#how could i possibly choose you know

[bravevolunteer]

thinking about the spare springlock suit that michael gets trapped in in sl. what do you guys think it was :)

[biblically-accurate-dca]

KILL!!!!!!!!!

[acourtofquestions]

Rowaelin Chapter 41 Kingdom of Ash:

She'd rebuild it—what she had been.

Perhaps one last time, perhaps only for a little while, but she'd do it. If only for Terrasen.

Rowan swooped from the mast, shifting as he reached her side at the rail. He surveyed the night-black sea beyond them. "You should rest." She slid him a glance. "I'm not tired." Not a lie, not in some regards. "Want to spar?" He frowned. "Training can start tomorrow."

"Or tonight." She held his piercing stare, matched his dominance with her own.

"It can wait a few hours, Aelin."

"Every day counts." Against Erawan, even a day of training would count.

Rowan's jaw tightened. "True," he said at last. "But it can still wait. There are ... there are things we need to discuss." The silent words rose in his animal-bright eyes. About you and me.

Her mouth went dry. But Aelin nodded In silence, they strode into their spacious quarters, its only decoration the wall of windows that overlooked the churning sea behind them. A far cry from a queen's chamber, or any she might have purchased as Adarlan's assassin.

At least the bed built into the wall looked clean enough, the sheets crisp and stainless. But Aelin headed for the oak desk anchored to the floor, and leaned against it while Rowan shut the door.

In the dim lantern light, they stared at each other.

She'd endured Maeve and Cairn; she'd endured Endovier and countless other horrors and losses. She could have this conversation with him. The first step toward rebuilding herself.

Aelin knew Rowan could hear her thundering heart as the space between them went taut. She swallowed once. "Elide and Lorcan told you... told you everything that was said on that beach."

A curt nod, wariness flooding his eyes. "Everything that Maeve said." Another nod.

She braced herself. "That I'm-we're mates."

Understanding and something like relief replaced that wariness. "Yes."

"I'm your mate," she said, needing to voice it. "And you are mine."

Rowan crossed the room, but halted a few feet from the desk on which she leaned. "What of it, Aelin?" His question was low, rough.

"Don't you..." She scrubbed at her face. "You know what she did to you, to ..." She couldn't say her name. Lyria. "Because of it."

"I do know."

"And?"

"And what do you wish me to say?"

She pushed off the desk. "I wish you to tell me how you feel about it. If…"

"If what?"

"If you wish it wasn't so."

His brows narrowed. "Why would I ever wish that?"

She shook her head, unable to answer, and stared over her shoulder toward the sea.

It seemed like he would close the distance between them, but he remained where he was.

"Aelin." His voice turned hoarse. "Aelin."

She looked at him then, at the pain in his words.

"Do you know what I wish?" He exposed his palms, one tattooed, the other unmarked. "I wish that you had told me. When you realized it. I wish you had told me then."

She swallowed against the ache in her throat. "I didn't want to hurt you."

"Why would it ever hurt me to know the truth that was already in my heart? The truth I hoped for?"

"I didn't understand it. I didn't understand how it was possible. I thought maybe ... maybe you might be able to have two mates within a lifetime, but even then, I just ….." She blew out a breath. "I didn't want you to be distressed." His eyes softened. "Do I regret that Lyria was dragged into this, that the cost of Maeve's game was her life, and the life of the child we might have had? Yes. I regret that, and I wish it had never happened." He would bear the tattoo to remember it for the rest of his days. "But none of that was your fault. I will always carry some of the burden of it, always know I chose to leave her for war and glory, and that I played right into Maeve's hands."

"Maeve wanted to ensnare you to get to me, though."

"Then it is her choice, not yours."

Aelin ran a hand over the worn wood of the desk. "In those illusions she spun for me, she showed me variations on one more than all the others." The words were strained, but she forced them out. Forced herself to look at him. "She spun me one dreamscape that felt so real I could smell the wind off the Staghorns."

"What did she show you?" A breathless question.

Aelin had to swallow before she could answer. "She showed me what might have been—if there had been no Erawan, if Elena had dealt with him properly and banished him. If there had been no Lyria, none of that pain or despair you endured. She showed me Terrasen as it would have been today, with my father as king, and my childhood happy, and..." Her lips wobbled. "When I turned twenty, you came with a delegation of Fae to Terrasen, to make amends for the rift between my mother and Maeve. And you and I took one look at each other in my father's throne room, and we knew."

