#i was 16 and i'd just started college and just cut my mother off and just lost a family member

[thornheartless]

Oh, okay. Realised that I can barely remember how my cat's meowing sounded. That hurts. I know that it was high pitched but not always squeaky, but sometimes squeaky. Picturing it in my mind isn't so easy anymore though.

[am-i-the-asshole-official]

I grew up in the Mormon church, in a very conservative and religious home, in a neighborhood and city that were both ~99% Mormon. At 16, I stopped believing, and I told my mother. She refused to let me stop going to church, and insisted that I try believing it again. So I stopped talking about it and went back to pretending to believe. Pretty much everyone I'd ever met was Mormon, and I was afraid that if any of them found out I was an atheist, they'd rat me out to the church leadership, and word would get back to my parents. I never tried to talk to my family (or any other Mormon) about it again while I was living at home. I was scared, but I don't know what I was scared of.

Two years later, I left home for college. (I made up a lie about a non-deferable scholarship to explain why I was going to college before a Mormon mission.) Once I was out of the house, I told my parents again that I didn't believe. They didn't argue. I even moved back in with them for the summer of my freshman year. We had a few arguments about politics before we all learned to avoid those topics, but religion never came up.

A couple years after that, I started having occasional nightmares and flashbacks involving the first time I told my mother I wanted to leave the church. (I still have those.) I'd always been bad at writing to family, and this just made it harder. I wrote home less often and took longer to answer messages.

It's been eight years since I left home. I've moved to a different continent, and I haven't spoken to any of my relatives in over a year. I never talked to any of them about why. I never told them that I'm bisexual, that I'm trans, or that I've changed my name and gone on HRT. I feel like nothing I have to say about any of that would mean anything to them (except that I'm being led astray by Satan, which they already believe), so it isn't worth the effort. Especially since I don't really care about any of them that much.

I've gotten a couple of messages from relatives since I stopped answering. (None from my parents.) For the most part they seem to be following my cue.

I'm never sure if going no contact like this was unreasonable. Should I have explained what was going on? Sometimes I wonder if the fact that I've been happier since cutting them off is enough justification, or if it just makes me a bad person. Did I just make everything harder than it needed to be by keeping it all a secret for two years, then blame my parents for it when I moved out?

Am I the asshole?

What are these acronyms?

[queerpossumtrenchcoat]

