#But like. This is ultimately just waffling because the cats in canon are not written as real cats. Warrior Cats isn't really a series about

[bonefall]

I’d be REALLY wary of that idea. I know it’s not your intention but no matter how you slice it that creates a scenario where some cats are genetically superior and more civilised than others based on where they’re from, which I feel is bad even if they happen to be nice to kittypets. Really love your work but maybe consider how you’d handle that one !!

Yeah, that's exactly the reason why I tacked the big old "THIS IS NOT IN THE REWRITE" warning onto the front of it lmao.

It also creates a situation where the Clans have an actual, unfortunate REAL justification for cat eugenics, which would mix very, very badly even in situations where there is no Clan/Housecat conflict. Unless it was completely dominant and always passed on but... you see how it's already an uncomfortable idea I'd have to tack on a bunch of bandaids to.

Sometimes a thought remains just a thought exactly because you end up thinking through its implications, y'know?

[everybody-loves-purdy]

In/re waffles: This isn’t the first time the warriors wiki pixels haven’t been accurate to the description. They do this a lot actually.

Squilf is depicted ad a tabby despite not having stripes in her description. (This can arguably extend to firestar, he’s apparently seen/described as a tabby in the new ultimate guide but considering that book also says Bluestar is white with green eyes, i dont think we should take any appearances in it as canon)

rootspring and tree also have stripes for some reason, no mention of stripes in his description on the site. It’s honestly surprising to me that Bristlefrost isn’t pictured as a dilute calico.

There’s also an innumerable amount of cats depicted as lynx points despite never being described with either stripes or color spotting. Some cats who sre specifically described as tabbies are pictured as lynx point cats anyway (example, Princess)

It’s odd because there’s other sprites that follow the descriptions in the books to the LETTER (ie Spottedleaf)

Regardless of how someone feels about these design choices outside of the wiki, this is the WIKI. The point of the wiki sprites is to portray an accurate visual, not someone’s fan designs. Can you imagine if, say, the My Little Pony wiki had pictures of someone’s fan redesigns of the mane 6 up instead of an official render from the show??? The description and the sprite being contradictory is not only probably very confusing for younger fans but it’s also very irritating. It’s genuinely baffling to me how they get so granular about sourcing the written descriptions and then do this.

Yeah I get taking liberties with background characters with very basic and incomplete descriptions, but I feel that for characters with well established designs, those designs should be accurately represented.

I guess with cases like Squirrelstar they’re also trying to make it consistent with current official art? But if we were being consistent with official art then Darktail would look like… this

It’s not a bad design in itself, it just completely contradicts the actual book descriptions of Darktail.

[metatiki]

Writing WIPs

I was tagged by the sublime @opal-bee and their adorable avatar to list my WIPs with or without details, then tag some peeps and see if I can wrangle them into an answer.

Since it’s been a looong time since I’ve talked about my WIPs in any detail, here’s a list. And likely a Read More at some point, because I Have Thoughts (surprise, surprise) on my WIPs.

Current Active Project (published an update in the last month):

Don’t Worry, I’ll Protect You -- My Inquisitor Dorian story is active (closing in on the end of Act II now, with writing begun on Act III) and is planned for a 4 arc story.

Current Inactive Projects (planning to update in 2018):

The Tiniest Lion in Skyhold -- The ongoing saga of Tiny, Cullen’s pet tabby cat. Pure fluff for people who love both cats and Dragon Age. I do plan to update this between major projects, as it’s a fun breather between more serious works.

Fractured Thedas Tales -- My lighthearted and mostly irreverent (with occasional sobriety) take on the companions in each game. Currently only DAO is included, but I do plan to extend to DA2 and DAI. If you haven’t read these already, I’d give them a shot. Trust me.

Inactive Projects (these are on semi-permanent hiatus due to either Life or Time):

Hope for Light -- The story of my Canon Warden, Kalindra Tabris. I got about 25% through the story and then Real Life happened, and I’ve never quite gotten the mojo to go back to her, which makes me sad. I’m quite proud of her story as it is so far, but I had to put it on the back burner for several reason. I will return to her, when I have the proper mindset back (see Read More). Just not yet.

Everybody Lies -- The story of my Canon Inquisitor, Martin Trevelyan. I’ve written snippets and snoppets of his story, and even published some of them (also this one-shot aaaaand this one). However, I’ve never written his full story, though it lives in full detail in my head. Part of this is due to time, but a large part of it is... well, actually, I’ll address that in a Read More below.

