Chapter 9: Breaking Faith and Other Things (Part II)
Fandom: Dragon Age 2 / Dragon Age Inquisition
Current Pairings: Cullen Rutherford x OC. Background F!Hawke x Anders
Rating: M (Canon-typical violence & behavior, check tags)
AO3 Links: Whole Work | Chapter 9
In which Saoirse has her first dream, and Aveline is skeptical at best.
CW: Canon-level violence and language.
“So, you’re the Wildling,” the guard captain observed as she watched Varric fiddle with a mechanism until a twang of a popped spring uttered out and he breathed a sigh of relief. “I honestly thought Varric was having me on.”
“I’d never lie to you, Aveline,” Varric chuckled as he tucked his thieves kit back into his belt.
Aveline glared down at him. “You lied to me about what you had for breakfast this morning.”
This was technically posted last night but then I got eepy and went to bed instead of putting it up here. Happy Wednesday!
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hey did you know??? that if you stop stretching and maintaining mobility in your body then it goes away?? things get tight and you can't move the way that you used to??? and when you decide to try getting a stretch routine going that the first week fucking sucks because you keep going 'damn i used to be able to do this no problem' and then you have to switch gears and be kind to yourself and just focus on getting better from here instead of berating yourself for dropping the good habits in the first place??? and your body never stops aging so you gotta keep taking care of it and sometimes you gotta take care of it extra in certain areas because of things that happened when you were younger and it's boring and sometimes hurts but it's so necessary???
i am yelling this at myself right now i am going through An Experience (trying to get into a routine of body maintenance again for my physical and mental health)
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this is a poster i made for my call to action assignment in humanities! it's a bunch of basic and easy stretches for people who sit and work at a desk all day (me)
the idea is that you'd put the poster up above ur desk and do the stretches every 30 minutes or so,, the whole routine won't take more than about 6 minutes to complete and when done regularly it can prevent wrist, shoulder, neck and back pain! :)
all these stretches can be done while sitting (although i HIGHLY recommend you stand up and move around while taking a break from working)
you can get a free digital copy of this poster here on my gumroad!
and you can order a print/poster here from my inprnt!
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I don't know how strictly accurate this is, but one of the things I find shocking about watching historical dramas is how many people there are around all the time---according to Madame de... (1953) a well-off French household in the Belle Epoque maintains a workforce of at least 3, and the glittering opera has staff just to open doors. According to Shogun (2024) you can expect a deep bench just to mind your household, and again, people who exist to open doors.
Could people....not open doors in the past? Were doors tricky, before the standardization of hinges? Because otherwise, the wealthy used to pay a whole bunch of people to do it for them in multiple contexts, and I find myself baffled.
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Hey... so there now appear to be AI-generated science articles on .org websites that are giving biologically incorrect "facts" on basic, for-children topics
The title is "Are There Freshwater Octopus Species?" which should be an incredibly straightforward thing to answer: No.
The article starts out decent:
"Despite their many fascinating features, there is no evidence to suggest that octopuses can survive in freshwater environments."
Cool. Okay. Next section.
"While most people associate octopuses with the ocean, there are some species that can survive in freshwater environments."
Wait. What?
"Freshwater octopuses belong to the genus Amphioctopus, which includes several species that are found in brackish water and estuaries. These cephalopods have adapted to life in freshwater environments and have been observed in rivers, streams, and even hydrothermal vents."
NO NO NO.
One species of freshwater octopus is Amphioctopus aegina...Another species, Amphioctopus marginatus...
THESE GUYS LIVE IN THE OCEAN.
[Scrolls 2 more sections]
Freshwater octopuses are still a topic of debate among scientists. While some researchers claim that they do exist, others argue that there is not enough literature to support their existence.
asd;lkfjasdlf;kjasd;flksjdfa
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hm ok so interestingly, bdubs’s courthouse is built on an odd number of blocks. note the roof of the facade coming to a point, but more importantly, the nine pillars….
you don’t use an odd number of pillars. like ever.
let me get this out of the way first: i get why you’d build with odd numbers in minecraft. i usually do it myself, to not run into problems like double doors or two-wide pointed roofs or frustrating spacing/symmetry between decorative elements. however. to not even out the design of something so unequivocally done in every other example of columns and pillars…. fascinating implications…
every other example guys. every other building with columns like this has an even number of them.
doing so sets the line of symmetry at an invisible point between two pillars, an even number on each side. but an odd total number of pillars makes the central pillar itself the line of symmetry. this does a couple things.
one, it upends the sense of community and equality. which i know sounds crazy, but really, a group of columns are all put there to hold up a structure. there’s no focus on one because they are all are working as supports.
symbolically, at least when first used in ancient greece, pillars represented people. and it makes sense for courthouses, especially, to want to show an even, fair, equal number of people on each side. no focus on any one, no inherent bias right off the bat just looking at it.
with an odd number of pillars, though, one will always be placed front and center.
and THEN. and then you walk in the courtroom itself (also odd-numbered blocks) and you are immediately opposite the judge, bdubs, located exactly centrally. and true, courtrooms are often set up like this anyway. but bdubs ups the ante and reaffirms that no, focus is on him by staging it all as a daytime court show, boom mic just over his head, cameras pointed in, spotlights on him.
literally by design, it was not built for justice. it’s built for show, for entertainment. and just look at the credits to know exactly what sort of message you’re supposed to be getting from this show.
the biblical story he used, with king solomon. it’s about king solomon. isn’t really about the trial itself, or the babies, or the women. it’s about showing (off) how wise and just he is. that’s the point. hm. interesting.
now, getting to the second point that etho also picked up on: it feels like a prison.
it’s not just the color palette. when your eyes naturally draw to the center point, you aren’t seeing an open space. instead of feeling like an arch or gateway or otherwise some kind of opening, the pillar there makes it feel closed off. the overall effect is that of prison bars. not pillars lining the entrance to a place of order or a temple. bars of a cage, a cell.
imagine the lincoln memorial were set up with 11 or 13 pillars. he’d look so much more trapped in there.
having a central pillar blocks the entrance. it’s not welcoming. you have to go around it; it’s immediately inconveniencing you. and when you go to leave, it’s there blocking you again.
this courthouse was not designed and built to be fair, nor accomodating, nor equitable, on any terms. even if unintentional, i wouldn’t call it so much coincidental as i would… subconscious.
after all, y’know. form follows function.
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