valentine went wrong, that’s what he cannot ever let himself be.)

And that moment when they get their first rune is also when their wings manifest, that moment when they claim their power and their heritage, is the moment that they, idk, corral it to fit within their human frames and human desires. That is the moment that they become Shadowhunters, rather than demon prey.

That is ALSO why deruning is such a severe punishment, why it usually ends in death. It’s not just that they’re tempting prey for demons, (though that is how most of them die), it’s that they can no longer control themselves, their blood is as much of an enemy to them as the demons who crave it, without the power of the runes to balance it out.

Clary obviously doesn’t have an enkeli rune, and equally obviously hasn’t been eaten by demons or exploded from uncontrolled angelic magic despite her extra-potent blood, which means something else must have been done to suppress her power.

Not just that her memories are pulled out, the actual magic of her heritage has to have somehow been hidden away from her as well as everyone else.

And it can’t just be a glamour that someone else is maintaining, because the show’s pretty clear that stuff that’s glamoured is still there.

Though I have thoughts on that too! Because some warlock’s have wings or tails or horns or things that stick out and would hit people so their glamours couldn’t just be a visual illusion, they had to somehow... hide.

(SIDE REC: @ralfstrashcan‘s lovely little bit of fic & meta about how the fuck does Alec always pull his bow & arrows out of nowhere. Possible magic options that aren’t glamours!)

Sometimes, glamours are just visual illusions. (See Alec’s quiver in the gifs in that meta post above.) Presumably, Magnus’ glamour over his eyes is just an illusion, because otherwise all that flickering and changing of his vision between normal eyes and cat eyes would give him a headache. :D

Cat’s glamour over her skin and hair is probably just a visual illusion as well, because it’s just color, but if you think Lorenzo Rey would let someone who brushed up against his arm feel scales if he didn’t want them to? Crazy-talk. He’s got to be able to hide the texture as well.

(I think Seelies can only cast the sort of glamours that are visual illusion, because anything else would be lying about what’s really there, and Seelies can’t lie. But that’s a whole separate post about fae and elves and folklore, so.)

Even if we assume there’s a second level of glamour which makes the thing not entirely there physically, it seems clear that it’s still kind of there to the person, that there’s some intangible feedback that must still happen, because otherwise it’s like disappearing body parts and that’s weird? And also it would need a different word than glamour, like, wtf, that’d be a dramatic difference.

SO, Nephilim can “glamour” their wings so they’re not there there, but they still get some physical/emotional feedback themselves, because they’re still winged people, their wings are part of their angelic heritage, they wouldn’t just deny them.

But if Clary knew she had weird powers and wings, again, the whole hiding from the Shadow World plan wouldn’t work.

So she’s got to be under like, a full-blown curse suppressing her everything. (A curse that was developed by warlocks for those few exiled Nephilim who managed to have the resources to pay for a way to survive? The way Max Trueblood’s still alive out there, so some day I can write a reunion between Maryse and her older brother.)

ANYWAYS

I forgot where I was going with all that, whoops.

TL;DR: Wings are neat, magic is weird, Nephilim are fucked up but it’s more interesting if there are reasons.

#my sh rambling #sh meta #shadowhunters #wing!fic #Anonymous #jilly answers

faejilly reblogged

serendiii

normal-thoughts-official

magnus forgave camille for abusing him, for trying to teach him he was worthless, for using his insecurities against him, for literally stealing the dagger his mum used to kill herself and putting it on display at her own home. when he handed her over to the clave, he explicitly said he only did it to save raphael, because he would do anything for him. it wasnt about himself. it didnt even give him closure

that’s a recurring magnus theme, too- he fights other people’s fights, but not his own. he forgave lorenzo for humiliating him. he sacrificed his magic for jace. he nearly let himself burn out to save luke from the alpha bite. he got involved in a shitton of shadowhunter drama simply because people would seek him, and he always gave it his all and was perfectly willing to sacrifice himself

the first time we ever got to see magnus allow himself to be angry at shit people did to him, not anyone else, and lash out, was when he threw asmodeus into limbo. he was so angry even the color of his magic was different (red instead of light blue), and what he did was really borderline cruel (tho still more gentle than asmodeus deserved tbh). and it wasnt just about the alec thing. what really threw him over the edge was asmodeus going “i will always find my way back to you”. he was tired of his fathers incessant abuse, of him trying to use him and pretending to care, of him trying over and over again to get magnus to renounce his life for him. magnus yeeted asmodeus because of the hatred he had acumulated after hundreds of years of being manipulated by his father