Let's talk gender expression, awful haircuts and realisation of who I am! I came out as gender fluid approximately around the age of the third picture above- and I got an awful haircut to match it, but at the time I felt like THE gender vibe; I was 13, or so, and didn't realise I looked like I'd had a fistfight with a weed whacker. It was a stepping stone however, for me to discover who I was; after this time I started to experiment with my look, name and pronouns, leaning more towards he/they and slowly changing my name from Jaimee to Jai and or James- small steps, I know, but crucial ones in me realising my dead name no longer really fit me as a person. James was a family name after all. Finding myself wasn't always glamorous, the look wasn't always particularly handsome or pretty, it was colour the tips of my hair with sharpie markers and conditioner until my hair had a distinctly petrol-and-macadamia type stench or cutting it with a cheap, disposable razor which ended up giving me hair reminiscent of the early 2000s emo scene (which I totally was, even if I only saw 6 years of the 'early 2000s!'). I would hack off chunks, flatten my chest with cheap Duct Tape and wear boxers I stole from my dad in order to feel some semblance of who I was, using makeup to poorly build cheek bones and eyebrows so I could look like my hero at the time, Brendon Urie (God, that aged poorly..) In time I got creative, I learned that my parents wouldn't let me get a 'real boy's haircut' so I'd have to improvise; here came the next 6 months of beanie hats and ponytails pulled over to create a 'boy fringe' which, in retrospect, was giving more Justin Beiber than Emo Quartet, but that all chained when I turned 16 and... Got to dye my hair for the first time!! It was the greatest experience for my gender to date!! My mother bought me midnight blue hairdye for my 16th birthday and helped me dye it; I looked in the mirror at my fairly short ish, dark blue hair and I saw it. I saw him, stood staring back at me with tears in his eyes. I saw ME. I told my girlfriend, at the time anyway, straight away and she accepted me with open arms- I think she was expecting the genderfluid-to-trans masc timeline, which funnily enough he followed in 2022 during lockdown. Lockdown dug its claws into my gender and expression quite deeply; while at home with my mother, father and two very young siblings I came to experiment with my gender a lot more, dressing in more masculine clothes and cutting my hair off for 'sake of ease', or that's what I told my parents anyway- they believed it too, surprisingly. I went through college having to somewhat pretend I was just a feminine man, I was exhausted and on the brink of suicide, as most people my age at the time were, and went by Eden because it seemed more palatable to the others around me- didnt stop me being picked on, but it wasn't by students... It was my own teacher! Shout out to Miss Dunsby! Then I dropped out of college. I picked up a shitty little cafe job as a barista and linecook, cooking meals, making coffees, pretending I gave half a shit about a joke I'd heard over and over again; I dyed my hair neon green and used my pay checks to get it cut SHORT short for the first time- I looked hella fine, in my opinion, but I was also starting to realise something.. Maybe I had been right the first time, because I didn't feel like a man all the time. Back to the drawing board... One shaved head and a job at a gay bar later, I started using the art of drag, performing as a female persona, to realise that I was Masc-Agender, like a boyish presenting genderless person. Easy enough, I suppose. I started wearing makeup, being myself and wearing whatever I damn pleased, uncaring of social cues and rules, I was me. I was happy. I AM happy. If there is anything you can take away from this, once you find the part of yourself you can express your feelings, thoughts and emotions with, go wild!! I did and it made realising my truth so much easier!

[lemonhoney777]

New Beginnings - March 2nd 2024

I am positioned for potential. I have moved into a new apartment all by myself, no roommates, conveniently located in the center of the city. My own art adorns the walls. My stuff is sprawled to my liking.

For the first time, I feel limitless. Like I can control my surroundings - my endeavors - like I can wash clothes whenever I'd like, or stay up late, or lay on the couch.

Today is Saturday. For context, this week I had a cold, so imagine my nose chapped from tissues and snot. I still feel 15% of the symptoms, but today was my Saturday, so I was driven to make the most of it.

I slept in, woke up at 10am. I put on blue biker shorts and a baggy shirt with a frog on the back of it. I ran errands and then came home and cleaned my apartment. I made an egg sandwich. I drank a big cup of coffee.

Last week I hung a big piece of raw canvas on my wall. To describe the size of this canvas > The size of a dog bed for a golden retriever. Or, I could easily lay on this canvas in a fetal position. Today was the day I started to paint it.

First I started with big magenta swirly lines, and then filled in the lines with green, blue, and orange. I didn't like the blue, so I waited for it to dry and then painted over it with purple.

Then I started working on some smaller pieces. I also walked around my apartment and touched up the paintings I had hung on my walls. Sometimes when you hang a painting, you start to see all the defects, and you just want to touch it up.

Then I went to the thrift store in search of some magazines or books that I could cut up and collage. I found an assortment of National Geographic magazines. As I was shopping, I got a call at 4pm from my mom who said she was at my house... I was expecting her to come by at 6pm, so I rushed back home.

When I pulled into the parking lot, I saw my mom dressed up cute in a floral skirt and a tank top. She had just attended an Orchid event (Where vendors display various orchids for sale), and she complained that the prices were outrageous so she left early. She is an avid orchid collector. I unlock my door and welcome her inside.

She drops off bags of stuff (that I didn't ask for). We sit on the couch and chit chat. She tells me about my personality as I was growing up, and my core traits.

good traits: Chatty, inquisitive, empathetic, discerning of trust, intelligent

negative traits: over-emotional, high expectations of others

We discuss my development, which diverts into a discussion of my parent's divorce when I was 14-16. Now, almost a decade later, i'm asking my mom why the divorce happened.

