#ages of muses;;

[septemberkisses]

the fact that i'm no longer the same age as the protagonists of novels and films i once connected to is so heartbreaking. there was a time when I looked forward to turning their age. i did. and i also outgrew them. i continue to age, but they don't; never will. the immortality of fiction is beautiful, but cruel.

[queenmuzz]

Headcanon: Whenever Rook addresses Spite when he’s not possessing Lucanis , they try to look where they think he may be, based on cues the Crow gives. They want to be polite to Spite, but are worried that they will look stupid trying to talk to Spite, while facing in the wrong direction.

Lucanis assures them that they always guess correctly, but neglects to tell them that even when they are looking the wrong direction, Spite always moves to wherever they think he might be.

[timethehobo]

300! Emmrich! Doodles! 💚

[peatbogpirate]

I've been wanting to do a full-crew Endurance illustration for a long time, and finally the gang's all here! 28 men, dogs and cat all accounted for, with every crew member referencing either a photo of them or a story about them. It's a little over two years since I first read Lansing's Endurance and I couldn't be happier to still be researching and drawing these guys :)

[bishicat]

miss harding...... 💍<33333

[lionofchaeronea]

Title: The Philosopher in Meditation Artist: Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669) Date: 1632 Genre: genre painting Period: Dutch Golden Age Medium: oil on oak wood Dimensions: 28 cm (11 in) high x 34 cm (13.3 in) wide Location: Louvre Museum, Paris

[vaguely-concerned]

My two cents on how much of Mind!Varric is Rook’s mind trying to fill the blank space and how much is Solas actively talking through a convenient blood magic paper doll of the mind: I think it's a mix of both, a truly collaborative psychosocial horrorshow if you would, but waaaay more towards the second. It feels too directed and tactical at times to be anything else. Rook's mind is willing to go along with the denial phase as far as it can fucking carry them to not have to face the grief and regret and does its part in papering over details that don’t make any sense, the way brains will strive to create coherent meaning even out of deeply confusing input, but to my understanding it's a collaborateur in how that plays out, not the instigator or control center. Solas is using it as a path to agency and to gather insight into Rook as a person unguarded as he can't count on in his own guise. (That stoic option that leads to him being like 'oh I see you're cautiously denying me access to your inner life. well. at least you still have Varric to talk to. y'know as an outlet :)'. You absolute BITCH Solas! That alone convinced me that he HAS to have an active hand in it on some level.)

My guess is that it takes considerable effort on Solas’ part to make Mind!Varric do anything more involved or complicated than seeming to sit up in bed and give casual commentary, and that’s why he keeps having eerie five minute shallow pep talks with you before he announces he conveniently needs a nap aaanyway good luck kid you got this haha. When he’s just spouting NPC lines from his bedrest, I’m ready to believe that could be Rook’s mind being allowed to improv lines for him more freely because it’s less about Solas trying to get something out of them or working an angle and more ‘Still here! Still totally alive and fine and the mentor figure you know and love and trust :) don’t even worry about it! Thankfully there is no war in Ba Sing Sei, as we all know’ upkeep work lol. Rook’s mind is allowed to set the tone of Varric, the outlines, but not always the content. 

AND, on a (beautifully fucked up) character psychology level, I feel like Solas is indulging in actually getting to be the good supportive mentor figure to Rook with one hand to assuage the guilt he feels about what he's done -- and what he's going to do -- to them with the other. Same internal logic as he uses in Trespasser about the Qun. ‘Almost everyone is going to die from the course of action I’m doggedly pursuing eventually. But at least I can make their last years happier and freer and kinder than they would have been otherwise. and that kind of makes up for it right. a little bit. doesn't it. doesn't that make it better at least. I need that to make it better)'. Did I really take your beloved mentor and friend from you if you don’t know yet that I did? Some philosophers would argue not really! So it’s probably almost ok actually. Isn’t it even a little noble that I’m taking all this grief and guilt on myself and shielding you for now. With undertones that I’m not sure he would realize himself (and might be mortified by if he did) that he is so incredibly lonely, and even a dishonest and indirect emotional connection is more than nothing when you’re that desperate. In this setup he gets idk. Both the control he craves so incredibly badly in relationships and over himself, and the scraps, the fading afterimages, of intimacy and warmth and companionship, even second hand. The one thing Solas and Rook agree on deep deep down is that they really wish Varric weren't gone. They're handshake memeing this in the saddest and most creepy way possible.

