rereading clockwork angel and i’m thinking about the parallels between will/jessamine and tessa/jem.
will and jessamine: both come from parents who left the shadowhunter life, spending their childhoods in the mundane world. their behaviour is often rude, volatile, they shout and argue, both masking their pain by lashing out and rejecting the love charlotte & henry offer them (for wildly different reasons, but the outward behaviour is not dissimilar). they have moments of raw vulnerability before rapidly closing off (jessamine and her dollhouse; will when tessa sees too much of his real self). will and jessamine’s lives both make them hopeless — will because he cannot let anyone get close, and jessamine who says she’d rather die than live this life she never wanted. will chooses the shadowhunter life, because he cannot go home; jessamine wants nothing to do with it, but she cannot get out. they’re both desperate for their lives to change (though we see more of this from will in cp1).
and then you have jem and tessa: both travelled from different continents after basically losing everything, to arrive in london. both tortured repeatedly, forced to recalibrate to the world after. they feel out of place initially, yearning for the lives they had before everything changed, before they had to travel so far from home (which brings the most pain, as jem says). people see them as different for what they are, for things they cannot change — the “half one thing and half another, like me” conversation. they take on more nurturing roles, so in the rare moments when they do express anger, it hits extra hard. they both want something essential: jem to experience the kind of love his parents had, and tessa to know who she is, to not be alone in the world.
they all carry their histories in different ways, i guess is the point here, and it’s interesting how certain characters’ backgrounds/stories parallel others. this isn’t to compare either pair, rather i’m just observing the similarities — it’s always struck me how will and jessamine seem pretty similar at the start of clockwork angel, (which shows in the way they argue and shout at each other a lot) though obviously their needs/reasons/values are incredibly different. and then there’s jem and tessa, who are more shy and yet, contradictorily, more openly feeling, who i think because of their nature often have their pain overlooked (especially the fact that they were both tortured!!) and tessa representing a reason to hope for both will and jem but also jessamine, who later projects this onto nate, bec she’s desperate for a way out, while jem and will have a reason to not be resigned to their fates.
anyway stan tid for breaking my heart again!