so this is really a turning point to magnus because 1- its the first time he allows himself to be angry that people mistreated him, to realise that he does deserve better and no one has the right to walk all over him, which speaks so much about his growth and journey to self-caring and loving; 2- the whole reason he is angry at asmodeus is because asmodeus doesnt care what he wants, so him allowing himself to hate asmodeus for that means learning that its ok to want what he does and want things for himself, to make his own life; 3- in a way, this is coming full circle, cuz asmodeus was the first or one of the first people to teach magnus that he was unworthy of love or to make a life of his own. asmodeus was the one who implanted the idea that magnus should be happy with scrapes because that’s all hed would ever get; in a way, magnus has trouble standing up for himself because of asmodeus and his shitty manipulative upbringing of magnus. he starts his journey to unlearning that by getting rid of its root and that must have been so hard to do, must have taken so much and shows how much better magnus is doing recently

and idk i think about that a lot and really this is such an important step on his path to happiness and im so happy for him ok

#asmodeus #magnus bane #sh meta #meta appreciation #tothetrashwhereibelong #queueue

faejilly reblogged

orangemeta

singingwordwright

Anonymous asked:

Okay first I just want to say sorry in advance for how long and messy this will end up being. In regards to Malec breaking up I agree with you that it was more than just a trust issue. I actually remember listening to that episode of the podcast and wondering when they were going to bring the other issue up because it seemed pretty obvious to me that to Magnus, Alec wasn’t just letting go but letting go to be with his people. At first it had been about trust for Magnus because Alec had (1/5)

singingwordwright answered:

just kept something important from him but after that moment happens you can see on Magnus that it starts being more of him thinking he needs to put his people first like he believes Alec has been doing (Alec asking for his dna on behalf of the clave, hiding the truth of the soul sword). Like you said, this is something that has been shown throughout the season and not just in regards to Malec (what the Seelie Queen said to Simon about shadowhunters always choosing their own) but it’s (2/5)

something that Magnus has only now openly acknowledged. To me that was the reason Magnus decided to end things. Alec letting go to be with his family made him believe that he had do the same. That he had to do what was best for his people but he couldn’t do that while still being with Alec. And it makes me wonder that if Alec hadn’t let go of his hands to be with his family (and definitely not blaming Alec for that) if Magnus would have still come to that realization and decided to end his (3/5)

things with Alec. Because I think Alec not telling him of the sword was a problem for Magnus but it was not what pushed him to end things. And I don’t think Magnus would have got back together with Alec if he still believed he couldn’t trust Alec. I think in the end Magnus understood that Alec had made a mistake but that ultimately Alec is an honest person, something that Magnus noticed of Alec from the start. So when they start talking at the end of 2x20 I think it’s something Magnus had (4/5)

already forgiven Alec for. Which fits with Magnus saying that it was in the past when Alec apologizes again. And so when they get back together, to me, it’s him acknowledging that Alec will always be a shadowhunter and he will always be a warlock but that doesn’t mean that they can’t be together if they both put an effort. Again, sorry if this was a mess I have a hard time putting my thoughts into words that make sense. (5/5)

Well, if I remember correctly (it’s been a few weeks since the podcast, forgive me, @rutherinahobbit and @michellemisfit if I misremember anything) Ruth and Michelle’s argument was that there just wasn’t enough build-up of the Shadowhunter/Downworlder (as it pertains to Alec and Magnus specifically) divide throughout Magnus’s ruminating in the flashbacks to justify Magnus suddenly claiming that the interracial conflict is the reason he’s breaking up with Alec.

Like, they acknowledged that absolutely, that was what the breakup was about, but they felt that the flashbacks themselves (which should have been where we saw his reasoning for the breakup supported) didn’t support that; they were all about building trust, so Magnus claiming it was about the interracial conflict sort of came out of nowhere.

To which my response is that the flashbacks themselves WERE about the interracial conflict. We (the audience) just sort of totally missed it because we were lost in how beautiful and sweet and romantic it all was.

Which, frankly, is some amazingly subtle writing and I know I give the show a lot of (well-deserved) shit for lazy writing but Jamie Gorenberg knocked this one out of the freakin’ ballpark.

