#they’re obvs very very rough and some of them are kinda garbage but it was just rlly fun to do overall

[sunnibits]

I had a homework assignment for my favorite class to do 40 thumbnail stills from a favorite tv show or movie, I chose lotr + my one absolute favorite shot from the hobbit as a treat :))

I was lowkey dreading it before I started bc it seemed like so much work, but it was actually really chill and easy and I honestly enjoyed it a lot!! it made me wanna do more screencap redraws in the future :)

[glorybcrn]

hihi everybody !! i’m kelly ( eighteen , she/her , mst ) and uh h ... i haven’t been in the roleplaying game for a hot minute but i’m really excited to be here n get back into it ! this is my garbage son gabriel who is technically an old muse ?? ngl i’ve dragged this poor binch to hell n back so if this intro kinda funky ... that why ....... also i may or may not be running on 3 hrs of sleep jfifjnck

◟ * ◊ ─ jason bateman + cismale + he/him » * believe it or not gabriel dombrova is working for the lothario family. they are forty seven years of age and are known to usually spend their time around city hall. the mayor, who has been a part of the alliance for sixteen years, has been living in victoria for forty seven years. the people closest to them describe the bisexual + capricorn to be driven and astute as well as reserved and unforgiving » 

background

— born and raised in victoria, despite not being a founding family, gabriel’s family still had relatively deep roots within the city; it was said that his great grandfather had moved here from massachusetts looking for the american dream. the patriarchal dombrova came from humble beginnings, building the family business ( a local inn ) from the ground up and over the decades it only got bigger and bigger until it had turned into the respectable hotel that it is known as today and now has multiple locations across the state of florida. naturally, his father inherited this business and his mother, on the other hand, is your typical southern belle, moved here from a small town in texas. she was a corporate lawyer ( it’s how she met gabriel’s father ) but since becoming a mother she really has had no interests in any other occupation other than trophy wife and socialite.

— to say that gabriel’s parents were old school would be putting it lightly. basically, both of his parents were deeply religious republicans and were very aware of their image as a family. they were harsh parents, extremely controlling when it came to their children’s lives but at the same time were also really emotionally absent. to this day they still believe that it was all in the name of tough love but obviously it was just emotional abuse. his father was especially hard on gabriel, he was a strong believer in physical discipline and thought gabriel to be too “soft”. he was always berating him, punishing him for petty offences, and pretty much just fostering your typical environment of toxic masculinity. though he never laid a hand on gabriel’s sister as she was what he called, “a lady” and his “pride and joy.”

— but gabriel was a good kid, he was obedient aside from stupid mistakes that kids are bound to make. he was your typical golden boy, a jack of all trades of sorts. not exceptionally good at one thing, but averagely good at a multitude of things. he was a quick learner and dedicated, anything he took a crack at, he eventually excelled in. throughout high school, he mostly kept to himself, choosing to focus on his education and after graduating valedictorian, he went to harvard where he earned his business degree. the plan was to come back to victoria, work for his father, and make his way up until he was ready to inherit the business himself.

— but while away at university, he met abigail. it was your typical whirlwind of a first love where it felt like it was just the two of you against the world. with her, gabriel experienced a sense of normalcy and sincere, unconditional love. for someone who severely lacked both up until then, maybe it wasn’t so crazy that the two decided to marry as soon as they graduated. together, they moved back to victoria to start their lives. to an outsider, gabriel’s life had seemingly always been perfect, envy-worthy. with a renowned and respected family, a successful business, the perfect wife, and now, a baby on the way too, it’s no wonder he’d been chosen by the lothario’s to be their candidate as mayor.

— his connection with the alliance started out small; the hotel business had been in a rough spot for a couple of years and out of nowhere, they seemed to have just come in at the right time, saving the day. he could be on their payroll all for the price of a few, teensy favours. favours such as his hotel being used as refuge for some of their men, a place of business when needed, and gabriel refusing to be a failure, especially in his father’s eyes, easily succumbed to their offer. 