She didn't fight the stinging in her eyes. "I wanted to believe that was the true world. That this was the nightmare from which I'd awaken. I wanted to believe that there was a place where you and I had never known this suffering and loss, where we'd take one look at each other and know we were mates. Maeve told me she could make it so. If I gave her the keys, she'd make it all possible." She wiped at her cheek, at the tear that escaped down it. "She spun me realities where you were dead, where you'd been killed by Erawan and only in handing over the keys to her would I be able to avenge you. But those realities made me ... I stopped being useful to her when she told me you were gone. She couldn't get me to talk, to think. Yet in the ones where you and I met, where things were as they should have been ... that was when I came the closest."

His swallow was audible. "What stopped you?"

She wiped at her face again. "The male I fell in love with was you. It was you, who knew pain as I did, and who walked with me through it, back to the light. Maeve didn't understand that. That even if she could create that perfect world, it wouldn't be you with me. And I'd never trade that, trade this. Not for anything." He extended his hand. An offer and invitation.

Aelin laid hers atop his, and his callused fingers squeezed gently. "I wanted it to be you," he breathed, closing his eyes. "For months and months, even in Wendlyn, I wondered why you weren't my mate instead. It tore me up, wondering it, but I still did." He opened his eyes, and they burned like green fire. "All this time, I wanted it to be you."

She lowered her gaze, but he hooked a thumb and forefinger around her chin and lifted her face.

"I know you are tired, Fireheart. I know that the burden on your shoulders is more than anyone should endure." He took their joined hands and laid them on his heart. "But we'll face this together. Erawan, the Lock, all of it.

"We'll face it together. And when we are done, when you Settle, we will have a thousand years together. Longer."

A small sound came out of her. "Elena said the Lock requires—"

"We'll face it together," he swore again.

"And if the cost of it truly is you, then we'll pay it together. As one soul in two bodies.

Her heart strained to the point of cleaving. "Terrasen needs a king."

"I have no intention of ruling Terrasen without you. Aedion can have the job."

She scanned his face. He meant every word He brushed the hair from her face, his other hand still clasping hers to his chest, where his heart pounded a steady, unfaltering rhythm.

"Even if I had my choice of any dream-realities, any perfect illusions, I would still choose you, too."

She felt the truth of his words echo into the unbreakable thing that bound their very souls, and tilted her face up toward his. But he made no move beyond it.

She frowned. "Why aren't you kissing me?"

"I thought you might want to be asked first."

"That never stopped you before."

"This first time, I wanted to make sure you were ... ready." After Cairn and Maeve. After months of having no choices whatsoever.

She smiled despite that truth. "I'm ready to be kissed again, Prince."

He let out a dark chuckle and muttered, "Thank the gods," before he lowered his mouth to hers.

"You're my mate." Her words were a breathless rush. "And I am yours."

The world might have been burning around them for all she cared, all he cared, too.

"Together, Aelin," he promised, and she heard the rest of the words in every place their bodies joined. Together they would face this, together they would find a way.

Together we'll find a way, their mingling breaths, the crashing sea, seemed to echo.

Together.

[theladyfae]

i think human nature/family of blood is a really good two parter in how it manages to show how full of shit ten is 🫶

[selfinflictedgunshotwound]

sorry for only saying this type of shit lately but i kinda wanna drive a car straight into a brick wall at the highest speed possible

[icewindandboringhorror]

Lineup of all of the characters that appear long enough to need a visual representation of them in the game lol

[the-eclectic-wonderer]

fav golden girl 👁️👁️

You do realize this is like asking me to choose my favourite hand, right? Or my favourite leg? It's like choosing my favourite eye, my favourite strand of hair, my favourite organ, my favourite --

Blanche. It's-it's Blanche.

[bittersweetresilience]

for the ship ask game...

feligami 🦚🐉

HI SELKIE 💘💓💗 let’s go into my room and sit on my bed. i have snacks 🥰

What made you ship it?

i didn’t ship feligami until very recently, since i have strong feelings about arocoded félix, but while i was making amvs i saw how many times they held hands and my heart was swayed.

What are your favorite things about the ship?

i don’t ship it enough to have an answer for this question 🤣 get nina in here. nina has essays on essays about queerness and abuse recovery. i suppose my answer is the hand holding.

Is there an unpopular opinion you have on your ship?

i have strong feelings about this one too. they would not have kids ‼️ they would not get married ‼️ down with the nuclear family ‼️

(ship ask game)

[variousqueerthings]

actually you know whose reaction I'd be really curious about, potentially coming across fourteen in the shops? Francine!

