Episode 35: Stronger Than Heaven
PSA: This episode is over 3 hours. Make sure you’re sitting comfortably!
Episode 35 of The Descent Is Easy discusses Stronger Than Heaven, Episode 5 of Season 3 of Shadowhunters.
We discuss themes running through the episode, such as clothes sharing and what it says about intimacy, Jace and what being a soldier means for him, Alec showing his age and Magnus showing how much still remains of the walls he’s built around his heart, Luke’s farm and where was that when we needed it in the past? Then we re-invent the Clave before discussing the basket of onions that is Malec, with their never ending layers and their ability to make you cry… but also, if they’re cooked right, they turn real sweet…. Hang on, what? Get out of our brain, Matthew!
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22nd April 2018 @ 3:18 am
Re: Magnus getting angry (2:31:52): I don’t know if you’re talking specifically about him getting angry at a person to their face or in general, but he did explode a drinks cart in 2×17. So there was that.
And later in this part of the episode (2:35:34) regarding Alec not responding to the fact that Magnus is yelling at him, I think it’s worth noting that Alec lives with some pretty strong, aggressive personalities, as well. Jace has yelled at him on the show more than once, and while Izzy is gentler I can’t imagine there weren’t times while they were growing up when she didn’t snap as well.
So I think if there’s one thing Alec has going for him, it’s that he’s grounded enough in family to understand that you can fight and be angry with each other and still love each other. Which, I think, is probably a large part of why he still thought he and Magnus would be okay and Magnus’s decision to break up with him in 2×18 came as such a shock.
Which actually now that I think of it sort of contradicts what I just said a moment ago. Alec has experience with this notion of being able to be angry with someone and still love them and be committed to them, but his recent experience with Magnus is sort of contrary to that, which means that now I’ve talked myself around to “hey, yeah, it is strange that this didn’t worry Alec more because precedent with Magnus being angry with him actually isn’t all that positive.”
Hrm. At any rate, you two have apparently repressed all memory of 2×17-2×20 on this subject. Which I don’t blame you for in the slightest, lol.
(Alec also raised his voice at Magnus in Raphael’s apartment in 2×09)
22nd April 2018 @ 8:42 am
explosive (literally) anger from Magnus in regards to the soul sword… interesting. No idea how that didn’t occur to us. It was terrifying, and hot. I should definitely have remembered hahaha I was desperately riffling through episodes in my mind, because it seemed unrealistic not to have more moments of that explosive anger, but there’s also only so long me and Ruth can sit in silence, staring at each other, before we have to call it a day LOL
so much interesting stuff in here!! I’m literally on my way out the door to the gym, but that will give me a good hour to ponder on the above thoughts and get back to you with something more useful than just ‘YEAH, TOTALLY!!’ haha
Xx
22nd April 2018 @ 11:58 am
2×18 and the break up being at the back of Alec’s mind is something that we really could have gone more in depth over in this tDiE episode but god, it did not need to be any longer than it already was!!!! haha
But that is really interesting conflict you’ve just brought up there. Of course Alec is used to people yelling and being angry and then still loving each other, and even just in a more Clave/Institute way, temperaments running high and people snapping, but everyone getting back to their job/mission/status at the end of it. Hence Magnus breaking up with him truly catching him by complete surprise. Which does mean Magnus blowing up in his face should put him more on edge.
Which I kind of want to explain by saying ‘yeah, but he’s more secure in the relationship now, they’ve both grown, Alec now knows that Magnus isn’t going to walk away from him again over a “disagreement”‘ but that of course makes no sense because a) magnus just said they’ve been together for 2 months, meaning the breakup happened about 18 minutes ago in show time b) alec has just been rejected due to how secure he felt in this relationship and c) alec textually says he’ll be lucky to be one of the “chosen” relationships to end up in the box. All of that pretty much states that Alec should be freaking out. hmmm.
