#quotes from the first three

[dandelion-roots]

[ID: a series of drawings featuring Riz Gukgak from D20 Fantasy High. In the first, Pok holds Riz's shoulders in heaven as says, smiling, when you work until the dead of night, your friends know you do it because you love them. In the second, Riz is having a group hug with his party and the text reads, but is it really love that drives you, Riz Gukgak... In the next, a desperate, pleading Riz clutches the shoulder of an indifferent, faceless person and the text continues, ...or is it fear? In the fourth, Riz is younger and digging through crystals with bleeding hands; the text reads, what use are you when you can no longer dig. In the fifth, Kalina, shrouded in darkness with only her eyes glowing, reaches towards the camera with a smile; the text reads, when you're too scared to think. Sixth, Riz is filling out Fig and Kristen's papers under the light of a lamp, serious and tired; the text reads, when you're too tired to work. Seventh, Riz is lying in bed, eyes hidden behind hair, hand on his father's picture; the text reads, too sad to keep the mood up. Eighth, Baron stares into the camera; the text reads, too lonely, too insecure, too weird. Ninth, Baron is holding a defeated Riz by the throat; the text reads, to keep moving? Tenth, Riz is standing in the distance, holding his briefcase, and behind him is a football/soccer ball; the text reads, what use is a ball that can no longer roll? The last drawing just says none in brackets on a dark background. End ID]

[sforzesco]

so it’s. it’s like. man this is so hard without my laptop.

alright so Crassus is a weird guy, existentially. There’s a tendency to speculate, assign, and insert him into whatever places are conspiratorial and shadowy because he fits into those narrative places with ease. My personal favorite (aside from all of it) is the idea that he may have pulled strings wrt to Sulla and Caesar’s conflict to help get Caesar out of it.

The Defeat of Rome: Crassus, Carrhae and the Invasion of the East, Gareth C. Sampson

In the universe that exists in my head, he definitely had a hand in it, but he didn’t really intend for Caesar to figure out he played a part in it, but Caesar’s good at puzzles, and noticing someone goes both ways. Binding someone to yourself goes both ways.

Crassus: The First Tycoon, Peter Stothard

This scene takes place sometime relatively soon after Sulla’s death. Crassus has complicated feelings about it, Caesar less so. Veni, vidi, vici, baby!

Here’s a bonus thing that I keep thinking about with them.

The Roman Revolution, Ronald Syme

like, utang na loob. and it is DEEP between them.

[bottombaron]

"very small subset" but also one of the "most requested"

[acourtofquestions]

Kingdom of Ash Chapter 61

Chapter; Highlights (okay the entire chapter is a highlight)🤣

As requested @mysterylilycheeta I NEED TO SQUEAL IN WYVERN FANGIRL WITH YOU NOW CAUSE OH M GOODNESS THIS CHAPTER ON SO MANY LEVELS I JUST AHAKWIHUHFEJLZXBKEKA

Agony was a song in Lorcan's blood, his bones, his breath.

Every step of the horse, every leap she made over body and debris, sent it ringing afresh. There was no end, no mercy from it. It was all he could do to keep in the saddle, to cling to consciousness.

To keep his arm around Elide.

She had come for him. Had found him, somehow, on this endless battlefield.

His name on her lips had been a summons he could never deny, even when death had held him so gently, nestled beneath all those he'd felled, I, and waited for his last breaths.

And now, charging toward that too-distant keep, so far behind the droves of soldiers and riders racing for the gates, he wondered if these minutes would be his last. Her last.

She had come for him.

Lorcan managed to glance toward the dam on their right. Toward the ruk rider signaling that it was only a matter of minutes until it unleashed hell over the plain.

He didn't know how it had become weakened. Didn't care.

Still Elide kept urging the horse onward, kept them on as straight a path toward the distant keep as possible.

No ruk would come to sweep them up. No, his luck had been spent in surviving this long, in her finding him. His power would do nothing against that water.

The farthest lines of panicked soldiers appeared, and Farasha charged past them.

Elide let out a sob, and he followed the line of her sight.

To the keep gate, still open.

"Faster, Farasha!" She didn't hide the raw terror in her voice, the desperation.

Once the dam broke, it would take less than a minute for the tidal wave to reach them.

She had come for him. She had found him.

The world went quiet. The pain in his body faded into nothing. Into something secondary.

