#So might as well try and keep it longer

[ask-cloverfield]

[bisexualcherdegre]

D:BH Rarepairsweek 7 | @dbhrarepairs

Day 3: Hank/Markus After the revolution, Markus and Hank are both trying to deal with the new situation they've been handed. Their paths cross.

[damngoodbabysiitter]

Hold on, baby, you're losing it The water's high, you're jumping into it, and letting go And no one knows That you cry, but you don't tell anyone That you might not be the golden one And you're tied together with a smile but you're coming undone

[rowenabean]

.

[iceeericeee]

I wonder how many tags i can add on to this

[rinhaler]

I've only written three requests today and I'm so burnt out holy fuck I don't think I'm ever gonna get through them all 😭

[friendlifyre]

iiii kinda wanna change my name

[platoniccereal]

ok, i don't know why i just glossed over this part earlier.

there are some inconsistencies in what the iron bull says about his background, here and there, e.g. in what bull says was his reason to reach out to the inquisition (krem says it was bull who reached out VS bull says it was krem while mimicking him VS bull says it was on his superiors' orders), but another detail i noticed is what he says about his merry trip into the re-educators' establishment.

bull says that one day he basically woke up and found himself unfit for his role:

one day i woke up and couldn't think of a damned reason to keep doing my job. turned myself in to the reeducators.

but what's told us as well is that he snapped and went on the killing spree, and then people were sent for him, and that's when he declared himself unfit:

which sent him in a berserk state. when his surviving soldiers later came back for him with reinforcements, they found him unmoving, covered in wounds and surrounded by the butchered corpses of the tal-vashoth warriors. he declared himself unfit for duty and too dangerous to be around civilians, submitting himself to the ben-hassrath re-educators.

which is not the “woke up with the realization” situation at all, not a boulder suddenly crushing one's shoulders, but a snapping moment.

now, i don't think bull lies. these may as well be parts of the same true story. he did wake up in that state some day, maybe even weeks prior to his breakdown. he could just ignore that, figures anyone on that island learns to ignore a thing or two. maybe it even scared him shitless, but he kept going as he always did, because one of his main traits is incredible stubbornness. maybe he said to himself, that it's alright, actually.

and then he snaps, kills people and turns himself in to the re-educators. because he understands that the matter is way more serious, and he's reached the end point.

for me there were some things that fell into place. nothing that wasn't said directly in the canon, just got some things consistency-wise, nice logical structure.

after bull becomes tal-vashoth he keeps talking about losing control due to straying away from the path of the qun. but it isn't just something he's been indoctrinated to, or what he deduced after fighting tal-vashoth. this isn't an idea bull is scared of because he’s just going through new experience.

that's something that actually happened to him, or at least he believes it did. he strayed away from his path, ignored it, kept fighting, and then lost control. it's suddenly not just a cautionary tale.

another thing is that hissrad kept fighting for 8 years because he believed he could change something, quoting gatt: “he thinks that if he does the right thing, then everything will work. he's been in seheron for ten years trying to make everything work.” certainly, he fought to make civilians' lives better. to protect and help. hissrad stopped when he couldn't see the end goal anymore. not just because he grew tired, or due to his grief, or because of horror he felt after the attack on the school. i'm pretty sure he would've kept fighting if he still had a goal, but this absence of aim was exactly a deal breaker.

even if one doesn't see worth in their own work, to which every part of the qun's common body strives, one can always hide in that hope for a change from their doubts. i can only imagine how many times bull and warriors on seheron would turn to “eventually the tides wear away the mountain”. especially when their own grief is so repetitive they need the goal so they won't break the cycle.

so, that's exactly what bull is cut off from when he becomes tal-vashoth. it would be easier for him to become disappointed in the ideology, but bull isn't that type of tal-vashoth.

iron bull: you mean getting exiled from my people and declared tal-vashoth? yeah, i should make a cake.

sera: you like drinking and singing and breaking beds. you’d already left.

from the outsider's perspective nothing changed in his life, save he got cut off of his own people. every companion pretty much gets it, some are happy for bull, some are sorry.

but it changes drastically for bull. he had an aim before, whether it was that he was making the world a better place from the qun's perspective, or that he wanted to prove himself to superiors and come back.

bull is a person used to devote himself, with great power and loyalty, and after he's declared tal-vashoth, he doesn't have a place to apply that might. maybe bull could find some peace in helping the inquisition with corypheus.

but after that..? in my case, the inquisitor lavellan gets it, he also had to invent the goal of helping elves and mages just to keep going, but the iron bull isn't quite invested in thedosian political games or ideologies for this trick to work.

chargers are living their best lives and doing their job well, but this hedonistic way of life is opposed to the qun's teachings. i guess earlier bull could make himself believe that even these little silly deeds helped the bigger picture somehow, this desire to help the whole society through every action being something the qun taught him. tal-vashoth bull is cut off from this bigger picture. this slot in his mind is empty.

this might be the biggest struggle for bull. he can keep moving forward, he's good at it, but that might be an aimless path for him.

[skyeateyourdonuts]

weeoo

[todayisafridaynight]

One of my fave jackets is this green jacket with a fur hood im wearin rn because 1.) its green 2.) my dad gave it to me 3.) it reminds me of saejima. Who also reminds me of my dad

[insert-game]

i think my dog’s new allergy medication is working 😭😭😭

[sabraeal]

Do you have any thoughts on “kaichou wa maid-sama?” You seem well read on shoujo!

I haven't actually read Maid-sama, though I did watch the anime a few years back. Love seeing Nobuhiko Okamoto get to be the love interest, thought the romance was pretty interesting, don't know if I'd heartily recommend it to anyone (sort of was a product of its time)

[running-in-the-dark]

and of course I'm now gonna do the one thing that I can do right now to make it better (which won't make anything better actually but it feels good right now and it makes me not want to die for a little while so I'll do it anyway) (it's thinking about leverage, obviously)

[orcelito]

Another morning another day

I've been thinking a lot about going to the animal shelter

[2hoothoots]

I wanna say that I absolutely loved your Paris affair fic, very well written ❤️❤️❤️. I was wondering if you were ever gonna make more fics like that with multiple chapters and or taking place in the future with other agents working together or with just Norma and Raz again.

thank you so much!!

i'd definitely like to do another multichapter fic at some point in the future, it's just a case of finding the time and energy and finalising what i actually want to write. i really loved writing The Paris Affair, but it was also a ton of work because the longer something is, the exponentially more time it takes. there's a lot that goes into writing a longer fic like that - plot, pacing, flow, themes, suddenly realising things don't make sense because a change you made in chapter 2 has a knock-on effect in chapter 4 which you needed to set up chapter 5, so now you gotta come fix this plothole - anway, it's a lot. rewarding, but a lot!

i've got a few longer fic ideas on the backburner at the moment. one of them's the intern road trip i think i've mentioned before, and i feel like i know the big plot beats for that one, it just needs, like, a theme. i need to really let it sit and figure out what speaks to me about the story before i can get it down on paper. the other one i wanna do is a mission fic with the FSAU trio! that one's ticking away nicely, but i want to hammer out a few more of the setpieces (because i want it to be full of cool action and stunts and shit)

[non-un-topo]

At the crossroads between wondering if it's worth it to basically completely rewrite all my WIPs or just take a break from writing for the rest of the summer