#I honestly think about this often

[ghostflowerhotpotch]

I am the only one who still thinks how when Miles went away on the train this was Gwen's face?

Despite everything that happened there, she is looking at him flying away as if she has lost her breath.

I utterly adore how down bad she is.

[technically-human]

Edwin after the confession is a menace

Bonus Charles being normal about it:

[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.

[uncanny-tranny]

I recently had to do a project in one of my psych classes, and man, I knew that CBT was used for every little thing, but seeing over and over, "do CBT! CBT is the best for every mental illness!" was so jarring. I'm absolutely biased because of my own experiences, but I just don't think it's as universal a treatment model as it's touted.

If you didn't benefit from CBT, it's not because you're lazy or didn't try hard enough or lacked intelligence or foresight into your own needs. Frankly, it's a therapy model that (I think) shouldn't be the only readily-accessible model and among the only therapy models covered by insurance. Some of us should not be treated in a CBT model and that's okay. It's not a sign of poor character or unreasonable demands, and if you don't think it's a model that works for you, then it's your right to express that!

[diamondnokouzai]

if magneto knew what the internet was then he would post to r/aita as often as possible and all his posts would be the top posts of the year. thats the kind of drama hes going through. he also gets permabanned from r/mutants for advocating violence

[ricky-mortis]

Curtwen Week Day 4: Haunted

[falmerbrook]

Meet the Saber-Skins

Helga is the companion of sorts to my Last Dragonborn, Elisere, and a few months ago I went a little ham developing her husband and kids. I've been meaning to draw them and introduce them for awhile now and thought this would be a fun way to do it!

I am incapable of just creating one single OC with no relatives. I always gotta give them a whole family. But this family is thematically important so I've put a lot of thought into them

[turtleblogatlast]

One of the earliest examples of Leo’s “I’ll do my own thing to accomplish our goal without discussing it with my team first” is in episode one. It’s super, super quick, and ultimately inconsequential, but it subtly sets up a great precedent that I think is very interesting.

When the boys need to grab the medallion from Splinter without Splinter noticing, Raph, Mikey, and Donnie huddle together with Raph taking the lead in trying to devise a plan to get the mystic device. Meanwhile, Leo slinks away and grabs the device by clocking the situation (by knowing his father well enough to predict his actions - something he does with each family member multiple times in the series) and making a move on his own.

It works out perfectly fine, and is ultimately the best move, and it’s honestly okay that he didn’t consult everyone for something so small when it’s such a non issue to get it, but it nicely sets up how this tends to go in the series, including how it goes in the movie.

To be honest episode one is actually really good at setting up a lot of things for each character in the long run, this is just one example that caught my attention, as small and unassuming as it is.

[hoofpeet]

Every day I think about what terrible advice "Don't draw ugly people" is..... I shouldn't be surprised by tiktok/youtube """""art advice"""" but it is kinda genuinely baffling that anybody ever said that whole-heartedly and meant it

[dootznbootz]

I think people sleep on this moment in the Odyssey...

If I'm wrong, not getting full context, or see something that isn't there, feel free to give evidence to explain why.

Here he crept under a pair of bushes, one an olive, the other a wild olive, which grew from the same stem with their branches so closely intertwined that when the winds blew moist not a breath could get inside, nor could the rain soak right through to the earth.

(Book 5, Rieu)

I think this is about Penelope and him.

Obviously, their marriage bed is made from an Olive tree. If it's just about Athena then why are there two mentioned? Why did Homer mention two when he could've just said he took refuge under one? Or a completely different type of tree? Why mention them being intertwined?

One an olive: Penelope, who has been with society and "safe" in Ithaca ("Safe" because of the suitors)

One wild: Odysseus, who has dealt with literal monsters and immortals and has just escaped from Calypso. Literally naked and filthy, a "wild man".

"which grew from the same stem with their branches": Them both being together at first, before being separated.

"so closely intertwined that when the winds blew moist not a breath could get inside, nor could the rain soak right through to the earth.": Despite being separated, they are still "intertwined". Whether you want to think of it as them being likeminded or simply connected, even though they are apart, nothing could get in between them. 🥺

I don't know what else Homer could be referring to other than them.

