#alternatively I am a dragon

[pineapple-cheese-bread]

Man I really looked at the options for Gender and Sexuality and just said no❤️

[drawnfamiliarfaces]

🎊Happy New Lunar Year! 🎊 Year of a Wooden Snake 🤎🐍🤎

Wooden Snake made me think of XS beloved headcanon of Jermaine being Dragon of Wood element and I just couldn't resist! ;3

design is absolutely based on @wei-smiler 's amazing Jermaine post (he looks so fly in their style!)

[mothsandbees]

Josie doodle bc I can't remember how to draw atm

[backtofiction28]

Ar lath ma, Vhenan

“How are the knives coming?” Rook asked as she entered the pantry.

          Lucanis had been pacing but stopped when he saw her. “Rook, this isn’t going to work. They moved the moon!” he exclaimed, gesturing to the ceiling as if the moon was there. “We are in over our heads. This is not magic you can fight with a blade. You’re putting your life in our hands.” He took a shaky breath. “My hands.” He looked down at his hands, brows furrowed in pain. “All I know is death.”

          Rook stepped closer to him and gently encased his hands with her own. “These hands knew how to comfort me when I almost broke down after rescuing the Dalish. These hands know how to make the best churros in all of Thedas. And these hands will not let me down for the final fight with the gods, because I trust in them. Just like I trust in you.” She smiled, trying to reassure him. “I know we can do this.”

          Lucanis brought her hands to his lips, kissing them gently. “Optimism is your best and worst quality.” He gripped them tightly. “If I have to kill every blighted creature in Thedas to keep you safe, I will.”

          Rook smirked. “Just two will be enough. And you know you don’t have to do this alone.”

           “I’m never alone anymore,” he said, meaning he meant Spite.

          She rolled her eyes. “You know what I mean. I’ll be here for you.”

          “Don’t make promises you might not keep.”

          Rook was quiet. She stared at his chocolate brown eyes—eyes that stared at her with such deep fondness and worry. She was such a sucker for those eyes. How did she end up caring for him so much? This wasn’t in her plan to save the world. But then again, when have her plans ever gone her way?

          Rook could feel her heart racing. She had planned on telling him at some point after they had defeated Illario. Stolen chances and her own cowardice had gotten in the way. And now the gods had hastened their plans to create their own dagger.

          Now would be a good chance, right?

Rook steeled her nerve. “Lucanis, I—”

          “Don’t,” he interrupted.

          She tried to ignore the sinking feeling in her chest. Did he know what she was going to say? He released her hands, the cold of the pantry seeping into her skin.

          “Whatever it takes,” he said. “I won’t miss this time.”

          Rook placed her hands behind her back, trying to act casual and ignoring the stab of disappointment in her chest. “Right.”

          Inside her head, she was screaming. Why couldn’t she say it? And why didn’t he let her finish? Maybe if she had said it, it would distract him from his task. She needed him focused—she needed everyone focused. This was their last chance at stopping the gods.

          Maybe this really isn’t a good time.

          But if she didn’t say then when? And how would she know they were going to make it back from this?

          If I don’t say it now, then I’m going to regret this.

          “Rook, are you alright?” Lucanis asked, his eyes shining with concern.

          Damn. She had been staring at him for too long with nothing to say. Figures she would make this whole situation awkward.

“Ar lath ma, vhenan,” she said suddenly. She could feel the flush of embarrassment coming on. Shit, why did she say it in Elvin?

          Lucanis raised a brow. “What does that mean?”

          “Um…it’s an ancient Elvin saying for good luck,” Rook said, scrambling for a way out. “You know, kind of like how performers say ‘break a leg’ before a performance?”

          “Does that make you my good luck charm?” Lucanis gave her a teasing smile.

          Rook blushed at his compliment. How could he say that he wasn’t good at flirting when he said it so effortlessly? She smiled. “Only if you want me to be,” she said. “I’ll see you at the eluvian.”

          She swiftly turned around and left the pantry, trying to slow down her heart rate and hoping that Spite didn’t catch a change in her scent. She was definitely going to think about that all day, but at least she told him. Granted, it was in Elvish, but that had to count. Right?

          (after the events of Tearstone Island)

          Ar lath ma, vhenan.

          Those were the last words that Rook had said to him before Solas pulled her into the Fade prison. Lucanis paced in the pantry, Spite’s voice a grating sound in his mind. No matter how many times he told him that Rook was gone, it only seemed to anger the demon more.