— of course, gabriel’s family has no idea about the real root of his sudden interest in politics, much less how the family business has managed to be so successful still despite his now even busier schedule. and as a result, his relationship with his wife and children have deteriorated over the years. it began as a defense mechanism, intentionally distancing himself from his loved ones as a way to protect them. and while his children maybe the one last soft spot gabriel has left, his sudden absence as a father has definitely put a strain on his relationship with them. however his relationship with his wife seemed to suffer even more, things between the two of them are definitely not how they once used to be. they’re cold to one another and see each other more so as strangers rather than husband and wife. unfortunately, a divorce doesn’t exactly fit into the white picket-fence image gabriel had so carefully curated over the years. 

personality

— after decades of playing different facades, gabriel’s definitely lost a sense of his true self, or maybe it’s just fully gone. he used to be this really compassionate and benevolent person who always prioritized family over anything. it’s why ( at least this is what he tells himself ) he initially risked getting into business with the alliance in the first place, but now, he really only pretends to be those things to get the people to like him. he can be incredibly charming when he wants to be but it’s all just so .. hollow ? if that makes sense. like, nowadays there’s rarely an ounce of honesty or sincerity in him. he’s just so consumed with being a part of the alliance, it’s all he really knows at this point.

— extremely driven and cunning, if there’s something gabriel wants, he’ll get it. even as a child, he was an over achiever and so he’s known to always come through when it’s requested of him. he’s not exactly evil .. ? but he is loyal to the lotharios. i think there’s a small part of him that hates them, hates himself, and hates what he’s doing but idk he kinda just tells that it to shut up lmao. having had to learn it as a child, he’s very good at compartmentalizing which is probably why he can play all these different roles so well without going insane dnkjds

— really reserved, tries ( and succeeds ) to put out this strait-laced and conservative image. has the ability to remain calm in any sort of situation and twist things to his advantage. like honestly ?? gabriel is probably a pr manager’s wet dream .. he just comes across as this very charming and kind man, he’s the type of politician that’ll say hi to your baby and sign its head idk

but ugh idk it’s hard to explain gabriel’s personality since he’s such an emotional mess, i would just end up rambling about the same thing over and over again if i tried to keep going so i’m gonna .. stop right now.

connections

— personal assistant ?? someone incredibly organized and competent. this plot can range from really basic like .. yeah book my doctor’s appointment thnx to someone he’s actually pretty close to ? maybe he doesn’t even realize it, idk. like we can literally do wtvr w this, so !

— other members of the alliance, could be just someone he’s acquainted with or knows well and works pretty close with.

— if you have any muses involved with politics or managing ? his campaign manager or just anyone who worked on his campaign. like w the personal assistant we can .. go basic or brazy w this.

— love interests ? doesn’t have to be ~romantic~ per se .. but idk like affairs ig ?? cause .. gabe’s not perfect, rip. but he is careful so it wldn’t be like .. smth messy or if it was he’d prob make certain measurements after. idk what that means exactly dnjsnsdjk just tryna not get caught uk … or even something as small as flirtationships !

ok these all suck bc gabe is….. emotionally dead inside cnjdsnksnjd but ! obv tht can change per circumstance n whatever so pls .. feel free to mssg me whenever if u have any ideas !!

[jamiedodgerart]

the fade is a liar sometimes

aka, a really long post about how mal hawke survived dragon age inquisition. warning for big but kinda vague spoilers for dai and mentions of alcoholism

ok full disclosure i dont know how he survived the fade. but im thinking the nightmare like. didnt wake back up in time to block the way through the portal, and so never caused the Do I Kill The Warden Or Hawke dilemma. cos. that was kiiiiiiiinda bullshit. 

i had to pick between alistair and mal. and i really didnt want mal to be actually really dead bc at the time of here lies the abyss he’d be in a really shitty place, mentally, and i didnt want him to just! die! without resolving that! so i gave canon the finger and concocted a convoluted plan to give mal a better ending

background, after the events of da2, he ended up leaving kirkwall and fuckin’ around in the woods for a bit. i imagine he was helping refugees get out for a little while, until anders showed up and convinced him to help groups of renegade mages/circles on the verge of winning their independence. at this point he was pretty sick of the world at large, didn’t know what he wanted or where he was going to go next, and let himself be (guided? directed? pushed around?) by anders, drinking himself into oblivion and generally feeling like garbage. he fell out of contact with most of his remaining friends and began convincing himself that he was guilty for the explosion, by trusting anders (he’d suspected something was wrong with the ingredients anders was asking for and confronted him about it, but trusted him and helped him by distracting the grand cleric)

i rambled about this on my private twitter but mal and anders... ended up not being a great fit for one another and past me said it better than present me can

eventually, the inquisition came into being and grew in power. anders, still being a wanted man and mal too by association, avoided the inquisition’s patrols pretty easily. but stories started to spread about the inquisitor and his... particularly creative justice. see, pica really likes choices that have some poetic irony to them that also focus on rebuilding (he had alexius work for the mages, stuff like that), generally avoids executions, and is pretty chill with mages. the inquisition is also independent of any government, really, and is about as impartial as you can get in thedas. so when mal gets word from varric that corypheus is back, a problem, and something they need mal’s help with (that is also, in his professional opinion, his fault), he gets an idea.

