#how y’all take hella taxes and still want a check during tax season??

[brattylikestoeat]

I grossed damm near 2k last week, but after taxes (they take a lot out of my check), insurance, union dues my net was only 1.2k

When tax time roll around they gone ask for more money, I always owe the state of Ga.

☹️

[takaraphoenix]

How does the Shadowhunter society work? Like, actually work?

I don’t even mean the clusterfuck that’s their leadership - where the Lightwoods are “dethroned” to be replaced by Lydia, who then inexplicably and without real explanation is replaced by Aldertree, who then is replaced by the Inquisitor herself, who just appoints her own grandson literally just based on him being her grandson, who then nominates his parabatai really only based on that even though the whole gods damn point of this game of musical chairs was to remove the Lightwoods from power. Okay, no, I actually also mean that because that was just a mess through and through.

You don’t... apply for jobs I guess? You just get chosen? Like how Isabelle suddenly became Weapon’s Master - whatever the fuck that even means.

Also, is there like... a job limit? I mean, Isabelle is the Weapon’s Master. She is however also apparently their head forensic scientist. And does autopsies. And she also takes over in the medical wing if need be, because we have literally never seen an actual doctor in the Institute, it’s mostly whoever has time. And she is an active-duty Shadowhunter going out on missions.

They... They don’t... have like... different departments, huh? You can just... dabble in all the jobs!

I mean, at one point it was implied that Jace is “head of security”, but once again, what does that even mean because he’s just constantly out on missions too. Shouldn’t the head of a department be... I don’t know... available to oversee stuff?

And what even is the Inquisitor? She’s first introduced as judge and jury for Isabelle’s trial. Making it look like she... personally... comes every time a Shadowhunter is on trial? Is she a judge? Is she the only judge?

And are there even trials? Like, for Downworlders? Because they skipped right to the execution with Clary - and all the Downworlders and supposed traitors from Valentine’s side. There was no trial there.

But over the course of the toher seasons, it looked more like the Inquisitor is the equivalent to the president. The absolute head. In charge of everyone.

Which brings me to their legal system. The president is your judge and jury. That seems kind of shady. But then again! They also threw Jace into the dungeon for getting abducted and tortured! And then they tortured him a bit themselves! So there’s that.

There’s also the shady way with which they handle their terrorists. You know, the two who got to lead the New York Institute with a bit house-arrest only. Even though head of an Institute is implied to be an important position. And Hodge too, just a bit of house-arrest and the whole “don’t talk about it” rune. I know this one is intentional to show just how shady and actually down for Valentine’s core ideals the Clave really is, but... it still stands as something questionable.

Because... throughout the show they all do seem very serious about putting Valentine behind bars and treating him as inherently wrong (also implied by the whole immediate execution thing mentioned above). So, what brought that change of heart on?

But I’m getting off-track. The main point I wanted to get to was: How do they pay for stuff? How are they paid? Are they even paid? Does money exist?

I mean, seriously. They’re squatting in an “old abandoned church”. So they don’t pay legal property taxes. They’re not like... pretending to be some kind of firm that works in that building, glamouring it as, I don’t know, a lawyers’ building or whatever, and having a kinda legal business front.

They keep themselves glamoured from mundies.

So, were do they get their stuff? Clothes, food, technology, heck, furniture and the ten thousand candles Jace keeps in his bedroom?

They have this hyper advanced technology that is never explained. Because that is not magic, it’s technology. The whole holographics, the computer-system that seems more advanced than ours. So you’re telling me they have absolute genuius inventors there, but don’t make money off of it?

If they did, if you’d tell me that they like make brilliant stuff and sell versions it to the mundie world - with like a flippant note about how they invented smartphones or something - and that’s how they finance stuff, I’d buy that.

Or heck, the thing I had kind of automatically assumed in early season 1 - that members of the Shadow World infiltrate the mundane world. Like Luke and Alaric. That the two werewolf-partners were intentional and not coincidental. Downworlders, working in law-enforcement, in hospitals, in the fire-department, just generally everywhere important to have a literal Shadow World to our mundane world; including Shadowhunters. Them, working as actual law-enforcement and specifically taking the non-mundane cases.

Y’all know Grimm? Love that show. Super stupid, hella lazy world-building on the bestiary side, but the whole concept of the supernatural hunter working as a cop, with his captain also being part of the supernatural world and thus helping by pulling some strings? That.

I kind of assumed that to be implied when the captain was also a Downworlder, but then the captain got killed and Alaric got killed and Luke got that useless mundie partner. Just, imagine for a moment, if the Shadowhunters did live integrated into the mundane world, but in the shadows of it. Isabelle as the forensic scientist or head medical examiner of New York even, the “head of the Institute” as the captain of the department, of both the Shadow World side and the mundane side, Jace and Alec as detectives working together. Cases are being shuffled around by the Shadowhunter in charge of the precinct so the mundies get the mundie cases and the Shadowhunters get the actual Downworlder stuff.

But they live cut off from humans and they are “lucky” that Luke is a cop and they can get inside case information from him, which makes Luke look shady and also kind of insane because he’s talking to thin air since Jace and the others only show up to a crime-scene glamoured.

They don’t have jobs in the mundane world though. They don’t interact with the mundane world.

So, where do their clothes and food come from? Do they have some oblivious mundie delivery guys bringing food to the church...? Do they... grow everything themselves? Do they make clothes themselves?

Are there Shadowhunter seamstresses and bakers? Is there a shopping mile in Idris?

