notyourparadigm

[notyourparadigm]

red lyrium

[notyourparadigm]

he could've just named the horse. seems like they weren't doing a whole lot in that desert. he had time

[notyourparadigm]

two types of chefs

[notyourparadigm]

when god closes a door you reach your little paws under it and go mrrwwaaaooow mmreeaaow

[notyourparadigm]

Frodo’s fate is no longer in our hands.

[notyourparadigm]

[notyourparadigm]

got tagged by @ripflemeth for this game about a poll of my 5 all time favourite characters, I've got way too many faves so instead gonna narrow it down to a theme:

[notyourparadigm]

Why is Lucanis The "Mage Killer"?

Mage Killer means something SPECIFIC in Dragon Age. This is like having a prison warden companion called "The Warden."

We had an entire comic series literally called Magekiller (one word, à la Dread Wolf vs Dreadwolf I guess) about one.

It's not just "anyone specialized in killing mages". It's a very specific person. Marius is sometimes just called perrepatae, or just "the Mage-Killer", because that's who he is.

Or, to put it in Marius' own words...

It ain't just a title you slap onto anyone. Unless Lucanis trained with a perrepatae, then we have some talking to do.

[notyourparadigm]

the duke fraldarius' birthday! 🗡️☁️

[notyourparadigm]

[notyourparadigm]

Close your tired eyes

[notyourparadigm]

Another really old painting I finally managed to finish! This one is loosely based on this scene (as I painted it, it kinda turned into its own thing lol):

Sakura: It's so dark and g-gloomy here... It's kind of scary, really. Takumi: If you need to, you can hold on to my arm. Sakura: Th-thank you... Takumi: We're pretty deep in the forest now. This place is practically a maze.

(Chapter 11: Mutual Enemies - Fire Emblem Fates Revelation)

I really like Takumi and Sakura supports and interactions!

[notyourparadigm]

Can I please get Miklan teaching Sylvain how to clean a lance, or some other nice brotherly thing, for the drawing requests?

'you're doing it wrong, sylvain.' (6)

is this brotherly enough? i can't really draw miklan being gentle. though i like to think the gautier brothers shared a few good moments in what was, most of the time, a very very difficult relationship. and that, i think, would only make sylvain more messed up.

[notyourparadigm]

Small of foot, big of heart 🦕💖

[notyourparadigm]

I feel like there's also something to be said about lore vs gameplay in terms of that, yes in DAO we have skills like Animate Dead and Death Hex and whatnot that are all in the school of Entropy and accessible to us as apprentices, but I don't think that's really indicative of what apprentices are taught. I feel like a lot of apprentices and enchanters wouldn't learn those spells, nor be encouraged to practice them by default. Apprentices are about learning how to control their magic above all else, and using it for the betterment of society, not to harm others.

I imagine a lot of the schools of magic are taught from a theoretical perspective, much like we in school learn a lot of dangerous chemistry and physics without ever doing it ourselves in labs. You can learn how acids and bases work and mix without actually handling them yourself. So all apprentices know what the different schools of magic are, principles surrounding them, perhaps some basic spells or ideas that connect them... but aren't necessarily being encouraged to cast the more violent or harmful spells. How to safely cast and conjure fire? Good practical skill, yes. How to drain life from another being? That's something you need to learn the theory of only.

As harrowed enchanters, I think it's very much implied most spend their time focusing on research and practice in specific fields. And so then, if you're an enchanter who specifically wants to work in the field of Entropy Spells, you presumably would work much like real universities and need to write up a research proposal (which is the case with the debacle in the Magi Origin of needing permission for the Rod of Fire, and one option being Torrin wanting you to write up a proposal for what you'll be doing in order to be trusted with the dangerous object). This would, presumably, also include what it is you are wanting to study and what tools or subjects (if any) to test on— and I'm sure the more "dubious" spells would require a lot more compelling proposal to be approved, especially if the magic looks maleficar-y.

But yeah, TL;DR — I don't think the average apprentice needs live subjects to test on when they're simply learning how to control their magic. Harrowed enchanters doing research into different schools and spells would likely be granted permission to test on live subjects— perhaps people in some contexts, as needed to test psychological spells for example— if they justified it as a needed part of relevant and helpful research, much like how we require sufficient justification for doing studies with live test subjects IRL. Easy to be approved for human test subjects to test soothing and calming spells. Harder to justify to your First Enchanter why you want to learn how to make living beings explode from the inside out, and what good that research does for people.

what do circle mages practise on, anyway? or, the real question: who do they practise on? i’d say healers and necromancers and the like could practice on corpses but i veryyy much doubt the chantry lets them have, you know, a supply of corpses. that’s a pretty obvious no-no. it’s circle mages having to be battle ready with no experience that gets to me. i guess you have to use each other, right? you probably have to start cutting people open to practise healing (with experienced supervision, of course) but oh man does that look like blood magic. (you begin to see why spirit healers are so specifically prevalent in one of the more lenient circles.) and you probably have to cast at each other to figure stuff out, especially complex and detailed work. if i was a student i’d sign up to be an experimental sleep spell target so fast. knock me the fuck out entropy kids. i don’t know what you do about primal spells in a locked tower but the fact that in the mage origin they’re practising fire spells in the library does not fill me with wild confidence for the level of health and safety