Mortal Instruments/YMMV

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Jace:What happened to your neck?
Alec:I went walking in Central Park and I fell.
Jace:On your NECK?!
Alec: *blushes* .

  • Designated Hero - The Clave is an entire group of designated heroes. With their Fantastic Racism, inventive cruelty, and massive arrogance, it's a wonder how we're supposed to root for them in the final battle.
  • Die for Our Ship - Poor Aline. She consensually kisses Jace once, while he and Clary are still convinced they're siblings, and promptly decides that he's not her type, is a fairly kind person overall (albeit one with no brain-to-mouth filter), and it's implied that she's trying to figure out if she's a lesbian, or possibly even asexual - yet she is constantly turned into a cruel, backstabbing, relationship-smashing harpy who gets between Clary and Jace, especially in AU fanfics.
  • Ensemble Darkhorse - Clare often expresses her surprise at the fact that many people state Alec as their favorite character as opposed to Jace or Clary.
  • Ho Yay - Jace and Simon have a fair amount of Subtext
    • Yeah especially if these two quotes have anything to say about it:

Jace: "Do you remember back at the hotel when you promised that if we lived, you'd get dressed up in a nurse's outfit and give me a sponge bath."
Clary: "It was Simon who promised you the sponge bath."
Simon: "As soon as I'm back on my feet, handsome."
Jace: "I knew we should have left you a rat."

    • And...

"Well, I'm not kissing the mundane," said Jace. "I'd rather stay down here and rot."
"Forever?" said Simon. "Forever's an awfully long time."
Jace raised his eyebrows. "I knew it," he said. "You want to kiss me, don't you?"

    • Near the climax of the second book, Jace allows vampire-ified Simon to drink his blood in order to heal. This results in Simon with his arms flung around Jace, clutching him violently, and biting his neck. Furthermore, Jace explicitly relaxes and pulls him closer. Uh...
    • Jace and Jordan have a fair amount as well. . .
  • Magnificent Bastard: Valentine Morgenstern is one of the best.
  • They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: The whole Brother-Sister Incest thing could have been tapped for a lot more drama, but never much did.
  • Unfortunate Implications - The afformentioned "mundie" term. Also, the only biracial (half-black) character in the series, Maia, is characterized solely by how much violent abuse she's taken in the past at the hands of the men in her life.
    • So your (Maia's) boyfriend attacked you, punched you out and bit you, infecting you with lycanthropy, then comes back later, claiming to have only done it because it was the first night of his transformation. You drop him like an old pair of panties, right? No, you take him back, because he obviously didn't mean it! Face. Palm.
  • What an Idiot!
    • Simon, especially at a certain point in City of Ashes.
    • Clary and Jace get several moments like these.
    • Alec about a certain thing in his and Magnus' relationship.
  • Writer Cop Out - Turns out Jace and Clary never were siblings, so all the drama about Incest then magically disappears. To be fair, she has stated that she didn't think her book would've been published if they were for real.