Mundie Moms

Saturday, April 13, 2013

More Shadowhunter Tarot Cards: Valentine's Circle

Earlier in the week Cassie posted more of Cassandra Jean's Shadowhunter Tarot Cards, and this collection are ones we've seen before, but not all together. It's Valentine's Circle. Here's what Cassie said,

"The members of Valentine’s Circle, as depicted in Cassandra Jean’s Shadowhunter Tarot. HELLO, young Luke. I asked her why she drew him so hot and she said he was her favorite character. Hidden depths, man.
(I know lots of people have been asking if they can buy these someday — I’m waiting on word from the movie studio. They have the right to merchandise Shadowhunter things, and I don’t, actually. So it depends if they let me. :)"



























Cassandra Clare's Recent Clockwork Princess Fan Q&A


Catching up on some of Cassie's recent Q & A's from Tumblr. Here are her two most recent ones about Clockwork Princess. Please be warned, this post does contain SPOILERS.
Hi Cassie, I would like to thank you for writing TID. I literally spent all weekend reading CP2 and it was amazing! I do have one question for you though concerning the epilogue.
Very spoilery under the cut! Tessa/Jem stuff, some Tessa/Will.
At the end when Tessa and Jem get together, do they eventually start a family? I would just like to know for sure. — forget-regret92
Hey Cassandra, So, I had just finished reading Clockwork Princess two hours ago. I cried a river, and it was a spectacular book. However, I need to know something: Will you include Tessa and Jem in City of Heavenly Fire or The Dark Artifices series, or was this the end of their story? Additionally, will Jem and Tessa have children? Hugs, kisses, unicorns and rainbows, Gabrielle <3 continuousconversations="" em="">
Hi Cassie! Thank you for a heartbreakingly beautiful novel. I have never read a book that elicited that level of emotion before. And it is because I genuinely felt connected to the characters. My question is about Jem and Tessa. Now let me first say that I am neither Team Jem nor Team Will. I think I learned the lesson from TID that it is possible to have more than one great love. Which is an idea I had never dwelled on with much thought before, because it is not usually presented as an option in our society. But I love Will as much as Jem. I cried tears of joy when it seemed Tessa would end up with Will. And then cried tears of joy when it seemed Tessa would end up with Jem. So when she had her life, marriage, and children with Will, it was perfect. When Jem is cured and she is able to have a life with him, I felt only equal happiness with no resentment that she is moving on from Will. So my question at the end of the novel was: Does Tessa get to marry Jem and have children with him too?! Then upon studying the family trees my question turned into: Why don’t Tessa and Jem get married and have children?! Do we find out more on this topic at the end of CoHF or in The Dark Artifices? Is there no line for marriage or any children because the family tree is drawn up to 2008 and they have not had time to get married and have children yet? Basically, does Jem get to be a husband and father with the love of his life after everything he went through to get to this point? Thank you for everything!! -Kristie — clockworkkristie
Hi! I feel like this has probably been asked a bazillion times…but Its been nagging me in the back of my head. I finished Clockwork Princess a while ago, and I LOOOOVE how you ended it. I was always a bit of a Jessa shipper, though I wanted Will Happy too. Well at the end when Tessa and Jem are able to be together I couldn’t help wondering: Now that hes not a silent brother, would he start ageing normally again? Or would he be immortal? Also would him and Tessa possibly ever get married as originally planned? and possibly start a Carstairs line? (granted that Tessa would get remarried) I was so afraid that Jem was going to die in CP2, that I hadn’t thought about any of those possibilities! So now that there is hope, Id really like to know! Oh, and one last note…something you’ve already probably heard a lot of times…but I love your work. Your books mean a lot to me and have gotten me through some dark times. You are also my hero in a lot of ways. So thank you for just being awesome! — herondale-an-carstairs
Thank you. It is very humbling to get messages like that. I am so glad you enjoyed the book.
I have so, so many emails in my box asking about Jem and Tessa getting married, and hoping that they will have kids. I can understand that. Jem has waited 137 years to have a normal life and get to be married and be a parent. In some ways Tessa has so much more experience of normal life than he does. They are both so deserving of happiness. 
I will say: Yes, Tessa can still have kids.
Yes, Jem is now mortal and will age and die like a mortal man, like Will did.
I’m sure if they had kids they’d work the name Will in there somehow. Even if it was a girl. 
