#I felt really bad about it at some point

[elvhendis]

New chapter 👀

Where The Storm Rests (24023 words) by elvhendis Chapters: 4/? Fandom: Dragon Age: The Veilguard (Video Game) Rating: Mature Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings Relationships: Illario Dellamorte/Rook, Lucanis Dellamorte/Rook Characters: Rook (Dragon Age), Illario Dellamorte, Lucanis Dellamorte, Viago de Riva Additional Tags: Female Rook (Dragon Age), Antivan Crow Rook (Dragon Age), Post-Canon, Slow Burn, Sexual Tension, Eventual Smut, Angst, Mutual Pining, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Rating May Change, Redemption, Fake/Pretend Relationship, Endgame Illario Dellamorte/Rook, only one horse, Action/Adventure Summary: After the defeat of the Gods, Moira "Rook" de Riva seemed to have it all. With First Talon Lucanis Dellamorte at her side, her reputation with the Crows restored, and celebrated as the hero of the Veilguard, she should have had her happy ending. But in the aftermath, Moira soon finds herself struggling, and her relationship with Lucanis begins to unravel. When a contract forces her to work alongside Illario Dellamorte — of all people — everything changes.

[poorly-drawn-mdzs]

Lan Wangji Goes To Lotus Pier AU: Part 3: Enveloping Feelings.

(Part 1, Part 2, Part 4)

[chimera-dolls]

Hey actual-users-of-the-dollblr tag!

Yes you! Reading this! I bet you're into actual dolls. Physical dolls. Doll collecting, custom dolls, art dolls etc. and not c0qu3tte shit.

This is your friendly reminder that spamming irrelevant tags on posts is spam. Legitimately spam, and against Tumblr User Guidelines!

You can, and should! report them! If you're familiar with how to report a spambot on tumblr already, you know how to report for spam.

May you have a blessed, and on-topic Dollblr feed~

[gideonisms]

straight women are so fascinating to me I want to study them under a microscope. Today this girl on instagram said she loves the first few weeks with a guy when he makes her feel so feminine but after that he "turns her into her dad" and other women were in the comments agreeing. I have to admit that I'd previously assumed very few people would ever want to be treated like they were feminine but I'm listening and learning

[animangalover-writes]

Yk it really bothers me when I see people talking about eurylochus and the crew like they were the problem. It just feels like everyone is just missing the point. Yes they stopped listening to ody, yes eurylochus opened the wind bag, but that's what makes them so human.

Picture this, you leave your home to fight in a war. It takes literal years for this war to be over. You've lost friends, you miss your family, you've been through hell. You're starving and your captain tells you they found food on this island.

And then the cyclops happens. More friends die, you barely escape with your life, and your captain gives his name to the creature that killed your friends.

And everything after that is a direct cause of that decision.

So you hesitate to trust him. Yes he's smart, he's capable, he always has a plan. But he would do anything to get home, and you know that. So when he comes back to the ship claiming to have a bag full of wind, and when he refuses to let anyone near, refuses to trust his own crew, you get suspicious.

Its been about a decade by this point, and your captain seems to get more and more desperate to get home. A god is after you. Odysseus is forcing himself to stay away, all to make sure nobody touches that bag.

Its human, it's realistic, it makes sense that someone would open the bag. Because odysseus stopped trusting you, and so you stop trusting him. So you open the bag.

I just find it frustrating that people look at the crew/eurylochus as bad guys because of this, as pawns for ody to get home and thats it. The point of the show is that ody has become a monster, has dealt with and left behind his humanity. We, as listeners, root for him. We give him grace because of his circumstances. Because he's the main character.

But for some reason, people don't give that same grace to the crew. They're human, their circumstances are awful too. They have no idea if they will get home, they aren't sure then can trust their captain anymore. They question things. They make mistakes. They cause the deaths of others. It's human, its that feeling you get when you think that maybe hope is lost after all, it's what this story is about. Mistakes and loss and blame.

