Dead Pasts, Dread Futures

Call me Blue. Feel free to make fanart, podfics, and derivative works of mine, as long as a heads-up & credit is given. I always appreciate the creativity of this community, without the use of AI. Header by @ratajota. Propic by @eldrtchmoon

[dreadfutures]

Welcome to Blue's Blog

Artist and writer, but science is my day job. Admin @thedragonagebigbang | @thedasincolor | @dadrunkwriting | @dragonagefanevents.

Things I've Made:

Read my AO3 fics: @ youworeblue

Peruse #My Art and #MyWIPArt

Check me out on ArtFight @ dreadfutures

Read fics I've written for #da drunk writing circle

Commission (or tip!) me on KoFi

Send me writing prompts (when my ask box is open)

Feel free to make fanart, podfics, and derivative works of mine, as long as a heads-up & credit is given. I always appreciate the creativity of this community. See my full use statement here.

▸Read about my OCs: Ixchel Lavellan | Halevune Mahariel ▸Read about my Dragon Age AUs: DA4 | Fix-It | Elvhenan | Alt-End

Things I Didn't Make:

Read Fics I've been gifted

See #Art for Blue - gifts & commissions!

Scroll my writing #prompts hoard for your own inspiration.

Fics by DA FanFiction Discord members: #daff reading list

Currently Promoting

Please check out my murder mystery Dragon Age fanfiction:

it ends, or it doesn't.

Rated T | 7 chapters | 45k. | Complete Felassan finds himself investigating a murder with a ragtag group of three outcast Dalish, uncovering an ancient ruin hidden in plain sight and the ugly secret trapped at its heart. Illustrated by Adurna-0 with additional commissioned art.

[cy-lindric]

Sainte Esconde des Mystères, une confidence pour une prière

Sainte Esconde des Secrets, montre moi ce qui est caché

My comic La Langue des Vipères was released this week in bookstores in France, Belgium and Switzerland !

This beautiful trailer was created by my friends at Potto Collective : @lholmesharfang , Luc Armanet, @noctambuleur , @estellito , @nomnomsandwich , @shliten, Matthieu Chavane and Fanou Lefebvre

[chiptrillino-art]

(ID in ALT Text)

its not like i dislike the canon design! i just... can't help myself ;;;

also aang is my exception to the 'no cape' rule

[s1ck0]

Juliette Brocal

[thedragonagebigbang]

Welcome to the Dragon Age Big Bang!

A fandom Big Bang encourages writers to produce a new, long piece of fanfiction, with the challenge of a deadline. Each fic will be paired with an artist, who will work with the author to create a new illustration based off of the themes and vibes of that work. Each team of participants in this event will produce: One (1) new, complete Dragon Age Fanfic of at least 25,000 words, and at least one (1) art piece inspired by that fic.

Completing these on time will ensure:

The fic (with embedded art, linked to the artist) is included in the AO3 Collection

The fic and art will be advertised on the Tumblr for the Bang, tagging both artist & writer

Unlike an exchange, this event is a collaboration between the artist and writer. All participants are valued equally in this event - artwork created for the Bang is not a commission or "free art". Participants strive to inspire each other with their works, while having fun and showcasing their individual work and creative effort.

Longfics can be anything you like, within our sparing content guidelines! Artists are asked to make an earnest effort to capture a vibe or scene of the fic, respect character descriptions, and collaborate with the writer on that content.

Check out our event requirements in detail on our new website:

The Dragon Age Big Bang Event Guidebook

Why Would I Do This?

Fandom! This is an opportunity to produce new works for Dragon Age - we love this fandom and making things for it, and it is works like the ones you'll make for this event that keep it alive.

Fun! This fandom can be extremely kind and full of mutual appreciation and interaction between artists and writers. Well done collaborations, with clear communication and reasonable guidelines, can be very fun and personally rewarding. If all goes well, new friendships and future collaborations may be formed!

Challenge! Whether from the deadline, the creation requirements, or taking inspiration from a written work, there’s a level of challenge involved with this event that can be exciting and inspiring.

Advertising! All works completed by the event deadline will be advertised here on our blog. The mods are artists and writers ourselves, and we know the importance of celebrating a finished piece and sharing it for others to see.