I think an important element too is that Solas needs Rook and their team to *succeed* —  up to a certain point. He needs someone to hold the two other elven mean girls off until he can get out of here. Ideally, in a perfect world, even do all the hard work of killing them so he can swoop in at the end and do his thing when both sides are exhausted and out of resources to stop him, and then Bob’s your uncle! Same logic as he was using with Corypheus, and after that worked out so well, too! King of choosing to never learn from a single solitary mistake he’s ever made even though i fully believe he could have the capacity to Fen’Harel <3 The underlying idea isn’t flawed, you see, it was just unforeseen circumstances getting in the way. This time for sure it’ll all work out the way I cleverly imagined it in my head beforehand. Cue By Talos this can’t be happening etc. in the form of a statue almost crushing him like a bug. 

So he's providing guidance and forging Rook into a leader from two angles: one Rook might not trust, and one they probably will. Shaping them into what he needs slowly and carefully. He’s helping you hone your team into their most effective state, as he might have done with his own agents back in the day, setting up his chess pieces even if he has to squint through two glimpsed realities to do it haha. Pincer maneuver of an insidious stealth mentor you never asked for. Also… at one point mind Varric gives you a whole little monologue about how Solas' problem is that he’s always seen his interpersonal connections as flaws and see where it’s landed him, all alone and the worst part? it hasn’t even worked. it’s all been for nothing he’s back where he began with nothing to show for it but his mistakes. Like...that has such strong 'uh okay happy to play your therapist from two rooms away here what the fuck kind of traumadump is this' energy to me, I’m not sure Rook like. Thinks that much about Solas as a private person. So much of Solas' self-loathing and futile insights into his own flaws seem to shine through in Mind!Varric's dialogue all the time — I just can't believe that there's no guiding hand behind it as it were. 

Most of all. I feel like people underestimate the degree to which Solas is incredibly funny. As in, he has a very consistent and recognizable sense of humour. It’s one of my very favourite things about him. We must remember — it is crucial that we always keep in mind — Orlesian accent and wig Solas from May The Dread Wolf Take You (my beloved, the explanation for why I love this dude even with the. All of the everything else. No one does it quite like him). He is not at all above doing things or adding little flourishes for his own obscure amusement, in fact that seems to me to be one of his most consistent traits. The Randy Dowager Quarterly comment Varric has? The ‘Maybe this is the Dread Wolf’s revenge. Forcing us to house sit for him’ thing? To Me this is 100% Solas amusing himself in his boring Fade jail surrounded by the screaming hellscape of all his regrets. Source: it came to me as divine revelation through pure vibes trust me bro 

If nothing else I find it much more narratively interesting personally if the connection between Rook and Solas really is that defenselessly intimate and entwined (and so unbalanced!), and the sense of violation and invasion and betrayal afterwards consequently all the more nauseatingly intense. Even if you kept him at arm’s length in the open, he’s been under your skin the whole time, looking around, gathering what he needs to destroy you, wearing the face of a friend. Regretfully, probably, but choosing to do it every step of the way anyway. (Sound familiar, Inquisitor? Solas doesn’t have that many tricks when you actually look at it, he keeps returning to old tried and true ones like a dog with a bone haha.) Maybe he even genuinely meant some of it as mercy, which only makes it so much worse. It makes his sin against his own core principles of autonomy and the freedom of all beings in mind, spirit and body so much more juicily grave if it’s something he pursues actively and consistently, rather than it half-falling into his lap as a happy accident mainly orchestrated by Rook’s own subconscious. Solas, too, is at his very lowest point, the closest to giving in and becoming his own antithesis fully that he’s ever been, and it makes the choice of whether you still reach out your hand to him one last time or not all the more impactful and difficult.

[biowaredisasterbisexual]

I really don’t understand the criticism that Veilguard doesn’t include enough open, devout Andrastianism. Like, it just perplexes me?

