#Like you look at my drawing and tell me that does not look like solas

[midnanoire]

My solas dragon age fanart :)

Ref down below 👎👇👎

[kurczeno]

i love solas because he is one of the most prominent examples of media vs fanon

each time i see a fanart of his he is so yassified and i cant help but laugh bcs in game he looks like this fellas

my mom entered my room once when i had dai opened and immediately asked "why does he have pussy on his chin" which, i think, is a polish idiom used when someone has this like hole????? on their chin (tho to be fair i didnt notice this particular thing, my mom is just super rude. she once bullied a girl out of her school and the teachers are still scared of her, one of them she put in a hospital, but thats story for another time)

i mean, hes pretty ugly (meaning not conventionally attractive of course, because people have different tastes and shit). Which I actually rather like, because as a Solas ha... disliker, even I have to admit - when he suddenly flirts with you it's hot. Like the va is doing an amazing job + his confidence is quite attractive, considering the fact that usually we know him as this nerdy nerd. And now he's just like "I wanna dominate you :)" OUT OF THE BLUE? after telling you about some random shit abt the fade. I mean you're telling me this bald guy tm is more confident than, say, cullen?XD Who would a homeless, elvhen, apostate hobo practice on, fucking spirits? Mythal???? (oh sweet summer child)

And I like that about Bioware games, that many characters aren't traditionally attractive but that's not why people choose them. Garrus is literally a huge lizard?, Liara has tentacles on her head, Solas pic rel, Zevran I think was supposed to be conventionally hot? But theres something terrifying about him, idk, maybe the random amount of detail, in comparison to let's say, Leliana, Morri in the first game - same shit. Also what did they do to her make up jesus. Also Varric. For 13? years we see the community being absolutely insane about him, begging Bioware to let them romance him. And let's be honest, the Veilguard guy is yassified Varric (Solas too), that's who they were horny for these 13 years ago.

So I started with the fanarts and I'll end with Veilguard, god bless ADHD. Bioware, leave my "ugly" companions alone ffs. I like them that way.

Also to be fair - i'm not exactly shitting on Veilguard here, or people making fanarts bcs

a) Inquisition did similar shit with Varric for example (Morri I think was supposed to be hot, but the graphics.......)

b) their drawing, their solas. I mean people like to "yassify" characters on fanarts (as my friend noticed, Fenris also usually has a more "basic" face on fanarts, and he already is quite "basic" in DA2) when they like the personality, it's pretty normal. Just a matter of preference, the way you imagine the character and, sometimes, not remembering the source material. So there's nothing wrong about that.

It's just that when I see hot solas fanarts/in veilguard I immediately remember the egg from the game

[johaerys-writes]

For the writer asks! 🌈💝💥🤲

[Writing Asks]

🌈is there a fic that you worked *really fucking hard on* that no one would ever know? maybe a scene/theme you struggled with?

There have been chapters in High-Flying Birds that I struggled with, and it is a fic I continue to struggle with sometimes haha. Mainly because there is so much I want to write, many little moments that are hard to arrange in a coherent chapter or arc, and there are also many things I feel like I have to write (or stay 100% faithful to canon) and that if I don’t readers might be disappointed or *I* will be disappointed with the end product looking back lol. It’s also a fic that I've done a lot of research for, so there were chapters or arcs that were a long time in the making (and one of the reasons why I'm so slow to update it lol...... it just all needs to marinate in my brain). One of the chapters that I struggled with in particular was The Sacrifice, because trying to condense Euripides' 'Iphigenia at Aulis' in a couple of chapters and also make it engaging and coherent was really hard.

Another fic I've struggled A LOT with, and I mean A LOT sometimes, is my DA longfic A World With You. Maybe it was because of my inexperience while writing certain bits, maybe it's the DA lore itself that is sometimes confusing but there were certain arcs that gave me such a hard time. I felt like I kept writing myself into corners and had to delete and rewrite a lot, and it was just pure agony lol. I do feel like I learned a lot through these struggles though so I don't begrudge them too much 😅

💝what is a fic that got a different response than you were expecting?

Ooh good question. I feel like you're a walking disaster and yet- is a fic that I did not expect many people to read-- I expected max 2 or 3 people to follow it but I've been pleasantly surprised by how invested people have become in this story. It warms my heart to see readers care so deeply about these boys; not to get overly personal LOL but I've poured a lot of my heart in it, it almost feels like cheating sometimes because several scenes or exchanges in it are things I or people close to me have experienced, and it's also sort of me appreciating but also heavily criticising the culture I've grown up in (something I hope comes across lol.) It’s so rare for me to be able to write something so close to my own reality that it feels like a niche in and of itself, and I'm so grateful for everyone who has been tagging along.

💥find your least kudos'd fic - say something wonderful about it.

Okay so I'm going to cheat for this one because my least kudosed fic is something I wrote ages ago for an exchange and I don’t have much to say about it, BUT my second least kudosed fic As It Was is one of my favourites because I wrote it for @mogwaei who is one of my favourite people, featuring Solas and their OC Maordrid from their fic Ouroboros, which is one of my favourite pieces of literature! Like ever!! And has had a profound impact on me and I love it and all the characters in it to bits!!! I still go back to this fic I wrote from time to time and drown myself in Mao/Solas feels 🫶 I feel like I captured something that is important to both of these characters, a small part of the connection they share and some of the things that draw them to one another. I'm quite proud of it ngl.

🤲what do YOU get out of writing?

Oh boy that's a good question haha. Like what does one get out of doing anything creative? It's definitely a great pastime. I spend many hours daydreaming/writing/editing/posting, time that I could use to do literally anything else but I just love the feeling of getting immersed in a different world, another person's mind. So escapism is a big part of it too I guess-- focusing on a fictional character's life and problems is so much better than focusing on my own LOL. I can tell you that my anxiety has been so much better ever since I started writing consistently, and it's why it's so important to me to set aside time every day to write.

Another more personal reason writing is important to me is because as an autistic person, writing about people and their feelings and how they interact with the world really helps me understand and process my own feelings and experiences in a way, since that is something I struggle with on a daily basis. And having this routine of writing also helps me gauge my mood/ emotions/energy levels, like I don’t always realise when I feel like shit or why I feel like this or what to do about it, but when I'm too tired or out of it to write I know it’s perhaps time to take a break and maybe reflect on some stuff lmao. And!! Of course!! Writing is great when it comes to processing traumatic or painful stuff. Like when my dad passed away last year I found myself writing a lot about grief and loneliness and losing people/situations that are important to you and not really knowing what to do about it, and I did that without even really realising it so I'm grateful for having this creative outlet that lets me process stuff in a somewhat healthy way lol.

This got unnecessarily long SORRY haha, but thank you so much for your asks 💙💙

[theluckywizard]

WIP Whenever!

I'm so excited to be moving into Skyhold in my long fic In the Shattering of Things! (HF!Inquisitor x Cullen and HF!Inquisitor x m!Hawke)

tagging friends who probably have writing or art to share in progress!

@nirikeehan, @crackinglamb, @rowanisawriter, @bluewren, @kiastirling-fanfic, @doomhippy83, @warpedlegacy, @about2dance, @barbex, @exalted-dawn-drabbles, @ir0n-angel, @ar-lath-ma-cully, @effelants

Newly minted Inquisitor Rose has only just begun to understand the surprising new feature of the Anchor (the Mark of the Rift in game) and she recruits Cullen to join her in discharging it at the buttcrack of dawn as is their tradition:

Cullen strides out, saluting lightly as he passes his guards who snap to attention, a flicker of interest in their faces and a traded glance. He looks every bit as put together as he usually does, his curls brushed into submission, fluffy mantle piled high around his neck. He hands me my vial of powder with thanks and I tuck it away. 

“How is it feeling?” he asks, gesturing at the Anchor.

“Like my nerves are on fire. Full. I didn’t want to wait longer,” I say, biting my fingernail slightly. It’s warm enough this morning that neither of us need hats or hoods, the spring breeze stirring in our hair pleasantly as we progress across the bridge.

“I’m glad you thought to get me when Solas wasn’t free,” he says earnestly.

“I– um– didn’t ask Solas,” I admit, peeking at him.

“Oh. Oh. I…” he trails off, catching on, grasping for his neck with a flush. 

“I’m sure he’s having a fantastical journey into the Fade at this hour,” I laugh awkwardly. He smiles, looking out at the brightening peaks.

“Maybe he could share his secret. I only seem to wind up in the dark and terrifying corners.”

“You know he would if you only asked, Cullen,” I tell him. “There’s nothing Solas loves more than dispensing knowledge.”

“I might if it weren’t so insufferable half the time,” he snorts. I had no idea he disliked Solas so. “Don’t mistake me, the man has his uses, but Maker’s breath. He does go on. And is never wrong of course.”

“I’m sure you are equally certain of your correctness,” I poke. 

“I at least understand the limits of my knowledge,” he grumbles.

“What, did he critique your trebuchet placement? The size of your squads?”

“Well, he’s not that foolish,” Cullen replies with a chuckle. “But no, he had a lot of snide comments about how little I know about demons and possession.”

“Ah. I’m sure the arguments were… spirited,” I say softly, remembering something of ours. 

“I’m sure you would have enjoyed them greatly,” he says with a laugh. “But you happened to be unconscious at the time.” We descend the steep road, first into the training camp and then out through the forest at its edge, trading an uncommon number of barely restrained smiles. The ice on the lake looks a little soft, weakened by the lengthening days and the radiant early spring sun. I pull my glove off and stretch my hand, the energy throbbing slightly at my fingertips. I shake it out with a hiss. 

“May I look at it?” he says, glancing at me. I nod, remembering with curiosity how he’d said he couldn’t really sense anything after the mark started expanding again in Haven. I hold my marked hand out to him and he cradles it in his, his thumb brushing over the mark lightly. A thrill streaks through my body just as he shakes his head. 

“Strange. You said it feels ‘full’ but I can’t sense anything about it. It feels like– well– a hand,” he says, and his cheeks are as pink as mine. 

“I didn’t know Templars could sense magic,” I reply and he turns pinker.

“I– I– well, only in close proximity… and only when it’s active. But I thought maybe–” He can’t quite hold my gaze and he clears his throat awkwardly. “Whenever you’re ready.”

I nod and walk over to the edge of the lake, twenty or so paces away from him. He draws his sword in preparation and I look back to wait for a signal. He inclines his head and I open the anchor, the Veil gaping wide over the lake like a great waking eye. My braid and cloak blow toward it, ice crystals drifting along the lake surface until they tumble upward into the open Fade. I can feel the tension in my hand easing as the Anchor calms and then the rift flickers out into silence again. Cullen sheaths his sword behind me and jogs over.

“Feeling better?”

“It’s always a relief,” I explain, stretching my fingers again. I pull my glove back on. 

“Shall we?” he asks, pointing back up the trail. I crunch in the snow alongside him, our pace leisurely. Now that the task is done, I’m not sure I want to relinquish him just yet. 

“So, this… Cole… creature,” he says. He chooses his words carefully because he knows I don’t like when people call him a demon. 

“Yes?” I ask.

“Are you really going to keep him around?” he asks. It almost sounds pleading.

“Has he been bothering you?”

“He’s been… sending me notes,” he says. I can’t help but smile because I am sure that Cole is busy teasing him apart.

“And what does Cole have to say?”

“I don’t know exactly. Most of them barely make sense. It’s unsettling.”

“Shall I tell him to stop for you?” I ask.

“No, I just thought maybe– does he do it to you too?”

“Send me notes? No. We’ve had conversations though. He seems to want to help people.”

“Ah. So I’m a project,” he says with a little laugh. “Perhaps they’re riddles.”

