For @13--ravens
todays bird
Jules of Nature

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ellievsbear
Sade Olutola

izzy's playlists!
wallacepolsom
Today's Document
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
Cosimo Galluzzi
we're not kids anymore.
cherry valley forever

Product Placement

pixel skylines
let's talk about Bridgerton tea, my ask is open
RMH
Aqua Utopia|海の底で記憶を紡ぐ

roma★
One Nice Bug Per Day
Alisa U Zemlji Chuda

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@13--ravens
For @13--ravens
I’ve had Cole in my party more often lately and I just love the spirit boi a lot okay.
me, lying awake at 5 am: how many people saw solas drag the unconscious inky across skyhold during the dream sequence. why didnt they stop him
Ghilan'nain
Decided I wanted to challenge myself with a redraw of this original piece I did of Ghilan'nain back when I started digital art in summer of 2018.
Am happy and surprised to see how far I've come since then. Maybe a redraw of my Evanuris' series will be something to put on my To-Do list.
meta masterlist: dragon age
The Suspicious Fact that Solas is an Atheist (But He’s Not Really?) or: Due to the Nature of Spirits and the Fade and Belief-As-Worship, The Evanuris Were Maybe Actual Deities and We’re All In Deep Shit (w additional commentary) (more additional commentary)
The Mistranslation of “Him Solas Evanuris” and how that poem may be telling the story about how Solas became an Evanuris
About Titans, the Blight, and The Evanuris
Are the Old Gods the Keys to the Evanuris’ Prison?
My Dragon Age 4 Expectations
Solavellan: the Romance about the Sacredness of Consent
Solas Takes Back the Anchor and He Has It Now
One of the Cole + Solas banters is secretly about Mythal
the Puzzle of the Dead Hand in Ghilain’nain’s Grove
more about Elves being Spirits
Inquisition, A Game About Empathy And Compassion
My Very Earliest Solas Meta :’)
Every Dragon Age: Inquisition character is a Foil to Solas
Parallels between Solas and the Mayor of Crestwood
Why Lavellan Would Still Be Worried For Solas After Two Years
The Elven Faction in DA4 Sounds Intimidating
The irony of players hating Solas when his character arc depends entirely on you and how you treat him
The Man on the Island
All New, Faded For Her
Flemeth and Kieran in the Fade
The Nightmare Demon, Solas and “Dying Alone”
The Forbidden Ones and the Forgotten Ones
Imshael Wants Solas To Win
The Hunt of the Fell Wolf
Solas and Skyhold
Solas and the Eluvians
Solas and Felassan
Solas and Mihris
RARE CONTENT/DELETED CONTENT:
Master Tag for All Cut/Rare Content
Entire Text Script/Talktable of Inquisition
All The Music In Dragon Age: Inquisition For Download
in-house developer character descriptions!
rare dialogue - Solas and Morrigan talk about Mythal being a Goddess of Vengeance
more rare dialogue from the Temple of Mythal
scene description of the Flemeth + Solas scene
cut dialogue - Morrigan in the last scene with Solas and Flemeth
Everything Solas has to say about the Blight/Red Lyrium
Good details about the Post-Temple-of-Mythal conversation
The Default Gamestate for DA4??
