#blacktabris

[gayrab]

Tagged by @t-aash 💜

Tagging @casijaz @blacktabris @nieloxychen @hrluver and anyone else who wants to play (especially moots)

Please tag me if you made one bc I'm nosy and I wanna see 🥺

[fetabathwater]

Omg is your dog part of the gang that killed Cruella's mom????? 😭 Queen, giving us all the entertainment we deserve!!!

this puppy kills !

[brialavellan]

@blacktabris replied to your post “Part of the reason why it’s good to have a lot of diversity is that if...”

I truly don't get how this is a difficult concept for writers to grasp. Even professionals with years and years of experience don't get it. Whiteness is a default which allows the privilege of individual responsibility. Meanwhile any one character of color becomes representative of their race/ethnicity and if your only Black character is a villain... Idk. Complexities of race aside it seems like common sense to me?? But then I, too, grew up at The Black Representative of Blackness for white classmates since I was often the only Black kid in there. And it's like. You can't do that lol. My parents are immigrants, no Black household is any one way, don't ask me about some things because I'm not intimately familiar with them. I'm just a person.

^^^^^^^^^^^ 

“I’m just a person” pretty much sums it up, yeah? 

(also you should do meta posts or talks or something bc you always sum up things so succinctly and nicely and just, you’re good at that - if you wanna put in that effort ofc b/c i totally get if you wouldn’t)

[dalishious]

@blacktabris replied to your post “Tbf to Varric, Dwarven culture views Varric as worthless due to him...”

�� it really could've been a nice dialogue on being first-gen and other similar things but bioware loves punching down too much. (That's to say that I can identify with some of this and get the mindset and can sympathize but where's the Growth™️ in the narrative?)

Right? It makes total sense for Varric to have a complicated relationship with Orzammar. He even talked about how he felt dismissal from Bartrand because he was born on the surface. But just like I feel Sera’s identity issues were not handled that well, I think Varric’s could have been better, too.

[casijaz]

🥳🥳🥳 yooo march is blessed, all my favorite peoples are having birthdays!! 😘✨🎉 Happy birthday!!!! I hope you can celebrate as much as the pandemic allows and that you can make plans to tear it up next year. 💕

💖😭 thank you!!!!!! I’m planning on partying via headset & discord lmao! I hope next year we can all have parties again without the fear of attributing to a pandemic! :D

[pestopascal]

It's touched me to see you so outspoken about everything and making sure resources for what's happening is included in fandom servers and not ignored. I've been up way too early watching footage of protests and am not starting off the day in a good way, but I saw you on my dash just wanted to say that. Thanks, friend.

venus 🥺 ilysm

[cheshirepirouette]

Ohh, thoughts of fabric arts!

Yessss okay okay okay. So!

I taught myself how to crochet and knit with both starting off Terribly, not even able to make a simple chain/row for a solid month in both methods. I’ll never understand how people can work with the tiniest yarn like with lace, but god do I want to add that to my skillset too.

Weaving is probably the form I most enjoy watching and I love the variety of techniques that vary from region to region. Even when it comes to knitting for example, how people hold tension in the yarn in Latin America may be completely different from North America. It’s so interesting!

[silverhammersims]

;___; your gifts are so great!! tysm

Yay I’m so glad you like them!

[gayrab]

@blacktabris replied to your post “Anyone else angry and incredibly disturbed by capitalism doing...”

it really scares me personally bc it was nearly overnight that every business was tossing out the manufactured statement and now blm is a trend and i just… i’m looking around like “wow, everyone is admitting they legit didn’t think of me as a person until it became profitable in some way” FEELS WEIRD, FEELS BAD, FEELS SCARY bc what happens when/if this ends plus everything you said, the businesses are *not* acknowledging how they contribute to and profit from systematic racism and the institutions built upon it. they just want to get the "woke" customers.

[bunabi]

@blacktabris replied to your post “was it confirmed all souls go to the Fade after death or did I imagine...”

It's not like people didn't not-die so... Reincarnation? Lol idk but now I'm having a crisis so ty

youre welcome :V

I’m stumped too like since the raising of the Veil coincided with elves losing their immortality I’m assuming it affected how the afterlife works. If the Fade was everywhere maybe souls just got recycled in a great loop of life and death and spirit incarnation and rebirth.