[wolves-in-the-world]

the thing about eliot spencer as a character, right. the thing about him.

(and as always your mileage may vary on my analyses so if we disagree that's cool actually)

is that he is in fact a somewhat emotionally constipated idiot who is occasionally sensitive about his perceived masculinity and gets defensive about emotional intimacy around other men (largely hardison, who's much more comfortable expressing affection and embracing a softer kind of masculinity), but eliot displays enough emotional awareness and sensitivity and respect for women etc etc that anyone who's been subjected to that era of television will put on rose-tinted glasses without even looking twice.

(and he is, don't get me wrong, incredibly emotionally aware for a professionally punchy guy with enough trauma to sink the titanic. it still startles me to see.)

on top of which we have the layers and the accessories and the excellent hair with the secret braids and the way he barely has an ego and he's good with kids and protective of his team without taking it too far, and some of us never stood a fucking chance.

[doctorsiren]

I love your artstyle! Especially how you draw kids like Pearl and Trucy they look so CUTE!

Thank you!

[whispers-of-gallifrey]

It's thinking about Maxwell and Jacobi hours

[padfootastic]

harry’s ‘saving people thing’ comes from james potter and if you disagree, u can bite me because that is the TRUTH

[anghraine]

elizabethwydevilles replied to this post:

'Most "corrections" of Padmé's characterization I've seen essentially want to make her [...] not a tragic figure except by wild mischance or the missteps of other characters.' I honestly think people have a really hard job accepting that the prequels are a tragedy for *everyone* involved (except Palps). You see it in response to characters like Obi-Wan; the refusal to engage with the idea that a character can try their best and still screw up is hard to swallow.

Yes, very much so! In some ways it's even more marked with Obi-Wan, I feel, because ROTJ so clearly set him up as someone who failed tragically in the prequel era and who took away the wrong lessons from his own mistakes. OT/PT Obi-Wan is a kind, self-sacrificing, and well-meaning person who is not motivated by malice, but there is a moral arrogance to him, a hubris, that plays a significant role in the larger tragedy he is part of and that hubris lingers in the OT even after his death (with potential for further tragedy!).

I think there's a temptation to cast all these characters with fundamentally tragic flaws as solely victims or villains, but an important aspect of this kind of tragedy IMO is how these kinds of flaws collide and contribute to something far worse than any of its parts. The kinds of mistakes and flaws that we see in these characters lead to consequences that are both inevitable and unpredictable; no single one of these tragic figures could independently control or foresee what was going to result from all these different dynamics and maneuverings and choices, but at the same time, these choices do inexorably lead towards disaster. So you get the "well [x tragic choice] isn't what really caused the tragedy, because Palpatine" or "we need to fix [x tragic choice] because it makes the character Bad" without really engaging with the complicity (conscious or unconscious) of all these characters and the significance of their complicity to what the PT is doing as a story.

I don't object to "I want to imagine a happy ending for my faves" at all, btw—I do that all the time and it's not what I'm getting at. But when it comes to insisting that something must have been what "really" happened for the story to "make sense" or be "fixed" in the face of all evidence and basics of story structure, I find it tedious.

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

ok for real though i go so insane for the fact that Lucanis owns a pet snake. i'm a real life snake owner and soooo few characters in media have snakes... like i went through some Elaborate headcanons to justify giving Dorian a pet snake in DAI... and veilguard then just dumped a man who canonically has one straight into my lap!!!!! i was doomed from the start

kicking my feet twirling my hair imagining what types of snakes the various crows all own... it really is the standard assassin pet apparently. Viago obviously has venomous snakes that he keeps for their venom (for poisons, making antivenin, and to build his own tolerance). i don't think he'd consider them Precious Pets but i think he would enjoy that this is an animal where interactions are very clearly transactional and build to trust. like a snake will never Love you the way a pet mammal will (their brains simply do not produce/uptake oxytocin) but you can still form bonds with them and i think he would appreciate that this process happens in a very logical way you can predict. And he keeps them in absolutely PRISTINE care (his quote in Eight Little Talons about the one he picks up there is "He deserves my respect. And a good home—with all the mice he can eat”).