Unlike the first three games, which take place in Southern Thedas (the purview of the Orlesian Chantry, the Sunburst throne), Veilguard takes place almost entirely in Northern Thedas. And it’s clear the Chantry’s role there is very different than in the South.

In Southern Thedas, the Chantry is a power unto itself. The Southern Divine, holder of the Sunburst Throne, occupies a place of real significance and power. She has her own militarized forces (the Templar and Seeker Orders). She politically has to interface with the rulers of the various places in Southern Thedas (Orlais, Ferelden, the Free Marches, etc.), but is not formally associated with or dependent on them. The South is comparatively poorer than the North, and we see a majority of services (taking care of orphans, medical care, the Circles, and very significantly education) being taken care of by the Chantry without necessarily much assistance from the relevant countries.

The Southern Chantry is an ever present figure in Southern Thedas, even for those that aren’t devout. And that is reflected in those stories and the cultures we learn about there.

The Tevinter Imperium is not like that. And that’s not terribly surprising. First, the Imperium pre-dates Andrastianism. They have another, older religion that helped form some of their cultural touchpoints. The Imperium did adopt Andrastianism, but did so as a consolidation of empire (which tracks with the Imperium being, in no small part, a reflection of the real life Roman Empire). As such, the Chantry is folded into and subordinate to the Imperium’s government. The real power in Tevinter, and control over the incidents of daily life that we see the Southern Chantry involved in, is the Magisterium and the Archon.

The Imperial Divine doesn’t control the Templars, the Magisterium and Archon do. He doesn’t control the Circles/education. That’s the Magisterium and Archon again. He is, in practical terms, less powerful than Dorian. He can’t make any real change as the Imperial Divine, so he dons a mask and runs a vigilante group to free slaves and make change that way.

The Northern Chantry simply isn’t as omnipresent as the Southern Chantry in the areas it exists, and it competes with a preexisting cultural backbone in a way the Southern Chantry doesn’t (because it largely stamped that out, though some of the Avvar and Chasind are still around).

I think a lot of people are comparing the impact of Andrastianism in Veilguard to that in Inquisition, because it’s the most recent, and the criticism spawns from that. But that…doesn’t make sense. The Inquisitor is leading a religious organization, ultimately affiliated with the Southern Chantry itself and founded by the left and right hands of the former Divine. It claims its legitimacy from Andraste herself (even if the Inquisitor doesn’t believe a single bit of it). The people who join the Inquisition are all okay enough with Andrastianism to affiliate themselves openly with it (Solas aside, but of course he has other reasons), and many are devout.

The Veilguard are just…random people. Skilled, powerful, talented people, but not people with any real affiliation with any Chantry. Davrin and Bellara have complicated relationships with the Dalish religion they grew up with, for obvious reasons, but they weren’t raised in Andrastianism or an Andrastian culture. Neve, per her, “barely keeps the holidays.” Her relationship to Andrastianism seems closer to the average non-church-attending American who celebrates Christmas and Easter, but isn’t particularly Christian beyond that. Lucanis does seem open to belief in the Maker and Andraste, but is kind of ambivalent to it. More agnostic than anything else. Taash wasn’t raised Andrastian, their mom largely still embraces much of the Qun even if she left, and Rivain was always kind of religiously funky anyway. Only Emmrich and Harding are particularly Andrastian, and even then Emmrich is from Nevarra which although deeply Andrastian is unique. Harding is the only companion whose Andrastianism we’d recognize from the prior games.

So in a game set in a region where Andrastianism is culturally less of an influence, where the Chantry holds far less power, and that has companions that aren’t devout Andrastians…how is it a failure of the game that it isn’t brought up more. That makes sense. It’s consistent with the world building that came before it and the continued reveal of that world in game.

I don’t get it.

[seaglassmelody]

People out here mad that there's not much obvious racism in Veilguard

Meanwhile I'm out here saying things like "wahoo!" and "yippee!" because we have not one, but TWO out-and-proud Dalish elf party members that are never shamed or argued with about their culture.

Gone are the days of being Dalish with Solas on one side and Sera on the other! No longer shall we have to have the only Dalish elf character get scolded on all sides for her choices because she wants to bring something of her history back to her people (Merrill my love you deserve so much better).