Cut Inquisition Quest - “The Big Bad Wolf”
“The Artifact” One of two pieces I did for Beyond the Veil charity fanzine
影戰士 by Tina Yeh
hey guys here’s my review of how much various horror movies fit their titles
scream: there is a respectable amount of screaming. could have been called “guy in a screamy mask with a knife” but they took a risk with the title and I respect that 7/10
the descent: there is a good amount of descending in this movie 8/10
it follows: it does, in fact, follow 9/10
Oculus: dumb. Idk what oculus means and I don’t care. shld have been called “murder mirror” 0/10
the babadook: movie is based around an entity known as the babadook. very good 10/10
creep: I guess the guy is fairly creepy, but I i wish the title was a little more specific. Work the wolf mask in there next time 5/10
the exorcist: there is an exorcist 8/10
the houses that October built: October can’t build houses. It’s a month. Idiots. 2/10 because it does, at least, take place in October
silent hill: I don’t think there are any hills that are more silent than the average hill in this movie 1/10
paranormal activity: there is activity that is fairly paranormal 9/10
the blair witch project: I guess what they’re doing could be counted as a project, and it DOES involve the blair witch, but I’d call it more of a “documentary” than a “project” 7/10
split: there are, to the best of my knowledge, no splits of either the gymnastic or banana variety in this movie 0/10
the midnight meat train: there is a train at midnight, and some meat themes throughout the movie, but the train itself is not filled with meat 6/10
the conjuring: nothing is actually conjured. they’re actually trying to get rid of something, which is like. the opposite of conjuring -100/10
it: ‘it’ could refer to anything. the clown. the paper boat. the bond of friendship between a misfit gang of children. this makes me want to explode. 2/10
as above, so below: i’d say hell is fairly different than paris. 4/10 because i think paris is kinda overrated
don’t breathe: would be solid advice if people didn’t need to breathe. should be ‘breathe, but as quietly as possible’ 6/10
alien: yup! 10/10
hereditary: i guess? seems like it won’t really be carried on after this generation, though 7/10
the killing of a sacred deer: no deer, sacred or otherwise, are killed. not even once 0/10
silence of the lambs: lambs being quiet IS referenced in the movie once, but again, there are zero lambs on-screen 3/10
the vvitch: there sure is one 8/10
funny games: NOT funny -20/10
Dismantle what’s past, build a new future.
• Support me on Patreon •
color palette meme ↪ @ thehighwind asked : Precious Metals (Gold) + Dorian Pavus
Medieval Vader by Jens Kuczwara
Rant about fanfiction writing
I was just informed by my brother (who thinks he’s a better writer than anyone else because he has some fancy degree in writing) that fanfiction “doesn’t count” as “real writing” because you aren’t using your own “ideas.”
He doesn’t know that I write fanfiction. He probably wouldn’t have admitted his opinion if her did. But it has pretty much solidified that I will never tell anyone I know in person what I write.
I’ve already been told by several family members that my obsession with a “stupid tv show” is ridiculous and that I’m “too old” to fangirl.
Sigh. /rant
In Defense of Fanfiction
I am a professional writer and editor in real life. I have a double degree in English and writing and am currently in school once more to obtain a master’s degree. If your brother’s fancy writing degree was worth anything at all, he should be able to admit that the vast majority of all literature is in fact fanfiction of someone else’s story and its elements. In other words, no one’s idea is, by definition, original.
Let’s take a look at just a few examples to support my theory that some of the most important or well-known pieces of literature ever created qualify as fanfiction:
Ancient/Old Literature
· Around 2000 BCE: The Epic of Gilgamesh was inspired as a fanfiction of a historical King of Uruk, mixed with Mesopotamian mythology. The story includes the character Utnapishtim, who lives through a world-wide flood by building a ship per the instructions of the god Enki and ultimately landing on a mountain in the Middle East, similar to Noah’s story from the Bible (dates for the book of Genesis vary anywhere from 1400 BCE to 800 BCE). Many historians suggest that the story of Noah was directly inspired by Gilgamesh’s story of Utnapishtim. Other historians suggest the two were simply inspired by a similar source. Either way, there’s too many startling overlaps to classify Utnapishtim and Noah as only a coincidence.
· 20-ish BCE: The Roman author Virgil wrote The Aeneid, which is a direct sequel to the previously created epic The Iliad attributed to Greek bard Homer. Virgil was also known for writing pastoral poems based off and inspired by the work of the great poet Theocritus (280 BCE). As a fun addition, Theocritus himself was known for rewriting the cyclops villain (Polyphemus) of Homer’s Odyssey into a love-sick idiot in his work, Idyll XI.
