#this will be unspeakably long

[vaguely-concerned]

rook falling asleep on the red couch in the lighthouse dining room while lucanis is making dinner....... they were helping out by keeping him company and peeling and chopping potatoes for a while there but then the potatoes are done and the room is so safe and warm and smells like coffee and good food and lucanis is trying to explain something to spite and his voice is low and soft and good to listen to and rook's eyes only slip closed for a moment. they'll get up to save the world again or whatever in a second just. one moment. while the world is warm and kind. and then they're being shaken gently awake an hour later because it's time to eat and everyone's starting to drift hopefully dinner-wards

[raphaerolo]

@codywanfirstkissbingo : Kiss on the hand (free space)

Theyre so soft.. so tender with each other..

Bingo card under the cut

[kekkuda]

this project is gonna be the death of me it is never ending but I’m locking in we ball

[melodyartist]

I don't want to draw...

But the parasite in me wants to draw

I don't wanna draw spicy stuff, I don't like spicy stuff

BUT THE PARASSITE, THE DEMON IN ME IT WANTS THAT STUFF

You understand what I'm saying?🤔

Will the power of free will win?

[laylakeating]

IT'S ALL OVER NOW, ALL OUT TO SEA. @thetroubletones, i love you!

[meirimerens]

slightly on the topic of the last ask slightly/alot not but: in general how do you think sticky, and especially murky interact with dankovsky? like sticky seeing him as a doctor/role model in that way seems quite natural. how do you think sticky sees rubin? do they bond.. they have a lot of similarities in my mind: both under isidor but NOT the heir. obviously applies more to rubin as hes the same age as artemy but lieke.. yeah. also, sticky also has that My Only Interest Is Medicine/ very studious in a way that artemy is not implied to have been to the same extent [as rubin at least, or not at first at home] . okay this ask started off with me wanting to ask about murky and dankovsky and i got distracted.. anyway: thoughts on murky and daniil? do u like the common hc that they bond over beetles? does he see his younger self in her standoffish autistic swag. would she paint him in the family portrait. etc. sorry for the essay in yr askbox

sticky considers dankovsky a Medical Role Model in the way he only half does burakh, not as a values thing but as a percentage thing. burakh's practice hinges in both his Capital knowledge and the steppe ways of his father and his communities whereas dankovsky is pure unfiltered Capital (and westbound) knowledge. dankovsky brings last year's Medical Knowledge Treatise (not the current year's, people need those) to sticky who's obsessed with the slightly gross anatomical lithographs in it (i know this because i've written it). i think he doesn't like. think much. of rubin. beyond "under/after a burakh but not the heir", they have very little in common. rubin has a whole airport worth of baggage wrt heritage and heirness, it's particularly more visible in P2 since he and burakh have actually very few interactions in P1; whereas in p1 he was put forward to be formally adopted as a foster son, that is not a thing in p2, it's actually way funnier (as in painful and cruel), instead he says of isidor [to artemy] "your father", "your father", until he stops and says "father", "father", putting himself as a burakh heir. it's less about being on a same plane as artemy, a brother to him, it's about being him. when the game dev docs call him "artemy's doppeldanger", that's very much this. Anyways i don't think Sticky cares much about him. they have little in common, sticky doesn't have a tenth of the Heritage bagage Rubin has, and while rubin shoulders burakh in his practice and sticky can be #inspired, he neither has the novelty of dankovsky's Capital Endeavors nor the utmost respect sticky owes burakh for literally saving his life. he's also over 2m tall (6'9"), generally grumpy, and vaguely scary. and still sneers and barks at burakh even years after The Event because he still has the heritage en travers de la gorge + grieving and coping. bad.

