jazzmckay

[jazzmckay]

Hobie being Miles’ #1 supporter, hype man & homie 👊🏿

[jazzmckay]

[jazzmckay]

i feel like a failure im gonna [remembers that outright admitting to suicidal ideation doesn’t cohere with the rational, unaffected persona i’ve so painstakingly cultivated for myself] infiltrate the world’s most secure prison in the center of a volcano, surrounded on all sides by a boiling lake, from which no one has ever escaped previously, with no escape plan in mind, on the slight chance that my dad was taken there as a prisoner of war.

[jazzmckay]

i like to imagine she always has a dagger strapped to her thigh. and not necessarily for self defense

[jazzmckay]

Neve Week - Day 1: Investigation

[jazzmckay]

lucanis' adoring face, my beloved

[jazzmckay]

Investigation 🔍

aka some silly text posts for @datvcompanionweeks' Neve Week! ❄️💜

[jazzmckay]

happy thedasweekend! how about "kissing your lover after believing you’d lost them ." for your pairing of choice?

hi hello!! it has been literal months but here they are 🫣🫶

Lavellan and Solas for @thedasweekend

[jazzmckay]

>>I've always thought that myself. People with power never fail to abuse it. Even those with good intentions.

[jazzmckay]

in kirkwall. straight up "blowing it" and by "it", haha, well. let's justr say. The chantrey

[jazzmckay]

Elgar'nan at every turn: You would look so good kneeling before me, Rook. Can you picture it. Are you picturing it.

Ghilan'nain, bonking him with a severed darkspawn limb: FOCUS

[jazzmckay]

Additional official DA media that’s available for free

(In case there’s something here you’re not aware of, and/or want to scratch the ‘itch’ but aren’t able to buy the books and main comics etc)  ◕‿◕

Heroes of Dragon Age - freemium game for Android and iOs devices. Update: No longer available as it was shut down. The game and the characters & items etc which were in it can be read about on the Dragon Age Wiki

Hindsight - motion comic from Penny Arcade, set in the past. Video can be watched at that link

Flemeth - short story-type thing, set in the past (it’s available to read here)

Dragon Age: Origins - comic from Penny Arcade, set around the time of DAO

Morrigan - short story type thing, set before DA:O (can be read here)

Alistair - short story type thing, set before DA:O (can be read here)

Dragon Age: Journeys - singleplayer flash game, tie-in to DAO. Final 2 chapters were never released to the public. Update: No longer available from its original source as Flash died in December 2020 (you may still be able to play it now though if you download the official Newgrounds Player)

Dragon Age: The Revelation - comic jointly created by BioWare community artist Irma Ahmed and David Gaider, set during DAO

Dragon Age: Warden’s Fall - webseries from Machinima, set before Awakening

Dragon Age: Origins - Awakening - comic from Penny Arcade, set just before Awakening

Varric - short story by Mary Kirby, set before DA2

Fenris - short story by David Gaider, set before DA2

Merrill - short story by Mary Kirby, set before DA2

Isabela - short story by Sheryl Chee, set before DA2

Anders - short story by Jennifer Hepler, set before DA2

Aveline - short story by Lukas Kristjanson, set before DA2

Sebastian - short story by Jennifer Hepler, set before DA2

Dragon Age: Legends - singleplayer flash game, tie-in to DA2. Check the DA wiki page or try this for download info/instructions

Hindsight Belt - In-world lore video surrounding a belt (Hindsight), promotional tie-in to DA2

Dragon Age: Redemption - webseries with Felicia Day, set before MotA

Dragon Age 2 comic - from PennyArcade. Set during DA2

Paying the Ferryman - short story by Joanna Berry, set before DAI

Paper & Steel - short story by Joanna Berry, set before DAI

The Riddle of Truth - short story by Joanna Berry, set before DAI

The Dragon Age Keep - a free online website/application that allows you to discover, shape, and share your DA experience. It’s designed to allow players to tailor the decisions they made in DA:O, DAII and DA:I. it has a bunch of sections including tapestries of the games’ stories and a ‘world lore’ section

The Last Court - text-based browser game accessed in the Keep, set before DAI. Update: No longer available as it was deactivated on November 17th 2020. A Google Drive with screenshots of 95%+ of the game can be found here [link updated to new location 06/29/22).

