Shadowhunters and Downworlders (19 page)

You might call what I did above “fansearch” (
fan
+
research
), a nonfiction companion to fanfic. Being inspired to learn more about something when it's mentioned in a book you're enjoying is certainly valuable for anyone, but I'd argue that it's especially so when there aren't many books out there that reflect your life. Investigating history through a queer lens is a way to make a link between your experiences and what
others have gone through in the past. The GLBT History Museum in San Francisco has a quote from a 1979 flyer inscribed on one wall that reminds visitors of the struggles of the queer community: “Our letters were burned, our names blotted out, our books censored, our love declared unspeakable, our very existence denied.”

And while I'm emphatically
not
a fan of emphasizing the challenges and difficulties that can accompany a queer identity, it's important to recognize that even today, there are a distressing number of people who are actively hostile to anyone whose sexuality and gender identity don't neatly fit their expectations. In a post about Clary and rape culture, well worth reading in full, Clare writes:

I get hate mail about Alec and Magnus on what I would say is about a weekly basis. I keep thinking it will get boring, but no, every time I wind up shaking with rage and walking around trying to shake it off and cool down. Since there's such a pile of it, I tend to notice the same language cropping up again and again. One of the most common complaints is that I made Alec and Magnus gay “for no real point” or “for shock value” or “to make money.”

I always wondered what the hell that was about. Did Alec and Magnus' sexuality have to create world peace before it was okay to include it? Are gay people existing that shocking? Is anyone dumb enough to think that including gay characters in your story is going to net you the big bucks rather than what actually happens, which is that your book gets kept out of trade fairs and banned from libraries?

Characters like Alec and Magnus, whose presence within a fictional universe as popular as Clare's puts them in front of a far wider audience than many other books with LGBTQ themes, are mirrors for some and windows for others. Readers who think Clare made Magnus and Alec queer “for no real point” are themselves missing the point. The presence of queer characters helps all readers, regardless of sexuality, get to a place where we can see both ourselves and each other more clearly.

Sara Ryan
is the author of the YA novels
Empress of the World
(Viking, 2001, reissued 2012 with new material) and
The Rules for Hearts
(Viking, 2007) and of various comics and short stories. Most recently she is a contributor to
Welcome to Bordertown
(Random House, 2011),
Girl Meets Boy
(Chronicle, 2012), and
Chicks Dig Comics
(Mad Norwegian Press, 2012). Her first graphic novel,
Bad Houses
, with art by Carla Speed McNeil, is forthcoming from Dark Horse Comics.

SCOTT TRACEY

Like Scott Tracey, I love a good villain. Without a good villain, a story is pretty weak. I loved Valentine in all of his monstrous humanity, so it is without reservation that I say: Go forth, and enjoy this valentine to Valentine. We miss him, but really, it's best he stays wherever he is…

VILLAINS, VALENTINE, AND
VIRTUE

I
love a villain. Before you can make me care about the heroine's quest or whether the hero will overcome adversity to get the girl, I'm already rooting for the villain. Why? Maybe it's because good villains start at the end of the journey while the heroine grows and learns as a part of hers. Good villains are always at their best/worst. They get to act right from the start; they thrive from the moment they step onto the stage.

Or maybe it's because villains are so entertaining. When you're a villain, the spotlight is always on you; every scene you're in becomes crucial just because you're in it. Villains make their own kind of fun, and that usually
involves explosions. They have nefarious opportunities in bulk. When it comes to villainy, there are no rules, no limits, and certainly no expectations—the villain's only job is to create problems and force the heroes to react.

Or maybe it's just because villains have cooler wardrobes, snazzier accessories, minions—not to mention some of the best lines of dialogue. Villains can tell you the truths you don't want to hear, and make you suffer for it.

Yup, whether it's Loki in
The Avengers
, Maleficent from
Sleeping Beauty
, Irina Derevko from
Alias
, or Voldemort, I'm Team Evil and Eyeliner all the way. I don't care if they're big or small, male or female, human or something else entirely. Give me a great villain, of any shape, size, or origin, and you'll have my time and attention, and access to my wallet for years to come.

This is one of the great things about the Mortal Instruments series: It has so many different flavors of villainy. There's a whole underground world of monsters, any of whom could fulfill another series' evil quota all on their own.

There are the faeries, who seem to show up only to cause Clary trouble (and occasionally give her a good lead on the latest mystery). The Faerie Queen tricks, beguiles, and tortures at whim, hiding her cruelty in archaic forms of hospitality such as the offering of food or drink. Even the simple act of telling a truth—a faerie mandate—is twisted to serve her villainy; some truths are wicked and sharp. Then there are the vampires, who have to feed on human beings to survive. They siphon off the thing that keeps humans from death and steal it for themselves. Not to mention all the werewolves and warlocks and other Downworlders that haunt the night.

Any of these character types on their own would make a compelling villain. Downworlders are the offspring (whether literally or symbolically) of demons, most of which are mindless monsters driven to hurt and destroy. As a result, many Downworlders succumb to impulses much darker than the ones their more human counterparts even possess. In fact, a case could be made that the evil that Downworlders do is tied directly to their demonic heritage. Either their inclination to do harm is innate (as with faeries, who are born with a cold, capricious nature), or when they transition into their new life, new instincts develop that push them to do harm (as with humans turned into vampires, who must struggle against the new desires burning under their skin).

But in the Mortal Instruments series, Downworlders aren't villains, not really. Not as a group. Just because someone is turned into a vampire doesn't mean they have to be evil. Simon struggles with the change, still wanting to be the boy he was before he was bitten, and while he stumbles on his path, he still strives to be better. Luke sought to master his werewolf side in order to keep his loved ones safe, and seems to have succeeded. Magnus may possess a physical
manifestation of demonic heritage (his cat eyes), long life, and the ability to do magic, but otherwise he seems as human as anyone else.

