fantasea

Is the bartender: Rowan, Lorcan

Gets into a bar fight: Aelin, Manon

Watches the fight: Lysandra, Chaol

Nyakim Gatwech at the 2018 Emmys

*goes to school the next day*

friend: are you oka-

me: am I okay? My queen is being held captive by another queen in some iron coffin, my baby rowan is now all alone, bc some ancient named elena done screwed up, my queen is gonna have to sacrifice herself, and then we have erawan, and let me tell u, that guy, he’s a whole new prob-

Manon Blackbeak

a commission for @wendlyn-shadows who asked me to draw manon looking badass af i hope i did her justice :)

kofi? :)

“Dorian padded onto his balcony, needing to feel the river breeze on his face, to know that this was real and he was free.

He opened the balcony doors, the stones cool on his feet, and gazed out across the razed grounds. He’d done that. He loosed a breath, taking in the glass wall as it sparkled in the moonlight.

There was a massive shadow perched atop it. Dorian froze.

Not a shadow but a giant beast, its claws gripping the wall, its wings tucked into its body, shimmering faintly in the glow of the full moon. Shimmering like the white hair of the rider atop it.

Even from the distance, he knew she was staring right at him, her hair streaming to the side like a ribbon of moonlight, caught in the river breeze.”

Excerpt From

Queen of Shadows

×Sam and Celaena×

Suriel: That boy is so gonna die

Bone carver: He doesn’t have the magic, ears, canines or tats for it…what do you expect?

*Dorian and Celaena*

Suriel: He is too pretty to have his heartbroken though

Bone Carver: Dude you know I have tats issues

Suriel: can we at least get a brotp

Bone carver: Sure, and I have plans for this one don’t worry

*chaol and Celaena*

Bone carver: In the name of my Cannibal sister, please tell me, you did not tell this one to “Stay with the warrior!

Suriel: you think after the disaster with Feyre I would be anything but specific!

*Rowan and Aelin*

*Rowan beats up Aelin*

Suriel: Quick make him appear in the room with an offer to heal her injuries

Bone carver: She will kill him

Suriel: Well show them their future kid, a baby girl this time please

Bone carver: She will kill me!

*Rowan and Aelin are cursing and planning each other’s murders*

Bone carver: Every good love story starts with an undeniable urge to murder your mate

Suriel: who hurt you

*Rowan and Aelin become friendly*

Suriel: *singing* sparks fly like the 4th of July, take me to the other side

Bone carver: Sit your ass down you are not meddling with this one

*Aelin and Rowan are proven to be carrannam*

Suriel: Yeah right, never saw that one coming! *Looks into the camera like he is in Office*

Bone carver: Settling for carrannam when they are freaking mates, we Stan such fools

Suriel: I gotta go up there, knock some sense into these idiots

Bone carver: You get your ass in the middle of it and I will personally set it on moonfire

*Nightgown night*

Suriel: Dude this girl doesn’t need our help

Bone Carver: our girls never do, it’s these criminally seductive Fae males that need some sense knocked into them

*beach scene*

Suriel: Motherfucking finally

Bone carver: yeah no shit, well shit here comes Elena

Suriel: That ancient buzzkill

*Rowaelin wedding*

Suriel: Son of a bitch they did it! Truth be told I would have liked a little show of this historical event

Bone carver: Of I know, Feyre I heard repeated star fall dress for Solstice, what are we gonna do with these simpletons

*at the end of empire of storms*

Suriel: I FUCKING TOLD YOU TO LET ME DO SOMETHING, YOU DIDN’T LISTEN

BONE CARVER: I HAD NO FUCKING IDEA SHE GONNA PULL A FUCKING SHIT LIKE THAT

SURIEL: YOU BRING HER BACK RIGHT NOW AND YOU SHOW HER HER BABY DO YOU UNDERSTAND ME!!!!

Sarah J Maas: *from behind the curtain* I am planning "Maas” murder of fandom’s heart with Kingdom of Ash, You little shits, There is nothing you can do about it

Suriel and Bone carver and entire fandom:

@faenet event: favorite scenes

“Celaena opened her mouth, but no words came out. Elena took a step toward her. “You could rattle the stars,” she whispered. “You could do anything, if you only dared. And deep down, you know it, too. That’s what scares you most.”

But like…why this character? Why have I chosen this one to devote an entire blog life to? I mean seriously, I’ve been reading fantasy books forever, and though I’ve read books I initially love as much as ToG (Kate Daniels, the Fever Series), ToG is what I’ve stuck with longest in terms of obsession. And it’s largely due to Aelin. 

While I was reading The Assassin’s Blade the other day, I was struck by just how angry Aelin is. She’s in Skull’s Bay and she’s just…fixing for a fight. She’s this hot ball of rage, of fury, of untamed, unfettered anger. 