he heads to skyhold, meets pica (who read the tale of the champion, asks varric questions about it constantly, was expecting a hero, and was not expecting the hero to be a depressed alcoholic) and iunno here lies the abyss happens with the aforementioned edit of no one important dying (i guess i could kill alistair and preserve a kind of important turning point in pica’s character with an added bonus of giving mal another thing to have survivor’s guilt about but i dont think i could go through with it. imagine the emotional toll. pica could get that change some other way anyway) mal by this point has gotten to know pica fairly well and has found what he’s heard to be true, and gives him a proposition

(i would like to add now that while ive read asunder, until i looked it up just now i didn’t remember where it sits in the timeline relative to da2, and it wasnt super clear to me just how much each of the two events affected the mage/templar war. so some text in sketches might be inaccurate, historically)

so you can imagine that anders is Pissed Off by this development, but justice is kinda like 

cos like. pica Is a real actual authority figure. who is down to dispense some quality justice esp re mages. and is coming at it from a “yo i know you meant well and you did kinda have a point but you also killed a lot of people so there does have to be Some kind of consequence of that”

(but neither of them are at all happy with mal turning them in)

anyway the trial ends up including a full investigation of the events in kirkwall, as well as the events at the spire (cole, rhys, and evangeline all give their testimony) and it’s more a straightening out of what was up with the whole start of this shitshow anyway, cos the confusion and misinformation about it is probably the worst part. 

pica finds anders guilty and sentences him to community service, which a lot of people disagreed with. pica thinks it was a GREAT IDEA though because that community service comes in the form of anders teaching the inquisition mages about healing magic!! something that anders is good at, loves doing, and can actually help people with!! why are we still fuckin about with herbs when there’s magic!!!!! this also has the added bonus of making mages less scary to the general populace- chuckin’ fireballs is a lot more alien and intimidating than healing up a broken arm, yknow? it can help mages seem more human and good for society than they were, separated from the public in towers.

anders is still a prisoner, though, which hes super not happy about, and part of his sentence is also that dagna gets to study him. he and samson are in grudging solidarity in the face of tolerating her extreme cheerfulness. and maybe he gets a cat too. i wonder if he and samson could talk about how shitty the chantry is re: lyrium addiction in templars? its obvs not on the scale of mage shittiness but it could be an interesting discussion

see in the grand scheme of things mal really didnt do all that much. he was duped by a lover into doing something he 100% would not have done if hed known what was actually going on. i feel like the most anyone could bust him on was aiding and abetting. and maybe helping hide an apostate. mal was found, as pica informally put it while distracted by looking at a transcript of a kirkwall templar’s testimony, “kinda guilty? just like. if ur asked to help blow up a chantry dont do it again” but cassandra elbowed him really hard and he said “look ok your sentence is, fuck, i dunno, work for the inquisition. what do you wanna do”

that was not what mal was expecting and he didnt have an answer. and pica looked at him and said “ill give you some time to figure it out, ok. just. take care of yourself, man. u look like shit” which got him another elbow, which he returned to cass with equal force

anyway. mal is now officially Not Guilty in the court of the law. which fuckin sucks bc that assessment does absolutely NOTHING to stop his shit brain from keeping being guilty about everything. so he tries to quit drinking, fails, and just has a rough time in general, while also sometimes visiting anders in prison. which probably really doesn’t help.

ENTER WARDEN-COMMANDER OF FERELDAN, MADRANA “MAD” TABRIS, AND HER PARTNER/GF/ADULT SUPERVISION EMMARIE “EMMY” COUSLAND

(you may also know mads as hester, as i called her in previous playthroughs. hester’s not a really elfy name and shes grown far enough away from her namesake that i felt a change was warranted. also emmy was created by @1500birds. i love her)

thats them (mads then emmy) so mad tabris, legendary fighter, unkillable blight-ender, bather in darkspawn blood, and general bottle covey is looking for a challenge. its been like ten years since shes had an actually hard battle to win and she’s near skyhold, and she’s heard that mal hawke, another legendary fighter, is also in the area. oh and some cadash guy. hes apparently good too. also, she’s looking for some way out of the whole grey warden death sentence thing. shes not keen on dying unless she’s killed, ydig, and apparently skyhold’s doing a lot of groundbreaking research these days

she and emmy swing on in to skyhold and finds that hawke is, well, a mess

important background. mads is not good at dealing with other peoples’ emotions. so shes not really equipped to deal with this. emmy, however, is kind, has nerves of steel, loves to help people, and is Very equipped to deal with this. and so the two of them adopt mal. (even though hes older than both of them.) 