Medieval Era (500-1500-ish CE)
· 700-1000: The Alphabet of ben Sirach was an anonymous Hebrew collection of satires that included a parody of the biblical Genesis story of Adam and Eve. The story gave Adam a totally different wife by the name of Lilith, the character of which was inspired by Babylonian mythology. The whole of the collection is additionally wrapped in a fictional account of telling the stories to the historical figure of the Babylonian king Nebuchadnezzar—another real person fanfiction of a celebrity from that time.
· Around 1000: The world’s first novel, The Tale of Genji by Lady Murasaki Shikibu, inspired the massive outpouring of Japanese Noh theater plays involving characters from the novel, such as Aoi no Ue (Lady Aoi), which has been attributed to a few people (Zeami Motokiyo and Inuo). This play appropriates the Lady Aoi from Shikibu’s psychological novel to explore her death and is only one example of the available fanfictions of the novel.
· 1308-1320: Dante’s Divine Comedy (known most famously for the Inferno) is a literal OC self-insertion of the Italian Dante Alighieri himself into the hell, purgatory and heaven from Catholic / biblical texts. Its format is in an epic, in an attempt to outdo the Aeneid and Iliad before it. It also includes an insertion of a ghostly Virgil, who copied the Iliad to write the Aeneid. Furthermore, Dante’s work includes insertions of real historical people that Dante didn’t like. It’s possibly the most self-indulgent fanfiction ever created while also being named one of the greatest poems in literature.
· 1392: Geoffrey Chaucer (known as the father of English literature) wrote a famous collection called The Canterbury Tales. The collection takes its basic format and inspiration from Italian author Giovanni Boccaccio’s The Decameron (written in 1351). It’s suggested that some of the tales Chaucer uses actually originated from Boccaccio’s work.
Renaissance Era (1550-1660-ish CE)
· 1590: English poet Edmund Spenser borrowed the legend of Arthur of the Round Table in his epic poem, The Faerie Queene. In it, Arthur is pretty love-sick over the fairy queen.
· 1597: English playwright Shakespeare borrowed various mythologies and historical figures and mixed them together. Not even his most popular play, Romeo and Juliet, was original. He took the idea from a poem written by Arthur Brooke in 1562, called, “The Tragicall Hystorye of Romeus and Iuliet.” Even more interesting, Brooke had taken his idea from the 1554 Giulietta e Romeo by Italian author Matteo Bandello. (Shakespeare repeatedly sourced other people’s ideas or historical existence for his plays.)
Enlightenment Era (1660-1789)
· 1667: English poet John Milton wrote Paradise Lost, a fanfiction epic of the biblical story in the book of Genesis about the fall of creation and humankind into imperfection.
· 1712: English poet Alexander Pope wrote a mock-heroic epic called the Rape of the Lock to make fun of all the serious epic writers before him, borrowing such images as the way epic warriors put on armor and connecting it to the way rich people put on rich clothing and jewelry. He used other standard epic elements as repeated throughout The Iliad, Aeneid, and so forth.
· 1759: French writer and inventor, Voltaire, wrote a satire Candide. It borrowed various elements from Tales from a Thousand and One Arabian Nights, a collection of Middle Eastern folktales from the Islamic Golden Age.
Romantic Era (1789-1850)
· 1819: In Don Juan, English poet Lord Byron took the pre-dated legend of Don Juan, which was about a man who seduced a lot of women, and reversed the original plot so that Don Juan ended up seduced by a lot of women.
· 1820: English poet John Keats wrote a poem as a retelling of the Greek mythological creature called Lamia, which was a half-woman and half-monster (description varies depending on the Greek source). A lot of his works borrowed heavily from Greek mythology and literature, and he idolized the English Renaissance poet Edmund Spenser, to a point where his first work was called, “Imitation of Spenser” (1814). In it, he borrowed various images from Spenser’s epic, The Faerie Queene.
