So I completely missed Dragon Age Sapphic Week way back in September of last year because of health issues. But I'd been really looking forward to it- so I ended up finishing this, which is what I’d prepped for Day One (Doomed Yuri).
So I completely missed Dragon Age Sapphic Week way back in September of last year because of health issues. But I'd been really looking forward to it- so I ended up finishing this, which is what I’d prepped for Day One (Doomed Yuri).
Finally finished my Lavellan to go with the rest of my DA protags!
Here's Thyrias Lavellan, originally an Orlesian city elf who lived in Halamshiral, he joined clan Lavellan after narrowly missing being present during the burning of Halamshiral. He eventually has a run-in with Briala and becomes part of her network of elven spies, which is what leads him to being present at the conclave during the explosion. He does his best to mask his Orlesian accent since things would very quickly become politically tricky if people knew he originated in Halamshiral. He hides this fact from the rest of the Inquisition as well, at least until after Celene's assassination at the Winter Palace.
Ning Yingying felt normal, too. The rage and grief were normal, now, even as she held the threads of irritation and sadness in her mental hands in an effort to handle them safely. So she finally acted on an impulse she had carried for months now and stepped closer.
“Liu-shishu,” Ning Yingying said.
Liu Qingge turned to look at her, eyebrow raised.
She clenched her fists and bit her lip. Liu Qingge waited patiently without saying a word. She took a breath and found her courage.
“Liu-shishu,” Ning Yingying repeated. “Will you train me?”
They were an Antivan Crow elf kiddo taken in by Zevran and my Tabris while they were dismantling house Arainai, who later went back to infiltrate the Crows to try to prove themself to their objectively incredibly cool dads who saved the world once and also systematically dismantled an entire Antivan Crow house.
Admittedly I finished this like the day after I posted my Hawke, I've just been forgetting to upload it.
Anyways here's Hyacinth Tabris! My Grey Warden. He's a rogue but he found the chasind robes at a very early level and liked how they looked better than any of the rogue armor in the game so that's all he wore.
He's very different from Atlas, he comes off as very diplomatic, reasonable, and responsible, but internally he's full of witticisms and snide comments. He's just good at keeping his mouth shut and not saying all the stupid shit that comes to mind.
Alright what's up everyone! If you do not follow my personal blog fair warning: I have become very suddenly obsessed with Dragon Age and have been playing thru the games for the first time ever- so expect the next chunk of art from me to be very Dragon Age-centric
So Anyways here's Atlas Hawke, the fun little guy I made for my DA2 playthrough and became incredibly attached to much faster than I expected.
More incoherent rambles and thoughts on my Hawke under the cut- it's very stream of consciousness under there and also very very long you've been warned
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Just like.... wow.... okay so I've now played through Inquisition and finished Trespasser and I've gotta say DA2 really took the cake for me, like by far my favorite of the 3. (Like please don't get me wrong it absolutely had it's issues I'm not saying it was a perfect game or that all the writing choices were amazing) But I just really enjoyed the smaller more personal scale of the conflicts in DA2, I liked that Hawke was even more Just Some Guy, and like yeah the Warden and the Inquisitor aren't like special chosen ones or anything, but they are both tasked with these gigantic world-saving country-spanning quests, and Hawke? Hawke is just a guy trying to do right by his family. Like he doesn't have any world saving mission. He is just trying to Get By and that really made this game hit home more for me than the other two.
I said I was gonna ramble about my Hawke and I just ended up rambling about DA2 itself... whoops. ANYWAYS- Atlas- My Boy Atlas- I recognize that a purple mage Hawke is the most common route people go and I am by no means unique or original, but this game series is very new to me, personally, and I'm having fun anyways. (From here on out I will be talking about my Custom Hawke and not like, Hawke the player character in general)
And gosh I'm such a sucker for complicated and messy family dynamics, and DA2 does that so well. Like the Hawke family is Fucked Up. Bethany gets killed by that ogre while they're fleeing Lothering when she tries to save their mom from said ogre, and Leandra immediately turns and blames Atlas for Bethany's death- and then later in Act 1, Carver, best baby brother Carver, also throws Bethany's death in his face while they're having their own stupid argument which started because Atlas was trying to cheer Carver up and boy did that fail dramatically.
