#of ruins and restoration

[crackinglamb]

WIP Wednesday

Tagged by @anneapocalypse, @theluckywizard AND @effelants. Heck, okay, okay! 🥰

Tagging @bogunicorn, @espressocomfort, @serial-chillr, @mogwaei, @bdafic and @about2dance. No pressure.

I've dragged OR&R out of storage recently and realized 'hey, this is pretty good, where's the rest OP?' So in an effort to get my brain back into Lark space, have a bit of spicy. This is just for you, Effe, since we were just talking about it.

Hawke stood sheepishly at the top of the stairs. He was sporting a black eye, a shiny burn across his bicep and an apology in his expression.

She gave him a look over her paperwork and then went back to it without letting him speak. He settled himself onto the sofa at the far end of the chamber and watched her as he had the first night they'd spent together. In some ways, nothing had changed. In others...

Well...

The candle was guttering by the time she finished and she looked up to see Hawke still sitting there. She lit a fresh taper and carried it to the sofa, setting it down on the table there. Then she crawled into his lap, her short legs barely bending around his larger ones.

“Don't tell me who won,” she murmured. “Don't make me choose.”

“I won't,” he promised.

They stripped in silence, baring their skin in place of their souls. Lark muffled her hiss as he entered her against his lips and his broad hands held her tight. She knew he would leave imprints of his fingers on her body and didn't stop him. The sofa squeaked under them, making them both smile in memory, but no words were exchanged. The pleasure crested like a rolling wave and still they did not speak. Even after, when they were sweating and gasping, their foreheads bent together. Lark closed her eyes and wished her life had fewer complications to it. She imagined that Hawke felt the same.

Nothing to be done about it, they tacitly agreed. Nothing but to take what the other offered and be grateful. She took his hand and led him to bed and they began all over again.

[marzipanandminutiae]

"we bought this Victorian house and opened up the interior, adding lots of overhead lights and pewter walls-"

biting you killing you biting you killing you biting you killing you

[strangerathecinema]

one of my favorite things about bojack horseman is that the show will end with the most depressing, heartbreaking, gut wrenching, emotionally devastating scene you’ve ever seen in your entire life then it immediately cuts to the absolute banger that is back in the 90’s by grouplove

[fandom-geek]

btw, the violinist in tmp 4? he's probably james smithson, of "founder of the smithsonian institute" fame

so what do we know about our violinist? he grew up in alnwick abbey, he was illegitimate and had legitimate full siblings, a father "certain of his celestial significance", and he has a nephew to whom he leaves his violin

and smithson? well, his father restored alnwick abbey in the 1750s, which was in ruins up until then. smithson was the only illegitimate child of any of the dukes there in the 1700s, which is when the statement is set

smithson also left his estate to his nephew after his death, with the condition that his fortune would establish the smithsonian institute if his nephew died without any children.

here's a point of divergence, however. in our timeline, smithson was a chemist and mineralogist. in tmagp's timeline, he was a violinist. however, as u/New_Helicopter836 pointed out to me on reddit, when smithson's body was disinterred by andrew graham bell, his right little finger was such that it suggests he played "the harpsichord, the piano, or a stringed instrument such as a violin"

looking at smithson's life, he left for university in 1782, so it's likely that tmagp 4 is set around the same time. it might be a bit earlier since the royal court orchestra moved from mannheim to munich in 1778 (putting smithson at about 13), it might be another point of divergence, or smithson is describing it this way to call back to its earlier significance. i'm not sure, but it's weird either way.

all that said, i'm not terribly sure why smithson describes his father (sir hugh smithson/percy, duke of northumberland) as "certain of his celestial significance", especially when the only other time he says celestial is to describe the violin's music. the user i mentioned before found that sir hugh, a major patron of architectural projects, had an observatory built, but i find smithson's language too specific. is his father an avatar too? mannheim is only a bit north of schwartzwald, after all, and this is about thirty years before tmag 23 where albrecht writes to jonah magnus.

let's look a little at smithson's bequest to found the smithsonian institute in the first place. smithson asked for it to be "an establishment for the increase and diffusion of knowledge among men". the magnus institute, notably, is described in the arg as a place of education, and it was founded in 1818. although smithson died in 1829 and his nephew in 1835, the original smithsonian (the columbian institute) was granted a charter by the us government in 1818.

the letter is strangely absent of any names for the violinist or his family, and i can't help but wonder if this is why. and if it is because this is smithson - is this related to why the magnus institute exists instead of the magnus archives? the smithsonian, before it was renamed, was originally granted a charter by the us govt in 1818 - the same year that the magnus institute was founded in tmagp.

this is set 30 years before we know anything of jonah magnus, at least in tmag, so is it possible that he persuaded smithson to fund his educational institute focusing on the supernatural? the changed course of smithson's life from scientist to supernatural violinist would certainly be conducive for that, not least to mention the strange absence of his fortune from his letter to his nephew.