· 1843: English writer Charles Dickens wrote A Christmas Carol, based off the various stories compiled in the 1841 and 1842 The Lowell Offering, a publication magazine written by a group of intellectual but mostly anonymous women. He borrowed the certain pieces of plot, language, and descriptions for Scrooge’s ghostly encounters from the stories “A Visit from Hope” (anonymous), “Happiness” (anonymous), and “Memory and Hope” (by someone named Ellen). A Christmas Carol is additionally littered with biblical allusions all over the place.
· 1844: French writer Alexander Dumas borrowed The Three Musketeers, as well as many of the story’s side-characters, from The Memoirs of Monsieur d'Artagnan by French author Gatien de Courtilz de Sandras. He didn’t even change the names or who the villain, the Cardinal, was.
· 1845: American author Edgar Allan Poe wrote The Thousand and Second Tale of Scheherazade, in which he has the mythical Scheherazade from the Tales from a Thousand and One Arabian Nights telling another story about the legendary Sinbad the Sailor.
· 1861: Hungarian author Imre Madach wrote The Tragedy of Man, which reverses the biblical moral principles of God and Satan: In this story, God is the violent and evil ruler, and Satan is the jaded/trickster victim just trying to open humanity’s eyes to the truth.
Modern Era (1900ish-1950s)
· 1922: Irish novelist James Joyce wrote his stream-of-consciousness novel Ulysses, which was based off of Homer’s Odyssey, to a point where he took the characters and simply renamed them, as well as aligned the structure of his book to the various episodes in Homer’s work.
· 1930: The Nancy Drew series was created under the penname Carolyn Keene, who did not exist. Instead, an American man named Edward Stratemeyer would write three pages of a story, then send it to one of several ghostwriters who wanted to write Nancy Drew. The ghostwriter would take the story and expand it. The anonymous group of ghostwriters all writing about the same character still exists today. Each individual ghostwriter has made changes to Nancy’s personality, looks, and age, as well as the type of plots said character engages in.
· 1937: English writer JRR Tolkien wrote The Hobbit and then Lord of the Rings in the 1950s. He borrowed the names of characters and places after those seen in the Icelandic sagas Poetic Edda and Prose Edda by Snorri Sturluson. Tolkien admitted he based the physical appearance of Gandalf off of the Norse god Odin. He modeled the character of Aragorn directly after Beowulf, from the old English epic (700-1000 BCE) Beowulf. Aragorn himself even paraphrases the Anglo-Saxon poem, “The Wanderer,” as an example of a verse created by his people of Rohan. Another fun fact is that Tolkien specifically borrowed the phrase “my precious,” from a Middle English poem called Pearl. Additionally, Tolkien was a big fan of romantic prose/poetry writer William Morris and wanted to write like him, so he borrowed a lot of phrases, aesthetics, and even names from such works like the 1888 The House of the Wolfings by Morris, including the place called “Mirkwood.” Of curious note is that Morris’s work was massively influenced by Virgil’s Aeneid.
· 1938: African-American author Richard Wright wrote a collection of stories called Uncle Tom’s Children, with an obvious borrowing of the title from Uncle Tom’s Cabin, written by Harriet Beecher Stowe in 1852.
· 1930s-present: DC and Marvel comics mostly just updated the mythological gods and goddesses for a modern era, appropriating their names, special relics, and abilities for their heroes, and then mixing them with some modern-day cover identifies. As an example, Wonder Woman was originally a nod to the Greek goddess Diana, a nod to the female Amazon warriors, and a redesigned image of Rosie the Riveter. As another example, the Flash is a reproduction of the Greek god Hermes, his winged helmet further clarifying the connection. Even the name Superman was not entirely original. 1938 Illustrator of Superman, Joe Shuster, took the name “Superman” from the German “Ubermensh,” a term coined by the philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. As a final example, sometimes the appropriation from mythology is incredibly obvious, as in the case of Thor.