Unfortunately it would be MEGA SPOILERY to say anything else. I just can’t. I can’t even say if Jem or Tessa will be in TDA or CoHF, or if they’ll just be mentioned by someone in passing. I just don’t think it’s a good idea especially in regards to books as yet unwritten. And beyond that, I think that even though people want spoilers — I want them all the time — there is a certain deflation to getting them. Sometimes it is best to wonder when you will get the answer someday. :-)
This is again a love triangle question. I’m winding these up — only two more and then I’m going to be finished answering questions about the TiD love triangle. Eventually I have said everything I can say and in the end, the books stand on their own as both the question and the answer.  In fact at the moment I’m wrapping up asks entirely, so you’re going to see a bunch from me in the next short while, try not to want to kill me too much. :)
hi cassandra! i absolutely loved the infernal devices trilogy and i can’t tell you how much it changed my life. however i have a question- i know that Tessa loves Jem and Will equally but what if she had to choose? it just so happens that she gets both boys but what if they found a cure and Jem was better? how would Tessa decide between them? what if she couldn’t have both. it’s just been something I’ve been wondering. also, i have a friend that is a Wessa believer (as am i)and she feels like Tessa ends up with Jem in the end. That Will didn’t really matter in the end. that she only went with Will because Jem was gone. how would you respond to this? — asian-face
I think the issue here, or an issue, and it is pretty weird when you think about it, is that readers, YA readers especially, have been trained to think in this “team” model where a love triangle has to have a solution involving the superiority of one option over the other option. The solution that CP2 comes up with is “the immortal have many lifetimes worth of loves,” and one of the things that makes it hard to guess that solution ahead of time is that TID hides that solution behind the reader’s identification with the protagonist. One identifies with Tessa: one doesn’t see her as fundamentally different from what we are, which is human, but she is. The reason your friend has had her head whipped around to the point where she is saying “Will didn’t matter” (when of course he did: he was Tessa’s husband for decades, they had children together, they were completely in love) is that the solution to the love triangle is something that separates Tessa’s experience of love from our experience of love in a fairly sharp way. Tessa solves her love triangle dilemma by being a different kind of being than the reader entirely: an immortal. The “team Will” and “team Jem” thing is sort of about “who do you want for Tessa” but mostly about “who do you want, full stop.” I think the reminder that Tessa lives on and Will doesn’t because Will is just a mortal guy is incredibly difficult and one can end up feeling a kind of alienated feeling from Tessa all of a sudden — because Tessa has been shown sharply to be something other than human. (And so is Jem, which is part of what makes him good for Tessa in this future, but it separates them both from us). Because Will is in fact, just a guy. He’s a very human human being, despite being a Shadowhunter. I often get asked who would win in a fight, Jace Superduperangelpowers Herondale or Will Totally Normal Shadowhunter Herondale, even though — Jace has special powers and Will doesn’t. I assume this is because we’re conditioned to see the boy hero as the most special and powerful, but in TID it’s Tessa who is, in fact, the most special and powerful, and so she is the one who lives forever, and Will dies (as will Jem). And that can be very uncomfortable to confront. And I think perhaps that is the uncomfortable feeling your friend is having that she is telling you about.
[I don’t quite know how to answer the “Who would she choose?” question because it depends on the circumstances. I think these are false choices, like the endless “Who would you save if two people were drowning” question, in which we think the answer reveals something significant but in fact, it doesn’t. I think if both Will and Jem were standing in front of Tessa as she chose, they would both be asking her to choose the other guy, and she would walk away from both of them because she could not choose Will without hurting both Will and Jem and could not choose Jem without hurting Jem and Will. Therefore it’s a false choice paradigm. There is a lot of extremely creepy Tessa should have been forced to choose stuff floating around that is not about the viability of love interests, but about the punishment of Tessa (for daring to be special and powerful and have two boys love her and she had better pay) that’s interesting in a gender studies way but not relevant to your ask so I’ll get to it later.]
Next up: Tessa and kids.
Also, if you want to see the drawing Cassandra Jean did of the Clockwork Angel, check it out HERE. I'm warning you, MAJOR SPOILERS, which is why I didn't post the picture of it. It's definitely one of my favorite moments from Clockwork Princess

Labels