“You’ll have to show me one if you have them still,” I say. “I’m not the best at riddles, but I’ve spent enough time with Cole to make some sense of the way his mind works.”

“I– yes– I think I do. That would be helpful,” he stammers.

“Cole told me that I was too bright to listen to,” I told him. A smile tugs at the corner of Cullen’s lips.

“Odd. But kind of nice, I suppose.”

Back in his office, Cullen opens a drawer full of letters and rifles through them, eventually pulling out a small creased scrap of paper with a sentence scrawled in splotchy ink. He hands it to me and I read it out loud but softly.

“They didn’t hang you there, you can walk away.” I look up at him. “What does it mean?”

“This one is about Kirkwall. The Circle in Kirkwall was in a fortress called the Gallows.”

“That’s– a really nice thought. The note, I mean,” I tell him, and it’s not even for me, but even I feel cozy inside; Cole’s effect is potent.

“I– I suppose it is,” he says, his eyes dwelling on it with a kind of softness. He rummages again for another one and hands it to me.

“He was dead the whole time. He didn’t know.” I glance at him. “Hm. Extremely vague. Who could he be talking about? A ghost perhaps? What do you think?” He shrugs and shakes his head a little bit and hands me another, watching me as I read it.

“Fond, fair, a fox on a frozen lake slipping past–” I can’t finish it out loud and blush brightly, furrowing my brow. –Follow her. “Are you sure that one is for you?” I ask, unable to look at him. Cole. I’ll be having words with him.

“I– I– think so? It came to me by runner,” he says, turning away slightly. I feel cornered into playing dumb.

“What do you think it’s about?” I ask him. He clutches at the back of his neck and paces away nervously.

“I thought you’d be able to help with that one,” he says, stealing a glance. I shake my head, frozen like a chump. Time to flee.

“I’d better get to work,” I say, though it’s well before I normally begin work.

“Inquisitor–”

“Hm?”

“Do you need to do this again tomorrow?” he asks.

“Oh, I– everyday. You know that.”

“Right. May I join you? Tomorrow, that is– not every day. That would be– ridiculous.”

“Preposterous,” I smile and the amber look snags me right in the heart. “All right. Same time?”

“Same time. I will endeavor to be… more prepared.”

[broodwolf221]

now it’s your turn! pick an oc and tell me motion, roots, and change!

SO hard to choose an oc, but... gotta go with delwyn <3

motion: How does your OC move? How does their clothing help or hinder their range of motion? Are they flexible, coordinated, clumsy?

She's very graceful and light on her feet - she's startled a number of people when she wasn't trying to. And when she sits she always draws her legs up somehow, so she gravitates towards reasonably flexible clothing. She's also prone to gesturing and talking with her hands a lot. On the field she wears stiffer clothing and it does bother her a tiny bit, but it's worth it for better protection

road: What does your OC wear while traveling? Do they have high-quality equipment, or are they making do? What does their gear look like?

She's used to making do and is able to craft some simple pieces herself, particularly of leather, but nowadays she gets quite high-quality gear. She's also very... sentimental is probably the closest word, but it's not quite accurate. At one point in my bigfic she genuinely mourns her destroyed leather coat, because she knows all the effort that went into it, from the animal's death to the crafter's hands, and all the material that was spent on it. I actually designed her current outfit myself, but to describe it... open surcoat, sealed at the neck and tucked into a belt so the length goes behind her - also makes a nice blanket at night! Underneath she has a simple, open-sided tabard with a simple tunic underneath and a leather gorget over the surcoat to protect her neck.

Leather breeches and calf-high boots. The tabard has metal accents, the most important of which is a long triangular piece over her chest - the others are mostly aesthetic (not her design, she wouldn't add anything 'just' for aesthetic value), but the long piece is another layer of armor. The boots also have metal accents, a mobile band around the ankle and a fixed plate across the toe.

Simple leather bracers over the surcoat and wrappings like Solas' on her calves but much shorter and simpler. They help bind her pants tight and make it easier to get into the boots.

change: Has your OC ever drastically changed their appearance? Significant haircuts, big tattoos, complete wardrobe swap, etc? Why? How do they feel about the change?

Her vallaslin! She has Andruil's, and obviously getting it was a big change - but she also lets Solas remove it quite far down the line, so that's another, very big change, arguably bigger than getting it in the first place. She got the vallaslin in the first place for very sentimental reasons, and finally lets it be removed because she eventually feels quite disillusioned about it.

aaaa thank you! this got so long but was so fun ;u;

[awkwardgtace]

Oops I missed that the ask game was for oc 😳

Also 5 and 19 for Sola, Mikhail, and Ian please 😁

you're all good. I mean I am sort of my own OC. So it's valid lol. If anyone else wants to ask me or my oc things, I may not be as honest as the OCs but i'll answer Ask Game

5. Do you have any role models? Tell us a little bit about them.

Goddess Sola: Makes a face trying to remember what that means. Gets excited once the memory comes back. "The little cloud and Alessia are my role models. They both know so much about mortals! They also do a lot of good things. Alessia protects people and the little cloud is always using her powers for others. I want to do that stuff too! Although I usually scare mortals badly, Delphia said I should only meet them if she's around after the last time..."

Human Sola: Looks around so no one is nearby. "I want to be like my mom! She's so pretty and strong. Also takes care of everyone even if they're bigger or smaller than her. I'll be just like her when I grow up! I'll wear pretty long dresses too!"

Every Ian: Fidgets with his hands nervous to be answering anything about himself. Thinks about the question and the people he's met in his life. "...Mik. He stands up for his beliefs and doesn't care if people hate him for it. Even if he couldn't be huge he'd face down anything. I want to be confident and strong like that. Have something I believe in enough to chase after it like he does too."

Streamer AU Ian: Hugs himself as he thinks a little harder. Mik is one, but he does have another role model too. "Mira too. She's been trying really hard to move forward after what she went through. Hearing how bad it was gave me nightmares and she still tries so hard. I want that strength to move forward like her."

Shifter/Giant/human Mikhail: Folds his arms across his chest eventually rubbing his chin. He lets out a sigh before settling on an answer. "I'd suppose my aunt if I have to pick one. The woman can be ferocious and doesn't let anyone abuse their size or power. Although she can be a bit too intense at times. That part I definitely don't envy. She doesn't hesitate to stand up for what's right, doesn't let her thoughts stop her. I need to be more like that."

Alien Mikhail: Has had Ian explain what that terminology means and still barely gets it. Thinks hard about it for long enough it seems like he won't answer. "It would be my teacher that aided me in becoming one of the planet seekers. They had been one for many years and brought many species into our group. I hope to leave a record like them after me."

19. Describe an average day in your life.

Goddess Sola: Excitedly bouncing on her feet and desperately wanting to take the chance to drag you along with her. "I usually go watch the clouds and draw pictures in them! Sometimes I grab one of the others to come with me. Then I go to the mortal realm and make sure the light isn't overwhelming and the clouds have become fun shapes when they aren't bringing a storm. Ash says I hurt storms when I shape those clouds so I had to stop. Sometimes I stop and watch mortals too, they do so many interesting things." She starts to ramble about games she's seen mortal children play. Describing things like tag and hide and seek. The point of the question was lost on her as she just excitedly talks about the things she sees.

Human Sola (Snake in the shed): Frowns as she thinks about it. "Mom and dad say I have to go to school even though the borrowers don't so I do that. Then I come home and play with Luna until mom finds out I didn't do my homework. Luna helps me with it and then we watch the movies he likes until bed time. Sometimes it's too hard for Luna so Ash or Rhys help me too. Oh and the days Felix or Ryder visit are the best! They play fun games and give me new toys.

Borrower Sola (Vamp Del AU): She smiles excited to tell someone all the things she does. Her parents and Delphia would yell at her if they knew. "I sneak around Del's room when she's sleeping during the day. I want to see if I can find anymore hidden things from the past us. Sometimes Vincent finds me and he makes me go back to bed. He's too quiet for being so big. Rhys reads me stories when Vincent finds me though, so I let him find me sometimes. At night the others make me and Luna practice borrowing. Just in case we have to leave here, but I don't wanna leave. I love Delphia and she lives forever so we're safe. I'm a better climber, but Luna is better at getting supplies. After that we play games with Delphia and sometimes she reads us books. They have a lot of weird sounding words, she says it's old English whatever that means. Then I fall asleep and Delphia or the others help me get to our bed."

Human Sola (mafia au): She's excited to meet someone new who wants to hear about her. She thinks hard, but her answer is pretty simple. "I have a human tutor that teaches me what I'd learn at school. Mom and Dad say school isn't safe for me, but that's fine. Then I spend time with Luna in Dad's office. Sometimes I go find my brothers or sister, but everyone else is always so busy. I hope one day I can be busy like them too. At night everyone comes to say hi, but it's too late for us to do much with them. The days they're home are the best. Those days are rare."

Borrower Ian: Sits near his house ready to bolt just in case. Stays incredibly nervous despite the promises he's safe. Giving up his routine is risky, but Mik said it was ok and to be honest and he trusts Mik. "I... I usually start by checking the entrances like Mik taught me. That they're still sealed properly and for any other borrowers who might need help. Then I try to get food, sometimes Mik left some out other times he hasn't woken up yet so I get it myself. The rest of the day I usually spend with Mik doing whatever he does. Sometimes I try to get better at making clothes with the fabric Mik gives me. Or watch the shows on the big screen that make me laugh. I-it's pretty normal for me, but other borrowers would think I'm crazy. I just like not being trapped somewhere all day anymore."

Human Ian (streamer au): Shrugs his shoulders, it's not exciting. He's kind of shocked someone wants to know. "I just play some games for my streams then usually hang out with Mik. Sometimes I sit in while he does his podcast recordings, help out with timings and sound board stuff. Then I teach him about some of the games I streamed. We just hang out, there's been a few times I just send him memes from my phone while sitting in his chest pocket. On some rarer occasions I go play games with Mira, Corus is there too. The guy is insanely good for someone so sleep deprived."

Human Ian (alien au): Hugs himself still trying to figure out what is even safe for him to do each day. "I wake up... eat the food I'm given. Then I just hang out unless Mik needs me. It's still pretty hard to be out around the alien, even worse when the guy walks around as a giant so much." Ian shudders. "Still better than being homeless in the woods. The alien tries too, I'll get used to him eventually... probably."

Shifter Mikhail: Frowns a bit since this is disrupting his average day. It's the middle of a semester and he has work to be doing. "I teach my classes at the university. Stay late for office hours in case a student needs me. Grade papers while there. Come home and often times become Ian's size to spend time with him. When I'm worn out he doesn't mind that I stay a human size and he sits on my chest while I read to unwind. I make a simple dinner that's easy for a borrower to eat without making a mess of themself and then go to sleep." Mikhail has made the active choice to avoid mentioning how annoyed the other professors make him. The times he shifts just enough his chair creaks from someone's annoying conversation topics. The aloof professor never gets to be left alone in peace and quiet while at the school.

Giant Mikhail (streamer au): Nods understanding the curiosity. He'd be curious too. Takes a few minutes to come up with an answer he hopes is good enough. His life is fairly boring outside of the time he helped Corus. "I work on the story of my horror podcast most mornings. Do research when it's time for the news episode. In the afternoon Ian comes by and usually causes some trouble until I put him in my pocket. Sometimes he actually helps. The entire time he's in my pocket he's sending memes to my phone making it vibrate and distract me." Mikhail has a soft smile on his face as he talks about the 'annoying' things Ian does. "Then we just hang out. I read books he plays games. Sometimes he shows me how to play one of his games. Some days I go see Delphia we usually get lunch or dinner. Now and then Corus joins us too."

