Shadowhunters and Downworlders (18 page)

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.)

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.

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.

In Paris, Magnus wears a striped fisherman's sweater, leather pants, and an “insane beret.” Stripes have had so many different meanings in dress over the centuries that French scholar Michael Pastoureau has written an entire book about them:
The Devil's Cloth: A History of Stripes and Striped Fabric.
Pastoureau begins his book by analyzing an advertising campaign slogan: “
Cet été, osez le chic des rayures
[This summer, dare to be stylish in stripes].” He comments: “To wear stripes, to present oneself dressed in striped clothing—if we believe the slogan—is neither neutral nor natural. To do so, you must display a certain audacity, overcome different ideas of propriety, not be afraid to show off.” Not a bad description of Magnus. And perhaps Magnus bought his leather pants from a shop in the Marais, a neighborhood that in 2012 is home to many gay bars, galleries, and shops, while in the sixteenth century it was frequented by the Mauvais Garçons (“bad boys”)—French and Italian “adventurers” who, according to
The History of Paris
, “created great mischief ” during the captivity of King Francis I. It's not difficult to picture Magnus among the adventurers. As for
the beret, it's simultaneously a traditionally French article of clothing and strongly associated with both bohemian and queer communities—within which there has always been a significant overlap.

In the Boboli Gardens, Magnus wears an enormous Venetian cloak and a gondolier's hat, suggesting that he and Alec spent some time in Venice before their Florentine sojourn. Several centuries previously, Magnus might have worn a similar cloak along with a mask and a three-cornered hat to celebrate Carnival. This costume, which was worn by people of all social classes and genders, allowed its wearers to be anonymous, which in turn allowed them the opportunity to engage in activities—such as sex with someone who was married, or of the same gender, or both—that otherwise would have been condemned. Magnus' gondolier's hat could be read as an homage to the liaisons that gondoliers sometimes developed with their clients; for instance, in the late nineteenth century, the English author John Addington Symonds, who wrote one of the first essays in English in defense of homosexuality, was involved with a gondolier named Angelo Fusato.

In front of Museo Nacional del Prado, Magnus presents himself in a sparkling matador jacket and platform boots. (And nothing else? Clare doesn't specify, although one imagines Jace would have reacted even more violently to the photo if that were the case.) Inside the museum, there
are any number of now-historic works of art that Magnus might have seen when they were new or even when they were in the process of being created. But the most notable thing about Madrid as a destination—about anywhere in Spain, for that matter—is that Magnus and Alec, were they so inclined, could legally marry while they were there. Spain achieved marriage equality in 2005.

(N.B.: About that marriage: A Malec wedding, or at least the prospect thereof, is another bonus feature that you should seek out if you haven't seen it already. Clare created a short story in postcard form about Izzy's short-lived but epic adventure in wedding planning, which she shared with fans who attended her
City of Fallen Angels
/
Red Glove
U.S. tour with Holly Black. Google “Cassandra Clare postcard short story.”)

All we know about this stop on the trip is that Magnus was wearing a sari. Maybe he and Alec watched
The Pink Mirror
while they were there.
The Pink Mirror
is the first Indian-made film to focus on transgendered characters, and the ensemble worn by the person featured most prominently on the movie poster—a richly ornamented gold sari and veil—is one that Magnus, if not Alec, would admire. The film is actually banned in India, but what good is being High Warlock of Brooklyn if you can't get your hands on illegal movies?

This time Magnus is wearing lederhosen—leather breeches—which he could have chosen for their associations with working-class virility, for how easy they are to clean in comparison with fabric garments, for the camp connotations that Wikipedia avers they have around central Europe, or perhaps simply for the (ahem) ease of access provided by their drop-front style. While in Berlin, he and Alec might have discussed another Magnus, gay rights pioneer Dr. Magnus Hirschfeld. “In 1919, Hirschfeld founded the Institute for Sexual Science, with which he aimed to make people conscious of their sexuality and allow people to live their sexual lives as they wanted, not just according to rules that were dictated by society,” says Gerrit Horbacher, the spokesperson for Berlin's Gay Museum, in an article on Berlin's gay history. Though judging from what happens later in
City of Fallen Angels
and
City of Lost Souls
,any insights Magnus wanted to convey to Alec about the value of unapologetic sexuality were not entirely absorbed.