The Inn Between Loads -- A very irreverent take on what happens to video game characters ‘between loads’ i.e., when they’re not in the game (usually through a scripted death). I love this series a LOT and it’s fun to write, but there’s no schedule or anticipated update.

Rise of Arlathan -- The outcome of trying to convert my long-time DA AU RP into a fic. 140k+ words later, and we only covered first 100k or our sprawling 5M+ RP epic, and interest was minimal, so we quietly stopped publishing it. For those who want to see Martin’s first appearance in my brain, check it out, but it will likely never be continued.

Projects I Will Never Publish No Matter What But Which Still Consume My Brain:

Jorath Amell: The Full Story -- Originally Written as my Evil Warden character, Jorath Amell challenged my concept that any character, no matter how evil, can be redeemed. Thus, Jorath Amell’s Full Story™ morphed into a saga so complicated that there is no possible way that even Neal Stephenson or Brandon Sanderson would be able to sell it to a publisher. I adore it in my head, but yeahno. I’ll never write it.

Kamila Hawke -- The story of my canon Hawke. Kamila’s canon ending doesn’t work at all for integration into DAI, so I probably will never write this story since I can’t make it fit with my other canon characters anymore. Still, I love my poor Kamila Hawke. (also some commentary in the Read More)

I tag @the-lady-magician, @the-duelling-tophat, @sallyamongpoison, @elementa1st, and @nightscrawl to encourage them to discuss their writing, art, or other creative projects!

And more for those who want more info... Well, it gets wordy. ;)

My two canon babies, Kalindra Tabris and Martin Trevelyan, are also highlighted in the artwork on my blog itself (to the right). I stopped publishing stories about them for different reasons, but this seems as good a place as any to talk about it.

For Kalindra Tabris, I have tried to write more of her story in the last year or so. Unfortunately, two things have interfered in me finding my place in her head again. 1) My own dysphoria. This is already getting better, but for a while, it was very hard for me to put myself into a female mindset. I think it was temporary, based on my stage of transition and mental progress through it, but it did affect me for a while. 2) The fandom. Kalindra’s mother is Dalish, and there was a period after DAI when I got very weary of the Discourse concerning anything Dalish. Not only that, the next part of her story would have been the Dalish quest, so it compounded the problem. Now that I’ve stepped back from the fandom and carefully make sure that very little Discourse passes over my dash, I may be able to get back into it. And to love Alistair during the Blight again. Maybe.

For Kamila Hawke, it is... complicated. When I originally played Kamila, it was as a lesbian who fell in love with Aveline, and then shifted to a slightly-more-than friendship with Sebastian because they were lonely but didn’t actually want any sex--and would have felt guilty entering into a relationship with Merrill and especially Isabela on that basis. As I wrote pieces here or there, I slowly came to realize that Kamila was, in fact, asexual demiromantic transmasc (or at least that’s the best way I can describe them at current)--but when I’d conceived the character, I didn’t yet know all the words for that. I just knew that Kamila felt like in my head. Ultimately, Kamila kills Anders in a fit of anger, then later kills themself when the guilt of killing Anders drives them into a deep depression. So their story doesn’t fit in between Kalindra’s and Martin’s easily. In fact, when I write Martin’s story, it will be with an entirely different Hawke because I don’t want to change their story just to fit canon events. But Kamila will always be my canon Hawke, no matter what.

For Martin Trevelyan, it’s a little more complicated. For many people, their main OCs tend to reflect what they are or what they wish they could be. Martin was that long before I knew that’s what I was doing. So writing his story means I have to unpack my baggage from what I want his story to be, and that’s a bit more tricky than just writing his story. I’m working on it, but I can’t work on it for long periods of time due to the emotional depth of investment it needs. In addition to that, Martin makes some decisions, both in his past and in the course of game events, which Some may consider to run counter to True Heroic Actions, and I’m not sure I want to deal with the potential reaction to that when I could just enjoy his story in my head. It’s petty, I know, but it’s a fear linked deeply to anxiety and my own instinctive desire to protect a character I most closely link to myself (more as an actual son rather than an alter-ego). Still, I love his story enough that I may eventually get around to it, but again... I don’t know. I waffle on it a lot. I have literally written millions of words for Martin and various versions of him in RP and AUs of that RP, so I love writing him. It’s just hard to publish him. Ah well.

[todisturbtheuniverse]

“Fic authors self rec! When you get this, reply with your favorite five fics that you’ve written, then pass on to at least five other writers.”