          There was no method to calm Spite down when Lucanis couldn’t even calm himself. He was just as devasted that Rook was gone. Emmrich had been working tirelessly to find her, but could he? From his limited understanding, the Fade was huge and seemed endless. How could Emmrich find her?

 Lucanis was getting restless. It had been two weeks since she had disappeared and the last words she had said to him plagued his mind. He tried asking Spite if he understood, but the demon did not. Rook had told him that it meant good luck, but Lucanis had a feeling that she had lied. But why? He growled, frustrated. He had to know the truth. So, Lucanis left the pantry to find Bellara. She was in Neve’s room, blankly watching the wisps fly.

          “Bellara?”

          She blinked and slowly smiled as he approached. “Oh, hey Lucanis. Don’t mind me. Just…” She trailed off, her eyes shining with tears.

          “I am sorry,” Lucanis said, “this is a bad time. I’ll go.”

          “No! It’s okay!” Bellara quickly wiped the tears from her eyes. “Was there something you needed?”

          Lucanis wasn’t sure if it was alright to even ask Bellara for anything, considering her state of mind. But, then again, after the damn island, everyone’s mood was low.

          Even his.

          “Rook said something to me before we left for the island. It was in Elvish,” Lucanis explained.

          Bellara cocked her head. “What did she say?”

          “Ar lath ma, vhenan,” Lucanis said, his accent stumbling over the words. “Rook said it meant good luck, but I have a feeling that it is not true.”

          Bellara had gone still, eyes wide and shining with tears. “It doesn’t mean good luck.”

          Lucanis frowned, noticing her body language. “What does it mean, then?”

          A tear escaped. “It means…I-I love you, my heart.” Her voice cracked at the last word.

After Rook had separated the dagger from Ghilan’nain’s body, she had disappeared. Lucanis called out her name over and over again, searching for her in the ruins. But he couldn’t find her. And neither could anyone else. Instead, they found Solas, freed from the Fade prison. Lucanis’ world had collapsed underneath his feet when the Elvin god told them that Rook was never to return. Instead, she was trapped in the Fade prison.

Now, it felt like Lucanis was falling deeper and deeper into a dark hole that he wasn’t sure he could escape. He stumbled a bit and had to grab the edge of Neve’s desk tightly, trying to use it as a way to center himself as Rook’s words once again echoed inside his mind.

Ar lath ma, vhenan.

          I love you, my heart.

          Rook had told him that she had loved him before heading to the island. Why? Why didn’t she say it to him in the language they both understood?

           Her scent. Changed. Smelled like. Roses. And hesitation.

           Is that why she had that strange look in her violet eyes?

          “I-I do not understand,” Lucanis said, his chest constricting. “Why did she say it in Elvish?”

          Bellara was fully crying, fat pools of tears dripping down to the floor. “I-I don’t know.” She sniffed and wiped away her tears. “But what I know is that Rook really did care for you, Lucanis. I-I think she truly meant what she said.”

          Bellara covered her mouth, eyes closed tight and shoulders shaking as she was wracked with more tears. In any other circumstance, Lucanis would not have hesitated to comfort her, but not this time. He could barely comfort himself. He wished he could have cried and screamed and raged or felt something other than the hollow feeling inside of his chest.

          How much more heartache could he take before he was finally broken? He spent a year tortured and imprisoned, but he, somehow, was able to keep himself sane. He was determined to set himself free and kill those responsible for his imprisonment. But this? This was not something he could solve with a knife.

          You. Should have. Told her too.

          Lucanis could never hide what he was truly feeling from Spite.  How could Lucanis hide away the feeling that he had been harboring for weeks? The feeling that he had been hesitant to say. He was an assassin. He should have known better. He was taught to never miss the moment to strike.

          But now it was too late to tell her.

          Too late to tell Rook that he loved her too.

[zuppizup]

The way dark magic can use parts of a sapient being without their knowledge or consent. The way Claudia could track down Rayla with a piece of her hair and Rayla didn’t even realise that was what was happening, how she thought the lights were cute and tickled…

The way it reminds me of those “if you’ve nothing to hide, you’ve nothing to fear” type arguments when it comes to the surveillance state. How parts of you (your data, your DNA) can be stored away until it is useful to those who might want to control you.

All to say, I am having the most fun with my dark magic AU.

[noheteroexplanation]

Kind of wild to think about how House of the Dragon could have turned out so differently if the casting director had made different choices. Because from interviews with the cast, we know Olivia auditioned for the role of Rhaenyra, Sonoya auditioned for Alicent and Phia auditioned for young Rhaenyra. Just interesting to think about really <3

[little-mimikyuwu]

sometimes I wanna download tiktok so I feel less weird when it 2 being pretty normal

[nostalgia-tblr]

oh yeah when the fuck did alicent have an extra son? how many kids are there??

