#s: the moment i knew

[dasketcherz]

headcanon that Varian picks up on a few ingavarrian swears solely cuz he hears Hugo mutter them all the goddamn time. Does he know what it even really means in slang terms? Who knows—but it totally takes Hugo off guard to hear the other alchemist say it out loud directly at him one particular time when he was exceptionally pissed at his lil shit antics. He truly never fails to surprise the blond

[remyfire]

I really enjoyed the persistent headbutting and BJ really not trying all that hard to get away. Cat Hawk continues to be real and true.

[shenzhiheng]

Miss S 旗袍美探 | Episode 4

[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.

[stevethehairington]

okay so it wouldn't be like a DIRECT au of it, just like a heavily inspired by, but BUDDIE TWISTER/TWISTERS AU:

so. buck is a storm chaser. he's got his team, him and a few others, and then abby, his girlfriend. they're working on trying to find a way to tame a twister — to get it to stop before it can start enough to do it's damage. they think they've finally got it, only when they go to put it into test there is a horrible accident and buck loses the whole team, except abby. the two of them are the only survivors. and it is DEVASTATING, but buck is like at least abby and i can lean on each other in our grief, we can get through this together. only abby quits. she quits stormchasing then and there and she leaves, just disappears, leaving buck alone with his grief. (if we want to be Extra Angsty, perhaps she even leaves with some sort of comment that implies she blames him for what happened).

so buck quits too — only it's not a permanent quit, of course. his sisters boyfriend, chimney, is a stormchaser, and when bucks home visiting maddie one day, chimney is there and he's talking about his teams plan (maybe his team was also after the same sort of twister tamer thing — maybe even based off of bucks teams initial research) and he's asking buck about it and buck hasn't thought about this stuff in a while (lies; he's thought about that incident every day since it happened.) but like enough time has passed that talking about it with someone else who's enthusiastic about the research rather than just interested in the tragedy of it all, starts to excite him a little too. and chimney tells him he should come with, when he and his team head out in a week. and after some Thinking and some encouragement from maddie, buck agrees and goes with chimney.

and so buck joins the 118 — consisting of chimney and hen and bobby (and maybe ravi too bc i love ravi okay). and it's good. they're a great team, brilliant, and they're all about helping people too. like, yes, their research is important to them, and they're fighting tooth and nail to achieve their goal, but they're put that on pause if there's even a chance for them to go help people evacuate or find shelter or clean up in the aftermath — and that's something buck really loves about the team. bc that's all he wants to do, help people. so buck fits right in with them and it's. it's fun, again. he did miss this.

and, of course, the 118 has a riiiiiival team — another group of stormchasers who are ALSO trying to find a way to stop the twisters before they can do their damage. they're both close, so it's kind of like a competition between them, which team will capture success first? but this team (not really sure who it'll consist of yet) but im undecided on if eddie would be the leader of the group or if he's just a team member, but. eddie dia,z with his sweeeeet texan twang, and his big cowboy hat and his flashy belt buckles and his charm, he's there. and their team is popular in the stormchasing world, and everyone's eyes are on them too.

but like it's always those two — the 118 and eddies team — at the forefront of it all, they're always chasing the same storms.

and both teams are on the cusp of a big storm, but the 118 catch wind that there's a small town in the path of this one, and they decide instead of following the twisters they're going to head to the town to help the people there. and they end up veering off the path and eddie notices and then HE finds out about the town and he tells his team they need to go help too but his team is like dude NO we gotta get to the twister, the 118 are gone so this is our chance to be the ones to test our tornado tamer solution, WE could beat them. and like eddies team has clearly lost the whole point of all of this — to save people. but HE hasn't, so he goes rogue and he heads to the town instead, where he finds the 118 and they're a bit wary of him at first bc it feels out of character for someone from his team to be here doing this rather than chasing the storm, but at this point im thinking buck and eddie have already had some conversations (MAYBE eddie has actually saved buck once already too so like that trust between them is already built) and buck just immediately starts shouting instructions and eddie falls into line with them and the two of them work flawlessly together and the rest of the 118 is like yeah okay he's good people and they welcome him in too.