People dislike Eurylochus because he opened the bag. But odysseus gave the cyclops his name. And polites trusted the lotus eaters. And Athena told odysseus to be cruel to a fault. Nobody here is innocent, not really. And none of them knew better either. They were working with what they had, with the terrible circumstances at hand. It's no wonder they made mistakes. It's no wonder people died.

Why are we ignoring the humanity of the crew? Why are we arguing that they, or that eurylochus, deserved it? If the story was about them, odysseus would be seen as the bad guy. But he's the main character, so the others are stupid and wrong, right? All that matters is that odysseus gets home, right? Even if it costs the lives of his crew. His crew who stopped trusting him when he stopped trusting them. His crew who he sacrificed to get home.

I think we're missing the point here. Odysseus did become a monster, and although we cheer for him getting home and Penelope and Telemachus forgive him, we have to acknowledge that he did do terrible things. Those men will never see their families again. Why are we erasing that humanity in them?

Humans do bad things for the sake of saving themselves or the ones they love. That includes Odysseus. That includes Eurylochus. That includes the crew. And that includes every other character in this musical.

[ratatatastic]

What did Nico H do to Barky??

This is specifically referring to an incident on Dec 17 2022 where Nico and Sasha were lining up for a face-off where Nico crosschecked his knee in the first period and subsequently Sasha would not start the second and would not come back to finish the game at all.

He would miss 3 games and end up playing again on Dec 29 2022, this was also after the time he came back from pneumonia so he hadn't already played in like 2 weeks so to see him out again wasn't exactly great news which only spurred on what some might call an excessive reaction, not to mention the whole "Dont hurt our Captain!"-ness of it all. Also Matthew was out with illness the game before against the Penguins and had just come back for the game against Jersey and it just felt like the team was always down a couple players due to illness or injury so to have your Captain out AGAIN made this game way chippier than it would've been for perhaps any other team.

Naturally the kitties did not take kindly to what they saw as a dirty play (despite later on Sasha reassuring media he didn't think Nico did it on purpose or that he's a dirty player) and checked him every chance they got, and then the next matchup after that.

And well, if you noticed since then kitties have specifically targetted Nico and have played him a lot harder than other Devs (because he's a great 2-way player you HAVE to play him harder but sometimes you can't help but think if theres something of a grudge there) which is why he ends up in a lot more scrums against us and I'm afraid Matthew seems to have the biggest grudge against him lol Ekky's definitely tied for like 2nd with the way he's always roughing up Devs doesnt specifically have to be Nico just /a/ Dev and it's been 2 years

[skunkes]

biggest downside of not having many experiences or meeting many people is not having anything to feed into the art machine

[proshipconfessions]

Responding to your last post about proshippers complaining about other proshippers. You didn't provide this option, but I really think it should depend on the content of the ask... And yes, this is a confession blog for proshippers/profic, etc. aligned people. Telling us to go to antiship confession blogs is horrifically stupid and is only going to put us in dangerous positions.

The proship community is not immune from being shitty. There are proshippers who act just like antis. People who think they can change their race and give themselves disabilities are straight up infecting the community as well. There are proshippers who are horrifically ableist against pwOSDDID, schizospec disorders, etc. There are proshippers who straight up use slurs they can not reclaim. There are proshippers who call people the r slur. I especially think proshippers with these disorders (including myself) should have a safe outlet to talk about the toxicity and abuse within our own community without telling us to basically become an anti. Because what the hell???

Of course, I can't read every single anon that you get, but if they are anything along the lines of what I'm talking about here, consider not deleting them. Especially don't tell people to "just become antis" or "just go to antiship confession blogs." That's harmful as fuck.

If anything, these confessions should serve as a reality check that our community isn't perfect. Or serve to remind people that this behavior shouldn't or won't be tolerated in the proship community. Not every self-proclaimed "proshipper" is actually a proshipper, especially if they act abusive, ableist, or harass people like antis do. I will die on this hill.