The Final Conversation - short story by David Gaider, set after Halward Pavus’ death, so post-DAI but pre-Trespasser. Technically not official or canon since it was written after DG departed BioWare, but definitely worth a read/including

The Next One - short story by Brianne Battye, linked to Tevinter Nights

Ruins of Reality - short story by John Dombrow, linked to Tevinter Nights

The Wake - short story by Mary Kirby, linked to Tevinter Nights

Minrathous Shadows - short story by Sheryl Chee, linked to Tevinter Nights

Won’t Know When - short story by Brian Battye, linked to Tevinter Nights

The Flame Eternal / The Eternal Flame - short story by Sylvia Feketekuty, linked to Tevinter Nights

As We Fly - short story by Lukas Kristjanson

(Also if you have Netflix, there is an animated DA series on there called Dragon Age: Absolution that you can watch. It has 6 episodes and is set mostly after DA:I)

[jazzmckay]

Hey kid, look at me.

I want you to T-pose. Turn your right thumb up and your left thumb doen and look at your right thumb. Move your arms up and down a bit until you feel a nerve running from your armpit to your palm. Now turn your right thumb down and your left thumb up, and look at your left thumb. Keep your chest facing forward and your shoulders back. Move your arms again until you feel that nerve again. Keep alternating between these two for a minute, or look at each thumb thirty times each.

Now sit down. Put your left hand firmly under your left buttock, palm down. Keep your shoulders back and put your right hand over the crown of your head, very gently pulling it to the right. Do this for thirty seconds, then do it again but with your right hand under your right buttock.

These are stretches for the nerves in your arms, and are very good for people who sit behind a computer a lot, or fibre artists, or you name it. Do them daily. They will hurt in the beginning, but keep doing them, even after the pain has gone, or it will return and you'll have to start all over.

[jazzmckay]

evanuris imagery masterpost including datamined content, artbook content, and my own theories on what each symbol might be.

[jazzmckay]

Ok Mr. 'Disapproves of using blood magic to find my missing mom', don't pretend I don't hear you cracking jokes with Merrill all the time !!!!!

[jazzmckay]

D/s and Emotional Needs

This post is basically a transcript of a speech I give to newbies to the D/s scene all the time IRL. I figured it might be useful not only to people curious about kink IRL but also to smut writers here on the smut writing website.

For the purposes of this post, I am sending specific physical acts out of the room. Right now they don't matter, because you can meet an emotional need through any number of physical acts. So when I say that there are many ways to dom and many ways to sub, I am not referring to many kinds of physical acts. I mean that there are many emotional needs that doms and subs bring to scenes, and those can change the scene more than the choice of physical acts that will occur in that scene.

I say this to newbies to the scene because they tend to have a narrow view of the motivations and needs that bring people to D/s, biased by both the newbie's own preferences and the depictions of D/s they've seen in media. The same is true of people who write kink fic. Kink fic is very biased to a narrow subset of the wide range of emotional needs that people might bring to this kind of play.

It's really important to understand this in D/s IRL because a mismatch or miscommunication about these needs can lead to a bad scene. For example, let's take the approaches of sub-as-beloved-pet and sub-as-object. If a dom treats a sub as a beloved pet when what they really want is to be treated like an object, then a sub who went into a scene needing to be ignored, or at the very least the illusion of being ignored and disregarded, is suddenly in the spotlight of a lot of intense attention and affection. Again, I will note that both of these scenes could potentially involve the same physical acts, just approached differently. Let's say it's a service submission scene where the sub is naked and cleaning the room for the dom. Sub-as-beloved-pet would get frequent praise and lots of patiently repeated instructions, while sub-as-object would get one detailed instruction at the beginning and no reinforcement except a punishment if they get part of the instruction wrong.

I'm going to go through a bunch of different styles of dom and sub, with the emotional needs that underlie them. This list is not exhaustive. I'm sure there's more I haven't thought of or encountered, so feel free to reblog with additions. It may also be a bit dom-biased because I'm a dom, but I think that might be for the best, because the emotional needs of doms are generally less understood than those of subs.

Various consensual kinks discussed below. Kinkshamers in the notes will be blocked with extreme prejudice.