[franeridan]

I understand why everyone who read dunmeshi instantly shipped marci and falin but tbh the fact that it's just treated as canon by the fandom cuts on a lot of interesting analysis that could be done on their relationship outside of the romantic reading, which is kind of a shame

[unproduciblesmackdown]

Mordecai probably lives in an apartment or something, but my first thought when you brought up the Caves on that post was that he won’t tell us because he’s been living in the Caves the Whole Time. Even tho he’d hate the slime mold.

yeah a Whole Damn House would be a bit much, and probably not as useful for the nightly bootlegging related goings on: see, freckle needing to stand around waiting for a ride before he can go shoot people. whereas mordecai can show up to the maribel hotel on foot, or at least have started out somewhere he could get a cab or whatever....and this is probably the closest to any relevant Living Situation Glimpses

someplace with a bed, and one with an art deco headboard....a modern style, so it's neither Antique nor unfancy enough to have less identifiable stylings at all. like just by guessing surely he lives in some apartment that's unassuming enough to live unassumingly in, with whatever alias, so something large & fancy would be unhelpful....plus if he's gonna be fairly rigorous in his domestic upkeep, it wouldn't really help to have a huge place, even if for the same reasons it wouldn't be too small (or old or otherwise unpleasant; hard no to slime mold, slime, or mold....) and like re: the rotating aliases, maybe he moves places fairly regularly for good measure, been at this like, a decade....tl;dr probably has some apartment/s that's roomy but not huge, nice but not Fancy fancy, at the nexus of practicality, resources, and preferences

but it's important to think about "what if mordecai's been living in the caves the whole time" b/c that's funny lmao

[bmpmp3]

no game trying to do some kind of metatexual morality thing making the player feel culpable for their actions by giving them the option to be nice or kill everyone has made me feel anywhere near how guilty and sick to my stomach Drakengard made me feel when you blast a bunch of enemies on the ground into nothing with Angelus. and it wasn't even About That

[6blackfilin9]

... i was thinking of him as Emhyr while drawing it

[llycaons]

'jiang cheng would like a strong woman' have you considered she would probably not like him

[katyspersonal]

Okay aside from ibuprofen, I have a serious question for when you feel better—

How do you think Rom felt after she ascended? Do you think she gained any sort of higher perspective that allowed her to see what the others she had left behind were doing and to look back on her own life? Could she see Micolash? Caryll? Willem? Yurie? What did she think of all their goals and ends…most of all…why was she hiding the rituals? To save the world from Mico’s horror or to help him hide his sins out of some lingering sense of care? Was she even think much at all? I wanna hear your thoughts!!

Well hmmm 🤔 First things first, I always felt like Willem urging the hunter to go in the lake was a signal from him to hunt Rom, which I think would be counter-productive if Byrgenwerth's goal was TO conceal that specific ritual! My interpretation is that Rom was a volunteer to conceal the horrors of the cosmos prior to what Micolash did; as far as Byrgenwerth and Willem were concerned, she was their special asset to gatekeep the Eldrich Truth from those who are not ready to handle it, as well as the one concealing Byrgenwerth ITSELF! Argh, this is a slightly long theory to recite, so I will just link it here: ( x ). Byrgenwerth we see in "reality" is only a very small building, and the rest of it (Lecture Hall) is between Nightmare and the waking world! The true univercity used to be accessed through the lake like a portal! .....really, please, just check the linked theory ;-;

So yeah, that's the gist of it! Rom knows that if 'unprepared' people witness a cosmic horror - nothing good will come out of it, and also chooses to protect Byrgenwerth. She cared for humanity in general and the evolution, just like other best Byrgenwerth scholars! So, protect humanity, but also ensure the research to improve it continues.

It was my recent idea that what happened with Byrgenwerth was a very similar effect to creation of Hunter's Dream - Rom having sort of a "pact" with Ebrietas instead! Now, yeah, whether she REALIZES what she's doing is a question that torments me to this day! @_@"

The best explanation for Willem's gesture I can give is that he is aware of Mensis Ritual and wants it stopped, realizing how damning it is for humanity! Damian, the one from School of Mensis himself works with us to break Rom's concealment, too... Like I said before, insanity for "strong ones" and beasthood for "weak ones" could never be stopped by any means as long as ritual is ongoing! The note in the Hunter's Dream for us is my best clue for this headcanon:

The night of our Hunter ends when Mergo is silenced (aka ritual is stopped), so this would be the 'source'. Rom's barrier mitigates the severity of the ritual's effects, but doesn't stop it. Her barrier is penetrable for those who are "ready" (you start to see things like Amygdalae even through her concealment if you have enough Insight), but Mensis Ritual is special in how it still bears effect on people in Yharnam whether they are aware of it or not. One could completely avoid blood and eyes both, but as long as ritual is ongoing, sooner or later they WILL give into either beasthood or madness.. That is not very acceptable, right?

