Reblog If The First Musical You Listened To Was Not Hamilton

So long as the creepy crawlies stay in their section of the cave, we’ll be good

It's actually funny how humans decided "fuck living in caves with all these creepy crawlies", got out of caves, built houses that have all the nice parts of a cave without any of the yucky parts, and then all the little bugs and spiders and other creepy crawly creatures that used to also live in caves thought "sweet, new and improved caves" and moved right back in with us.

Tairn is the dragon version of a death god and Violet is the only human alive who can sass him

All the dragons treat Tairn like he’s a myth come to life, like the gothic grandfather of death and fire. Riders flinch when he lands, other dragons lower their heads, professors literally move aside.

And then they see violet, this tiny, breakable, puny human walk up to him and go “Oh, for fuck's sake, Tairn.” and he just listens????

Violet has done what no other rider has: domesticated the DRAGON OF LEGEND and made him emotionally accountable.

She literally told the equivalent of a fire-breathing nuclear weapon to calm down and he DID.

Today is July 2nd, the day Independence was voted on. It took two days to draft the Declaration, agree on the final draft, and sign it, thus making July 4th the day it was signed and the day we celebrate Independence.

Happy Treason Day everyone, for today is the day we committed to the path of treason against the British Empire.

Glass pendant in the shape of a ram's head, Carthage, 5th-4th century BC

from The Walters Art Museum

Before the Throne: How The Assassin's Blade Reveals the Heart Behind the Legend

This Is Where It Hurts—And This Is Where She Begins

I didn’t expect this book to undo me. I opened it for context, for backstory, for a deeper understanding of a girl I already thought I knew. I was not prepared to meet her here—bloody-knuckled and golden-eyed, standing at the edge of her own undoing, daring the world to come closer.

The Assassin’s Blade is not a prequel. It’s a reckoning.

These five novellas do not orbit the Throne of Glass series—they are its heartbeat, its open wound. They are the story beneath the story, the ghost behind every line Celaena Sardothien ever speaks. I thought I loved her before. But it was here, in these pages of sun-scorched desert and salt-stung shores and bloodstained cobblestones, that I saw her clearly for the first time.

This is the book where the mask cracks.

Where we watch a girl who kills for coin learn what it means to fight for something she’ll never get paid for. Where the sharp edges of her arrogance are dulled by bruised compassion, where her bravado is tested against grief so raw it bleeds straight through the page. She is not softened here. She is tempered.

Her love story with Sam Cortland wrecked me—not because it was tragic (though it is, utterly), but because it was real. No grand declarations. No sweeping gestures. Just quiet defiance and tentative touches. A rivalry melting into alliance. A glance held too long. A boy who didn’t ask to be her hero—but stayed anyway.

And when he’s gone? The silence he leaves behind is the loudest thing in the book.

But this isn’t just a love story. It’s a story about choice. About power.

About what happens when a girl forged into a weapon begins to wonder who she is when she’s not being pointed at someone.

When Celaena walks into Skull’s Bay, she is the blade Arobynn Hamel sharpened for years—obedient, lethal, beautiful. When she leaves, she’s something else entirely. She’s the girl who chose to defy him. Who looked at 200 shackled souls and decided that maybe she didn’t have to be what he made her.

There is no moment more powerful than when she realizes she can choose. That her loyalty was never freely given—it was manipulated, conditioned, beaten into her. That the life she’s been living isn’t the only one available to her.

And it costs her everything.

Arobynn’s shadow stretches long over these novellas.

He is not the loudest villain. But he is the most dangerous. His violence doesn’t scream—it whispers. It gifts. It smiles. He doesn’t break Celaena with blows (though those come too)—he breaks her with belief. He teaches her to confuse control for care, cruelty for closeness. And when she finally sees through it—when she walks away from the Keep, from him, from the man who raised her in a gilded cage—she doesn’t just claim freedom.

She earns it.

Every setting here is symbolic. Every relationship a lesson.

The Red Desert teaches her discipline, the cost of trust, and what it means to be seen as something more than a killer. Ansel offers her friendship, then betrayal, then something stranger: mercy. In Innish, Yrene Towers reminds Celaena that healing and hurting can exist in the same body—and that sometimes, giving away your armor (a ruby brooch, a pouch of gold) can be braver than drawing your blade.

By the time we reach the final novella, the road ahead feels inevitable. And yet, I still hoped. I hoped Sam would survive. I hoped Arobynn’s grip wouldn’t tighten. I hoped, absurdly, that love might be enough to save her.

But this is not a story that spares its heroine. This is the story that forges her.

When Celaena kneels in the King’s court, sentenced not to death but to a life of chains, she doesn’t scream. She doesn’t beg.

She survives.

And on that long, bitter road to Endovier, when the world has been stripped from her and only the memory of love remains, she sees the white stag—the Lord of the North, the symbol of her lost home—and finds something fierce and sacred still flickering inside her.

Not hope. Not yet. But resolve.

“I am Celaena Sardothien, and I will not be afraid.”

Those words hit like thunder. They are not pride. They are not bravado. They are the bones of her future self forming beneath the ash. This line, whispered into darkness, is a prophecy. A promise. And I will never forget the way it made me sit back, breathe deep, and believe in her all over again.

This book didn’t just deepen my love for the series. It reshaped it.

The Assassin’s Blade is not supplemental. It’s essential. It’s the foundation. The soul. The scar tissue. It is the quiet epic of a girl choosing—over and over—not to become the worst thing that ever happened to her.

Reading it felt like remembering something I’d forgotten I knew. Something about survival. About love. About fire.

Rating: ★★★★¾ (4.75/5)

For the ache. For the anger. For the boy who died, and the girl who didn’t. For the blade that became a queen.

if completing tasks feels so good and reminds me completing tasks is easy then why is starting them the emotional equivalent of sending my first born to war

Your daily dose of cat memes

"You should always make time for books."

―The Library of Lost and Found by Phaedra Patrick

I’m bored and nosy. Please reblog this with the book you’re currently reading.

Can we normalize not swearing in public? There are innocent little ears around us that don't need to hear these nasty words and it is our responsibility to be good role models for children. We must not corrupt their hearts.