#it can be super hard but. fun!

[venelona]

I might lack the motivation to see it through, but I really like your dazatsu works, so I was wondering how you motivate yourself to create fanfiction? How do you get into the headspace of the characters?

Motivation is a fickle mistress, it's hard to say what EXACTLY motivates me. I guess the best answer is 'I write the fanfic I wish there was'. The true 'write what you want to read', I am usually really motivated to write something I wish to read so badly - a hole in the market, or a certain concept I wish I could do my way that would cater to all the things I like.

Since I also primarily write shipping fanfics, engaging with canon/fanart/other fanfics on the pair also motivates me greatly. Reminds me of why I like the characters and want to write about them in the first place

I quite like getting into the headspace of the characters, at least those I like a lot, haha. For me, it's always the question of "would this character to this?" - when I think of them doing or saying something, I think back on what I know of the character, if there were similar situations to this one in the canon and try to think what would be the most logical thing for that character to do. Like puzzle pieces - canon gives you puzzle pieces, and you can either arrange them how you want, or see what new pieces can fit to existing ones.

I think just good thing to keep in mind when you writing a character do something is the question of 'why are they doing this'. The why's come from their personality, their past or the circumstances of the story (the events or even the rules of the world)

Also, something that motivates me and I'm very lucky to have - good community! Comments are a wonderful motivation. And the power of friends?? Absolutely amazing. Half my motivation to finish things is solely to talk to my writing friends about it 😂

I'm happy you like my works, thank you so much!

[egophiliac]

so on the subject of the "Crowley is secretly Revaan/Laverne/Levin/please Twst give us his name" theory, I think my feelings are best summed up as "I don't really buy it, but it's funny". like, in all seriousness, I'm not opposed to it; I have enjoyed the writing in Twst so far and I'm willing to trust that whatever happens will, you know, make sense and not be terrible. but I'm just not really convinced by the current evidence! maybe that'll change once we learn more, we'll see!

with that said, may I propose a few alternate theories about the possible Crowley/Revaan connection:

[yeonjune]

Yeonjun about the strain he felt while preparing for his debut solo project ✙ "GGUM" MAKING FILM

[my-memed-tw-adventures]

So this is how the event be going right?

[al-luviec]

my art has been all over the place lately

[yippee-optimistically]

mods r asleep post humanized 4x

finished catching up on tpot it was peakkkkkk but i am so scared of one. also working on little clay and felt dolls of 4 x and 2

[puppyeared]

doodles of my fav sillies

anton belongs to @poicyss

[hadesknockedupintheunderworld]

The world if people stopped applying their understanding of "conservatism" and "religion/christianity" through a very modern, deeply American view onto Death Note (a manga from the Early-mid 2000s which is very much set in the cultural and societal context of early-mid 2000s Japan and all that entails):

[pianokantzart]

Princess Daisy's capabilities as a ruler being disregarded because she's loud, hotheaded and emotional, leading her to be perceived by many as immature and impulsive.

Luigi's capabilities as a hero being disregarded because he's awkward, nervous and emotional, leading him to be perceived by many as weak and pathetic.

Both of them recognizing the value inherent in each other's feelings while simultaneously seeing the strength and potential in one another that they are unable to see in themselves. Do you feel me?

[ricky-mortis]

I drew Ted from the wonderful @nabwastaken ‘s Time Bastard Au! The original design is by the talented @midnightnautilus , and was so very fun to draw!

[shima-draws]

So every year my company has a huge conference where we all come together and go to different presentations and stuff. That’s the boring part. The FUN part is getting to talk to everyone and drink and party and listen to the higher ups talk about their experiences which always ends up being super inspirational.

Long story short they had a discussion about like. Taking chances and getting involved in things you want to be involved in even if it means changing positions in the company. And y’all know how much I fucking HATE my current job lol and while I have been searching for work outside of this company I haven’t had much luck (very competitive field + not a lot of open jobs that suit my experience + half the jobs in my field getting taken over by AI, etc etc). But!! While it’s not EXACTLY what I want to do with my life there is a position in this company that definitely has a more creative and artistic side. And that’s marketing. And there’s one (1) guy handling marketing for our entire company and he offhandedly mentioned to me a few weeks back about how he’s looking for help—and he went straight to me in particular bc he knows I have a background in art and design and stuff like that.