If you're an elf you get two elf friends who are happy to share things with you! If you're not an elf you get two elf friends who are happy to teach you about them!

Elf Appreciation Life featuring Davrin and Bellara!!!

[queenmuzz]

That Ring that Caterina uses to alert the Crows she's alive and kicking? The one that she originally gave to Lucanis's mother, in order to show her favour?

What if when attempting to return the ring to her, she insists that Lucanis keeps it, to give to someone he shows favour to?

And Lucanis wants to, he has the exact person in mind (and I suspect Caterina knows exactly who), but he cannot bring himself to do it.

Imagine him sitting on his cot after Tearstone Island, twisting the ring between his fingers, regretting that he kept putting it off.

[timethehobo]

Help he’s just too cute I can’t stop drawing him. 😭💀

[alderaanplacesss]

After the events of Veilguard, Rook and her companions become quite famous over Thedas. They’re spoken about in ways that will one day become lore, like the legend of the Inquisitor and the immortal wolf who loved her.

But they also have lives, and families, and normalcy to return to. And what isn’t as famous at first, is Rook’s sweeping romance that started at The Lighthouse.

It isn’t until she starts showing up at the back of Mourn Watcher lecture halls, or is spotted frequently in Nevarran gardens that people start to gossip.

Rook is hard to miss; the person who fearlessly commanded Elven Gods to stand down definitely has a presence. She doesn’t fit the mold of a student, and she certainly isn’t in need of instruction. No, her sudden and frequent appearances to The Necropolis are for something else entirely. Someone else.

Emmrich does anything but hide it. He’s madly in love with his scandalously younger girlfriend. The professor blushes when students ask him about their epic tale, happy to gush about his beloved Rook. He has a framed portrait of her on his office wall, where he can sometimes be found writing her love letters when she is away. Emmrich escorts her on his arm when they walk through the halls of the college, always making time for her.

One day, the couple is spotted in the cemetery during Emmrich’s lunch break, and Rook is wearing a gorgeous black diamond on her ring finger. The future Mrs. Volkarin, is how he proudly refers to her now. Sometimes it is My beloved fiancee. He can hardly wait for it to be My Darling Wife.

The day they marry, all the wisps in the Necropolis dance and chime so brightly that the dark city is filled with a constellation of spirits. It’s a sight to behold - a rare and beautiful thing that is talked about for years to come.

[rueyam]

idk what you call it but i got not time for complicated people i need calmness and people who‘ve matured & figured themselves out so we can enjoy each others company sincerely

[lionofchaeronea]

Tristan and Iseult meet at the fountain, while King Mark, above, spies on them. Detail from an ivory casket panel, made by an unknown artist in Paris in the 1340s. Now in the Louvre.

[walkingstackofbooks]

IPS/BIL AU where Tain dies before he can send the message. Garak and Worf never go to the gamma quadrant. Julian and Martok don't get rescued.

Back on DS9 the changeling is stopped pretty much just as it was in canon, with Kira and Dax managing to stop the Yukon from reaching the sun, just as it explodes. (Maybe since Garak is still on the station, he notifies Sisko that Bashir has taken the Yukon out?) This time, however, no-one knows it was a changeling, and among all the shock and grief, there's tense speculation about what the hell Julian was doing out there in a runabout with a bomb.

The changeling had planned to never be identified, believing it would sow more confusion and fear in the Federation if they believe one of their own had been secretly allied with the Dominion. And so the changeling had left behind a trail of "Julian" interacting with highly questionable locked-down message-boards such as "Would enhanced individuals be better off under the Dominion?", which would never have been tracked back to him apart from under such scrutiny he's now post-humously receiving. (The changeling knew about Julian's enhancements - to become something is to understand that thing, after all.)

Of course, it is considered whether Julian may have been impersonated by a changeling, but once the link to his enhancements has been revealed - and his parents can't hide it, they confess, and are sentenced to time in a penal colony - it seems very much decided that Doctor Bashir had become an augment extremist, biding his time on DS9 until he could play out his part in the Dominion plot. There's varying levels of acceptance of this among Julian's friends - even if it seems that they have to admit it, it's still almost impossible to believe that Julian could have tried to do that. But it doesn't really matter what they think - life has to go on, and the war's continuing whether they like it or not, and little by little they move on with their now-Julian-less lives.