It would have been incredibly easy for them to overplay the whole “star crossed lovers/oh! woe! your people hate mine and my people hate yours oh no whatever will we do? alas we can never be together!” angle…but they didn’t. Gorenberg capitalized on the audience’s tendency to view things from Alec’s perspective to completely throw us for a loop when we realize that Magnus wasn’t looking at things the same way.

(for ease of reference, from here on out, I’ll be referring to the flashbacks as Flashback A, B, and C.)

In Flashback A, the difference in their two perspectives is much clearer. As I said, Alec is panicking over someone finding out he stayed the night with a man, while Magnus is concerned about the fact that he’s getting too cozy with a Shadowhunter (and assuming that Alec is running away–at least in part–because Magnus is a Downworlder.) Because we, as an audience, tend to view everything from Alec’s perspective, we sort of handwaved that and assumed it wasn’t important.

Then Flashback B happens. And because we’re viewing it from Alec’s perspective, we’re thinking, “Oh, Magnus is self-conscious about being a warlock, Alec finds it beautiful and is reassuring him, how sweet, Magnus can trust Alec when he’s vulnerable.” Except…that isn’t all that was going on.

Let’s look at that from Magnus’s perspective. Yes, Alec knows he’s a warlock, he’s seen Magnus do magic, but this is the first time Alec has been truly confronted with Magnus’s…otherness. And Alec is a Shadowhunter. Not only a Shadowhunter, but the scion of a family known for hating (and at one point trying to commit genocide against) Downworlders.

Magnus’s concern wasn’t “is Alexander going to be repulsed by my loss of control?” it’s “Is Alec-Lightwood-the-Shadowhunter going to be able to cope with the reality of me being a warlock now that he’s seeing it up close and personal in this very intimate moment?”

I don’t believe I’m just head-canoning this. This was in there, it was just very subtly dealt with, and it may have been filmed deliberately to lead us to assume the issue is one thing while it was actually another.

In Flashback C, we get a moment where again, you see that Alec knows Magnus is a warlock and accepts that. He asks Magnus what scares him and Magnus gives him an answer that leads Alec–and the audience–to assume that what frightens Magnus is that he’ll lose Alec.

Except that both of the previous flashbacks show Magnus bracing himself for the Shadowhunter/Downworlder conflict to be the issue that makes them not work.

So when Magnus says “you asked me what my greatest fear is. It’s this.” he’s not saying his greatest fear is losing Alec. He’s saying he’s feared all along that he’ll lose Alec because the Shadowhunter/Downworlder conflict pulls them apart.

See, again, the audience tends to see things from Alec’s POV. And Alec has all along naively believed that if they just love each other hard enough, it will be enough to overcome that. Thus, so have we all.

I think we see that in 2x10, when he choses to tell Magnus that he loves him right after hearing from Victor Aldertree how Shadowhunters and Downworlders can never be together. Alec makes a deliberate choice to reject that sort of thinking and simply love harder.

And I think for a while, Magnus wants to believe that’s possible as well. But then 2x12 happens. Magnus had started to believe they could love hard enough to overcome their issues right up until the moment when he said “If you love me, you have to believe me” and Alec…doesn’t.

That’s when Magnus starts to lose faith in them.

2x13 is salt in that wound, but when Alec apologizes, Magnus accepts it and tries to get his faith back. But then in 2x14 we see a moment when Magnus feels like Alec is rejecting him (or at least his support) because he’s a warlock. He tries to go along with it, he even overcompensates, putting a happy face on and acting as cheerleader for Alec’s Downworld Cabinet plan.

In 2x15 once again, we see Magnus back to fearing Alec is going to reject him for being a warlock. It’s not just that he killed his stepfather, it’s that he killed his stepfather with his magic. Alec is a Shadowhunter; Alec is duty-bound to punish Downworlders who harm mundanes. Alec is once again confronted by the reality of Magnus being a warlock (but even so, he tries to make excuses for it) and ultimately accepts rather than rejects Magnus.

Think about how that must have messed with Magnus’s head. On one hand, you have Alec very adamantly sending him the message over and over that they can overcome the pressures of the Shadowhunter/Downworlder dynamic, they can reconcile their disparate situations and bring their people together, but on the other hand, you have Alec repeatedly blundering in ways that make it harder for Magnus to trust him.