and maybe eddies team runs into trouble too and eddie catches wind of it (he's still connected to their radios maybe?) and he's like fuck we gotta help them too so he and buck break off to go help that team (bc even if they're the 118's rivals and even if they're on the verge of the breakthrough the 118 has been chasing too, that doesn't matter rn. what matters is saving as many lives as possible) so the two of them break off to go help and they DO but eddies teams solution DOESNT work, but they took the 118's truck that was loaded with THEIR solution so buck and eddie let that loose and THAT DOES end up working and so buck and eddie save eddies team AND the town AND each other.

and, OF COURSE, through all of that buck and eddie fall in love, and in the end eddie ends up joining buck's team, and they chase storms together, and when they have bad days, when they have close calls, they're there for each other and they're not going anywhere, and they ALWAYS have each other's backs <3

[gelarshiesprofruitboarder]

the comics sure are. interesting.

[urfavisananimegirl]

walter white from breaking bad

Walter Hartwell White (Breaking Bad) is an Anime Girl!

[ifeelprettyandwittyandgay]

this is when you know shits getting good

[mamorigami]

i think its so inevitable for the team to take up a 100 yr quest at SOME point in time so i might keep the idea that they're doing it, but i won't involve the story & plotlines in the current series. do u get me.

[un-pearable]

Civil War (2024) is a mechanically good film but the commitment to not stoking real world political tensions in a movie about the potential consequences of those tensions leaves a gaping hole in its worldbuilding and reduces its impact to just. a series of melodramatic images of “what if the bad war happened here”. completely declawing any potential impact it could have had for the sake of not being controversial

[our-king-bree]

when Nick said that he wanted to break the cycle and Sel was like and how exactly do you plan to do that? ready to kill Nick on the spot at the mere insinuation of him harming Bree? yeah that right there it's growth

[remyfire]

Did you know that they love her? 😭 💞

[hamletthedane]

We don’t talk enough about how Shakespeare straight up wrote Iliad fanfiction that was filled with so much deep Homeric lore and philosophical discussion of the nature of power, it put Tudor audiences straight to sleep

[legionofpotatoes]

nimona thoughts! still my top movie of the year so far!!

been thinking about how to frame my thoughts on this gem, and I ultimately arrived at a bit of a pretentious jumping-off point. but honestly, my favorite stories are always the ones that end up demoting the whats, the hows, and sometimes even the whos in service of the whys. it's the hardest question and context to tackle in any story, and it's worth interrogating the most in order to find any true meaning, any connection at all to what's told.

nimona shows exactly why walling yourself away from the "others" isn't good enough. it shows why you have to do the work and see them.

not just that it is dogmatically "the right thing to do". not just depicting what certain systemic injustices are, how they are deployed, and who they are targeted at. but the why. that simplest, purest shape of questioning an injustice dating back to your gentlest time as a child, when you were vulnerable, naive, and truly curious in the best possible faith. the question you would always ask was why.

you are picking up a sword to threaten the unknown. you've been told the whos and whats. you parse it thus. but you don't know the why. you are watching this happen on TV, contextualized, simplified, dramatized. you are connecting the dots. understanding the why.

nimona painstakingly drills down on that why. arduously, achingly digging past the institutions of fear fed by cycles of indoctrination and right down to the core of it. packaged in a simple-to-parse fantasy world built with deft, elegant metaphors and archetypes that immediately fall into place and make sense to a person of any age.

it is animation as a medium and fantasy as a genre both working in concert. a fun and colorful romp that ends on a gentle embrace of reassurance that tells children - both literal and the ones buried deep inside adults - that their first question to the world was always the correct one. because it was the kindest.

[skunkes]

OMG you like moral orel?? who is your favorite character :]c *Blinking and fluttering my eyelashes beautifully*

i watched the whole thing in a few days, ended yesterday. My faves are nurse bendy and joe (together and as a unit), stephanie (individually and then as a unit with the reverend but i dont like him individually), + danielle, of course

[villain-in-love]

So. The kinda-kidnapping incident. The one I talked about in the last ask.

So, maybe three years since they first met, Thistle no longer wants to kill Kiera. Our boy is in love and desperately wants to have her by his side. The problem is: she’s still highly dangerous. So his solution is to seal away her magic and lock her up in his house.