Tagged by @montpahrnah; thanks! <3 (Even though it’s a million years later...sorry, everyone who’s tagged me in something. I swear I’m actually getting to it.) This was...a challenge. I’m going through one of those dumb phases where I feel like I’ll never be able to write a fic I want to post ever again (even though I JUST posted something a month ago? Brain, chill) so this was a nice hard look at trying to see what I actually like about my writing.

Edit: Tagging @servantofclio, @hollyand-writes, @ferociousqueak, @commander-diomika, @continuousspec, and anyone else who wants to tbh--I’ve been mostly off of Tumblr this past week and have no idea who has or hasn’t done it, so here’s an open door, and absolutely don’t feel obligated!

A Slash of Red - f!Hawke/Isabela, 21k, M  

For once I’m going to choose this, rather than A Slash of Blue, because while ASOB was ~50 days of me slowly embracing not just a weird, abbreviated writing style but also the much-compressed fact that I could in fact love a woman romantically, ASOR was a love letter, the most wonderful love letter I’ve ever written or ever will, I think. (Full disclosure: I don’t write many love letters.) The more time that passes between when I initially knew and loved DA2, the more I question about its actual intricacies. This is true of most fiction I consume. I get caught up in wondering if the writers really meant these subtleties of character depth or if they were happy accidents, as if the worth of them can be determined by the answer to this question. ASOR embraced everything I thought I knew and loved and understood about Isabela, poured through those glimpses and flashes and illuminated them, all the good and the bad in what I hope was equal measure. When I reread it I remember loving something because of what I saw in it, what I made of its potential, not because of what someone else put into it, and I think that’s worth something--though I sometimes forget.

Wall Yourself Away - f!Trevelyan/Iron Bull, 25k, E  

I had waited so long to write what amounted to a ~25K word fic. I’d planned it for over a year. I’d waffled about it because--while I tend to really like reading and hearing about other OCs--I assumed that no one would really want to read this much backstory about Kat. Like, half backstory, at least, where the backstory actually enters the story itself in secondary OC form. But I decided, whatever, I want to write it, because Kat is my ugly duckling OC. She has none of Hawke’s fabulous hair or terrible humor and instead a caricature of all my crappier personality traits, like crippling fear of change and general social anxiety and insecurity in all relationships at all times. Finally getting to write about her, getting exactly what she wants by just gritting her teeth and muscling through--by accepting that she has a bit of bravery to her when it counts--was fucking great.

Event Horizon - Aria T’Loak/Nyreen Kandros, 14k, M  

Ugh, this is a hard one to talk about. I wanted a canon-compliant story that showed Nyreen and Aria--individually and together--through a gaze that wasn’t Shepard’s. Especially how Nyreen came to be with Aria, in all the ways she did. Obviously the most awful part of making it canon-compliant is that at the end, Nyreen still dies. At the time, my mom had just passed away, and while I did not grieve her per se, I grieved possibilities. If she was still alive there’s a high chance that our relationship would be even worse than it was then--it was drifting toward no-contact, definitely--but as long as she lived there was also technically a non-zero chance that she would stop being a totally horrible person and start actually trying to make things up to me. I kind of felt this both ways with Nyreen and Aria: Nyreen knows that ultimately their relationship is doomed, but waffles on torpedoing it while there’s still a tiny chance, even if it means sacrificing some morals; Aria loved Nyreen, in my opinion, but she loved power/control more, and it’s only after she’s lost both of those things with real finality that there’s a possibility for her growth to move in a different direction. It was a challenging fic. But I got paired with a fantastic artist (@laur-rants) and it was overall a really cathartic bit of writing.

When You Fall - f!Hawke/Isabela, 4k, T 

I wanted to leave Hawke in the Fade, but I didn’t want her to die. (Sometimes I wanted her to die, but only when I was feeling really morose and not myself.) My Hawke had particularly strong friendships with Aveline, Merrill, Bethany, and Varric, on top of Isabela; I wanted to showcase that, that she hadn’t just been herding cats for six years but that she meant as much to all of them as they meant to her (not that she’d ever say so, the jerk), and that they also mean just as much to each other. I loved writing this; it was meant to be very short, less than a thousand words, but it was one of those stories that just told itself naturally to me without much planning.

Promising -  f!Adaar/Josephine Montilyet, 12k, G

Anytime I reread this I get a little sad that I lost momentum and didn’t add much more to the series, but. I love it for what it is, which is basically the height of what my fic has become lately: those little missing moments in between the big conversations, which are big in their own way, that add context and nuance to characters and their relationships. And it’s really fucking sweet, tbh. I hope someday I get back to Adaar and Josephine.