Alien Mikhail: Thinks about how his routine would best be explained to humans. Frowns as he considers it might sound problematic, but has nothing better to explain himself. "A day for my kind is a bit longer. I usually spend it researching humans through the media I can now understand. I haven't been able to find a good explanation for some things. Like 'yeet' or why people miss vines. From my research nature still has plenty of them. I make meals for Ian and leave them for him to eat as he feels ready too. I try to mimic the lifestyle the humans in the media I've found use to make Ian feel comfortable. I'm not sure it has worked, but trial and error is my only option. I also spend a lot of time making things in the ship easier for him. I have been working on a surprise for a while, I found many humans do things like this and I hope it helps assuage his nerves. I'm sorry I've gotten off topic. Other than research, I write reports on my progress. Currently it's known I've met a human who has agreed to help me. After what I sent back so far many others are excited to learn more about humans, they are quite strange creatures. The blankets were something a lot of people have started to use on my planet." Mikhail seems to stare off, it's a little hard to tell with his eyes a solid color. It's clear he thinks he answered the question sufficiently, even with his bit of off topic additions.

[osmoticeel]

rules: pick any ten of your fics, scroll to the midpoint, pick a line (or three) and share it. then tag ten people.

I wasn’t tagged and I don’t tag people but if anyone does this because of me please @ me in it! I wanna see what you have to share ✨

All of these are WIPs to varying degrees. Also very few of my WIPs have names �� I'm posting this in the hope that it encourages me to work on more than just the ultralong ones.

Twilight (the Enterprise episode) (Hoshi/T’pol)

T'pol's reflection in the mirror above the dresser is unfamiliar - her hair is long, and while she slept hairs have come loose and frizzy from the braid down her back. The defined edges of her face and body have softened ever so slightly, though she doesn't feel weak. Her eyes look wider, maybe a little unfocused - or a little crazed.

She's aged – not much, but a noticeable amount. Last night, she was sixty-four years old, first officer of the Enterprise. She was on her way to engineering, taking short, measured steps on unsteady feet, deep breaths, vertigo making the walls close in. The floor lurched – a spatial anomaly or her own perception? – she fell, and— and— nothing.

She steps closer to the mirror, trying to make sense of the gap between her image of herself and the woman in the mirror, and notices a note on the dresser. The paper is beginning to yellow with age, but the formal Vulcan handwriting is undeniably hers.

T'pol, daughter of T'les, know that I am you, though you have forgotten me.

Emergent Properties (Hoshi/T’pol, Vox Sola)

Hoshi knew her vices all too well, and she never considered pride to be one of them.

She took pride in her work, yes, because she was hardworking and focused and believed nothing was worth doing that wasn’t worth doing right. But she was also (consciously, willfully) friendly, and helpful, and humble. She didn’t like being wrong, but she was happy to accept it as something she could learn from. She knew what she didn’t know.

And yet none of that seemed to matter.

The Vulcan Word for Love (Hoshi/T’pol)

“How do you say I love you in Vulcan?”

T’pol’s mouth is dry, and she freezes, unable to do anything but stare, feeling like an ambushed gormagander. She is not prepared for that question. But it is not the Vulcan way to lie, and so she tells the truth as she knows it:

“We don’t.”

She feels Hoshi sag in her arms. There’s a part of her that wants to draw Hoshi in closely, to say T’pol can try to be human for her. There’s a part of her that can feel, intensely, how those words hurt, not for the explicit meaning itself, but for everything implied by it. And what those words imply is equally clear, echoed across the bond they share, etching itself into T’pol’s mind like acid.

Vulcans do not love to begin with.

It is extremely fortunate that Vulcans require little sleep, because even as she tries to meditate in Hoshi’s arms, she finds herself drawn back to that thought. It haunts her with the fiery intensity of all Vulcan emotions, until morning.

These Are the Voyages (gen, Voy/Ent crossover)

“It’s not educational, it’s an adventure that just happens to be based in historical fact.” Harry paused to smile knowingly. “And besides, I think you’ll find you like history a lot better when you’re a part of it.”

Tom raised his eyebrows and went back to eating.

B’elanna slid in between them and, without asking, picked up the padd and started reading it. “These Are The Voyages: A Holographic Window Into History.” Harry tried to grab the padd out of her hand, but she held it up in the air away from him and continued reading the description with a dramatic flourish. “Relive the thrill of battle, the intrigue of diplomacy, and the awe of exploration. Join the crew of the NX-01 Enterprise, Starfleet’s first warp 5 vessel,” she let out a small snort, “on humanity’s first steps into deep space.”

Time After Time (Paris/Kim)

It was a formulaic sort of conversation, a lecture Harry could have heard from his own father. Start with flattery – “You’re such a promising young officer,” – then veiled threats – “I’d hate to see you ruin your career,” – then actually get to the heart of the matter – “but that Tom Paris is bad news.”

Figures. Harry never had good taste in men. Luckily his common sense was usually stronger than his heart. His mother raised him right, he might say. It still smarts every time.

Harry was so distracted that he almost didn’t notice when the very object of his frankly juvenile brooding slid into the seat across from him, sloshing a bowl of slightly pink tomato soup as he set it down.

“There, you see? I told you it wouldn’t take long.”

Tom was bitter, even more bitter than the Starfleet replicators’ impression of tomato flavor. Apparently Tom never had a replicated tomato before, because, while Harry gripped the edge of the table at a loss for words, Tom took a sip and grimaced.

“Fourteen varieties, and they can’t even get plain tomato soup right.”

Harry might have told him there’s a reason for the fourteen varieties, that next time he should try the Bolian style, but Tom’s spoon clinked as he dropped it into the bowl, and Harry hated these conversations.

A Secondhand Truth (Paris/Kim)

“He misses you, you know.”

Harry was stunned, had been completely thrown off from his mental calculations of nebular dust decay. “Who?”

“Tom.”

“Oh. What do you mean?”

“He tells me you just canceled Captain Proton on him again, and now I see you here, hard at work on a problem that even I agreed is completely irrelevant. You didn’t have a fight, you’re just avoiding him.”

“He’s better off without me.”

“I beg to differ, he was much less insufferable when you still talked to him.”

Harry hadn’t seen that smile of Tom’s in a long time, the one he’d thought could burn out stars. He’d just imagined he saved it for B’elanna behind closed doors.

Fission (B’Elanna/Seven)

Janeway insisted, in her narrow scope, that human collectives and connections were no different. Humans were interdependent, she said; just look at the crew of Voyager.

Short-sightedness was an obvious result of living a single life, isolated from contradictory viewpoints.

Seven of Nine knew this much: the crew of Voyager was cacophonous. There was dissent. Members identified with two factions that warred with each other and only cooperated due to necessity. The captain had to command her crew and compel them to serve the needs of the whole, and punish those who didn’t, Seven of Nine included. It was intolerable. To be Borg was to know harmony.

Shuttlecraft 13 (Troi/Yar)

But she pitied Armus, as well. It was a heartless blob of hatred and anguish – negative emotions, but not pointless ones. They ought to be red flags the mind raises to alert itself to danger, that calm down when the situation passes. But there was no danger. Armus was trapped in a dark tunnel without an exit in sight. She wondered if anyone had ever tried to take it seriously. If she was going to die here, maybe she could talk it down.

“You want to play that game? That wasn’t meaningless at all. I know what you really want. Misery always wants to be shared. If you make someone else suffer, you think it’ll be worth something. It might at least mean you’re right. Well, that’s not how it works. It won’t ever make you feel any better. But if you let Will go, I’ll cry with you.”

Between Unforgiving Stars (Troi/Yar, someday)

“How deep does the rabbit hole go?”

T’ven frowned. “How is a small mammal relevant?”

“It’s an allusion to an old Earth story – Alice in Wonderland, in which a young girl falls into a rabbit’s burrow and discovers a world where everyone and everything is illogical. I was referring to its use in an old Earth movie, which asks ‘how deep the rabbit hole goes’ to refer to discovering concealed layers of confusing or incomprehensible truth.”

T’ven nodded, but she was obviously baffled.

“Perhaps a better way to say it would be, how many layers of deception are there?”

“Only the Tal Shiar can be said to know, though I doubt their left hand knows what the right hand is doing, to use one of your Earth expressions.”

Deanna smiled graciously. “You’ve studied human mythology.”

Waiting Game (Troi/Yar)

“Deanna,” Will said, and she could hear the unspoken, don’t. But he knew that if she’d visited his quarters, if she was so serious when she was so plainly uncomfortable, it must be important enough that she needed to say it for herself, no matter what.

“I don’t want you to think,” Deanna began, then swallowed, realized the way she was going to end that sentence – that I still have feelings for you – wasn’t fair, because her own feelings were out of her control, and the truth is she had no idea how she felt, not after the other day threw her off, but she wasn’t going to pressure herself to get her own feelings in order until she was well and ready. Instead she took a deep breath, steeled herself, and said the simplest truth she could manage: “I don’t want to pick up where we left off.”

Will sighed, crumpled slightly, but he almost seemed relieved. “I knew it was a matter of time before I had to hear it.” He took a deep breath. “I’m happy to have you as a friend, Deanna.”

[elfroottales]

So, so far in my Delmar family of sibling city elf Rooks (their parents got married young and the twins were a surprise hence the big gap between them) I’ve got besides their appearances and backgrounds (and mostly fun 80’sish names that actually date back to the Renaissance or earlier) their attitudes pinned down as of today

(Will do some art later this is just to have their profiles somewhere safe 🐦‍⬛

Rook #1

Quote: “I’m not losing anyone, step carefully.”

Tiffany, 41, mage, veil jumper, makes all the choices based on how much it will help people. (In the tradition of my first plays, follows my gut feelings first reactions to the story. Generally makes blue choices with the odd purple very rarely.) 

Character: Generally kind, proper, Team Mom (tm), likes music but can’t dance, loves cooking, has a temper when people don’t listen to her, hopeless romantic, loves to play matchmaker.  Dreams of having a bakery.

Fears: Germaphobe, centipedes, death and dead bodies, her life not mattering in the long run, her family going back to the poverty of her early childhood.

Solas: A peer of around the same age, finds him handsome but far too in need of some talk and care to follow that thought. Often pokes him with logic, and if all else fails the promise of food.

Speaking to Solas: “Moping will do you less good than you think.”

Romance: Emmrich

  Rook #2

Quote: “Didn’t I tell you to listen to me?”

Felicity, early 20s, Rogue, Lords of Fortune, makes all choices based on personal gain on one hand and if helping people will make her look good on the other. (Generally makes purple or red choices. Especially red if she’s being talked down to)

Character: Brash, self righteous, Elven Glory (tm), Vain, greedy, and excessive need be liked by other elves. Likes art but can’t paint, loves to carve small figures out of wood,  oblivious to love. Dreams of being queen or some other royal figure written about in the history books in a remade society. 

Fears: Abandonment and isolation, being wrong, something happening to her family because she wasn’t good enough.

Solas: An idol, a legend who she does her best to please with her great ideas that will make everything in his plans work!

Speaking to Solas:

“Of course your plan will work, I helped with it!”

Romance: Davrin

Rook #3

Quote: “Are you sure you want me?”

Nicolas, early 20’s, Warrior, Gray  Warden, makes all the choices based on how scared he feels at the time, genuinely wants to help people but is often afraid of making a wrong decision. (Generally makes blue choices, with the odd red if pushed to his limits. Tries to be purple but fails so spectacularly it almost goes back to being funny) 

Character: Timid, shy, empathetic, The Tank (tm), self-sacrificing, low self esteem, wants to be a true part of the team but lacks social skills, is very good at drawing but never shows his work to anyone. Bashful to love. Dreams of living in a quiet farm in the country like the one his parents came from, is very curious about what a life without the veil would be like. (Has a tiny, silly, smaller dream of raising  winged cows as pets)

Fears: Heights, drowning, (list cut short, for time)…not being good enough as a warden and turning into a darkspawn, standing in the way of someone that might be a better hero for the job.