Time passes. they get a new CMO. The Cardassians re-occupy the station, and Sisko leads the campaign to get it back. Worf and Jadzia get married. Garak gets a message.

A.L.I.V.E. J.S.B.

And no-one knows what to think. JSB can't be... can it? But how...

Garak argues that Doctor Bashir's death is so well-known that no-one would use his name as the basis for some sort of trap. Miles agrees. Everyone else wants to agree. (For a certain definition of 'want'. Julian being alive, not a traitor... that also means he's been doing somewhere in the past ten months, and it's difficult to think about what sort of awful place that might have been.)

Garak and Worf are sent out to chase this signal - in theory, it's recon, but naturally it quickly devolves. They get captured themsleves, finding Camp 371 and Julian, looking ten months worse for wear. Garak learns about Tain's death, and the subspace transmitter he'd began working on and that they'd only just been able to finish, having managed to recruit a recently-abducted Starfleet engineer. An engineer who's currently in solitary, leaving them with a plan to escape now there's a runabout in orbit, but no way to effect it. Unless there's something Garak can do...

And Worf, of course, meets Martok, and is impressed by the Klingon's tale of daily fights for nearly three years. "Almost every day," Martok corrects him. "There have been times when I've woken up with a sore head to find that the doctor has taken my place."

Worf looks to Julian, nodding. "So you are the man we remember," he says. "Your enhancements may have helped you fight, but it was an honourable thing to volunteer."

"My... my enhancements?" asks Julian faintly. "What- what do you mean?"

"Commander, is now really the time—" Garak tries to interrupt but Julian speaks over him.

"No, Garak, I want to know— I-I need to know. What do you mean, Worf?"

And Worf, in his short, succinct way tells Julian how they had believed he had died, and what they had discovered thereafter, and while they know now that he is not an augment extremist, his parents' confession made it clear that he is an augment.

Julian doesn't say very much after that, apart from what is needed to help with the rescue - he calms Garak down, he volunteers to try and figure out what needs doing in the crawl space ("I've learnt at least a few things from tinkering with it over those seven months...") - but otherwise, he's withdrawn and spacey. Garak perserveres - he must get Julian back to DS9, has to hope there's still time to rekindle that light in his doctor's eyes - and manages to get them out, and even locking onto the engineer's life sign in solitary. They make it to the runabout, and escape.

It's a very different sort of homecoming. This time, rather than having only a few hours to get used to the idea that Julian had been missing for a month, they've been mourning him for almost a year, angry and confused and left with so many questions. And they've had almost a week of wondering what's become of Worf and Garak, and to tie themselves in circles wondering if J.S.B really could be Julian Subatoi Bashir.

Garak gets them all beamed directly to sickbay, and it's obvious that Julian's overwhelmed enough by that without having hordes of emotional friends come to greet him. So they're allowed in, one at a time. Miles petitions to be first, and wraps Julian up in what would have been the firmest of hugs - apart from Julian's so gaunt, so... so fragile, that Miles finds he dares not squeeze too hard. Words gush out - ones that he'd never have thought he'd admit out loud - about how much he missed Julian and how glad he is none of what they said was true, and it takes him some time to realise that he's been blabbering on and Julian's not been saying a word.

Julian has been clinging onto him tightly, though, and that... that's got to be enough, for now.

[invinciblerodent]

This is going to be very ranty and disjointed, probably borderline incomprehensible post, but with the "return" of Dragon Age Discourse (and really, did it ever go anywhere?) and me repeatedly seeing the complaints and dismissals of DA:I as a "chosen one"-type of a narrative, I just.... I keep finding myself thinking about the relationship of truth and lies within the game.

Throughout the course of DA:I, the idea of a malleable, flexible personal identity, and a painful confrontation with an uncomfortable truth replacing a soothing falsehood, follows pretty much every character throughout their respective arcs.