Lucanis on the other hand, I think would understand the snake does not love him but still be more attached to his emotionally anyway. maybe because he's used to loving people who don't actually care about his well-being 😭 But I think he'd appreciate a pet he can actually freehandle more. House Dellamorte is not known for poisons the way the de Rivas are, and they might still have an adder on hand for venom reasons but it's more likely they just borrow some of Viago's if needed... poison's just not their niche. If Lucanis was the one picking out a pet I think he would go for a non venomous or rear-fanged variety (aka, some venom but unlikely to bite a human) so he can actually hold it without being on high alert (i mean, in our world, you should never freehandle hots, but people do anyway & would in fiction too. but its a very fuck around/find out scenario). I feel like he and Illario would probably have the same type of snake since they grew up as brothers--Illario also clearly had an emotional attachment to his own pet snake since he got mad at Lucanis irl for a dream he had where Lucanis threw the snake out the window [EDIT: I misremembered this part, it was Viago's dream. Though I think I do remember an in-game reference to Illario also having a snake..?]. So i think both of them having a pet they play with/dote on a little more than is actually needed for a reptile fits really well here.

now as for specific pet snake species headcanons. We have VERY little detail in the snake lore in Dragon Age, despite Tevinter using it as a symbol of the country alongside dragons. i PRESUME there's many kinds of species around but who knows what... the only one we ever get mentioned by name* is in Eight Little Talons, where the writer refers to the snake Viago picks up there as an "adder" or a "death adder" but never anything more specific. Unclear if this is just writers thinking an adder is a specific species and not a class of snake or if there's only one type of adder in Antiva. I mean there's like 200 species of snake in North America and 100 or so in Europe and SOOOO MANY MORE in the tropics/asia (to be fair, there's only like 3 species in England and none in Ireland, but that's sad and those countries are tiny islands and exterminated wildlife/wildlands on purpose so we're not applying that to Thedas). Antiva has coastline and is warmer and I'd roughly classify it as similar to the Mediterranean in terms of climate, with colder winters farther inland and more humidity/closer to subtropical up north. Without the benefits of modern electricity they'd probably be keeping animals that can do well at ambient temperatures for the region. Treviso is on the coast of a bay (not full oceanic) and not too far south of Rivain, so I think we can guess at fairly mild winters & hot summers, probably tending towards drier but with monsoon-influenced humidity.

(*technically an earlier character in Tevinter Nights refers to a "venomous drake-adder" but he was lying about it being there, and we have no way to tell if he picked a real snake to pretend was around OR just made up a scary sounding snake name. alas.)

Now... given the Crow's general penchant for aesthetics I think both Dellamorte boys would be drawn to a dramatic looking variety, like a mexican black kingsnake or white-lipped python. sadly both of these absolutely stunning species are both a bit outside the climate preferences I specified (mbk live closer to true desert, wlp true tropical). I also am charmed by the idea that they caught the snakes themselves in the wild vs purchasing them, becuase that's such a childhood animal-lover thing to do (my grandma used to tell horrified stories of my dad/uncles bringing home "wagons full of snakes" they found playing outside). SO i think my top choices are either the European Thedosian cat snake (Telescopus fallax), which is a rear-fanged beauty with a grey and white checkerboard pattern. OR a Mediterranean Antivan Grass Snake (Natrix natrix, astreptophora, or helvetica), which has the added bonus of badass keeled scales . While the grass snakes come in many beautiful color morphs due to the aforementioned crow drama I am inclined to give them the melanistic color variant, for the beautiful dark black appearance. Although I am also happy with the greener varieties :) All of the above average a little over 3ft in length as adults, so reasonable pet sized. Some of the Natrix genus are more aquatic than others so would be fed on frogs rather than (or in addition to) mice, and I do enjoy the mental image of Lucanis & Illario going out once a week to hunt for dinner for their pampered pets, falling into ponds on whatever estates they're currently being trained at :) as a lighthearted contrast to, you know. every other aspect of being raised as a Crow.

Left to right: Telescopus fallax, melanistic Natrix natrix, and Natrix astreptophora)