It Would Have Been So Interesting With A James Who Is Insecure And An Outcast Of Society + His Love Triangle

It would have been so interesting with a James who is insecure and an outcast of society + his love triangle would have been awesome with the fact that as Cordelia is an amazing warrior shadowhunter and wielding a legendary sword that everyone admires and James the pariah of society who also has demon blood

I imagine James so much when he's around Cordelia he realizes there's a rift between them which makes him a bit jealous of Cordelia and makes him even less confident and pushes him to be with Grace a strange girl but who understands him and makes him feel comfortable in her presence

It would even have been a great parallel the fact that he turns into a shadow and the fact that he lives in the shadow of all his loved ones

Matthew might even have had a romance instead of being in this love triangle

Something that’s been bothering me for a while is the way cassandra clare did a complete 180 on james as a character.

the james we were promised way back when the midnight heir and nothing but shadows came out is nothing like the james we see in the main series. and it makes me viscerally angry. james in the last hours is well…it pains me to say this because i do love him, but… until chot he’s not that interesting.

most of his struggles that were set up in the short stories magically resolved themselves before the series began, he’s no longer insecure about how different he looks compared to other shadowhunters, suddenly he’s just as quick and witty as will and matthew are, and everyone loves him and wants to marry him! when the james we were promised was a social outcast, who every day was reminded that not only is he not like his father, he is so much worse.

james in the midnight heir is shown to be jealous of his parent’s perfect love, when he himself is suffering because he’s madly in love with grace and she just broke things off with him. we also see this hint of resentment towards will for being so “perfect”.

which shows up again in nothing but shadows, james constantly compares and is being compared to will. will is so handsome, and james is so odd looking. will is able to make everyone laugh and everyone likes him, james is awkward and often does not know how to express himself.

and we can see in the way james talks about this, that he’s annoyed at his father for making him feel like he is inadequate. and then he gets to the academy and the first thing that happens to him is all the other kids start to make fun of him for the way he looks. they keep telling him how odd he looks, like a goat. and then his powers manifest and once again he is reminded just how different he is from everyone else.

the last hours was originally pitched as a love triangle with a herondale in the middle. so when i first found this out i thought this story was finally going to challenge the godawful “herondales love but once” rule. and this would also fit into this idea that james is somehow “wrong”, he’s not extroverted and witty like his father, he has demon blood and demonic powers, which creates a wedge between him and other shadowhunters.

and on top of that, he loves two people! one of them being an amazing shadowhunter warrior from a respectable family with close connections to the herondales (cordelia). and the other not so proper, maybe kind of evil, weird daughter of a mad woman who hates herondales (grace). so the story wouldn’t only be about him choosing between two women he loves, but also about him being torn between the expectations of his family and society and his “dark side”.

but then cassie made the gracelet and erased all of james’s problems and we ended up with yet another boring love triangle that no one asked for…