· 1949: English author George Orwell reviewed a book called We by Russian author Yevgeny Zamyatin. He wrote a rave review on it and declared that he would try to write something similar, which ultimately became 1984, sharing many similar plot points and concepts while bringing the story of We into a more realistic environment. The novel We also inspired Ayn Rand’s Anthem and Kurt Vonnegut’s Player Piano, for which Vonnegut admitted he also borrowed concepts from Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World.
· 1950s: The Chronicles of Narnia by British author C.S. Lewis was based on biblical stories conveyed through various mythological elements as well.
Postmodern Era (1950s-Present, debatably)
· 1977: African-American author, Toni Morrison, wrote a critically acclaimed novel called Song of Solomon, which took its title name, as well as the names of several characters and plot points, from the Bible.
· 1988: British-Indian author Salman Rushdie’s The Satanic Verses was inspired by the life of the Islamic prophet Muhammed. Its title is a direct reference to controversial verses once placed in the Quran but then removed. These highly controversial and sensitive connections to Islamic and Old Testament personalities of Gabriel and Satan resulted in the banning of Rushdie’s book from several regions.
· 1997-2007: The Harry Potter series by British author JK Rowling borrows heavily from historical alchemy, including the age-old legend of the philosopher’s stone and the 1652 book Culpeper’s Complete Herbal, which was about the medicinal and occult properties of plants, which helped her build how magic was used in her stories. Rowling also admits the 1652 book inspired many of the character’s names. She appropriates several historical figures as well for her own purposes (as a sort of real-person fanfiction), including references to alchemists Nicolas Flammel and Paracelsus. She even admits to, while writing Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, dreaming about Flammel showing her how to make a philosopher’s stone.
· 2003: American author Dan Brown’s The Da Vinci Code and its twisting conspiracies are based almost entirely on the books of Margaret Starbird, most of which were written between 1993 and 2003.
· 2009: Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, by American author Seth Grahame-Smith, is a rehashing of Jane Austen’s 1813 Pride and Prejudice. But with zombies.
· 2015: American writer of critically acclaimed The Outsiders, S.E. Hinton, claims that she has posted anonymous fanfictions of her own novel, as well as at least four Supernatural fanfics, being a huge fan of the show and of the paranormal.
As a professionally educated and trained writer and editor myself, I had to study the intertextualities of several of the pieces I mentioned above. But this is not an exhaustive world list by any means and is missing some other fantastic and influential writers—I’ve included only what has come to my mind in a short time. Plots and characters and ideas have been largely passed around throughout the history of literature. Without fanfiction, a solid portion of well-known literature would not exist.
In fact, many authors and even inventors will say that there is no such thing as an original idea. Certain pieces get touted as creative because they combine previously suggested elements in a different or thought-provoking way. (Don’t even get me started on how science fiction is a driving force behind many scientific advancements today!)
If you’re writing fanfiction, then you’re participating in a tradition that spans millennia. There is no piece of literature created in some “original” vacuum. That is precisely why literary critics, and those who have professionally studied fiction in an academic setting, use the word “intertextuality” to describe how works of fiction are ultimately interrelated in some way or another.
Therefore, fanfiction is the legacy of literature. If Virgil, Dante, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Keats, Poe, Dickens, Tolkien, and Brown can write fanfiction about and expand other people’s works, you can too. So the next time someone tells you to stop writing fanfiction, or tells you that it’s not a valid form of art, tell them that they obviously have never read the most important historical works of fiction, or even many popular modern stories, which are all rehashed fanfiction stories, borrowing characters and names and setting and even syntax. Rant written for @greenappleeyes and everyone else unfairly shamed for writing fanfiction. Content was retrieved from my own class notes, as well as publically available online interviews and articles.