Lorcan slid his other arm around Elide, bringing his mouth close to her ear as he said, "You have to let me go."

Each word was gravelly, his voice strained nearly to the point of uselessness.

Elide didn't shift her focus from the keep ahead. "No."

That gentle quiet flowed around him, clearing the fog of pain and battle. "You have to. You have to, Elide. I'm too heavy-and without my weight, you might make it to the keep in time."

"No." The salt of her tears filled his nose.

Lorcan brushed his mouth over her damp cheek, ignoring the roaring pain in his body. The horse galloped and galloped, as if she might outrace death itself.

"I love you," he whispered in Elide's ear. "I have loved you from the moment you picked up that axe to slay the ilken." Her tears flowed past him in the wind. "And I will be with you ..." His voice broke, but he made himself say the words, the truth in his heart. "I will be with you always."

He was not frightened of what would come for him once he tumbled off the horse. He was not frightened at all, if it meant her reaching the keep.

So Lorcan kissed Elide's cheek again, allowed himself to breathe in her scent one last time. "I love you," he repeated, and began to withdraw his arms from around her waist.

Elide slapped a hand onto his forearm. Dug in her nails, right into his skin, fierce as any ruk.

"No."

There were no tears in her voice. Nothing but solid, unwavering steel.

"No," she said again. The voice of the Lady of Perranth.

Lorcan tried to move his arm, but her grip would not be dislodged.

If he tumbled off the horse, she would go with him.

Together. They would either outrun this or die together.

"Elide-"

But Elide slammed her heels into the horse's sides.

Slammed her heels into the dark flank and screamed, "FLY, FARASHA." She cracked the reins. "FLY, FLY, FLY!"

And gods help her, that horse did.

As if the god that had crafted her filled the mare's lungs with his own breath, Farasha gave a surge of speed.

Faster than the wind. Faster than death.

Farasha cleared the first of the fleeing Darghan cavalry. Passed desperate horses and riders at an all-out gallop for the gates.

Her mighty heart did not falter, even when Lorcan knew it was raging to the point of bursting.

Less than a mile stood between them and the keep.

But a thunderous, groaning crack cleaved the world, echoing off the lake, the mountains.

There was nothing he could do, nothing that brave, unfaltering horse could do, as the dam ruptured.

Rowan made himself stand there, to watch the last moments of the Lady of Perranth and his former commander. It was all he could offer: witnessing their deaths, so he might tell the story to those he encountered. So they would not be forgotten.

The roaring of the oncoming wave became deafening, even from miles away.

Still Elide and Lorcan raced, Farasha passing horse after horse after horse.

Even up here, would they escape the wave's reach? Rowan dared to survey the battlements, to assess if he needed to get the others, needed to get Aelin, to higher ground.

But Aelin was not at his side.

She was not on the battlement at all.

Rowan's heart halted. Simply stopped beating as a ruddy-brown ruk dropped from the skies, spearing for the center of the plain.

Arcas, Borte's ruk. A golden-haired woman dangling from his talons.

Aelin. Aelin was—

Arcas neared the earth, talons splaying.

Aelin hit the ground, rolling, rolling, until she uncoiled to her feet.

Right in the path of that wave.

"Oh gods," Fenrys breathed, seeing her, too.

They all saw her.

The queen on the plain.

The endless wall of water surging for her.

The keep stones began shuddering. Rowan threw out a hand to brace himself, fear like nothing he had known ripping through him as Aelin lifted her arms above her head.

A pillar of fire shot up around her, lifting her hair with it.

The wave roared and roared for her, for the army behind her.

The shaking in the keep was not from the wave.

It was not from that wall of water at all.

Cracks formed in the earth, splintering across it. Spiderwebbing from Aelin.

"The hot springs," Chaol breathed. "The valley floor is full of veins into the earth itself."

Into the burning heart of the world.

The keep shook, more violently this time.

The pillar of fire sucked back into Aelin.

She held out a hand before her, her fist closed.

As if it would halt the wave in its tracks.

He knew then. Either as her mate or carranam, he knew.

"Three months," Rowan breathed.

The others stilled.

"Three months," he said again, his knees wobbling. "She's been making the descent into her power for three months."

Every day she had been with Maeve, bound in iron, she had gone deeper. And she had not tapped too far into that power since they'd freed her because she had kept making the plunge.

