#Fairchild family

[claveandcovenant]

Shadowhunter Family Trees

Herondale Family, Lightwood Family, Fairchild Family, Blackthorn Family

[myangelbach]

The Fairchild Family face card

🎨: Cassandra jean, Charlie bowater

[rhiannons-bird]

Shadowhunter family names poll

Currently writing an overlength post about translating shadowhunter family names and it got me thinking on how differently I perceive them between languages. On the one hand that’s for the typical reasons (translation is an act of betrayal etc.) but ALSO I didn’t actually know English when I first read TMI/TID, but they kept the names in the translations, so naturally I perceived them as proper names without associating meaning with the words they’re made up of (for the most part). What mainly contributed to my impression of them was the sound and later the insignia described for them.

My question is: how did that go for you? Were the names separate entities from their constituting words or did you derive meaning/associations from those individual building blocks?

Also feel free to comment:

Do you have specific colours/aesthetics/images/etc. that you associate with the names?

That’s the names, not the families. Like there’s a Herondale family aesthetic but what pops up in your brain when you hear/read “Herondale”.

Though maybe the question is warranted on how much the two affect each other.

[thebellekeys]

Shadowhunter Families: The Fairchilds

“Heroes aren't always the ones who win. They're the ones who lose, sometimes. But they keep fighting, they keep coming back. They don't give up. That's what makes them heroes.”

- City of Heavenly Fire by Cassandra Clare

[atinyladybug-art]

First artfight post!

Here we have a Fairchild Family Gathering in a conversation pit but since they're Vast Avatars their conversation pit is a literal cloud.

OCs from left to right [ Including OC Profiles on Artfight + Artist Social Media] :

Elliot Fairchild by @zacharie-davis-draws

Sonar Fairchild (+ Void Cats) by @atinyladybug-art

Jude Fairchild by @de4r-ang1e

Luca Fairchild by riskierdaisie (instagram)

[lilasprincesse]

Am I the only one who would have liked to see basic characters who are in families other than The Herondales, Fairchild, Lightwood, Carstairs, Blackthorn?

I warn you, I love his families but I wanted to know more about the other Shadowhunters families because for me it could have been interesting to know more about the other families

on a bit of the same thing am I the only one who wanted to see more weapons created by Wayland the Blacksmith often used by the main characters

because the only weapon made by Wayland the Blacksmith that we have often seen used by the characters are Cortana and Phaesphoros and Heosphoros

[slushmonsterz]

i think amazon should ship chain of thorns to my house sooner

[amrubrum]

Clary and Alec in CoB when Alec refused to admit Clary was a shadowhunter:

y'all i pray this makes sense🙏🏻

[claveandcovenant]

— Fairchild Family

Memento Vivere.

Members: Charlotte, Henry, Charles, Matthew, Jocelyn, Clary

[tiredandoptimistic]

What I really enjoy about Luke and Maryse's interactions in City of Ashes is that they clearly grew up separate from each other. Both of them are in their late thirties, but they hold this image in their heads of who the other was when they were teenagers, when they were enthralled by Valentine's hateful rhetoric.

From how he describes them to Clary, it's clear that Luke looks down on the Lightwoods. He says that they were Valentine's closest lieutenants and the most dedicated to his doctrine, and yet he ignores the fact that he was Valentine's second-in-command for most of the Circle's existence. He knows that he had doubts at the time and then grew into a kind and accepting adult, but Robert and Maryse appeared dedicated to Valentine from the outside and have been separate from Luke ever since, so to him they must still be as cruel as they ever were. He sees himself as superior because he got out first, but forgets that he stuck around until Valentine literally told him to kill himself, while Robert and Maryse surrendered to the Clave voluntarily.

Then there's Maryse, who's still bitter over Luke's betrayal. Not because he turned against Valentine, but because he and Jocelyn set a trap that ended with every member of the Circle (other than the Lightwoods, Hodge, and Michael) being killed by the combined forces of the Clave and the Downworlders. Of course Maryse is being pretty hypocritical here, since she was fully in on the plan to murder a bunch of unarmed diplomats, but she does have a point that Luke and Jocelyn did nothing to protect their former friends. Their plan saved lives in the long run, but it resulted in far more bloodshed that night than Valentine's simple massacre.