Dom-as-control: This may seem obvious or even trivial, but it shouldn't be dismissed: many doms are motivated by an emotional need to have some part of their life where they have total control over what is going to happen. Something that I love about this style of domination is that I always know exactly what will happen next (except if there's some emergency, safeword, or other issue to address.) There are no wild cards in a controlled D/s scene except for those I explicitly allow (like if I ask a sub to choose which whip I'll beat them with.) This is also a reason why I personally have a very hard time switching; I have difficulty with the uncertainty of not knowing what will happen next. It should be noted that this style of domination is fairly incompatible with the bratty style of submission, as the brat is constantly throwing wild cards into the scene.

Sub-as-blankspace: The other side of this coin is the sub who needs to not have to think anymore. They've spent all day deciding what to wear and what to eat and which toothpaste to buy and they just want to stop. This is a very common motivator. This sub needs specific and clear commands from a dom, without too many steps, or else needs to have a well-established protocol of kneeling and service that they can do by pure muscle memory. This sub does not want the dom to offer them a choice of whips they can be beaten with, because that forces them out of the blissful blankspace of not needing to choose.

Dom- or sub-as-service: The same emotional need can sometimes motivate domination or submission! Many people dom or sub out of a desire to please their partner. It's about taking on a defined role that you know will meet your partner's needs. It feels good to be needed, after all. This motivation for D/s is generally the best understood by the public, especially as a motivation for doms. It's generally more socially acceptable to want to control and torment people if you're doing it selflessly in order to please them. A big part of my motivation for making this speech to people, and for writing this post, is to point out that this is far from the only style of domination, and pleasing their subs is far from the only emotional need that doms might have.

Dom-as-whumper: I'm using this terminology because of the website I'm on. I'm not into whumpfic, but I recognize in people who have a visceral need to see their blorbos whimpering and bleeding the same need I have to tear apart a cute kitten with my bare hands, or to crush a sub beneath my booted foot. It's the cuteness aggression approach to domination: sometimes your sub is so cute your hands itch with the urge to destroy them. This is where domination and sadism bleed into each other; this style of domination does not work well for the sub who wants to submit without being hurt or humiliated.

Sub-as-object: Subs who like to be treated as furniture, robots, or objects are often motivated by a need to enjoy a sexual or kink situation while being free of attention and scrutiny. Obviously, some baseline level of attention is needed for BDSM safety; the dom needs to be able to notice if the sub is injured or upset. But beyond that baseline, it can feel very freeing for a sub to be turned on, blissed out in subspace, crying, drooling, whatever, without anyone closely watching or listening to them, so long as they fulfill whatever their purpose as an object is.

Sub- or dom-as-flex: Both doms and subs can be motivated by a need to feel competent. I definitely feel awesomely powerful and competent when I do a style of domination that requires specialized skill, such as hypnosis. Submission can also provide a feeling of competence: look how long I was able to stay kneeling on the hard floor! Look how perfectly I cleaned the room, exactly as Mistress told me to do it!

Dom-as-troll (or mad scientist): The sibling to this kind of dom is the writer who thinks "wouldn't it be fucked up if....?" and then writes a freaky nasty little horror story about it. A great thing about D/s is that you can have a thought like "wouldn't it be fucked up if I tied up my sub and then ate their favorite snack right in front of them?" and then you can just do it (provided you know your sub likes to be tied up and tormented.) Then you can find out how your sub would react to your terrible ideas and laugh evilly at the results. The emotional need being served here is the goblin part of your brain that wants to break things just to see how they shatter. All you need to do is find someone who wants to be broken.

Sub-as-brat: Brats are often discussed as a single type of sub, but in my experience, there are two rather different emotional needs that drive brats. Some people are brats because they need the assurance that they can act out all they want, and it won't derail the action; the dom is strong or skilled enough to subdue them no matter what nasty tricks their goblin brain gets up to. Other people are brats out of a need to live in a predictable and fair moral universe. Those brats want a very clear system of rules and punishments for those rules. Then they test the rules, and they get meted out exactly the punishment they were promised. Within the world of this scene, the world is fair, and the same misbehavior will always face the same consequences, something that rarely happens in the real world. These types of brats are rather different, because the first kind of brat doesn't care as much if the consequences of their misbehavior are inconsistent, while the second kind cares a lot.

Sub-as-beloved-pet: Or beloved child, if they're an ageplayer. I find that subs that like to be a beloved puppy are driven by an emotional need to be loved, treasured, and supported unconditionally, even if they make mistakes, even if they behave messily or clumsily, even if they look silly, because that's how a good pet owner should treat a pet. There might be discipline involved, but the discipline is very supportive and patient.

