queen of the rats

Yeah, I'm getting in on the trend. This one is all platonic relationships though, because I love how complex and interesting the platonic/parabatai/sibling situations get in TSC. Check it out, and let me know what rankings you got!

I enjoy how The Land I Lost emphasizes the tragedy of never being allowed to know each other. Lily saves people because she didn't save Raphael, and he turned out to be the best person in his life. Alec dreamed of escaping New York because he didn't know that Magnus was right across town and perfectly suited to making him happy. Rafe and Alec finding each other was just a coincidence, but Rafe fit into the family perfectly.

There's no glowing beacon that lights up when you meet somebody who's going to change your life, so you need to put in the work of opening yourself up to all sorts of strangers if you want to ever find the ones you'll love.

It's especially important with Lily, since she suffered so much abuse as a human and thus became a heartless killer. She didn't help anyone but herself, which might have saved her from other abusers but it also cut her off from the people who could have been her friends or partners. Raphael just slipped through the cracks and inserted himself into her business (because he's a bossy little bitch) which was Lily's wake-up call. Raphael seemed like just another pesky human, and thus proved that pesky humans can be people worth loving. He grew up surrounded by love and never gave up that affection for his family, which proved that Lily's experiences of familial abuse weren't universal. Despite the appearance of Raphael as the hater and Lily as the socialite, Raphael is the one that showed her how much goodness exists in the world, and it gave Lily access to a whole different sort of immortality.