Prep Process - The Immortal Cup: New York Institute (#1)
Note: Posts grouped under this category will mostly concern the New York Institute in itself, but they may also refer to the New York downworlders and their community (as well as their relationship to the Lightwoods and the local Institute)
One of the things I’m looking forward to writing the most about Clary’s early days in the Institute is what I call “the Gouging* Scene”.
It’s a scene in which Clary, Jace, Hodge & the Lightwoods spend the afternoon/day cleaning up battle gear that have been left unused for years prior to the arrival or Maryse, Robert & theur children, where blood and various forms of grime have been rotting away in the stinkiest, most encrusted mess Clary has ever seen-and the whole thing is largely pointless too because, while all those gears are left disgusting, Jace & the Lightwoods have their own well-maintained gear to go out in.
But one of the reasons I like this scene is, in part, because it’s a bit of a pointless job. Nobody’s going to wear the gear they’re cleaning up, and as much as they wish they could, the Lightwoods will never be able to make most of those gears fully battle-ready again.
I like this scene because, in addition to showing Clary how the Institute is organized (both on the official front, but also in terms of interpersonnal relationships between its inhabitants) it also gives the reader a pretty important insight as to the state of the Clave in 2016. Prior to that scene, what Clary sees is a rather grandose building-empty and (cery) dusty but still vaguely decent-looking. But then she gets to these piles and piles of leather armors with blood and innards rotting away in the deepest grooves of the armor, and that’s where she realizes ‘this place is falling apart’.
I like this scene because, more than the dialogues that come before and after about the insane levels of DIY-ing the Lightwoods have done on their place of residence (and there’s been a lot of this) it shows that they, and the Nephilim in general, are fighting a losing battle-that they’re trying to maintain a legacy that weighs them down more than it lifts them up and all that for what? Because if someone from the Clave came into their Institute and realized the older armors weren’t being restored to some degree, they’d get in trouble.
Ultimately what I’d like to show with this, in addition to the Clave being so engrossed in its own legacy that it’s caving in under the weight of it, is the disconnect between what’s being ordered from Idris (here, cleaning up useless armors) and what really, urgently needs to be done (in this specific case, looking for Clary’s mother and Valentine).
From there on, I can build up on the frustration such a disconnect induces in the people who actually work on the field (read: everyone, with Hodge being in a slightly different position due to his being trapped inside the building all the time) and the ways in which the Lightwoods (as well as the rest of the Institute-dwellers community) find to work around the inadequacies of their hierarchy.
Which, incidentally, I will probably need to make a full post about, because there are many things that I need to develop about them, including giving them a name that may-or-may-not turn out to be ‘The Outer Rim’.
*Referring to the fact that Shadowhunters’ battle gears include gouged lines designed to let enemy blood drip off the wearer faster and minimize the risk of their armor catching the smell, which would attract demon. Gouging in itself refers to the cleaning of those lines (as well as the fold of leather, where applicable) which is where the grime tends to stick.
It’s also occasionally referred to as grouting because after a while it feels like trying to take grout out of poorly-made tiling :P