Contact The Mods: ask | discord | email: [email protected]

[sergal]

everyone shut da fuck up this is the only thing that matters

[sergal]

Oh My God Damn

[femalegothic]

[sprinkledsalt]

All of these comments hit the nail on the head 🔥 It's so cathartic to hear the woman in the video saying like "these women defend their partners like 'you don't know him!' but you're the one who chose to bring him up and share this with the internet and now you're acting like we're intruding on your relationship that you told us about." I feel like most women have been in that situation where another woman is complaining about her shitty partner, you then have a natural negative reaction like "wow he sounds like he sucks", and then the other woman gets suuuuuper defensive. I think these comments^ are right about the motivations behind it and I always have sympathy for abuse victims, but as the other woman in the situation, you have no idea what to say, since acting like there's nothing wrong with the story feels wrong and like you're enabling, but then pointing out that the guy's behavior was wrong can lead to these women blowing up at you or cutting you off, so you have to walk on eggshells around these women about a subject you didn't even bring up or want to talk about. It's just, ugh lol

As an aside, I love her point that a lot of men get gifts for themselves, but women are gifted things that aren't just for them, but benefit the entire family, like a vacuum cleaner.

[azspot]

“Because the truth is, tech doesn’t have an image problem. It doesn’t have a message problem. It has an intention problem. What’s wrong with the axe murderer who broke into my house is not that he hasn’t successfully persuaded me to buy into his narrative. What’s wrong is that he’s trying to kill me with an axe. Similarly, when you launch a product that’s designed to put millions of people out of work, block access to sources of verifiable truth, replace human creativity with slop, and lower the barriers to every sort of atrocity, the problem isn’t that you haven’t told the public a good story about those things. The problem is that you are trying to do them.”

— The 40 Most Rage-Inducing Problems in Tech

[parakeet]

just saw a 'comments' tab on someones blog you know where the following and likes tabs would be if enabled and it was just showing all the replies theyve made on peoples posts. this is fascinating when did this feature come out

[parakeet]

EMERGENCY - ITS AUTO ENABLED!

if you've made replies on posts there is now a tab on your blog showing every post youve replied to and your reply.

if this is not what you want, either go to your blog and click comments and disable it from there or just go to your individual blogs setting pages. just change it from blue to grey if you dont want everyone to see your replies AND the post you're replying to

PLEASE BE ADVISED that it is set to disabled for blogs that have not made any replies but it will turn ON if you reply with that blog in the future.! i just tested it with my main, which was greyed out but it turned on the moment i left a test reply

figured i'd get the word out bc i have not seen a single mention of this and i'm sure there are plenty of people who maybe comment on things they don't want on display for everyone to see on their blog lol. you can still look at your replies with it toggled off just no one else can, like locking the following and likes list

[parakeet]

so for some reason this feature was actually announced on the tumblr engineering blog. interesting choice not to reblog it to the staff or tumblr blog, esp considering they asked for user input on how to implement it, but i suppose considering the response to the last update maybe the replies would be too overwhelming...

so couple of clarifications. comments are disabled as default for primary blogs that have their likes disabled. they are seemingly enabled for all other blogs that have replied to posts

posts you comment on may show on your followers 'for you' page if you leave your replies publically available. they may, in the future, show in on your followers dashboard if your follower goes to their dash settings and enables this. apparently, if your likes are enabled, your followers can already see those on the dash if they've gone into preferences and selected to do so, which I was unaware of, and that seems to be disabled at default, but it's possible i disabled it previously and forgot about it ig

[queam]

Queen Anora’s full armor from my last drawing

Based on Loghain’s armor here and Anora’s dress with the ferelden sigil on the chest

[poison-p1nk]

🔻

[alessandriana]

‘The devil’s child’: the rise and fall of the only female yakuza

The long read: Mako Nishimura fought her way into the Japanese underworld, but drug addiction and the slow demise of organised crime gangs a

[mikkeneko]

Takegaki had been a yakuza enforcer for 32 years, a tough guy who was close to the Yamaguchi-gumi boss. But over time he had grown disillusioned: money was scarce, and newcomers ignored the sense of honour and tradition that he believed should underpin yakuza life. When a boss’s son was gunned down in a dispute, Takegaki left the Yamaguchi-gumi altogether. There are, in theory, ways to retire from yakuza life. But Takegaki’s former colleagues didn’t accept his departure. They shot up his house, after which he installed CCTV cameras and slept with a sword by his side.

Soon after, in the city of Himeji, he founded Gojinkai, an NGO helping other yakuza leave the criminal life. Gojinkai aimed to address a major issue for anyone trying to ditch the yakuza and join the legal economy. Authorities consider them members for five years after leaving – meaning they are left unbanked, unable to find employment, and more susceptible to rejoining the underworld. Ex-yakuza “are afloat in the grey zone,” says Herbert. “So there is no way for them to get out of the criminal scene.”

