Ankaa Phoenix

jonathan shadowhunter was a warrior but never forget that at the core of jonathan shadowhunter was love, because when his sister and best friend lay dying he begged the angel to save them and that's the reason we have nephilim at all

Details matter so much in a story because I loved how jessamine got her due in TMI. She put the London institute in grave danger in TID and she became the reason the London institute survived Sebastian in TMI the best, without any loss/death, nobody was even touched 🥹

like yes i think kit and jessamine should be friends because it would be funny and they could be judgemental besties together but also idk... something about how neither of them ever wanted to be shadowhunters and then found themselves living in an institute full of strangers who are all so close to each other and don't really understand them after their families were brutally murdered and ended up in too deep to leave especially because given the unchangeable circumstances of their lives they didn't see any way out

sometimes I remember how jessamine showed herself to simon so he’d know that george was safe with her and I just 😫

Something I find fascinating about Jessamine Lovelace as a character is that on the one hand, there are a lot of ways in which she is correct about how messed up shadowhunter society is and has every reason to resent being forced into this life, both due to it's brutality and her understandable reactions to the grief and trauma which led to her integration into this world. However, instead of rebelling by paving her own path separate from convention like some characters would, she rebels by idolising the mundane society and culture of Victorian England, which is equally fucked up and terrible for different reasons. She clings to conventionality, to rules such as "lady's shouldn't read novels or the news" because to her, adhering to them means exerting control over the life she currently has, and because she likely learned them from her parents (probably specificaly her mother) who she misses and wants to keep with her as she lives a life they did not want for her. It seems more about the principle than the personal, I'm sure she genuinely enjoys some things about the Victorian English woman ideal such as fashion etc. but probably like 80% of it she would not consider to be that great if she got to pursue that life instead of being prevented from it, or if she has no reason to tie it to her grief. She's clearly hungry for a life outside of shadowhunting and that ideal is the other option being presented to her, so she clings to it out of stubborness that is simultaneously admirable because the determination required for it shows a type of strength and also is a tragedy. It is what led to her being so susceptable to Nathaniel I think, because she's been stubbornly clinging to this fantasy for so long and so when someone comes along and offer it to her it doesn't really matter who he is, she can just slot him into this fantasy and she won't think too hard about everything around it not because she's stupid imo but because she just wants to believe the fairy tale is real (which also kind of gives comp het but anyway). I will say that I appreciate that her storyline isn't about weaponizing conventional femininity leading to a triumph and is instead almost.. not a cautionary tale, but shows that this type of empowerment has it's limits and ultimately puts women in the power of men and society more than the other way around, as much as I love Isablle Lightwood and many chars like her that's just something I wish was depicted more. The tragedy of Jessamine Lovelace to me isn't only that she never got to live the life she wanted to (which truly is tragic on it's own), it's that she never got to become disillusioned about the life she never got.