#and slightly feverish

[l3ominor]

.

[vaguely-concerned]

severing the connection of the titans to themselves, each other and their children, to the world, and with it severing the connection of the dwarves to their true nature, the basic state of love and belonging that should be their birthright. ("our children, orphaned".) severing the connection between rook and the reality and true memory of varric, and thus from themselves and their own healing grief AND love. (do we spot the echo, perhaps?) severing (mostly accidentally this time, I'll give him that) the connection between the fade and the real world, dream and reality.

the scale we're operating on varies from the mythic, the cosmic and existential, to the individual and deeply, nauseatingly intimately personal, but it's the same pattern every time. solas keeps committing the same act of enforced dissociation, of creating orphaned pain that cannot even know itself, estranged from its own history, origins and coherence, unhealable in being impossible to recognize for what it is and thus unreachable. (hello lucanis in the minrathous saved route btw. this theme echoes everywhere when you look for it. I do love this game.) making others strangers to themselves for his own purposes and being surprised when it blows up in his face horrifically once more even when it's his same indelible original sin repeated, again and again and again. dissociation is a natural process the mind uses to protect itself from unbearable pain, but to knowingly cause that in someone, to play around with their connection to themselves and reality so fundamentally, to further your own cause... yeah, I'm not surprised the fabric of the world keeps tearing apart in protest in response to that, there's something so unspeakably insidiously wrong about it. forget snacking down on apples and knowing yourself to be naked or whatever, that sounds like a perfectly blameless if presumably slightly chilly afternoon to me -- force-feeding someone else their own fragmentation for your own gain, however ostensibly worthy your final goal, feels much closer to what real sin would be to me. and even worse because *buries face in hands* he just keeps doing it!!! he should know better, but he keeps doing it!!!!!!

I know I keep joking that solas only has the like three basic moves he keeps rearranging to invent new and spectacular ways of doubling down on making the same mistake yet again, but looking at it like this it's almost not even funny anymore haha. (almost. there is a hysterical amusement and affection that rises within me every time I see his smug little face, we cannot choose who we love only what we do about it.) and the worst thing is that I think he could learn! I do believe he has the capacity, the depth of empathy and soul and intellect, to learn from this, had he chosen to do so, had he let himself pause and truly listen at any point. but at the end of the day, even all these thousands of years later and with the mountains of guilt he lugs around, he chooses not to. and I suspect it's because he fundamentally does not actually understand what he did wrong. on his way to, ostensibly, fix one of these splits he caused, that of the veil, he basically goes and does to rook's mind what he did to the titans, and without the hand of mythal guiding it or anyone else culpable in it with him this time, as if to underline twice that in all these thousands of years he has learned absolutely nothing! almost to an impressive degree! does he even recognize that it's the same thing he's doing? does he even actually afford rook and their internal world that much thought to begin with, aside from what purpose they can serve for him? I'm not so sure. and to do it all with varric's face, with the person he took from them, making them feel complicit in it when they find out, the same way the dwarves will have to grapple with the fact that their whole economy is based in unwittingly selling the blood of like. god. their parents. themselves. solas. babe. what the fUCK. what the fuck. what the fuck.

perhaps part of the blind spot comes down to the way it's the inverse of his own trauma. solas knows exactly what happened to him because it's the endless ache at the center of his existence, the thing -- the first mistake -- he can't escape or undo or forget, nor bring himself to accept: he became real, one coherent set self, with no way back to what and who he was. and what he does with that pain, his one move, is to make others not-real. to himself, and more alarming still to themselves. he makes them forget, as he cannot forget. does he think it's mercy, in some way? does he realize how and why that makes it all so much worse??? and... not quite the same thing, but when mythal dies the structure of his own inner world falls apart catastrophically, and in his vengeance for that, even unintentionally, he imposes that same unravelling on the world. we've all heard the lines about spirits mirroring the real world and what you bring into your relationship with them being what you get in return, but how about the tragedy of the inverse -- the world being brought to mirror you, despite what your intentions might have been going in. no one should have that power, but you claimed that power yourself to do something else and now you have to look into that mirror forever. no such mercy as forgetting yourself for you. you are everywhere now, this broken mirror of a world will reflect yourself back to you no matter where you look. perhaps it would feel easier to simply close your eyes and walk on willfully blindly. AGH it's all so delicious and fucked up and makes me feel absolutely nuts

dissociation is something that's also central in iron bull's character and internal conflict, so presumably this is simply a deep theme trick weekes keeps returning to/is interested in exploring in their writing! and the elegance with which it's done and how inextricably yet subtly embedded in the narrative it is both with bull and overall in veilguard means it's not always engaged with or recognized as I feel it deserves, but to me personally it is Everything and gets at it in ways that feel weirdly real and authentic.