Like Atlas is witty and charming and sarcastic and kind of an asshole sometimes, and comes of as incredibly over confident and cocksure and that's because he's very much been shoved into the role of 'okay you've gotta take care of everything and if you don't everything bad is Your Fault, and since you're in charge of taking care of everything, everything bad is automatically Your Fault No Matter What Anyways.' So he's gotta playact like he has everything all together and under control, because what the fuck is his family gonna do if he doesn't? And underneath all of that he's an incredibly stressed out guy, who does not feel like he can ever let on that he's stressed and making everything up as he goes and just hoping that things work out well.
And like he tries to do the right thing- by god does this man try. He brings Carver with him on the deep roads mission because he and Carver work well together! Carver wants to go! He loves his little brother, there is no one he would rather have by his side than his little brother! There is no one he trusts more than Carver to have his back! Carver and Atlas are incredibly close. Like Carver is the one person who actually recognizes that the way Leandra projects all of her own issues onto them, but like mostly Atlas, is really shitty! He acknowledges that after apologizing for his part in the argument I mentioned above. And then of course Carver ends up getting the Blight during the deep roads mission, because nothing can ever go right for them. Thankfully Atlas brought Anders along, so Carver is able to become a Grey Warden instead of DYING, but he has to leave, and Atlas doesn't even find out whether or not Carver survived his joining for months. And of course Leandra blames Atlas for this, she begged him not to bring Carver along with him, and he did anyways and now she's never going to see her youngest son again and it's all Atlas's fault. And that's how Act 1 ends and I just.... Auaghghghghhhh-
And then we've got Act 2, and like mid-way through Act 2 is probably the high point for Atlas. Things peak for him here and then it's all one big snowball downhill from there. So like, Atlas romanced Fenris, because this man is addicted to difficulty, and of course was going to immediately be infatuated with the guy that makes hating mages half his personality. (I mean it wasn't immediate, it was more of a slow build, mutual-trust, to friendship, to lovers thing, especially considering three years pass between Acts 1 and 2) And yeah, Atlas doesn't hide the fact that he's very into Fenris, and Fenris definitely hasn't seemed opposed to this. So after Fenris kills Hadriana and then they get together for one night- Atlas is like, riding the high of what was probably the first positive physical affection he's gotten since Carver left for the Grey Wardens three years ago. And then of course the following morning Fenris immediately breaks things off with Atlas, so what Atlas thought was going to be the start to a romantic relationship, just ends up being an ill-fated one night stand. And like! Atlas does not begrudge Fenris this! He completely understands Fenris's reasons, he is not upset with Fenris at all! He is still just completely crushed though. So yeah, things peaked for Atlas for like one very short night and then start speeding downhill. Because not long after that is when his mom is killed by a fucking serial killer. As if things weren't already fucked enough for Atlas, already having lost his twin younger siblings.
Also side note- I love the fact that DA2 is portrayed as Varric telling the story of Hawke's life to Cassandra, and that we know Varric is an unreliable narrator. Because like Leandra's last words to Hawke being that she's so proud of her strong boy- at least with how Atlas's relationship was with Leandra up to this point- felt so so out of character for Leandra, and I love the headcanon that that's Varric giving his bestie some closure narratively that he never actually got in reality. So like that's canon for Atlas. Because that was Leandra's decapitated head frankensteined onto another woman's body- and magicked into a reanimated corpse that absolutely did not seem like it had any conscious thought- like she was already dead before Atlas showed up. There were no final words. There was no nice narratively satisfying ending to that one. And I like it better that way tbh........
We're just gonna like skip over the whole qunari invasion subplot because I am. Not a fan of how that was handled. Writing wise. Like what the fuck was that. Like I have THOUGHTS about it but they're not gonna go on tumblr. Anyways. Moving on.