If you don't want to house confessions about these topics, that's fine. Just say so, and I'll make my own confessional blog where these topics are allowed.

You’re right that there are plenty of people who are proship and also shitty af. It’s something that I’ve both posted plenty of confessions about and have actually even—in case you haven’t been familiar with my blog for a while—made my own post about! It’s like one of just a few posts that I have made speaking directly from my mouth and not a confession. It’s just a post that I wrote about behavior that I hate seeing pop up far too commonly in this community. I literally can’t count how many people I have blocked, which includes not only antis, but also shitty proshippers and pricks who claim to be them while supporting harm caused to others in real life.

You’re also right that you can’t read every anon that I get. I would have much preferred that you even just ask what kind of thing I’m talking about instead of acting like you’re some secret second mod and I’m just some asshole who refuses to hold anyone or any behavior accountable as long as I agree with them on some level.

I really do wonder what you would think about one of the (many with a similar tone) asks that inspired this post.

Do you know how many anons I get with the same fucking attitude and the same fucking insistence that they’re right and I’m wrong and evil, and yet I’m somehow the perfect mouthpiece for their beliefs? What reality check is this supposed to be giving me? Please either stop assuming that everything I say is in bad faith or genuinely try to explain to me what the good content for my followers is in this ask. This is the behavior that I mocked in my post. I also have an old one that I think is somewhere in my drafts(?) where the evil behavior that they’ve seen among a bunch of proshippers that has made them hate all proshippers is venting about harassment from antis. The fake post I made mocking them is an amalgamation of those two, but you only get this one since I’m way too tired to go find the other one rn lol. If someone reminds me, I can reblog it with it later.

Also, I really can’t tell where I said in my post that I would tell these people to go to antiship blogs (other than my reference to a comment where I said that if all that people send to my inbox is how much they hate proshippers and basic proship ideology, then they should probably take that to an anti blog) instead of just deleting the ask, like I actually said in the post. The post that was really more of a way to let off some steam while getting some use out of the Tumblr polls that I practically never get to do anything with. Do you think that the person in those screenshots that I put above is more at home here than they’d be sending this to some anti’s blog?

But like to try to put myself in your shoes, you could’ve been having a shitty day when you sent this, you could be young, or hell, you could’ve seen someone say something similar to my statement recently while meaning this shitty completely different thing. Or maybe you’ve never seen my blog in your life and have no clue what kind of stuff I do/don’t post. My response might sound super defensive, and I hope that it doesn’t, and that I’m not jumping to conclusions, too. I’d hate to blow this out of proportion over what could easily be just a misunderstanding. If I’m being too harsh, sorry. I aim any coldness towards all of these bigoted ideas and the idea that I hold them, and not at you as a person, as I’m willing to believe that you’re an entirely rational person who just misunderstood me and lashed out at me bc of it. But if there is a next time, please try to give me the benefit of the doubt. I don’t ever intend to do anything harmful, and what I said wasn’t intended to imply anything like what you’re saying here at all. I’m not talking about proshippers venting. I’m talking about actual antis coming into my inbox with the “I’m like TECHNICALLY a proshipper, I guess, but I just despise proshippers and think that people who engage with certain types of fiction are inherently bad!!!” So unless you’re one of these people coming into my inbox, then I am NOT telling YOU to go to antiship confession blogs. And if you are… well, then you’re probably not gonna see this, since I’m going through and blocking all of these dickheads soon.