Because the way they make it look, with the dwindling number of Shadowhunters - based on them dying young during missions and not producing enough heirs to compensate for that and not having the cup to make more Shadowhunters - I sort of got the impression that every Shadowhunter has to take a soldier career. Either you go into active duty, or you become an Iron Sister/Silent Brother, or a politician.

But they have a cafeteria. It’s not like that’s enchanted like the dining hall in Harry Potter, right? So, do they have Shadowhunters on staff who are cooks? Janitors? Since the whole weapons-cleaning thing was being used as a “punishment” for Jace, do they just... take turns? Have a chores-schedule and everybody gets to clean up and cook like once a month...? Do they have Downworlders in the positions they themselves see as below them, like the janitorial staff?

Does... does money even exist in their society? I’m really curious about that, because it would imply that they have an economic system. And I really did get the impression that they were a pure race of soldiers, battling demons with no sense of procedures on how to qualify and apply for a job - I mean, Clary just flat-out moves into the Institute and starts going on missions without any training at all, without a screening, without... without, yeah as dumb as it sounds, a job application.

Are there pay-checks? Are those actual jobs? Is there money? How does it work?

The point of this post really is that I’m an absolute sucker for world-building and this world-building absolutely sucked.

Seriously, I do love the conceptual idea of the Shadow World, but at no point was it actually established how it fits into our world. It was just vagued at that it stays hidden and glamoured, but how? How does it co-exist? How does it, as an independent society work?

Heck, that goes even deeper than jobs and politics. Why do they all speak English? Why don’t the Nephilim have their own native tongue, considering they use “runes” for their magic, which was in fact the writing of early day Germany (albeit different runes, of course)? Or, at the very least, why don’t they speak pre-dominantly German and&or French, considering Idris is physically located between France, Germany and Switzerland.

Why do all Shadowhunters automatically speak English like that is the dominant language of their society? Be that new arrivals like Aline, Helen, Aldertree, Lydia, Sebastian. You can pull that stunt if you put your fairy tale country into the USA, like so many do. But if you put it into Europe and give a very specific location, you should let that influence things. I mean, what’s practical about them speaking English? The ones outside the US, that is - it does make sense that the Lightwoods and the staff in the New York Institute speak English. The Inquisitor, the reinforcement we’re getting, the Silent Brothers in the City of Bones, heck the scene where Clary is sentenced to death? Why would they speak English?

And don’t come at me “It’s the dominant language!”, because... why would that matter to Shadowhunters? They’ve shown they’re an old-fashioned society, very stuck in their old-fashioned ways. They would 100% not go trendy with “uh all the mundies learn English as their second language nowadays maybe we should raise all our kids English-speaking??”. They’d continue speaking their own native tongue throughout, they’d among themselves talk in their native tongue and certainly not in whatever language the mundies of that region are speaking considering that they don’t interact with mundies.

And that native tongue should be either an original Nephilim-language, German, French, or even an original conceptual mix of German and French that came together over the centuries, because the fact that Idris lays where it does implies that the first Nephilim created were, in fact, German, French and Swiss, probably also some Italians and Austrians.

There’s no way that centuries ago, the Angel grabbed a bunch of Brits, made them Shadowhunters and then dumped them in newly-created Shadowhunters Country to form a settlement there and speak pre-dominantly English. That’s... incredibly ridiculous.

And I know “the first Shadowhunter” is named John Shadowhunter, but that in itself is a fact I want to forget because it might just be the singularly dumbest thing I’ve ever heard in the realm of world-building and I’ve encountered sparkling vampires. Seriously, I had assumed the job-title “Shadowhunter” came from them, quite literally, hunting shadows. No. It had to be a super fancy perfectly coincidental name of the very first Shadowhunter? Yikes on that one.

And, again, that really very English name makes little sense considering where Idris lays. She did bother to give her villain the most on-the-nose German name, so why not Jonathan Schattenjäger, then? Or, you know, do the more sensible thing and not put your fantasy country slap-dash between Germany, France and Switzerland. It could as well be on a glamoured, hidden from mundie sight island off the shore of England. Make it a reasonably English-speaking country and also have it better hidden because... how exactly does that even work? Is it like Grimmauld Place that just folds in on itself or whatever? Time Lord technology? Because a country, even a small one, just... there, in the middle of Europe? But no one can see it? How is that explained for the mundies?

See, I’m not even saying that they all need to speak German/French, or that CC had to invent a whole new language. I’m just saying that, with where she places Idris, those would have been reasonable things to happen and no one forced her to put Idris where she put it, there is no actual real reason why it needs to be specifically there and three things - name of the first Shadowhunter, how it’s hidden from mundies and the language are - would have very easily been explained by simply not putting the country where it was put. But if you make something take place in a specific place, you have to take that place’s specific culture and other parameters into consideration in how your world forms.

I just... these things are world-building 101 questions. How is the leadership structure in this society, what kind of money-system do they have, what language do they speak.

And sure, I have only read the first book and CC might still surprise me with some mindblowing world-building that explains it all - but to be quite honest, the fact that Hodge and three underaged teenagers were all the people manning the New York Institute, my questions about the economics of this still stand, maybe even more so than before because uh... child-soldiers are fine I guess?? No need for actual, non former terrorist adult staff!

This is just... something that frustrates me. Sure, your world doesn’t have to be 100% because it’s still fictional. But there are some corner stones about your fantasy world that should be solid, that should be set. In the books and in the show, that is.

And... not many things about how the actual world works were as much as even just mentioned. And that really frustrates me, because to me, the most important part are the characters, and the second most important part is the world. An inconsistent and badly explained world is really very frustrating for me.