krazicatladyart

Latest Posts by krazicatladyart

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.

It appears to be a forest spirit of some sort from Colombia.

https://godsandmonsters.info/madremonte/

spin this wheel

you're now this mythical creature, congrats!

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.

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

I am becoming aware of the effect a lack of trust in the media has had on people, paired with a dearth of research skills.

whoever came up with the 'crossing fingers behind your back nullifies a promise being made' thing should be given nobel prize for service to the visual artists depicting a character being untruthful or traitorous through shorthand

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.

Reading fantasy again, I've started thinking about how odd it is how in books like that, the non-human races invariably scoff at human frailty and vulnerability, even those that they'll call friends. Like that's mean?? Why would you be a dick to your friend who you know is not capable of as much as you are, and it's not their fault they were born like that. That's mean.

Like consider the opposite: Characters of non-human races treating their human companions like frail little old dogs. Worrying about small wounds being fatal - humans die of small injuries all the time - or being surprised that humans can actually eat salt, even if they can't stomach other spicy rocks. Being amazed that a human friend they haven't seen in 10 years still looks so young, they've hardly aged at all! And when the human tries to explain that they weren't going to just unexpectedly shrivel into a raisin in 10 years, the longer-lifespan friend dismisses this like no, he's seen it happen, you don't see a human for 10 or 20 years and they've shriveled in a blink.

Elves arguing with each other like "you can't take her out there, she will die!" and when the human gets there to ask what they're talking about, they explain to her that the journey will take them through a passage where it's going to be sunny out there. Humans burn in the sun. And she will have to clarify that no, actually, she'll be fine. They fight her about it, until she manages to convince them that it's not like vampires - humans only burn a little bit in the sun, not all the way through. She'll be fine if she just wears a hat.

Meanwhile dwarves are reluctant to allow humans in their mines and cities, not just out of being secretive, but because they know that you cannot bring humans underground, they will go insane if they go too long without seeing the sun. Nobody is entirely sure how long that is, but the general consensus is three days. One time a human tries to explain their dwarf companion that this is not true, there are humans that endure much longer darkness than that. As a matter of fact, in the furthest habited corners of the lands of the Northmen, the winter sun barely rises at all. Humans can survive three weeks of darkness, and not just once, but every single year.

"Then how do they sane?" Asks the dwarf, and just as he does, the conversation gets interrupted by the northland human, who had been eavesdropping, and turns to look at them with an unnerving glint in her colourless grey eyes, grinning while saying

"That's the neat part, we don't."

My biggest culture shock after moving to the US was seeing people boil water for tea by microwaving it

Gettysburg

Any battle at all except Waterloo. Reblog if you can think of one!

It's that time of year again when everyone's gonna celebrate a birthday while conveniently ignoring the birthday boy.

Merry Christmas!

Over 10 years ago I drew this mother naga with her kid and a bowl of gulab jamun, and I was blown away to see people still reblogging it and saying kind things here. I decided to draw a sequel, the PTA (People That are Anacondas) meeting is over, and she finally gets to have some gulab jamun. c: I really hope this cheers you up some.

Really can't go wrong in fantasy with a giant skeleton being part of the environment. I'm talking colossal, part of the scenery bones.

Oh yes, let me wonder what the hell it is, how it died, how long it has been there. Let me walk on its ribs pathways, climb inside an eyesocket, look at where it fused with the nature around it.

Hmmm…

Paten from the Treasure of Saint-Denis, France, circa 900 AD

from The Louvre

dashboard advent wreath for y’all :) (x)

27+48

7+8=15

Carry the 1

1+2+4=7

75

oh uh. scuse me. just a lil snail crossing your dash

I just got described as an "ad hating commie" by someone because I said a minute of youtube ads is unpleasant. fully spent 5 minutes arguing and defending youtube ads. insane stuff

"During the 70s, some priests were becoming rather casual with the liturgy. One afternoon, a priest came into the soup kitchen that Dorothy Day was working at. He wanted to offer a liturgy for the homeless. He went into the kitchen and grabbed a mug to use for the chalice.

Dorothy, although frustrated at the irreverent use of houseware for the liturgy, prayed throughout the mass with the priest. After the liturgy ended, she quietly got up and started to cleanse the vessels. Then, she walked outside with the mug and a shovel.

A man followed her and asked her what she was doing. It is said she kissed the mug and then buried it. She told him that it was no longer a mug, but a chalice. It was no longer suited for coffee- it had held the Blood of Christ. She didn’t want anyone to mistake it for a mug again. Once something holds the Body of Christ, it is no longer what it was. When the mug held the Blood of Christ, it changed its vocation forever. It could no longer hold anything less than Christ again.

We were common mugs. Simple, functional, practical, and good people. We had a capacity to hold good things. But when Christ entered our lives, we became more. We became Chalices. We started to hold divinity Himself within our hearts. Now that we have held the Body of Christ within our bodies, we are no longer common, but rather extraordinary.

May you know the transformation God has placed in your heart. May you trust that you are truly made new and be extraordinary today."

You may have seen photos of him before, such as this one from 1886, when he (on the left) was already 50 years old:

It just struck me today that in his lifetime he has lived through the invention of photography itself, as well as moving pictures, television, VHS tapes, DVDs, BluRays and streaming; sound recording, 78rpm shellac records, 8-track tapes, CDs and MP3s; bicycles, cars, motorbikes, zeppelins, airplanes, helicopters, spaceships, satellites, the Moon landing, the Mars rover; the telephone, the internet, the smartphone, lasers, plastics, cellophane, washing machines, vacuum cleaners, refrigerators, electric ovens, microwaves, atomic bombs; the assassinations of Abraham Lincoln and JFK, the American Civil war, the Boer War, WWI and II, Vietnam, 9/11; Vincent Van Gogh, Pablo Picasso, impressionism, surrealism, Salvador Dali, Andy Warhol, Jazz and Blues and Rock & Roll, Disco, Punk, Hip-Hop and Grunge; Charlie Chaplin, Oscar Wilde, Harry Houdini, Sherlock Holmes, Gandhi, Jack The Ripper, Sigmund Freud, Wyatt Earp and Billy the Kid, Communism and the Soviet Union.

None of these things existed before him. Yet he's still alive today, walking around and eating grass.

Gold swivel ring featuring an amethyst frog, from the New Kingdom period of Egypt, dating between 1550-1229 BC.

Cobalt blue glass bracelet uncovered at Passiery, Switzerland, La Tene culture, circa 200-125 BC

from The Museum of Art and History Geneva

Sculpture with rooster head, was found in a tomb at Gaochang, a Tang city on the edge of the Taklamakan Desert, 7th-10th century, Tang Dynasty, China.

Concrete proof that a centaur’s greatest enemy is a big cat

Stunning mosaic from the floor of the triclinium (dining room) of Hadrian's Villa, residence of Emperor Hadrian outside Rome

Altes Museum, Berlin

Rock crystal lizard uncovered near Cortil-Noirmont, Belgium, 2nd century AD

from The Art and History Museum, Brussels

Gold and lapis lazuli earring, Egypt, 19th Dynasty, 1295-1186 BC

from The Metropolitan Museum of Art