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@cindymeltzer
The sixth and final chapter of "Rhyme or Reason" is up!
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Chapters: 6/6 Summary: Every great professor was once a student. (A dive into Emmrich's and Johanna's college years.)
[90s college AU.]
Graduate school isn't easy.
Neither is finishing college without your best friend.
[Read on AO3]
(A Heclach ficlet dedicated to @astreamofstars, @eluvisen, and @cindymeltzer for their support and patience while I freaked out the whole weekend that I got to meet Tracy Wiles. XD )
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"I still can't bloody believe it," Karlach says. "The Jaheira. Right up there."
She peers out the flap of the tent at the dark landscape of the Shadow-Cursed Lands beyond. The outline of Last Light Inn is barely visible in the distance, its silhouette of moonglow subtle against the curse-black sky. "A mile off, max, and there she is. Jaheira. Holy fuck."
Hector smiles drowsily, squinting up at her through half-closed eyes. It's got to be past midnight, and they really need a proper night's sleep. Their infiltration of Moonrise Towers is precarious at best, and even though they didn't get thrown out instantly, he's still fully aware that things could go south at any minute. And, frankly, being able to fall asleep next to Karlach is still such a miracle that he doesn't want to waste a moment of it.
But her excitement is so obvious that he can't bear to interrupt her. "Holy fuck, indeed," he murmurs with a crooked smile.
"Yeah. You get it." Karlach laughs. Her tail is curled under her hips, but its point lashes back and forth with irrepressible energy. "You grew up with all those books in your monastery. Bet you had all the stories about her and her crew - written down proper and everything." "Mm. A set of four volumes bound in brown leather," Hector says sleepily. "The Saga of the Bhaalspawn, in great golden letters across the front. And then, rather smaller and more ornate - As Told to Volothamp Geddarm, Truth From The Hero's Very Lips." He rolls over on his side and pillows his head on one arm. "A tale full of intrepid adventure and derring-do - and, I'd guess, intense exaggeration. Maybe Jaheira would be willing to tell you some of the real stories."
Karlach meets his eyes sidelong with a goofy grin. "Yeah," she says brightly. But then the grin fades and her eyebrows knit together in an expression of sudden concern. "Maybe. I mean, I know most of the stories the way mum used to tell 'em. I bet Jaheira hears that all the time, though - how everyone grew up hearing about her, how she was my childhood idol, blah, blah." Her tail goes still, then draws an idle little nonsensical shape in the dirt. "Bet you get tired of hearing that. When you're a hero."
"Maybe," Hector says, rolling his head to look up at her with quiet affection. "Or maybe she'd find it inspiring. That even while she's stuck out here in the dark, people are still excited to see her. Reason to keep fighting and all that. You never know."
Again that slight grin flashes across Karlach's face, irrepressible. "Yeah. Oh, man, that would be cool. To help inspire Jaheira, like she inspired me."
"You do know all about fighting your way out of a terrible place," Hector points out.
"Yeah." Karlach considers this for a moment. "I mean, she probably doesn't want to hear about Avernus. Not while everything's already this deep in the shit. But I could tell her how those stories about her helped keep me going down in the Hells. That'd be nice to hear, right?"
He smiles softly. "I'm sure it would."
She juts her jaw out in a pensive expression. "If we get out 'a the Towers alive, maybe we can talk to her more. If she's not sick of us yet."
She gives an exaggerated groan and flops down to sprawl out on the bedroll next to him. "Fuck. I keep thinking about that drink we had with her before we left. I can't believe I did that weird little curtsey at her. What the fuck was I thinking?"
Hector's eyes are closed again as he curls in against her side, but his lips twitch in a slight, teasing grin. "Definitely the first time I've ever heard you call anyone 'milady'."
"Oh, fuck, I did do that too, didn't I?" Her tail lashes violently around at her side as she covers her face with one hand. "Gods. She probably thinks I'm a fucking nutter."
He chuckles low in his throat, shifting to rest a hand over her stomach. (A little shiver goes through both of them, at that soft, casual touch.)
"My guess is she thinks you were excited," he says gently. "And if she's anything like me, she'll like you best that way."
Karlach snorts, but he can feel her relax a little, squirming to get more comfortable on the bedroll. "Yeah. Maybe. I hope you're right." She rolls her head to look at him. "Thanks, Hec." A slight pause. "I'll be really normal, when we next talk to her. Promise."
