Please help a girl pick a color. The only color I seem to not have in my collection is hot pink. Trying to remedy that. Which one screams Bryce to you or do you have your own suggestion?
After the CHD podcast, I was feeling particularly down. I know a lot of us were. I love making playlists for these books, and I at that point I hadn't gotten around to making a “Bryce”-themed playlist yet. So I decided to put a hold on my Feyre playlist and throw myself into a complete, “cinematic” Crescent City playlist. Each song fits with an event in the books. That’s part of why it’s 5 hours long 🫣 (and if you’re like who the heck needs a 5-hour-long playlist, look I have a 2-hour commute, I do distance running, and have ADHD🫠)
There are all sorts of genres and types of music. So there’s something for everybody. “Sad sack” music, heavy metal, synth, hyper pop, and instrumentals (mostly signifying the end of one book).
Some of my favorites:
🦄 Love Chromeo and figured they would be a perfect “House” band for the Raven. So every time (except the first time) we’re at the Raven in the book a Chromeo song will play.
🦄”Let’s Have a Kiki” by the Scissor Sisters - when Bryce, Fury, and June are partying and Danika and the pack are being murdered (my husband side-eyed me for this one ha but I like the juxtaposition of this ultra pop hit and Danika yelling at the pack to “lock the doors tight” while Bryce slow-motion parties it up.)
🦄” Slow Song” by The Knocks - when Hunt has to trail Bryce on her first run to the nail salon 💅 she definitely plays him like a slow song.
🦄”Kiss Me” by New Found Glory for Bryce and Hunt’s walk through the garden when the flowers bloom.. and then they get attacked by the Kristallos 🙃
🦄”Wild Horse” by Freya Ridings - my Lele 😢
🦄”Blinding Lights” by All Time Low ➡️ “Golden” by Huntr/x for Bryce’s epic “Savior of the City” sequence
🦄”First Light” by Lindsey Stirling - for Sofie 😢
🦄”Midnight City” by M83 - Bryce landing in Velaris at Azriel’s feet
🦄OF COURSE I had to put “Stone Mother” “Wolf” by First Aid Kit on here
🦄”MERCY KILL” by Vukovi and then “Borderline” by Tove Love for Bryce’s two sort of “battles” with Az and Nesta
🦄”Promises” by Nero - Lidia’s rescue of Ruhn, Baxian and Hunt
🦄Anytime the Sprites triplets are fucking shit up I picked BABYMETAL - their song “RATATATA” with Electric Call Boy for Lidia and the four Sprites decimate the Asteri’s forces.
🦄”Bitter” by KTJ and CARLY - basically sums up Bryce in the Avallen caves
I’ll probably do a post or two on some of these. I love analyzing music alongside books or movies.
I loved working on this. It definitely got me into a better mindset moving forward with the next installments in the Maasverse. If you decide to give it a listen, let me know which ones were your favorite.🩷🦄
Alright fellow Bryceriels, TMI but I’m ovulating and with that comes well…. Feelings… soooo what line from the Maasverse made you sweatttt.
I’ll go first. Today (specifically) it is: “Then Azriel said in a soft, lethal voice, “Explain or you die.” 🥵☠️😩
Edit: I love that there is such a mix of lines here and how some were spicy and some were sweet 🥹
So many good quotes and moments that would work with this video 🤭
I originally posted this in the Bryceriel sub but thought it might be fun to discuss here, too. This isn’t a ship debate, but more so a discussion or comparison, that saviors often are wolves in sheeps clothing. I added some quotations to make it a little more appropriate for this sub 😊. Anyway on to the post…
I cannot stop thinking about the Princes of Hel and their true motives. I do not think they are as benevolent as Bryce and Co. believe they are.
I also cannot stop thinking about characters from a sci-fi/fantasy series “The Silvers” by Daniel Price. The comparison below will contain heavy spoilers for both Maasverse and The Silvers universe. That being, said I will put the synopsis for the first book in “The Silvers” series below (3), and if it piques your fancy you can read the series and come back another time. This series world-building and imagery were top-notch. I felt like I was “watching a movie” while reading it and I highly recommend. That being said. Let's get into it.
“The Flight of the Silvers”
“Without warning, the world comes to an end for Hannah and Amanda Given. The sky looms frigid white. The electricity falters. Airplanes everywhere crash to the ground. But the Givens are saved by mysterious strangers, three fearsome and beautiful beings who force a plain silver bracelet onto each sister’s wrist. Within moments, the sky comes down in a crushing sheet of light and everything around them is gone.
Shielded from the devastation by their silver adornments, the Givens suddenly find themselves elsewhere, a strange new Earth where restaurants move through the air like flying saucers and the fabric of time is manipulated by common household appliances.
Soon Hannah and Amanda are joined by four other survivors from their world—a mordant cartoonist, a shy teenage girl, a brilliant young Australian, and a troubled ex-prodigy. Hunted by enemies they never knew they had and afflicted with temporal abilities they never wanted, the sisters and their companions begin a cross-country journey to find the one man who can save them—before time runs out.”
And now we're heading into the spoiler-heavy comparisons.
Amanda and Hannah, our protagonists in the series, are saved from a devastating car accident when they were children by these same beautiful and mysterious beings, we later learn their names, the Pelletiers. A mother, father, and son who are advanced humans from the future with temporal abilities. They can manipulate time & space.