By 2020, when Nishimura first met Takegaki, he was often quoted in the media predicting the yakuza’s demise. She began visiting the Gojinkai office once a month, joining Takegaki and other former yakuza in a street-cleaning exercise. It was “wonderful to see such a bigshot in the past taking the initiative to pick up trash”, she writes. Nishimura’s inability to leave her criminal past behind had left her poor, alone and jobless. But she was inspired by Takegaki. “If he can do it,” she thought, “so can I.”

Working with Gojinkai gave Nishimura a sense of purpose. After the pandemic, Takegaki allowed her to open a branch just minutes from her old gang HQ in Gifu. She helps former members with housing and drug rehab, and finds work for some of them at a local demolition firm. “I want to let people know that whatever you’ve done in your past, you can still face the future,” she said. “And you can sort yourself out.”

[brambeag]

and also. seven

[notahorseindisguise]

everytime i wear an outfit like this i think about this tweet

[ao3commentoftheday]

hi! You're response to my reblog with Ao3 coding resources doc and general promoting of cool html things makes me want to highlight some of the other cool things that the folks that use workskins do on ao3.

Interactive games: I have a whole post here about the various games on ao3, but pokemon, dating sims, minesweeper, cardgame mimics, character creators and an animated point and click adventure game are some real highlights!

The (currently non-canon) HTML Tryhard tag. Filled with many many cool fics that utilize workskins to tell stories or fics that have tutorials with them. (If you'd prefer to search with filters, a good chunk of fics are in the 2025 or 2026 HTML Tryhards Event collections)

Generators -- When I was starting out, workskins were intimidating, but some folks have made generators that allow you to input your text and get the HTML and CSS to just copy and paste. Including Twitter posts, Simple Texting, Minecraft Chats, iOS texting (instr.), Tool Tips & Footnotes (instr.) and Choose Your Own Adventure (instr.)

Anyway, I hope my ramblings can show off some of the REALLY cool things Ao3 allows us fans to do and maybe inspire more to try making things with workskins.

I am in awe! Truly! And I actually poke around and look for these things sometimes!

Thank you so much for sharing this wealth of resources! It's much appreciated 💗

[tpwrtrmnky]

Guy who has a non-research degree in a field that never studies human subjects: Here are my opinions on what needs to be done for me to respect this field I've decided to become a denier of.

[Extreme breach of scientific ethics]

[Violent abuse of power]

[Method that actually doesn't obtain any information]

[Controlled double-blind studies of phenomena where that is literally impossible]

[Seeking empirical proof that a word has the meaning that it's defined as]

[Study that would have a dropoff rate of 100%]

Additionally, how do we know that [best currently available theory] is true, and not [dominant theory from 100 years ago that repeatedly failed in the face of evidence]? I have found some minor methodological flaws in [studies that were not designed to prove the best available theory, but rather examine edge cases within that theory], so we should really consider [nonsense with no evidence backing it whatsoever].

[dreadfutures]

For the first time in more than a year... I have an update.

The Brave Guide, Ch 92 - Seeing Ghosts

Ixchel's party is stopped on the road by Briala's agents - who have horrifying news to share.

“It’d be a whole operation you’re proposing,” Ixchel said. “Cassandra can’t stand this kind of subterfuge.” “It’s not subterfuge,” Charter said with a surprisingly unmasked annoyance. “It is the heart of my faith. Whether the Maker’s will is distorted by a puppet, or stewarded by someone who came to her beliefs genuinely? The subterfuge is not on our part.” Ixchel tried not to seem taken aback. She remembered Charter in Wycome, with a large paper lantern warming her face, and unknown names written inside. She remembered how much she did not know about the spy. They were of the same people, and yet.

The Brave Guide is a canon-divergent Dragon Age longfic. It continues the story of Dead Pasts and Dread Futures, in which Lavellan was sent back in time against her will after the Dread Wolf’s plans destroyed the world.

The series follows Inquisitor Ixchel Lavellan and her battle to find hope for herself, and hope for Thedas. As the world ends, Ixchel is resurrected under mysterious circumstances and is sent back in time to the Conclave. Ixchel is furious, convinced of her own futility, and yet she cannot give up again. These are the stories of how she gets better.

[Read from the Beginning] | [Current Chapter] | [TLDR] | [Other Fics]