[melveres]

letters from his Spellbinder

[drkcatt]

MY WIFE SHE IS SO BEAUTIFUL

[sincerely-sofie]

You're scared you'll never care about someone. You're scared you never have. You don't know how much love is held in your chest. You never will.

[chaosandwolves]

HAPPY TWO YEARS OF RUIN TO ALL THE DEAR HEARTS OUT THERE 😭😭😭

I can't believe we have a new post and they're working on new music omg

[villainanders]

… girls have we considered morrigan/merrill

[summeraestiva]

Just found out I can’t romance Dimitri as a male character. Devastated.

[janumun]

The way Gilbert von Obsidian has me catching my breath each single chapter like a scandalised (and extremely turned on) Victorian maiden.

[crackinglamb]

WIP Wednesday

Tagged by @fiadhaisteach, thank you lovely! 💕

Tagging @ir0n-angel, @bdafic, @pikapeppa, @autodiscothings, @demarogue, @espressocomfort, @mordinette, @rosella-writes and @wabart. No pressure!

I've now officially been working on Of Ruins and Restoration for 10 months. And it's still nowhere near ready to be posted. Oof. But, that said, I have lots to share from it.

Lark and Solas's Fade date went a little...further than a kiss, which complicated all manner of things. This is the aftermath.

---

“Where does that leave us, Solas?” Lark asked, letting the wind on her balcony whip her hair around her face. He was turned away from her, intent upon leaving, it seemed. She felt something in her chest splinter and crack. It left her wanting to gasp for air, or perhaps lash out in anger. She did neither.

I've never done that before.

I should not have let it go so far. Forgive me, Inquisitor.

That wasn't a complaint.

Perhaps not, but it was ill-considered, just the same. I should not have encouraged it.

“It would be kinder in the long run to...”

“To leave me be?”

“Yes.” His head had turned, just enough to see the point of his ear and the arch of his brow. He seemed upset, but it was aimed more at himself than at her.

“Do you think I am fragile, Pride? That I will break when it ends?”

“No.” Unspoken, but so plain she could almost hear it, was the end of that statement. But I might.

“Was it real?”

Now he turned to look at her, eyes wary, mouth firm against saying too much. His stance held all the dignity he could muster in the moment and she looked up at him while walking a coin across her knuckles. The flash of gold in the sunlight caught his attention and he watched it for the length of one pass across her fingers and back. When he lifted his head enough to shift his gaze back to her own, the melancholy was gone. No, not gone. Buried.

“It was as real as you'd like it to be.”

She bounced the coin off the back of her hand and caught it in her palm, folding her fingers over it as if she could so easily hold something far more precious. The irony wasn't lost on her.

“Then it was real. Are we damned to be fools then?”

“Yes, Inquisitor. We are.”

[wereh0gz]

Guess who's thinking up a new au to make themself sad with

[anemonator]

I’ve been reading some theories on the status of Grulovia twenty years after the deluge, and speculation seems to range from “it no longer exists” to “it got invaded again” but sometimes I think about the idea of the Grulovia that lived. The Grulovia that survived. The Grulovia that clung on by the skin of its teeth, took every bit of stolen wealth that the Maliks couldn’t take with them, and used it to rebuild. The Grulovia that beat the odds.

I can only imagine what kind of country it would be like. A country of those who stayed behind, of those who wouldn’t - or couldn’t - leave for greener pastures. A country equal parts traumatized, hopeful, and vindicitve. A country with a fear and distrust of psychics that is both deeply unfair and deeply understandable. A country trying to reinvent itself even as it’s still digging itself out of the ice, half trapped in the past and half desperately running from it.

This is all just speculation on my part, of course, but I personally think that, in a hypothetical “Return to Grulovia” storyline, a place like that makes for a much more interesting setting than an uninhabited frozen wasteland. It becomes a lot harder to confront the ghosts of your mistakes when it turns out those ghosts never actually died.

[kojiarakiartworks]

June 2012 KTM Kathmandu  Nepal Patan

© KOJI ARAKI Art Works

Daily life and every small thing is the gate to the universe ：）

[hopelesslygaysstuff]

Look at him!!!! He’s like the comics!!!