#;;Muse Things

[marigoldbaker]

another cool thing is when you devour a book over the course of a handful of hours and it fucks you up and you just have to lie on the couch feeling like your brain went swimming for too long & only just came up from under the water. art is so good

[blackkatdraws2]

[Toon x Mobster] drawn for fun, he doesn't know how to hold that thing wwwwww

[st-just]

Watching the new tasting history and very charmed by the fact that the whole Michelin Star system apparently started out as, like, a galaxy-brain marketing campaign for the concept of road trips.

[madootles]

this guy

[swordatsunset]

Oddly enough one of the most meaningful/painful parts of I Saw the TV Glow was when Owen is sitting there, watching the old tapes, someone with a family and an adulthood (or so she tells us), however small and sad that life is, and she tells us how abjectly humiliated she is rewatching them. The cheesiness of the show, its stilted and childish plots, the bad acting and bad visuals and whatever else— Owen is humiliated to have been saved by this bad TV show. And regardless of the fact that I don’t think the Pink Opaque she watches is the actual Pink Opaque that saved her, it tunes into this fascinating and essential part of living dissociated from your actual life and restored/saved/rescued by media, which is the shame of living like this. Yes, this was the thing that helped me survive; it was awful and childish and embarrassing and I can’t believe I survived it, I can’t believe I got through this period with the help of this. It’s so easy, when your life is so small, to be ashamed of your lifelines: it’s so easy to survive and look back and be horrified at how pathetic (however untrue it may be) and pitiable you were, and then, in reaction to that blinding embarrassment, lash out at your former self, try to say how much you’ve moved on (because you’re better now, of course you’re better, you don’t need to be saved by anything, right?). You loved this? The reason you’re alive is because of this? How embarrassing. How sad.

[lavend3r-stardust]

Palming their dick through their boxers so you can see them get all rilled up and hard. their breathing growing faster as they try to stifle a moan until you press your fingertips to the head, feeling their cum bead through the material, fingers ghosting the slit in their boxers and leaving them pleading for you to pull their cock out. But you glide your fingers up and down the outline of their bulge, and their head rolls back with a low, needy groan, their hips rolling upward to meet your hand

[maaikeatthefullmoon]

I’m sorry but, to me, this

does not look like an angel with no plan and no ulterior motive.

And, I think Crowley knows that. And Aziraphale knows he knows. Because they’ve known each other for aeons. Because Crowley knows his different tones of voice. Because they trust each other.

This is the face of a determined angel. And this is the face of a demon who’s still there with him.

He’s not happy about it, but he’s still there.

If he’d given up on them (on Us), he would’ve left. It’s what he’s always done before: Crowley’s been the one to turn & leave. He wouldn’t have watched Aziraphale leave if he didn’t still believe in him, in their history & their trust. He stayed.

[plaidos]

if you don’t think trans men benefit from patriarchy then you don’t think trans men are men

[metamorphesque]

"The God of Small Things", Arundhati Roy

[mrsnaildood]

Misc. CX-Tech drawings I've done throughout the year. Third piece is fanart for @toomanyteefs's fic Reclaimed.

[nothatsmi]

Guys. I've done it.

The animatic is finally here!!!! YAhooo!!

I really hope you like it. Took me something like two/three weeks on top of an insane amount of work, I don't know how I managed both-

If you want you can (re)watch it on Youtube! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mki1Vl3ylMM (yes this is self promotion)

[vaguely-concerned]

My two cents on how much of Mind!Varric is Rook’s mind trying to fill the blank space and how much is Solas actively talking through a convenient blood magic paper doll of the mind: I think it's a mix of both, a truly collaborative psychosocial horrorshow if you would, but waaaay more towards the second. It feels too directed and tactical at times to be anything else. Rook's mind is willing to go along with the denial phase as far as it can fucking carry them to not have to face the grief and regret and does its part in papering over details that don’t make any sense, the way brains will strive to create coherent meaning even out of deeply confusing input, but to my understanding it's a collaborateur in how that plays out, not the instigator or control center. Solas is using it as a path to agency and to gather insight into Rook as a person unguarded as he can't count on in his own guise. (That stoic option that leads to him being like 'oh I see you're cautiously denying me access to your inner life. well. at least you still have Varric to talk to. y'know as an outlet :)'. You absolute BITCH Solas! That alone convinced me that he HAS to have an active hand in it on some level.)

