#also like... they're all being polite lol

[hyperions-light]

@uchidachi requested I do this one, and now that the activity around it has calmed down a bit, I thought it’d be fun!

I’ve briefly considered this topic before, but thinking about it for longer I’m pretty sure that if Lucanis or Neve brought this up (lbr here, it’d be Lucanis) it would start a fight lol

Marriage sounds like it involves a whole bunch of things Leth doesn’t like such as

-rules

-legal proceedings

-interacting with authority figures

-politics

However, they do love parties and wearing fancy clothes, so it has that going for it.

Putting the rest under the cut, bc long lol

But I think ultimately the idea would kind of freak them out, because then like… what about Teia and Viago? They have a weird situationship going on that they don’t want to give up or have to think too hard about, and marriage might complicate it. Being freaked out would immediately cause them to start an argument, and then they’d probably run away and hide for some amount of time. (Leth’s instincts always say: fight until you can run, run until you can hide)

If they were eventually convinced (hard but not impossible) it would have to be a wedding where all three of them get married, because they'd think it was unfair, otherwise.

And then probably Lucanis would regret his decision because it would turn into the biggest, most elaborate party in the history of Treviso. Leth has never even met half of the people who show up. Teia is over the moon because any wild, extravagant thing she suggests Leth will enthusiastically cosign. Everyone is invited. EVERYONE. It should be a huge security risk because so many Talons (and the Black Divine and the Archon) are in the same place at once but everyone is so heavily armed it would be suicide to attack them. They probably ask Solas if he and Lavellan want to stop holding the sky together briefly so they can come too. Yes, the necromancers can bring the Necropolis skeletons. Of course Vorgoth is invited! Tell uncle Eldrin to bring the griffons!

Probably the only thing that Leth would actually debate with Teia about is clothes. They don't want to wear a dress (they aren't as good at stabbing people in them. What if they have to stab someone?), they want NEVE to wear a dress. There is a LOT of debating back and forth about color schemes and fabrics and tailoring. I think it's like Divine Conclave level serious; Teia and Leth are locked in a room for a week and everyone else goes in and out periodically looking utterly exhausted. They figure it out eventually, though. They find the right shades of purple and turquoise so that everything looks cohesive.

I think the biggest Issue with the wedding is probably politics. There's the Crow house alliance to worry about, which Viago would get huffy over, and there's Caterina. Viago is very convinced that if Leth is around Caterina for any substantive period of time, they are going to annoy her into killing them, so he's spent a lot of time impressing on them that they should stay tf away from her. But she's going to be their grandmother-in-law now! There's probably a lot of traditions to fulfill, like formal meetings and interviews and evaluations and dinners which will stress Lucanis out! Leth endures it with uncomfortable bemusement. They only irritate Caterina a moderate amount-- she definitely whacks them with that cane at least once. It's fine, though! Leth likes grumpy people and is good at dodging.

I think the celebration is like... Carnival or Mardi Gras, essentially. It lasts a week, no one leaves when they're supposed to, everyone is horribly inebriated. They need healers because the Lords of Fortune tried to play their drinking game in the canals and got sick immediately. People show up late; they go and come back and somehow the party is still happening. Lucanis, Neve and Viago definitely tap out at some point-- meanwhile, Teia, Illario, Isabela, and Leth are having an amazing time! It's sort of also a party to celebrate the apocalypse being averted?

I think Taash would make it through the whole time, Davrin would last a while but he has to do Griffon Wrangling eventually. Emmrich is out after like day two. Manfred would stay the whole time. Bel would have fun but I think she would get burned out on it eventually. I think all the faction leaders show at some point, but they also either 1) have stuff to do 2) do NOT want to spend a week in the middle of this chaos, so I think probably by the end it's just Teia and Isabela left.

Leth brings some of Harding's fade plants to decorate the venue and hand-delivers an invitation to Harding's mom. They order a barrel of that nasty shit they serve in the Hanged Man, and pour one out for Varric-- maybe Bianca sneaks in there at some point. There's probably a dramatic reading of Varric's least favorite book, just so Leth can annoy him in the afterlife.

I think it ends up sort of cathartic for everyone? Like, the wedding is why they come, but everyone needs to unwind from all the terrible shit that happened.

I think the actually romantic part is probably after, during the honeymoon. They just go somewhere quiet and isolated where Leth can make sure their two workaholic partners do absolutely nothing productive for two uninterrupted weeks. Treviso and Docktown will be okay without them, for a minute-- Viago and Elek promised.