Ruth is at a Spa retreat this weekend, but I will poke her when she gets back and see if she has any fascinating insight I’m missing in regards to this. I feel this will make our intro to next weeks episode veeeery long. you totally brought this on yourself! Personally, I think you should go for knitting. 😀
22nd April 2018 @ 7:41 pm
I’ve never been able to get the hang of knitting. I’ve tried to teach myself multiple times but eh 😛
I look forward to what you and Ruth have to say. Sorry for dumping so much on you as I was listening (though now you see how much the podcasts actually engage me; I am just not usually in a place where I can comment at each and every moment I feel like commenting.) Sorry for making your next episode so long from the get-go!
22nd April 2018 @ 10:28 pm
yeah, same. Ruth knits loads and I once decided I was going to learn cause I bought 5 balls of baby blue wool and decided I was going to knit a unicorn (totally the thing to start with, right?). I half way through got bored of the unicorn idea and instead knitted a dragon instead, and then pretty much decided that I was done with knitting. I made a dragon. Where else was there to go? hahaha
never apologise for that! We love it!!
22nd April 2018 @ 2:29 am
Re, my timeline (2:12:03): I haven’t updated the timeline in a couple episodes because 3×04 was so frustrating to me on so many levels that I needed to step back from meta for a while. But as far as I can figure, as my timeline stands now, this episode would fall on a Saturday, *maybe* Sunday if I sat down and really crunched the sunrises and sunsets. Which means I probably need to go back to season 2B and tweak things if I want to be a stickler about making it fall on a Monday, which makes me want to cry because off the top of my head I can’t think of a place after 2×16 (which we know had to have happened on a very specific day) where there’s any wriggle room in the intervals between episodes.
*headdesk*
Interest note, though. It’s possible that when they were writing this episode in the late spring/early summer of last year, they still thought the show would be airing on Mondays instead of moving to Tuesday, making this moment a sort of throwaway fourth-wall-breaking line like in the Buffy musical episode where she says “Dawn’s in trouble? Must be Tuesday” (because the show aired on Tuesdays then.)
22nd April 2018 @ 11:48 am
I’m sorry, we didn’t mean to call you out like that and make you sad!!! haha but Saturday is so close!!! there must be a way nudge it to Monday somehow! ::manic grin::
Also, I love that theory in regards to the show airing on Mondays and it being too late to re-shoot / ADR fix it!!!! I had no idea about the Buffy line, because I was watching Buffy on German television when I first started (so 6 months behind original airing, most of the time) on about 3 different days of the week, as they messed it around so much, and by season 4 I had given up on television and was importing the DVD boxsets from the UK so I had no awareness that line wasn’t just funny by itself, but actually metatextually AWESOME. I love it!
22nd April 2018 @ 7:35 pm
lol no, I literally said in my liveblog for this episode that it was probably going to require me to fix my timeline, so you didn’t do anything except remind me that I still haven’t done that. *sigh*
22nd April 2018 @ 1:54 am
Re: Jace as mediator (1:45:12): “Jace Wayland is Switzerland” There’s an interesting bit of long-lost canon text that has never been fully explored and has all sorts of potential, doesn’t it? I think I’d like Jace a lot better if we saw that side of him more often. Izzy ends up taking that role more often instead, and since she also always takes the role of everyone’s agony aunt, all that is left for Jace to do is stew in his manpain and chase after Clary.
Re: Jace completing his mission with Simon (2:06:43): It seems to me also that his determination to see this through to the end might also hearken back to his earlier comment about how he doesn’t care what happens to Simon, but Clary does. If Jace goes to the Silent City and he’s found unfit for duty and deruned, then Clary is going to lose a significant portion of her support structure. Meanwhile, Simon is damned near invincible and no one can touch him. Which means that Jace has a very vested interest in making sure that Simon is okay, because Simon would then be able to support Clary if the day should come that Jace could not.
Oh wow, look at me, talking myself into feeling some sympathy for Jace.
22nd April 2018 @ 11:44 am
Hah! Embrace the Jace sympathy! I know one has to wade through a lot of bullshit, manly postering, bad parabatai decision making and other show non-sense to get there, but it is there somewhere, hidden, in a dark little corner of the show that the show remembers… every 6-8 months.
in all seriousness though, fair point on his mission being about Clary in as far as setting up situations/people/powers that will be able to take care of her, once he’s gone. interesting thought!
