Laila🎧

I'm so normal about this movie that I did this in 3 days with a total of 10 hours of sleep. If you know this song you know it s time to bring out the tissues.

I really really hate that Simon becomes a Shadowhunter in the end. Not just because I liked him as a vampire but because I think that it undermines a lot of narrative weight and themes for both him as a character and the story world in general.

This series is very focused on how authoritarian and bigoted and corrupt the Shadowhunter society is. This race of angelic demon hunters are actually a bunch of corrupt bigoted assholes. And one of the major ways that this is portrayed is basically by having every Shadowhunter (including protagonists like Jace and Alec) continuously subject Simon (and the other non-Shadowhunter characters, but Magnus and Luke are afforded a certain level of societal respect that Simon certainly isn't) to microagressions and sometimes outright hate crimes for the simple crime of not being one of them. And the messaging is meant to be that this bigotry is deep-seated and wrong and the other characters need to work through their prejudices and that he doesn't deserve to be treated like this.

He deals with hatred not just from outside sources, but also self hatred and repression of his vampire identity (clinging tightly to any sense of human normalcy as a way to cope with how utterly fucked his life has become) to the point of basically developing the vampire equivalent of an eating disorder and starving himself on purpose because he hates having to drink blood. He loses access to his religion (now weaponized against him because of his vampirism), his mother rejects him, and tons of people are trying to kill him because he's the only daywalker in existence. And he gets kidnapped every book because he's the resident damsel in distress despite literally being unkillable for like two books lol. His life fucking suuuuuucks. Simon, as a human and then as a vampire, basically is the Other in the series (funny, because he's also like the normalest guy ever). His storyline over the six books is basically figuring out who he is in this supernatural world he followed his best friend into and finding some self respect despite the hatred (internalized and externalized) he faces.

Achilles -> Paris Alexander -> Diomedes

step 1. buy hades 2

and it's delightful to me, idk, how odysseus has been trapped and cornered in various way throughout the odyssey, but arguably never so that he has to tell the truth to get out. (with the phaeacians, maybe? the omniscient narrator corroborates some of what he tells them, but do we really know everything?) and in fact he is not trying to get free of penelope. he wants something from her, wants to convince her, wants to be welcomed home, but until this point he's lied to her, revealed himself to other people before her, and been distant with her (though also patient! he doesn't try to strongarm or rush her into accepting him; it's his idea to sleep elsewhere).