SHADOWHUNTERS | Magnus & Alec “You lose your breath every time they enter a room; your heart beats faster when they walk by; your skin tingles when they stand close enough to feel their breath. I know you feel what I feel.”

I don't really get why are people are mad they continuously ask Magnus for help? Clary and Jace are Magnus's friends he cares for Clary a lot and he's not as close with Jace but they've been shown to have a friendship. Also Alec is his boyfriend so?? And Clary and Jace are the main characters and Magnus helping them gives him a bigger role. And it would be an issue if he never got his own character development but he has plenty of scenes without Clary and Jace. Sorry this is a mini rant

i’m of two minds on this (surprise surprise)…..like on the one hand, it shouldbe acknowledged that magnus has had issues with people, often specificallyshadowhunters, before when it comes to being taken advantage of etc. like hedetails in his conversation with maia in 2x07. and of course, there is the important consideration of the natural friction between shadowhunters and downworlders as a result of the myriad problems with their society. i guess when it comes down to it, im not a fan ofthe “poor beleaguered magnus vs. evil selfish shadowhunters” narrative,but i also dont buy the whole “everything between everyone is a-okay and happy and love”either? like with the vast majority of things, the actual truth is probablysomewhere in between. 

so turns out i had lot more to say about this that i … .may be thought… anyway under the cut

the reasonwhy im not a fan of the first one (poor magnus vs. selfish meanies) is it seems to contradict magnus as acharacter almost entirely…both his personality and his power would insulateagainst something as extreme as all that. of course magnus is an extremely generousand compassionate person when he wants to be, which leads to such problems (as we saw in his relationship with camille, where he gave a million times more than he got), which does leadto issues of being taken for granted or taken advantage of like the ones he talked about with maia in 2x07, so it’s not likeit’s something that’s not a thing - it is a thing, but when it becomes thatmuch of a thing in people’s interpretations, taken that far, it justseems like it’s woobify-ing him, like he’s not a manipulatable child, he cansay no if he really doesn’t want to do something. 

but basedon that and more crucially to me, at its worst, it seems like it’s doing adisservice to magnus based on my understanding of his motivations and character, to appear asthough the only reason he would ever want to be involved in the main conflict(i.e. the fight against the genocidal, downworlder-racist megalomaniac) isthrough reluctantly helping the shadowhunters - rather than acknowledging thathe has an equally significant stake in the game and that it’s not magnus unwillinglyhelping with someone else’s personal quest, but rather it being something verysignificant to magnus and his storyline as well. so it’s not always “those damnshadowhunters always asking magnus for help” but then things like stopping agreater demon or, like, preventing a war in the downworld are not just goalsfor clary/jace…..like magnus cares about the outcome of the events just as muchif not more?? so that’s what i guess i don’t understand.

like yousaid, the second magnus would not be involved somewhere where he should be,people are rightfully going to be saying that he’s being “sidelined” from the mainaction. so its this weird thing where the diegetic thing – in the narrative,magnus being asked for help – is bad, but the non-diegetic thing thatwould result from that diegetic thing not happening – in real life, important lgbt+character of colour being sidelined from the main conflict – would also bebad. like people pick and choose, sort of, what they’re going to look at only at face value in the narrative, and what they’re going to look at from a broader consideration of the real world interacting with the narrative (diegetic/non-diegetic are the wrong words but it’s late and i cant think of the right ones). so honestly sometimes I struggle to understand where people arecoming from on this issue tbh.

like,there was a gifset going around recently that was trying to, uh, illustratethis narrative, where magnus didn’t get paid for all the help he did orwhatever, where at least half of those instances he was paidand/or volunteered freely to do it. so firstly, there’s a differencebetween “magnus wants to help” and “magnus is forced to help” that ifeel like people don’t…..get…..so often. both have happened, solike i said, the truth is in the middle. but, like, people often have such a vesteddislike for shadowhunters as characters (or specifically clary and jace) thatthey project that onto magnus who, to be fair, does have a dislike and mistrustfor shadowhunters in general, but in my view clearly cares about clary and jaceand the gang as friends (harry himself said that in as many words in his lastinterview). so it’s not exactly a stretch that he would want to help them whentheir lives are in danger, to me, i guess lol? 