22nd April 2018 @ 7:33 pm
Tell ya what, I’ll embrace it once he manages to find his way to extending that sort of caretaking concern for Clary to the rest of the people he ostensibly loves. 🙂
22nd April 2018 @ 10:25 pm
fair.
22nd April 2018 @ 12:36 am
Re: Alec asking to move in and why he feels the need to push for that now (59:10)
Keeping in mind Matt’s comments in interviews last week about how focused Alec is on his relationship with Magnus in season 3, at least part of me wonders if this isn’t happening (in part) as a response to the way Jace rebuffed him in 3×04, and in the way Maryse refused his offer to try to intervene or fight her derunement in 3×03, and the way Izzy has been, since the end of season 2a, asserting her independence and not really letting him help her and not finding it effective even when she does let him try to help her (2×09/2×11/2×12.)
Alec has never struck me as a person who is particularly ambitious. Which seems contrary to the text we get, where multiple people have said that he’s wanted to be in this position as Head of the Institute and/or moving up in standing with the Clave from a very early age. Any “ambition” we get from him can be easily and accurately chalked up to a desire to prove himself to his parents, who have always been critical. He is also a person to whom authority and leadership comes naturally, but that’s not the same thing as being ambitious. Ambition is about achievement and advancement for its own sake.
What we see from Alec, though, is more about finding what he’s good at and targeting that as being his life’s work. Also, having authority and elevated standing within the Clave puts him in a better position to take care of his people, which is something we see repeatedly as being the niche he’s carved for himself in the world. That’s what he does.
Right now, though…he CAN’T take care of his people. Maryse doesn’t want him to. Izzy and Jace are both rejecting his attempts to do so, with varying degrees of hostility at varying times. That has to leave him feeling pretty ungrounded. What’s he for, if not for doing that?
At the same time, he’s also becoming more aware of the rot behind the pretty facade, where the Clave is concerned. It’s possible that he’s starting to question whether he can effectively help the people he cares about if he’s deeply entrenched as part of the Clave machinery. Would he just become another part of the problem, instead, the way he almost did in 2×17?
So how much of this desire to go full steam ahead with Magnus is about him moving *toward* Magnus, and how much of it is moving *away* from these mental niche he’s always slotted himself into as his place in the world?
22nd April 2018 @ 11:40 am
Completely agree with all of that. So much of his focus in on Magnus, because he tries to fix things everywhere else, and he’s not succeeding or actively being told to stay out of stuff, so he turns to the one thing that is working for him, which is his relationship with Magnus. So how much more of a slap in the face must it have been, when Magnus also rebuffed him?
I saw some really interesting commentary (and I can’t for the life of me remember who wrote it and where, which is a shame but also why I couldn’t get it into that episode of tDiE as I really don’t like discussing other people’s theories on air, without being able to give proper credit) in regards to Alec’s ridiculous level of joy after having pulled a lever and his ley line plan working out. Basically saying ‘he pulled a lever. big deal. his reaction is completely over the top, right? well, let’s look at how the rest of his life is going…’ and talking about him running into walls repeatedly so thing, this one tiny thing going right? this thing that came from a crazy daring plan of his? a plan Raj and his mates were saying was going to blow up in his face, and then it didn’t? What a change that must have been to how his life was going so far… yeah, it makes a lot of sense.
Alec’s having a rough time!
–Ambition is about achievement and advancement for its own sake.–
so so true. and I think him casually turning down the job at the Clave supports that. A truly ambitious person would have taken the job and found a way to make his relationship work around it. or not.
But Alec’s not like that. I agree he is all about doing a good job and taking care of people, and the higher up he is, the better he can do that. it’s not about the high up position. it’s about the exponential rise in how much he can help and change.
22nd April 2018 @ 7:32 pm
I’m almost certain that meta was by @catastrokey? You’d have to go back through their blog to find it but I’m pretty sure it was them.
22nd April 2018 @ 8:50 pm
oh, I do recognise that username, so I’ll totally check if I can find it, thanks!