[cherry-treelane]

I find it so ironically funny when hardcore Debbie defenders use the defense that she was just a victimised teenage girl (agreed) and then proceed to slander Fiona and express their hatred for her character and lack of sympathy

as if being an adult magically absolves an individual of the horrifying trauma that precedes them and screws up their mentality and actions

funnily enough these people get mad at others for "expecting Debbie to be an innocent angel and hating on her for acting out as a result of trauma" (also agreed, debbie does deserve more sympathy, she can't be expected to grow up to be a perfect saint when she's been through so much) yet seem to hold Fiona to the same unattainable standards and put her on a pedestal as if she wasnt a child that was forced to intensely grow up while never actually being raised

like lets put this into perspective and remember that fiona grew up surrounded by corrupt morals and insanely screwed up behaviour yet still emerged as messed up, yes, but surprisingly good considering the situation she was in??? she had to navigate basic things such as morals and being a good, responsible person on her own. imagine how difficult it must be to lead a bunch of kids, including yourself, with no previous role model or good example of your own to follow. most of the time, she always tried to do what she thought was best and would have the most desirable outcome

[koterkot]

i'm probably a system but i have a job so idrc about that rn

[loderlied]

i need you all to know that the main reason (besides a general hunger for attention) niles even accepts aldori’s call is because he got caught stealing his student’s work and passing it off as his own and his reputation as a teacher was obviously ruined. lmao

[venusiancarbondioxide]

after thinking about the last few rounds of "notable man is accused of sexual assault," and how they've gone down, i've come to the conclusion that most people don't actually care about victims of abuse as people, they just care about victims of abuse as tools they can use to bludgeon famous men. which, don't get me wrong, those men deserve a good bludgeoning, but shouldn't we care about those they've wronged? do the people posting takes about how neil gaiman and cormac mccarthy were shitty writers anyway have compassion and love in their hearts for victims, or are they more happy to engage in a parade of shitting on a shitty guy? and remember when we were all singing songs about drake being a pedophile? he did that shit, but like, really, does anyone actually care about the young women involved here?is there any love or protection being extended to them by society, or are we just bumping "not like us," six thousand more times and calling that feminist action? do the people joking about diddy's baby oil usage ever stop to think about the horror of it all? and yes, those guys are terrible. fuck every single one of them and also all the ones i don't have time to name. but shouldn't our first priority be the people they've wronged? how many victims of bill cosby or kevin spacey do you know the name of? because i don't know even one; the narrative is never actually about them and what they've suffered. the wider world cares more about the """taboo sex lives""" of powerful men than the actual suffering of nameless, everyday people (usually women, but no one's exempt). and that's depressing! i've been guilty of this before, and looking back on it, i wish i had spent more time thinking about the people harmed then clowning and decrying the person doing the harm. i'm not saying these guys deserve to have it easy, but it often feels like the first priority is shitting on them and not actually helping those who they've hurt. and hurting these people--that isn't necessarily restorative, you know? it doesn't actually fix the harm they've done. ideally, we should focus more on righting the wrongs than using those wrongs as weapons.

but that's ideally. i have no expectation that this is going to change at any point. it will go on and on and on, beyond the suffering of this world and into the next.

[momentomori24]

I have just now finished Cold Front and holy shit. That was a lot more intense than I thought it would be. I need a Winnie plush to forfeit all mortal possessions to now.

[pkmoth]

having swap au thoughts. *slaps roof of claus* there's so much mental illness in this guy. im gonna blow up everyone in the room and then myself

[cuteniaarts]

@katkastrofa, circa 40-ish hours ago: Hey, what if our newest bunch of OCs adopted a baby from one of the other brothel girls who knew she couldn’t afford to raise one? That would make for some fun shenanigans :D

Me, with a notoriously non existent sleep schedule, instinct of self preservation or concern for my poor wrist: Alright, bet. Watch how fast I can make you fall in love with this hypothetical baby >:)

Daneli as a gentle and loving caretaker-turned-adoptive-mother is something that can be So Personal, actually, and originally I was going to leave it at this quick sketch, but then I got carried away thinking about what this child will grow up to be like raised by this little gang of misfits, so…

Here she is!! A little older and so, so beautiful, I need more of her in my life immediately, she’s way too precious

And, because I wouldn’t be me if I didn’t also add a sapphic element to this absolute cinnamon roll, a small crack ship that I’m only half serious about for when she’s a little older still:

All in all, we may be getting impossibly far from canon, but I for one already cannot get enough of sweet darling Kumisai <3