So being ✨ inspired ✨ by the conference I stepped wayyyy outside my comfort zone and worked up the nerve to tell him hey I’m interested in what you do and I know you mentioned you might need help and I’d frankly love to help. And he was SUPER excited lol I mean we’ve been friends for a while and he’s literally the friendliest and most extroverted person I’ve ever met. Things are already moving so quickly lmao he’s talked to my boss and his boss about getting me into marketing so I’ll be able to do things like. Photography! And video editing! And web design! And swag design! And lots of creative things!! And I’m very excited!! Bc I’ve felt so fucking stifled at my current job bc it’s just. Very opposite of a creative type job and while I do appreciate my teammates I just. Don’t want to be there anymore.

So I saw the opportunity and I was like. Clearly looking for other jobs is not working rn so you know, maybe marketing isn’t something I want to do forever, but it’ll at least give me more experience in my field if I do end up finding a job elsewhere. You know? And if I do this I won’t be absolutely miserable every single day doing something I don’t care about and don’t love doing. So.

Anyway long story short I might be getting a new position soon and I’m VERY excited and jazzed and grateful to finally get to have a job that I’ll actually enjoy doing. And I wanted to share. :))))

[sieglinde-freud]

let it be known that i love prince inigo with my whole soul. however sometimes it is SO much fun to think about owain and his two most loyal-est knights you ever seen: worst guy in the world #1 and worst guy in the world #2. i love retainer inigo and severa so much. retainers who bully you and make fun of you and trash on you but they’d leave behind everyone and everything they ever knew to follow you and protect you in a whole new universe. they love you so much that they’d swear allegiance to total strangers but that loyalty pales in comparison to what they’d do for you. and they were all lovers!!!!!!!

[shrews-art]

The child queen of a world born anew!! What will she do!

[apuff]

my chemical tober :D

[buttered-toasty]

Forging of the Ring/The Proposal/Reflections of Self

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Till death do us part? You’re not getting out of this that easily.

And with that I think I’m done with my little marriage series (as I have been calling my bigger Sauron pieces)! I will post them all together sometime. Happy Halloween and remember not to separate out parts of your soul for the making of cursed jewelry!

Bonus thing with some extra portraiture under the cut, idk

[alongtidesoflight]

so here's my honest thoughts on dragon age: the veilguard, after ~40 hours of playing. i finished the main quest after having finished all companion quests and major faction quests. just to clear up what content i saw, i played as an elven transmasc rook who is a member of the lords of fortune. he romanced lucanis (although after finishing the game i'm now leaning towards taash). i don't know what's happening in playthroughs that have a different race, gender identity, romance or faction going on.

full spoilers ahead, i mean it. don't read further if you want to avoid them. i don't want complaining about it in my asks.

oh and also, if you're worried because of a few negative reviews online i can comfort you by saying don't give a fuck about a certain big name youtuber who is very much tied to bethesda franchises giving this a negative review. i'll explain why.

i'm starting off with the things i liked

the game looks really pretty. i was worried it wouldn't feel like thedas anymore (with them trying to "focus on northern thedas only" i thought they'd make a clear cut in environmental design. they do and they don't. it's complicated. i'll elaborate on it when talking about the negative stuff). anyway it does. minrathous feels like kirkwall. treviso enchanted me like the winter palace did. the hossberg wetlands reminded me of the hinterlands and a couple other inquisition maps. arlathan looked like... arlathan. the crossroads were different, but familiar. overall i like the way it looks and feels. it's thedas, with a twist. it's a good one, and gives everything a solid but unique feel.

combat is top tier. if you're a hardcore dragon age player you WILL miss the tactical aspect of it for a bit, but i promise you, once you're used to the way the combat works, you will be lapping that shit up. and once you get to ability combos you'll mourn the control you used to have over your companions in battle a bit less

the MAIN quest and its story. i expected worse, way worse. and for a while the game even had me tricked (harr harr you'll get it in a second) it is Really That Much Worse. but holy shit was it good. i walked away satisfied ngl.