I will spare you the details, the past is in the past. You can predict why they got divorced - they were unhappy together, and it was meant to happen in God's timeline. Both of my parents are in new happy relationships. My dad has had a girlfriend for 6 years, and my mom is remarried.

Internally, this conversation resurfaced feelings of being a wounded child. I have inherited equal personality traits from my mother and father. I have my fathers anger and my mothers anxiety. I become a different version of myself when I am in the presence of either parent. I become more tailored to their traits, more appeasing.

At my college graduation I couldn't focus on my academic achievements. Moreso, I was just in awe that my parents were in the same room together, happy and chatting and reminiscing on old friends they use to share. Sometimes I wonder, when will be the next time I get to see them in the same room? My wedding?

I miss my nuclear family. I know people are complicated, and we're all adults, I just miss being under the same room as my mom, dad, and brother. When you're a child, you don't realize that one day your family will scatter across a map, hundreds of miles away, only to be seen on PTO long weekends or your graduation.

But at least I can still call them and chat with them. And they're happily in new relationships. I would not have wanted them to be unhappy together. But I just wish we could get together once a year to get dinner and chat. Or at least, I wish they didn't trash-talk each other to me. I wish I could be my full self around both of my parents, instead of hiding parts of me that resemble the other parent.

Regardless. Later that night I opened Tumblr, hoping to create a daily blog, which I will use to document my life by practicing my writing. I accidentally logged into the tumblr blog I ran when I was 12 years old - 16 years old. I skimmed through my old blog, and found a long post about my struggles to understand the divorce my parents were actively going through, and the guilt I felt as I moved back and forth between each parent's house. I felt empathy for my young self, it felt like I was reading her diary. Reading this post after 10 years, it hit me in the gut. It felt like divine timing to read this post, on the heels of my discussion with my mother.

What did this mean? Why is God prompting me to contemplate the heartache from divorce I felt 10 years ago? Why am I still so hurt, even though I have healed and I am happy for their new relationships, and I know the split was for the best?

I don't have the answer. All I did was log out of my old tumblr account, and create a new tumblr blog, and wrote this long post for the void. I am my mother's daughter, and my father's daughter, resembling both of them at the same time.

Things I did well today- Thrifting, cleaning, art, seeing family, eating, sobriety,

Things I could do better- Rest, relax, go with the flow, laundry

Thanks for reading!

[ofstormsandfire]

Wh. What's the Incident.

Alright. Buckle the fuck up, my lasses and lads and nonbinary chads. Today we're hearing about:

THE INCIDENT

(or: how Hope's opinion on coffee went from "will drink in emergency" to "ABSOLUTELY THE FUCK NOT")

Picture a slightly babier Hope. Tiny and loud as hell, this little blonde bespectacled sophomore girl (for non-Americans, I was around 16) filled with the hubris that discovering high school theater had brought me and taking too many AP classes. That year, I took two, out of... thirteen total? (And I passed most of them, to the detriment of most of my mental health. Kids, don't take AP classes, or at least not the amount that I did.)

Obligatory fuck College Board, moving on.

That year, I had AP US History, and AP Music Theory, in that order. Both tests were on Fridays, the second a week after the first. This is important because the final review project the teacher for music theory was having us due was due a week before that exam.

This would have been a nonissue, except that this is me and I either get my work done weeks in advance or I'm procrastinating at the last minute. The smart thing to do would have been the former.

Obviously, because this is me we're talking about, I did the latter. If memory serves I'd finished the actual project with plenty of time to spare for a good night's sleep, but my mother's printer chose then to stop functioning halfway through printing it. (It was a themed study guide, I had a lot of fun making it and a lot less fun printing it.) I ended up staying up way later than usual, and by the time I finally cut my losses and went to bed...

...well. Getting up at ass o'clock the next morning, in order to drive nearly an hour to my high school for an AP exam starting at 8 AM... was suddenly looking even less appealing than usual.