There are some more obvious ones, Solas, Blackwall, The Iron Bull, their identities and deceptions (of both those around them and themselves) are clearly front and center in the stories told about them, but this theme of deception (both of the self- and the outside world) is clearly present in the stories of the others as well.

Like, for example, ones that come immediately to mind are stories like that of Cullen, who presents an image of a composed and disciplined military man, a commander- all to hide the desperate and traumatized addict that he sees himself as.

Dorian grappled with the expectations of presenting the image of the perfect heir to his father's legacy, the prideful scion of his house, his entire life (he even introduces himself as the result of "careful breeding", like one might speak about a prized horse)- all while knowing that his family would rather see him lobotomized and obedient, than anything even just resembling his vibrant and passionate self.

Cassandra calls herself a Seeker of Truth, and takes pride in that identity- only to learn that in reality, she has been made a liar, a keeper of secrets, without her knowledge or consent, and it is up to her to either uproot the entire organization and painfully cut out the abscess it is to build it back from the ground up into something respectable, or let the information she had revealed sit, and continue to fester.

And this theme continues and reframes itself in, among others, things like Sera's own inner conflict between her elven heritage and her human upbringing, or in Cole being caught in this unconscionable space in-between human and spirit, between person and concept, etc.

The Inquisitor isn't exempt from this either.

I feel like this is where the core of the many misunderstandings of this plot come from, why so many people continue to believe that Inquisition is a "chosen one" or "divinely appointed" type of story, because I think many might just... not realize, that the protagonist's identity is also malleable, and what they are told in the setup/first act of the game is not necessarily the truth.

The tale of the Inquisitor is the exact opposite of that of a "chosen one" story: it's an examination and reflection of the trope, in that it is the story of an assumption that all wrongly believe to be the truth, and thrust upon you, even if you protest. The very point is that no matter who you choose to say that you are, you will be known as the Herald of a prophet you don't even necessarily believe in, and then that belief will be proven wrong, leaving you to cope with either a devastating disappointment if you believed it, or a bitter kind of vindication if you didn't.

There's a moment just after Here Lies the Abyss (when you learn of the lie you've been fed your entire journey in the game) that I don't often see mentioned, but I think it's one of the most emotionally impactful character moments, if you are playing an Andrastian Inquisitor who had actually believed themselves chosen (which I realize is a rather unpopular pick, lol): it's when Ser Ruth, a Grey Warden, realizes what she had done and is horrified by her own deeds, and turns herself in asking to be tried for the murder of another of her order. As far as she is concerned, she had spilled blood for power, and regardless of whether she was acting of her own volition at the time, whether she had agency in the moment, is irrelevant to her: she seeks no absolution, but willingly submits to any punishment you see fit.

And only if you play as an Inquisitor who, through prior dialogue choices, had established themselves as a devout Andrastian, can you offer her forgiveness, for a deed that was objectively not her fault- not really.

You can, in Andraste's name, forgive her- even though you, at that point, know that you have no real right to do so. That you're not Andraste's Herald, that Andraste may or may not even exist, and that you can't grant anyone "divine forgiveness", because you, yourself, don't have a drop of divinity within you. You know that you were no more than an unlucky idiot who stumbled their way into meddling with forces beyond their ken.

You know you're a fraud. You know. The game forces you to realize, as it slowly drip-drip-drips the memories knocked loose by the blast back into your head, that what all have been telling you that you are up to this point, is false. And yet, you can still choose to keep up the lie, and tell this woman who stands in front of you with blood on her hands and tears in her eyes, that you, with authority you don't have, grant her forgiveness for a crime that wasn't hers to commit.

Because it's the right thing to do. Because to lie to Ser Ruth is far kinder than anything else you could possibly do to her, short of refusing to make a decision altogether.

There are any number of criticisms of this game that I can accept (I may or may not agree depending on what it is, but I'm from the school of thought that any interpretation can be equally valid as long as there's text that supports it, and no text that contradicts it), but I will always continue to uphold that the Inquisitor is absolutely not- and never was a "chosen one".

They're just as small, and sad, and lost, as all the other protagonists- the only difference is that they didn't need to fight for their mantle, because instead of a symbol of honor, it acted as a straitjacket.