#but you ever. fucking. think about how he genuinely got groomed. like that’s explicitly stated. in the show. ken trauma thesis etc

[kendallroygf]

mysterious skin + succession

[singingwordwright]

Shadowhunters recap - s2ep18 “Awake, Arise, or Be Forever Fallen”

SHADOWHUNTERS Recaps Intro and Masterlist

These recaps may contain spoilers from the books (that may or may not happen in the show.) Proceed at your own risk.

Recap and meta under the cut.

Gotta give it to Max, he’s a little badass. Temper that with a bit of discretion and maybe he’ll actually live to reach adulthood, contrary to all book canon. Like, seriously Max, you couldn’t have gone to find Alec or Izzy once you realized what the hair leading you to Sebastian meant, instead of confronting Sebastian yourself?

Gratifying just how many times Sebastian gets stabbed in this episode. Of course, I’d prefer it if one of them was a mortal wound, but alas…

If Lindsay was lurking in the hall outside Alec’s office, she should have heard Max’s head crack against the desk. A blow hard enough to knock someone out and cause them to bleed from their nose and ears would be LOUD. I’ve literally heard real people hit their heads in ways that do much less damage and it sounded like a melon exploding.

Now that the banter and fun goofing around is back, so is Simon and Maia’s chemistry. I think this is the magic of Simon. I bought the Climon relationship the most when he and Clary were being giggly and having fun together. I found Simon and Maia’s chemistry in s2ep06 to be off the charts, again, when they were bantering and laughing. For some reason, whenever Simon forgets to be that guy whom women can laugh and have fun with, he loses a lot of what makes him click in his various potential pairings.

My frustration hit its peak with the fact that Sebastian was right there in the middle of everything while everyone was all, “Where is Jonathan?” There’s only so many times you can yell “HE’S THERE!!! HE’S RIGHT FUCKING THERE IN FRONT OF YOU!!!” at the TV before you just throw your hands up in the air and say, “You know what? Fuck it. You’re too stupid to live. I hope he guts you all.”

They carried this plotline right up to the brink of me hitting that point.

Current sexuality: Magnus saying, “m’lady.”

“Your crush” Oh, I’ll show you a fucking crush, you pint-sized wretch!

Let’s all take a moment to bow our heads and be grateful the producers are making a young-adult urban fantasy show and not a hospital drama. Because they would be really, really bad at it. Seriously I was cringing.

And what the fuck were the runes flashing on the monitor over Max’s head about? Are they there to remind the infirmary medics “This is how you draw an iratze. This is how you draw Nourishment. This is how…” (I’m not sure what that last one was, but it looked like some Shadowhunter stylized version of the Caduceus or the rod of Asclepius.)

Of all the times for Magnus to refuse to take Alec’s call.

Wow. I’d forgotten what an asshole Season 1 Alec could be. He’s come a long way, considering that in-universe it has literally been six weeks since he and Magnus met (No, seriously, check out my timeline if you doubt me. I did the math so you don’t have to.)

I say “asshole” in the most loving way possible, of course. He had his reasons, but he was indeed an asshole. It just goes to show how unhappy and uncomfortable in his own skin he was, and how much losing that burden of hiding himself away from the world impacted him.

Still, I sort of wanted Magnus to push back a little harder when Alec low-key threatened him. “If you let anyone know…”/“Oh, you’ll do what, Shadowhunter?” Because Magnus could almost certainly kick Alec’s ass with all but one of his little pinky fingers broken.

I’m glad we’re finally getting down to business with the whole Ollie thing. But IIRC it’s against the Accords (or Covenant?) to let mundanes know anything about the Shadow world. Which means Luke could be in trouble if the Clave gets wind of her finding out.

And why is so so eager to know, anyway? Like, why was she all up in his business?

