amorverus:
OK but I really want to talk about Alec Lightwood and his lgbt+ narrative Shadowhunters.
I don’t normally join in on the conversation because I prefer to make gifs and cry in the tags about my children, but I find Alec’s lgbt+ narrative to be a lot more layered than what I normally see in YA genre television (I stress genre because genre television has always been especially lacking here.)
A lot of the lgbt+ characters I’ve seen may be coded as such, but they’re either already open about it, like Danny from Teen Wolf or Clarke from The 100, or deep in the closet so that “coming out” is the climax, like Kurt in Glee. To be fair to Glee and from the patchwork of episodes I’ve seen, Kurt does seem to go on to have his own narrative beyond his coming out story, but there’s still a very contrived “I’m gay” declaration and it’s heavily implied that he’s in denial to himself about his sexuality up to that point.
Alec is not in denial to himself about his sexuality. This is a really important distinction that I see when watching because as a (former) closeted lesbian, I was really tired of seeing closeted characters continually represented as someone who cannot acknowledge they are, in fact, not straight. It is the experience of some closeted people, but it isn’t for all.
But Alec, away from the prying eyes of his loved ones, responds pretty readily to Magnus’s flirting (which is why Magnus goes on to flirt aggressively, because he thinks Alec is receptive based on their first interaction.) He blushes, but he doesn’t once shoot Magnus down for making the “wrong” assumption about him. This is only reinforced when he accepts a date from Magnus almost immediately not only the next day but mere minutes after a conversation with Jace about how Jace has every right to be mad at him.
It’s an important approach because Alec’s main conflict is two-fold: the first is his family and, by extension, his society. The Clave is very clearly a shame culture, which is a type of culture I don’t see represented in Western media a lot for obvious reasons but which, as an Asian, I identify with wholeheartedly. Family image is everything. As the eldest, Alec is carrying the torch for the Lightwood name. In private with Magnus, Alec’s shame is not triggered because warlocks are far outside Shadowhunter culture, much in the same way I easily told bosses and colleagues I was gay years before I admitted it to my family. Instead, Alec’s fear is that if he’s outed within his own people, it will ruin the Lightwood name for generations to come and he will take his parents, his sister, and his little brother down with him.
The second is that Jace is closer than a best friend. They share a very special bond and they’re also adopted brothers. With Jace, it’s only half to do with the fact that he’s not straight; the other half is that Jace’s opinion means a lot to Alec and Alec is afraid of what many people are afraid of, queer or straight: that falling in love with a friend will ruin the relationship irreparably. He’s afraid of how Jace will look at him, of what might change between them, when he realizes that Alec thinks of him romantically.
In short, Alec wants little more than to make the people he loves proud and keep them safe, and he feels he cannot do that if he comes out, which is not a narrative I often see at all, but one that is personally so important to me. There is more than one reason lgbt+ people stay in the closet and it is not always because we can’t accept our sexuality. Sometimes it’s because we think we’ll be letting the people closest to us down and in many ways, it becomes about protecting our family as much as it’s about protecting ourselves.
And really, there’s nothing that speaks more to Alec’s character than that.