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

This week on "CJ needs to gush about DAO": Morrigan's dark ritual.

I adore Origins because depending on how serious you take roleplay, every decision you make is a thread that leads back to your origin, and in this case of the ritual, who you choose to romance can have a major impact on how you handle this choice.

For context, my canon run is with a female Tabris who romances Alistair and keeps him as a Grey Warden, and is close friends with Morrigan. It's more in character for my Tabris to reject Morrigan's ritual and not even bring it up to Alistair, which would result in her leaving him behind while she makes the ultimate sacrifice in killing the archdemon... however, agreeing to convince Alistair to do the ritual with Morrigan is the only choice in the entire game where I break roleplay because I'm selfish and weak and I want Tabris to live.

I have a lot of strong feelings about the ritual, like it hurts me. It makes me want to chew on furniture. I can talk about it until I can talk no more. I so badly want to be strong enough to remain in character and reject the ritual.

Let me explain: Tabris survives an origin that deals with sexual assault. She gets kidnapped on her wedding day, she watches the other kidnapped women and her husband get murdered, and then is too late to save Shianni from being assaulted... and Tabris carries that trauma with her throughout the entire game.

If the way to save her life is to ask the two most important people she cares about; one being her lover and the other being her best friend; who she knows hate each other, to have dubiously consensual sex in order to make a baby to absorb the old god soul... she's saying no. The last thing Tabris would ever do is put someone into a sexual situation where consent is at all dubious after what she saw happen to Shianni and nearly happened to herself. She'd rather die than force that upon Alistair and Morrigan.

That's what I mean when I say origin affects everything; I know some will side eye that with "Really? Your warden would rather die than let Alistair sleep with another woman? It's one time, and Alistair agrees to it, so no one needs to die?"

Let me be clear in saying this isn't a "Morrigan slept with my man" issue. Sure, that part's awkward and it sucks, but that's not even breaking water tension, let alone diving into the deep waters to the core of the issue.

For my Tabris, this is about betrayal, consent, and accepting fate.

The person offering Tabris this deal is someone she thought of as a trusted friend who has actually been lying to her the entire time. It doesn't matter what Morrigan's intentions are now or if she genuinely wants to save the wardens. She knew from the beginning why Flemeth sent her with them, she admits as much. She knew a warden would need to make the ultimate sacrifice and then leveraged that to get what she wants. Morrigan waited until the night before, when Alistair and the warden learn one of them has to die to defeat the archdemon, and took advantage of the high running emotions and possibly the fear of dying to make the warden agree to her ritual.

At least, that's how my Tabris interprets this confrontation. She feels betrayed by someone she came to love like a sister and went out of her way to help Morrigan with her mother upon learning what's in Flemeth's grimoire. And then that someone tells her no one needs to die, she just needs to convince Alistair to sleep with her... which is a huge fucking problem.

The Alistair and Tabris romance is slow; it took a long time for either of them to be comfortable with being emotionally vulnerable and trusting each other with basic intimacy, let alone sex. Tabris is mortified at the idea of putting Alistair in this situation. Not only would it feel like a betrayal on her part to ask that of him, but she knows the last thing Alistair ever wants to do is father a bastard who then goes on to grow up without him. How could she possibly ask him to do that?

Then you consider that ritual or no, there isn't a guarantee that they'll survive anyway. Say they do the ritual and Tabris dies anyway; she made Alistair sleep with Morrigan in order to save her and then she died anyway. Or if Alistair dies then Tabris gets to live with the fact that the last person Alistair was with was a woman he hates because she asked that of him… and either way, Morrigan gets to walk away with what she wanted.

Tabris led the group, and she's accepted that if Riordan dies [which he does] then she'll be the one to make the sacrifice, even if it means breaking both hers and Alistair's heart.... except she doesn't because I'm a coward who doesn't want to lose her because my worldstate isn't good without her in it but I also refuse to lose Alistair so I just pretend it plays out differently in my head it's fine-

But... that's how I play Tabris and view the situation. My friend @pi-creates and I have discussed the dark ritual at length. While I play a Tabris who romances Alistair, Pi plays a Mahariel who romances Morrigan, so we have vastly different interpretations of the ritual itself and Morrigan's intentions.