It'll be fiiine, I thought, dragging myself out of bed like a zombie. I'll just chug some coffee. Tastes like shit but hey, Mom drinks it all the time and she only gets tired suddenly and coincidentally when I want to do something fun with her, so what could go wrong?

(A lot of things, as it turns out.)

(Also, babier me had yet to realize the depth of how fucked up the woman who birthed me was, and how much she'd fucked me up, but this ain't about her.)

So. Ate breakfast, yoinked a travel mug full of the coffee Mom drinks, and chugged it on my drive to school. That alone wasn't too bad, though I was getting a bit of a stomachache. I'd had worse, though. Besides, it was exam day and I didn't dress up as a lesbian cowboy with my then-crush for this class to not come out of it with the college credit I so rightly deserved.

Really, though, if a stomachache was the worst I got out of chugging a mug of crap-tasting coffee, I probably wouldn't have sworn it off for good. I would have relegated it back to the spot it had held up 'til then, which could be summed up as "drink in case of emergency."

I wasn't feeling too tired by the time I got to school. In fact, I was feeling like maybe I could actually do this. But I knew I'd crash eventually, and I did not want that to happen during the roughly four hours worth of exam ahead of me, and so I made a decision that would get me hubris-checked hard.

Y'see, some kind souls (mostly our teacher, who we'd all dubbed Mr. Bro because that's what his actual name shortened to and he was, in fact, quite chill for a history teacher at that school) had brought breakfast for our class. Which was good, because I hadn't eaten much at home, and was bad, because breakfast included some coffee from Starbucks. I didn't even know they sold it in containers you could fill smaller cups from. Apparently they did.

Within the... roughly half an hour, give or take a few, that I had before the exam started, I refilled my travel mug and drained it again twice. By then, well. I was feeling a little jittery, but I figured it would go away eventually. Jitters were good, right? Jitters meant that I'd be faster at taking the test.

The moment of truth, after a frantic thirty minutes spent desperately reviewing via Kahoot and chugging Starbucks coffee that tasted marginally less crappy than whatever my mom made, finally arrived. We all shuffled off to the gym. Made sure we had our number two pencils and water bottles and everything.

I walked into the gym...

...and then I woke up at home, in my bed, the next morning.

I did piece together what had happened later from context clues. According to my friends, I'd acted normal enough after the exam, if really, really, really jittery. And obviously I did okay enough in the exam, because I got a 4. (Scores go from 1-5, with anything above a 3 being a pass and usually only 4s or 5s being good enough for college credit.)

But, y'know. Funny thing, I don't like not remembering what I did! Even if it was probably a whole lot of mind-numbing boring shit that my brain probably did me a favor by forgetting. I'll probably be a blackout drinker, which I fully intend to test once I turn twenty-one in the safety of my own home with my dad, the Lord of the Rings trilogy of movies, and a TV Tropes drinking game I've had bookmarked in anticipation of that moment for as long as I can remember.

But, uh, yeah.

That's why I don't drink coffee anymore, ever.

Because I'm a blackout coffee drinker, and it seems incredibly ridiculous to type it out now, but. That sure was a thing that happened. In fairness, that probably also happened because I chugged so much in such a short period of time, but like... it doesn't even taste good? And it tends to make my stomach hurt.

It's probably the wildest story I've heard for someone not drinking coffee, but I'm sure someone else somewhere on the internet has a wilder one.

[skepticalarrie]

I want to share my Larry story!! Sorry, this got kinda long lol

So, I was introduced to both 1D and Larry during the same conversation ironically enough. I was at either a church or school event when I was about 16 years old and the group I was hanging out with started talking about this boyband called One Direction. One of the boys we were with was adamant, ADAMANT I tell you that two of them were romantically involved but one of the girls kept denying it vehemently. The funny thing was that neither of them was willing to back off from their stances. Naturally, when I went home later that day, I looked up One Direction and found it odd that, if there was a romance in the band, it wasn't bigger news.