After Valentine's supposed death, Jocelyn, Luke, Robert, and Maryse all went into a sort of retirement in New York City. For Luke and Jocelyn it was their mundane employment and for Maryse and Robert is was their place as Institute heads, but both couples spent fifteen years raising their kids and learning to be better people. By the time we see them in TMI, all four former circle members had come to terms with how atrocious Valentine had been and dedicated themselves to doing better with their adult lives, but since it happened in relative isolation, they all still remember each other as they were at age twenty. To Maryse, Luke is still the man who left his friends to die, and to Luke, Maryse is still the woman who stuck by a murderer until the end.

I just think it's very interesting that there are so few survivors of the Circle left in 2007, and barely any of them communicate with each other at all. Amatis was left alone in Idris, Hodge felt so abandoned by the Clave that he went back to Valentine, Robert and Maryse trapped themselves in a loveless marriage rather than give up the illusion of stability they'd built for their kids, Luke and Jocelyn denied their past until it came to find them, and Michael was killed with his family in a scheme that would never have worked if a single person came to check up on him in the ten years Valentine inhabited his life. They could have found a community through this common experience, but instead they saw each other as monsters for the things they all did.

[helenofblackthorns]

something I would love to see in better in black is wtf is going on at the NY institute. specifically whose living there because I know it's crazy and I want to see it so bad before CC inevitably has everyone move into their own wildly expensive apartments that they can somehow effort despite not having real jobs 😔💔

like we know Jace and Clary are running it, plus Izzy and Simon are living there (at least for now). Beatriz is the tutor so she might be living there?? Mark and Cristina are both part time in NY and if Diego is the Inquisitor he's also probably relocated for that. and Maryse may also still be living there like 😭 we haven't had a full Institute since tid I need it soo bad

[thebellekeys]

Matthew Fairchild: Beauty and the Bottle (Meta)

Alternately entitled Matthew is still in love with Cordelia in the Epilogue, or, The Love Triangle made sense thematically, or, Matthew’s character arc was just excellent in ChoT, or, Matthew as one of Cassie’s best.

Feel free to stream Pomme while you read. 

Okay, so now that we’re post-ChoT, I’m starting a new meta series where I break down some of the characters and the issues I had with The Last Hours trilogy now that it’s complete. In this post, I’m exploring the intersection between the Fairstairs, Matthew’s alcoholism, his characterization, and Oscar Wilde (the man). I’m starting off with Matthew, who’s my favorite character in the trilogy and like, my third favorite TSC character ever. This is a review and analysis of his character arc in the series as well as some of my opinions on his character. (N.B. there’s a lot of gushing and simping here. The other ones I have planned are not even remotely as flattering.)

How Cassie writes Matthew

All in all, I thought Matthew was the best written character in TLH and in Chain of Thorns. I thought that his character had a clear-cut narrative arc and that his character also remained consistent from start to finish. Matthew feels well thought-out because he’s fundamentally a character of enigma and a character of subversion. It felt like Matthew was real and wasn’t just a sidekick or an unwilling hero. But moreover, I find that from the midpoint of Chain of Iron, Matthew changed the trajectory of the story completely. I don’t mean in the sense that the love triangle was formed and got in the way of Jordelia (okay, I guess), but rather that Matthew’s character arc threw both James and Cordelia’s own arcs off guard, out of their orbits. This was for the better.

Enigma - It’s incredibly interesting that we don’t know what Matthew thinks or feels, at least not really, due to no Matthew POVs. We got a couple of pages in ChoG from his POV, but that was only to show the Grace kiss, and that was only because we couldn’t have gotten anything from Grace’s POV so early on in the trilogy for obvious reasons. And besides Cast Long Shadows, we got nothing else using Matthew’s narration in the trilogy. Nothing in ChoI or ChoT at all, at the very least. Like… that’s fricking weird, isn’t it? Not weird in the bad way, but weird in the sense that you have characters who are significantly less influential in the main plot/in the Jordelia plot, like Anna or Ari, who get POVs literally all the time. And yet, we never really know what Matthew is feeling at any moment. This is actually awesome. By giving us less of Matthew in the POV, Matthew becomes a larger-than-life character in the story i.e. he’s outside of the reach of the reader; he’s almost untouchable despite being, in my opinion, omnipresent in ChoT. I find it hard to believe people don’t see Matthew as a compelling character by default.