He snickers softly, pressing a kiss to her shoulder. "You're welcome, darling. And don't make promises you can't keep..."
you say to me here is a woman. she's insane and irreparably broken and probably a danger to herself and others. and i say yay yippee woohoo! and things of this nature
@volkoss
Chapter five of "Rhyme or Reason" is up!
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Chapters: 5/6 Summary: Every great professor was once a student. (A dive into Emmrich's and Johanna's college years.)
90s college AU. In which Thedas takes on Y2K, Johanna Hezenkoss tries to give a pep talk, and Emmrich Volkarin faces the ups and downs of applying to PhD programs.
[Read on AO3]
Khalid of my heart... let my love... my love guide the way...
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Adjustable Party Limit Custom Companions Lite P4 Companion Heads for Tav NPC Hairs for Tav Extra Dyes for the Fashionable Folk of Faerun Get a Room - Photomode Romance Poses Claravel's Emotes for Photo Mode Otis_Inf Photomode Tools Reshade Dialogue - Baldur's Gate II
Chapters three and four of "Rhyme or Reason" are up!
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Chapters: 4/?
Summary: Every great professor was once a student.
(A dive into Emmrich's and Johanna's college years.)
[Modern Dragon Age AU.]
Read on AO3
Rhyme or Reason - cakeisatruth - Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Rating: Teen and Up Audiences Chapters: 2/? Relationships: Johanna Hezenkoss & Emmrich Volkarin
Summary: Every great professor was once a student.
(A dive into Emmrich's and Johanna's college years.)
[Modern Dragon Age AU.]
--
The smallest moments are often the ones that change everything. In Emmrich’s case, it’s entering the world of research because he’s nineteen years old and needs a job.
Most of the labs on campus only compensate students in the form of course credits, and the ones that don’t are often woefully outside his field of knowledge. He’s majoring in corpse whispering, of course; the mage who scorns the area in which they’re naturally gifted is a fool. Declaring a dual major in chemistry was an act of either rebellion or fear. He still isn’t sure which. There’s nothing simple about chemistry, far from it. Sometimes, students leave the classroom in tears of frustration. Still, it’s a reprieve from pondering the near-inevitability of death.
In any event, he’s pawing through the vending machine coin return slots, looking for change other people might have left behind, when he sees the flyer. The professor is familiar in name only - a Dr. Kaiserling, who teaches upper-level courses - but it’s enough to prompt him to pull off one of the slips of paper and tuck it into his pocket.
[Read the rest at AO3]
a thousand people I could be for you, and you hate the whole damn lot - cakeisatruth - Dragon Age: The Veilguard
Chapters: 1/1 Words: 3,273 Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Summary: Taash reflects on growing up as the child of an immigrant.
[Modern Dragon Age AU.]
--
Being born in one place and raised in another is a vague thing. It’s like living with a mirror always just in the next room, one that shows this warped, fuzzy picture of how everything could have been - almost was - just a thin sheet of glass separating that life from this life.
The mirror in Taash’s room in the Lighthouse is smashed. It never reflected the room the right way, anyway. Didn’t take a lot for them to unbalance themselves once or a half-dozen times and kick the glass.
Looks better this way, they think.
[Read the rest at AO3]
Commission for @writer86 of Liana and Eleanor!
THANK YOU SO MUCH! I LOVE THIS!
Liana is mine; Eleanor belongs to @cindymeltzer
We created them in Dragon Age: The Veilguard, and they are sisters by adoption. Both grow up to be Shadow Dragons; Eleanor is a mage, Liana's a rogue.
To read a little about Eleanor, check out: Nothing More, Nothing Less
Sadly, I haven't yet done much more than private RP with Liana. Give me time (a long time, I'm a slow writer) and something may come!
I WANT MY ARM BACK
*Rolls out of the Fade with a Starbucks* Can I get extra credit if I put way too much effort into a shitpost?
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Minaya and Tangle
This is a sketch for my friend, the lovely bean @cindymeltzer ! I had the honor of drawing her inquisitor, Minaya, and a feline companion, Tangle <3
(I’m sorry I haven’t been here in forever, I’m back in school and I also got sucked into Dead By Daylight)
My babies. <3
Crit, you are a wonderful artist and friend! Everyone should go follow this amazing bean right now.