Live While We're Young had just debuted either that day or the before so they were in full promo mode. Coincidentally, the first 1D interview I ever watched was the now infamous MuchMusic Larry denial interview. I was like "oh how lucky am I that I just happened to stumble on an explanation for this!" I didn't really give to shits about any of it and took everything they said at face value cause I didn't see any reason not to and just assumed that it was one of those instances in which fans thought Harry and Louis would look really cute together. I'd seen shipping before in fandom, so it wasn't anything new to me. From what I could tell at the time and for all I cared, they were just good friends and I left it at that.

I never fell into the 1D hype and it wasn't until OTRA (or around the time they announced the hiatus) that I became interested again. I was now in college and far more advanced when it came to online sleuthing and that was when I learned that some fans seemed to have this weird theory that Harry and Louis were communicating with them through rainbow teddy bears. My opinion of Larries immediately shifted from "aw it's just a cute ship" to "oh shit, these people are insane..." It didn't help that every Larry proof video I found was just what I saw as overanalyzed body language.

Cut to the hell that was 2020. Now, I'd always had th mindset that it wouldn't bother me at all if Larry did end up being real but I was pretty convinced that it wasn't. However, there was one thing that always bothered me: if I were to accept that theory that Harry and Louis found the Larry conspiracy theory so disturbing that it actively destroyed their friendship, why in the ever-loving fuck would they allow whichever crew member who was responsible for the bears to continue doing it? Espeically if they knew it was being connected to Larry because there was no way in hell they weren't aware of that. So, there was always this tiny piece of me over the years that kept thinking...there has to be something more, something I'm missing for people to have taken this so seriously for so long.

That's when I fell down the proverbial rabbit hole. It wasn't until I stumbled upon a fact that I had never heard before that I couldn't think of any reasonable explanation for that my mindset completely shifted. That fact was that apparently Louis's mother had deleted every single picture of Freddie off her social media right before she passed. I could not comprehend that and perhaps it's wrong of me to think too hard about a dying woman's decisions but I could not for the life of me understand why a woman or anyone for that matter would delete every single picture of her one and only newborn grandchild before passing. That was when my mindset shifted again from "oh shit, these people are insane..." to "well...stranger things have happened in that industry..." and all I could weirdly think about was the fact that Adam Driver and his wife kept her pregnancy and the birth of their child a secret from the press for 2-3 years, so it's completely possible to hide things if you want to and that's kind of where I've been sitting ever since

The hysterical thing is that I was fully expecting to kind of be proven wrong about Larry when it came to Louis's tour but to my complete and utter shock, Louis's tour convinced me far more than Harry's tours ever did and the home shit happening right now has sort of solidified it for me tbh

Anyway, that's my story lol

That's a great story! Thank you for sharing, anon. It's so impressive for me to think some people were in the fandom for ageees before becoming a larrie. Because that basically requires to throw out of the window everything you knew about them. It's a big shift and it kind of messes with your head a little bit, it's not easy. Good for you though <3

[pussyandpetrichor]

I wish I had admitted I was trans back when Pokemon Crystal came out. At that time I was openly calling myself a "tomboy but the other way around", talking about how girls are so much better than boys, even occasionally saying I wished I could be a girl, but I had seen too many episodes of Jerry Springer to think being "trans" (I didn't really have that word yet) would do anything but make people hate me.

Also, I knew I had a crush on a girl, so that way trans people had been explained by my aunt was that it was because a guy really liked other guys, so he pretended to be a girl to make them like him [sic], and that didn't fit me, so when my mother legitimately asked me straight to my face why I used to dress up in girls clothes at day-care and push my chest fat together to make it look like I had cleavage (specific examples) I panicked and told her it was all just a joke.

And that triggered shame, and coincided with when my dad left, so I definitely blamed myself. I blamed my dad leaving on my femininity, and even though, in retrospect, him leaving was a good thing, I retreated.

I suppressed femininity and convinced myself to behave more masculinely.

It didn't work, of course, so I was just kind of sad and fucked up for the rest of my childhood.

Eventually, my father came back, and completely stopped the things he used to do before he left, and life began returning to normal, except I was still repressing part of myself.

