Hello! I'm Asta and I'm tired and my therapist is SO proud of me for writing fanfiction instead of doomscrolling. Every time I feel the void calling I bang my dollies together harder. Come take a look: I'm on AO3 as EpiphanyJones, where it's all smut and feelings. Sometimes at the same time!
My writing, including snippets, is tagged my fic. My very occasional art is tagged my art. I like to do tag games; here's my tag list if you want to be looped in. (Even if we've never ever interacted, please please consider this an open invitation: I'd love to see your dolly memes/wips/etc.)
Currently VERY extremely normal about Dragon Age, and while it's mostly Lucanis these days I'm pretty agnostic about the pairings and characters I reblog. I tag thoroughly.
Not #veilguard positive;
Not #veilguard critical;
A secret third thing: this game is wildly uneven (and also I have dumped hundreds of hours and tens of thousands of words at its feet)
My (complete!) Solavellan umbrella collection is A Bent Back and a Marked Palm. It's a few pwp oneshots and short character studies, but the main fic, Once Called Home, deals with my Lavellan's loneliness, depersonalization, and isolation following the defeat of Corypheus and leading into Trespasser; it does not require any prior reading in the series. Character tag: Morai Lavellan.
My Rookanis umbrella collection is A Shrike to Your Sharp and Glorious Thorn. The main work is Crumbs for the Starving, which is a lot of Warden feelings and is about all the different ways in which people break and put themselves back together and hurt each other in the process. The other entries are mostly smut and/or character studies, and almost all of them can be read alone. Character tag: Rook Thorne.
Portrait of a Family: A Dellamorte Family Character Study
It's the one-year anniversary of my favorite fic I've ever written. In celebration, I thought a repost was in order. This is a fic set pre-Veilguard, examining why the Dellamortes are Like That.
Excerpt:
This woman has held many titles. Many names. All of them bought with blood. Sometimes she feels that she is a woman in pieces. She was Caterina first. Then she was a fledgling, a Crow. A wife. A mother. A grandmother. First Talon. The last one is the bloodiest of all.
Across the years she has lived and the many lives contained within them, she feels as though she has lost parts of herself. Littered them across the landscape, strewn far and wide. She feels as though she could take someone on a tour of it, tell them where she lost each and every piece, the way that when you lose parts of your heart, you never get them back. She could say here, this is my first loss, the first crack in the glass. Some part of her feels that if she could turn back time, follow back each branching, winding crack to the beginning, she might stop it all before it begins. She knows the time and place as well as she knows this villa, every window and door, every hedge in the garden.
Sometimes, at night, she walks the grounds, the moonlight catching in the bits of silver in her once-dark hair, and she looks for them. She is always looking for them. Feels that she will never stop; she isn’t sure she wants to. The villa is full of ghosts, but she is the only one haunted. The only one here who remembers them as they were. Remembers this villa as it once was: a home.
Whoops I meant to post this when @adejareve posted chapter 10 of Birdwatching!! I drew this in a fever when she first sent me a snippet of The Elevator Scene which is why Rook's not wearing the right outfit and Lucanis still has his [spoiler] but I couldn't bring myself to change it.
(he does have a pinky, but the single struggling pencil stroke that should show it was lost in the shitty phone photo. alas!)
I am emerging from my hell week(s) slowly, gently, like a body washing up on the beach, and the waterlogged rats in my brain are starting to stir; but I'm happy to report that even they have a limit, and I won't be participating in Lucanis Week.
I really feel for Neve when the city choice comes up. Her country is actively, aggressively evil. It’s plagued by religious zealots who just will. not. go. away. And it “““helpfully””” exports those zealots to all the neighboring countries as well! Everyone is just maximally sick of their shit.
Even from a harm reduction perspective, it doesn’t really make sense to step in, because Tevinter has a proven history of getting right back on its bullshit. Whoever gets saved could fall to Venatori (or even just regular magisters) right after. And she knows it. You can hear it in her voice, especially when Rook isn’t a Shadow Dragon. She’s just grasping for any reason to explain why an outsider should care what happens to Tevinter.
It’s like, don’t think of it as saving us, think of it as preventing us from getting Worse. Think of how we’d misuse our power! Because I can understand the appeal of leaving us to the leopards. I get the schadenfreude. I get why you want to write the whole place off.