If you two have have a moment?
mass effect - squad members |x|
yes i am aware that it needed more development time and could’ve been better
no i will not be taking any criticism constructive or otherwise
hey it would be great if people could reblog this
so
mainstreaming
people love to share “Cute” videos of “DEAF BABY HEARS FOR THE FIRST TIME/DEAF MOTHER HEARS HER KID’S VOICE FOR THE FIRST TIME” and everyone lavishes praise on auditory verbal therapists and everyone is so fucking glad that we might soon Cure deafness with the wonders of science and everyone thinks that deaf people with an opposition to any of this are just a product of Barbaric Deaf Culture Bullshit
meanwhile if you’ve ever spoken to any of those kids who were mainstreamed when they were 20 and had the mental capacity to comprehend and express how they felt about it all, way after all of those cute videos were long forgotten and they were gone from any sort of public eye, you’d notice a similar narrative
unrelenting trauma
you talk to nearly any mainstreamed kid who couldn’t integrate quite as well as the wunderkind that had a hearing problem that hearing aids could help and you’ll find out that they leave linguistics classes with haunted eyes that turn to tears because they can no longer handle hearing anyone deliberately enunciate sounds without reacting like they’ve been smacked and shaking as they desperately wish they could leave the room
it doesn’t matter if their Integration was formal or not, you talk to a grown mainstreamed person and more often than not they’ll tell you they can’t handle soundless videos anymore because the impulse bred in them to never Not Hear gives them panic attacks when something like that shows up (ps if you can recognize that a video has no sound you might want to start tagging it. the only reason i don’t is because i can’t fucking tell adequately at this point)
the kids who, when their moms (#mumblr) saw them removing their hearing aids (did you know that doctors often turn those things up so high that adults have reported their ears hurt on those settings?), had their hearing aids strapped to their heads; the kids who didn’t get to have a true choice between sign language and Being Fixed because their parents would never let them (and if any hearing parents get the idea that they can get around this i hope you realize that in a society that demonizes sign language like ours actually does under the veneer of caring about deaf people a 3 year old will never not be pushed away); the kids whose parents just thought they were doing well enough as is or could try harder and that would solve it all; these kids do not come out of this emotionally unscathed. they come out of this nervous wrecks who feel like crying anytime they have to ask someone too many times to repeat themselves.
auditory verbal therapy groups aren’t smarter about deaf issues, kinder about deaf issues, than deaf people. they create actual fucking little meme images where they don’t simply talk about the “necessity” of punishing deaf kids for failing, they laugh about it amongst each other.
these people willingly use information from the foundation named after the guy whose name was deeply associated with oralism, who didn’t want deaf people to intermarry to “keep the gene pool clean”, to tell everyone about how deaf kids are fine without sign language thanks to the wonders of auditory verbal therapy. they post shit like this.
people who have been mainstreamed spend the rest of their lives regretful that they’ve been kept away from other deaf people their entire lives, regretful that they’ve never learned sign language and instead have their language skills fried because they completely rewired themselves, hyperfocusing, to be able to hear just the people around them so they’d stop being yelled at, finally. they become more and more emotionally fragile around anything that makes them feel like they’re back to being lectured about how they say things funny or don’t understand sounds.
mainstreaming is fucking evil and the only reason you consider “fixing” it to be a good outcome for us is because you refuse to listen to any grown deaf people that didn’t come out of this golden
tldr: if you’re wondering why sharing “DEAF BABY HEARS FOR THE FIRST TIME” videos is bad and why deaf people hate you for it is because you are celebrating the very ideology that will lead to that kid being a regretful emotional wreck when they can finally understand “oh wait what i was actually given was a bunch of complexes to force me to pretend i’m functioning most of the time”
I genuinely hate those videos, and this is a damn good explanation of whyz
I hate that I used to really like those videos. I’m HoH and before I ever took an ASL class, learned about Deaf Culture, decided to be a Deaf Educator/Interpreter, got my own hearing aid and realized it’s not perfect and not a quick fix, I used to like these videos a lot. Now I cringe when I see my hearing friends sharing them and shake my head that I ever did the same.
I’m on spectrum for autism, and I gotta say, I was raised and socialized to think these videos were cute –
But this list of traumas is so bone rendingly familiar. This? This is so familiar. My brothers and sister in the deaf community, thank you for putting it into words, so I can articulate on your behalf. Intersectionalism is important. Thank You.
…Next time, I’ll stick with Tennyson.
This has been stuck in my brain since Wednesday.