I’m wondering if it doesn’t actually have something to do with Maia, considering the way Ollie zeroed right in on her. Say, Ollie’s a cop, but she also, idk, moonlights helping Sam (who maybe is a private investigator?) by taking on missing person cases at the behest of desperate families. Contrary to book canon, we’ve been given some indication that Maia’s parents may actually care for her, so what if they hired Sam and Ollie to track Maia down, and find out she’s gotten mixed up in what might look to be (on the surface) a weird wolf-worshipping cult?

IDK I’m just spinning bullshit theories.

I like how at SDCC Isaiah said that Luke is grooming Maia to take over the pack someday, and how we actually sort of saw that in action here.

I liked Jace’s distress here, because with the exception of s2ep08 and a pat on the head in the last episode, we haven’t really seen him and Max interact or gotten any impression of how his relationship is with Max. And his distress here feels a lot more…sincere? relatable, maybe?...than his oft-repeated bouts of brooding manpain over his upbringing under Valentine.

And, strangely, his pain feeling more genuine also made Clary’s empathy and support feel more genuine. This moment made me feel more of a connection between them than just about any other moment they’ve had on-screen together.

Funny how when you build a relationship between characters out of moments and situations that are arise organically within the plot—rather than forcing it—it just works better, isn’t it?

I feel like I should say something about Bat, but I just don’t have much of an impression of him or what part he’s going to play within the plot, yet. Kevin Alves seems incredibly sweet and eager to be a part of the show, however, so there’s that?

“Rebooting of the brain.” Really? (The part of me that actually knows something about medicine is rolling its eyes so hard right now. This was badly done. Suspension of disbelief in one area only works if you are meticulously grounded in accurate reality in other areas, and this would have been a good area to do that. Massive head trauma that can’t be magically woo-wooed away.)

I have lots of thoughts on the decision to keep Max alive, most of them not good. I was prepared for the pain of him dying, which would have struck pretty close to home because I have a 10yo son. And as a storyteller, I think it would have gone a long way to establishing the stakes for this story.

Like, Valentine wants to commit genocide, and Sebastian wants to help him. We all get that. And we’re all horrified by it. But genocide is a MASSIVE concept to try to really wrap your head around. The human brain, I think, tends to shield you from really grasping it. It’s just too much.

This is a problem faced often by storytellers who are writing stories in which the fate of the world is at stake. It’s too big. The audience can’t connect with it personally, can’t internalize it. So you take that, and you distill it to make the stakes personal. One death, of a character who is beloved by your protagonists and hopefully by your audience, an innocent with all the potential in the world that will now never manifest, stands in for the thousands or millions who will actually die if the bad guy isn’t stopped. That death becomes a rallying point for your protagonists, and a symbol to your audience of just how evil your bad guy is and how much he needs to be stopped.

In short, Max needed to die. He needed to die as tragically as possible. It would have had a lot more storytelling mileage.

God. This scene was just everything I could have asked for their first time to be. I’m pretty sure I wrote a line in a fanfic once about Magnus telling Alec that one of the rules of his bed was that you had to be able to laugh in it, so the giggling and giddiness was just so perfect. And the fact that Magnus responded “No such thing” when Alec expressed concern that he might be doing something wrong is really something else I could have written myself.

It was tender and sweet and sexy without being objectifying and I loved it.

I will say, though, I’m probably in the minority in that I never wanted or needed to see a scene where Alec was confronted with Magnus’s cat eyes for the first time and explicitly stated his unstinting acceptance of him. I always felt it would be othering to go that route. And I felt like this idea that Magnus, who is so incredibly powerful, would lose control so easily a little absurd. I always liked to imagine that the idea that Alec would find NOT being accepting of Magnus unthinkable, that he would be honestly and sincerely befuddled by the idea that Magnus’s eyes might be a Big Deal. “Yeah, he’s a warlock, he has a warlock mark, I’m not sure why that’s supposed to be something that matters.”

That said, if they were going to go there, then this was the way to do it. The thread that weaves through Magnus and Alec’s story in this episode and ties past to present is the fact that they come from different worlds, and with those different worlds come different obligations and priorities. So in this case, the othering was entirely the point and it played into that theme.

