#i don't know anything about dao-style swords

[gravitywonagain]

I want to know about your WIP Bury The Sunlight

*cackles maniacally* okay. so. this au was built between me and a friend a while ago, and the gist of it is that lwj goes to protect wwx and wn at qiongqi dao, ends up too late to save jzxuan, but covers their escape and ends up getting his 33 lashes for that. but! rather than accept this and go into seclusion, he makes that insane trip to the burial mounds, only instead of finding a'yuan, he begs wwx for asylum. so he ends up healing from his whipping with wwx and the wens in the burial mounds -- aka probably the worst possible place to attempt to heal anything for anyone ever. the title (from "Failure" by Breaking Benjamin) alludes to the way resentment might affect healing -- especially from such massive damage -- for a sword path cultivator, and how the balance of energies might shift within their body. the fic would largely deal with wwx alternating between beating himself up for corrupting the pure and perfect hanguang-jun and only barely not destroying the cloud recesses for daring to hurt him like this. also i really want doctor!wq and patient!lwj interactions because i think they'd be hilarious.

snippet:

Wei Wuxian wakes with a start. A broken string twang reverberating up the nerves along his spine. A cultivator at the gate. He struggles to sit himself upright, muscles protesting the motion, head spinning with it. He feels raw, drained. Empty. Jin Zixuan. Shijie's husband. We Wuxian shuts his eyes as the dim light of the Demon Subduing Cave swims around him. Blood. Blood blooming along the gold-silk petals of the Sparks Amid Snow peony. Blood dripping from his lips, from Wen Ning's clenched fist, rivulets following the black corpse lines up his arm, upsidedown, inverted world. Twang. So, they've come. For blood. Wei Wuxian draws on the resentful energy that saturates the blood pool. Pulls it into himself. Gulping it down, overflowing himself with it. If the Jins have come, they will not have come alone, and Wei Wuxian will need all the power he can get. It is difficult to hold this kind of power, this much resentment. His control wavers, his mind frays. The toll it takes on his body-- Well. It's not like that'll matter for much longer anyway. He'll buy the Wens time. That's all he's ever been able to do, after all. Buy them time. He hopes they don't hate him for it. Wen Ning follows him to the edge of the wards. The gate, such as it is. The seal rattles in Wei Wuxian's sleeve, in Wei Wuxian's head. There are ghosts inside the seal. Ghosts with voices, with teeth, with claws. Until he sets them free, he is their only available target. They agitate his anger, bring it raging to the surface. It's good, the anger. He cannot be weak now. Not when he may need to take on an army.

(full disclosure: i do not remember which of us wrote this. i have no record of her writing it, but it's so much her style that i wouldn't be surprised. i know that i did write some of it. but idk how much...)

thank you for asking!!! <3

WIP Ask Game

[crossoverfamily]

I've been thinking for a while about how in DAI, the game makes you choose a class and then specialization, and your companions also are limited this way. And the same applies to DA2 and DAO (if I recall correctly), which means you can either see it as purely gameplay mechanics or actual "canon".

Of course, mages are a very specific category of people in DA franchise. They don't choose to be mages, whereas warriors and rogues, as far as I'm aware, don't have a similar reason to be a class and not another (aka they like chose what to do). However, all three classes have in common that there's next to no "mix of classes". You don't see characters who has varied gears, who can be a rogue or a warrior in battle depending what's needed. A rogue is always a rogue, a warrior is always a warrior, a mage is always a mage.

If it's just gameplay mechanic, then in fanwork, you can in fact headcanon that characters might have more gears, and/or have skills of multiple classes. But if it's "actual canon", or at least you want to consider this as more than gameplay mechanics, then it raises the question as to why. Obviously, it might simply be that it takes too much time to master skills of different classes, so most people focus on one class, and one specialization. People can still have a bit of basics on something else (ex: a mage/rogue might still know how to wield a sword, but much less than an actual warrior), but most only have one "path" they are "mastering".

However, I also considered the idea that each class actually affects the person's body, which means that, the more someone "master" a class, the more their body is suited for that class and not the others. Or at least, some skills and specializations have a certain influence. Think rogues who can become invisible, or warriors who have special cries. Those skills aren't considered magic, but they're still special.

And I figured: maybe I can personally hc that it's a little bit of everything I mentioned? Magic is limited to specific people, but skills can be learned by anyone although there's different degree of how much you can "mix skills", and of course anything that isn't a skill can be learned by anyone.

So for example, a rogue can learn to wield a sword, and be decent with it, however they happen to not be able to use any warrior skills because they learned rogue skills and their body just can't learn non-rogue skills. And another rogue doesn't know how to wield a sword because they focused on learning to master their skillset. Meanwhile, a rogue who specialize in creating traps, needed the time to learn to make these, yet it's not a skill the way "becoming invisible" is, so that trap specialist rogue can in fact learn some warrior skills. But because they're a rogue, they'll never be able to deepen anything warrior based, as their body is "tuned" into being a rogue.

I needed to figure out what my hcs were for this, because I had to wonder if Ireth would be affected by the whole fact he's thrown into another world with a different system, and if yes, what happens when he returns. I did always love the idea that Ireth learns a very different type of magic, which in turn means his actual "dragon age magic" is very basic. He does have an unorthodox style, but beyond that, it appears as if he's only had basic training.

So you can imagine the inner circle surprise the first time they see Ireth able to use his real, primary magic. Because he learned magic in BOTW/TOTK world, which in my head is very rich in natural magic, and where he would have people like Zelda and the Champions/Sages who can teach him a few things, and Wild himself with a special connection to Nature. That's without counting what he might be able to learn from the other worlds. Among my five protagonists, Ireth is THE mage of the group.

I think the only hint anyone who sees him fight, at first, is the ease he has with various "elements". However, it doesn't really surprise anyone, since it makes sense for him to learns various basic spells if his training was supposedly basic. Possibly, only actual mages might start to wonder, because they might "feel" things and/or notice magical equivalenet of "muscles reflexes", and other little details that only a mage can notice. They wouldn't actually know for certain, but might eventually suspect that Ireth is either holding back, or for some reason, he can't do more than basic level. Fun fact: it's a bit of both~!

And ooof the post is long already, but I just need to add: the whole point of discussing my hcs for how the classes work was to figure out what Ireth would need to hide and/or what he would be careful about. Because he might still be a mage first, but all four of my other boys are flexible in what they can do. Wild and Wuxian are both actual swordmaster and bowmaster. Peter and Allen are very good with hand to hand combat. All four are great with agility, and two of them at least can combine speed-agile with strength.

And all four just... want Ireth to be able to protect himself. When they meet, Ireth is the only one who has next to no training. So yeah, you can bet all four want to train Ireth in whatever he wants, without limiting him.

(Now, there are "parrallel verses" to consider, where for example it's much more "strict" and each class cannot learn from other classes, so Ireth has to hide completely he's not just a mage, or he's actually more of a sword&magic fighter than a mage who can do other things).

(To be fair, while it would totally be a parallel idea to have DA world be that strict in what someone can do, the idea of Ireth as sword&mage is just as fun as him being a powerful mage, so they're pretty equal rather than one being "main" and the other "parallel". So we'll see what I do about that!).