My version of Yurie becomes aware of what is happening, together with Fauxsefka, but agrees to let it happen. She thinks that keeping the ritual but also concealing it could cause a positive effect on humans by making their conscious evolve sooner or later.. So, what if some people become beasts instead of elevated as the cost? Can't help everyone! Fauxsefka thinks she is a callous bitch for that and bails. Laurence, I think, would be really proud of the way she thinks, on the other hand.. Willem, like I said, doesn't seem to agree with something so drastic! (Sadly, the only way to stop the ritual would be to first unveil it, which.. not everyone could survive. Like ripping the bandage.) But Rom is... still up for questioning.

Prior the spider form, Rom did believe in making people smarter through "deception". She witnessed the 'cursed', 'forbidden' knowledge beyond 'Stars and Moon' early and knew that Choir people would not listen. And she did hide Micolash's true antics at Mensis, trusting him to figure things out in his own way. And to do things that no one else would have the courage to do, herself included. I think it would be very bittersweet if even after her ascension, Rom still blindly trusted Micolash to figure everything out while she covers his back, even if now at more instinctive level. So, when Micolash decided to lock the Lecture Hall passageway to protect himself further (after Edgar betrayed the Choir for him), Rom just... let it happen. Helped, even! Placing herself in opposition against Willem. During her human life, she allowed Micolash to do a lot of awful things - with herself too, using her as a test subject, believing that she was "too stupid to decide such things" and Micolash always "knew better", so could that persist even now? That... deep trust, even in the most insane plan, not knowing that Micolash completely lost the objective.

But on the other hand, the idea of her being so completely lost within her own power that she doesn't even understand what happens (and when) is really appealing! That she just experiences and observes so many things, in so many timelines, on so many levels at once... well, until Hunter trying to kill her would make her focus on their specific universe and timeline. :') But yeah, complete transcendence + theme of a powerful "idiot god" that doesn't realize their power is really good. So, yeah, Rom doesn't leave the lake past the Mensis Ritual because of either blind faith in Micolash's plans or because she just... well, everywhere. She might not even notice with how many other things she's seeing. The motivation of milking the "use" of the ritual's effects I already gave to Yurie. 🤔

I just think the whole vibe of her being a genius that never credited herself properly fits her the best! She kept hearing that she was too dumb to decide for humanity or herself from the only family she had and just... agreed with it? Although she is aware that progress is impossible without sacrifice and very daring experiments, as soon as Mensis Ritual happens, Rom believes that "smarter people know what they're doing"... if she IS still aware of anything. Whatever Micolash is doing, he has good intentions and knows what is the price and the result, right...? RIIIIIIIGHT?? Yurie, Damian, Willem and Fauxsefka know Micolash is batshit, though.

If she still has some lucidity - she can "see" people that she used to know, yes. She just would not think of them or miss them in the same way us normal humans do... Memories would be torn, like in a dream, she'd know of Yurie, Micolash or Caryll but not have lucid comprehension of becoming a bit too "enlightened" to interact with them normally. Most of her attempts to interact with someone would transcend the space and time, but also she'd be too incomprehencible in this way... Not even for the most Insightful people. It could come like a dream, or like sixth sense, and Rom would "envision" herself as still a human. Close person like Yurie or very smart person like Caryll would still guess that the strange 'feeling' must be Rom, just not able to grasp her. That'd be beyond their perception! Micolash, that lil shit, would think whatever he could perceive to be a sign from Kos, though. -_-" I think even Ebrietas would not be able to truly grasp Rom now, should she try to contact her via the 'astral projection'! Think of it as almost no one having enough Insight / Eyes Inside to see her like this... This is very lonely, like being a ghost. Rom has to be there physically to communicate! But she should NOT leave the darn Lake!!

Patches, who is also a 'spider', got split across the multiverse in a much more solid way, of course 🤔 Rom is simply Too Many Things to have a similar fate... becoming a person-per-universe is too little to contain her, at least yet. Great Ones are more complex than just bald lil shit who messed with something forbidden!

[cerealbishh]

"You get to see her understanding of how things really are. And so that becomes much more present on the surface. (...) In this season, we get to see her fall deeper in love with him but also navigate those challenges. And also becoming an anchor for Rhett but also struggling with his decision, 'Is this what I want for my future as well, as much as I love this man?'." - Isa in an interview with The Knockturnal(x)