thedragonaspect

[thedragonaspect]

testing a theory. no middle ground options. data is cleaner without them. please consider re-blogging to help me increase my sample size.

[thedragonaspect]

That's the trap Hannah's in - she might have done the wrong thing for Sam, but the right thing for Commander Shepard.

Too late to fix it for now, but here's hoping Commander Shepard survives so Sam can one day live.

I have a lot of feelings about the fact that the reason Sam survives any of this has an awful fucking lot to do with Hannah Shepard driving him to be the soldier she believed he could be.

[thedragonaspect]

Out of a moment of aching sadness and fury and manic impulsivity, a wizard turns a killer whale trapped in a theme park aquarium into a human so she can smuggle it out of the park and back into the wild.

[thedragonaspect]

Children of late-stage capitalism.

Sounds more like a recent scientific study than fiction.

Spin this wheel first and then this wheel second to generate the title of a YA fantasy novel!

(If the second wheel lands on an option ending with a plus sign, spin it again)

Share what you got!

[thedragonaspect]

Two identical infants lay in the cradle. “One you bore, the other is a Changeling. Choose wisely,” the Fae’s voice echoed from the shadows. “I’m taking both my children,” the mother said defiantly.

[thedragonaspect]

✨ Please reblog the polls to make them reach out to as many people as possible, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people listen to the music with an open mind 💖 Artists and titles will be revealed after the poll's conclusion, check the original post for an update! ✨

Please don't spoil, this is not a quiz. :)

[thedragonaspect]

The thing with vampire romance is that they have to be supernaturally older for it to work. 72-year-old vampire? Like, your grandad's age? Doesn't feel right. But a 172-year-old vampire, that's intriguing. They're out of their time, and have watched their contemporaries grow old and die. You need that extra century to get all melancholy and brooding.

Legitimately the funniest thing just happened in our virtual book group after someone rec’d a vampire romance to me and someone else piped up that it had a “problematic age gap.”

In a vampire romance novel.

Like, yah. I sure fucking hope so.

[thedragonaspect]

The Worst Timeline:

Todd comes on stage.

"How’d that get there?"

Removes I.

"SKYRIM EXTREMELY SPECIAL EDITION OUT NOW!!!"

[thedragonaspect]

A question for Hannah - what was an instance when she genuinely felt she'd done good by Sam? Was she right? What about Daniel?

You ask the BEST Hannah questions.

As an adult, Hannah was absolutely responsible for getting Sam back into the N program after he washed out. She played politics, pulled strings, threw her weight around, abused her power. It's something that risked her career to do. And she took credit for none of it. She let Sam believe that Anderson did it for him, because that's what she thought he needed to hear. I think she genuinely felt like she had done something good for him. She didn't do it for herself - she did it for him.

The irony, of course, is that half the reason he did the N program was the debt he felt he owed to others - like his father - and his driving need to feel like enough. But his path was already on rails by that point, so to quote Eleanor Shellstrop, she both helped him and didn't help him at the same time. In doing it, she reinforced a lot of things that Sam needed to unlearn, but the Sam who was so driven to succeed in the N program got the second chance he badly needed.

As a child, I think there were moments where she shined for him. They would have been few and far between, but just enough to keep his hopes high that one day, she'd want to come back for him, or take him with her to the stars.

I imagine there was a time where the stars aligned and she got to take a pre-teen!Sam on a tour of the ship she was serving on, or even let him tag along on a simple survey mission of the Arcturus star, where he would have learned all about the galactic halo and Arcturus' anomalous orbital path. Sam would have loved it (though Daniel might get a few grey hairs when his son comes home yammering about how Arcturus is going to crash through the galactic disc). An excursion like this would have put both Sam and Hannah in their element, letting them connect in ways she understands - through her profession. He'd have talked about it for months. Years. Hannah would have genuinely enjoyed the experience, and it probably laid the groundwork for how hard she works to help his career. She doesn't know how to be a mother, but the stars in his eyes that day would have moved her to do whatever she could from afar to get him to those stars.

