#even better if they aren't even the protagonists but some inconsequential side characters

[canisalbus]

I say this in the best way, but your characters feel like they're from an obscure but really good piece of media, and you feel like the artist who always draws the two main characters as ghay lovers

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[antthonystark]

honestly one of things i like about the show is that all the characters are flawed in some way, it's what makes it engaging for me anyway. they aren't perfect (but i might hyperboly say that they're 'perfect' if that makes sense? like they're imperfectly perfect? idk, lol)

i mean, yeah, of course! that’s the draw of any character for me, and it’s the mark of a well-crafted and multidimensional character. and i think the characters in sh are really good in this respect. honestly, i don’t really get it when people try to act like their faves don’t have flaws (and ok i defend alec a lot but i never say he’s not flawed ok ppl just come after him sometimes) bc that’s the fun part. 

i actually really like the characters of shadowhunters for a variety of reasons but something that i find interesting and quite gratifying are their flaws. the thing about both television and  YA fantasy are that they are built on generic tropes that kind of structure the genre, and YA fantasy specifically is among the tropiest genres that exist, not that that’s a bad thing. and shadowhunters definitely has some elements of the genre and the overall narrative structure - clary’s hero’s journey-slash-bildungsroman - is pretty typical of YA fantasy (but there’s also other stuff e.g. the downworlders, allegory, etc. that flesh out the narrative but i dont want to go on an even deeper tangent). 

but what i like about how the characters translated to the show (and i think the aging up really factors into this but that’s a story for another day) is not that they’re necessarily playing against trope, but rather that they’ve been expanded, i guess, and have given those archetypal characters typical of television or of YA fantasy a lot more breadth and depth, and i really appreciate that. 

like for example (im pretty sure this ask was in response to something about clary) i think clary is a fantastic example of this. so much of the time, YA heroines have flaws that are either illusory or largely inconsequential, and nearly everything they do - even if people are telling them not to do it - ends up being for the better. but clary in the show, specifically, i feel like she escapes that, because she has real and tangible flaws that affect what happens - she has hubris, and a lot of it. the ‘fatal flaw’ is one of the most interesting things a hero can have in literature (or tv i guess lol) and i’m really interested to see how it plays out with clary - because you see her hubris (i.e. pride, arrogance, i-know-better attitude) get in her way sometimes and cause problems, notably in 2x05 when despite jace and magnus’s advice, she went ahead with her plan and almost paid dearly for it or 2x07 when she ignored/tazed luke and almost messed everything up. so it’s a flaw, and a tangible one that affects her narrative. now the fatal flaw generally leads to the downfall of a tragic figure, and i don’t really think clary is set up to be a tragic figure, but what i’d really like to see is that hubris lead to something much more majorly negative for her story that results from this pride/over-determination specifically (not that i want her to suffer, but i want her to grow) and thus making her not only flawed and complex but also dynamic and able to develop because of her flaws. and i think this is more apparent in the show than in the books which are much more aligned with the more prototypical YA heroine (not that that’s a bad thing necessarily). 

and, cause this is me and you knew what you were getting into, my dude alec is another interesting example of a character’s flaws playing a bit outside of what we normally see in the genre. normally you have the rule-following, obedient-to-a-flawed-organization-in-the-name-of-lawfulness character either be neutral or be an antagonist, rather than a protagonist, and if he is on the side of the protags then it’s only when he’s utterly persuaded out of his lawfulness by the rebellious-but-good protags, but i think alec is in a more interesting and nuanced place than either of those positions, because of his lawfulness which was more apparent in s1, his responsibilities and duties to his family and his career, and of course his ingrained biases as a result of the environment he grew up in. which i think is really cool and would love to see them explore a little bit more even in the upcoming season. (in fact it was one of the things that drew me to him the most initially when i was like ‘hey i like this dude he’s my fave now’). 

i mean i could go on with the other characters, but the point is i really do feel like the flaws in the characters of shadowhunters make them very complex and dimensional and that’s why i like to see that, especially when it starts to broaden or colour outside the lines of the tropes that are typical of tv and also of the specific literary genre, instead of just going “oh this character made me mad and upset im gonna hate them now” ya know what i mean?