Prep Process - The Immortal Cup: Jace Morgenstern (#1)

Soooooo…Jace. I mentioned in my latest Clary Post that Jace was the character who changed the most in this rewrite and tbh, I still think it’s right. There will be other changes among the characters, but Jace is the only one I’m rebuilding from the ground up tbh—which, yes, comprises making him Clary’s actual blood brother. Not that it’s going to be a problem because TIC!Clary’s love interest is Isabelle, but I digress.

In many ways Jace’s emotional journey and development arc in the story will echo and mirror Clary’s arc and its general themes. Where Clary discovers/acts on her homosexuality, Jace discovers the concept of asexuality and how it applies to him, as well as figuring out how to make his relationship with Alec work in a way that respects that part of him while satisfying them both (that relationship, by the way, undergoes some massive changes throughout the story).

More importantly, where Clary’s overall arc consists in discovering her family’s history and how she wants to fit in it, Jace almost has the opposite arc. He already knows what there is to know about the Morgenstern history and he knows what his place is (or what it’s supposed to be) within that heritage, and his entire arc consists of learning how to let go of said place (and the pressure that goes with it) to forge his own identity and his own pace.

This is helped along by several events, including (but not limited to) having to leave Idris as a child to be adopted by the Lightwoods, meeting Clary and, later on, meeting Luke and Jo (Luke is especially significant to Jace’s arc btw)…and yes, the evolution of his relationship to Alec, too.

Being black, for Jace, doesn’t factor much (if at all) in his reasoning, mostly because he’s been raised in a place that doesn’t give a shit about the color of your skin* and, later on, the Lightwoods never really made a fuss about it.

(Also he doesn’t go out much and, when he does, it’s often under a glamour so he hasn’t been as exposed to the unsavory parts of Mundane culture as, say, Alec or Isabelle, who are much more aware of racism and other discriminations than Jace is)

I think what I like best about TIC!Jace, though, is that he’s a lot less of a dick than his canon counterpart, and in a way much more welcoming to Clary (making Maryse and Robert frminists helps that). I’ve always envisioned him as a very lonely child due to being raised in secret—I don’t think he’s had much friends his age, and not for long—and when he gets to the Lightwood his main ‘entry point’ so to speak isn’t even 'completed’ by most Nephilim standards.

(Alec, for various reason, refused to give Jace free access to his mind, which runs counter to the usual practice)

That makes him someone who badly wants to fit within a larger group—a family, a people, a history—but who, in many ways, never quite manages to fit in or, when he does, he rarely manages to feel that he does. In a way, it’s sort of a lucky thing for Clary because, when she ends up with the Lightwoods, Jace is basically like a puppy with a new friend and does his best to make her feel welcome—but for Jace himself it’s not necessarily a very healthy thing, and he doesn’t really realize that until he’s forced to by an event that I will not disclosed here for suspense reasons (tho I have mentioned it elsewhere on the web, for the dedicated).

On the whole I’m really enthusiastic about writing Jace in the rewrite, and trying to write his relationship to Clary and the others, it’ll be challenging (in part because it’ll all be told through Clary’s POV) but interesting, I think.

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*Which, amusingly enough, means I’m going to have to pay extra attention to the characters in power and their skin colors. This is actually going to be a bit of a double-edged sword because having POCs in places of power in the Clave means several of them with pretty racist mindsets but  eh. I’ll have to counterbalance that with Clary and the Lightwoods ;)