Maybe Solas created the Veil solely to interrupt this cycle?? To make sure that the evanuris died permanently. This might also explain why elves arent immortal anymore. If so: fuckin yikes!

[resolutioninclockwork]

“Please, come with me.”

Thank you for the prompt, @blacktabris​!

“Please, come with me.” He’d offered so politely the first time - showing her around the campsite, introducing her to the other wardens. 

“Please, come with me.” She’d asked him repeatedly, needing him by her side as they fought monsters and demons. 

“Please, come with me.” He’d pleaded with her to stay with him when he confronted Eamon, when they faced down the Landsmeet.

“Please, come with me.” She’d invited him to leave with her, rejecting his crown and accepting their life together.

“Please, come with me.” He whispered in her ear, limbs twined, bodies rocking together in the quiet of their first night alone as heroes. Voices muffled by the blankets, they renew their promises. 

“I will always come with you.”

[cherrymilkshake]

To Victory or Underground

Alistair/Warden Tabris | T | 815 words

For @blacktabris for @santa-age! Definitely the most challenging fill of the three swaps I joined this year. Feel free to DM me if you wanna see the three other unfinished WIPs I wrote you, haha

---

It's on to victory or underground Burn the fleet, we'll be heroes or ghosts But we won't be turned around   - Burn the Fleet by Thrice

Since becoming a Warden, and especially since the battle of Ostagar and Alistair's deference to her decisions, Dysina Tabris had felt the pressure of the status. The constant stress of travel and battles and politics—ugh, the damned politics. She hated those most of all. Her companions bickered endlessly, and pleasing one meant angering another, and they all had such baggage. (Not that she didn't have her own.)

But now they were headed back to Denerim, a city that she honestly hoped she'd never have to see again. She kept up appearances as best she could. No weakness could show through, she knew that.

And yet, Alistair, for all his naivete and childishness, noticed.

The night before they were set to arrive in Denerim, Sina was feeding her dog, as she always did. He barked happily as he snapped up the meat, rolling onto his back for Sina to rub his belly. She chuckled and obliged. "Oh Shianni would love you," she murmured, moving her hands up to rub his ears. But her hands stopped as she thought of home— No, what used to be home.

The weight of everything that had happened fell onto her shoulders.

She excused herself quickly, ducking into her tent before the panic could hit her in earnest.  

After a few minutes, Alistair slipped into her tent. "Sina, are you—" He gasped when she looked up at him with a face stained with tears.

"A-Alistair!" she breathed, reaching up to wipe at her eyes. "Maker's breath, didn't anyone ever teach you not to barge in on people? Were you raised in a barn?"

He tried to smile. "Well, not raised in one," he joked, sitting down beside her. "Hey, it's okay. It's okay, Sina." He tried to rub her back, but she shooed him off.

"You don't know that," she said, choking on the knot in her throat. "You can't know that." What if horrible things had been done to her family as retribution for her actions? Had the arl taken revenge on the entire alienage for the death of his son? She'd taken responsibility, but having been denied his execution, had the arl's wrath grown under the neglectful watch of Loghain?

Alistair's voice brought her out of the spiraling thoughts. "Sina," he said firmly, putting his hands on her shoulders. "Breathe."

She tried, dragging air into her chest, but it was caught and strangled in her throat, shuddering right back out. Tears leaked out of her eyes.

"Breathe," Alistair said again, this time pulling her into an embrace. Against her good ear, his heart—its beating low and steady in his broad chest—thrummed.

Slowly, she tried to match her breathing to his heartbeat, the stress and anxiety ebbing away.

"There you go," Alistair sighed, and his hand came to rest on her back, rubbing her shoulders. "It's okay."

"You can't know that," she said again, softly this time, more resigned than panicked now.

"Sure, I can't be certain, but I know one thing."

She raised her head, looking up at him. "Oh? And what's that?"

"I know that you are the strongest, most beautiful and fierce woman I have ever met. No matter what happens, you will come out on top." He pushed back her hair, damp with sweat and tears, freeing her face. "I know it will be okay because I have faith that you will make it okay."

