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You’re my present this year.

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Wuvy, how we all love you and your jealous little heart.

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jessica kringle is a baddie 🫶🏻

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Me, a sweet summer child: Oh cool. They say that there’s more backstory for Felassan and Isseya in the Dragon Age books.

Also me, now 1/4 of the way through Last Flight:

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ive forgotten the origin of "she blank on my blank til i blank" and i dont even begin to know how to look it up

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If you're reading this...

go write three sentences on your current writing project.

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Finding out that Lancelot was apparently the invention of a french writer is absolutely hysterical to me. 12th century french poet sitting around reading arthurian romances and thinking "yeah these stories are pretty good but I think what they really need is a french guy who shows up and fucks arthurs wife"

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you cannot fix that blond man please step away and let the professionals take over

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omg

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You could tell me that Illario and Elek Tavor are long-lost twins, and I would believe you.

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Veilguard Spoiler (Cute!)

Just visited Holden and his daughter Mila in Hossberg and you know what banter I just got?

Holden asks his daughter if they’ve earned a treat that day, she of course agrees and the dad essentially says “Good, cause Rook’s Crow friend brought me some cioccolata calda.”

Lucanis went out of his way to purchase, package and hand deliver luxury coco (you know it’s not cheap, he’s Rockefeller level rich) to a child he met exactly one time in the middle of a battle to thank her for saving their lives. What a sweetheart. What an angel. Pookie bird. Love of Rook’s life.

I can’t not marry this caffeine-addicted bird man.

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best

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my entire brain right now is just maric, asking duncan to send a letter to fiona, not really expecting a reply but unable to stop thinking about her a few months pass, and he gets a letter back. it's short, but it's still fiona, and and he's in a good mood for days. loghain doesn't ask why.

letters becoming a regular thing, because letters are harmless. they don't use their real names, unless someone intercepts. but it feels a little like...something. friendship, at the very least. a balm to a couple of weary hearts who are tired of pain.

a year passes. alistair is nearly two. eamon says he's well, but hasn't said anything else and maric doesn't ask because it hurts too much. fiona doesn't ask, either, but he can tell when it's hurting her by the shape of the silences in her letters. sometimes he goes a long time, without a new one.

when three months pass and he hasn't heard from her, he begins to pester Duncan for news the younger man doesn't have. when it turns into four, he starts looking for a way to rearrange his schedule, to ride for weisshaupt if necessary.

just as he's about to leave, he recieves the news that she's been kicked out of the Grey Wardens. she's headed back to the Circle. he writes one, two, three responses, and they all end up in the wastebasket. what if...what if she came to Ferelden? Surely Kinloch Hold would be kinder to her than Montissimard. he could...they could...

but he can already hear her answer.

you know I can't. so instead, the fourth and final reply, the one he sends, just says "what do you need?"

"write me a letter, you ridiculous man" the letters have grown longer and more frequent, now that she has time she isn't giving to the grey wardens. he complains bitterly in coded language that the landsmeet fights him every time he tries to improve life in the alienage; she responds with counsel and a badly drawn caricature of arl kendells. she tells him all about how Orlesian politicking infects even the Circles of Magi, he responds with a limerick about an Orlesian lord losing his pants that has her snorting her morning coffee.

sometimes, his words grow a little too tender, and its weeks before he hears from her again.

it's another year before he sees her in person, and that is entirely by accident. the empress has invited him to a ball, and he makes an appearance despite the fact that the palace at Val Royeaux fills him with a dull anger he's never quite able to shake. he finds himself ditching the crowd and the mask for a cloak and hood, just to get some fresh air and clear his mind. it's an objectively bad idea. the king of ferelden unguarded in val royeaux is somewhat akin to leaving a rabbit unguarded in a kennel full of hungry dogs. what's more, as he's walking the grounds, he finds himself staring at the long stake on the palace gate, and realizing what it was for. or what it had been for, once. "not a party person, I see,"

he turns, and there she is. for all the ornate gowns and elaborate hairpieces he's seen tonight, fiona in simple green velvet and her dark hair caught up in a comb is the loveliest thing he's seen. even the mask is not terribly ornate, and she tucks it aside as she approaches him, her hazel eyes squinting in affection. "I - Fiona! I didn't know you'd be here." "Oh, I'm not allowed inside the palace, but even the circle has to come when the Empress calls. They have us milling about the outside. like decorations." "...well that's stupid." they laugh, for a moment, and his stomach swoops as she comes to stand close, to look at where he was looking.

"was it a very fascinating gate post?"

"ah, well-"

he means to shy away, but she tilts her head with a look of concern.

it was where they hung my mother's body when they killed her seems a little macabre, so he just says "they used to display bodies there, during the war." she seems to gather his meaning, or at least part of it, and affection for her blooms in his chest as she spins the conversation off into lighter places, telling him a story of one of the major players of her letters, a mage having an affair with not one but three different nobles, all of whom were attempting to kill each other. by the end he's laughing, and she's grinning, and he wants so badly to kiss her. he remembers the soft noises she makes when he kisses her. "no good nobles in val royeaux, I see." "well. usually. there's one, tonight."

they part when the bell rings, and he must make his way back to the ballroom lest he be considered rude, but not before he presses a key to his private room into her hand. the choice, as always, is hers. "they'll talk," she says later, as she's unbuttoning his shirt.

there are a hundred different scandals happening val royeaux tonight. they'll just have to be one of them. "let them," he says. he bends at the knee and scoops her into his arms, carrying her to the bed. later, he lets his fingers wander over the crisscross of stretch marks on her hips that weren't there the last time he saw her like this. she seems self-conscious, tries to cover herself, but he grabs her hand and kisses her. "beautiful," he murmurs. how could the proof she carried his child be anything but beautiful? "Ridiculous." It started, truly, in the depths of the Deep Roads. But if you ask Maric, that's how it started again. Letters, and a visit, here and there. Once a year, maybe twice if they're very lucky. he sends her gifts at Wintersend, and there's always a busybody or two at the Circle trying to discern the identity of Fiona's benefactor. she sends back three boxes of sweets. one for maric, one for cailan, and one - well. he always sends it to Redcliffe. it always ends with the same question, and the same answer. "you could come with me, you know."

"you know that I can't." "that doesn't mean that I'll stop asking."

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Been watching Kevin Can Fuck Himself on Netflix this week. It's a fascinating show, and easy to digest as background noise while working.

Kevin Can Fuck Himself is a serious drama sendup of the classic sitcom dynamic. It's two different shows mashed into one another.

The show's front is your typical Manchild Husband sitcom about a man named Kevin McRoberts. Every episode, he has a new wacky shenanigan to drag his wife and neighbors into, which usually blows up in his face spectacularly.

But Kevin is not the show's main character. Whenever he's onscreen, the show is lit and shot in sitcom fashion, with laugh track and applause and musical cues and all that jazz. The universe revolves around him and responds as sitcoms do to his every whim.

But this show is actually about his wife Allison. And whenever she's away from Kevin, the show changes genres to a serious drama piece. It's a show about the emotional and financial abuse of being tied down to the role of the Manchild Husband's "Nagging Wife", and more broadly the effects that his Comedic Sociopathy have on the put-upon supporting cast around him as well.

It's the story of a woman's quest to finally escape from the cage that her marriage to an impulsive, inconsiderate, and entirely self-centered piece of shit has trapped her in.