Thinking about how family is literally everything for the Blackthorns, and how this is the root of all their happiness as well as all their distress. Because there's so many factors working to pull their family apart, the siblings must always prioritize their connection as a family unit. This keeps them stable and together, but it also creates stagnation and isolation. None of them are able to have lives beyond their family, which creates clear frustration in the younger siblings (mostly Dru and Tavvy) while making the older siblings (mostly Helen and Julian) seek familial connection even more intensely. Mark, Livvy, and Ty are in an interesting position where they're torn between the two extremes. They understand the importance of family and want to take care of their siblings, but they also seek connections and contentment beyond the Blackthorn unit.
Tavvy is shown to be a very lonely kid, and he immediately perks up when the Lightwood-Bane family comes to visit because he rarely gets to see other kids his own age. His family did not provide him with a playmate, and so while he loves his siblings he's also missing a lot of the stuff they cannot provide for him.
Dru is especially discontent with her life, because she's old enough to want a purpose but young enough to not be given one. Similarly to Tavvy, she's got all her basic needs of family and safety, and so she starts looking for other types of fulfillment, like friends and romance, that cannot be found within her family unit.
Ty is also in a difficult position, because his autism means that his family is especially protective of him. Julian in particular is so worried that Ty might be discriminated against that he doesn't want him to ever leave the household or interact with strangers, and while Livvy is less restrictive she does threaten anybody who tries to get close to him. Because Ty has been hurt by peers in the past, his siblings become convinced that family is the only setting in which he'll be safe. Meanwhile, while Ty does appreciate the stability of his family, he also yearns for adventure and connection. This is why he latches onto Kit so quickly, because Kit is somebody who lets him explore new sides of himself without asking him to leave anything else behind.
Livvy is interesting to me because she's always defined as "the protector," the one who wants to keep everybody else safe. While she's the same age as Ty and has similar desires for normal Shadowhunter experiences (like solving mysteries) as well as normal teenager experiences (like kissing boys), she also generally sets those interests aside whenever she thinks that her family might be at risk. Livvy is thrilled to meet Kit because he's a new friend beyond her family unit, but she also is willing to get rid of him if there's any chance he would hurt Ty (which is reflected when Ty and Kit have their falling out because Ty sees that Kit won't prioritize Livvy). While Livvy isn't forced into an authority role the way that her elder siblings are, she still voluntarily chooses to adopt that authority and to set her personal goals aside if it means maintaining the integrity of their family unit.
Julian is obviously the one who sacrificed the most of his personal life for the sake of his family. It's clear throughout TDA that Julian just doesn't let himself want anything else, because he's worked so hard to hold his siblings together that he cannot conceptualize a world in which anything else matters. While he does also yearn for a life with Emma, a lot of this is because Emma already fits into the life he has with his siblings. He literally says that he often dreams he and Emma were married and that the younger Blackthorns were their children: Emma is the perfect partner because she expands his world beyond his family without asking him to give up his family.
Mark is one of the most complicated Blackthorns because he's the only one who's actually lived a life outside of their household. While he does still love his siblings, none of them can understand why he might choose to remain with the Hunt because literally none of them have ever been happy in a setting that didn't involve them all being together. He's one of the oldest, but he doesn't know how to take an authority role because he isn't used to prioritizing the safety of his siblings above all else. This is especially interesting in his relationship with Ty, because Ty is the one with whom Mark is closest and he often seeks comfort and connection with Mark, and yet Mark does not quite know how to be an anchor for him in the way that Livvy and Julian have been. Put simply, Mark has a lot of shit on his mind beyond simply being a part of the family, and so he can't put everything else aside in order to be there for them. There's a scene in which Mark thinks about how Ty has been seeking him out less since Kit started staying with them, and it shows how Ty is doing better once he's able to form a connection with somebody beyond the family, and how Mark is doing better when he's not expected to be everything all the time for other members of the family. With Mark, it becomes clear that while remaining together and supporting each other is very important for the Blackthorns, there's also a certain tragedy in the fact that they're not given the freedom to want anything else.
Helen is of course doing the worst. Like Mark she was cut off from her family, and while she and Mark both had romantic relationships, Helen has literally nothing in her life besides Aline. Helen is neither able to find contentment with her family nor to seek contentment beyond it, because she is kept isolated from her siblings as well as her peers. Because of this, Helen idealizes her family and believes that being together is the most important thing. She cannot want anything else until she gets her family back, and this leads to complications when she eventually meets that basic need and is forced to consider what other elements are necessary for happiness.
This got very long. I just think it's neat how they all need to be together, but at the same time they're all kind of trapped. They've been put in a position in which they need to focus on staying together at all costs or else they'll be torn apart, but they still clearly suffer from seclusion and run into desires that stretch beyond domesticity.
romaincrisis
theartofmadeline
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