Of all the different creatures we meet during the course of the Mortal Instruments series, there's only one who proves himself to be utterly unredeemable, fantastically evil, and gloriously unhinged. And he's not a Downworlder at all; he's human.

It's probably no surprise by this point that there's a special place for Valentine Morgenstern in my heart, a place I reserve for the most deliciously evil characters. Right from the start, Valentine's role is clear. It's in his name (or at least his last name). Morgenstern means “morning star,” a reference to Lucifer, who fell from heaven for his sins against God.

Valentine, raised in Idris, was an exceptional child who excelled at his Shadowhunter training and seemed poised for great things. Unfortunately for the rest of the world, these great things skewed toward the darker end of the spectrum. He is extremely attractive, intelligent, and possessed the kind of charisma that would have served him well as a politician, if not a king. Instead, Valentine became the leader of a splinter group of disaffected young Shadowhunters who believed they were superior to the Downworlders and that the Accords that kept a peace between the two was an offense. After his father's death at the hands of a werewolf, Valentine's negative views on Downworlders became even
more
extreme, and the Circle became a rebellion in truth. Valentine no longer simply wanted to discuss the superiority of Shadowhunters; he set his sights higher than that. He wanted to break the Accords.

Valentine interests me so much because he's a man of extremes. He is an idealist who wants to see evil purged from the world, but he became a revolutionary willing to do anything—evil included—to keep the Accords from being renewed. He is a zealot who wants all Downworlders destroyed, but he is also an opportunist who has no qualms
against using those very same Downworlders to achieve his goals. He is a father who loves his adopted son enough to forgive him his rebellions and repeatedly extend an olive branch to him (in his own way), but he is also a monster who experimented on three children still in the womb without their mothers' knowledge or consent and without caring about the consequences.

For a man who despises all that Downworlders are, Valentine's deeds rival any of their greatest crimes with ease. He has started wars, drafted armies of demons to torture and kill fellow Shadowhunters—the same people he was claiming to try to save—and even gone up against the angels themselves, thinking that he knows better than they. Even the worst of the Downworlders tend to kill their victims quickly. They don't keep them chained up in their basements for sixteen years, torturing them for their secrets. And through all of this, Valentine still considers himself the hero of his own story.

In an attempt to bolster his army in the early days of his campaign to acquire the Mortal Instruments, Valentine created a number of Forsaken by using runes on mundanes. He knows that the mundane body cannot handle the runes, that it becomes misshapen and twisted and that the end result is a sort of mindless monster. He knows too that once a person becomes Forsaken, there is no turning him or her back. And Valentine still condemns his army to insanity and eventual death.

Vampires drink blood in order to survive. It may not be the most noble action, but they do it to survive. When Valentine murders Downworlder children, it is with much darker motive: to quench the Mortal Sword in their blood, in order to swing its alignment from angelic to demonic.
He kills to strengthen his control over the demon hordes he needs to strike out at the Clave.

All of the things he does are in service of a single endgame: to cleanse and purify the Shadowhunter race and return it to its former glory. Once Valentine summons Raziel, he plans to ask the Angel to remove the angel blood from any Shadowhunters who do not drink from Valentine's altered cup—which means that the newly human Nephilim, still covered in Marks, would instantly become Forsaken. Such was Valentine's plan for pruning what he saw as a corrupt government and population: mass murder.

What makes Valentine's actions even more disturbing is the fact that Valentine is human. He's not necessarily predisposed to acts of evil the same way demons are. While I say that Valentine is human, that's not entirely true. He, like all Nephilim (and Clary and Jace more than the rest), has the blood of an angel running through his veins. If anything, that should
bolster
his humanity. But Valentine's humanity isn't, like Simon's, a counterweight to his darker impulses. It's the
source
of them.

What does it mean to be human? The word “humanity” refers to the human race as a collective whole but also to treating people with sympathy and compassion. One of the synonyms for “human”? Humane. All three words have the same root, suggesting that treating others with compassion, in a way that is humane, is a fundamental part of what it means
to be human. That because we're human, we are predisposed to acts of kindness, in the same way that the
Mortal Instruments series suggests that a demonic heritage can, and sometimes does, predispose one toward more brutal behaviors.

But being human has a dark side too. When we talk about human nature, it's almost always cast in a negative light. It's an admission of our failings. “I'm only human” is what we say when we make a mistake or when we strive for something only to fail. “What can you do? It's human nature” is what we say when we, or others, don't live up to our ideals of benevolence. In short, to be human is to wrestle with two related but contrasting ideas: that our nature is inherently compassionate but that we will act without compassion often, and we must accept not only that it has happened before but also that it will happen again.

Fundamentally, then, to be human is to know what is good, to be tempted by what is evil, and to choose to strive, over and over again, for the former over the latter. If this sounds like the same struggle Simon experiences in becoming a vampire, that's not an accident. After all, Downworlders are human too; it's what makes them different from demons. They are not mindless creatures driven only to destroy. They too can choose. (And who's to say that the root of Downworlders' darkness isn't human in origin, just amplified by demon blood beyond what a normal person experiences?)

Valentine is exceptional only in that, though he like all men is born with a choice between acts of humanity and acts of destruction, he chooses destruction almost every time. He isn't an animalistic devourer trapped between worlds, hungry only for something it can shatter apart and rend between its jaws. He's a man, a cultured man. And even though he knows the pain of loss and the dangers of war, he sees violence as having more value than kindness.