theyve got really, really different ways of trying to help mal. emmy is a great listener, and understands survivor’s guilt and the lost-all-my-family brand of trauma pretty well. she helps him sort through all the shit that’s happened to him and offers a lot of support. and hugs. by god shes a hugger. also theyve got a symbiotic cuddling relationship bc emmy is always cold and mal is always warm, so they platonically nap together sometimes. mads is unfortunately too wriggly and pointy to be a good cuddler :’( she squeezes in the mix sometimes anyway though and it’s uncomfortable but nice

mads’s method of helping mal is in her area of expertise: getting out pent-up negative emotion by fighting. for a long time, mal has internalized a lot of shit, and mads is really good at annoying him into either yelling or punching out that shit. shes doing it out of concern for his well-being, she swears, and not because she takes joy in pissing people off. she does but thats not the point. it’s not a perfect strategy but it does help a lot

unfortunately for her, sometimes mal can be downright vindictive when drunk and angry, and can hit on the few things she’s insecure about

(i would really love to make a post about mads sometime, cos she ended up being a lot deeper of a character than i originally intended. i really just wanted a really sharp angry lady who fought with the subtlety of a brick to the face, and ended up getting that plus bravado covering up a whole host of insecurities. i feel like i should finish dao before writing it up though ahah)

(what mal said is also not totally accurate- mads cares very much for emmy. but yknow how when things get heated it doesn’t really matter if they’re really accurate anymore- they just have to be close enough to get a reaction, ydig)

anyway! the two of them together help mal get his life back in order- he cuts down and eventually quits drinking, starts taking better care of himself, and gets more of a handle on life. i guess you’re probably wondering where varric is, right around now. so am i mal pushed away a lot of people close to him after da2, including varric. but varric kept looking out for him (lying to cassandra to protect him, using his network of contacts to keep an eye on where he and anders were operating). when mal comes to skyhold i think he’d try to avoid varric out of guilt- yknow how when it’s been a really long time since you’ve talked to someone, and you know you should have called them back, but you never did, and they kept asking how you were, and you want to be in an actually good place before you call them back, but shit keeps happening, and it’s been like two years since youve said anything to them, and then you see them and do some serious acrobatics trying to stay out of their sight so you don’t have to confront their honest interest in your well-being that they have no right to still have after so long with no word from you, and you have to make it seem like you havent been avoiding them because that would be rude, and really it’s just easier to be constantly vigilant of where they are and make sure youve got plausible reason to be leaving casually yet quickly

well mal did that. emmy had to physically bar his way from escaping a room once when varric came in, and dragged him by the scruff of the neck to talk to him. varric was painfully understanding and ended up hitting it off nicely with emmy

so! someday mal gets a job. specifically, pica gives him one. because he still owes the world some community service. with his experience as a hunter and highwayman, he becomes a scout!

whoaaa color

more specifically, mal becomes a... specialized type of scout. some idiot who shall not be named but whose name sounds a whole lot like pica cadash gave him command of a small squad of scouts, heavier armored and armed than average inquisition scouts but not heavy enough to count as infantry soldiers. their job is to dismantle highwayman and rogue mercenary bands, in whatever way necessary. so! originally this was supposed to mean sneak attacks on their strongholds or whatever, but mal talked with him about his own experiences with crime (mostly that most people in his crew back then were in it out of necessity, and needed money to support family) and the squad kind of became. really heavy recruiters. it became kind of a joke that the inquisition would take anyone- and they would! practically any skillset could be used in an organization as big as the inquisition, and at this point it was still growing

like. barely any exaggeration here

so that’s where he is pre-trespasser! thank u for reading and if youve got questions or want to learn more PLEASE ask i lov my ocs and love talking about them

i want to add that in @1500birds‘s latest playthrough (miranda trevelyan, a pro-chantry mage cullenmancer) mal rags on cullen endlessly

that was supposed to be the playthrough where he survives the fade, but then bran realized that miranda would kinda hate mal and would 100% leave him behind