My guess is that it takes considerable effort on Solas’ part to make Mind!Varric do anything more involved or complicated than seeming to sit up in bed and give casual commentary, and that’s why he keeps having eerie five minute shallow pep talks with you before he announces he conveniently needs a nap aaanyway good luck kid you got this haha. When he’s just spouting NPC lines from his bedrest, I’m ready to believe that could be Rook’s mind being allowed to improv lines for him more freely because it’s less about Solas trying to get something out of them or working an angle and more ‘Still here! Still totally alive and fine and the mentor figure you know and love and trust :) don’t even worry about it! Thankfully there is no war in Ba Sing Sei, as we all know’ upkeep work lol. Rook’s mind is allowed to set the tone of Varric, the outlines, but not always the content. 

AND, on a (beautifully fucked up) character psychology level, I feel like Solas is indulging in actually getting to be the good supportive mentor figure to Rook with one hand to assuage the guilt he feels about what he's done -- and what he's going to do -- to them with the other. Same internal logic as he uses in Trespasser about the Qun. ‘Almost everyone is going to die from the course of action I’m doggedly pursuing eventually. But at least I can make their last years happier and freer and kinder than they would have been otherwise. and that kind of makes up for it right. a little bit. doesn't it. doesn't that make it better at least. I need that to make it better)'. Did I really take your beloved mentor and friend from you if you don’t know yet that I did? Some philosophers would argue not really! So it’s probably almost ok actually. Isn’t it even a little noble that I’m taking all this grief and guilt on myself and shielding you for now. With undertones that I’m not sure he would realize himself (and might be mortified by if he did) that he is so incredibly lonely, and even a dishonest and indirect emotional connection is more than nothing when you’re that desperate. In this setup he gets idk. Both the control he craves so incredibly badly in relationships and over himself, and the scraps, the fading afterimages, of intimacy and warmth and companionship, even second hand. The one thing Solas and Rook agree on deep deep down is that they really wish Varric weren't gone. They're handshake memeing this in the saddest and most creepy way possible.

I think an important element too is that Solas needs Rook and their team to *succeed* —  up to a certain point. He needs someone to hold the two other elven mean girls off until he can get out of here. Ideally, in a perfect world, even do all the hard work of killing them so he can swoop in at the end and do his thing when both sides are exhausted and out of resources to stop him, and then Bob’s your uncle! Same logic as he was using with Corypheus, and after that worked out so well, too! King of choosing to never learn from a single solitary mistake he’s ever made even though i fully believe he could have the capacity to Fen’Harel <3 The underlying idea isn’t flawed, you see, it was just unforeseen circumstances getting in the way. This time for sure it’ll all work out the way I cleverly imagined it in my head beforehand. Cue By Talos this can’t be happening etc. in the form of a statue almost crushing him like a bug. 

So he's providing guidance and forging Rook into a leader from two angles: one Rook might not trust, and one they probably will. Shaping them into what he needs slowly and carefully. He’s helping you hone your team into their most effective state, as he might have done with his own agents back in the day, setting up his chess pieces even if he has to squint through two glimpsed realities to do it haha. Pincer maneuver of an insidious stealth mentor you never asked for. Also… at one point mind Varric gives you a whole little monologue about how Solas' problem is that he’s always seen his interpersonal connections as flaws and see where it’s landed him, all alone and the worst part? it hasn’t even worked. it’s all been for nothing he’s back where he began with nothing to show for it but his mistakes. Like...that has such strong 'uh okay happy to play your therapist from two rooms away here what the fuck kind of traumadump is this' energy to me, I’m not sure Rook like. Thinks that much about Solas as a private person. So much of Solas' self-loathing and futile insights into his own flaws seem to shine through in Mind!Varric's dialogue all the time — I just can't believe that there's no guiding hand behind it as it were. 