To gather up the full might of her magic.

Not for the Lock, not for Erawan.

But for Maeve's death blow.

A few weeks of descent had taken her powers to devastating levels. Three months of it

…

Holy gods. Holy rutting gods.

And when her fire hit the wall of water now towering over her, when they collided —

"GET DOWN!" Rowan bellowed, over the screaming waters. "GET DOWN NOW!"

His companions dropped to the stones, any within earshot doing the same.

Rowan plummeted into his power. Plummeted into it fast and hard, ripping out any remaining shred of magic.

Elide and Lorcan were still too far from the gates. Thousands of soldiers were still too far from the gates as the wave crested above them.

As Aelin opened her hand toward it.

Fire erupted.

Cobalt fire. The raging soul of a flame.

A tidal wave of it.

Taller than the raging waters, it blasted from her, flaring wide.

The wave slammed into it. And where water met a wall of fire, where a thousand years of confinement met three months of it, the world exploded.

Blistering steam, capable of melting flesh from bone, shot across the plain.

With a roar, Rowan threw all that remained of his magic toward the onslaught of steam, a wall of wind that shoved it toward the lake, the mountains.

Still the waters came, breaking against the flames that did not so much as yield an inch.

Maeve's death blow. Spent here, to save the army that might mean Terrasen's salvation. To spare the lives on the plain.

Rowan gritted his teeth, panting against his fraying power. A burnout lurked, deadly close.

The raging wave threw itself over and over and over into the wall of flame.

Rowan didn't see if Elide and Lorcan made it into the keep. If the other soldiers and riders on the plain stopped to gape.

Princess Hasar said, rising beside him, "That power is no blessing."

"Tell that to your soldiers," Fenrys snarled, standing, too.

"I did not mean it that way," Hasar snipped, and awe was indeed stark on her face.

Rowan leaned against the battlements, panting hard as he fought to keep the lethal steam from flowing toward the army. As he cooled and sent it whisking away.

Solid hands slid under his arms, and then Fenrys and Gavriel were there, propping him up between them.

A minute passed. Then another.

The wave began to lower. Still the fire burned.

Rowan's head pounded, his mouth going dry.

Time slipped from him. A coppery tang filled his mouth.

The wave lowered farther, raging waters quieting. Then roaring turned to lapping, rapids into eddies.

Until the wall of flame began to lower, too. Tracking the waters down and down and down. Letting them seep into the cracks of the earth.

Rowan's knees buckled, but he held on to his magic long enough for the steam to lessen.

For it, too, to be calmed.

It filled the plain, turning the world into drifting mist. Blocking the view of the queen in its center.

Then silence. Utter silence.

Fire flickered through the mist, blue turning to gold and red. A muted, throbbing glow.

Rowan spat blood onto the battlement stones, his breath like shards of glass in his throat.

The glowing flames shrank, steam rippling past. Until there was only a slim pillar of fire, veiled in the mist-shrouded plain.

Not a pillar of fire.

But Aelin.

Glowing white-hot. As if she had given herself so wholly to the flame that she had become fire herself.

The Fire-Bringer someone whispered down the battlements.

The mist rippled and billowed, casting her into nothing but a glowing effigy.

The silence turned reverent.

A gentle wind from the north swept down. The veil of mist pulled back, and there she was.

She glowed from within. Glowed golden, tendrils of her hair floating on a phantom wind.

"Mala's Heir," Yrene breathed.

Down on the plain, Elide and Lorcan had halted.

The wind pushed away more of the drifting mist, clearing the land beyond Aelin.

And where that mighty, lethal wave had loomed, where death had charged toward them, nothing remained at all.

For three months, she had sung to the darkness and the flame, and they had sung back.

For three months, she had burrowed so deep inside her power that she had plundered undiscovered depths. While Maeve and Cairn had worked on her, she had delved. Never letting them know what she mined, what she gathered to her, day by day by day.

A death blow. One to wipe a dark queen from the earth forever.

She'd kept that power coiled in herself even after she'd been freed from the irons. Had struggled to keep it down these weeks, the strain enormous. Some days, it had been easier to barely speak. Some days, swaggering arrogance had been her key to ignoring it.

Yet when she had seen that wave, when she had seen Elide and Lorcan choosing death together, when she had seen the army that might save Terrasen, she'd known. She'd felt the fire sleeping under this city, and knew they had come here for a reason.