21st April 2018 @ 11:54 pm
Re: Magnus helping Lilith (33:44)
I think what bothers me most about this (and what we see in the sneak peeks for next week’s episode) is that this is a very dangerous potion in its various potential uses, not the least of which is actual rape/sexual assault.
I mean, my first thought when Lilith said she wanted a potion to make someone fall out of love is how such a potion could be used by a jealous stalker-type to interfere in someone’s relationship in order to make the target of their fixation turn away from the person they love. Maybe that’s too…mundane…a rationale for Magnus to think of it off the bat like I did, but one thing this show has generally gotten very right is treating these supernatural characters as though they are human beings with human motivations and emotions, and the whole jealous/scorned lover bit is about as universal a motivation as there could be.
I suppose the “sliver of soul” thing could be used as a safeguard against such a possibility, except that a warlock who is obsessed enough with someone to want to force them to stop loving another person is also obsessed enough to abduct and steal part of the soul of their “competition” in the love triangle, so really I think Magnus should be much, much more wary than he is here.
Based on the sneak peek, I think with 3×06 we see the use of this potion as a means to commit sexual assault clearly textualized, but I don’t have much faith that the show will actually follow through on that and it makes me deeply, deeply uncomfortable.
At some point this fandom needs to have a discussion with the way this show handles consent. Pretty much the only time it’s raised the flag on that subject is with 2×07, which is honestly the least problematic moment. 1×03 (Simon and Camille), 2×05 (Clary almost being raped), 2×08 (Izzy forcing Raphael to feed from her, a scene which, despite Raphael’s asexuality, is framed as being very erotically charged), 2×15 (Simon being peer-pressured into biting Heidi, again, a moment that is framed as being erotically charged including taking place in what is analogous to a sex club.) This is a serious recurring issue and the fact that it most often goes over the audience’s heads is disturbing.
22nd April 2018 @ 11:30 am
I thought it was interesting way to go about it, because we know from EVERY show that has magic (and, you know, common sense) that love potions are bad. Bad bad bad. You don’t touch them. And when she says ‘anti love potion’ there was a bit of me, from that overwhelming love potions are BAD that did kind of go ‘well, and ANTI love potion can’t do that much harm, right?’ and of course you then think about it and the possibilities for harm it can do are kind of endless… because you are still taking away a person’s free will. you are not taking it away and *directing* it to do more sinister things with, but you are taking it.
your thought about a jealous stalker character making someone turn away from the person they love makes it really hard for me to not think about alec and magnus. Alec would never do this, but a large part of what he’s worried about in this episode is that magnus said no to him moving in, because magnus isn’t as deep in this relationship as alec is (in alec’s head) and then he finds the box and learns about all of the people magnus has loved in the past. surely removing that love for all those people would free up more of magnus’ love for alec… there are horrible awful things this potion could make people do… and yes, under certain circumstances, I can see how it could be ok. If used on yourself or on someone, with their consent. But that’s not a decision magnus should make with someone who he’s known for 10 minutes!!
And I agree, the show has a huge problem with addressing consent and they were only called up in because it happened in a Malec scene. like, people are low key aware of the other instances and have raised the issue. we spend a fair amount of time discussing the date rape Camille committed on Simon, the obvious I/R issues etc. but 2×07 led to a big enough wave in fandom that it not only got back to the show, but made them address it and change their narrative (or at least elaborate) but it seems to have in no way raised any concerns over ‘hey guys, maybe we need to be more careful in regards to consent, what do you think?’
22nd April 2018 @ 7:28 pm
Oh, God. Now you have me thinking about book-based meta, that I really can’t speak about because I know you haven’t read the books. Ruth will probably know where my mind is going with your whole potential application of the anti-love potion on the Magnus and Alec situation, though.
And yeah, at some point the fandom needs to raise a big enough stink over the show’s general issues with casually handling sexual assault and coercive sexual/erotically charged situations. That conversation needs to happen.
