✨a person (perhaps)✨

Gets turned into a rat? Bites the vampire holding him hostage.

The whole group is about to be killed by a big demon? Simon kills it in one shot.

Gets turned into a vampire and kidnapped as a sacrifice? Not only escapes but also becomes immune to the sun.

Vampires want him dead for being immune to the sun? Gets THE LITERAL MARK OF CAIN AND NOW IS UNKILLABLE.

Summons an angel, and the angel wants to kill him? Survives because of the Mark of Cain.

Sacrifices himself to a demon? only turns human and loses his memories, no big deal, he can now become a shadowhunter and get his memories back. It's not like he actually liked being a vampire in the first place.

He literally was the most powerful being walking the earth at some point, and he was just a guy in a shitty band.

Hillarious.

Everyone talks about the color scheme, one light one dark, about how Jem is kind where Will is abrasive, etc etc, but more importantly--- without even the illusion of being cursed Jem does pretty much exactly what Will does.

There is a wall between Jem and the rest of society. He is kind to Charlotte and rarely teases Henry, but the London Shadowhunters discuss him as this distant tragedy. The poor foreign boy who is weak enough to die of a drug addiction. They don't know him.

Nobody knows him, except maybe for Will.

Just as Will is hellbent on keeping people from loving him, Jem refuses to make deeper connections with people because he will die anyway. He is just as lonely as Will, hell, in some ways Jem has even less... because Will befriends people, has connections with them, even if he is purposefully an ass about it to uphold their distance.

But Jem has truly only allowed Will to get close to his heart.

It's not that Jem thinks that people don't like him, but by being kind and affable and quiet about his suffering he's trying to slip from their hearts and memories quietly. Where Will is loud and abrasive, Jem's subtle and accompanied by a smile.

It's the exact same thing Will does.

It is just as misguided.

Of course, Jem is loved. Of course, his death will hurt those around him.

All he's achieved is that he's as lonely as Will is. As desperate for a way out.

That's why they BOTH need Tessa in the end. Someone who sees them, someone who forces them out of their protective shells and back out into the world. It is no coincidence that Jem becomes reckless and selfish in his love for Tessa - she is forcing him to be memorable. To be a person and not just a boy dying quietly.

Sophie (and later Will) note that they hadn't known Jem could laugh like that. Be loud like that. Love like that. Because, well, just as Will denied himself his feelings, Jem did too.