Subversion - Indeed, I was not kidding when I said Matthew is vaguely omnipresent. He is, kind of. He literally threw the Herondaisy ship off its course in a considerable way. His alcoholism and increased depression were always in the back of every character’s mind, and yet, we didn’t really get a peep out of Matthew until we did, and when we did, it always packed a punch. I think the fact that Matthew hides his feelings and his innermost desires is an effective trait that Cassie plays on time and time again by not giving us his POV. We’re always getting a reveal from Matthew, or an unanticipated act from him i.e. “love is a creeping vine”, him going to Edom with James. I know this is partly due to the alcoholism, but it’s a smart narrative choice nonetheless. Matthew is always important without his importance being immediately shoved in our faces: Matthew was instrumental in both the Thomastair arc and the Jordelia arc.

Matthew and Alcoholism

I was really pleased with the way Cassie dealt with Matthew’s addiction and his trauma. The scene where he tells Charlotte about the potion business should have been an extended scene, but everything else was amazing. Cassie absolutely needed to put Matthew through the wringer in ChoT for all of his foreshadowing as being a beautifully tragic young man to make sense. In fact, I had anticipated it would be way worse than it actually was, but alas, it’s fine. I like the way that Matthew absolutely did not have an easy time in Chain of Thorns. Every time you thought the withdrawal symptoms were manageable for him, he either drank again, or got hurt in some way, or simply couldn’t manage the withdrawal symptoms at all. It also was the factor that ended Fairstairs, which was important, as Matthew was becoming, in Cordelia’s head at least, a potential reincarnation of her father. Matthew’s alcoholism was as realistic as possible, at least in the context of a YA paranormal fantasy book. Cassie didn’t sugarcoat or water down what Matthew was facing nor its consequences on his relationships, and good.

Matthew and Cordelia

I maintain that by the Epilogue, Matthew is still in love with Cordelia, that he's leaving in part because of his feelings for her, and that she's very much aware of this (the stone thing seems metaphorical). This is why I say that Matthew's arc is bittersweet: his love will indeed remain unrequited and he has to live with that, at least until he inevitably moves on. He does not have the chance that Jem will inevitably have with Tessa in 100 years. He's leaving James and Cordelia for a reason, because he knows it will hurt to live and have to see it every damn day (in the same way that he was actually gonna run off to Paris alone and by himself at the end of ChoI anyway, before Cordelia has busted in).

In my opinion, the Fairstairs arc was excellent, from a holistic perspective. I will talk about this more in Cordelia’s meta piece, but essentially, Matthew symbolizes the self-liberation trope as it relates to Cordelia (James symbolizes stability and safety). For Cordelia, Matthew is kindled fire where James is eternal cool, Matthew is the bacchanalia where James is the hearth, Matthew is the Bohemian where James is the Gentleman’s Paragon. As you may have noticed in some of my previous posts on this topic, Matthew exists to provide an avenue of freedom for Cordelia: freedom from rules, from Edwardian morals and etiquette, from judgment, freedom from repression - he subverts Cordelia’s expectations of how her own life can play out. It’s for this reason that Matthew is characterized as the hedonist and as the decadent, and why we’re reminded of it time and time again by Cordelia herself. Matthew, by nature of the subversion that we’ve covered in the earlier section, was the ideal choice to whisk Cordelia away from the path she’d thought was carved out for her. If James and Cordelia are two stars locked in each other’s orbit, Matthew is a golden comet that appears out of nowhere but whose power you cannot deny.

