Curate, connect, and discover
Today I found myself reading TMI again after being done with studying (ugh, whoever invented exams can burn in hell) and I feel like I keep running out of ways to explain how incredibly copy pasted and close I feel to Alec. Like, yes sure, I love Izzy with every inch of my soul and don't I wish I was like her and Magnus is just such a me vibe in my best days. But Alec has always been my focal point every single time I read Cassandra Clare, and every time I expect to find myself being like "oh shut up" like I often find myself doing when Jace talks, even Clary sometimes, but I just don't.
I find it so unbelievable how the first time I read City of Bones I was around three years younger than Alec in that book and I just couldn't help but think "He's real". Because miss m'am Izzy was killing demons in high heels at sixteen and Jace probably had more girlfriends than I have hair on my head and there was Alec. Trying to beat sense into them, being discarded by Jace the moment Clary came into view. His only friends being his own sister who was his complete opposite and his parabatai who way too foused on being cool than on his own struggles, him trying to hide himself from the Clave out of pure fear that they would exile him and just abandon him in a world full of demons as a mundane like they did to his uncle.
He was the secondary character. The fifth wheel of the cart, as we say in my family. And I could relate to that, because being on the outside and looking on the inside, being aware that you're not enough is something that i've found myself doing all my life ever since I was a toddler. Not too fun. Not too cool. Not too smart. You're just in the middle of it all. Never enough to stand out. Just a blank paper. And I just felt this ache in my heart when I finished that book years ago and I still feel it every time and this boiling rage knowing that this man stood bravely against it all. The fact that he played such an important role in the war, almost as important as Jace and he was still seen as "Jace's parabatai", when this man genuinely changed the law and rebuild every belief of the Clave to make it more humane.
There's just enough words in the dictionary to how many levels I love Alec and to how many levels I am grateful to Cassie for writing him, because who would I violently and brutally relate to if it wasn't Alexander Gideon Lightwood, the Inquisitor of the Clave and the man who loved a man so much he changed the world for him and Magnus's archer boy.