As lovely as the dinner date scene in 2x17 was, there always seemed something stilted about the way Magnus was behaving. We all know why Alec was being shifty, of course, but I know when I saw the sneak peek of that scene, I wasn’t alone in thinking “oh, shit, Magnus already knows about the Soul Sword, he’s laying a trap for Alec to walk into” because the way Magnus spoke about trust and transparency was just so…pointed.

Clearly, I was wrong about Magnus offering Alec enough rope to hang himself, but the weird emphasis with which he assures Alec that he defended Alec to the Seelie Queen stays with me, and in retrospect, I wonder if wasn’t a case of Magnus protesting too much? “Look how I defended you and your initiatives! See? I still have faith in us!”

Except…he doesn’t. He’s trying to, he’s trying the old “fake it ‘til you make it” approach, but he can’t quite pull it off.

There’s been a lot of speculation about what happened between the moment in Magnus’s loft when Luke told him about Cleophas’s fire message and the moment he knocked on Alec’s door, because clearly between those moments, Magnus realized that yes, Alec had lied about the Soul Sword. I think what happened was that Magnus accepted that his faith in them was broken and he couldn’t pretend anymore.

In light of this, I think what sort of comes out of nowhere is Magnus’s decision to reconcile with Alec at the end of 2x20. When and how did he get that faith back? I still don’t know, and I’m hoping what season 3 will show us is that Magnus and Alec are moving forward less on blind faith that it will all work out if they just love hard enough and more on determination that if they acknowledge and deal with those issues, rather than just closing their eyes and pretending it doesn’t matter, then they won’t have to chose between being together and loyalty to their people. I hope.

Wow, this got long. Thanks for your thoughts, nonny!

faejilly

I think the decision to reconcile with Alec surprised Magnus too, honestly. When Alec asks if they can talk, Magnus downs his drink before following, and it’s not a hopeful expression on his face as he does it.

But he’s obviously still conflicted, because he’s never been happy with taking the Seelie Queen’s offer, for all he didn’t think he had a choice. (And how many times has he heard that through out history, someone justifying some terrible thing with I didn’t have a choice. He doesn’t think he’s one of them, but sometimes he’s… concerned.)

I’m not sure I know what Magnus thought they were going to be talking about, if he assumed that it was going to be some sort of awkward promise from Alec to be better, because he’s always sorry, and he’s always better, but he’s still a Nephilim raised to rule through force and Magnus is tired.

But Alec doesn’t make any promises he can’t keep, or try and make Magnus explain himself, or explain himself so much that it somehow becomes about him and Magnus ends up comforting the guy who was supposed to be apologizing (another reason he cut of Alec’s attempted I’m sorry, I think). Instead Alec has no excuses, or explanations, or expectations. He doesn’t ask Magnus for anything, he just admits he’s lost.

And I can’t imagine Magnus not thinking, well, it would be nice to be lost with someone, for once.

#fic back friday #meta appreciation #maleccrazedauthor #sh meta #my sh rambling #malec #shadowhunters #relevant to my #unending WIP List Of Doom #*sighs forever*

faejilly

Anonymous asked:

okay so there were quite a few unsettling differences in the Shadowhunters tv adaptation, but that's okay I'm over it xD One thing I am still not over, though, is that they didn't include the fact that the runes your parabatai draws on you are stronger. It was always just something that I really loved about parabatai relationships and we could have seen more of the weighing importance of parabatai bonds onscreen, plus ofcourse bonding. Your thoughts?

Well, I know they mention it on the TV show? The fact that they don’t do anything with it afterwards isn’t any different than anything else with the parabatai bond? And the runes in general work a little differently in the books too, don’t they?

*shrug emoji*

I’ve never read the books, (and am not planning on doing so), so I don’t really have any thoughts on this particular note.

I agree that the show wasted a really interesting concept, a dedicated, purposeful, soul-bond, and how it might effect the culture of the Nephilim to have it explicitly coded that they’re stronger as partners, as teams, than they could ever be alone. I feel like that would lend to much fewer single sacrificial hero stories than in, say, the US, where we’re very much focused on individual successes rather than community ones. I feel like that would have more weight in the way they relate to each other, in the way they do their jobs; I do think it would also add to their superiority complex, should tie into the Clave’s racism, because of course you can only be parabatai with another Nephilim, this gift of the angels, this bond that makes you more than you could ever be on your own, is only for your fellow Shadowhunters. You share your soul with someone, and no one besides another Nephilim will ever know what that means... No one else need ever apply. No one else can. That’s such a short step from no one else can to no one else deserves, isn’t it?