The more I learn about Hannah the more I ache for both her and for Sam.

[thedragonaspect]

Some recent commission examples + a new YCH commission option

[thedragonaspect]

every pokemon is someone's favourite and i'm determined to find a person for every pokemon so please reblog this and tell me what your number one favourite pokemon of all time is

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[thedragonaspect]

For me, there's character resonance in ME3, fighting to save Earth for humanity even though it was never Darcy's home. "Save Earth" is the simple motivating tagline against the Reapers, but a part of her knows it's not going to be that simple.

Another random poll cause I'm bored

[thedragonaspect]

[thedragonaspect]

Lis (mostly monochrome) in the Astral Sea (yay, purple everywhere!)

I was tagged by @pickel182 to make my Tav in this picrew here and (shhh) I'd already done this one before so here's Jen along with a version of Astarion I'd made:

Jen: tall buff Paladin who is half-elf and half-Deva and loves our little bitey boy. She makes an appearance in my BG3 fics over on AO3 all of which are collated in The Blood that Sings in Your Veins collection

I ofc had to give her wings and a starry background; as for Astarion we all know him and I had to give him some earrings and a bottle of something that is likely poison for his weapons

If @thedragonaspect is interested I'd love to see Lis in this - otherwise anyone who sees this feel free to do it

[thedragonaspect]

Day 3 - Love, Day 4 - Home, and Day 5 - Struggle.

From my to-write list, this is the start of Kaidan's POV in between ME2 and 3. He explores the stripped-back ship during the overhaul from Cerberus to Alliance.

The SR-2 is not Normandy, and never will be. Kaidan wants to make that very clear, but there’s no one to tell. Shepard isn’t here. With the way the ship has been gutted, there’s no sign that she ever was.

What he doesn't know is how much that's an echo of what Darcy woke up to. Separated by six months, they both step onto that ship and feel the absence of home.

A little something for the Mass Effect Trilogy Appreciation Week.

Day 1 - Family, and Day 2 - Friendships have a lot of overlap centered on one OC and the impetus for my first Mass Effect fic. And she wasn't planned in the slightest.

It started with revisiting ME3, reaching the 'Lola' scene, and wondering if and why my Darcy Shepard would tolerate that nickname. Then, the notion that she'd had worse nicknames - and that left the empty space of 'who from?' Enter the OC.

Her surname, Graves, came first, then Kayla - she just kept mentally turning up during my commute, familiar like she'd always been part of the story. There was a physicality and attitude, all forming with inexplicable clarity. In hindsight, I've figured out a few of the influences, but it remains the most forcible manifestation of an OC ever I've experienced.

Mikayla Graves is a spunky, non-combat L2 biotic and Darcy's best friend and de facto adopted sister, making a family of 3 with Hannah. Because Darcy isn't a biotic, it's Kaidan and Kayla who provide the lens to flesh out the muddy history of biotics and L2s - Kaidan as a (mostly) success story, and Kayla as the could-have-been-worse civilian. I've got so much more to say for my fic interpretation of ME, and hopefully there'll be time for it one day.

[thedragonaspect]

Tagged by @swaps55 to post a gif from 10 12 favorite films without naming them.

In trying to narrow these down, I realized a lot of my favourites are heavily influenced by a good soundtrack. For context, I got into Star Wars as The Phantom Menace came out - I was never primed to hate it, and really enjoyed the prequel trilogy. And the Mustafar duel was so good - choreography, cinematic location, and epic music.

Avatar is frustratingly flawed (and a huge time commitment), but the music does so much for it. I have the soundtrack for At World's End, and Drink Up Me Hearties was such a perfect musical close to the trilogy.

Ophelia makes the honorable mentions because of my favourite negative movie review of all time. Someone who attended "Ophelia", with the tagline, "Hamlet Through Her Eyes," and left a review complaining "I didn't like it, it's just Hamlet from Ophelia's point of view." I mean, yeah, that's exactly what the film advertised itself as...

And Cowboys vs Aliens, I love for committing to exactly what it said in the title, and it was one of the first films I saw with my husband.