Which yeah, it makes total sense that someone who romanced Morrigan with a different origin, and has the option to do the ritual with her rather than asking someone else to do it, wouldn't see this the way I do.

To quote Pi: "Playing as a male warden in the Morrigan romance makes the whole situation feel different, and maybe it’s because she’s presenting it differently due to the emotional connection, but it feels more like she’s opening up about her initial instructions (that she had been given by Flemeth) and offering a solution to avoid the possibility of death. And for my Mahariel, the constant threat of sudden death has haunted him from the start – he caught the blight and was ripped away from his clan (something he did not want to do in the slightest), got forced into a Grey Warden ritual that could kill him, was forced into a battle that could kill him, going on this whole quest that he never wanted but has now become responsible for regardless of his thoughts on the matter… the dark ritual may be one of the few moments where he is presented with an option to decide if he wants to walk into certain death, or take actions of his own volition to stop it.

"The idea of the ritual still feels like a dodgy thing to do since the ultimate outcome is unknown at that point, he’s taking Morrigan at her word that it will save the warden and that this child would be unharmed, just with an old god soul that she isn’t exactly clear on why she wants that and is determined to runaway immediately after the battle to secure it properly. It could be interpreted that it’s purely a preservation thing, but I’m biased to wanting Morrigan's intentions to not be power based.

"But also, taking part in the ritual isn’t as outlandish for my warden since he and Morrigan have already been involved in an intimate relationship. It’s the future of the ritual that is scarier – the idea of this old-god baby, and the idea of Morrigan insisting that she’s leaving afterwards when Mahariel and her have a loving relationship. He’s hurting, but he doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want Alistair to die, he doesn’t want Morrigan to leave, he definitely doesn’t want pregnant Morrigan to leave on her own… it’s complicated, but for completely different reasons."

And I find that fascinating. I want to know how other players approach this part of DAO, what origins they play, and who they romanced. Seriously, this is an invitation to anyone reading to share their thoughts.

What about a warden who doesn't even have Alistair in their party because they made Loghain a warden? Is there anyone out there who has Loghain do the ritual with Morrigan and why? What about male wardens who don't romance her? Do you choose to do it with her anyway, or do you ask Alistair or Loghain to do it? Do you tell Morrigan to fuck off with the ritual? Why? Who makes the ultimate sacrifice in that case? And what about Morrigan herself? How do you interpret her intentions/motivations? I want to know.

I'm telling you, this is a discussion that gets me excited, as most discussions about DAO do.

[ofwolvesandshatteredshields]

me: let's see what the spell list looks like for this enemy my level 6 party might run into next meeting :)

spell list: Finger Of Death

me: (: let's make some adjustments

[mfdragon]

Does the "MF" in ur username mean Mother Fucking

Is ur name Mother Fucking Dragon?

Yes.

[gayturians]

i say this as a known solas hater and an avid varric enjoyer. if they had him walk up those steps to talk solas down and solas killed him right there on the spot and they showed us that in the gameplay reveal.... i would have deleted every da4 critical post on my blog and sent bioware $60 as a pre-pre-order

[wrathful-reptile]

i have hatched many an egg and many a double

but alas, nary a triple to grace my lair

[zuulbean]

hate being a dnd player what do you MEAN i just wrote and explained all the subtextual elements of an animatic i made for a character that I MADE that only exists to me and like 4 other people. what do you mean it’s like 500 words long.

[paratielisdum]

Hey hey hey! First post! Not sure what to say so I'll start out with some background/info/description of this wof x ac AU

(yes, it's a Wings Of Fire x Assassin's Creed AU!)

First of all, its origins lie in a roleplay server i used to be a part of. There i met Purpy and we both created this sort of AU, which took base elements from assassin's creed (such as the two factions, assassins and templars) and added them to the wings of fire world!

It has been a year since then, with a lot of development, ideas and headcanons shared between us.

This blog will cover MY side of this AU but will include some of Purpy's as well (she might have different headcanons on certain things than me though)

Main thing i will do is write about the main plot, aka the main rp storyline we did. Headcanons, character sheets, references and art might come later

I have not actually seen anybody mixing these two fandoms yet, if anyone knows of people who do this, send me their name or something haha (idk how to tumblr)

Asks about anything are welcome always! (But I'll try not to spoil a lot of the plot)

Lastly, thanks for taking the time to read this :)

[ranger-danger]

Dnd people who hate rangers are so funny. Oh you love bards, but think rangers are useless in combat? That’s rich. Next you’ll tell me you love monks, but think rangers are too weak. What do you love sorcerers and think rangers suck?