Thankfully, eventually, I found the cosplay community. It was run by a non-binary person, and full of trans people in general that I was free to be myself, even if being myself was explored in the context of fictional characters.

But, I could be anything: genderless alien who wears all black, a comic book heroine, a rodent of unusual size et al. And so, at 16, I began exploring gender and finding comfort in different gender expressions, building a wardrobe of things that made me feel like myself. And sure, most of these clothes were technically costume pieces, but why should that matter.

Meanwhile, I tried to broach the subject with family. And, unfortunately, I started with my aunt. I mentioned having transgender friends and their opinions on a particular piece of legislation happening at the moment, and she loomed over me and told me in a voice that registers in my memory as being incredibly menacing, "You had better not let *them* make you think *you're* trans." So, I resolved to wait until college to come out.

Or, perhaps I should say university, as I went to school in the UK, London specifically, and it was glorious. Nine months of total freedom. I was able to live as myself 24/7 without stopping to go back in the closet when I got home. I used my pronouns everywhere. I wore dresses whenever I felt like it. It was wonderful.

And I kept putting off coming out to my family. I put it off all the way until they were coming to visit me. My mom and two aunts were planning a trip, thankfully, neither were the one who had loomed over me, but I still fucked it up.

I panicked, again, and told my mom I didn't want her to come. Which wasn't exactly what I'd meant. I had meant that I didn't want any of them to come, but then I found out the aunts had bought their tickets and planned a day and I had to tell her. The fear of going back into the closet in my daily life outweighed my dear of that aunt finding out.

Besides, if things went poorly, there was still the opportunity to never leave London. But, that conversation went as well as could be expected. My mother was worried that she had done something to make her seem like she wouldn't be an ally, and it took me a few years to convince her that she hadn't been the problem.

But that meant that I now had two aunts and no mom for this trip, and so I asked her to pass on my coming out to them. The subsequent trip passed mostly uneventfully, thank goodness.

And then I moved to Italy for 2 months, and that was pretty terrible. I got lost my first day, someone cut open the pocket on one of my bags trying to steal stuff, and I began my time feeling like an idiot and a fool. But things didn't really get much better. The faculty and everything were great, the fellow students mostly fine, but the people of Florence were terrible to me. I got groped and assaulted, had rude things shouted at me, drew looks and glares everywhere I went. It was a particular brand of nightmare. And maybe it sort of threw me into the deep end and taught me how to survive transphobic/transmisogynist violence, but I did not appreciate it. I drank a lot while I was in Italy, and it was probably not healthy. But I did have some friends, one of whom I'm still friends with, and that made life considerably more bearable.

When I returned to the States for my second year of college, I attended Florida State University. And, for any prospective, trans, high school seniors looking, I do not recommend this school.

The progressive groups are full of so much internal animosity, and the culture outside of these microcosms is so vitriolic that it is truly a terrible place to live. And even worse, is the actual city of Tallahassee.

I'm not going into it, but I wouldn't stop to use the restroom in this city, nevermind voluntarily go there ever again.

But, I met my fiance there, and we live together now, in a different part of Florida. We have our own little life, cats, a lizard. It's been great.

[vvakarians]

I'd love to know 1-32 about Calliope! :>

OH BOY MY DUDE, prepare yourself for all the info under the cut

1. What is their favorite word?

Uh, dragon, of course, at least I’m inclined to say dragon. In elvhen her favorite word would probably be “Enasal” or “Enasalin” which could mean victory in the latter or as the wiki says “joy in triumph over loss” for enasal. Just because those words mean a lot for her. 

2. How do they sleep

I mean, not that great in one way this could go, but we’ll get into the how she sleeps first, physically at least. She’s always cold and leeches off everyones body heat so she always keeps a shit ton of blankets in her bed. Not only that but her bed is a four poster with the curtains hanging off of them to keep in the heat, you can imagine her favorite season is summer, also winter because everyone wants to be warm.