your choices have SOLID weight. there's consequences, good AND bad. i got minrathous blighted, ruled over by venatori, and the leader of the shadow dragons ultimately died because of my decisions. i made those at the beginning and throughout the game. he died at the end. DAVRIN died because i didn't expect what i was saying to have that much weight. i thought i was in the clear. he had hero status. well turns out, your choices can still get your companions killed even if you do everything right. i fucking love him. he shouldn't have made that sacrifice just because i told him to do everything it takes once.

the inquisitor, morrigan and dorian being there, surprisingly. there's also negatives to this though, see below.

speaking of companions dying and the inquisitor playing a bigger role: the final quest feels like me2's suicide mission. i was blown away by it and the fact that i got to see the results of all my efforts playing out in front of me.

bioware are NOT trying to redeem solas. they love him as a character yes, but i wasn't forced to see any good in him. he betrays you. he fucked my rook over twice. he fucked him over right back, for good this time (the veil wasn't torn down, i anchored it by binding him to it, he's doomed to uphold it). but solas really lives up to his name as the trickster elven god. rip to all the people who grew really attached to him over the years.

varric died. if you like him that's probably as hard reading it as it was watching it. varric died and the game lies about it until the very end. when the realisation hits, it hurts. but in the very best way.

the amount of care they put into gender expression and trans identities this time around. (i'll add onto this with negative points as well too).

rook feels very much ingrained in the world of thedas. he doesn't ask questions that expose the player to lore through dialogue as if he's stepped foot into thedas for the first time. those conversations feel very solid and good. i hope other faction players got as much joy out of this as i did.

and the things i didn't like and boy there's a lot unfortunately

the music. let's just get that out of the way holy shit. it doesn't feel like it belongs in this universe. it gets so incredibly sci-fi-y at times you'd think it's taken straight from mass effect andromeda. there's not a single song unique to veilguard that i really enjoyed. it broke my immersion, real bad. hearing a busker play the tavern songs from inquisition on a lute right after i killed some venatori with wobbly bass songs playing in the background is just odd. weird tonal shift. don't like it. it's made for people who like flashy light-weight cinema.

tevinter nights is required reading. the podcasts are required listening exercises. the game is so fast paced, especially at the start, that there's no time to introduce you to characters and how much weight their names carry in-game. i would not have known who half these people are if i hadn't skimmed over tevinter nights. i'd care even less about them than i already did. there is no time to get properly attached to them. people will act as if you're talking to a legend personified and you'll be thinking man goddamn which chapter of tevinter night were they in again and what did they do???

there's a weird mismatch with the animations. you'll have beautifully fluid ones, like emmrich casting spells. and then you'll have rook's face animating in the most unnatural manner that's sorta reminiscent of mass effect andromeda's "my face is tired" addison, when their emotions SHOULD be landing with the player rn instead.

i'm not vibing with the art style. sometimes it works. most of the time it doesn't. at points i felt like i was watching tangled.

that also brings me to some of the dialogue. same issue. i am watching frozen. i am watching tangled. someone on the writer's team really likes the adorkable trope. bellara is its victim.

for all the talk about identity, bioware sure doesn't like theirs. the grey warden armor got a redesign again and it just makes them look like a generic army. i hate it lol

in general, i don't like the armor design. the wardrobe/appearances system is fine, but it's just not helping if all the armors are just... kinda bland or downight bad looking? and don't get me started on the lords of fortune armor. that is orientalism personified.

the world states should have been carried over, full stop. i know they said they didn't because they want to separate what happens in the north from what happens in the south, which... i could have lived with that. but the inquisitor sends you letters that keep you up to date on... the south of thedas. you learn that there's a blight again, that people are standing strong but it's difficult, denerim's fallen, the rulers are taking care of it, orlais is fighting and they're successful for a while, etc etc. what's good bioware. i thought we don't care about the south this time around. why are you feeding me so much boring generic information. if you're not gonna show any of it and just write letters, then carrying the world state over should not have been an issue. i have a game dev background. those few lines of code would not have broken your budget or pushed your engine's limits. fuck right off.