as far as murky goes i don't think she cares much about dankovsky at first either. she can get sick in p1 bachelor route, but for the endeavor of us making a story with a certain linearity and mashing all of the routes into one, she does not, and only gets sick from the obligatory p2 All Children Sick event. same as sticky wrt rubin, she doesn't owe dankovsky her life (does not realize it. in the event of a linear story, dankovsky did very much help this guy greatly. tons, in fact. but it is not dankovsky who visited her when ill and promise to save her from the illness. these two, too, i don't think have much in common to start off. she is not stand-offish in the way that he is, i don't personally hc dankovsky as autistic so that would not be in my instance something that they find a mirror between each other over, his grief as an adult man over failure (or feeling of it) is completely unlike her own childhood grief of losing both parents and having the man who (she considers) is their murderer walk around the community, be relied upon and loved. grief rewires a person (real #grievingheads rise up) but it did not rewire them the same and they do not exteriorize it the same at all. she does come around to him, from 1) having seen him around already and he's not that bad 2) that's Old Man's Man and if old man Good and Loving then by extension... etc. she Does draw a family portrait i know it for a fact. she does it and never mentions anything of it. that's just her silent way of saying "you cool so we cool👍" i do fw the beetle bonding heavy though i do. i don't think dankovsky brings his collection to ToG (incl. because some of it is at his dad's) but during a visit to the town his Old Ways catch up to him and he gets enthusiastic bout some beetle crawling around and catches it. starts telling everyone about it. murky fw his collecting ways (she collects plant specimens [including hers] and rocks) so she trails him around and starts asking him about other bugs that are Not Beetles because she thinks it makes sense they be grouped together and he has to be like i'm so sorry i have no idea what this thing is. (eventually he gets himself an entomology book and they start bugwatching together. love prevails etc)

[the-judicial-assistants-notebook]

enthralled by the implications of what we could have had

[rigginsstreet]

MAE: And then also her implementing that change and breaking that pattern in her familial relationships that her mom was having of taking back these guys who do not treat them right and her sort of not only saying no to that, but also "I'm not doing that in my life" with Riggins! SCOTT: Big move. Big move. And a lot of Tyra-Tim scenes haven't been making it into the episodes, but have been in the scripts, but a lot of them are the show trying to figure out how to same the same thing and get Tim to the place where he's so honest, and he is in that scene. He's like "I did." And she says "This is exactly what somebody would say before they just revert back to who they were." And I'm like, ah man, can Tyra not believe that people can kind of change at this point? Maybe not until she fully changes her situation. MAE: She's also, like, I think, to a degree that's such a tricky thing about relationships and people in general, like yes people can change, but at some point- at what point does it not work for you anymore? And being- I think that's like a really grown up thing- another kids having to grow up thing to realize that look, you're on your own journey, and I support you and I'm glad you- I understand you have to do this as many times as it takes for it to make sense to you to actually implement this change in your life and have it really be yours, but I can't go with you on that journey anymore.

-IT’S NOT ONLY FOOTBALL: FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS AND BEYOND

[vaguely-concerned]

severing the connection of the titans to themselves, each other and their children, to the world, and with it severing the connection of the dwarves to their true nature, the basic state of love and belonging that should be their birthright. ("our children, orphaned".) severing the connection between rook and the reality and true memory of varric, and thus from themselves and their own healing grief AND love. (do we spot the echo, perhaps?) severing (mostly accidentally this time, I'll give him that) the connection between the fade and the real world, dream and reality.

the scale we're operating on varies from the mythic, the cosmic and existential, to the individual and deeply, nauseatingly intimately personal, but it's the same pattern every time. solas keeps committing the same act of enforced dissociation, of creating orphaned pain that cannot even know itself, estranged from its own history, origins and coherence, unhealable in being impossible to recognize for what it is and thus unreachable. (hello lucanis in the minrathous saved route btw. this theme echoes everywhere when you look for it. I do love this game.) making others strangers to themselves for his own purposes and being surprised when it blows up in his face horrifically once more even when it's his same indelible original sin repeated, again and again and again. dissociation is a natural process the mind uses to protect itself from unbearable pain, but to knowingly cause that in someone, to play around with their connection to themselves and reality so fundamentally, to further your own cause... yeah, I'm not surprised the fabric of the world keeps tearing apart in protest in response to that, there's something so unspeakably insidiously wrong about it. forget snacking down on apples and knowing yourself to be naked or whatever, that sounds like a perfectly blameless if presumably slightly chilly afternoon to me -- force-feeding someone else their own fragmentation for your own gain, however ostensibly worthy your final goal, feels much closer to what real sin would be to me. and even worse because *buries face in hands* he just keeps doing it!!! he should know better, but he keeps doing it!!!!!!