(I fully drew three pieces from scratch in 9 hours I cannot feel my brain or my hands anymore send help)

[lord-squiggletits]

This might be bc of my personal reading of exRDI/OP bc I'm pretty sure the authorial intent was to just write Optimus as having some fall from grace/borderline tyrannical edge but like

I really kinda wish the story had been written as more of a political intrigue, almost GOT-esque thing (sorry for the cliche) where like, instead of Optimus being written as the narrative's scapegoat to be condemned both by the characters in universe and the meta narrative, he was just written as...morally gray? With more of a focus on "this is a shitty situation where no decision is good" rather than having Optimus just be some sort of white guilt stand-in of how oh, he's a Prime so that means the most important part of his legacy is how Cybertronians are awful and he's no better than the other ones etc.

Like Barber doesn't write Optimus as EVIL or in a way where he's unilaterally condemned as a person who did more harm than good, it's just imo the vibes of the story is more of a dark political/war story where no person is clean and there's no solution to the war that doesn't involve moral compromise. Instead Optimus is forced to make these moral compromises but then everyone else in the story loses their absolute shit and immediately starts calling him a tyrant or a fascist or something.

Like idk, it was partially an issue of the set-up. Because for one, it was really hard to take it seriously when the humans went "omg he's annexing Earth the Autobots were literally the colonizers all along!" (I think the dialogue was written almost exactly like that too sjdjsidn, so bad dialogue was also another issue) yet were perfectly fine working with the Decepticons led by 1. Soundwave who personally helped execute the attempted invasion of Earth and 2. Galvatron who constantly talks about wanting to kill these puny organics. I feel like I would've been able to take humanity's fears of being colonized again more seriously if like, they hadn't literally teamed up with The Colonizer Faction just bc Soundwave promised they were good guys again. So really it's just execution + plot holes + bad dialogue.

And another thing about the annexing of Earth specifically that I wish got talked about more (mostly by the fandom more than in universe) is that like. Basically the reason Optimus did that was because the neo-Decepticons were planning to invade Earth again, but since he's not actually a formal political leader any more he has no power to actually force a war to stop them/request military back up. But also, Starscream didn't give a shit about Earth and neither did the Council of Worlds, so appealing to the government for help defending humanity wouldn't work either. So Optimus annexing Earth was an absolute clusterfuck yes, but in a way it was also kind of a shrewd political move to force Cybertron to dedicate a spot in the government for humans and thus grant humans a say on Cybertronian politics.

What I mean is that in a story/with an author like that of GOT, where the setting is grimmer and every character is morally ambiguous, I feel like Optimus would've had way more room to be an interesting and compelling character. Bc then instead of the story immediately screaming "ALL HAIL OPTIMUS DID YOU KNOW OP ANNEXING EARTH TO THE COUNCIL IS BASICALLY THE SAME AS MEGATRON ATTEMPTING TO GENOCIDE EARTH," Optimus could have been played around with more as a political figure making the shitty decisions in an effort to stop another genocide. Instead of just unilaterally condemning Optimus and immediately comparing him to fucking Megatron of all people, there could've been more focus on the politics of it with maybe some sort of theme of how "being a leader in war is an inherently unethical position where every decision you make will lead to death/conflict/hate."

Like idk I just think it would've been more interesting if the narrative spent less time going "zomg Optimus is totally a tyrant now" and instead went all in on exploring the political conflicts and how far politicians (Optimus now being one, since he's declaring wars and forcefully acting as an ambassador that no one asked for) can go on manipulation and forcing people's hands for the sake of an ultimately good cause. I mean, Windblade was doing shit like covering up for Chromia who killed people in a bombing, making backdoor deals with Starscream, and conspiring with Optimus to bypass Starscream/overthrow him as Cybertron's ruler somehow. The difference of course is that Windblade and exRID were written by two different authors with genre/thematic differences, but as a reader it is really disappointing to see two different political narratives where "a hero turned politician turning to morally gray/unethical methods to outmaneuver a deadly opponent" is treated as clever and heroic for one character, but tyrannical and worthy of ostracization of another character.