Solas:

A mentor and teacher, tough but fair, by the end of their time together growing to an almost fatherly role.

Speaking to Solas:

“Why do you look so sad all the time?”

Romance: Harding

[victors-grave]

Which of my oc's can you ship together for this year's artfight?

When I make my permissions for my characters, you may notice I always put that if there are two/multiple of my characters who you want to draw together as a ship, that I need you to comment on one character's page so I can know before hand and so I can avoid characters being shipped together who have massive age gaps or are related in some way.

So, I thought I would make this post to make it more obvious on which characters can be shipped together, and which cannot.

Firstly, there are multiple timelines and eras with my characters.

You have the characters that exist in 6025 PT, which is where Zena's story begins, for example you have Hal Nex, Zena Xa-Qui, Thaniea Hio, etc. You have the characters who died in 6000 PT and therefore, their ages are the age which they died, for example, Siela Inei, Florena Sola, Ravona Satone, etc. There are the soldiers whose story takes place a couple of years before 6026 PT, for example, Key, Volt, Iris, Grim, etc.

There are the characters who exist in 6055 PT, for example Zena and Thaniea, who are in their 50's by that point, alongside their children and other random characters like Na'vida and Na'dane La'sene and Arley Syx.

Finally, there are the characters who exist in 6083 PT, around the time where Zena and Thaniea are elderly women and Zena is planning on retiring as the Divineli and handing the sword over to Karun Avarani instead, for example you have Karun Avarani, Frenia Hesing, Saheia Al'khana, etc.

The only character that does not follow any of these patterns is Elara Xa, but that's because she currently exists in her own timeline that takes place decades before any of the other eras. And also the characters that died in 5999 PT, rather than 6000 PT, for example, Uttara and Wye Xa-Qui, and then the character who died in 5985 PT, for example, Soren Inei.

If you want, you can go through all of my characters on Artfight and if there's characters you see that you think would look good as a ship, then just send me an ask and I can tell you the nature of their relationship.

I'm fine with people shipping my oc's, but they have been my characters for so long now that I've become protective over them and like having most of the control when it comes to their stories.

Here is my artfight if you want to check it out.

And I also have a hit list if you want to add your characters to it.

[vaguely-concerned]

some thoughts I've been having about what I (to my delight) have seen dubbed the Three Great Big Liars of DA:I, but mostly building up to some analysis of what iron bull's got going on that way because it fascinates me:

solas I don't think is actually naturally a liar at all. he lies out of tactical necessity the vast majority of the time and seems relieved to be able to spill his guts to the extent he deems safe and do some friendly elvhensplaining to you at the end of trespasser. in (what he would consider lol) an ideal world, he would just tell you shit straight out, not least of all because in his heart of hearts he's a terrible little know-it-all (affectionate).

varric's lies are the lies of a storyteller: he lies for fun, profit and a sense of meaning, and instinctively. to create meaning where there might not be any, to entertain, to reflect or deflect, for his own comfort and convenience, because the world is unbearable without a kinder lie to see it through, as an act of love. (look at how, in the legacy dlc for DA2, the version of leandra that tells hawke all the stuff they probably really really need to hear... is the one varric has made up for them if leandra is dead by that point in the story. all of DA2 is a love letter, but that one especially gets to me. varric loves hawke so much.) he tells the sorts of lies that sometimes tell the truth better than the truth ever could, and sometimes are the self-serving cowardice of not being able to accept the world -- and the people in it, himself included -- as they actually are. I think varric is always aware that he's lying, though. he's a craftsman first and foremost lol

iron bull is a lie. or maybe a series of lies overlapping and interlocking to create each other like an escher drawing. or rather, he has been forced to take on and internalize many different and contradictory fundamental truths and to know exactly when and how and to/with who to perform each one. hissrad is real, and iron bull is real, and both of them are fucked because of it. the KING of compartmentalization and cognitive dissonance. his is more the lie of dissociation, which he uses both as a professional skill and for psychological survival.

(yeah as far as I'm concerned bull still has the Big Time PTSD, and not just from seheron. both solas and cole pick up on this in their banter with him -- cole especially is very good at noticing the ways iron bull has to frame the world in deliberate ways to keep doing what he does: "nothing on this side has a family", "you make them come to you so it's their fault; you don't want to kill, you want to protect". but in these ideas you see that the truth is also kept alive in those lies: 'everyone has a family, but these people can't, because then I can't do my job' (which, within the qun, directly equates to 'then I can't exist', which is so fucked uuuuuupppp. bull wanted the reeducators to 'fix him' because his mind stopped him from knowing what's actually wrong so he wouldn't have all meaning and connection in life taken from him -- not just with the world around him but within himself.). if cole tells bull krem's last thoughts, it's the one time what cole does just breaks something in someone in a permanent way, because bull is a pretty fragile psychological eco system beneath it all. it's why cole observing "there was no pain" after bull turns on you in trespasser is so eerie and so sad. he's beyond pain at that point. something broke in him for good this time.)

in some ways it serves him very well and is honestly pretty adaptive; look at his relationship to cole, for example. in any other circumstance cole would be what he'd consider a demon, which scare the crap out of him -- except that he loves cole. ergo cole can't be a demon, he's just some weird squirrely kid to take care of haha. you can see why he's kept that mechanism around, for all that it takes a heavy toll in the long run.

frequently I think bull must not even know when he's lying, or maybe he's aware on some level that he's always lying, because everything he does or says, any feeling he can have, belies some of the contradictory realities he has been forced to hold as truth over the years. he's had to set up a much more uh flexible approach to reality to be able to stay somewhat functioning. so it's simultaneously true that duty to the qun trumps all in a bottom line sort of way, and that he feels more loyalty to (and meaning in!) the chargers than to the qun now, and these things cannot actually coexist but they do and he has to find some way to live like that. and then if he becomes tal-vashoth... he has to deal with all the tal-vashoth he killed thinking it was necessary, and that maybe not all of them were. oh boy

and you have to help him make the choice to save the chargers, even though that's clearly what a large part of him screams to do. because the thing is... his weird indecisiveness and helplessness in that quest comes from him being in full survival mechanism mode, because something in his trauma brain is recognizing that bitch, he's going to have to find a way to still live no matter what the outcome here is, he can't be going putting all his eggs in one reality basket lmao. it's not just a video game thing, he needs someone else to make the choice for him, to settle once and for all who he is, because necessity and trauma have made it much more adaptive for him to keep that an open question... but damn, you really can't live your whole life like that, it's going to kill you one way or the other. like no fucking WONDER his biggest fear is madness, he's been balancing on that knife edge for what seems like basically his whole adult life at least. and also no wonder he's afraid of demons, he must feel on some level it's quite crowded in here as it is

I think what really opened my eyes to his character was listening to all of his banter and realizing just how much he adjusts himself to fit with the person he's talking to. he can almost seem like a different person from conversation partner to conversation partner. varric does a similar thing in that he makes a deliberate point to try to find some sort of common ground and something to connect over with every companion (except cassandra because they've got book-stabby history lol), but he doesn't actually like... change himself or lose himself in the process the same way. probably partially down to different motivations/reasons for that social chameleoning too: bull is specifically trained to get things out of people as a job, varric just likes people and also likes being liked. bull is so finely tuned to giving people exactly what they need or want from him as professional spy thing, you can almost feel him having to... dissolve a little, set parts of himself aside and pull others out, to be able to do it. it's so interesting and sometimes so subtle too.

TL;DR: the trauma and the qun came together to do such a number on this man and I'm glad he's out of there now and living his best dragon-slaying life

(vivienne is also a liar but like in the realpolitik way, which I think is more about power structures and keeping yourself safe and on top in a hostile system than anything inherent in her. That's Just Politics Baby haha)

and they all catch on to blackwall being deeply sus immediately, because blackwall has elements of all three of their motivations but like... faintly incompetently hahaha sorry blackwall

[blind-alchemists]

you ever sit and think about how Solas, by his very nature, is just ... very far from fitting into the trickster archetype. and the Evanuris used exactly that to paint him as a scheming liar whose only goal is destruction, mayhem, and chaos until he had to fit himself into that role because he was left with no other choice if he wanted to accomplish his goals.

like. Solas is honest. even when he shouldn't be. it would have been much easier to lie to the Inquisition so he'd seem less suspicious, or just to cover his tracks. it would have been easier lying to the Inquisitor. so that no one would ever know his true character, his goals, his motivations, but he just - didn't. (yeah, yeah, lying by omissions still lying, yes, but also some sort of compromise the way I see it.)

and, yes, he knows how to play political games. he's enjoying them. he can hide the truth in plain sight, in a way that doesn't make you question him, but that's because he managed to survive in Elvhenan. you can't tell me he didn't get directly involved with the Evanuris and their court antics at one point and did not learn how to imitate them.

but, also, he's compassionate. he truly wants to help people in need. he doesn't approve of cruelty/violence when there is another solution. all of his emotions are genuine: his sorrow, his guilt, his anger, the appreciation he has for a high approval Inquisitor, the disdain he has for a low approval Inquisitor. he cares about his friends.

he's stubborn and prideful but he's open to change and reflection - evident by basically all of his banters. (Cassandra, Varric, Bull (if you save the Chargers), Blackwall. Sera, at times. given more time and opportunity I can totally see how he'd grow close with Dorian and Vivienne (+ Sera) as well if their character development got reflected in their banters. or if they went through as major an arc as Bull or Blackwall can. Cassandra too, kind of.)

my point is: for all his flaws and strengths, he's not the fool he believes himself to be. he's capable of getting along well people who are extremely different from him, he's capable of accepting their differences and embrace their similarities (as long as they're reasonable). Solas' fatal flaw isn't that he's too proud to ask for help or too foolish to look for another option; he knows he's not doing the right thing. but he does it anyway. his fatal flaw is his sense of duty (and his heart he could never harden enough).

and, yeah, he can be charismatic (proof being several scenes in his romance route) but it strikes me as something profoundly natural because he falls apart just as easily in Trespasser. I don't read him as charismatic in a way that leaders are often described, more in a raw way in which some people just draw others to themselves because they shine so brightly. the kind of people who make friends easily. (this also plays into my 'Solas is an extrovert' hc, which makes everything worse if you think about his fear and his line about betrayal and how lonely he is, but anyway-)

he's smart and passionate, like all people are about the things they love, without any ill intentions. he's calm (if he isn't about something upset) and gentle with the world (do you hear how soft his voice becomes when he talks about the Fade. the emotion. the feelings.).

but people remember his figure as a beast with slavering jaws that wants to swallow the world, as a trickster laughing maniacally about the demise of gods, as a liar and a cheat and a threat - as someone he never was, and never can be, without corrupting himself.

because. yeah. I sometimes make myself sad thinking about it.

