#its always just

[vigilskeep]

hi hello @demandthedoodles was kind enough to tag me in wip fridnesday, that well-known day of the week, so i dug up a little keir and anders snippet. it’s not that deep it’s essentially just 1k of anders being embarrassing

(context: this is set at the end of the Act Break Breakdown™️, so basically keir hasn’t been in town for nearly a year in the time between act 1 and act 2. this also makes it set before any kind of relationship)

As soon as light bloomed inside the lantern, Anders nearly jumped out of his skin. There was a figure, waiting, in the dim light.

Hawke was in the doorway.

Hawke, of all people, was in the doorway.

As a mage, Anders was in the business of altering reality. Somehow no spell he had ever cast had seemed quite as improbable as the mundane fact of Hawke’s broad shape filling out the doorway of the clinic. He was a little hunched over, lending an awkward slant to the thick fur pelt worn over his shoulders, and letting his ragged dark hair fall loose to one side. It was longer than ever, almost to his waist. That was what startled Anders, more than anything: the reminder that it had been almost a year since the last he had seen of the man.

Frankly, he had not expected to see him again at all. “Hawke?” said Anders, baffled.

Hawke blinked, slow and cat-like. There was something strange to those yellow-gold eyes that had not been there before. Before Anders could place it, a motion of Hawke’s right arm, cradled to his chest, drew his attention. Anders only realised it was, in fact, an arm, when his sleep-deprived vision had cleared enough to see past the blood.

The blood. In an entirely different voice—an uncharitable listener might have called it a yelp—Anders said, “Hawke!”

“Healer,” answered Hawke, with a grimace. He was only wearing light armour under the fur, nothing more than a chest-plate, pauldrons, and bracers, no doubt a born and raised Fereldan’s concession to Kirkwall’s latest bout of sweltering summer heat. It left the injured arm mostly bare. It was drenched in red, which had poured down from a thick, ugly gash across the meat of his bicep.

“Maker’s breath,” said Anders, rushing over and immediately taking his other arm by the shoulder to pull him into the clinic. He was mildly aware it was a liberty to take, after almost a year, but there was no standing on ceremony in the clinic, and Hawke had never minded before. “What happened?”

Allowing himself to be moved, and Maker knew Anders could never have moved him otherwise, Hawke said, “Carta.” Right. Never one to waste words, this one.

Anders headed for one of the cots, manoeuvring Hawke approximately in its direction so he’d take the hint and sit down. How long had he been standing out there? “Why didn’t you just come in?”

Hawke did take the hint and sit down. With his free arm—his left hand, and Anders idly noted the dexterity he had with it—he loosened the distinctly Fereldan brooch that pinned the fur pelt around his shoulders, letting it slide free, and raked his long hair to one side, out of the injured arm’s way. “The lantern wasn’t up yet,” he said, like this explained everything.

“Don’t be ridiculous,” said Anders. “You must have heard me moving around.”

Despite the pain the movement must have cost him, Hawke shrugged. “Lantern wasn’t up.”

There was no use standing over him, at Anders’ height. He sat next to Hawke on the cot so he could face the wound. He was dismayed, almost immediately, by how distracted he was by Hawke’s closeness.

Nearly a year, and he wasn’t over this? A little mortifying, he had to admit. Maybe it was just the surprise. The sudden immediacy of him, after such an absence without any thought of his return. The familiar smell of blood and sweat and kaddis, and an excuse to zero in on the muscular thickness of his arm. That was all. Anders reminded himself he had a job to do, and focused on examining the wound.

The first thing he noticed was that the cut had sliced a tattoo raggedly in half. It took Anders a moment to piece it together as the sword and anvil of the Red Iron’s sigil, a souvenir of Hawke’s indentured year with the mercenary band. Justice flashed like a throbbing headache behind Anders’ eyes, remembering the onslaught of refugees that they had both poured in with. So many forced to lower themselves to such depths, all for the questionable privilege of feeding into this meat grinder of a city. “Glad to be rid of this, are you?” he said lightly.

Hawke frowned down at it. Too late, Anders remembered who had done that year of service with him, who also wore that mark on her arm, and he cursed himself for ever forgetting. As long as Bethany was in the Gallows, he couldn’t let himself forget. “I can live without it,” he said.

Not on Anders’ watch.