"But what if I don't, Alistair? Don't you get it?"

"You will, because the others and I will be there to help you, every step of the way. Even Morrigan."

Sina sighed and tucked her head into the crook of his shoulder, breathing in the scent of sweat and metal that clung to them both no matter how often they scrubbed their skin. "What if it's too late for me to do anything, Alistair?" she asked softly.

"Then we'll be there to pick you up if you fall," he said firmly, wrapping his arms around her and pulling her into his lap. "You were there for me, even when we barely knew each other and my whining didn't deserve it. Let me support you too."

"You were in mourning," she protested. "It wasn't undeserved."

He chuckled and pinched her side. "You're doing it again! It's my turn, I told you!"

Finally, she laughed, the tears truly finished. "Alright, alright! Fine, you were a huge baby whiner who didn't deserve my sympathy."

"There we go!" He kissed her cheek. "And you are lovely and strong and will one day wrap all of Ferelden around your little finger, and the entire country will thank you for it."

Sina laughed at the ridiculous notion and embraced her lover, basking in his warmth—both the physical and personal. Alistair was like a personal sun, a source of light and life even in these darkest of times.

With that smile behind her, maybe everything would be okay.

[fetabathwater]

🎉 🥳🥳🥳 HAPPY BIRTHDAY

THANK YOU VENUSSSS 🥳🥳🥳🥳🥳

[brialavellan]

@blacktabris

replied to your post

“Bioware hasn’t made a good villain since Meredith”

Corypheus (sp?) was so disappointing, after the final battle I kept expecting some new Real enemy to come out and fight me like "psych" but no the game was p much finished

Same lmao turns out I romanced the real antagonist and hes not even a compelling villain he’s just some guy I’d rant about on r/iamverysmart like I’ve met tons of him where I live and went to school 

That one despair demon near that waterfall in the Hinterlands gave me more trouble than Corypheus. 

Even his plan sucked. Like “I’m gonna cause Orlais to fall by killing Celene” LMAO ok but I killed her (by inaction but still) and it worked out great so....don’t know what you thought you were accomplishing there, bud.

Bioware could make some real cool baddies back in the day, I don’t know what happened.

[dalishious]

@blacktabris replied to your post “This ambient line about the Rivaini ambassador...”

A narrative could be made about cultural migration and multiple ethnic groups living within the same area but like. That's too much effort for that white team and effort aside, they just lean heavily into established racist tropes instead of actually doing some research and making Rivain make sense as anything other than the bin for their dark skinned extras.

Yeah that’s the kind of thing exactly what I mean in saying I don’t have anything against pulling from different cultures to build a fantasy country, because heck, that mirrors real life history. But at least to date we don’t have any of that, just like you said, a “bin.”

[thedosianexplorer]

2, 14, 25, 38 ! for... everyone? anyone? you do you

2) How easy is it for your character to laugh?

Jhera: Pretty easy. She enjoys banter, and it’s not uncommon to hear her laughing once she’s comfortable. 

Evaine: Extremely easy, but it will out of nervousness at least 25% of the time

Ladwyn: Difficult. You get a wry grin most of the time, and when she does actually bust out laughing it causes alarm.

14) What animal do they fear most?

Jhera: Ravens. Their role as Falon’Din’s servants unsettles her now. 

Evaine: Darkspawn, and good luck telling her that they don’t count.

Ladwyn: Dragons are the only creature that has ever made Ladwyn feel like prey.

25) What are their thoughts on marriage?

Jhera: Never gave it much thought, and continued to not give it much thought until a few years after the Blight ended. 

Evaine: Pro-marriage, but didn’t see it as something “for her” for a long time. 

Ladwyn: Definitely planned her dream ceremony as a small child, and has always kept it in the back of her mind.

38) What memory do they revisit the most often?

Jhera: Finding a mountain lake on patrol with Tamlen, and then sneaking Merrill and a jug of cider there that night. 

Evaine: Her family’s first harvest festival in Lothering.

Ladwyn: Getting her daughter ready to join her new clan.