Also after that Leth is bringing Lucanis and Neve to meet their clan, because they don't live with them anymore, but that doesn't mean they aren't important. Maybe the quiet, sincere version of the ceremony happens there, with nobody else around? And Leth is bullying them into matching tattoos, which they will do themself.

Hey, hope you all had a good weekend! Unfortunately, it’s Monday =/ Fortunately, it’s time for Rook Intro Hour! 🍀🌺🌼🌸

How it works: I ask you a question about your Rook(s) and you answer it with as much brevity or verbosity as you desire. You can do this whenever you want, and I’ll reblog it + add some comments! There’s no time limit— if you want to do the older ones, they are collected here! (The post is updated on Fridays!)

Today’s Question(s): Does your Rook want to get married to their LI(s)? Do they care about where? Is there a specific tradition/traditions they want to follow, when they do? Who would they invite? What would they wear?

Have fun & thanks for sharing!

[saccharinescorpion]

i’m sorry, i have to put my foot down: Juniper did NOT call the farmer stinky and do the ojou-sama laugh in her first scene for you to say “March is literally the only character in Fields Of Mistria who isn’t overly nice to the player” this is blatant mean girl erasure!!

[vaguely-concerned]

btw my headcanon for sophia amell in veilguard is that she has been 'oh no... I think your letter got lost on its way to me first warden... too bad, I'll just stay here in amaranthine until I hear from you, then.... is this a letter I see before me...... a tragedy. I can't read all of a sudden. my eyes. you sent a messenger? my messenger now I'm adopting them. no message received sadly try again'-ed all summons to go to weisshaupt, so she's in denerim with alistair when stuff starts to go to shit and at least they spend the impromptu superblight together. they may both be right on the edge of the calling (? we just don't know!) and ferelden might be about to fall, but at least they're king arthur and merlin-ing (erotic and romantic connotations) it up together at the end of the world and kissing and holding hands about it. and what more could I hope for for them. that's what beating the odds looks like for wardens I think.

there's a particular incident where she saves his life through the power of spirit healing and. maybe the guiding hand of Something that seems to still reside in the petals of the rose he gave her that she's worn in a little glass vial around her neck and that have not withered all these long years, and it inspires actual myths and romantic literary traditions and folk ballads and all sorts of nonsense that outlast them both. neither of them care tho they're just. hugging right now. drenched in darkspawn blood like the old days. resting their foreheads together. taking every moment they may have left just to be together. whatever you do don't go without me. wherever you go let me go too. and with you let me be buried, and where you go after that let me go with you then as well. (of course. of course. after all of this, where would I ever go without you. the one good thing about the blight is that it brings people together. the one good thing is that it brought me to you.)

[spoondoodles]

I blacked out and more Logince HS AU appeared on my canvas idk what happened (also ty @oatmeal-stans-the-trash-rat for some inspiration sorry it took so long to make a post about Them <3)

[sysig]

Smooth cover (Patreon)

Bonus alt:

[unproduciblesmackdown]

winston my quant of billions

[a-god-in-ruins-rises]

"raza" is actually referring to the coming american race (the cosmic race, some might say)

[prussianmemes]

a white english anti-war socialist wins a seat in parliament and the next day the hindi PM says that this is an alarming sign of rising rabid-antisemitism, far-right politics, and islamic fundamentalism.

??? what

[milfbrainrot]

have always been a bit more neutral to timebomb but it has rly surprisingly grown on me so much ;-; i think i do see it more from the tragedy angle and maybe more one-sided. i'm not sure jinx has ever been in a place to reciprocate the feelings i'm sure ekko has, but it is nice to think about for years down the line and in terms of what could have been.

[non-un-topo]

It's strangely gender-affirming when my mom gets defensive and accuses me of mansplaining

[snekdood]

why do ppl call shark3ozero a debate bro when like. I hardly ever see him actually debate anyone..? usually he’s just talking about current events?? is talking to vaush like twice really enough for ppls black and white thinking to be triggered about ppl????