Dom-as-nurturer: Some doms are motivated by a need to be in a nurturing role that their non-D/s life may not allow them to fulfill. For example, a man who wants to express affection and tenderness to his partner but has a hard time doing so because of the way he was raised may be able to unlock that ability if his partner plays a sweet puppy and he's playing the puppy's doting owner. Basically, the D/s scene creates a little world and a set of roles in which it's expected and normal for the dom to be nurturing, even if that's not true for the dom outside of that scene.

Dom-as-enfant-terrible: The other side of the coin is a dom who needs to be in a role where they can be unreasonable, demanding, and selfish, a role that their non-D/s life may not allow them to fulfill. For example, a mother who spends all day thinking about her family's needs may relish the opportunity to center her own desires without worrying if she's being "too much." She can be impatient and fussy and demand the sub do things over and over until she's satisfied, all of which she can't do when she's working as a teacher or other caring role.

Dom-as-artist: I think this is a hugely under-appreciated motivator for doms. Many have a need to be creative and imaginative that they fulfill through domination. I've been to workshops and demos at kink conventions where I've been awed by another dom's fiendish creativity. I once watched a hypno dom with a sub who got off on being afraid, and he hypnotized her and crafted an extremely elaborate horror scene in the room, filling it with menacing shadows and phantasms. This is where I'm contractually obligated to link A Dom DM because this is where domination overlaps a lot with game running and game design.

Sub-as-aesthetic-object: The flip side of this coin is that many subs enjoy being an aesthetic object or canvas for a dom's art. Very often these are subs chasing a need to feel beautiful, or at least enjoyable to look at. Subs who want to be aesthetic objects may enjoy wearing special outfits during scenes, or being posed in sexy or appealing positions. Subs in this kind of scene may enjoy letting go of worrying about whether they look good to the dom, because the dom is shaping them to their own preferred aesthetic, whether that's via poses, makeup, shibari, or something else.

Sub-as-sexual-creature: A lot of subs enjoy being called sluts, offered up for free use, or otherwise being hypersexualized. Why is that? Well, our society has a lot of shame and repression around sex, and it can feel much easier to relax and enjoy sex if it's couched in the fantasy that you have no choice because you've been reduced to a purely sexual creature. The sub has an emotional need to give up responsibility for choosing to have sex and be sexual, because that responsibility is a heavy weight to carry.

Dom- or sub-as-taboo-breaker: This is a huge motivator for both doms and subs. We all live in a society, and sometimes we feel a need to break the rules of that society. Both domination and submission provide opportunities to do so. It's taboo to piss yourself as an adult, but a watersports scene creates a space where it is acceptable or even desirable for a sub to break that taboo. As a dom, I personally get a huge taboo-breaking thrill from slapping a sub across the face. There's something about the sheer disrespect of it, and the memory of being scolded for doing it as a child, that fills me with impish glee.

Dom-as-hunter/sub-as-prey: For the hunter to catch the prey, there must first be a chase, or at the very least an ambush. This need not be a literal chase (we sent physical acts out of the room, remember?) but it is a dynamic to hunter/prey-flavored BDSM: the hunter has to earn it. This fulfills an emotional need for both dom and sub: a dom who struggles with feelings of unworthiness can feel like they've earned their partner's submission, and a sub can feel that the dom cares enough to put in the effort to catch them. Hunter/prey also allows dom and sub to explore some pretty dark emotions within the safety of consensual kink, such as fear, obsession, and consumption.

Dom-as-shadow: I mean shadow here in the sense of shadow work. Many doms take inspiration from people who bullied them in school (and many subs enjoy re-enacting scenes of childhood bullying in a safe and consensual context.) There is a real emotional need served by claiming the power of those bullies for yourself. Those childhood cruelties can be utterly transformed by the change of context. For example, the catty whispers and sneers of straight girls who bullied me for being queer comes out very different when I perform those same catty sneers as a genderfucky adult.

Sub-as-lesser-being: While some subs like to be beloved pets, and others like to be disregarded objects, some like to be pond scum. There can be a real freedom that comes from occupying a role of being disgusting and horrible. Nothing good or useful can be expected of you, and nothing you do will ever earn praise, and so you're free from worrying about or pursuing any of those things. Sub-as-lesser-being is also a space to explore difficult emotions like shame and humiliation in a safe context.

[jazzmckay]