If Matthew effectively symbolizes self-liberation and his character plays purely on subverted expectations, then Cordelia not having Matthew and Cordelia rejecting Matthew (Jordelia stans, look away now!) represents the end of Cordelia’s quest to escape society, to escape society’s inherent restrictions, hierarchies and repression, and the end of her quest to attain self-liberation to the fullest. Cordelia has chosen the least subversive path possible at the end of her story and has chosen to stay in orbit after all, and great for her! Matthew, to paraphrase Oscar Wilde, will always represent to Cordelia all the sins she never committed, all the choices she never really made, all the opportunities she did not take, and she will always be fond of him for that. Regardless, Matthew was not in a suitable mental place for any relationship in ChoT (see the previous section on alcoholism) and we’re reminded that this freedom that Matthew symbolizes came with a caveat after all. Plus Herondale love runs true yadda yadda. But let’s not pretend that anything is given for nothing - Cordelia indeed has lost something very big by the end of ChoT, and it’s very bleak if you look at it with a microscope… but this isn’t Cordelia’s post! On we go!

Matthew Fairchild as Dorian Gray

So, Matthew is absolutely Dorian Gray. Starting with the physical or immediate similarities, we do notice that Matthew is lean and tall and blonde and angelic, looking the way Dorian is described in the text (we as a society must never let a certain actor, bless him, let us forget this). Dorian makes a deal with the devil to stay young and beautiful forever, while Matthew purchases a truth potion from a sketchy fairy because his trust in his mother faltered; this is the crux of Matthew’s central conflict (which will always be directly proportional to Alastair’s own conflict in the story). Dorian's horrid painting hidden in the attic is Matthew's grim secret about what later happened with the potion. Dorian is a murderer, and Matthew sees himself as a murderer (he isn't one, but he absolutely believes it). Dorian has sold his soul, and Matthew thinks his own soul is forfeit. Both Dorian and Matthew live for the sake of art, freedom, amorality, and beauty. After all, Matthew's key tenet in life is to do “mad, wonderful, colorful” things. But a hidden darkness and silent suffering beneath the obvious beauty are intrinsic in Matthew's character. Matthew turns to the bottle to cope with his own painting in the attic. The fact that Matthew is also bisexual, eccentric, a lover of Oscar Wilde, and positively adored by everyone he interacts with whosoever are also signs of his parallels with Dorian Gray. Both Matthew and Dorian prioritize extensive travels as a means of attaining these mad, wonderful, colorful experiences - Dorian, like Matthew, had fled London to tour the world and gain all the experiences he could gain with his newfound gift. Likewise, Matthew and the Fairchilds having an ever so tangential link to Faerie (even if it's by virtue of his own character descriptions) also helps us picture him as eternal and larger than stuffy London life. Matthew's beauty - beauty of body, beauty of soul, beauty in suffering, beauty as a mere pursuit - is simultaneously Matthew’s core value and core trait. 

But Matthew Fairchild eventually supersedes Dorian Gray. Dorian did not ever have the heart or soul or courage to look his own sin in the eye or to acknowledge the equilibrium that must exist between body and spirit. But Matthew finally opened up that dusty attic by the end of Chain of Thorns and looked the worst of himself in the face. And so, Matthew will retain that grace and beauty and light that is now forever out of Dorian’s reach.

Concluding Thoughts

Matthew is a character who we crave more of by virtue of Cassie’s choice to give us less of him than we would anticipate, especially considering that he’s one of the four cornerstone characters of The Last Hours. He's one of the few characters in ChoT specifically who didn't constantly make me envision Cassie just pulling strings and making things happen out of nowhere. Matthew is aesthetically beautiful on the outside and by consequence, it’s easy to merely watch him flirt with the joy of living like you’re watching a play, which is rather fitting for a character who is timely linked to stagecraft and who claims he would have been an actor in another life. But the other Matthew on the inside is also equally beautiful and shining, and he shows his capacity to love, suffer and still come out on the other side of it all with his cracks glowing gold like kintsugi. In this way, Matthew Fairchild is as relatable to us as he is still untouchable. And that’s fricking awesome.

[fairchilds-glasses]

I just found this Snapchat video that I completely forgot about so

@nicascurls @barclaysangel

This is literally what happens everytime Rachel goes to the cabin to see Nica, Andy and Alice (she’s only there for Alice)

Just does not put her down 😂

Have I had this video saved since 2017? Maybe