I know I keep joking that solas only has the like three basic moves he keeps rearranging to invent new and spectacular ways of doubling down on making the same mistake yet again, but looking at it like this it's almost not even funny anymore haha. (almost. there is a hysterical amusement and affection that rises within me every time I see his smug little face, we cannot choose who we love only what we do about it.) and the worst thing is that I think he could learn! I do believe he has the capacity, the depth of empathy and soul and intellect, to learn from this, had he chosen to do so, had he let himself pause and truly listen at any point. but at the end of the day, even all these thousands of years later and with the mountains of guilt he lugs around, he chooses not to. and I suspect it's because he fundamentally does not actually understand what he did wrong. on his way to, ostensibly, fix one of these splits he caused, that of the veil, he basically goes and does to rook's mind what he did to the titans, and without the hand of mythal guiding it or anyone else culpable in it with him this time, as if to underline twice that in all these thousands of years he has learned absolutely nothing! almost to an impressive degree! does he even recognize that it's the same thing he's doing? does he even actually afford rook and their internal world that much thought to begin with, aside from what purpose they can serve for him? I'm not so sure. and to do it all with varric's face, with the person he took from them, making them feel complicit in it when they find out, the same way the dwarves will have to grapple with the fact that their whole economy is based in unwittingly selling the blood of like. god. their parents. themselves. solas. babe. what the fUCK. what the fuck. what the fuck.

perhaps part of the blind spot comes down to the way it's the inverse of his own trauma. solas knows exactly what happened to him because it's the endless ache at the center of his existence, the thing -- the first mistake -- he can't escape or undo or forget, nor bring himself to accept: he became real, one coherent set self, with no way back to what and who he was. and what he does with that pain, his one move, is to make others not-real. to himself, and more alarming still to themselves. he makes them forget, as he cannot forget. does he think it's mercy, in some way? does he realize how and why that makes it all so much worse??? and... not quite the same thing, but when mythal dies the structure of his own inner world falls apart catastrophically, and in his vengeance for that, even unintentionally, he imposes that same unravelling on the world. we've all heard the lines about spirits mirroring the real world and what you bring into your relationship with them being what you get in return, but how about the tragedy of the inverse -- the world being brought to mirror you, despite what your intentions might have been going in. no one should have that power, but you claimed that power yourself to do something else and now you have to look into that mirror forever. no such mercy as forgetting yourself for you. you are everywhere now, this broken mirror of a world will reflect yourself back to you no matter where you look. perhaps it would feel easier to simply close your eyes and walk on willfully blindly. AGH it's all so delicious and fucked up and makes me feel absolutely nuts

dissociation is something that's also central in iron bull's character and internal conflict, so presumably this is simply a deep theme trick weekes keeps returning to/is interested in exploring in their writing! and the elegance with which it's done and how inextricably yet subtly embedded in the narrative it is both with bull and overall in veilguard means it's not always engaged with or recognized as I feel it deserves, but to me personally it is Everything and gets at it in ways that feel weirdly real and authentic.

[civetcider]

ok but what if we... DID get you started on that Roblox game ?

WELL I MEAN, SINCE YOU'RE ASKING!!!

i've been playing for like 3 years now, i have nearly 7 million coins and an achievement score of like 1600 and im a royal guild truther!!!

this is walker, he was a first real rareish dragon i ever got, i guess i thought naming him walker would be funny since he doesn't have legs, i want to give him a legendary color potion but i keep forgetting, he has ghost element witch i think is super cool

this is cruiser, the second rareish dragon i ever got! because she was my main dragon for a while yueshi are probably my favorite dragon in the game, she has leg color, eternal element and is 5 mut, yueshi used to be worth a good bit, but they brought them back recently and made them really easy to get so she's kinda cheap as hell now but she's still cool 2 me

this is patty, my big fucking seal, she has leg color isn't she awesome

this is fruity, she also has legendary color and wild eye aura

this is my fucking crab, his name is crusty

this is billy, once i was trying to change one of her colors and i accidentally got rid of her legendary color and i had to spend a million damn dollars to get it back

this is bleeb

also my roblox avatar looks awesome, my banana swag

[intosnarkness]

”come over here and make me” kanej

(1 2 or make up your own) (ask)

Sankt Emerens is not someone Inej was really familiar with before she was brought to Kerch.