She had come here for this reason.

A river still flowed from the dam, harmless and small, wending toward the lake.

Nothing more.

Aelin lifted a glowing hand before her as blessed, cooling emptiness filled her at last.

Slowly, starting from her fingertips, the glow faded.

As if she were forged anew, forged back into her body.

Back into Aelin.

Clarity, sharp and crystal clear, filled its wake. As if she could see again, breathe again.

Inch by inch, the golden glow faded into skin and bone. Into a woman once more.

Already, a white-tailed hawk launched skyward.

But as the last of the glow faded, disappearing out through her toes, Aelin fell to her knees.

Fell to her knees in the utter silence of the world, and curled onto her side.

She had the vague sense of strong, familiar arms scooping her up. Of being carried onto a broad feathery back, still in those arms.

Of soaring through the skies, the last of the mist rippling away into the afternoon sun.

And then sweet darkness.

[cisthoughtcrime]

.

[misspickman]

i love uu complicated ai relationships and messy view of the self

[varpusvaras]

Rex: One of my brothers also has two kids, eight and four, so like, similar enough ages to mine. And every time they come over, I get this wildly different experience. They come in and say "hello, uncle Rex", and I go, hello to you too. They ask, "where should we sit?", and I go, try one of the chairs. They say "we would like to color", and I go please. And then they sit down. And kriffing. Color. An HOUR later, I can go into that room, and they just be coloring like hum-hum-di-hum-hum. And I go like that's nice. Where are my twins? Are they in the house? Are they on the house? Are they under the hou- oh they're on the street, fantastic. I go out like what the kriff are you guys doing? And they're like "we broke all of the crayons and put them in the mailbox"

Rex: I've tried to ask Fox if he wants to exchange the kids but he said he doesn't want that Skywalker nonsense into his household and I'm like. Yeah.

[spiderin-space]

Lots of scene redraw sketches 👀

[skydaemon]

guess what im rereading????

[crossbackpoke-check]

it’s all the rest of what i want with you

connor dewar/brandon duhaime :: 8k

Summary:

“Brandon,” Connor says with a sigh. “There’s no baby in there.”

“Not yet,” Brandon says. Connor feels his stomach twist, almost like what he would imagine a baby kicking to feel like.

in these trying times of dewvorce, may i offer you 8k of pwp inspired by @stillfertile’s wonderful art which i had. several breakdowns about 🫶 anyway please enjoy!!!

[hana-bobo-finch]

I’m shadowing at the vet clinic in 2 days and I’m clearly not nervous at all because I definitely didn’t have a long winding, distressing dream in which the veterinarian made me play a game in which leif had to throw food at people and maki kicked his ass so bad that leif fucking died but don’t worry because the vet was there and he has magic healing powers and he brought leif back to life but he made sure to mention for some reason that leif doesn’t have chlorophyll because he’s not a plant

[leslieseveride]

“you scared me." 🤝 “yeah i about had a heart attack.” 🤝 “i can’t lose you the way i lost her.”

the holy trinity.

[stellewriites]

Ohmygoodness stelle I am obsessed with dog meat! It was so good

Does wife end up sticking around? Does her crazy match their crazy after an adjustment period?

<33

aaaa thank you so so much three 🥹🥹 im so happy to hear you enjoyed both parts 💓

i kinda left it open so that the readers could decide what they’d prefer for the ending - personally i don’t see her leaving any time soon. it took meeting kyle and johnny for her to be able to realise she didn’t want to be with elliot any more, but she’s not going to have that outside council when she’s with them, and they’re just going to absolutely hammer home the emotional manipulation and control now that she’s there with no one to take her away (no real friends and inferred that she was probably also cut off from family if you caught the hints).

she’s acknowledged the relationship is fucked up but also acknowledges that it’s kind of all she’s known from previous partners - so to break away on her own would take immense strength and likely several tries, and i don’t think she’ll want to face the music. i think she’ll throw herself into the relationship (and like in the film probably go along with their awful crazy murder schemes in order to survive) and look at all the red flags with rose tinted glasses in order to cope, otherwise i think the hopelessness would get to her ://

woof,, bit bleak towards the end there but that’s my two cents on it!!

[cazzyf1]

Thessa von Trips (Wolfgang Von Trip's mother) diary entry about Wolfgang, the preface to a biography about Wolfgang.