So, if it had to happen, I’m glad it at least happened within this context and wasn’t just schmaltzy.

I really loved Luke being such a badass here but I’m certain allowing Russell to live is a bad idea.

Seriously, though, Russell. Not only is Luke a badass just as a werewolf, but he’s got the martial training of a Shadowhunter. How do you imagine you’re going to win this?

Probably one of the most realistic fight scenes I’ve ever seen in terms of showing just how exhausting fighting becomes in very short order. Too many drag out too long before the combatants start to show fatigue.

I really want to know about the cooks at the Jade Wolf. Are they werewolves themselves? Is that why the kitchen staff never bats an eye at anything, including these people waltzing in and out of the kitchen and storeroom?

The scene with Maia explaining her backstory was extremely well done and Alisha Wainwright is all things wonderful and I love her.

“This is what love got me.” Let’s take a moment to recognize the symmetry of Maia and Simon’s stories though. Becoming a vampire, a Downworlder, is what love got Simon as well.

I can’t say anything about this scene that hasn’t been said before, and better, since they released it as a sneak peek. But it’s so beautiful and my heart hurts.

Magnus’s moment with the Lightwoods all together on one side of the hall and him by himself on the other is incredibly poignant but I can’t find the words to really examine it properly. This is the point at which things just began to hurt too much and my brain stopped being able to cope with it.

I’d really like to know how Jace, who can sense Alec’s happiness over things like having sex with his boyfriend for the first time, couldn’t sense the lack of a spike in grief that would have surely occurred upon Max’s death. Grrr.

The fight sequence with Sebastian taking out all the guards was amazing and Will Tudor is brilliant. Did he really use a sword that was still stuck through someone’s body to parry a blow?

What the hell was with him just using his hand to open the crypt, though? No rune or anything. Can Sebastian somehow channel magic?

This whole thing with Clary was awesome and for once she seemed to be working for her miracles so I’ll ungrudgingly let her have this. The one thing I don’t know is what finally tipped her off about Sebastian. Was the electrum nugget thing too warm after he handled it? Did she just realize she never saw his palm? What made her chase after him and check his palm?

I loved her stabbing him. Twice. I’m fully in support of stabbing Sebastian. Yes. Please. Let’s stab Sebastian more. Sebastian for Pincushion 2k17.

Sebastian continues to be a creepy-ass fuck. Seriously, WHY did they decide to go with the incestuous obsession thing? There are so many other places they could have taken that story.

I like that her Open rune that burned through Magnus’s wards also exploded the Institute security doors. I appreciated that for a couple reasons. First, because Sebastian taught her to do that, to use her runes and make them more powerful. Second, it’s also a nice little nod to the books, since we didn’t get that scene of Clary totally disintegrating and blowing up Valentine’s barge with that rune.

Sebastian has vamp speed, too?

I want to ship them, but I haven’t managed it yet. In-universe it’s been like, a week, since Clary and Simon broke up. And of course we know they’re not end-game. But the writers ended up making me buy Climon more than I ever expected to, so maybe they’ll do the same with this one.

I just don’t want to see either of them hurt, so if Simon ends up ending it with Maia, I’m going to be upset, and if Maia ends up ending it with Simon I’ll be upset. *sigh*

I hated seeing the home Simon has been making for himself torn apart like that.

This is the moment of my first death and the beginning of buckets of tears. This look on Magnus’s face after Alec says “our way back to each other.” I can’t. I just can’t. He’s just so heartbroken here.

And the way Alec’s eyes close when Magnus touches him.

And the way Magnus’s voice almost breaks when he says “I love you, too.”

And the way Magnus is trying to smile, just a little. To hold on to some of the joy he’s found with Alec. To file this portion of his life away as a happy memory. To remember Alec as a good thing and not a source of sorrow.

There are so many nuances here and every single one of them fucking slays me dead.

Alec’s disbelief and denial.

Alec’s youthful, naïve insistence that if they just work hard enough, if they’re just determined enough, they can find a way, and Magnus’s world-weary wisdom and centuries of experience telling him there’s just no chance for them.