He thought about it for a long time, trying to rationalize why would he need to execute this idea that spontaneously appeared in his head – why would he actually need Kiera? How is she useful to the Golden Kingdom? I think this is the time when Thistle finally admits to himself that he’s in love with Kiera, and perhaps there is one selfish thing he wants to do. He still came to a conclusion that he’s doing a good thing – he wants to take care of his beloved and keep her safe from danger, is there’s anything bad about it? …that, and he also wants her to become less dangerous to his dungeon and the Golden Kingdom.

I think that if he somehow managed to trick the Winged Lion to seal it into the book, he should be able to do so with Kiera. Though the plan he came up with flusters him to no end, this is his best idea. It relies a bit on a shock factor, and for the first time in a while, he will need his ritual knife (he most likely never uses actual weapons, but Marcille also suddenly pulled out a knife when she had to perform a bloody ancient magic ritual. So I guess Thistle would also have a blade for similar purposes).

The plan is to throw Kiera into the earlier prepared magic circle during another fight. Pin her to the ground with the knife, and kiss her to distract her. While she’s dazed from a kiss and pain combined, get away from her and read the incantation.

It worked, but it was stressful – in Thistle’s calculations, if he didn’t do things swiftly enough, she really would kill him in retaliation with his own ritual blade. She dropped to the ground powerless mere seconds before she could get out of the magic circle.

When she woke up, she was in an unfamiliar dusty mess of a house, with a wound on her palm by which she was pinned completely healed, and all of her weapons missing. Lying in bed with a blanket put over her, no less. The situation was shocking, but it was enough to look at the books and the clothes that were lying around to figure out who is the owner of the house.

In the process of figuring what has happened, she found out that she is also magically tied to this house, and physically cannot walk further than a specific perimeter around it.

It's been a long while since the last time Kiera was this angry. Absolutely livid and murderous, cursing Thistle out in every language she knows, and trying to kill him. However, without her magic and regeneration factor, she can’t quite keep up with a dungeon lord, especially the one who is an experienced mage. The fact that Thistle stayed completely calm while deflecting her attacks, and was just trying to convince her to calm down without hurting her made Kiera feel even worse.

The first week was the most intense, obviously. Then Kiera calmed down a little bit and decided that she might as well take this as a chance to get more information on Thistle, since she is obsessed with him as well, at the end of the day… also he has an entire small library in his house, with books you won’t be able to find anywhere anymore. That's an opportunity it would be a shame to miss.

She proceeded to thoroughly investigate his house.

And so, for some time they settled in a bizarre parody of a domestic life. Thistle is happy his beloved is by his side and he can take care of her, Kiera is going crazy stuck in one place without being able to run around and fight. She was seriously doing her best to be a nuisance. But what really takes her out is how sweet and attentive Thistle was towards her now, when he finally has things going his way and he doesn’t consider her to be that much of a threat. Even her regular attempts to murder him don’t help with that.

One specific moment I imagine is a scene in which Kiera is cooking something for herself (still debating whether to share with Thistle), and accidentally cuts her hand with a knife, since she’s not used to cooking. She stares in horror at the wound that doesn’t just immediately heal, so Thistle notices that something is wrong. He takes her hand in his to heal it, and then remarks that from now on, if she accidentally injures herself again, she can always ask him to heal her. Kiera is both struck with existential dread at these words, but also can’t stop thinking about Thistle holding her hand gently to heal her.

I think Kiera will spend about a half of the year in his house before she designs a (bloody and unpleasant) ritual to get her magic back and breaks out. Thistle will be heartbroken and maybe a bit mad, because to him it felt like a declaration of “I don’t love you back”, like he was truly abandoned, she doesn’t want him and doesn’t want a happy life with him, and it just doesn’t feel the same now, to be alone, and he’s also so damn offended…

Overall, I created this situation for a temporary change of pace. To see how they would function in a different environment/situation. Also, most of their interactions happen how Kiera wants it – she prefers this game of fighting and running around, stalking and trying to kill each other. So I decided that it’s only fair to do things that way Thistle wants, for once.

Also both got hurt emotionally – Kiera was starting to fall back into depression while stuck in Thistle’s house, going mad from powerlessness and boredom. And after she runs away, it’s time for Thistle to feel terrible.