cobaltash

[cobaltash]

Every now and then some discourse pops up around a queer ship consisting of a pair of fictional characters who are not blood related, but refer to themselves as "brothers" or "sisters," or are in some way, according to the fandom, "sibling-coded."

Every time I see that discourse, all I can think about are the very real queer men I once knew, who, before their deaths, lived their lives posing as "stepbrothers." The only way to avoid suspicion for being two older unmarried men living together in a rural conservative area was to pretend they were from the same family, even though the truth was that they were lovers.

They were never out in life. Their relationship was a strict secret to nearly everyone. They never knew that I knew, and sometimes it fucks me up inside that they never got to come out to me. It fucks me up that they had to hide behind a fake "brotherly" relationship for their own safety. It fucks me up to look at a gravestone that reads "beloved brother" and know what it really means, and what it could have said if they'd lived under different circumstances.

In another world, they could have been husbands, but they never had the opportunity. The world will remember them as brothers, because, even in death, that is what was safest.

The freedom to declare queer love openly is something that not everyone has. And I think more people could stand to remember that.

[cobaltash]

Falling back to my comfort zone, drawing profiles. To be honest, didn’t expect to render Ashton but here we are.

💥  [Ko-fi | Redbubble | Twitter | Youtube | INPRNT] can be found in pinned post.    

[cobaltash]

Fenris stays silent, just running his fingers over Hawke’s letter.

[cobaltash]

kiss from above!? ꒰ ♡ ꒱

[cobaltash]

✨HORSES STUDIES ✨

I wish I could live in mountains with a horse and some cats (3 or 4, maybe) without worrying about money. Yeah…

[cobaltash]

"There I was, so covered in prickle-burrs I stuck to everything I touched. Lucanis was nothing but mud from the ears down. Catarina just stared speechless." — 'The Wake', Mary Kirby

I love two (2) disaster cousins.

[cobaltash]

Imagine being one of Emmrich’s students.

You go back to Treviso to make sure your family is ok and you see your esteemed, mid-50s professor ziplining across the city rooftops like a complete maniac.

He’s jingling like a walking bazaar while he’s ziplining because apparently half of Thedas’s gold is hanging off him, and he’s casually hanging out with one of the deadliest Antivan Crows and some decades-younger absolute snack who is constantly batting their eyelashes at him.

How do you even attend his lecture after that

[cobaltash]

[cobaltash]

A blade sharpened all these years

[cobaltash]

pride, fierce as fire.

[cobaltash]

[cobaltash]

your protector.

[cobaltash]

Commission of Fen'an and Freya Marin for @arthrmorgann!!

commission info

[cobaltash]

The Weave

—

I’ve had a couple people ask for prints so I made a preorder! I’ll have prints with me at c2e2 as well but the shop will be stocked next week! Shop link is in my bio.

[cobaltash]

“Etymologically,” she explained as she drew her sword along the whetstone, “the word ‘paladin’ means, ’an officer of the palace’.”

She tested the blade’s sharpness, and bisected a single hair plucked from behind his crown, before adding, “a monarch is not himself the palace, of course.”

[cobaltash]

One of the best things about doing research is when you turn up an account of a bunch of people fighting very intensely over something that's objectively very low stakes

[cobaltash]

I think people would armchair diagnose bad people with cluster B disorders much less if psychiatric disorders hadn't all been given names by ableists who of course picked the traits most unberarable to "sane" people to name them rather than, you know, the ways it affects the people that have them. It's like, when doctors are all "this disorder gives you extremely low self esteem. and it's called the Selfish Fucking Asshole Disorder" or "this disorder makes you want to die so bad. and it's called the Hysteric Bitch Disorder" or "this disorder disconnects you from your peers. and it's called the Insane Evil Cunt Disorder" and so on and so forth, so of course you have people going "oh, this person is a selfish fucking asshole, they MUST have Selfish Fucking Asshole Disorder! this further proves that all people with this disorder are like that in the first place!" Do You See It