On the more emotional side of things, Callie doesn’t sleep very well at any point. As a child it was hard to sleep because of nightmares that her mother would be able to soothe, but her mother died when she was fairly young, after that nights are really the worst time. It only eases a little bit when she finally gets together with her partners, whether in canon with Solas, or with Halla in their au, or Isidoro in my combined canon au with Alexx. Especially after Here Lies the Abyss she can hardly sleep because of both the anchor and because of the dead that call to her at night. 

3. Favorite companion

She wouldn’t really be able to choose if directly asked, even those she may not agree with she still loves in her own way for them. Her best friends are Cole, Sera, Dorian, Bull, and Varric though, out of the main companions, as well as Solas, because she romances him. Calliope adores all the advisors, including my Warden-Commander Mahariel who joins with Ophelia (my hawke) after Here Lies the Abyss. 

4. What secrets do they keep, untold to anyone?

Calliope is pretty much an open book to anyone that is fairly close to her, but she has some secrets that aren’t widely known except to her twin brother and the Inner Circle. Shockingly the secret has nothing to do with being the reincarnation of Falon’Din, which was pretty hard to keep out of anyones way once the ball started rolling. No, it’s the fact that she has such a hard time feeling like she is needed for anything, that she feels much of what has happened in the world is her fault. She also mainly keeps her feelings about her gender to herself and only lets people know what pronouns they should use for her, and it’s pretty much not spoken about as to what her orientation is, but everyone knows she isn’t straight. 

5. How do they feel about magic

Magic and the Inquisitor have a complicated history honestly. Both herself and her brother came into magic at the same time, Elessar accidentally froze Keepers feet to the ground while Calliope set a halla’s ass on fire and almost caused a stampede. She was not raised as a mage because of the high volume in her clan and they did not wish to be called upon by the Chantry, so Elessar was the one trained as a mage instead. Calliope was trained to be a Master and a Hunter, which she excelled at rather well; she was awarded the position of Protector of her fathers aravel when he went on excursions for trade. 

During Inquisition she comes into her magic with mixed feelings, she really doesn’t pay too much attention for a while. The spells she knows are really only fire based and healing based, as well as being the most basic. She has no problem with magic really, as many of her friends and family are mages. There are a few times when Bull says shit about magic that she gets very defensive and upset, but aside from that there isn’t much until trespasser. Her thoughts on blood magic are even alright with it really, as long as it’s consensual to both parties if someone else is involved. 

6. How do they feel about killing

She feels that it is a necessary evil, nothing more nothing less. If someone deserves to be killed than they will be. Callie tries to spare the innocent as much as she can. After all she is Falon’Din, so her views on death aren’t an end, and even without being Falon’Din she sees death as something that isn’t an end even if she grieves pretty heavily when someone dies.

7. How do they feel at night, in silence, all alone?

Badly, it’s all negative feelings all at once. She tries to keep away from this situation as much as possible.

8. Tell me about them in a modern AU

I actually have two of these for Calliope! In DA:I in a present day setting she’s still Inquisitor, at least eventually, but she comes from a farm/general store owning family from an elven town in the Free Marches. She’s trying to go to school in the city when the Temple of Sacred Ashes (a political summit in this au) gets blown to pieces, she was there to observe as part of a class she’s in for college, along with several other members of that class. 

In a regular modern day au she’d still be a college student, probably going for a double major in Religion and History. Her twin brother is going to college for Forensic Sciences, and there’s a lot of coffee shop shit, and falling for a good looking Grad Student who works at the school library. 

9. What is their favorite meal

Dalish Forest Comfort with Hearth Cakes!! I own the Dragon Age cookbook and it’s real good. Callie would love her cultures food even if other people would consider it to be plain.

10. What guides them

Their compassion for all people of Thedas tbh. 

11. What hinders them

Feeling like she’s not good enough or that she will fail at every turn.

12. Do they have hidden talents

She can tie a knot in a cherry stem with her tongue, also she’s shockingly good with the stable creatures? And I say creatures because have you seen the Dracolisks?