I'm working on a "mid-length" (bless my heart?) WIP that takes place in Tevinter at a pivotal time. Preparing for it, I have built a Magisterium lineup with more than 2 discernible factions -- to exemplify how I see their political spectrum playing out:
The Schizocletes (etym. "Those who pronounce the schism"): The dominating, patriarchal and conservative Andrastian faction in the Magisterium. It emerged from the movement that pushed for the schism from the Orlesian Chantry in the Towers Age.
The Draconic Septemvirate aka The Seven-Headed Serpent: The Draconic representation in the Magisterium kept shrinking with the rise of mandatory Andrastianism, until the seven priesthoods consolidated into one faction, that remained a major conservative force even as the Old God cults were outlawed.
Dignitas Tevina ("Dignity of Tevinter"): A populist faction that tends to sway between its support between conservative Andrastians and conservative Draconians. Somehow, it ends up betraying every coalition it has ever formed. Notable members: Archon Davan.
Legates Ambassadoriae: The Orzammar Legates, mostly concerned with economic and infrastructural issues and lyrium trade. They happen to support any coalition in their favor.
Pactus Silentium ("The Pact of Silence"): A radical pro- Old God faction that demands restoration of the old rituals, and deregulation of blood magic and slavery. Through backdoor deals, house conflicts and backstabbing, it eventually drowned out the Seven-Headed Serpent and transformed into The Venatori. Notable members: Aurelian Titus.
The Eluvites (etym. "The Seers") : A more moderate, pro- Old God and human-centric faction that proposes restoration of non-violent religious practices, from both the Old God cults and older, pre-Imperial heathen religions. Hails mostly from pre-Tevinter Qarinus and Neromenian traditions, the majority of representatives come from the North-East coastline. They support granting some liberties to the Laetan and Soporati houses under the banner of ethnic solidarity, but they're pro- status quo on slavery and predominantly anti-elven.
The Oarmen: A moderate Andrastian faction reaching back to Hessarian's pre-schism legacy. Has spoken up mostly for the interest of the Laetans, and a particular religious rhetoric claiming that magic is a sign of Maker's mercy bestowed upon the family. Notable members: Archon Radonis I
The Transfigurationists: A faction that emphasized the original pro-Soporati, abolitionist, egalitarian leanings of Andrastianism, supported education and lifting up of the Soporati. Purged by its opponents in the debacle of TE 2023/ 9:29 Dragon that led to the enthronement of Archon Radonis. The spirit of the faction survived among the friendly houses, and became revived as the Lucerni faction. Notable members: Abraxas Tilani, father of Maevaris Tilani
The Virtuti: Patriarchal Andrastian conservatives, but more idea-oriented and stringent in their moral code. A little like virtue ethics believers but still very elitist. Notable members: Halward Pavus, father of Dorian Pavus.
Can you talk more about Harding just happening to be lucky that she joined a morally good group? Like the more I listen to Inquisition and Veilguard dialogue with her in them, I can’t help but think you’re onto something.
“Me? I’m no one. Lived near Redcliffe all my life. Herded sheep for my neighbor. When the Inquisition came through my village, I helped by telling them everything I knew about the area. Then I signed on. Wanted to see the world before it was swallowed up by… that thing out there.”
anyone can offer you a chance to see the world. adventure, beautiful foreign sights, respect for your skill, status when you go home, community and camaraderie among your fellow fighters. chances that you might never usually get as an ‘ordinary’ person, in this case living in a rural area as a (fantasy) minority. honestly for me the whole “get out there and see the world!” thing specifically evokes the real world evil of like, classic military recruitment rhetoric. it’s all a big adventure! never mind what you’ll be doing and who you’ll be doing it to.
and our first sight of harding is a confident smirk when she kills. (which we’re supposed to feel fine about and maybe think that she’s a #girlboss, because remember the mages and templars are Crazy, so killing them indiscriminately is fine. but let’s imagine dai is a serious game.) she obviously took very easily to violence in the inquisition’s name before she’d met any of the inquisition’s leaders, before the inquisition had a real direction, and before they had a simple-to-justify, no-longer-human enemy like corypheus. if she could be convinced to do all that by the inquisition’s scouts, then why not anyone else offering the same things? why not an inquisition that was actually, you know, an inquisition?
