Tag: downworlders

nightfallgoddess:

lvkegarroways:

kay but like. if you expect magnus and luke or any other downworlder to suddenly drop everything and coddle alec or any shadowhunter and have them be the ones who only ever bring up the injustices downworlders face yeah youre racist bye

bless.

Okay, I’m going to go on a rant, because you’ve missed one major point. 

Everyone is dangerous. That does not mean they should be persecuted. 

Shadowhunters are killers too. Valentine used his powers to hurt people. He killed mundanes and Downworlders by the barrel, as well as his fellow Shadowhunters. Runes have the potential to be used to torture and murder mundanes. Shadowhunters can be bloodthirsty, power hungry, and amoral, and they have powers that make them dangerous to the average human. Does that mean Shadowhunters should be attacked, held without due process of law, policed by a force beyond their control, and governed without representation? 

No, you say? That would be unfair, you say?

It’s just as unfair to stereotype the average vampire based on the actions of a few, or the average faerie based on a generalization, as it is to judge every Shadowhunter by the standard of Valentine. 

Your arguments (that they’re dangerous, that they hurt people, that their culture is different from ours and therefore untrustworthy) are used to attack real minorities every day. Real people die because their group is “innately criminal” or “manipulative”. CC can’t have it both ways. The Downworlders can’t be a metaphor for real minorities and then be demonized in the same sentence.

 Yeah, there are criminals and monsters, and yeah, their politicians are sleazy. Guess what. All politicians are sleazy and there isn’t a group in the world that doesn’t have a few bad apples. 

What’s more, Downworlders are completely capable of self policing if given the chance. Jordan got out of control but it wasn’t a heroic Shadowhunter who brought him in line, it was a werewolf organization. Now I recognize that vampires are scary, and it’s easy to see them as monstrous if you were raised on horror stories. And faeries are definitely different from humans, for better or for worse. But in the Shadowhunters universe they are also directly paralleled with real life marginalized communities, and are shown to be in every way equitable with Shadowhunters, both in heroism and villainy. 

Your assumptions and generalizations are an example of harmful stereotypes in action, and your thesis is inherently flawed when it assumes any sentient being needs to be “held in check” by a group just as monstrous as they are. 

Ragnor and Magnus and Catarina were absolutely early adopters of camera technology. Ragnor got one early and took pictures and Catarina was one of his favorite models. 

Magnus loved having his picture taken and when the first handheld cameras came out? Magnus was one of the first people to take selfies. You know those pictures of edwardian gentlemen looking like total dorks trying to get their boxy brownie camera far enough away to get a picture of themselves? That was Magnus. Except he used magic to make them even better. 

Also Catarina and Ragnor loved it when pictures finally got color and they could admire themselves in all of their glory but before that they would sometimes painstaking paint color into their skin. 

They have boxes of ancient pictures and whenever they go through them they’ll periodically find nudes Ragnor and Magnus (and on one occasion Catarina) posed for. Also, it’s like a timeline of fashion disasters. They can spend days making faces at each other and going through old pics. 

Raphael hates getting his picture taken but Magnus has lots of pictures of him anyway. He’s unfairly photogenic.