#but as you see I have also watched Lawrence Of Arabia and am familiar with that whole Deal

[elainemorisi]

cannot tell if I'm Sturgeon's Lawing it, overextrapolating, or in fact remotely onto a thing, but... Media These Days is really taking shortcuts with like, [especially moral] characterization, right? like this isn't a remark in any direction about the contents of the morality, it's a remark about how many times I've watched/read a thing and sat there going like, I'm pretty sure you (writing) expect me to take this as believable, but you actually just have a paper doll mouthing words here, this isn't believable just because the paper doll is mouthing The Good Guy Words

and like it's something beyond Pet The Dog, is the thing. I've no objections to dog-petting as a tool. one identifiable difference being that The Good Guy Words are then later made load bearing for reversal, of all fucking things. it's one thing to have Designated Good Guy that's fine (and actually this stuff is more Designated Sympathetic, so again, "moral" being used very loosely). but if you want?? as I think you want??? me to first believe that DGG is in fact G but then! to be shocked when he isn't... you gotta do more than mouth words. we don't actually share an unspoken and obvious moral code, you the writer and I. but also even in cases where I don't outright disbelieve your definition of Good it... still doesn't work. there's still no there there

and like the fixes are there, but they're not so similar as to feel like the explanation is really in them (closest generalized fix is "remember the agency of other characters" but like that's a fix for so much bad writing it barely counts). it sorta just seems like this particular bar has sunk into the floor? but why?

tl;dr the experience is "I'm not conflicted[/shocked/moved], I'm confused" and I swear, it's increasing. often in total (but popular) shit, sure, but sometimes in not-utter-shit-in-every-other-respect stuff too. and just, why??

[thevagabondexpress]

let's take a closer look at christopher, matthew, and their shared love of downworld, shall we?

On the surface, when you read them, Matthew Fairchild and Christopher Lightwood are wildly disparate characters. They have almost nothing in common. But then we get to the Shadow Market in Chain of Iron, and suddenly—suddenly Christopher Lightwood is a whole different man from the owlish, absentminded, socially inept little being we see around his friends and among the Enclave in general.

He's street-smart, avoiding the dangers of the Shadow Market with the practiced ease of many, many visits, he haggles like an expert (to quote Cordelia), and what's more, he's openly Nephilim in a place that seems to generally despise Shadowhunters and yet he and the vendors are familiar, even friendly with each other, Christopher chats as comfortably as he haggles, and in general he seems far more comfortable there than he does among the Nephilim of the Enclave, even those he considers his closest friends.

Up until then, Matthew and Anna were the characters we associated with Downworld. They frequent the Hell Ruelle, and are welcome and beloved there, and it's made clear that Matthew adores the Downworlders and their way of life, watching with starstruck eyes and longing to join in.

Matthew is the Downworlder lover extraordinaire—or is he? Hypatia states quite plainly in Chain of Gold that Matthew is welcomed into the Ruelle because he's pretty and amusing: he's there as a lovely plaything, a pawn of the other guests, a runed curiosity who can't seem to keep it in his pants and doesn't seem to realize that he can say no. The way he's treated by the Hell Ruelle is exploitative at best. And in the Shadow Market? He's swindled and snubbed like everyone else. Matthew adores the Downworld, but he looks at it through glittering rose-colored glasses, viewing it with the fetishized fascination for the exotic of a British colonist writing a travelogue of the Near East. He's Lawrence of Arabia, Marco Polo, Gertrude Bell.

Christopher in the Shadow Market, by contrast, is one of them already. "Christopher Lightwood!" one vendor calls. "Just the man I was hoping to see!" Granted, I don't know how they'd treat him if he wasn't such an extravagant spender but I imagine he would still be welcomed, if perhaps not hailed so loudly. But why? Christopher isn't scandalous, or extravagant. From everything we've seen he holds himself to high standards and lives a fairly clean lifestyle: he doesn't sleep around, he doesn't smoke, he doesn't do drugs or drink to excess.

But at the same time, while Matthew does do those things, he also gets treated like a toy by the Ruelle, and I am willing to bet you the moment he puts his foot down and says no to somebody, they'll stop letting him in.

Christopher, on the other hand, is humble. We're shown frequently through his interactions with his friends and family and other members of the Enclave that he doesn't place himself higher and believe himself better than anyone else. Neither does he seem to buy the prejudices those around him seem to hold: why should women, or Downworlders, or people of color, be considered lesser than someone else? He considers everyone on equal footing in that respect and judges them based on who they are as individual persons. And even then he shows a great capacity for leniency and forgiveness: he's the first of them to accept Grace, and while he goes along with his friends' hatred of Alastair in spirit, his actions don't suggest he really dislikes Alastair that much at all (except when he's insulting Anna, that is).

We see all of those behaviors from a distance in the Shadow Market scene, in the way he haggles and chats with the vendors and the fact that he doesn't seem either afraid of or bedazzled by the Market at all.

Ultimately, Christopher surpasses Matthew when it comes to knowledge of and position within the Downworld. Where Matthew treats the Downworld like a curio cabinet, and is exploited for his hedonist nature in turn, Christopher treats the denizens of the Shadow Market as equals, and receives equal treatment back from them, welcomed as a customer, a regular, yea even a friend.

TL; DR, Christopher has always been the true Downworlder spirit, and Matthew needs to wake up and put his foot down before he gets himself seriously hurt—again.