Champion of Kirkwall! Yay! Meredith knows he's an apostate mage and is just Waiting for any half-decent excuse to either bring him to the circle, make him tranquil, or kill him? Not yay! Atlas is absolutely good friends with Anders, and has been helping with the mage underground every chance he has. People in the city have been whispering about making him of all people Viscount and he has no idea how to feel about that, like he'd rather not, but who else is gonna do it? And who else would do it and actually give a shit about mages and elves and just like lower class people in general? Like this incredibly stressed out guy does not need more added to his plate, he really doesn't. But he's definitely thinking about it. I mean hey! It's not like he's got any family around to take care of at this point right? Why not just take that eldest daughter syndrome thing he's got going on and use it to fix the city?
The one bright spot for him here is that hey, at least he and Fenris get back together. That one's nice. They both deserve something positive and comforting after all the shit they've been through.
And then Meredith is trying to invoke the right of annulment and Anders blows up the fucking Chantry. And Atlas can't even blame him for it. After 6 or 7 years of painstakingly working to try to find peaceful ways to improve the lives of mages and getting blocked at every turn, with the knowledge that Meredith has been getting worse and worse and worse, and has been actively looking for any excuse to invoke the right of annulment and just kill every single mage in Kirkwall? And Grand Cleric Elthina has been absolutely no help, and has absolutely been subtly on Meredith's side the entire time. Like at a certain point, violence really does feel like the only option left. When you've been backed this far into a corner.
So obviously Atlas takes the side of the mages, doesn't kill Anders, is honestly like 'my dude, my buddy, my guy, my best pal(aside from Varric, and my boyfriend Fenris) why didn't you tell me? I would've helped you on purpose.' He's elated when Carver shows up during that final push to the Gallows, like the whole situation is absolutely shit, and it'd definitely be better if his beloved brother was no where near danger, but he's a Grey Warden now so that's not even an option anyways. So it's just nice to have him around even during such an intensely stressful moment. Honestly everything is so unbelievably fucked at this point that Atlas isn't even stressed anymore. Like things literally cannot get worse. He's kind of riding the high of things not being able to get worse. Or maybe that's just adrenaline. Who knows. Aveline and Sebastian both leave, Atlas is unbothered. Doesn't even try to convince Aveline to side with him later either, like he's never really gotten along with her, and he did not like how she treated Carver. Fenris and everyone else stick around, and that's what matters to Atlas, like all the people he was actually close friends with stick with him in this moment (Fenris, Varric, Isabella, Merrill, Anders, & Carver)
And then yeah, they save the mages, defeat Meredith, leave Kirkwall with the renegade mages. Everyone goes their separate ways due to one reason or another, except Fenris. At least Atlas does get to keep one positive close relationship around.
Playing a oneshot with some friends this weekend where we each made a PC for someone else in the group to play. I got @hobbitsetal so I made Zaray Rosales, an eladrin arcane trickster rogue with an urban bounty hunter background for her!
After we'd all made the characters we found out that 3/4 people made rogues. So we've got a party of 3 Rogues & a Paladin LOL
Tav glances back. In the split second before Spider speaks, he wonders why Spider looks…almost sad. Conflicted. He’s holding something up. But he only gets a second, before—
“Mens retexere,” Spider says, and crushes a glass sphere in his hand.
A bright flare of magic.
Something crumples in Tav’s brain. Everything fragments.
Fan art of @anonymousalchemist's fantastic BG3 fic like a bird, like a stone
Joining a new campaign in February and I made a whole character reference sheet for my PC, Felon, goes by Fel. I've never done a reference sheet like this before for a character so I'm really proud of how it turned out!
So now the rest of the party knows about the fun tech he can't remove so I can actually post this here now! Turns out! That's a LICH! Fel is having a terrible time
Sneak peek of a panel from the comic I'm working on! I'm really proud of how the stark contrast black and white look turned out here, I really think it works well with the whole noir vibe I'm going for with this
Working on turning some of my wife's writing into comic form so I made a line up of 4 of the main characters in her story Trick Troubles. Kensington and Vinny are both my OCs and Trick and Wilzewski belong to my wife, @knighthawkpoet !