[rosella-writes]

“ it feels like i’m stuck in between today and tomorrow, yes and no. ” for solas and felassan, or virelan and felassan, for dadwc >:3

Thank you Blue! 💚

Not shippy quite yet but it's super early. For @dadrunkwriting

Pairing: Virelan Lavellan & Felassan Rating: Gen

~~~

Virelan finds him beside the still waters, plucking at a reed in the mud. 

“It’s quiet here,” Felassan says — he must sense her behind him, despite her quiet footsteps. “As quiet as I can bear.”

Virelan grunts out a low sigh as she lowers herself to the ground beside him. She leans forward over crossed legs and braces her stump on her knee. “Fewer sylvans out here. Fewer knights of the horned variety too.”

Felassan almost chuckles. She can hear the little breath of it at the back of his throat, and raises her gaze to his face. His vallaslin is bold, composed of dark looping lines on russet skin. It echoes a style long lost — she wonders which of the Evanuris it once honoured. He smiles at her, barely, and watches her from the corner of his crinkled eye. 

“Come back with me,” she says suddenly.

He winces. “Why? To be gawked at by those you’ve gathered? To look Briala in the eye? No.”

“Briala isn’t the only reason I went looking for you.”

Felassan looks down at his hands. They're weathered and cracked at the knuckles, worn from the passage of time and years of work in this Veiled world. When he draws the reeds through his fingers, they rasp like an ancient sigh. 

“What became of her?” he asks quietly. “She lives, yes, as you’ve told me. But there are worse things than dying, or even failing.”

Virelan frowns at him, feeling discomfort settle at the pit of her stomach. “She is a marquise. She stands for the elves of Orlais, at the price of her freedom.”

Felassan’s breathing becomes tremulous. “So she stood by the side of her empress after all.”

“It won’t last.”

He shakes his head with one sharp, decisive motion. “No, it will not. I warned her of this.”

Virelan tucks her chin. She registers that feeling in her gut as shame. “I pushed her towards Celene. It solved my most pressing issue at the time, but… I look at her now and just don’t know.” She grits her teeth. “I wonder if Gaspard could have been better.”

“There was no better,” Felassan spits, as if clearing his mouth of bitter drink. “Briala makes her own decisions. Whatever you did to twist or manipulate this outcome was no better or worse than anything I or Briala or Fen’Harel himself —”

He cuts off, as if a hand had grasped his throat. They both look down to the reeds in his hands to see that he’d bent them in half. He casts them into the water with a snap of his wrist. 

“And you would have me come back to that cursed place,” he says, so quietly she nearly misses the bite in it. “Where the spirits press so close, where the ground is poisoned by his touch. All because I once knew him?”

“Skyhold isn’t poisoned,” Virelan insists, not ungently. “I thought it was, once. But then my son made it bloom, just as his father did before him.”

Felassan looks up at her sharply. Dark hair hangs like curtains on either side of his gaunt face — his throat works, as if swallowing down cutting words… or a cry. He surges to his feet, so quickly that Virelan blinks and leans back out of instinct. 

“I told him,” he mutters. “I lived here among you for decades, learning, always learning. Then he wakes and is here for but a sliver of time and —”

“He doesn’t know,” Virelan snaps. “I won’t tell him.”

Felassan’s clenched fist opens. His tense shoulders fall. “Why? It could change everything.”

She sets her jaw and stares up at him, glaring against the bright mid-morning sun that shines past his head. The light catches the frayed ends of his ragged hair. 

“That is exactly why I can’t, hahren.” 

Felassan recoils at the honorific, slumping even further. 

“He’s just a boy,” Virelan continues through clenched teeth. “He does not need that weight. If Solas changes, it will be because he chooses to for himself. I can’t lay Tulin as a sacrifice at the Dread Wolf’s feet and beg.”

Felassan watches her with eyes that glitter like chips of amethyst in his skull. His lips pull back over his teeth. “You are just as proud.”

“And I’m right,” she spits. “I’m wrong about many things, but I’m right about this. I named Tulin thinking I could use him as a cudgel, but he’s a child. I cannot. I will not.”

He shakes his head and looks over her, sightlessly, at the water. A moment of silence passes, tense and taut as a bowstring — she wonders when that nocked arrow will finally fly to meet its target. 

“I paid a painful price for a similar decision, lethallen,” he finally says. “I would not give the Dread Wolf what he hunted for, merely to protect a mortal elven girl. I had watched over her for so long that I… well.” He glances down at her, the corners of his mouth pulling down into a grimace. “I had formed Briala into the perfect tool. And in the end I could not sacrifice her.”

Virelan can still feel the snarl disfiguring her face. “So you understand.”

“In my way.” He takes a deep breath and gazes at her, eyes tracing every line as if seeing her fully for the first time. “It feels as if I am stuck in between today and tomorrow, yes and no. I have lingered for so long, caught in the cradle that is the Tirashan, relying too much on its beating heart. Am I truly ready to step free of it?”

Virelan shrugs. “You’re asking the wrong person. I’ve only just begun to look before I jump. But I’m offering you a step out of these woods, back out into the world on your own terms. Not his.”

She rises to her feet with a grunt and brushes mud from her hind end, then wipes her hand on her thigh. Felassan looms over her, as tall and imposing as his counterpart had been. Even in his bedraggled, frail state, he cuts an impressive, broad-shouldered figure — when she steps closer, he does not back away. His eyes drill down into hers, bright beneath furrowed brows. 

“Stop hiding,” she murmurs. “It’s been ten years. You’re ready.”

His expression does not change, but his eyelashes tremble almost imperceptibly. His chapped lips part around what may be an excuse — he pauses, then finally speaks. 

“I’ll come.” His lip lifts in a quick little smirk. “If only to meet Fen’Harel’s boy. I’m dreadfully curious.”

Virelan snorts gracelessly. “Whatever you need to tell yourself. Come on.”

She turns and makes her way back to the edge of the forest, leaving behind the soft sensation of the warmth of his body. Virelan doesn’t check to be sure he follows — she smiles to herself when she hears the crackle of reeds as he passes through them in her wake. 

Perhaps this slow arrow didn't break in the wolf’s jaws after all.

[merrybandofmurderers]

[ID: banner reading Work in Progress Wednesday in white cursive font on a smudged turquoise, yellow, and gray background /END ID]

revised chapter of the pavellan fic. follow up to this

As Dorian made his way across the battlements to the mage tower, he paused at the sound of some disturbance echoing on the wind. After a moment, he realized it was coming from above him, and he looked up to find he was below Lavellan’s balcony.

The disturbance was Lavellan’s voice—raised in anger, no doubt.

Dorian could not make out the exact words and decided it would be best to keep his distance, anyway. Over the last few days, Lavellan had calmed down after his brush with the Freemen of the Dales; it was about time for something else to draw his ire. Dorian turned back to his destination, knowing Fiona was waiting for him.

Later, Dorian headed to the Rest to join their usual group for cards, only to find Lavellan absent. Varric directed him up the stairs to Sera’s nest, with a grim look probably meant to warn Dorian to tread lightly. As Dorian approached Sera’s room, he heard her voice, sharp and derisive, through the cracked door.

“—elfy in the worst way.”

“No. That’s the thing,” came Lavellan’s voice. “He’s not. He’s only elfy for himself, for elves that are dead.”

“Yeah, worst way, what I said. Not like you. You’re elfy for all elves.”

A huff.

“You don’t listen to him,” she continued. “Head’s stuck a thousand years up his ass. You’re better. Know better, too.”

There was a heavy sigh. “I appreciate it, Sera.”

The door swung open, making Dorian jerk back. He hadn’t realized how close he’d gotten. Sera’s eyebrows shot up, and then she smirked. “Not a spy, huh?”

Heat crept up Dorian’s neck, and he cleared his throat. “I was merely coming to fetch Lavellan for cards.”

She cackled. “Sure, ponce.” Then she shouldered past, jumping down the stairs and loudly ordering Blackwall to move over.

Dorian dithered awkwardly outside her room, unable to see Lavellan from where he stood. After a moment, Lavellan’s voice came from inside, “You may join me, if you wish.” Since his tone was amused, Dorian felt safe to enter.

Lavellan sat on the cushioned window seat, a tassled blanket around his waist, his loose hair ruffled by the wind coming in through the open window. He had discarded his shirt and chainmail, and Dorian’s eyes went straight to his lean, scarred arms before he forced them to Lavellan’s face. Lavellan was looking out the window, chin propped up on his hand, his expression thoughtful.

“You seem rather uncharacteristically subdued,” Dorian remarked.

“A question, Dorian,” Lavellan said without looking at him.

Dorian took a seat beside him. “Of course, amicus.”

“When we first got to know each other, did you think me—” he grimaced “—exceptional?”

Dorian couldn’t help but laugh. “Is that a serious question?”

Lavellan shook his head. “I don’t mean in the sense of being—extraordinary. I mean, did you consider me an exception to my race?”

It was Dorian’s turn to frown. There was no test in Lavellan’s voice, but Dorian could not tell the motive behind the question. “Well, I hadn’t been familiar with many elves before I met you, so it’s difficult to compare—though I like to think I’ve learned a thing or two since our acquaintance.”

Lavellan finally looked at him, a thoughtful tilt to his head.

When he did not say anything more, Dorian dared to venture, “Does this have to do that argument you were having earlier? With Solas, I presume?”

Lavellan’s expression turned wry. “You heard that, huh.”

“Surely you’re not unaware of how your voice carries.”

Lavellan sighed, laying himself out on the cushioned seat. His undershirt rode up, exposing the thatch of hair trailing down his abs and disappearing under the hem of his breeches. Dorian swallowed against his suddenly dry throat.

“Solas finally returned from wherever he’d been to mourn his spirit friend and said he wanted to talk to me. Which was, you know, rare enough to make me curious.” He rested an arm over his eyes. “I really should know better.”

“And he said… you were an exception to your race?”

Lavellan expelled a harsh breath in reply.

Dorian winced. Surely Solas knew by now that would be a wrong thing to say to Lavellan. Not that Dorian could claim to know the man well—Solas had remained resistant to any friendly overtures—but Lavellan had certainly yelled at him enough.

“Look, there is little enough you agree on with Solas. You do not need to take his words to heart.”

“I can’t help it,” Lavellan grumbled. “My sister wouldn’t let it bother her—nothing ever bothers her—but I just can’t.”

Dorian frowned. Lavellan had mentioned something like that before, that his sister would disapprove of his generosity. It didn’t sit right with Dorian, but he knew to tread carefully on the subject of Lavellan’s family and had not the means to put those pieces together.

“You aren’t your sister,” he tried. “Your heart isn’t something to regret.”

Lavellan snorted and muttered, “Isn’t it?”

Dorian paused, wondering if he was meant to hear that. “Lavellan?”

Lavellan took his arm away from his face and rolled onto his side, hair spilling around him, to stare at Dorian. But not in his customary blank way—there was a deep furrow between his brows, his gaze hard. His mouth had a troubled tilt to it.

“Are you that bothered by it?” Dorian asked gently.

Lavellan’s eyes shifted away, hand rubbing the back of his neck. “Ah, nevermind.” He stood, stretching his arms over his head, and Dorian determinedly did not look below his face. He began re-dressing in his discarded clothing.

Dorian distinctly felt as if he’d missed a step in their conversation. “Uh, really?”

“It’s just Solas, as usual.” But Lavellan wasn’t looking at him.

Dorian stood slowly. “Are you sure? You know I’m—here for you.”

Lavellan tightened his sash over his chainmail. “I do know. And I am sure that I would like to be drunk.” His gaze flicked to Dorian finally, a playful curl at the corner of his lips. “And maybe win some gold off you.”

Dorian scoffed. “As if I don’t know better than to bet with gold against you.”

Lavellan chuckled, but it was too rough, too curt, and his shoulders were tense. Dorian followed him down the stairs, where Lavellan was greeted by his companions, still feeling off-footed.

Dorian accepted the cards Varric dealt to him. Well, maybe Lavellan just hadn’t wanted to have that discussion with Dorian. It was fine. Dorian understood; it was an elf thing, and Dorian just wasn’t up to the task. It was fine. His grip on the cards tightened.

Lavellan brightened with the additional company and slowly relaxed with each new glass of whiskey set before him. He did not act as though anything odd had occurred, but Dorian could not shake the feeling that something was… off.

Perhaps he was being overly paranoid, but Dorian had too much experience with being brushed off by men. Maybe that’s all it was, what it reminded him of. It was Lavellan’s choice whom to confide in; it didn’t necessarily mean anything that it wasn’t Dorian this time. It was an elf thing; Dorian “got it.”

It was fine, Dorian told himself. Solas had upset Lavellan; it had nothing to do with Dorian. It was fine.

“Call!”

Dorian jolted out of his thoughts.

Lavellan smirked at him, tapping his cards against the table. “Feeling confident, Pavus?”

Dorian looked down at his hand, looked at the pile of coins on the table, looked back to Lavellan. At his hesitation, Lavellan’s brows drew down, his head tilted slightly, questioning. Dorian deflected with a chagrined smile, and folded. “Sadly, not tonight.”

Lavellan’s smirk faded, but on his turn, Varric put down the Angel of Death, and Lavellan’s cocky air returned in full force. He flourished his cards and laughed at the losers’ groans as he took the pot for himself.

Dorian smiled, in spite of his mood. It was fine. Lavellan had recovered; Dorian was overthinking it. It was fine.

@mrs-theirin, @gaysolavellan, @transfenris-truther, @fade-and-loathing-in-thedas, @calicostorms, @midnightprelude

[testudoaubrei-blog]

Content note for discussions of eternal damnation, and all sorts of other shit that will trigger a lot of folks with religious trauma.

Before I get started I might as well explain where I’m coming from - unlike a lot of She-Ra fans, and a lot of queer people, I don’t have much religious trauma, or any, maybe (okay there were a number of years I was convinced I was going to hell, but that happens to everyone, right?). I was raised a liberal Christian by liberal Christian parents in the Episcopal Church, where most of my memories are overwhelmingly positive. Fuck, growing up in the 90’s, Chuch was probably the only place outside my home I didn’t have homophobia spewed at me. Because it was the 90’s and it was a fucking hellscape of bigotry where 5 year olds knew enough to taunt each other with homophobic slurs and the adults didn’t know enough to realize how fucked up that was. Anyway. This is my experience, but it is an atypical one, and I know it. Quite frankly I know that my experience of Christianity has very little at all to do with what most people experienced, or what people generally mean when they talk about Christianity as a cultural force in America today. So if you were raised Christian and you don’t recognize your theology here, congrats, neither do I, but these ideas and cultural forces are huge and powerful and dominant. And it’s this dominant Christian narrative that I’m referring to in this post. As well as, you know, a children’s cartoon about lesbian rainbow princesses. So here it goes. This is going to get batshit.