22nd April 2018 @ 8:48 pm
ONE DAY I WILL FINISH THE BOOKS!!!!
well, one day I will finish book one, as I need to do that, before the hiatus is upon us. And then I will ponder the other books. Ruth’s already planning tDiE episodes for the S3 to S4 hiatus and they include discussions of book 2 and 3… if that’s not counting your chickens before their hatched, I don’t know what is hahaha
fandom, as a whole, when applied correctly, is a very very powerful thing. sadly it is hardly ever directing it’s collective strength at the right things..
22nd April 2018 @ 1:07 pm
Ugh!
Ruth’s not here, I’ve already been to the gym, and now I’m bored so I’m rewatching 03×01 and Magnus interrogating Raphael, a person he calls his close friends, had known for 70 years, and who’s asking for a tranqualizer suddenly makes him just handing over that potion to Lilith so much worse!!!
22nd April 2018 @ 7:29 pm
Ow, damn. You’re right.
I suppose the “get out of jail free card” there is that it’s established in that moment that Magnus calls Raphael out because he knows Raphael so well that he can tell Raphael is lying to him, and he doesn’t have that familiarity with Lilith.
22nd April 2018 @ 8:49 pm
yeah, I did think about that.. but it’s just not good enough, is it? damn you Magnus. so dumb.
11th January 2019 @ 8:29 pm
Hey! I’m very, very late, but oh well.
The thing, you see, with the problem the show has with rape and fandom only calling out the Malec of it all, is what I like to call ‘the Otherness of representation’.
Representation is great! I love representation, and it’s amazing how Shadowhunters (the show, not the books, because though the books have some pretty good rep too, the show is far more diverse. Not that I dislike the books. I probably prefer the books to the show and the whole hangup fandom has over Books vs. Show, I find, is utter nonsense. But that’s a different conversation. Oh the wonders and dysfunction of fandoms that have two very very different mediums and such love for both and such hate for both. Its always easier with say, the PJO fandom, in which it’s unanimusly agreed the movies suck.[they really, really do] But i digress) has such an effortless relation with it.
But, as Cassie Clare said on her Tumblr., fandom has a tendancy to treat LGBT+, or PoC, or ‘strong’ females, as Other.
Fandom grips on to them with both hands, and says ‘oh my precious baby’ ‘must protect’ ‘so precious’. And that’s not bad. Not if you treat everyone like that. But oh-so-often it is towards minority groups. The incident Cassie talked about was how so many fans would ask: ‘is Alec a top or a bottom’. And she made a good point. It shouldn’t matter. And yeah, you may want it for fic, but if so, then why are you only asking about Malec. why not any hetero ship? Shadowhunters isn’t the only fandom that does this. The Raven Cycle, for example, had a huge debate about whether Adam Parrish(you guessed it, part of a homosexual ship) is a top or a bottom. And I understand why fandom tends to treat non mainstream things like this. There has been so much lack of these things that any mention of it makes fandom sit up straight and go ‘you. i like you.’. and yeah, these characters are awesome. yeah, oh gods, love them, they deserve it. but dont treat them as Other. you can like them more, but please, please dont treat them as Other. because then you are saying that they are different because of x, and please, please, dont do that.
21st April 2018 @ 11:24 pm
With this episode being so longer, I’m worried I’ll forget what I mean to comment on before I’m done listening to it, so I’m going to try to take notes as I go along. I’m also going to write down where I paused to make the comment so that if I address something that is revisited and covered after that point, it’s something we’re aware of.
Re: the Jace and mental health storyline (21:32). I think you raise a good point about being dismissive of this storyline, and that is probably something I should watch in my own commentary on it.
I think what bothers me most about it is that this is not a legitimate plotline about someone coping with a mental health issue. This isn’t even a red herring, because for it to be a red herring, your audience would have to not be in the know about what is really going on.
The mental health plotline is a convenient diversion to drag the story out for a few more episodes without it becoming an Idiot Plot, particularly on Alec’s part (an Idiot Plot, as defined by TV tropes, is a plot that only works if your characters are being really stupid about something. In this case, the plot only works if Alec doesn’t do the mental math wherein he KNOWS Jace was dead (because he felt it, and his parabatai rune disappeared) and he also knows Clary was right there with Jace *and* a wish-granting angel, so Dead!Jace x (Clary + Raziel) = Live!Jace. It also gives Clary and Jace something to chase after to avoid them coming to the conclusion that resurrecting Jace has gone seriously awry.
