#j.c

I’m in the process of re-reading The Mortal Instruments. Yesterday I finished the fifth book, and I can’t stop thinking about Sebastian/Jonathan Christopher Morgenstern.

And I think that I want to start here:

“Your sister,” Sebastian said. “Is she? Because you two don’t act like it. You think other people can’t see the way you look at each other? You think you’re hiding the way you feel? You think everyone doesn’t think it’s sick and unnatural? Because it is.”

I remember when I first read this saga, and I remember how I used to despise Sebastian. Of course, there were many reasons: he’s the antagonist, he stands between my darlings and their happy ending, and his feelings for Clary disgusted me. I couldn’t understand him; for my 15-year-old self it was simply a show of perversion, depravity. At the time, I didn’t challenge the idea that his wickedness was merely the result of his blood, even though the entire saga challenges that idea — Raziel himself challenges it. Let’s start with the books in general:

“All the stories are true.”

This phrase means a lot of things. It serves to establish the world-building without having to explain too much, because it uses information that the reader already has — stories that are already familiar — and it confirms them. So after the reader accepts that fairy tales are true at their core, everything else becomes consequential. In terms of philosophical intention, it simply means that whatever you believe to be true, every preconception you have about yourself or the world, will shape your life. It will shape who you are and your experiences at a fundamental level.

Sebastian shares his character’s fundamental challenge with Elphaba. I don’t think I need to explain this, because it’s obvious: one in the eyes, the other on the skin, both show signs that their superstitious parents interpret as demonic. Of course, in Sebastian’s case it’s actually demonic, but it doesn’t matter. They are immediately outcast for a reason that is evident in their appearance, and they are hated by their close relatives for something they can’t control.

Now, Sebastian is immediately abandoned by his mother — but what about his father? This is what Valentine has to say to Clary:

“And because of you she hates me. And because of that, I hate the sight of you.”

Just to reinforce the point I want to make, this is what Clary has to say to Jace about Valentine:

“Valentine doesn’t care about me,” Clary said. “He’s only ever cared about you.”

Valentine hated his son for the same reason. He was unable to process guilt and remorse, so he externalized it. He burdened his children with it. The thing is, both of them are affected by Valentine, but Sebastian had to live with him for years. He bore the signs of it in his skin, in his mind, and in his heart. Not only that, he knew of a boy — a boy with whom he shared the name — a boy who was angelic and perfect, someone his father could love. But why? Because Jace, in my opinion, represents the personification of “what could have been” for Valentine. In his mind, Jace is the experiment he should have performed on his own flesh and blood, on his wife, because if he’d done that, she would have stayed.

Of course, he also says this:

“Understand this, my son — I loved you for those things (his humanity, vulnerability, softness). But the very things I loved about you made you no use to me.”

It’s a big conundrum for Valentine. To achieve his goal, he needs a son he despises — someone whose very existence caused him to lose the person he loved — and now he’s miserable, but he has his soldier. He hates Sebastian and he needs him, so he tortures him. He lets him in on his secrets — secrets that burn through the psyche of the child, secrets that fill him with rage, envy, desperation, and a desire for destruction. It’s funny, in a way. Valentine gave Jace his suicidal tendencies, and he gave Sebastian a passion for desolation.

This is the quote that opens book five:

“No man chooses evil because it is evil. He only mistakes it for happiness, the good he seeks.”

I think this phrase is there to help us understand Sebastian. First, he has no social framework whatsoever, because he’s been forced into isolation since he was born. He knows of people; he knows of people who are better than him, and he knows of people who rejected him before he could even act on the wickedness they had charged him with. Do you remember Sebastian’s back? Let me remind you:

“His bare back was striped with ragged scars, one after the other, too even to be a random accident.”

Valentine hit him using demonic weapons — things that would hurt him forever. Clary asks him if he can still feel the pain, and he says that he feels it all the time. His back, his wounds, hurt all the time.