"All events whatsoever are governed by the secret counsel of God." - John Calvin

“We’re all just a bunch of wooly guys” - Noelle Stevenson

This is a post triggered by a single scene, and a single line. It’s one of the most fucked-up scenes in She-Ra, toward the end of Save the Cat. Catra, turned into a puppet by Prime, struggles with her chip, desperately trying to gain control of herself, so lost and scared and vulnerable that she flings aside her own death wish and her pride and tearfully begs Adora to rescue her. Adora reaches out , about to grab her, and then Prime takes control back, pronounces ‘disappointing’ and activates the kill switch that pitches Catra off the platform and to her death (and seriously, she dies here, guys - also Adora breaks both her legs in the fall). But before he does, he dismisses Catra with one of his most chilling lines. “Some creatures are meant only for destruction.”

And that’s when everyone watching probably had their heart broken a little bit, but some of the viewers raised in or around Christianity watching the same scene probably whispered ‘holy shit’ to themselves. Because Prime’s line - which works as a chilling and callous dismissal of Catra - is also an allusion to a passage from the Bible. In fact, it’s from one of the most fucked up passages in a book with more than its share of fucked up passages. It’s from Romans 9:22, and I’m going to quote several previous verses to give the context of the passage (if not the entire Epistle, which is more about who needs to abide by Jewish dietary restrictions but was used to construct a systematic theology in the centuries afterwards because people decided it was Eternal Truth).

19 Thou wilt say then unto me, Why doth he yet find fault? For who hath resisted his will?

20 Nay but, O man, who art thou that repliest against God? Shall the thing formed say to him that formed it, Why hast thou made me thus?

21 Hath not the potter power over the clay, of the same lump to make one vessel unto honour, and another unto dishonour?

22 What if God, willing to shew his wrath, and to make his power known, endured with much longsuffering the vessels of wrath fitted to destruction:

The context of the allusion supports the context in the show. Prime is dismissing Catra - serial betrayer, liar, failed conqueror, former bloody-handed warlord - as worthless, as having always been worthless and fit only to be destroyed. He is speaking from a divine and authoritative perspective (because he really does think he’s God, more of this in my TL/DR Horde Prime thing). Prime is echoing not only his own haughty dismissal of Catra, and Shadow Weaver’s view of her, but also perhaps the viewer’s harshest assessment of her, and her own worst fears about herself. Catra was bad from the start, doomed to destroy and to be destroyed. A malformed pot, cracked in firing, destined to be shattered against a wall and have her shards classified by some future archaeologist 2,000 years later. And all that’s bad enough.

But the full historical and theological context of this passage shows the real depth of Noelle Stevenson’s passion and thought and care when writing this show. Noelle was raised in Evangelical or Fundamentalist Christianity. To my knowledge, he has never specified what sect or denomination, but in interviews and her memoir Noelle has shown a particular concern for questions that this passage raises, and a particular loathing for the strains of Protestant theology that take this passage and run with it - that is to say, Calvinism. So while I’m not sure if Noelle was raised as a conservative, Calvinist Presbyterian, his preoccupation with these questions mean that it’s time to talk about Calvinism.

It would be unfair, perhaps, to say that Calvinism is a systematic theology built entirely upon the Epistles of Romans and Galatians, but only -just- (and here my Catholic readers in particular will chuckle to themselves and lovingly stroke their favorite passage of the Epistle of James). The core of Calvinist Doctrine is often expressed by the very Dutch acronym TULIP:

Total Depravity - people are wholly evil, and incapable of good action or even willing good thoughts or deeds

Unconditional Election - God chooses some people to save because ¯\_(ツ)_/¯, not because they did anything to deserve, trigger or accept it

Limited Atonement - Jesus died only to save the people God chose to save, not the rest of us bastards

Irresistible Grace - God chooses some people to be saved - if you didn’t want to be saved, too bad, God said so.

Perseverance of the Saints - People often forget this one and assume it’s ‘predestination’ but it’s actually this - basically, once saved by God, always saved, and if it looks like someone falls out of grace, they were never saved to begin with. Well that’s all sealed up tight I guess.

Reading through these, predestination isn’t a single doctrine in Calvinism but the entire theological underpinnings of it together with humanity’s utter powerlessness before sin. Basically God has all agency, humanity has none. Calvinism (and a lot of early modern Protestantism) is obsessed with questions of how God saves people (grace alone, AKA Sola Fides) and who God saves (the people god elects and only the people God elects, and fuck everyone else).

It’s apparent that Noelle was really taken by these questions, and repelled by the answers he heard. He’s alluded to having a tattoo refuting the Gospel passage about Sheep and Goats being sorted at the end times, affirming instead that ‘we’re all just a bunch of wooly guys’ (you can see this goat tattoo in some of his self-portraits in comics, etc). He’s also mentioned that rejecting and subverting destiny is a huge part of everything he writes as a particular rejection of the idea that some individual people are 'chosen' by God or that God has a plan for any of us. You can see that -so clearly- in Adora’s arc, where Adora embraces and then rejects destiny time and again and finally learns to live life for herself.

But for Catra, we’re much more concerned about the most negative aspect of this - the idea that some people are vessels meant for destruction. And that’s something else that Noelle is preoccupied with. In her memoir in the section about leaving the church and becoming a humanistic atheist, there is a drawing of a pot and the question ‘Am I a vessel prepared for destruction?’ Obviously this was on Noelle’s mind (And this is before he came out to himself as queer!).

To look at how this question plays out in Catra’s entire arc, let’s first talk about how ideas of damnation and salvation actually play out in society. And for that I’m going to plug one of my favorite books, Gin Lun’s Damned Nation: Hell in America from the Revolution to Reconstruction (if you can tell by now, I am a fucking blast at parties). Lun tells the long and very interesting story about, how ideas of hell and who went there changed during the Early American Republic. One of the interesting developments that she talks about is how while at first people who were repelled by Calvinism started moving toward a doctrine of universal salvation (no on goes to hell, at least not forever*), eventually they decided that hell was fine as long as only the right kind of people went there. Mostly The Other - non-Christian foreigners, Catholics, Atheists, people who were sinners in ways that were not just bad but weird and violated Victorian ideas of respectability. Really, Hell became a way of othering people, and arguably that’s how it survives today, especially as a way to other queer people (but expanding this is slated for my Montero rant). Now while a lot of people were consciously rejecting Calvinist predestination, they were still drawing the distinction between the Elect (good, saved, worthwhile) and the everyone else (bad, damned, worthless). I would argue that secularized ideas of this survive to this day even among non-Christian spaces in our society - we like to draw lines between those who Elect, and those who aren’t.

And that’s what brings us back to Catra. Because Catra’s entire arc is a refutation of the idea that some people are worthless and irredeemable, either by nature, nurture or their own actions. Catra’s actions strain the conventions of who is sympathetic in a Kid’s cartoon - I’ve half joked that she’s Walter White as a cat girl, and it’s only half a joke. She’s cruel, self-deluded, she spends 4 seasons refusing to take responsibility for anything she does and until Season 5 she just about always chooses the thing that does the most damage to herself and others. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, the show goes out of its way to demonstrate that Catra is morally culpable in every step of her descent into evil (except maybe her break with reality just before she pulls the lever). The way that Catra personally betrays everyone around her, the way she strips herself of all of her better qualities and most of what makes her human, hell even her costume changes would signal in any other show that she’s irredeemable.

It’s tempting to see this as Noelle’s version of being edgy - pushing the boundaries of what a sympathetic character is, throwing out antiheroics in favor of just making the villain a protagonist. Noelle isn’t quite Alex ‘I am in the business of traumatizing children’ Hirsch, who seems to have viewed his job as pushing the bounds of what you could show on the Disney Channel (I saw Gravity Falls as an adult and a bunch of that shit lives rent free in my nightmares forever), but Noelle has his own dark side, mostly thematically. The show’s willingness to deal with abuse, and messed up religious themes, and volatile, passionate, not particularly healthy relationships feels pretty daring. I’m not joking when I gleefully recommend this show to friends as ‘a couple from a Mountain Goats Song fights for four seasons in a cartoon intended for 9 year olds’. Noelle is in his own way pushing the boundaries of what a kids show can do. If you read Noelle’s other works like Nimona, you see an argument for Noelle being at least a bit edgy. Nimona is also angry, gleefully destructive, violent and spiteful - not unlike Catra. Given that it was a 2010s webcomic and not a kids show, Nimona is a good deal worse than Catra in some ways - Catra doesn’t kill people on screen, while Nimona laughs about it (that was just like, a webcomic thing - one of the fan favorite characters in my personal favorite, Narbonic, was a fucking sociopath, and the heroes were all amoral mad scientists, except for the superintelligent gerbil**). But unlike Nimona, whose fate is left open ended, Catra is redeemed.

And that is weird. We’ve had redemption arcs, but generally not of characters with -so- much vile stuff in their history. Going back to the comparison between her and Azula, many other shows, like Avatar, would have made Catra a semi-sympathetic villain who has a sob-story in their origin but who is beyond redemption, and in so doing would articulate a kind of psychologized Calvinism where some people are too traumatized to ever be fully and truly human. I’d argue this is the problem with Azula as a character - she’s a fun villain, but she doesn’t have moral agency, and the ultimate message of her arc - that she’s a broken person destined only to hurt people - is actually pretty fucked up. And that’s the origin story of so many serial killers and psycopaths that populate so many TV shows and movies. Beyond ‘hurt people hurt people’ they have nothing to teach us except perhaps that trauma makes you a monster and that the only possible response to people doing bad things is to cut them out of your life and out of our society (and that’s why we have prisons, right?)

And so Catra’s redemption and the depths from which she claws herself back goes back to Noelle’s desire to prove that no person is a vessel ‘fitted for destruction.’ Catra goes about as far down the path of evil as we’ve ever seen a protagonist in a kids show go, and she still has the capacity for good. Importantly, she is not subject to total depravity - she is capable of a good act, if only one at first. Catra is the one who begins her own redemption (unlike in Calvinism, where grace is unearned and even unwelcomed) - because she wants something better than what she has, even if its too late, because she realizes that she never wanted any of this anyway, because she wants to do one good thing once in her life even if it kills her.

The very extremity of Catra’s descent into villainy serves to underline the point that Noelle is trying to make - that no one can be written off completely, that everyone is capable of change, and that no human being is garbage, no matter how twisted they’ve become. Meanwhile her ability to set her own redemption in motion is a powerful statement of human agency, and healing, and a refutation of Calvinism’s idea that we are powerless before sin or pop cultural tropes about us being powerful before the traumas of our upbringing. Catra’s arc, then, is a kind of anti-Calvinist theological statement - about the nature of people and the nature of goodness.

Now, there is a darker side to this that Noelle has only hinted at, but which is suggested by other characters on the show. Because while Catra’s redemption shows that people are capable of change, even when they’ve done horrible things, been fucked up and fucked themselves up, it also illustrates the things people do to themselves that make change hard. As I mentioned in my Catra rant, two of the most sinister parts of her descent into villainy are her self-dehumanization (crushing her own compassion and desire to do good) and her rewriting of her own history in her speech and memory to make her own actions seem justified (which we see with her insistence that Adora left her, eliding Adora’s offers to have Catra join her, or her even more clearly false insistence that Entrapta had betrayed them). In Catra, these processes keep her going down the path of evil, and allow her to nearly destroy herself and everyone else. But we can see the same processes at work in two much darker figures - Shadow Weaver and Horde Prime. These are both rants for another day, but the completeness of Shadow Weaver’s narcissistic self-justification and cultivated callousness and the even more complete narcissism of Prime’s god complex cut both characters off from everyone around them. Perhaps, in a theoretical sense, they are still redeemable, but for narrative purposes they might as well be damned.

This willingness to show a case where someone -isn’t- redeemed actually serves to make Catra’s redemption more believable, especially since Noelle and the writers draw the distinction between how Catra and SW/Prime can relate to reality and other people, not how broken they are by their trauma (unlike Zuko and Azula, who are differentiated by How Fucked Uolp They Are). Redemption is there, it’s an option, we can always do what is right, but someone people will choose not to, in part because doing the right thing involves opening ourselves to the world and others, and thus being vulnerable. Noelle mentions this offhandedly in an interview after Season 1 with the She-Ra Progressive of Power podcast - “I sometimes think that shades of grey, sympathetic villains are part of the escapist fantasy of shows like this.” Because in the real world, some people are just bastards, a point that was particularly clear in 2017. Prime and Shadow Weaver admit this reality, while Catra makes a philosophical point that even the bastards can change their ways (at least in theory).

*An idea first proposed in the second century by Origen, who’s a trip and a fucking half by himself, and an idea that becomes the Catholic doctrine of purgatory, which protestants vehemently denied!

**Speaking of favorite Noelle tropes

[inquisimer]

wip wednesday

ty ty ty @kirkwalls-dumbest​ and @a11sha11fade​ for the tags!! I am exhausted and worn out from work today, but I’m sneaking in before Wednesday is over with a snippet from my upcoming chapter of Roses Into the Abyss🥰🥰

In which Neria & co meet the only sane Avaar in the Fallow Mire