[sauceproxy]

fuck it. frank abigail fancam (spoilers!)

[pixelatedraindrops]

A silly little idea I came up with (or actually I’ve had it for a while) when I was talking to Kazin, and as always, she drew it out for me… xD

The idea is that if Yuma goes into (or is forced) into a Mystery Labyrinth while he’s sick; in the Labyrinth, the illness temporarily disappears since they are in an alternative dimension. So while healthy, he can solve the mystery with no obstacles.

However…when he leaves the Mystery Labyrinth? His condition worsens. Depending on how long he was in there, or how much energy he used, it’s all transferred to his body outside, and…yeah he practically collapses.

LATER…

Shinigami knows exactly what she did.

What a little jerk x’D

[ender-of-the-sender]

When people use she/her on me it feels very similar to when people call Bildad her

Like i see where you're coming from but like hmmmmm

[shymebox]

Here in parkour civilization, NO ONE chooses to jump for their crew

[wanderingchocolateeclair]

:)

Listen, if hori doesn’t put them in the final battle, I bloody well will lmao /lh

I have doodles to do, things to catch up on and asks to get to but my body decided to make me very suddenly ill (>:[) in the midst of some serious college stuff, so just have this for now <3

I want to see all of them feral, dishevelled and fighting, so I am playing with the blorbos like toy dolls :)

[bewaretheidesofmarchyall]

Bolas vs. Soulfire = band kids vs. choir kids

[arthurs-vaccine]

Do I make sure Arthur wears his big blue coat at all times after his tb diagnosis because Arthur is permanently underweight after it and tb makes you really feverish? Yes

[jacky-rubou]

ugh... sickness is kicking my ass right now 😖

[sporkandpringles]

Continued here because I don’t want to clog up someone else’s post too much, but basically, what I was trying to say in my reply to this post is that I think we have this mistaken idea that “good stories” are something that exist in a vacuum and can be divorced from character and setting while still keeping the good parts. As if the “perfect plot” is something that exists completely devoid of context. But I just don’t think that’s true.

Truly great stories, fanfic or not, aren’t cut-and-paste. They wouldn’t work with any other characters or any other setting. The characters and setting are integral parts of what make the story good.

And authors, yes even fanfic authors, who are good at their craft know this. So only the mediocre ones go that route. The greats wouldn’t dream of trying to take their fanfic masterpieces and cut a bunch of holes in them and try to repackage them as marketable because that would destroy them.

So the shittiness of fanfics made into books is not because only fans of pairings you don’t like choose the fanfic->book pipeline, or because only het romance with tropes you happen to not like get adapted. As I mentioned in the reply, there are slash authors who write different tropes who have gone this route, too. It’s because re-writing a book without its characters and setting (if they were even there to begin with) creates a shitty product.

So, if you’re hoping your favorite slash author will take time away from their demanding job to turn their lovingly crafted hobby magnum opus into a generic mass market paperback, it isn’t going to happen. Not because the good fanfic authors are “too normal” to think about publishing their works, (not a fan of the implications of that statement, in this house we love and support freaks). But because the paltry amount of money they might (most fanfic adaptations are not wildly successful) make from bastardizing their baby is not even remotely worth it.

They would rather stay true to their original vision, even if it makes them $0. And I think we ought to have more respect for that.

[gxlden-angels]

I don't know entirely how to explain this, but I think an important part of healing from religious trauma is learning about substance use disorders and shifting your views on drugs to neutral

[lesbianphan]

time to buckle up and finish the Fics I owe people (i'm so sorry I know I'm bad)

[gothyanki]

Tested for COVID last night and got the boldest, most confident positive you could imagine within about five seconds. So there’s that!

[mrvelocipede]

Well, fuck. We've managed to go nearly four years without getting Covid. We've gotten our vaccines, worn our masks, limited our trips out into the world, taken somewhat more care and trouble than we might have done. Mostly it was because it seemed like the smartest thing to do. Partly, though, it was to try and protect my mom, who is the oldest and most at-risk of all the people in my own immediate circle.

So it's fairly ironic, I suppose, that when we finally did get Covid, it was from her. Because she's been going out and doing all sorts of things without bothering with even a mask. "You did at least get your booster in the fall, right?"

"Oh, I never got around to it. I'm so bad at keeping track of those kinds of things."

[synnthamonsugar]

You DID NOT see me suggest that Toland is a lore only character