Fracases and Frays

By: Nanananana9 (edited by: Alice Bibliofaith)

“Because when this universe was born, when it blasted into existence in fire and glory, anything that would ever exist was created. Our souls are made of that fire and glory, of the atoms of it, the fragments of stars. Everyone’s are, but I believe ours, yours and mine, are made from the dust of the same star. That’s why we’ve always been drawn to each other like magnets, all our lives. All the pieces of us belong together.”

-Cassandra Clare, Lord of Shadows

A lot of us are attracted towards the outer space; the cosmos, galaxies and stars in it. And it’s pretty clear why, just looking out at the dark sky in the night might show us those twinkling lights.

A lot of physicists have tried to explain how the universe works. There’s one particular theory I’d like to talk about, which gave the terms ‘dark matter’ and ‘dark energy’ to us. Now, these aren’t directly related to the Shadowhunter world. The theory gives the term dark matter to explain why some stars that have small amounts of mass should have vanished, are yet able to survive with this matter that is not visible to us. The term dark energy is used to justify the outward movement of basically every thing in the universe, and hence it’s expansion.

I don’t expect you to become an astrophysicist and exactly understand what these two terms are (neither do I, at least, not in part), but one surprising thing I wanted to tell you was that dark matter and energy make up 95% of the universe that we do not have knowledge of. All these 118 elements that we’re aware of only make up 5%. Now I know this is only a theory, and that it has chances of not being true, but if there is a chance all this is true, then we’ve got a long way to go. And already, usage of radioactive material such as Uranium and Polonium have barely not been able to make us all get converted into dust, as result of a nuclear war. Vengeance and anger have lead to harsh policies and actions. A simple order to drop atomic bombs can take out the lives of masses. What power feelings have.

Curiosity is human nature, and there are many reasons to find out everything about this universe, in which scientists will have to take caution. But mostly, it’s their will and courage that makes them not waver. A rumbling sea is enough to fear. Looking up, the outer space is astronomical.

Aren’t Shadowhunters similar in some ways? They know that realms exist – demons come upon the earth to ravage it and feast upon all, depredate it of good and everything surrounding it. Shadowhunters don’t have any access to these realms of their own, neither can they peer through to keep a watch on most demons (the exception being the Faeries, but the Clave in Exile are too hypocrite to broker a deal with them). Their fate mostly brings them to the Hellish realms – Edom and Thule, which really just deprives any person for hopes of a realm that might have better life.

But they keep fighting on – they’re trying to find out some way to block all doors to the Earth that let the demons enter; they’re fighting them off. And you know what the best part about it is? They’re doing this without any incentives. Farmers need to know that the crop they are producing gives them more profit, same with the workers, or merits for someone who tries to learn something. Shadowhunters don’t conduct a census to know what improvements are done in the people every year – how the humans improved (which again, will have the whole chaos of deciding what is good and what is not). If you ask yourself, ‘why do I work so hard, and also be ready to sacrifice my self for these people?’ there’s quite a lot of reason to not care. And even if every country is trying to improve in itself- literacy, preventing exploitation of nature, food security, etc. – it’s us who have war with each other, us who take up bullets and shoot in seconds.

And maybe this explains why – If dispute and peace stand on opposite sides, whom would you choose? But that’s not the thing, how can peace ever be an enemy?

But maybe, they see the humanity, as even they are humans. They’ve done a lot of idiotic things and stated irrational statements, all those in the Cohort are misanthropes due to various unknown reasons of hate, but those who are not, somehow find a way to see the better hopes. And that’s not even highly optimistic, maybe just human nature.

‘They’ – the tulips – ‘concentrate my attention, that was happy Playing and resting without committing itself.’

-Sylvia Plath

Maybe these bright spots are just like tulips to the poet. (At least, in the moments she wrote the poem, for those of you who know more.)

So, the brave ones have hopes but they’ll never stop fighting, maybe that’s that one place where we can say that we love the word, ‘fighting’, whatever is the challenge.

Diana keeps polishing the swords that could be used for bloodshed as well as for good. Wayland the Smith probably had some faith and cause to make the swords – Durendal, Cortana, Joyuse that were tempered in the fire, which therefore gave the inspiration. It’s just how from a simple principle of pressure and area, the usage of sharp things came into use; which later made things which have different uses like disciplines in a subject. And for me, the best part is that anything, literally anything, is a weapon. Even when Kit says, ‘I’m gonna forkify you,’ with a fork in his hand, it’s humorous but we know there’s no guarantee.

“People listen to me because I don’t compromise my values, they know when I say something, I believe it.”

-Cassandra Clare, Queen of Air and Darkness

This is one of the reasons why we love daring people. How many as ever we make memes about Clary and logic and rationalizing, we’ll always remember that she was brave.

But that’s also why many times it takes away their points. Even if we would never like seeing the heroes play the manipulative roles, which are more like Julian’s if need be. But a lot less of the heroes are like that; we know Horace Dearborn is the master of manipulation – the way he lays everything out to fulfill his malicious wants… in everything, the equal balance of action and speaking to beguile. This really made me not regret that class in literature were dissected and made out the full meaning of Brutus’s speech in William Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, finally concluding that how we choose words affects the listeners. And isn’t that very similar to the fey? I bet they’d be great lawyers in the mortal world.

But again the heroes win our hearts, they might sometimes be foolish. Some of us love this foolishness that can make them seem more human and relatable, some of us don’t; but then there are those qualities that make them the heroes.

There’s also this assumption that I’ve made; we know that, ‘the cold of battle’ has been described so many times in the books; the world slows down when they disintegrate the demons; now, light travels fast, which is basically more than the speed of everything around it – the earth rotating, the planets revolving – it all seems to be slower, so what if Shadowhunters fought at something of the speed near to light? I know this is an assumption, but we’re all allowed to formulate our own conjectures.

We know that Showhunters think of themselves as supreme from the mundane, and have not always had peace with the Downworlders, but they’re getting better. The many fights they have within themselves- civil wars and such- where those blades and weapons clash and we’re frustrated- are bad, but maybe they’ll improve someday. We can certainly hope- and that’s why I love this fiction.