~~~

A blue-gray figure materialized amidst the misty fog. He wore thick armor and oiled furs that flooded Neria with jealousy, shivering as she was in her dampened cloak. Still, she jutted out her chin and mustered as much stature as she could. The effort was somewhat diluted, given that she sunk further into the mud the longer she stood still, but it was an effort nonetheless.

“So you’re Herald of Andraste?” Humor laced his voice and he might have raised an eyebrow, though she couldn’t tell behind the mask that covered most of his face. She scowled. Ironically, despite her insistent efforts to refute any divinity, the urge to snap back at his mocking surged within her.

“They’ve called me that, and much worse. Why have you separated from the other Avaar?”

“Trying to figure out this hole in the world. Hard to commune with the Lady when the air is rife with fools.”

“Fools?”

“Our chieftain’s son, a whelp on a trophy hunt.” He snorted derisively. “Head too far up his own ass to read the warnings the sky writes in the birds.”

He gave them his back and Neria stepped to his side with a squelch, getting her first proper look at the rift-like scar in the air.

As Lace said, it was inert. But this close, Neria could feel the fade energy brimming closer to the edges of the Veil and her mark hummed and sparked in response.

“It is a rift in potentia, lethallin,” Solas murmured from behind her. “If we do not accelerate the process, we merely delay a return trip to seal it properly.”

“Noted.”

“Never seen anything like its like,” the Avaar continued, as if their aside hadn’t happened. “Endless, angry spirits—a message from the sky, no question. But what is the answer? What meaning does she give us in this chaos?”

She’d comforted many people who seemed dazed, confused, afraid of the Breach. Whatever reasoning they assigned to this apocalypse, their voices dripped with emotion, wavered in their terror or uncertainty or grief. But the only note in the Avaar’s voice was curiosity; he pondered, even and inquiring, seemingly confident that he would find answers on his Lady’s schedule.

Neria’s jealousy suddenly encompassed far more than simply his furs.

“It’s that mess” —she gestured to the section of clouds mottled green by the obscured Breach— “Some kind of magic gone wrong.”

“I know that,” he scoffed, dismissive enough to draw indignation up through Neria’s chest. She tamped it down, pressing her lips into a thin line. “I’m talking about the Lady of the Skies. Do you not know her?”

His eyes fastened on her left palm, where her mark leaked green light through her leather gloves. “She knows you, lowlander.”

“Interesting, how widely Ferelden beliefs diverge,” commented Solas. Neria winced, but the Avaar snapped a retort to her companion before she had the chance.

“Call me Ferelden again, elf, and see how far you get.”

The creak of plate armor and a muffled cough reminded Neria that they were a bit tight on time. Still staring at the forming rift, she hooked her fingers behind her back and toyed with the leather strap on her staff.

“Your kin say they’ve captured an Inquisition patrol, but we have yet to confirm their position. Do you know” —she swallowed and tried her best to project the kind of speeches the heroes in her books gave— “are we on a mission for rescue, or recovery?”

“A few were injured in the skirmish, but they were alive.” He gave her an inscrutable look and she forced herself not to sag with relief. Her companions were under no such performative pressure, though, and a whoosh of air escaped Lace with his announcement.

“Last I saw, at least.” He shrugged and Neria inclined her head in acknowledgment.

“How would you be called, serrah?”

“To your people, a priest. To mine, Sky Watcher. But by my choice alone, I am rites to the gods, mending for the bleeding, a dagger for the dying.”

Amusement sparked in his eyes behind his mask. “And if that is too much a mouthful, you may call me Amund.”