Like for God's sake this narrative where Optimus gets lambasted at every turn sometimes by people who work with/are literal tyrants/terrorists themselves is so fucking exhausting. I'd rather read a story that focused more on the idea of, well what Optimus did was unethical but on a political level it was actually advantageous in several ways. Then you could write a story that really dives into a view of like, idk... Does power inherently corrupt or is it just situations like war that allow leaders to seize power and become tyrannical? Are politics an inherently dirty field where the only way to beat your competition (and secure a decent future for the nation) is to become underhanded and manipulative yourself? Is it okay to bypass or work against rightfully elected officials when those officials are turning a blind eye to things like war and invasions and historic racism?

ExRID did somewhat touch on these themes to be fair, but I feel like in Optimus' case they were either poorly executed or just thrown away in favor of having every other character talk shit about him and how he's the worst person ever. Bc like goddammit, I do think Optimus' polarizing and sometimes bad decisions as a character DO make him skirt on the edge of tyranny and shouldn't be downplayed, but on the other hand, I feel like no one (fandom or in-universe) ever tangles with the OTHER side of the story, which is just... Would it have been unethical for Optimus to NOT have done anything? Cybertronians literally put a colony on Earth, injected Earth with alien technology and sleeper agents, used Earth as an incubating ground for dangerous elements like Ore-13, invaded Earth and killed 1 billion people-- after all the shit Cybertron did to Earth, is it not fair (even morally obligated) for Cybertronians to clean up their shit and help Earth defend itself against a crisis that Cybertronians caused? And if Cybertron's government/the individuals within are racist enough that they don't care about Earth, don't see it as their problem, and don't even see human life as meaningful since they don't live that wrong anyways... is it not, in a way, a good thing for Optimus to have overstepped his authority and forced diplomatic relationships between the two planets? So that humans had an actual political channel to go "fuck you, we're in your Council so you'd better ally with us" and so that Cybertron would be forced to go "welp can't write off these humans as Not Our Problem, guess we have to help them." Doesn't forcing Earth to be part of the Council in a way legitimize Optimus' fight to help Earth, since without a formal political office he's just a rogue general fighting an unauthorized war, but with the government involved, defending Earth now becomes a politically sanctioned act?

Like idk. I guess exRID and OP did get into some of this stuff, but as a whole it felt like the story underutilized its political elements and got bogged down in shit like pointless crossovers, and constantly pausing the narrative to have Side Character #2847 talk about how Optimus is a fascist, and having Optimus go on white guilt-esque monologues about how maybe all Cybertronians should die and are unworthy/unable to ever have a peaceful society because their society colonized other planets.

Just so much wasted potential honestly. ExRID/OP as written felt like it was going way too hard into "omg Cybertronians bad and Optimus is actually a tyrant" instead of just writing a complex story and letting readers come to their own conclusions. And also lambasting Optimus for doing things that other characters did (or characters who did even worse things), but letting those characters exist in peace while Optimus has to just be some allegory for colonialism that has to be torn down at every turn because that's Deep and Intellectual.

I just like the kinds of stories about politics that play around with the ethics of it all, like, "this politician is a shitty person but their policies actually prevented some sort of disaster from happening" or "this person did something illegal and defied the law but they did it because no one else was doing anything" or even "everyone hates this person for forcing them into a political deal they didn't want to be involved in, but the fact that they were all forced to become allies actually allowed them to cooperate and save themselves in a way they wouldn't have been able to alone" (which is pretty much literally how the annexing of Earth ended up going).

Like man I don't want to sit here being lectured/having my favorite character be lectured about how much tyranny is bad. I want my favorite character to do shitty things and then go "whoa that was shitty...but also kind of smart...but also caused a lot of problems...but also solved some other problems that could've turned awful if he hadn't forcefully resolved them."