despite leading with wanting to see the world and not even mentioning any kind of moral motivation, harding definitely perceives herself as a good person and i don’t think she would go for anything that didn’t have a veneer of righteousness. she takes pride in the inquisition and what she believes to be its purpose. but any organisation can say they’re doing it for the good and order and stability of the world, right. any organisation can pass you that message through a recruiter who at least sounds like they believe it. and as a scout on the ground you’re so far from the war table that you will never really know why the people directing you are making their decisions. and you opt to kill whoever they tell you to kill anyway. even in some impossibly hypothetical world where those decisions are all just and measured and necessary, can it ever possibly be moral to just hand over your conscience like that? to kill blindly because those are your orders?
i feel like harding’s narrative veers so closely to real world recruitment rhetoric that i don’t just find it uninteresting to be like Yay It All Worked Out :), i find it Bad. this is not heroic when it happens in real life and i don’t think it should be heroic here. i know i’m in the genre where Pure And Honourable Warfare Of Our Innocent Boys And Girls Against Inhuman Monsters or Perhaps The Inherently Evil Foreign Horde of Baddies is virulently everywhere but i think that’s precisely why we should be aware and critical of it and thinking around it not just accepting it as fact you know
and harding would be a better character for this setting if we engaged with the blood on her hands. she is essentially a killer, it’s the first defining thing we see her do! she doesn’t have to be stuffed into a “cute wholesome moral compass we don’t have to take seriously” box just because the writers can’t even imagine a dwarf being taken seriously let alone a dwarf woman
Am I okay? Not really. This fic has been a labour of love for almost a year. I never thought I could write anything so long.
But in no way would it have been nearly as fun as it had been without so many of you supporting and encouraging me. So beneath the fold I have some thanks to give out.
Please be kind - my memory in general is not stellar, especially for names (yet another trait I've projected onto Dawes). Just know that if you ever reblogged my CQ updates or expressed your love for Dawes, my gratitude is deep and boundless.
My fiance @northyme, for putting up with my ranting and raving and helping me work through plot snarls. For reading the smut and giving their seal of approval. My pickle :)
@svalbird - for not even going here yet reading a big chunk of chapters, then actually playing Veilguard and joining the fandom. My whump buddy, my angst pal. I know you have my back when it's time to blend those blorbos
@d7kyoshi - My longfic pal, my brother-in-rooklace-arms. Many thanks for letting me bounce ideas off you and for keeping the hype train for dwarves and rooklace and yuri going (everyone read Taller Than Titans NOW!)
@epiphany-jones - for being an endless well of kind words and an all over inspiration, for always picking up what I'm putting down, for GETTING Dawes and cheering him on and also hunting him for sport. He needs both for proper enrichment
@himluv - for cheering in the tags and comments and being a huge supporter and Hardawes fan from the start, for the inspiration to even write about Hardawes in the first place after I read Say My Name (say it twice)!
@tkwritesdumbassassins - for your in depth comments and picking up on parallels and little breadcrumbs I placed throughout the fic, for being a great worldbuilding wall to bounce ideas off, and just a really positive influence
@cute-ellyna - for reblogging every update with hearts and kind words. It always helped and always put a smile on my face!
@falonwithbenefits - so much hype and encouragement and so many kind words!
@in-the-drowning-deep - So much blorbo brainstorming and rooklace and sharing songs!! My fellow Mercar!
The Lighthouse Creative Hub crew for the constant encouragement, for spinning off ideas, and for loving Hardawes as much as I do!!
There are so many more here on tumblr who I see in my notes constantly like @shoutyelf and @frostbittensun and @thedas-finest and @mythals-whore and @corinnesin and @imrowanartist and @blackwall-my-tiny-husband and @davrinsleftpectoral and @shadowknight19kay and @bronzieinthedas and so many more but my brain is an unmended net and everything is slipping out!
240k words are a heck of a lot. Before this, the most I had written in one piece of work had been just over 100k for a YA novel I had vague dreams of publishing, but that was before covid and burnout and everything. Writing fic brought back my love for writing, big time.
This isn't the end of Dawes and Harding's story. The sequel does not have a name yet, but it has its beats. In the meantime I have a Hardawes smut oneshot in the works, and of course, Let These Ruined Palms Be Your Chantry is going to get some much needed love. I will also be working on Bloodletting, a Merrill x Bellara postcanon fic. :)
Until then, enjoy this illustration I made some time ago with Dawes and Harding in their epilogue, picking daisies and recovering from saving the world.
From Ready Now - Dodie:
You saw through me all this time
I'd forgotten people are kind
I was hurting and you knew
So you showed me what to do
You said "I will listen, tell it all
When you're finished we'll talk more"
But I didn't know how, so we took it in turns
To my surprise we found my words