As part of a traveling circus, living in a wagon, her family hadn't had a lot of need for harvest festivals. They'd usually taken advantage of them to set up a tent and earn coin in one of the smaller Ravkan villages they passed through. But they never stopped at the shrines or left offerings to him. Why would they, when they didn't grow anything?

Her first autumn in the Barrel, Inej was surprised by the revelry on Emeren's feast day - the sheer number of drunk people in the streets, the fireworks, the raucous laughter and the stream of men whose inhibitions were low enough to stumble into the Menagerie and spend their kruge on girls who couldn't say no.

She thought she might hate Sankt Emerens. She had never hated a saint before, but she was willing to bend a little for someone who inspired such chaos.

Which is why, in her second year in Ketterdam, Inej climbs up to the roof of the Slat with a bottle of whiskey and resolves to not think about anything even remotely religious instead of participating in the celebrations. She decides to pretend that it's a normal night, and that no one on the West Stave is being sold in the name of someone who died in a grain silo.

It doesn't go great.

She's only a drink or so into the whiskey, the amber liquid just kissing the top of the label as she lowers it from her lips, when she feels his presence on the roof with her.

"Hello, Kaz," she offers, giving him a little toast with the bottle. It's about time she got to greet him without looking.

"What business?" he asks, which just makes her snort through her nose. He's come to see her. On the roof. During a festival. Why would she be bringing him business? Sometimes Kaz is just the absolute worst.

"Getting drunk," she replies, though she doesn't think she will. She's had enough whiskey. She doesn't even like the stuff, it's just what Kaz had in his stash that she could take. Plus, if she's going to get drunk, she should do it with her feet on the ground. Nothing good has ever come of trying to get shitfaced on a roof.

Probably her father has a saying about that. Something profound, and wise. She misses him in a way that aches.

Kaz comes to sit next to her, close but carefully avoiding any contact between their bodies, and holds his hand out for the bottle. She takes another sip before she hands it to him.

"This is mine," he says, but he wipes the rim of it with his sleeve before taking a swallow. He winces a little, and Inej can't help but smile. He doesn't shoot whiskey well. It's something no one else seems to ever notice. He sips it, drinks it for status instead of enjoyment. She files it away in her mind, a secret she can sell when he's rich and powerful.

"I borrowed it," she replies, watching him out of the corner of her eye. "You weren't around to ask."

"Someone had to arrange for the fireworks," he shrugs. "There's always profit in this city, if you know where to look."

Somehow, Inej thinks her father would disapprove of that as a proverb. But it does sound like the kind of thing you would say while shaking the hand of your pewmate at a Ghezenite service. Good morning, there's profit to be made. Heathens.

"Of course," she shakes her head and reaches for the bottle again.

Kaz doesn't hand it over, instead making a show of taking another deep drink. This time he coughs, and Inej feels vindicated by it. What an asshole he is.

"Why aren't you out there?" he asks, gesturing with his chin towards the revelers below. "You could get drunk on another man's alcohol."

"Other men want payment for free drinks," she says, before she can consider it. It's true, of course. If you let a man buy you a whiskey he asks for your company. And Inej can't be bought anymore. Not like that. With Kaz, there may still be a price for things, but it's a price she knows up front. A price she can say no to, and know that he'll let her.

That seems to put him on his heels, and she uses his moment of distraction to take the bottle back, swallowing deep. She should stop. She should get down. She doesn't want to.

The alcohol is warm in her stomach, and Kaz is warm at her side, despite the barrier of air and clothing that will always keep them apart.

"Give that back," he demands, his brow furrowed. "Go buy your own whiskey, Wraith."

"Why don't you come over here and make me?" she replies, and when their eyes meet in the darkness, she can feel something coming from him that she's never felt before. Something like want or need. It scares her. It scares her to think that she's on a roof, far away from anyone who can help her, with this boy who she trusts. Who has earned her trust. Who lies and cheats and murders and probably doesn't deserve that trust.