Most of all. I feel like people underestimate the degree to which Solas is incredibly funny. As in, he has a very consistent and recognizable sense of humour. It’s one of my very favourite things about him. We must remember — it is crucial that we always keep in mind — Orlesian accent and wig Solas from May The Dread Wolf Take You (my beloved, the explanation for why I love this dude even with the. All of the everything else. No one does it quite like him). He is not at all above doing things or adding little flourishes for his own obscure amusement, in fact that seems to me to be one of his most consistent traits. The Randy Dowager Quarterly comment Varric has? The ‘Maybe this is the Dread Wolf’s revenge. Forcing us to house sit for him’ thing? To Me this is 100% Solas amusing himself in his boring Fade jail surrounded by the screaming hellscape of all his regrets. Source: it came to me as divine revelation through pure vibes trust me bro 

If nothing else I find it much more narratively interesting personally if the connection between Rook and Solas really is that defenselessly intimate and entwined (and so unbalanced!), and the sense of violation and invasion and betrayal afterwards consequently all the more nauseatingly intense. Even if you kept him at arm’s length in the open, he’s been under your skin the whole time, looking around, gathering what he needs to destroy you, wearing the face of a friend. Regretfully, probably, but choosing to do it every step of the way anyway. (Sound familiar, Inquisitor? Solas doesn’t have that many tricks when you actually look at it, he keeps returning to old tried and true ones like a dog with a bone haha.) Maybe he even genuinely meant some of it as mercy, which only makes it so much worse. It makes his sin against his own core principles of autonomy and the freedom of all beings in mind, spirit and body so much more juicily grave if it’s something he pursues actively and consistently, rather than it half-falling into his lap as a happy accident mainly orchestrated by Rook’s own subconscious. Solas, too, is at his very lowest point, the closest to giving in and becoming his own antithesis fully that he’s ever been, and it makes the choice of whether you still reach out your hand to him one last time or not all the more impactful and difficult.

[antlergrave]

he has me on an excruciating chokehold please help

[niechys]

My hand slipped on this

I use @keferon 's design for obvious reason.

At the end of the day. I like doing manga : P

I swap the dialogue a tiny bit just to get the impact, I guess....

out take under cut

At first I was gonna do the "oh no he's hot" thing. But as I draw I think it's more funny if Aid just say it out loud.

I also still love it that he punch Vortex XDDD

[idliketobeatree]

i just know for a fact that charles has a tragic, chronic giggler disease in bed. like, yes of course, crying during sex beautiful and true, but have we ever considered him smiling so widely that they literally cannot proceed with anything, because edwin keeps asking him "what made you laugh this time? what is so hilarious?", and charles needs to duck his head because how can he explain that he's incandescently happy and it's not going away. "sorry we can't kiss, i can't control my joy long enough to relax my mouth. oops." and he's like "okay, okay, i got this, for reals this time"; it takes edwin palming both of his cheeks to pull charles in and charles just. grins. again. teeth clinking in the middle. he would be mortified if this was anyone else or if edwin decided that's enough and maybe we should play cluedo instead.

he's doing neither, because edwin's a good person like that. he finds a way to tickle him along the sides so that charles has a reason to have a chuckling fit at least.

and it must have been a complete shock to edwin too. if he dared to imagine it at all, he never would've guessed intimate relations could be so... freeing. that you can laugh yourself to tears and still keep going, that your lover can have such a wonderful time exploring everything unknown about you that he's glowing inside and out. from what he's gathered, sex is supposed to bring a certain level of seriousness and it's like, the exact opposite with charles— frankly, it's just more of charles, everything about him distilled and intensified, his normally warming smiles are blinding now, the way his limbs move thrice as graceful as when he's on a case. you know edwin has a list of favourite charles sounds, and somewhere near the top lands the breathy, unabashedly happy huff which morphs into a quiet moan by the end. he loves it. he'd be lacking without it. edwin is the luckiest ghost on earth, it seems.