(Translated from German using google translate so parts don't 100% make sense)

Warning: you might cry

Started on some gray November day...

This book is for you!

This book should record a part of our lives. We both wanted it that way then - today, it is different. The pages are no longer complete. I took them out!

It would be unbearable to know that I would only have to open the pages two or three times to read your poem, to see your writing! When you left, I couldn't understand it, and to this day I still can't believe that you're no longer there! I dream of you, and when I run to the mailbox in the morning to find a greeting from you from somewhere, I am unspeakably sad and awake at the same time.

You often looked at me with astonished eyes when we talked about religion. I told you that I only believe in nature, and your objection was that nature was created by God, so it must be there. You believed in him, but why, why did he destroy everything? Because he loved you? That would be too cheap a consolidation for me. Why? Will there ever be an answer?

I think you were too good for this world. Perhaps if you had your eyes open to all the intrigue and evil around you, you would have saved from becoming evil.

You would probably have hard can be, but never insincere, let alone selfish. You believed that the people around you meant what they were saying, and you seemed content. How hard it hit you when you once did that. You had to experience the opposite; only I know. We were both suffering. You because you just couldn't understand it, I because I didn't know any consolation that could help you. Because whatever I said you didn't want to understand it. You never wanted thanks - just understanding. And what did you harvest? You were taken advantage of and certain people used your back as a jumping platform. According to the motto: “Everyone is their own neighbour!”

I don't want to and can't think about it anymore. My heart hurts! Please forgive me, I know you are sad when I have thoughts like that. I want to try to listen to you. When I think of you, I am happy. Only then. You took the word “happiness” with you. It's no longer there. It lives in me together with the thought of you. You probably know how often my thoughts are with you. I hold on tightly to it so that life doesn't become unbearable. Sometimes everything is just so damn difficult. Everything reminds me of you: cities, countries, music,

Maybe later, much later, I'll go wherever we would be happy. Then I'll run after a time that will never exist again because it stood still when you left.

Do you know that the idea that I already knew back then, the connection. Is it a gift to you that I might give back at some point or make me very, very happy? I wish that all the women in the world could be as happy as I once was for just a few minutes. It's enough for a lifetime! I thank you!

I often think about your words. They still ring in my ears today. Words whose meaning I didn't understand at the time. I couldn't do it either. You pointed the meaning of your thoughts and feelings then. And I hear the shrill ringing of the phone in the night and then your voice. How many times have I experienced this, a hundred times I have tormented myself with it.

I was afraid I wouldn't be able to help you. The word in general - no, the concept of fear - how different it appears. How many fears have I endured for you? I think you have to be afraid in order to be able to love. When you “have yourself again,” you know what a gift you have. Fear and love - two completely different words. And yet they belong together. I think of your words:

"The most important thing in life is living and sometimes I think we are already dead and we just don’t know it yet!”

That was four years ago in Milan.

I didn't want to understand your words, I couldn't understand how you - just now so unspeakably satisfied - came to this outburst. All I knew was that the fear that was almost squeezing my throat at that moment would never leave again.

And then everything came at once.

It was at this time that I learned to value minutes. I know how much you still have in seconds and that two or three words can be the greatest treasure in the world. Because they can take away the fear and tension and give happiness and satisfaction.

Just a few words... and yet they are the most important thing in life.

Why am I writing to you? Maybe to relieve myself. Maybe also to free myself from the pressure that rests on me. It feels so good to say everything and say everything you would never say!

My thoughts are with you more than ever and it is so difficult to always be composed and maintain my composure. How often do I ask myself: “What’s all this for?"

It has become so pointless and everything is so empty. Tears are the only salvation. They help, as grotesque as that may sound.

How many times have I read your letters. I'll know them by heart soon. It's the few moments when I'm happy, as always, when my thoughts are with you.

I will never forget any of your words. Your gestures are familiar to me and your fear is also clear to me.

I could paint your face with my eyelids closed - if I had the talent.

I thank you for everything! I will always think of our melody: "Love is here to stay for ever - love is imperishable!"

It will be so!

Please, teach me to live on.

Good night

My love

My love forever

[jesterjaxx]

I was drawing duntrent and halfway though had a Tachycardia attack so im blaming this drawing for it

[thequeenwechoose]

Daemon Targaryen Week 2023

Day 3: Favorite Quote