ultimately,i think that the most crucial difference arises in the way that one reads that particularrelationship. if you read it as magnus being superficially magnanimous andcivil while having a deeper-rooted dislike, vs. if you read it as magnus beingsuperficially disdainful while have a deeper-rooted affection. if the former,you’re more likely to be upset by the way magnus is ‘treated’ by the two mains,whereas if the latter (which is in my opinion the way the writers meant toframe it, regardless of course of how it came across to people), maybe not so much. another dimension to this is the downworlder/shadowhuntersdynamic, in that Shadowhunters often view themselves as superior in anyinteraction, which – unpopular opinion time – doesn’t apply to the same extentto clary since she wasn’t raised with these notions of superiority like theother characters, including jace, to be fair. i feel like this dynamic is more salientalso in official rather than amicable contexts, e.g. when magnus is at thetrial or strengthening the wards for Robert, but it would be stupid to say itdoesn’t play a role even in the everyday interaction between friends. so,again, it’s complex. it’s not one thing or the other, but really both, so thenreally neither. in my view.

i keepreferring to “truth” but the truth of the matter is, it’s going to dependwholly on interpretations, and i think the reading of this relationship is animportant one in the way that one views it.

alsothere’s also a difference between “wanting to help”, “being forced tohelp” and “sort of being expected to help and not really being thanked forit because he’s an established good guy™ in the show allied with the grouprather than an outsider to the group and/or some neutral figure and in film/tvthe good guys dont usually thank each other unless there’s a higher purpose forit in the narrative”

with thatlast one, i think people, maybe a bit punch drunk on fanfiction, don’t alwaysget that things in regular scripts/narratives that are even a littlebit extraneous do not get to stay in. so things likepeople barging through doors happens because the script needs fat trimmed andit’s less time consuming to start a scene like that than with a knock (andusually with a knock there’s again some purpose, e.g. alec knocking in 2x07when he normally doesn’t so magnus is by the door bc it would be an awkwardshot imo for alec to walk in and stride all the way over to wherever tf magnusis chillin to grab him and kiss him lol – similarly, there was no knock in 2x09 bc malec were over at the balcony and it wouldunnecessarily elongate the scene by having them walk over to the door to answerit etc……like im sure they didn’t think that hard about these things or theycould have done them the other way without giving 2 shits, it’s just thatnobody ever thought people would care this much about doors lol – and, in thenarrative, lbr…if magnus didn’t want someone in his house would they be in hishouse……just think about it). i mean, people don’t even say “hello”or “goodbye” on the phones in any film or tv show i’ve ever seen unlessthere’s some reason for it, so scenes with the good guys standing aroundthanking each other for helping …… i honestly don’t think i’ve seen a scenelike that that doesn’t serve some higher purpose. by that, i mean the primeexample is alec thanking magnus for stuff - obviously, the narrative needs toestablish alec as this person who cares about magnus, so rather than havingeveryone line up and say thank you, alec is the person who most often does itbecause a scene like that with alec and magnus would not beextraneous, because it serves the higher purpose of establishing a thingbetween the pair. just like clary thanking jace establishing a thing betweenthem in, say, 1x07; or clary thanking alec and being rebuffed in 1x08establishing their continued conflict that plays a role in the followingepisode; etc. like does that make sense, where i’m coming from in thatregard? like, when connection needs to be established between characters, it is – jace and magnus’s little moment ashe hands over the stone in 2x03, for example. if it’s not constantlyreinforced, it’s maybe (no shade, just a thought) because the screenwriters don’tfind the connections of friendship or at least fondness between the charactersas dubious as some of the viewers.

MOSTIMPORTANTLY, like i said before, the sense of superiority over downworlders indoctrinatedin shadowhunters from an early age is not illusory or unimportant, and ofcourse that is going to inform the interactions between magnus, a downworlder,and other shadowhunters, young or old. so again as i said in my opening statement,it’s as little a case of pure love and rainbows and sunshine as it is the otherextreme interpretation of this issue. a lot of the stuff people talk about –they have a point. often, that stuff – e.g. people calling magnus “warlock” disparaginglyas the most obvious example, but many others as well – is deliberate by the writers, because this issuebetween the two strata of the shadow world isn’t something that they ignore,since they…ya know.. wrote it in the show. however, some of the stuff peoplesay borders on the ridiculous. as usual, the golden mean can usually be foundbetween extremes.