[yume-no-miya]

look i love making sae be the one who's so in love and showering hajun with so much love and affection but it's much more fun to think that HE fell harder than her

[vaguely-concerned]

I've been trying to figure out a dynamic between neve and rye that I find more compelling, because right now there's not much of anything there for me to sink my little teeth into. but I think I've landed on something delicious with the idea that especially after minrathous gets fucked, rye looks at neve and sees myrna -- someone he feels he keeps letting down horribly no matter how hard he tries not to and can't quite achieve the approval of/connection with that he wishes so it's better to just pull away completely and disengage rather than stay in that unshifting shame. neve is (very understandably) measured and distant with him after what happened, and he's flashing back to his student days of myrna gazing at the perpetually hungover heartbroken heap of a person of him on the other side of her desk every time he missed the deadline of a paper or project like '...can we at least both agree that this is. a bit disappointing. especially considering your potential.' (and him all smudged black eyeshadow and numb ruefulness being like 'sure that's a very kind way to put it myrna thank you'.)

aside from the 'if I let him get too deeply into this he'll go the way of brom and it'll be all my fault (again)' element, neve thinks rye is dismissing her and her city/being a bit callous in the same way he was after varric's death (listen. how fucking wild must rook's reaction to losing a beloved mentor seem to the rest of the crew who aren't seeing the blood magic paper doll ghost varric the whole time, especially those who got to see them interact. you WOULD think 'there's something wrong with this guy. putting the job first is one thing just not seeming to react at all is another this is fucking freaky', wouldn't you, especially after seeing the warmth in that dynamic in action beforehand.) perfect storm of two people who grit their teeth and turn inwards in pain deciding that not talking about it is their best bet (NEWSFLASH: IT ISN'T) lmao

(rye spent his last year of watcher training on a mostly joyless bender and then got it together enough to finish the eternal orb project last moment in a fevered near-sleepless week instead of the half a year that was intended. emmrich is both astounded and distressed to hear this. "a week? but -- but that is an astounding accomplishment rook!! and also why in the maker's good light would you ever do that to yourself?" ("well you see there was no one to stop me from doing it like that but me. and under those conditions these things tend to happen".) rye was working through/looking up stuff around transitioning and doing every kind of OTHER high level watcher research through that whole time, but ultimately he's an excellent watcher and a terrible student, at least under traditional methods. adhd from here to the fucking moon. touched by something akin to divine inspiration in moments of high tension that pulls all the threads into one coherent unbreakable cord, a bit of a frayed mess in most other settings. in our world he'd be dropping out of a masters program at the very last hurdle in this moment maker bless and protect him)

[fairymint]

The duality between Zivan's interactions (namely Kazuya) showing frustration/confusion at his emotional constipation, and Magnus's being dealt with gracefully/gently

both are so, so good, although I will mentally dunk on them both, simultaneously as i encourage them to grow thru it

[torgawl]

i voted 😕

[qqueenofhades]

I think its genuinely fascinating how Biden has somehow become the bad vibes sin eater for the party. I'm seeing people who were doing the whole "voting doesn't matter both old men are the same" pivot hard into voting as harm reduction. The anti voting rhetoric has COMPLETELY lost The Youths on tiktok. People suddenly remember the good things the Biden administration has done but don't associate Harris with any of the things they didn't like. In my swing state volunteers are signing up in droves. People feel ENERGIZED, the vibe shift pre and post Biden dropping from the race has just been insane

Y'know, that is a... good way of putting it. It's also why I'm quite sure that Biden has probably been planning it for a while. I don't think he was intending to step down, and didn't want to be forced out at the drop of a hat, but after he realized that the circus was never going to stop until he did, he did the honorable fall-on-his-own-sword thing and definitely, DEFINITELY spent some time choreographing this behind the scenes. Because while the roll-out has been very smooth, it could just as easily (as many of us were expecting) have been a total disaster, and that doesn't happen without SOME planning. It's also entirely possible that the campaign staff flipped from Biden to Harris are superhuman, to come up with a massive online roll-out, new branding, new signs (they had plenty of 'em in Wisconsin yesterday), new everything, but I'm guessing it's a combination of both. Biden has spent his entire political career being underestimated, and after we literally made a meme out of Dark Brandon juking the Republicans out of their shoes, we should definitely give credit where credit is due in how masterfully he pulled it off.

Because we have had eight years defined by the central question of Whether The President Is a God King Who Should Serve For Life (the MAGAts obviously think yes), the sheer idea of a president willingly giving up his power BEFORE he had to is also novel and admirable. It's sad that this is the case, but so be it. The Republicans also got a heaping helping of Be Careful What You Wish For that was undoubtedly brilliant; they've been yelling for years that Biden is old and frail and can't serve and should step down. Biden went "lol okay" and gave it to them, and now they're fucked.