And that’s when I realized how few female characters we get who are this angry, who are allowed to be so angry. I mean in real life, anger is a masculine coded emotion. We associate it with men, it is accepted within men, and while men are viewed as having anger, women are viewed as being emotional. (you can check out Stephanie Shields Speaking From the Heart: Gender and the Social Meaning of Emotions for more on this). In other words, women are viewed as being innately emotional. Women’s emotions are coded as being part of who they are, not due to some external force. So she’s being emotional, rather than reacting appropriately to something that has happened. And we view the only acceptable emotion in men as anger. 

This leaves very little space for female anger. Either you’re being “overly emotional” or “over reacting.” Or, you’re being too masculine. You’re angry, like a man. Your rage is not something people want to see. 

In fiction, we get so few angry female characters. And I mean truly angry characters. Not momentary anger. Not the anger of Inej telling Kaz she will have him without his armor. Not the anger of Hermione yelling at Harry for not speaking to Ron in book 4. Not the anger of Elizabeth turning down Darcy’s proposal. A raging, burning, angry female character. Where is she?

She’s Aelin. Aelin, for all of the Assassin’s Blade, for ToG, CoM, and most of HoF, is angry. She’s furious. At the King, at the empire, at Chaol, at Rowan, at Maeve, and finally, at herself. She has other moments of course. She’s happy, she’s sad, she cries, she laughs, she enjoys herself. But underneath it is the well of anger, anger that she rarely accesses, because as she explains to Rowan, “I’m afraid I’d burn the whole world down out of spite.” 

And we see that anger break free at times. When she kills Archer Flynn. When she yells at Emrys and Luca. When she screams at Rowan about the fae genocide. When she beats him up. She keeps her anger leashed, for the most part, and HoF is really where we see that anger crest and break the dam. It’s so deliciously good. 

Because why shouldn’t she be angry? She’s been dealt a shit hand. Her family murdered, her kingdom colonized, her best friends murdered, her childhood dominated by an abusive monster, her first love dead, her second love hates her and on and on. Why shouldn’t Aelin Galathynius be pissed?

I think why so many people see a change in her post HoF is that in part, she loses the anger. That’s okay. You can’t be angry forever, and part of her journey is allowing herself to release that anger, to acknowledge it, to stop pushing it down. Throne of Glass is, I think, at its core the story of a young woman learning to let herself be angry and then conquering that anger. In QoS and EoS she’s still the cocky, badass, chaotic-good, witty Aelin that we know and love. But she’s a lot less angry. Yes, she’s still pissed. At Darrow, at Maeve, at Elana, at the Gods damned gods. But…she’s learned to be okay with that anger. She’s realized that she won’t burn the whole world down. 

I wouldn’t say Aelin let go of her anger after HoF, but rather she learned how to channel it in healthy ways, and allows it to drive her but not consume her. She’s far more determined in QoS and EoS–she has an agenda, and dammit she’s going to achieve it. She now knows how to use her anger to accomplish her goals.

I don’t think Sarah set out to give us such a game-changer of a character, but somehow as Sarah’s writing matured so did her conception of the character, and she allowed that rage to exist as part of Aelin rather than an abberation in Celaena that she occasionally allows to get out of hand. 

When we conceptualize anger, it’s inherently male, like this guy (bless Pixar for exploring its young heroine’s anger–as well as all of her emotions in Inside Out). On cop shows, the “loose cannon” is always male, a cop who “doesn’t play by the rules.” He’s still always one of the good guys, but a bit of an antihero.

It is so incredibly rare to let female antiheroes exist because we don’t want our female characters to feel ugly emotions. It’s why Jessica Jones is so powerful to me, because she’s angry in the same way Aelin is angry, except instead of having fire powers she self-medicates and is a functional alcoholic.

I just… love everything about this post, and want to respond to it, because it is the uglier emotions that make Aelin so remarkable. No one ever tells her to “calm down.” No one (okay, maybe Chaol) tells her she’s letting her anger rule her. Rowan lets Aelin be angry, which is why they work so well. 

The other reason I love Aelin?

She’s contradictory. She’s this incandescently rage-y character, but she’s also allowed to be indulgently feminine. She loves dresses and books and chocolates and bubble baths. She’s in a world of men, so she especially values her female friendships. While she’s such a game-changer, allowed all these masculine heroic traits, she still gets giddy about dressing up and flirting with boys. 

Some of the reviews of Throne of Glass were off-putting because they seemed to fault her (and the book) for being ditzy and boy-crazy as soon as he gets out of slavery. To me, this originates in misogyny that hates the feminine, that thinks the only valid female characters are the ones who resemble male characters, who kick ass and don’t care about what they look like (though they are always somehow effortlessly flawless). It’s this mindset that devalues everything a teenage girl loves and finds important. 

Let them be angry. Let them be resentful. And rebellious. Let them be hard and soft and loving and sad and silly. Let them be wrong. Let them be right. Let them be everything. because, they are everything.”

Got em thanks to @courtofmaas | IG

First KoA POV is Aedion’s

The book has two prologues

Sarah couldn’t stop crying about KoA

The book is about 1,000 pages, like 995