cherrycoveredpythia

[cherrycoveredpythia]

My preliminary reactions to "Ignite the Fire", in chronological order:

[cherrycoveredpythia]

I snorted.

Ignite the Fire Characters with no spoilers

Cassie:

Mircea:

Pritkin

Gertie

Agnes

Rhea

[cherrycoveredpythia]

It seems like Cassieverse tumblr is pretty quiet right now. I’ve been AWOL for months myself--dissertation, more dissertation, worldwide pandemic, etc. Other things on my mind. But I just started watching The Great on Hulu and I am so struck by Elle Fanning’s performance. I’m always bouncing from one mental image of Cassie to another, but currently I’m really into this fan-casting. Delicate features, upturned nose, not a classical beauty, backbone of steel! 

[cherrycoveredpythia]

wait wait wait, @chibioniyuri, you read the Labyrinth fanfiction I wrote when I was 18 years old. :-O 

Last night, as I was trying to get to sleep and failing miserably, I had one of the most memorable lines from a fanfic go through my head. Now that I’m at work and trying desperately not to catch up on the sleep I missed (hey, up for 24+ hours, woop woop), I’m reading the fanfic again.

It harkens back to my Labyrinth days.

The memorable line: “Not just the fucking goblins. I should think that the others would go along with the fucking ones. If you like.”

The fic is Into the Rose Garden by Dryad13.

Good old nostalgia…. though I’m glad I didn’t misremember how much I enjoyed this the first (half dozen) time(s) around.

[cherrycoveredpythia]

I feel the same way! The pacing was really great in this one, and all of the characters are growing organically.

I love the emphasis on teamwork throughout the book. Including some, ahem, metaphysical members of the team.  

Shatter the Earth

If you’ve finished Shatter the Earth, what did you think?  Feel free to use spoiler cuts if needed.

Personally, I liked this one better than Brave the Tempest, if felt more concise and less chaotic. The Cassie/Pritkin dynamics were awesome. They seem to be getting back to their CtD/HtM type dynamics. The growth you see in several characters was great too. I’m looking forward to see where things are headed.

[cherrycoveredpythia]

Preliminary incubus thoughts from Shatter the Earth (spoilers ahead). I’m just talking this out to myself, so I’m happy to hear other thoughts. 

In Brave the Tempest and Siren’s Song, we finally get more perspective on Pritkin’s incubus side. This internal relationship is really interesting, considering all of the hybrid characters we already know pretty well. There’s Dory/Dorina (dhampir), Claire (part magic-user, part dragon-fey), Cassie (part goddess/part magic-user), and Casanova (vampire possessed by an incubus for centuries). I see them as a spectrum of integration, with Cassie on one end and Casanova on the other:

----Cassie (fully integrated, keeps discovering new facets of her powers, but does not feel like they are at odds with her psyche) 

----Claire (disturbed by her new dragon urges and feelings, which have not been present for her entire life) 

----Dory/Dorina (one psyche that was artificially split in half, so now they have separate personalities and desires)

----Casanova (two separate beings hanging out in one body in a mutually beneficial relationship. At least, until Rian decides to go her own way)

Pritkin’s interesting. His fey heritage is fully part of him, although he feels alienated from his fey relatives because of his part-blood status. When we see him as Myrddin, he’s not conscious of his incubus half but it’s not at odds with him, either. It isn’t until his time in hell, and more so after Ruth’s death, that he sees “the incubus” as an alien entity in his body. It’s like he made himself into a Dory/Dorina out of sheer stubbornness. 

In Shatter the Earth, Cassie experiences incubus-Pritkin as a separate being with its own agenda. It’s almost like Pritkin is possessed by an incubus who is permanently trapped in his body. Like Dorina, the incubus can only manifest himself a) when Pritkin is not in a position to control it, or b) when the incubus is fully desperate, like in the end of STE. 

I hope the next book finds Pritkin back in touch with Rosier to learn more about his incubus powers (and psychology). Cassie has really benefited from her time with Gertie, and Pritkin could do the same with an experienced teacher. I don’t see Pritkin/Incubus ever being as fully integrated as Cassie’s human/goddess combination, but I do think he could be more like Claire. He’s always himself, but sometimes he lets the incubus-self and its gut instincts manifest over the war mage. 

What do you think the ideal outcome would be?

[cherrycoveredpythia]

I want/need reaction GIFs of:

-Pritkin throwing a chair at a two-way mirror and diving through the hole

-Fred shaking his tush in his boxers and sideways tie

-Cassie running down a hallway, yelling “FIGHT ME!”

-Rhea and Rico broom-racing

-HeroCat taking out Jonathan’s eye

[cherrycoveredpythia]

This hits every one of my buttons. Checks all the check marks. They got me. 

[cherrycoveredpythia]

I chortled out loud when I read this line. Now I’m wondering what media Billy is consuming when he’s not hanging out with Cassie. 

He gets it

[cherrycoveredpythia]

Out of the woodwork

Hi guys!! I just finished reading Shatter the Earth!! I’m here for your comments and content before I dive back in for the second read!

[cherrycoveredpythia]

Hi! My name is Ell and I just finished reading Siren’s Song today. Prepare for the deluge. 

of

fucking

water

manlikans

raining

from

the 

sky

while

Pritkin

cackles

and

Zheng-Zi

quivers

[cherrycoveredpythia]

YAS my coven

Brave the tempest/siren's song graphic meme

--5 Characters

--7 Chapters

--3 Locations

--10 Quotes

No specific dates or deadline. Tag it with bttgm or ssgm please!

[cherrycoveredpythia]

@pritkinspalemoons​ your posts are making me live

[cherrycoveredpythia]

I love this so much *crying emoji*

“I’ve broken a dozen rules in the last little while; why not one more?”

for @cherrycoveredpythia

[cherrycoveredpythia]

A picture is worth a thousand words

(damn Sam, you got some biceps)

#godgetaroom

[cherrycoveredpythia]

And for a moment, I forgot everything, even why I was there. Because she was beautiful. No, I thought, in stunned amazement, she was *beautiful*, achingly, heartbreakingly, unbelievably so. Raven-dark hair, flowing like a river almost to the floor, eyes like a sea storm, blue and gray and glinting in anger, a face so perfect it hurt, like a force of nature carved in flesh. Blue robes that flowed about her like waves when she moved and grabbed one of the witches. And slit her throat.

Ride the Storm, pp. 357-8. 

In Brave the Tempest, Adra reveals that Nimue’s mother was a goddess. Any guesses about her identity? I think any pantheon is fair game, although Karen definitely seems to prefer Indo-European gods who have multiple iterations across mythologies. 

[cherrycoveredpythia]

cassieverse reread (3/?): Augustine

A row of other dots that I’d mistaken for buttons peeled away from her shoulder and followed. By the time the dress was buttoned up, the spiders had covered half the bodice with a tracery of black embroidery, as delicate and intricate as the cobwebs they mimicked. The designs were constantly being woven and unwoven, so quickly that it looked like silken foreworks were exploding all over the fabric, each blooming in a unique design before morphing into another even more elaborate.