One must assume, if this parabatai bond is held up as such a divine gift, (which they say it is!) that Alec being the parabatai of such a well-respected Shadowhunter, the best warrior, the lost Herondale heir, the angel-blooded... that’s got to be part of why and how he “got away with” being gay, with being with a downworlder, in such a deeply racist and homophobic society. No matter how much they’d like to get rid of him, they cannot cannot break that bond, not and break a basic tenet of their culture. That’s something I wish the show had leaned on too, because it would have made it so much more clear: why the bond meant as much as it did to Jace, (he could protect the first person who’d ever stood up for him just by existing) and why Alec was so afraid to come out; we never saw the consequences he could have suffered, and while I know a lot of queer people understood them implicitly, the show made it seem like maybe he’d been wrong, maybe this wasn’t such a big deal, when of course it is, and the fact that he pulled it off should be stunning.

ANYWAYS

This is very rambly (as usual) and look, I turned anon back on and got what seems to be a legit question, thanks nonny! And yes, I am always here for people doing more with the parabatai bond, it’s the best lore wrinkle ever! GIVE ME ALL OF IT. <3

#shadowhunters #sh meta #my sh rambling #parabatai #Anonymous #jilly answers

faejilly

namm-y asked:

What do you think jaces reaction would be if Alec chose to be immortal?

Jace would be delighted! A world with Alec in it is a much better world than one without him! And if anyone deserves to be around forever, married and sappy and happy, that’s Alec. And if anyone could actually deal with the rest of the world’s stupid and start fixing it, that’s also Alec!

That said, I have problems with the question. (not to be rude! Immortal husbands is very popular, and I 100% enjoy the eternal fuck the clave! narrative that they offer)

HOWEVER

1: you cannot actually choose to be immortal! Not even in Shadowhunters! It does, imo, break the world to ask that question. It’s not a thing! No one knows how to do that! That’s not... that’s just not. I cannot grok it, I’m sorry, I can’t.

You can risk losing your soul and let yourself die and try and be a Vampire, but that’s still dying, it’s just... louder and bloodier forever. I do not think Alec would choose to be a Vampire in order to be immortal; he was willing to risk being a Vampire when it was a tool to get to Edom, but those are not, imo, the same thing.

2: Even if there was a way to try and be immortal, there would have to be consequences for that sort of power, and it would probably be dangerous for someone besides Alec, in which case he wouldn’t want it. That’s not a risk that it would ever be worth taking, I don’t think.

And even if there was, idk, some entirely harmless magical conversion (which somehow the whole world doesn’t have, just him?!?) I still don’t think he’d want it. His fantasy was never to be immortal, it was to grow old with someone. It was to live his life, and yes, hopefully leave his mark and help the world be a better place, but it was never to outlive that legacy.

(Or, gods forbid, outlive his children. That’s not something anyone anywhere would ever be able to choose. It happens, obviously, but no decent parent could willfully, knowingly, go into that. Just. God. I can’t even write that sentence without wanting to cry.)

I mean, it’s a dumb pat sort of quotation, but there’s a reason ‘die a hero or live long enough to see yourself become the villain’ resonated and stuck. If you outlive your own legacy you’re going to see it change, or die, or break. There are a lot of reasons Magnus has such trouble being immortal, and only one of them is watching people die. Why would Alec want that? His entire sense of self is based on what he does... at some point he’ll be done doing though, and he’ll be ready to move on. That’s what humans are supposed to do. I don’t want to see him lose that humanity just to be with Magnus; I don’t think Magnus would want to see it either, and I really don’t think Alec is capable of choosing to give his humanity up like that.

NOW.

If you want to make some weird magical trauma that has the side-effect of Alec being immortal, have at it, that’s an interesting story. I still think Jace would handle it much better than Alec, at least for the short term. Because Alec living forever? Jace’s dream come fucking true.

#shadowhunters #sh meta #my sh rambling #immortality #alec lightwood #jace lightwood #malec #I guess?#idek #namm-y #jilly answers