“Very well,” she said, smile curving her lips. “Ma serannas, Amund.”

~~~

tags for @effelants | @nirikeehan | @brainworm-terrarium | @noire-pandora | @bluewren and consider it a wip whenever, since this is coming in so late 😂

[thevikingwoman]

Fandom: Dragon Age. Words: 3303 (this part)

Part 1 | Part 3 || read on Ao3

(art by @destinyapostasy​ banner by me)

Solas x Iwyn Lavellan | vampire AU | smut with feelings Rating: Explicit. Sex, painting, oral sex, biting/blood during sex, vampire stuff, very light dom/sub, sub!Solas, a bit of begging, light angst

Comfort, part 2

Iwyn watches as Solas works in the kitchen. He makes himself a hearty breakfast. Eggs, toast, mushrooms, bacon. She approves. It smells divine and she regrets not needing to eat any of it. She does accept a mug of coffee, black. Solas adds milk and 3 teaspoons of sugar to his. She’s comfortable watching him, snug in one of his sweaters.

He is a puzzle, she decides. He seems far too self-assured, too comfortable, too measured and calm to get drunk in bars, to invite someone home without a thought for his own safety. To allow her into his home and his bed, to allow her to bite him.

“So, you’re an artist?” She gestures behind her, to the hallway and the glimpse of paint and canvases in a work area, of beautiful finished paintings.

“Not really.” He shakes his head. “It’s… a hobby. I’m an investment banker. Or was.”

“Was?”

“Another partner and I was working to shut down some of the more unethical aspects of the company. The she had an… accident. I proceeded to uncover every dishonest transaction and business, and it brought the company down. I am jobless, for now.”

He shrugs, but his nonchalance is careful and deliberate.

“You don’t believe it was an accident.”

He looks up at her.

“No.” His voice is full of a deep sorrow.

“Were you close with this person? The partner.”

“She was a friend.”

“I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bring up painful memories.”

“It’s no matter. What was done was done. And now I am out of work – no one in the industry would be willing to hire me.”

He shrugs again, and sits down to eat.

She is worried. This does uncover the mystery – the way recklessness seems out of character for him, the weariness she senses in him too. A part of her realizes – no one would miss him, if she missteps. He already gave her his trust, and he shouldn’t have. She ignores that part of her, tells herself she made peace with that a long time ago.

“Aren’t afraid they will retaliate. If they can arrange one accident, there could be another?”

“What happens will happen,” he says, and digs into his eggs.

She doesn’t like this fatalistic attitude one bit. She wants to hunt down the people who hurt him and make them suffer. She doesn’t pretend to ignore this impulse. She might still do it, if only she can find out their names.  

“They already had their revenge,” he says. “None of them can imagine anything worse that being ostracized from the world of finance.”

Her intent must have shown on her face. And she can imagine worse. A lot worse. He doesn’t need to know.

Solas pushes his plate aside.

“Now I’ve had my breakfast” He smirks at her.

“Can I see your art?” she asks. She is curious. She is hungry, yes, but she also wants to know him, before he changes his minds and kicks her out. Not that he can force her out, now that she’s invited in, but she’d respect his wishes. She thinks.

“Of course.” He sounds surprised, like he doesn’t expect her to care about who he is or what he does. She supposes it is fair, given how she is a vampire, and only should care for blood. Or sex, or both.

He uses a spare bedroom as a studio. It is messy, littered with paper, paint, brushes, inks and more materials of all kinds. His works are in many different styles – soft charcoal sketches, impressionistic paintings, a few watercolors, but what draws her eyes is bright art, stylized and different from anything else she has seen.

“These are beautiful, Solas.” They are. The light and the uniqueness. Stylized wolves howling at the moons, bright rays of gold hitting a crumbling castle. “You should take you art to galleries. I’m sure you can sell your art.”

“It’s just a hobby.” He looks like he doesn’t believe her.

“Do you want it to stay a hobby?” She runs a hand up his back, and kisses his neck. His pulse quickens, but she doesn’t bite. “You could start something new.”

“Can I draw you?” he asks suddenly.

“You want me to pose for you?”

“Yes. Please.”

He pulls out a stool, and she sits on it. She’s wearing Solas’ sweater, and it’s too big and slips off her shoulders.

“Do you want me to take this off?”

“No, it’s fine. It looks good. Interesting.”

She tucks up one bare leg, and smiles at him.

“It’ll just a be a quick sketch,” he mumbles, pulling out an easel and securing a piece of heavy sketch paper with two rubber bands. His picks up some pens and charcoal, frowns, and states at her intently. She winks and shows a little teeth. It makes him chuckle and start drawing. His movements are quick and broad and then small and detailed. He’s concentrating and it gives her time to study him. His cheekbones, his strong jaw, and lush lips. His broad shoulders. His throat, two small wounds already almost healed. She was careful, and it will barely leave a scar.

Solas pauses, and notices her staring. He blushes, coloring his cheeks beneath his freckles.

“A little longer,” he says. “Please.”

“I’ve nowhere to be except your bed.”

His blush reaches his ears, but he keeps drawing. He picks up some colored pencils, carefully contemplating the colors before he uses them. Once decided, he’s quick.

“I just need to capture the colors,” he murmurs. “I’ll add details later.”

“Eager for something?”

“Yes.”

He looks at her briefly, then he returns to his sketch. The intent in his eyes makes her impatient too, like he can chase away the cold inside of her. She pushes that aside, and focuses her attention back on him, the confident way his hands move across the paper. It doesn’t take long for him let out a satisfied sigh and put his pencils and charcoal down.

“Thank you,” he says, and shows her his work. It’s her, detailed and accurate. She’s perched on the stool, her leg drawn up as she sat. Her smile reveals a fang and the look in her eyes is dangerous. He captured every part of her, including the one who wants to tackle him to the ground.

“Beautiful.”

“The beauty is all yours.”

She puts the drawing safely on the worktable, and kisses him.

They make it to his bedroom, his curtains securely closed still, and they tumble into his bed. He slides his hands up her legs, underneath his sweater she’s still wearing. He pulls at it.

“Please, I want to touch you.”

“I like this, though. Very cozy.”  

“You can have it, later.”

She laughs, and helps him to pull it off her. His hands returns to her body, warm and large. He teases a nipple, causing her to gasp and want. He follows with his tongue, licking down her throat, lightly sucking her nipple. She wants more, and growls and digs her nails in to his shoulder until he bites. A moan escapes her, and he continues, hand on one breast, his teeth on the other and then down, hot breath against her skin. He slides to his knees in front of her, pulling her legs over the edge of his bed. She shivers in anticipation.

“May I taste you? Please.”

“Yes.”

Iwyn spreads her legs and caress his ears, causing him to moan in turn. He kisses the inside of her thigh, but he’s as impatient as she is, and he quickly finds her sex, wet and ready. He licks up to her clit and he gently sucks. She moans and presses his face to her, and he does not protest and works eagerly. He works one hand under her ass and pulls. her closer. His other hand finds her cunt, and he slides a finger, two fingers into her. She’s so wet for him, her juices coating him in a slippery mess.

“More,” she growls, and she falls backwards on the bed, tilting her hips towards him. He tongues her clit, pressing and sucking, and he pumps his fingers slowly and deep, stroking her. She rides his hand and his face faster, mercilessly, thrashing until she comes against him.

Solas sit back on his haunches and wipes his face in his shirt. He smirks when Iwyn collects herself enough to sit back up, and grabs his shirt and pulls him in for a kiss, tasting herself in his mouth.

“Take off your shirt,” she says, and he does. She kisses him again, and down his jaw and his throat. He trembles and his breath hitches. She wants to bite him, but she doesn’t. Not yet. He wants it too, and that excites her, sends a new bolt of arousal through her body. Too much; she has to be careful.

She nips him with blunt teeth, pushes him on the bed and climbs on top of him.

“My turn to taste you, Solas.”

His hips buck into hers, the hard ridge of his cock pushing against her. She kisses his exposed chest, trailing kisses across his collarbones, worrying his pink nipples. Everything she does make him react, shudder and moan and want. It pleases her, his willingness to take what she offers, his easy need. Iwyn moves down his body, and dips her hands beneath his pants. Solas lifts his hips to help her pull them off him, and he is finally as naked as her, beautiful spread out beneath her.  She runs one finger up his large cock and it jumps, wanting more. She kisses the tip of it, the shaft, teasing and gentle.

Iwyn sits back between Solas legs, her hands on his thighs and she spread them further, making room for her.

“Put your hands above you head and keep them there. If you can.”

Solas nods, and does as he’s told, stretching out, mortal and vulnerable before her.

“Very good,” she says.

Iwyn considers him for the moment, letting him wait. She caresses his thighs with small strokes of her thumbs, until he impatiently tries to lift his hips. He can’t though, supernatural strength allowing her to keep him firmly in his place.

“Please,” he says. “Please touch me.”

“I already am,” she says, and grins at him. She moves her whole hand though, down closer to where his leg joins his crotch, fingers dancing across sensitive skin.

“More,” he whimpers, and his cock flexes impatiently.

She takes mercy on him, and grabs his cock in one hand. It’s hard and heavy and very large and pretty. She caresses the velvet soft skin and pumps lightly, her other hand fondling his balls. She bends over him and kisses the inside of his thigh. She can feel his blood there, pumping rhythmically through his veins.

Iwyn licks up his cock, and takes him in her mouth. Just the tip of him, swirling her tongue around his head. She tastes the saltiness there, and she takes as much of him as she can into her mouth. His cock is thick and long and very hard. She moans in appreciation, reveling in his gasps and groans, and the way her lips stretch around him. She keeps one hand on his hips, holding him in place, and work him slow and fast. His cock pulses in her mouth, and she pulls back, kissing down his other thigh. His pulse jumps when she scrapes blunt teeth along his tender skin.

Iwyn returns to his cock, taking him in her mouth again. Solas gasps her name. She uses her hand around the base of his cock, pumping along with sucking, stimulating his whole hard length. Solas bucks into her mouth and she now lets him, urging him on. His cock hit the back of her throat, and she swallows and sucks.

She thinks he is close, and she pulls back again, letting him slip from her mouth. His hips keep moving, his erection seeking friction that isn’t there.  She kisses the inside of his thigh again.

“Please, please, I need…”

“What do you need, Solas?”

She wraps her hand around his cock, and doesn’t move it.

“I need, I need to come. Please. I need you.”

Iwyn lets her fangs out, pricking his skin. Solas words turn to moans, incoherent pleading. She pumps his cock, impossible hard, with her fist, and drags her fangs down to where she can feel his pulse, stuttering and wild.

She bites, rich blood coating her tongue. Solas screams, and comes, hot spend covering her hand. She drinks, a few more sips while he is pulsing and trashing in her hand. She’s careful, withdrawing her fangs and licking her lips. She clamps a hand over the wounds, tight, and seals them. Solas looks dazed and perfect. She licks his softening cock, the taste of his cum mixing with his blood.

“You taste delicious.”

“Fuck,” he says, and his cock twitches.

“Again?”

Solas chuckles and shakes his head. Iwyn nestles next to him, and kisses his shoulder. After a little while, he squeezes her shoulder, and sits up.

“I think I better go clean up a little.”

She lounges in his bed, naked and satisfied for now. The bedroom is cozy, despite the tall white wardrobe looking generically modern. There’s a drawer too, and a bookcase, filled with books with no apparently organization. A thick book on ancient Qunari architecture next to a novel by an author she doesn’t know. Something that looks like a finance textbook next to a biography called Scandals, Sex, Paint: The Life of Michel de Bordelon. Iwyn itches to organize it, but at least there’s not clothes strewn all over, except the ones they discarded last night and this morning. There are more books stacked on top of the wardrobe, along with a glass jar filled with a fairy light string. It’s surprisingly whimsical, yet another unexpected side of him.

When Solas returns, he’s brought his easel, pencils, and sketchbook.

“May I draw you again?”

“Of course.”

She’s pleased she inspires him, she finds it incredibly flattering. If she’s honest, she also enjoys the blush that spreads across his cheekbones when he asks. He looks a little shy, as if it’s somehow more scandalous to draw her nude than for her to suck his blood while he comes all over himself. It’s endearing, and she is happy to pose.

He doesn’t bother to dress, and sketches quickly, his eyes roaming over her as he commits her to paper. He pulls a sheet off the sketchbook, and she stretches.

“Come back to bed,” she says. She wants him next to her.

Solas puts down his pencils, and comes to her. She kisses him, full of need.

“I am not certain I’m up for another round just yet,” he says. “But I did promise to sate your hunger.”

“If you’re willing,” she says. The sex, his gaze on her has left her hungry in more sense than one. She wants him in every way.

“You can do whatever you want,” he says.

She scrapes her teeth against his neck. “You really shouldn’t say that.”

“Please.”

She cannot resist his begging. She bites, his rich blood flowing across he lips. Solas groans, far off and loud. She sucks his sweetness up while he shudders in her arms, grasping the sheets beneath him. He doesn’t try to stop her, and she has to slow herself down. She doesn’t want to.

She allows herself to be careless with the wounds. Maybe if she leaves her marks, he’ll be protected form others of her kind. He is too careless with himself, that’s all. It has nothing to do with the heady feeling of him being scarred by her, forever.

She nestles closer to him, and he sighs, delirious. She makes him drink some water before he falls asleep again.

Iwyn gets up. She feels awake and powerful, full of his life and blood. She peeks at the easel, at herself looking sultry out of the page. Or hungry.  She cannot allow herself to stay, to sleep, no matter how easy it is to be with him, no matter how much he fascinates her. Leaving herself vulnerable is too risky. Once was enough.

She looks back at Solas. He looks innocent, beautiful. She wishes she could paint him, sharp angles and pale skin and bloodred marks at his throat and thighs.

Iwyn worries about him, too. She knows there are mortals like that. The chasers. Those who wants to flirt with danger or with death. Those who crave the high of a vampire’s bite. Or worse, those who are drawn to the idea of immortal life, who does not understand the agony of the vast, cold eternity. A coldness he could chase away, a small voice offers inside of her, if he joined you at your side. She shakes her head. He does not deserve that. Neither did she, but she can’t change that.

She doesn’t take him for a vamp chaser, but his behavior, his eagerness is concerning. A bright flash of jealousy at the thought of him finding someone else to satisfy him, someone else tasting him. She can only hope to dissuade him, and to remind him to live his life to the fullest.

Iwyn covers him tenderly with a blanket. She needs to leave, somehow, before she does something she’ll regret forever.

--

Solas wakes, and the first he knows is that he is alone. Maybe Iwyn left the bed. He isn’t sure how much sleep vampires need, just as he isn’t sure how long he has slept.

His clock says 13:23, so he has only dozed a little over an hour. He gets up, and stops at his easel, Iwyn lounging and looking at him seductively. His hands itches to take the sketch and the pose to a large canvas, giant and larger than life, just like the way she barged into his bed.

“Iwyn,” he calls. Maybe she is in the kitchen or living room, but no one answers. He notices both her dress and his sweater are missing, as he pulls on his shirt and boxers.

“Iwyn!”

In the hallway, her shoes are gone. In the kitchen, a folded piece of paper against a half-drunk cup of coffee.

He sits.

He folds it open.

Solas,

Thank you for last night, and this morning. It was wonderful. I’m sorry for my sudden departure, but I must walk away. Had I stayed, I fear I would have wanted more from you. That you would have given me more than you already have.

You’re a wonderful man, Solas. You do not belong in the shadow. I care about you, more than I probably should.

I know your life seems troubled right now, and I worry this clouds your judgement. If you had been awake, you would have asked me stay, and I would have. I’m not a nice person, Solas. I’m a vampire, selfish and immoral. You should remember that. At some point, I would want to drag you into to darkness, or you would want to follow me. I can only be strong once. I wanted to stay in your embrace, to get to know you better, but you don’t deserve that. My life is in the dark, and so is my path. You can’t follow.

You deserve to live your life, beautiful and in the sun. Continue painting, drawing. You can give so much to world, and please do. Someone can give you what you deserve, and someone will.

Please take care of yourself, Solas. Don’t try to find me, and please do not seek out other vampires. No more inviting strangers to your house!

Goodbye and live well.

Yours,

Iwyn of Clan Lavellan