He lifted his hands and began using his magic to feel out the shape of the injury, to understand the cut that had made it and the stitch that might weave it back together. In the heat of battle and desperation, he might have done quicker, clumsier work, but Hawke wasn’t in danger. (Though Anders dreaded to think what might have become of the arm if Hawke had waited for the bloody lantern an hour or two longer.) He could afford the luxury of taking his time. With any luck, he could save the tattoo with almost no scarring at all.

After several long minutes of near-silent work, Hawke said, “I missed this.”

Anders blinked, and looked up from the wound, outside of which he had almost forgotten that Hawke was there. Hawke was looking back at him, steady and contemplative. Anders kept noticing details he’d almost forgotten. Hawke had longer eyelashes than you’d somehow expect of a man of his roughness, hidden a little away into the fold of his eyes, only visible at this angle.

“What?” said Anders, backtracking from all thoughts of eyelashes to parse out what Hawke had said. “You’ve missed getting cut up? Tell me you’ve found a line of work that doesn’t involve that and you’ll really give me a fright.”

“Not that.” The corner of Hawke’s mouth had turned up slightly.

Well, that was worth pursuing. “Having your own private healer, then?” he said, and he added his best suggestive raised eyebrow, just for masochism’s sake. “It must have been a trial to do without me.”

“It was,” said Hawke, entirely seriously, as ever, which flummoxed Anders so thoroughly he looked back down at what he was doing, which was probably a good idea. “But I meant magic. I missed it.”

That stunned Anders even further into silence. He flexed his fingers as he pulled the seams of Hawke’s wound together, binding flesh to flesh, and tried to remember if he had ever heard anyone else say the word magic the way Hawke said it. It was not unlike the way the Warden-Commander had spoken the words: In war, victory. In peace, vigilance. In death, sacrifice. It was not unlike the way Justice had said justice, when he’d had a voice of his own to say it. It was not even particularly unlike the way Anders had heard Chantry sisters utter the Maker’s name. Reverence. For magic. He had not thought to hear it again.

[tothechaos]

this is what every tiktok screenshot looks like to me

[starridge]

puppet hour was brutal

[druid-for-hire]

[image id: a four-page comic. it is titled "immortality” after the poem by clare harner (more popularly known as “do not stand at my grave and weep”). the first page shows paleontologists digging up fossils at a dig. it reads, “do not stand at my grave and weep. i am not there. i do not sleep.” page two features several prehistoric creatures living in the wild. not featured but notable, each have modern descendants: horses, cetaceans, horsetail plants, and crocodilians. it reads, “i am a thousand winds that blow. i am the diamond glints on snow. i am the sunlight on ripened grain. i am the gentle autumn rain.” the third page shows archaeopteryx in the treetops and the skies, then a modern museum-goer reading the placard on a fossil display. it reads, “when you awaken in the morning’s hush, i am the swift uplifting rush, of quiet birds in circled flight. i am the soft stars that shine at night. do not stand at my grave and cry.” the fourth page shows a chicken in a field. it reads, “i am not there. i did not die” / end id]

a comic i made in about 15 hours for my school’s comic anthology. the theme was “evolution”

[ezlo-x]

palico lore will always be funny to me. They get paid to hunt just like a human hunter. But since they're small anthropomorphic cats you always treat them like pets or babies. like your palico is grown ass man....cat

[pigswithwings]

above all else a trans woman is a person. above all else a trans women is a woman who goes to the same grocery store as you and buys fruits in the same grocery cart as you and goes home and eats her dinner the same as you. above all else a trans woman is a woman who dresses like you do and talks the same way you do. above all else a trans woman is a woman who wants to be cared about the same way you want to be cared about and a trans woman is a woman who makes friends the same way you make friends. above all else you should care about trans women because they are people. treat her as such.

[stil-lindigo]

lighthearted.

if this comic resonated with you, please consider donating to this palestinian escape fund (vetted by @/nabulsi and @/el-shab-hussein) as it is less than $7,000 away from it's goal.

i turn 24 today. To celebrate, I made this comic to be a spiritual successor to lead balloon, a comic in which I talked about the darkest period of my life so far.

A lot has changed since my 23rd birthday and this one. My priorities have shifted a lot, in ways that I think are mostly good. But i think the best part about today is that suicide has gone back to being a far away notion. I'm really lucky, and I'm grateful for that.

[angelofdumpsterfires]

how i feel about all the changes in s3

[lemongogo]

life of regret

[colorful-horses]

not a phase

[nidbaesenpai]

Happy one year anniversary ISAT! To celebrate I wanted to share the lil strips I made for my friends when they reached the end of the game! They're all meant to be snippets of life post game and a glimpse into the world I'm making for Loop.