Amanda, Hannah, and the rest of the Orphans believe the Pelletiers to be their protectors, believe that they are trying to help the Pelletiers save the new world they ended up in, and other timelines/worlds from the same destruction that befell their previous world.
Long story short, we find out the Pelletiers are not at all saviors. The Pelletiers are the reason for all the destruction. They even insert themselves in disguise amongst the Orphans to keep tabs on them and guide them to reach their goal. The Pelletiers are seeking immortality. They believe that they can breed immortality into their future by “breeding” the Orphans from Hannah and Amanda’s world with the Gothams (people with temporal abilities in the new world for Hannah and Amanda). Eventually, the Orphans and the Gothams are able to defeat the Pelletiers, but at a tremendous cost.
This is sort of a 30,000 ft view of the series, but it establishes the comparisons I am going to make to the Princes of Hel. Magical beings, who exist in another world/universe who seem to be “helping” and seem to be “benevolent.” They saved Hannah and Amanda as children. They saved the Orphans. They fight with them and protect them, but we find out this was a sham and they are really the ultimate bad guys in the end (honestly, frighteningly so).
Compare this to the Princes of Hel. Bryce ponders in HOFAS about asking Prythian for help, but is worried, "Am I trading one monster for another?” I find it interesting that SJM brings this up. Of course, it makes sense that Bryce would question the IC and their motives. She does not know them as we do as a reader. She doesn't know that they would likely fight on Bryce’s side if they chose to enter the fray. And she does have some of the same fear when it comes to the Princes of Hel, but Aidas has been a sort of positive character for Bryce when she was younger. He appears to her when she is young after a traumatic event or experience, and helps to put her at ease. Pelletiers 🤝 Adias? Time will tell, I suppose.
The Pelletiers were big on experimentation, similar to Thanatos and his crafting of demons, the Thunderbirds, and, unfortunately, our lightning boi, Hunt.
Hunt’s power cannot only charge Bryce up, but it's established that Thunderbirds can also drain power as well. We also know that Hunt is not the only one who can charge Bryce up, he's just (besides Azriel hehe) the best at it.
“It was Sofie’s strange gift: not only electricity, but firstlight power, too. Energy of any type was hers to command, to suck into herself.” SAB Prolouge
“White, blinding firstlight—or was it secondlight?—flowed from the Dead Gate up his arm. Up his shoulder. And on the other side of the archway, the stone began to go dark. As if he were draining it.” SAB Chap 32
“Use your healing power and hit my fucking chest,” Bryce snarled….If Hunt’s power had charged her up, maybe …” SAB Chap 55
“Was it his power? Or something about this world? Even Hunt’s hadn’t felt like this—so undiluted, like one-hundred-proof liquor.” FAS chap 16
Why would the Princes of Hel create a being that cannot only power up the Starborn heir, but drain them? This does not bode well in my opinion for Hunt, or for Bryce.
Now we're led to believe that the Princes are doing this because Aidas loved Theia, and wanted to rid Midgard of the Asteri like some universe-hopping vigilantes. But I feel like that is not the endgame. At least for Thanatos and Apollion. Thanatos has stated multiple times that he'd like to ‘John Wick’ Bryce for killing his pet (“Shall I meet you on the battlefield, however, I will take vengeance for the Shepherd’s death.” SAB chap 39) and that he would love to drink her soul (weird if you're supposed to be saving her, but OK).
“I do not care for my brothers’ agenda. I do not heed their rules and restraints and illusions of civilization. I shall taste all of you like this—you and your masters—once the door between our worlds is again open. Starting with you, Starborn.” SAB Chap 39
I mean if that doesn't spell out Thanatos position I don't know what does.
Apollion wants her at full strength. (“Train harder. Train better. He is waiting.” SAB Chap 24). We are led to believe this was a ploy to get her and Hunt off their happy asses and start training. But what if there's more to this? i.e., the Pelletiers saving and training the Orphans when their ultimate goal is to breed them and use their offspring to gain immortality. We also cannot ignore what Apollion did to Jesiba. We know how Jesiba feels about the PoH. And while she and Aidas became friends, this could all be a ploy, too. Or if Aidas is benevolent, I suspect he is being played by his brothers.
What do the Princes of Hel really want? I suspect that the Princes/Asteri/Valg are possibly the same beings. The original world of the Asteri being Hel, eons and eons after they sucked it dry and abandoned their world. The Princes of Hel/Valg are the Asteri that were unable to follow for whatever reason. Maybe they weren't World Walkers, maybe the original Asteri trapped them there, (think Maeve and how she locked out Orcus, Erawan and Mantyx) and the knowledge of this truth was lost to the millennia that the Asteri have spent conquering. Are the Princes looking to become conquerors like the Asteri? If they are connected to the Valg in TOG, I suspect that is an absolute yes and I believe they want to use Hunt and Bryce to do that.
“We grew too populous. Wars broke out between the various beings on our world. Some of us saw the changes in the land beginning—rivers run dry, clouds so thick the sun could not pierce them—and left. Our brightest minds found ways to bend the fabric of worlds. To travel between them. Wayfarers, we called them. World-walkers.” Vesperus in FAS…
Geee sure sounds a lot like Hel and a lot like Maeve’s/the Valg home world! I'm not going to post the exact quotes or pages but Chap 49 of Tower of Dawn describes almost the same exact thing as above.
We will only find out these answers in the next books, whether there is more crossover in the next ACOTAR books or CC4, I don’t believe we’ve seen the last of the Princes, and the next time, they won’t be so friendly.