“You once asked me what I was afraid of. It’s this.”

And here’s my second death. That all along we thought that Magnus was afraid of being alone, being abandoned, like Camille said, he never does well losing the people he cares about.

So, we’ve always thought he was afraid Alec would break his heart. Leave him. Be repulsed by him. Choose duty over him.

We should have known better. Magnus has lived long enough to have his heart broken before, and he knows he’ll survive it.

His real fear is inflicting that pain, that loss, on someone else.

My third and finale death. Alec stifling a sob is where I just lose it entirely.

So I guess what I’m saying here?

Yes, this is a break-up. That’s my read on it. Sorry. It just is.

I don’t believe it’s a permanent one. Of course it’s not. If they’re not back together by the end of the season, at least on some sort of tentative, provisional basis, I’ll be very surprised and extremely pissed off. If I’m left with this boulder sitting on my chest over the hiatus I’m not sure I’ll survive. This show is supposed to be my happy place and I think if they leave me in this hurty place for very long it’s going to ruin it for me.

I don’t think the producers will let this linger long.

But this scene right here? As far as Magnus is concerned in this exact moment as he’s walking away from Alec?

He thinks they’re done. He thinks they’re over. He means it to be that way.

Something will happen to make him change his mind, though, and that’s important. Because here’s the thing:

We’ve seen Alec choose Magnus over and over and over.

He chose Magnus in s1ep06 when he walked away from the Institute and duty to take an evening to at least investigate the possibility of doing something that wasn’t about duty.

He chose Magnus in s1ep12 when he walked away from his own wedding.

He chose Magnus in s2ep06 when he turned his back on his own fears and misgivings and plunged into this relationship.

He chose Magnus in s2ep08 when he challenged his mother’s lack of acceptance repeatedly and sent her a very pointed message about their relationship.

He chose Magnus in s2ep10 when he rejected Aldertree’s words about the impossibility of relationships between Shadowhunters and Downworlders.

He chose Magnus in s2ep13 when he risked censure from the Inquisitor to take a stand for what’s right.

Even when everything he’s ever been trained and brought up to do is telling him to do the opposite, he has chosen Magnus repeatedly.

The only time we haven’t seen him choose Magnus was with regard to keeping the secret about the Soul Sword, and even then, his choice was about Magnus, even if it was paternalistic and wrong-headed.

What we haven’t seen, though?

We haven’t seen Magnus choosing Alec. We see him clearly aware of the difficulty in their situation, especially since s2ep12, but he never really chooses to stand against it. Which is not to say he’s not committed, not at all. We’ve seen Magnus put himself on the line and expose himself and make himself vulnerable for Alec. That’s huge. But with the exception of his hesitation to keep pursuing Alec in s1ep12, we haven’t seen him make that same deliberate decision to damn the obstacles between them and make this relationship happen. His commitment has been more along the lines of ducking and covering and hoping whatever is heading toward them blows over before it pushes them to this critical juncture.

We need to see him make that choice. Everything since s2ep12 has been leading to him making that choice.

Now, I don’t want to step outside my lane, so I’m gonna tread carefully here. 

The thing we have to remember is that Alec, coming from the privileged group, is much safer choosing Magnus than Magnus is in choosing Alec. He’s got that safety net built in, so it’s easier for him. He may face censure and perhaps a decrease in some of his advantages (like being passed over for job promotions) but no consequences that he might face are on the same level of what Magnus might face.

So the two dilemmas and the choice to stand against their respective obstacles are not equal. If Magnus choses their relationship over his people, he doesn’t just face censure, he faces genocide. Pretty big difference there. The only possible way he can justifiably choose Alec at all is if he somehow discovers that choosing Alec dovetails conveniently with the best way to protect himself and his people.

My prediction is that something in the next episode, or in the finale at the latest, is going to bring Magnus to that decision point and make him turn around.

But for the moment? Right now, this scene?

I know it’s going to be an unpopular opinion, but Magnus really does mean this to be a breakup.