[artistotel]

hey! for todays protest, i made this little zine about palestine (holding just simple and basic information).

you can download the zine here, fold it yourself, and distribute it around.

no credit is needed. feel free to leave it around bars, protests, or wherever. simply print it (borderless) and fold it. here is a tutorial on how to do it.

dont stay silent. there is a genocide of horrendous, atrocious proportions going on. also if you are a zionist here to argue with me, i dont plan to entertain you at all, not on my art blog. fuck off, you'll be swiftly blocked. i see enough of you clowns on my main and i have no energy for you. you can skip the death threats too bc i dont give a shit.

(i'm off to get ready for a surgery now, i just wanted to post it before this. if you need anything, i might take a bit to reply)

[fairsweetlonging]

truth serum / system reveal au where shen qingqiu gets hit with an uncloaking spell that reveals the system in the reflection of his eyes every time it pops up.

during one of his missions, in the treasure hoard of some dragon-like creature, he finds a golden, oval shaped hand mirror, its gaudy style more victorian based than anything (airplane you hack!), that doesn't seem to do anything when he looks into it. but when he does, it reveals the system's screen in his eyes.

he doesn't notice this, of course, because he can't see it, and the system, surprisingly, stays quiet.

the peak lords think he's cursed.

maybe mu qingfang is the first to notice, during the mandatory post mission check-up, when shen qingqiu is scrolling through his most recently accumulated points and mu qingfang can see the strange vividly-blue lines reflected in his pupils. it's gone when shen qingqiu blinks, like it was nothing but a trick of the light.

it comes out when yue qingyuan is visiting and, just as he's done laying out the plans for a new mission, shen qingqiu's eyes glaze over and a bright blue box takes over the whole of his iris. shen qingqiu goes quiet; the thing in his eyes moves, shifts, pulses for a second, like static worms crawling all over his pupils. then he blinks, and it's gone, and shen qingqiu accepts the mission that yue qingyuan was almost sure he would decline.

maybe there is an intervention, when the peak lords corner shen qingqiu at qian cao peak and try to figure out what's wrong, subjecting him to all kinds of treatments and curse-finding spells that turn up empty, they can't find anything.

of course, the silencing threat is still very much up and running. at first shen qingqiu was kind of confused by the whole ordeal, but when the peak lords start describing a "strange blue box", he realizes, with sickening suddenty, that they're describing the system. and he can't say anything.

this only makes everything worse, because their fellow peak lord now keeps evading every question and acts like he doesn't understand. liu qingge points right at his face and asks, "that blue box, what is it?" and shen qingqiu laughs nervously and starts talking about how bright the weather is and surely it's the sky and nothing to worry about!

even worse, during the intervention the system thought it was a good idea to start talking to him, so now even the peak lords who hadn't seen it and who might have been persuaded by light tricks and reflections, get a first row view that no, that definitely isn't a trick of the light.

they try to do the whole thing of "are you in danger, blink twice" but shen qingqiu can't even do that because it's still a direct admittance!

maybe eventually he starts saying vague confirmations that don't actually confirm anything, like "this master hears what you're saying", or maybe he goes with a classic "this master can neither confirm nor deny that." but the system starts warning him for that too and eventually he stops saying anything, which worries the others more.

luckily mu qingfang catches on that every time they ask a direct question about the box or shen qingqiu says anything vaguely confirming, it appears. it doesn't appear when they ask about curses or demons, so it must not see that as a threat.

for a little extra angst: maybe the peak lords keep pressuring him for answers, and at some point shen qingqiu gets fed up and snaps out something like, "why don't you understand that i'm not allowed to answer that!" the system counts this as a direct admittance, threatening it's existence. so it punishes. shen qingqiu has a qi deviation so bad it lasts two weeks and takes two people every day to cleanse his meridians. the system doesn't appear in that time. it doesn't appear for a long while after that, either. the peak lords stop asking, mainly because shen qingqiu will instantly leave the room if they do. they don't stop searching for a cure, though.

shang qinghua returns from a business trip and catches on the second someone mentions a blue box and forced silencing.

[desertduality]

something about the way the hermits try to blend their bases together when they're close by is just really sweet to me. I don't really know how to explain it other than like. it's art. they start out with their empty plots of land and then they shape it and change it and they start growing into each other. the lines blur. it's like they're all given a slab of marble and they carve their own statues but they make the statues hold hands. i dunno.

[heynhay]

do u guuys remember how huge lovebug was. back in ye days.