He opens his mouth to reply, but she doesn't hear what he says, because something explodes over the harbor.

It's a firework, a shower of gold and red sparks like a small sun that blazes into existence for a moment. It's breathtaking, and she turns to look at Kaz, watching as the next one goes off, the reflection of green and blue in his dark eyes. He's beautiful, and the way he's looking at her makes her think that maybe- maybe- he thinks she's beautiful, too.

Probably not. Probably Kaz Brekker doesn't have feelings about beauty, unless it's something he can get money from. And he promised her she would never have to do that. So what use would her beauty be to him, anyway?

"Here," Inej hands him the bottle and gets to her feet. "I'm done. Good night, Kaz."

"Stay," he says, his voice warm in the chill of the air. Or maybe it's the alcohol. "Just - just until the fireworks are done. They're good fireworks. I would know."

Inej pauses, looking away from him to where a series of three explosions is going off, one after the other, a high whistling sound giving way to the bursts of color. It is pretty. It reminds her a little of the ones her aunt and uncle used to set off at the solstice, meant to scare back the night and show the way for the sun to return to them.

"Okay," Inej breathes, and returns to sitting an inch away from Kaz, their bodies never touching. If it's payment for the whiskey, well. She's willing to pay it. For now.

Neither of them speaks again as the explosions around them start to pick up, colors and sparks dancing down the firmament. She leans back on her palms, the rough shingles of the roof biting into them. Something soft and firm brushes over her fingers, a split second of contact that feels for all the world like leather.

She doesn't react, schooling herself to stillness. If Kaz touched her hand, she knows, it was an accident. It's not something he would do on purpose. Not to her, and not to anyone. So she won't make a big deal of it.

Kaz doesn't say anything either, just takes another gasping drink from the bottle and sits with her as the sky turns to light.

[ilovemesomevincentprice]

Vincent Price as

The Last Man On Earth (1964) dir. Sydney Salkow

[passionpluto]

other people's theories on why illusen and jhudora became enemies: angsty, well thought-out, full of lore

my theories: maybe one of them stole the other one's favorite lipstick and it was a limited edition holiday exclusive that was never sold again???

(presenting exhibit a! which is...the only exhibit i've got, really!)

[georgiabulldogsfan37]

This is the man who stole my heart

[lamortwrites]

Hit a nice round scary big number of kudos on ao3 so I'm gonna be sappy for a min. I fucking loved writing as a kid -- I wanted to be an author, bc ofc I did -- and I wrote ceaselessly, hundreds of thousands of words, both fanfic and original stuff. I would cram folded bits of plain paper in my pockets and write in tiny tiny handwriting on each side (bc you can fit so much more on the available space that way!) and I'd type in the shitty notes app of my cheap shitty smartphone once I got one and I went through countless notebooks and refill pads and what have you. Sixth form was very bad for me mental health wise and I burnt out really hard, and for a very very long time after I thought that was it. I couldn't get more than a handful of paragraphs done on something, at best, and I wasn't really happy with anything I was doing.

And then I played through a video game as a murderous demigod overflowing with religious guilt and, well, here we are. According to ao3 I have published 37.2k words in the past eight months -- not a whole lot, esp by other people's standards, but for me that is a staggering amount, esp for someone who has struggled a lot w writing anything at all for the past eight years.

I've never really been active in a fandom before (not that I really am now, I stay in my lil corner and you cannot make me leave) but I have made so many incredible friends over the past few months and I am so, so grateful to know you all.

To everyone who has liked my fics, thank you. To everyone who has commented, thank you. To everyone who has talked to me about my writing, about Labrys, about anything...I really cannot thank you enough. Things are still not great for me, honestly. But knowing that there people out there who enjoy my writing is wild, and I am so, so grateful to all of you. <3

[vaguely-concerned]

every time rye hears lucanis really laugh he has such a mortifying '*sick and harrowed with longing to the very depths of his soul* alright :)' moment. I just got the banter where taash talks about stuff their mother told them about crows as a kid and it was a 10 on the soul quaking richter scale event