Shadowhunter's and family disfunction - The Lightwoods.
So I was writing a post about the Relationship of the Lightwood family and I realized that this Family has all of the hallmarks of being very dysfunctional is very dysfunctional. The mother Maryse is obsessed with the family image to the detriment of the family and each of the siblings seems to fall into the trope of a person within a dysfunctional family. Dysfunctional family - Wikipedia
This isn't a healthy environment for anyone to grow up in yet they do manage to heal after being exposed to a spell that shows people's worst fears through hallucinations, that were caused after being cast by a warlock that is looking for Magnus as he rescued one of her warlock children due to the situation she was living in and she was being used by several people for her magic.
This spell brings out people's worst fears and we see the effects of the life that the Shadowhunters are currently living. Especially Alec as we see throughout the show that he blames himself for things that have happened to Clary since she came into his life. In the show, Clary's mother is killed by a demon and Alec was possessed by it when he killed Clary's mother ( this is a direct deviation from the books)
Yet we see the tropes of dysfunction in the Lightwoods in
- A mother that is Obsessed with family image, and a distracted father that is involved in work more than his family, and favors one child more than the other. We see that Robert lightwood is closer to Izzy than Alec. There is a scene in the first series where we see Robert come home and Alec is home but we see Robert spend time with Izzy.
So we see the children in the family fall into the tropes of
- Alec takes on the role of the family Caretaker - by being the one that is telling the truth, sees the reality of the situation, and questions things that are happening in the show and the books. His parent's place is the acting head of the institute. So we do wonder how long he has been in charge as we see that he has been acting head for a while and this is why he needs to question things that are happening when Clary comes into his life and Simon in a way too and it is Simon and Magnus that see the reality of what is happening in Alec's life. This is a fantastic edit of how Simon sees how Jace treats Alec.
- Jace the Golden child ( who is adopted into the family) - So he is praised and excused from bad behavior and Alec is punished instead of him. We also see this challenging dynamic play out as the Parabaiti relationship plays into this as well. This relationship becomes complicated as they are at an age when they started into more serious romantic relationships.
- Izzy falls into either the family mascot or the scapegoat - so her partying, relationships with the downworlders, not following orders, and developing a drug addiction ( yet this needs a separate post on the way that the show handled addiction as it deviates from the books)
- Max is too young to be involved in the family dynamics but is protected by Alec as the Shadowhunters are educated at either the Schoolmance or by tutors.
We see that this family needs to heal and we see the fallout in each one's relationships with their romantic partners. Either in the case of Alec and Magnus not being able to recognize attraction and then pushing it down to save the family. Then seeing and wakes up to his reality and recognizes who he is and how it affects him. We also see Alec treat Magnus very badly as he has never been in a romantic relationship. Both in the show and in the books. In the books, he gets sick of being the Shadowhunter's pet warlock. I have written about Magnus and Alec's relationship before however, I am now seeing things that I hadn't picked up on before around how our family relationships affect our lives and our own romantic relationships.
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