this gripe of mine carries over to all the cameos. as a lord of fortune you have to deal with isabela a lot. it's fun. i missed her. you get to go drinking with her and taash and bellara! also my hawke romanced her. she's not mentioned once. they had the opportunity to put a sentence or two about her in there with not a lot of effort, trust me.

when varric dies, all she has is a single line about it. for gold, for fortune, for varric. she only says it if you interact with her on your way to the final push. that's not mandatory.

morrigan is there. kieran isn't. the old god soul that mythal and then solas absorbed? who cares at this point, the gods are dead now and solas is locked away for eternity. i suppose? why is morrigan there. she feels unneeded. i wish they'd just left her down south, at least that way i wouldn't have had to witness her god awful redesign.

dorian at least feels as if he belongs in this story. the shadow dragons are a crucial part to protecting minrathous. he's also weirdly underutilised. isabela and morrigan had more lines than him in my playthrough.

on the topic of romance: bro that was underwhelming. no, genuinely. you know when romance picked up a bit? after the point of no return. i heard maybe two lines of companion banter about it before that. maybe i missed something which i honestly doubt, but romance did not play much of a role in lucanis's storyline. i saved his grandmother as he wished me to (and if you read tevinter nights you know she was rather abusive and their relationship not the healthiest) and told him to focus on his family. a reunified family my rook wasn't even introduced to as a partner at the end of all that.

really, do not buy this game if you're only in it for the romances. others might be better, lucanis's basically gave me nothing. except for an outing (the second coffee date i had with him, it was getting repetitive) all of it played out once i committed to the final quest. the sex scene was a fade to black. annoyingly right after davrin died. if you're looking for well paced and good spice, pick up something else. the sweet talk and the final goodbye were nice though.

for all the good the ever-presence of gender identity does, it is brought up in such a disruptive manner too. it doesn't even play out naturally if you CHOOSE the lines that are meant to be said. hearing the words trans and non-binary in this setting doesn't feel right, and i'm saying this as a trans guy. i think it could have been handled more gracefully. the amount of times my rook went "i'm a MAN" as if he's about to start drumming on his chest and roaring any second now got super nerve-grating. "i'm so glad you're into me... the me who is trans. remember?" just. tell me one trans person who'd talk like that to a person they've grown close with and are trying to romance. this game doesn't handle sexuality well, so all this hey my body might not look like the way you're expecting it to look talk amounts to nothing anyway. i feel about this the way i feel about krem: this is partial exposition to trans experiences... packaged up for cis consumption. the ONLY exception to that is interacting with taash. holy shit was all of that heartwarming and bro did it feel good and natural to talk to them about theirs and rook's gender.

rivain and nevarra are new locations added by veilguard. they're also incredibly underwhelming, small and constricted maps. rivain is a coastline with a few ruins. the hall of valor is a partial ruin nestled into a cave on a beach, with a fighting pit. isabela is there in her skimpy outfit commentating your pit fights. that's it. i'm sorry if you were looking for a bustling pirate cove or whatever. you're not gonna get it. the nevarran crypts btw are a long ass dungeon crawl. that's it.

speaking of maps. i thought people were being dramatic when they said you're gonna be fighting the same enemies on them again and again. i thought they were figure of speeching it. they're not. you WILL fight the same amount of enemies. in the same spot. every time you reload the map. best to stay on a map and clear out the enemies and do as much questing on that map as you can before leaving, because you WILL have to do it all over again once you return.

the three choices i made for my inquisitor didn't matter lol she didn't have to face solas and therefore couldn't stop him at any cost as she had sworn (maybe because my rook tricked solas into binding himself to the veil, there was also an option to fight him. would she have stepped in? who knows). blackwall wasn't mentioned. and either her using a small amount of her forces in the final fight was the reason the civilians of minrathous fared so well..... or it just didn't matter. ultimately i think she had very little impact on anything