Aside from that, on the most basic level, it's far, far easier to see the actual difference in the parties with Harris as the nominee, just because it shows that one party is willing to make progress and reflect the new demographic reality and social mores of America, and the other one is not. Now to be clear, Biden deserves an incredible amount of credit for coming out of retirement (he was ALREADY 77 years old when he became president and had had decades of a long and respected career in public service behind him) to fight, beat Trump, and deliver an incredibly successful presidency. He held the line against authoritarianism at home and abroad, he rescued the trashed American economy and managed a world-leading recovery from Covid, he stood up for democracy, he spent four years filling the benches with liberal judges to reverse even some of the Trump/McConnell hack job, he finally passed comprehensive infrastructure investment and the Green New Deal under the name of the Inflation Reduction Act -- and so on. Many of these priorities had been languishing for decades or were completely trashed under Trump, and he could not have done so much in just 4 years without all that age, skill, and experience. Hence why all the Ageism!!! was (aside from being a Republican/media smear job) dumb. He's able to do the job because he has had decades to study. Turns out that makes you actually pretty damn good at it.

Yes, Biden could not do as much as he wanted or originally planned, had to deal with MAGA Republicans and Joe Manchin/Kyrsten Sinema sabotaging him the whole time (lololol Manchin, possible possessor of the World's Biggest Ego and with Trump around that's saying something, popping out of obscurity to self-righteously announce he would not be willing to be Kamala's VP. YEAH ASSHOLE. LITERALLY NOBODY ASKED YOU. NOBODY WHATSOEVER. NO MATTER WHAT HAPPENS AT LEAST WE WILL SOON NO LONGER HAVE MANCHIN IN THE SENATE). And yes, Biden made some serious mistakes of his own, because he IS from an older generation and a different style of doing politics/different beliefs that no longer resonate with the younger segments of the electorate. But this old white Catholic guy at the age of almost 80 still managed to be the most progressive president ever, coming in at a moment of incredible domestic and international crisis and getting us safely to the other side, and all cynicism, criticizing, and caveating aside, he deserves an incredible amount of credit for that. I mean that absolutely, and I am very grateful.

As I said, willingly relinquishing that power takes guts, and when Biden saw the writing on the wall that he had to sacrifice himself, he took his time, he didn't jump too early, and he didn't jump too late. On the most basic level, it becomes a hell of a lot easier to make the "both parties are not the same" argument when one is running a (comparatively) young brown woman and the other is still running their loathed felonious old demented orange traitor. Most Americans are not plugged into policy minutiae and details. They look at Biden-Trump, they see two old white guys. When you take one of those old white guys away (who goes in a self-sacrificially heroic manner and in sharp contrast with the coup-happy fascist) and put Kamala Harris in there instead, it generates an obvious jolt. People can see for themselves that there is a real difference that doesn't rely on closely reading news and tracking complex policy, because as noted, most Americans simply don't. The brown first-generation American daughter of brown immigrants is a quantifiably different story from "old white guy career politician," which for better or worse is how Biden was seen, especially the old part. We needed that establishment expertise to beat Trump in 2020; I still think Biden is the only one who could have done it, and as noted, we owe him a great debt for doing so.

However.... 2024 is not 2020, and it is not 2016. There has been this HUGE and unbelievable swing to Kamala because she represents the antithesis of what the last eight years of Trump-induced anger, fear, panic, chaos, and hatred has stirred up. That's why people are so ready to rally around her, just as they were (I daresay) around Obama in 2008, after the exhaustion, chaos, war, and mounting economic misery of Bush. Trump has been out of office for the last four years, but his shadow over the American political landscape has been omnipresent. Now people know that we finally have a real chance at getting rid of him forever, and just as Biden was uniquely positioned to capitalize on that in 2020, so Harris is now. Which is why, however tough it will be, she has a real shot at winning. I can guarantee the Republicans know that, and are shit scared. Because the Black Lady Army of Democracy has indeed arrived in force to Get This Shit Done and I don't know about you, but I found that incalculably comforting:

Yikes! All lined up for Kamala pic.twitter.com/Dt4OCDp7WX

— Alex Cole (@acnewsitics) July 24, 2024

This, at the most basic level, is what scares fascists the most, it's exactly what we need now, and what Harris is uniquely positioned to mobilize, along with her gangbusters appeal to young voters:

This is the energy we need. This is what Biden saw and planned for and which he launched us into, and where all that experience and age paid off. This is why people, even people otherwise disengaged, disillusioned, or checked out of the tedious and mind-numbering drudgery and depression of American politics, are responding to it. Because it's easy to understand, it offers hope, and it tells a very simple story that is nonetheless long overdue:

Thanks so much, Joe. Go absolutely waste that orange fucker, Kamala. We got your back.