13. How do they carry themselves

Calliope carries herself as a kind and easy going person, which gets some people thinking they can just walk all over her, where she quickly puts them back in their place. If they do it more than once she gets really angry, and no one wants to see the five foot tall reaver and reincarnation of falon’din angry.

14. What are their vices

Probably getting more angry than needed, and also she cries a lot but that’s not really immoral behavior?? She also won’t give mercy if she isn’t shown mercy. Calliope also hates no one except herself almost exclusively.

15. What was a turning point in their life

Honestly? The end of Trespasser. Calliope gets really hard for a while and bitter, thankfully raising Athim and focusing on helping people affected by Solas’ shit does give her back some softness that she lost. 

16. Do they ascribe to any religion

Nope, she doesn’t believe in Andraste, nor does she believe in the Creators.

17. How do they react to trauma

Depends on what kind it is, but usually she shuts down first, then gets angry, or really really weepy and sad. 

18. What is their relationship to their parents

Calliope adored both of her parents, her mom Imryll died when she was really  young but she paved the way for a lot of good things that Callie strives for nowadays. Her dad was the saving grace in a lot of situations so she loves him very much, she gets very depressed when he dies. Elgar’nan and Mythal are another thing altogether, she gets defensive about Mythal, and angry towards Flemeth for claiming to be her. Her “father”? Well she doesn’t talk about him a whole lot.

19. Do they have siblings

Yep! She has one! His name is Elessar and he is her fraternal twin. 

20. Tell me about their love interests

Well the egg is her love interest in canon, but in the Pure World State AU, @charlatanreyes ‘s Isidoro Rosetti is her husband, he’s an Antivan Enchanter who’s very good and lovely. The other is the kickass Halla Trevelyan from @lorspolairepeluche !!

21. What sexuality/gender suits them

Calliope is nonbinary and prefers they/them or she/her pronouns, her orientation is panromantic demisexual.

22. Tell me about their body, are they tall, or smol

Callie is very smol and stronk. Abs for days. She also has albinism.

23. What is their combat style and weapon of choice

SLASH AND HACK THEM, the bloodier the better, and her weapon is a Sulevin Blade with a master dragon slaying rune.

24. Do they have any fears/phobias

Calliope is afraid of uthenera/the long sleep, and failure.

25. Do they follow their instinct or hard facts

Instinct all the way, Calliope is very emotional and not a logical being at all.

26. How do they cope with sorrow

Not very well at all. Grief comes in large waves and she’s very empathetic unfortunately, even more than is healthy honestly. If it’s to a really severe level she’ll isolate herself for a long time because she doesn’t want to bother anyone at all with her feelings. If she’s pressed about it too she’ll flare up with anger, especially if she doesn’t know you very well.

27. What makes them burst out laughing

BAD JOKES. LIKE REALLY BAD JOKES. Also there was one time that Dorian showed up to a meeting with his mustache all fucked up and Calliope was very tired, she started going into a giggle fit that no one could cure. 

28. Tell me about their grooming routine

Well really all she does is bathe and wash her hair/skin, she doesn’t have much time for anything else. But sometimes she’ll have moments with Solas or her other LI’s and take long baths with nice smelling oils. 

29. What makes them blush

I MEAN, anything really, especially if her LI is teasing her. Honestly anything in front of other people will get her to blush really bad. Solas once kissed her full on in front of the group one morning in the Frostbacks, just a lazy kiss that he didn’t think much of and she was red for the full morning. 

30. What makes them cry

Injustice and death, which often go hand in hand. Sometimes she’ll wake up during nightmares crying, and certain memories will trigger crying fits if she’s not careful.

31. Tell me about their aesthetic

Blood, golden sharp teeth, green lightning, big ass swords, ravens, cryptic sayings, dragons, and sleep. Also bear hugs.

32. If they had a tumblr, what would they post

Probably lots of positive posts and social justice things, book quotes, flowers. Honestly anything on dragons too and lots of adorable animals, some shit on history and certain videogame stuff too.