I guess I find that…sort of disrespectful.
It’s disrespectful to the intelligence of the viewers, because they literally pulled this mental health plotline out of their posteriors. There was nothing about this mentioned until it became convenient to do so. It’s not exactly a deus ex machina, but it’s a near-cousin, you know?
It’s also disrespectful to the way a real plotline about someone dealing with a mental health crisis should probably be handled, because onc it’s no longer necessary to spin out the drama for a few more episodes, it will be dropped in a hot instant and never mentioned again, the same way Alec’s mental health issues in season 2a were.
(this ended up being a long comment, sorry. I will make different comments in a different message to avoid a single comment becoming a nove.)
22nd April 2018 @ 11:17 am
I think that’s a totally fair point! Same as Ruth calling me/the show out, or I suppose at least tempering my sadness at what’s going on. It is true that this isn’t a finished discussion on mental health and that (by anything the show has done in the past) we have to expect them to drop it, rather than finish talking about it, and they shouldn’t get points for that. you’re both completely right in that regard.
I think my sadness just stemmed from the fact that people weren’t calling out the show for bringing this up and not discussing it, cheapning mental health as an actual issue by using it as a plot diversion device (which again, good point, well made!) or even just saying ‘it’s not for me’. People were literally just going ‘screw him keeping secrets. screw his “woe is me” attitude. screw him lying to Alec. Screw him and his problems.’ which was just a bit saddening. It was twitter mainly and I should really just stay away from it, but then at the same time, I’m really bad at staying away from it haha
But yes, I think you’re absolutely right, this only gets to be a valid plot device if it continues, or if they conclude that it’s nothing to do with Jace’s mental health, but then use it to talk about mental health in general (which is valid) or in other characters (coughalecpleasegodletthemtalkabouthimcough) of the back of having raised the issue again.
22nd April 2018 @ 7:14 pm
I have a very, very minuscule number of people I follow on Twitter outside the cast themselves, so I tend to be free of most of the Twitter fandom hysteria.
I mean, you’ve seen how wordy I am. Does Twitter really seem like a good fit for me lol? idk if it’s the character limit or what, but I’ve found Twitter fandom generally does tend to be even less nuanced than Tumblr, and that’s saying something.
22nd April 2018 @ 8:31 pm
I’m kind of still confused that such a thing as ‘twitter fandom’ seems to actually exist. and people talk about ‘we met on twitter and just got chatting and now we’re best friends’ and I don’t understand how!! there are not enough words on twitter to ‘just get chatting’ to anyone!! lol
22nd April 2018 @ 7:23 pm
I think the problem with the Jace thing is that they really did wait too long to introduce the mental health diversion. They waited until AFTER the viewers’ frustration with Jace was well-established, and then when they DID introduce the subject, they did it in the context of him attacking the fandom’s sweetheart, so that’s…really not a good way to go with the whole thing if you’re trying to make people feel sympathy for Jace.
He actually did win some sympathy points from me in 3×05 because (his rudeness to Kyle when he barges into the apartment aside) he was mostly very human and felt vulnerable, and this is literally the first time we’ve seen that from him this season except for when he was with Clary. I’ve never been a big fan of the kind of character who’s an asshole to everyone except their love interest (even Alec, snarky and brusque as he can be, isn’t just as outright rude and egotistical as Jace, and definitely doesn’t have the history of bullying people to bolster his own self-esteem that Jace does.)
So, uh, yeah. You’ve got a character who has done very little to endear himself to viewers–to the point where fans overlook the fact that he’s an abuse survivor because he’s so frequently abusive himself–being played by an actor who is severely hated by a large portion of the fandom for problematic behavior, and now they’re trying to make us feel bad for him and, man, that is a *hard* row to hoe.
22nd April 2018 @ 8:42 pm
yeah, the dom!drama factor is really not helping the whole Jace situation and fandom at large caring about his storyline, is it?