Why did Valentine do that? He wanted Sebastian to understand:

“the perils of obedience.”

Clary doesn’t immediately get what he means; she thinks he’s mistaken. But he isn’t. Valentine punished him because he is exactly what he made of him. Sebastian was a child, and he was trying to prove himself to his father — to earn his love and his affection, both things he felt were conditional on approval. All the characters misunderstand Sebastian, some more than others. This is what Clary has to say about him:

“Loneliness drove him as much as desire for power — loneliness and a need to be loved without any corresponding understanding that love was something you earned.”

Her reflection on loneliness is correct, but if there’s something Sebastian really doesn’t understand, it’s unconditional love. Otherwise, he wouldn’t lie. He can love unconditionally; he loves his sister unconditionally, in his own deprived way. But he knows nobody could love him the same way. He hoped she could. He had hoped it since he knew she existed, and then they met — she rejected him, and he realized.

At this point, he already has an extremely disturbed idea of what relationships are, because Valentine had told him about Jace and Clary, about their love for each other. He thinks that since the angelic children would feel that way even if they thought they were related, this was how a brother and a sister should love.

“Clarissa was his sister; she belonged to no one else. She was his. He knew it.”

This is what he thinks before even meeting her. This is what he realizes as soon as he knows of her existence. But when she asks him:

“Who do you belong to?”

he knows in his heart that he was meant to be hers. But all the love and desire he understands is corrupted by his upbringing. His father only knew possession and control. His father only felt passionate and erotic emotions toward women. Clary had loved her adoptive brother like a lover, so he thought that was the way.

“And you don’t care that I’m your brother,” he said. “I know how you felt about Jace, even when you thought he was your brother. You can’t lie to me.”

I mean, we can hate him. He killed Max. He’s a monster. But he has every contextual reason to think the way he thinks.

“Tell me you love me. Tell me you love me and will fight with me.”

This is the boy who keeps the box with his initials carved on it — the one the woman who rejected him kept for sixteen years.

Sebastian only wants to be loved, but he never knew love; he doesn’t understand it. He only saw rejection, hatred, and violence. He had to win his father’s approval through violence, so he tries to win his sister’s affection through violence — forcing himself on her, hurting her — while imagining a world where there’s nobody but them, and no one could judge him there, no one could hate him there. He would know love in destruction, desolation, and death. He would create a world that fit him — a world that could accept him and give him a chance.

“Love given without truthfulness wasn’t love at all.”

But what could he know about this? He had been a slave all his life. Raziel said to Valentine:

“No one asked you to sacrifice your son.”

And no one did. He did it to himself, to prove himself worthy through an act that was merely aesthetic.

Sebastian had a soul, just like Magnus and all the other Downworlders have souls. Raziel indirectly confirmed it.

He wasn’t evil because of his blood. Lilith’s blood didn’t deform him. His life, his family, his circumstances are what ruined him forever. The humiliation, the rage, the hatred burned through him, and he became a monster.

I like to imagine a universe where he met someone when he was a child. It doesn’t matter if it’s a boy, a girl, or an animal. What matters is that this creature can’t get hurt. Sebastian can try, but he won’t succeed — and he won’t suffer retaliation, because he hasn’t caused any real damage. I like to imagine who he would have become if only he had something that could prove that love doesn’t control, it doesn’t destroy. I think he’d be different — still flawed, of course, maybe terrible — but I’m sure this example, this single relationship, would change him fundamentally.

Haha, silly comic 😋

Oh yeah, J.C calls Kitchen Wizard “KiWi” as a shortened form

Also she was kicked outta the kitchen by KiWi 😔

She is also immune to anything that forces her to be in love with someone, but that will then redirect to the person closer to her 🥳

PLEASEPLEASEPLEASPELEASE—

Your wish is my command

Love tale!Syphus has a unique name now: Anemon. pronounced ah-neh-mon.