In addition, “Wide Sargasso Sea” by Jean Rhys (1966) - named by Time as one of the 100 best English-language novels since 1923 - is a fanfiction novel based on the characters created by Charlotte Bronté in “Jane Eyre”.
Me in Dragon Age 4 trying to figure out which of the mages has a hidden agenda:
tbh the most unrealistic thing in harry potter is when mrs weasley in the first book asks “now what’s the platform number?”
like this woman has been going to that school for seven years and then dropped kids off on the same place for nearly ten like why on earth would she forget the platform number
I still have the headcanon that Molly BAMF Weasley saw a scrawny underfed child with an owl who had no idea where he was going and looked lost and confused and was like, “Ah, yep, new son.” but didn’t want to scare him by outright approaching and asking if he needed help so she was just like, “MUGGLES, MUGGLES EVERYWHERE! DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT THE PLATFORM NUMBER TO WIZARD SCHOOL IS? WHAT’S THAT? NINE AND THREE QUARTERS? OH, YES, THAT’S RIGHT. THE PLATFORM NUMBER IS N I N E A N D T H R E E Q U A R T E R S!”
Of course seeing as how Harry isn’t the most observant bloke, she probably ushered her kids past him fifty times as different ones screamed the platform number until they finally got his attention.
With that being said, and I’m extremely sorry for taking over your post:
11:45:
They had just enough time to make it onto the platform, get their trunks loaded, and say their goodbyes. Molly ushered them all along, wishing that she could just Apparate them all onto the train and be done with it. There was too much to do, too much to say, too m—
All at once, she screeched to a halt. Percy crashed into her, causing the twins to snicker.
A tiny boy was being crossly turned away by a security guard. A boy whose ribs poked through his baggy shirt, whose glasses were broken, whose jaw was trembling as he tried to find his way. Well, surely she could be the person to guide him there? And did he…? Yes! He had an owl! He was one of them!
The poor child; he looked so lost.
Where were his parents?
Never mind, never mind. She would see to it that he would get on the train. But she had to be careful. She couldn’t startle him. He’d run off and that would be the end of it. No, no, they had to be crafty.
11:47 AM:
“Packed with Muggles of course,” Molly said loudly, ushering her very confused children past the boy. “What’s the platform number again?”
“Nine and three quarters,” Percy said. “Mother, how could you have forg—?”
It was George who nudged him as he understood what she was doing. She had done it before, after all, and she would do it again.
Unfortunately, it didn’t work.
The boy didn’t seem to notice them.
11:48 AM:
“Packed with Muggles of course,” said Molly again, marching her children past once more. “What’s the platform number?”
“Nine and three quarters,” Fred and George screamed in unison.
And still the boy remained lost.
11:49 AM:
“Mum,” Ron panted, tripping over himself as he ran to keep up with her. “Slow down!”
Molly ignored him as she practically flew past the poor boy. “Packed with Muggles of course! Now, what’s the platform number?”
“Nine and three quarters,” Ron bellowed.
11:50 AM:
Molly honestly didn’t care if her entire family missed the train and she had to set off across the UK herself like a mother leading a flock of ducklings: she was going to help this boy onto the bloody train.
She marched past him with a fiery determination and said, “Packed with Muggles of course!”
The boy looked up.
Yes! Okay, this was it, this was it, this was it. Play it cool. He was following them. Listening. Pretending not to.
They stopped.
“Now,” Molly said. “What’s the platform number?”
“Nine and three quarters,” piped Ginny.
Victory!
The next nine minutes were a whirlwind of chaos but they managed to get the boy through the barrier. At Molly’s insistence, Fred and George popped up and helped him get his trunk into the compartment. She handed Ron an extra sandwich and muttered, “Tell him that everywhere else was full.”
He dutifully nodded.
As the train took off, she waved to her children, including her newest one.
Bristling with pride, she began to head back to the Burrow. There was simply no time to waste. She had a jumper to knit.
to war
I’m just….so….tired.