both death & the maiden

independent & private original character. written by marianne, 30+.

[graveswalked]

⋆ ☽ ⋆ A GIRL WHO IS BOTH DEATH AND THE MAIDEN. ⋆ ☾ ⋆ private & independent original death witch character, with various alternate and crossover verses, written especially as dragon age: the veilguard's ROOK (other verses incl. bg3, all souls / a discovery of witches, amc's immortals universe, vampire). plot-focused. potentially triggering material. written by marianne, 30+, est. CARRD ✴ PLAYLIST

traveling with — wakesleft ♥, montclair, valiantsword, xbornhungry, saintsdawn, florietiae, bolyde.

important — immigration system bail funds ✴ immigrant legal resources center ✴ immigrant defense project

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me all day every day lmao

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hell on earth i ordered tampons and my doordasher brought pads and doordash wants to refund me for only part of the item 🙃

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i wanna write quick first five people who like this post will get a kiss from astoria in their inbox

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i wanna write quick first five people who like this post will get a kiss from astoria in their inbox

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and continuing my vampire bitching from earlier: some people are VERY comfortable with sexual violence and domestic violence when the abuser is a woman. i can name at least half a dozen well loved and heavily defended characters who canonically commit or attempt an act of sexual violence, or domestic violence, and are still lauded among (primarily white) fans, esp. women, not because they're monsters and fucking horror shows and deeply complex and interesting characters whose monstrosity feeds the narrative in compelling ways, but because they're empowering or strong or "good representation."

[graveswalked]

anyway thinking abt adding some vampires to the dead dove horror blog but putting them in an immortals universe. specifically rosalie and victoria and maybe alistair from twilight, bc there are some delicious backstories in there that just did Not get the attention they deserved.

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lest you all fear that my time touching grass has made me more palatable, please know i have been ruminating on vampire opinions that would get me hunted for sport, and not just dragon age opinions.

[graveswalked]

i am gonna let one of them loose: lestat is a professional liar. a brat. pathetique. in the books he shifts between adoring people and despising them and he constantly contradicts himself in later text or rewrites history. he may have been anne rice's most specialest baby boy king but the result, intentional or otherwise, was to create a narrator so deeply unreliable about himself, the people he loves, the people he despises, the past present future EVERYTHING, that nothing he says should ever be taken as gospel. without outside verification he should never be treated as telling the truth. "he loved armand in the books so why is he so awful to him in the show" probably because he is lying to himself and daniel and influenced by how he feels about armand now "he said he would never say that about claudia so clearly she lied" he is a liar he is a liar he is a liar and so is claudia and so is louis and so is daniel and so is armand and so is literally everyone on this show. the first two seasons were all about the unreliability of memory, of the monster that is memory, of the way we rewrite history. why does that suddenly stop existing to fans if the prettiest white boy is the one lying.

additionally the way that fans will rush to demonize louis for. checks notes. being imperfect and fucking up, just like everyone else, is not slick or subtle. it's racism! thanks for playing!

[genderkoolaid]

*gets out a big megaphone* sanitizing female characters by removing all moral ambiguity and their ability to make complex choices is not any more feminist than demonizing them. you have to learn to appreciate female characters without finding some way to simplify their personhood into either "evil bitch" or "perfect pure girlboss." it is still dehumanizing to view women as virtuous morally pure angels of light who can do no wrong. thats just bog standard benevolent misogyny.

[graveswalked]

on the topic of disability month, a quick run-down of her chronic health conditions & disability:

PTSD. she is a survivor of rape, imprisonment, abuse (physical, psychological, sexual), torture, and repeated murders. her ptsd is only occasionally addressed or managed, and she is not in therapy.

cold hyperalgesia. due to nerve damage from the physical abuse and torture she experienced as a teenager. astoria experiences chronic pain in cold weather, and so is frequently managing her body temperature via magic.

numbness / pins-and-needles sensation in her extremities, esp. her fingertips. again, the result of nerve damage. this happens especially in the cold.

cerebral anoxia. given that she died multiple times, her brain was totally devoid of oxygen. magic helped heal some of this, but she does still have a moderate hypoxic-ischemic brain injury that has impacted her long-term memory (along with trauma) and impacted her emotional regulation.

chronic low blood pressure & related occasional dizzy spells. this happens when your throat gets slashed. she tries to just power through it, though she frequently hydrates and consumes a lot of salt.

lower baseline body temperature. rather than your standard 98.6F, astoria's baseline is around a 95, as a result of her drowning.

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lest you all fear that my time touching grass has made me more palatable, please know i have been ruminating on vampire opinions that would get me hunted for sport, and not just dragon age opinions.

[graveswalked]

life is so fun when you remember you can give your OCs insane heretical beliefs. anyway astoria believes that the maker is actually the blight and that in killing elgar'nan and therefore the blight, the world is saved from the maker. this also means that elgar'nan and ghilan'nain were the progenitors of the maker.

[fakelawyerbug]

I've seen a bunch of "fandom etiquette" posts on my dash today and I'm going to say something that is maybe going to be unpopular but;

The absolutely pervasive mentality that unwanted criticism or critique shouldn't be given and should be ignored is why fans of color don't stay in fan spaces.

And I am not going to mince words here:

A lot of you are racist. A lot of your fan works are racist.

That might have been difficult to hear. And if it was, you should probably reflect on why that was.

"Fandom etiquette" has created a space where fans of color either bite our tongues and eventually leave or say something, get dogged on, and then eventually leave.

So much of "fandom etiquette" seems to be about insulating creatives from Feeling Bad and hostility to any kind of negative feedback is a pretty big contributor to why bigotry festers in these spaces.

[fireheartedpup]

People talk about how Lucanis isn't actually the one who's impressive and say he's only able to get a shot a Ghilanain because of Spite... But his handling of the Spite situation is deeply impressive to me.

He doesn't just hold out for an entire year, he makes a deal that means his worst concern is shared custody of his body. Most mages can't even do that.

Calivan says, "It was supposed to take a week, at most!" Thedas has five day weeks (we think).

There are three records that we are able to access (one note just says it goes on for pages and pages.) Prisoner 36 succumbed after 9 days. Prisoner 20 succumbed after 18 days.

The longest we have a record of anyone else holding out is 100 days, and after that time they were taken over by a demon of passivity.

He and Spite aren't just working together. He's already learned how to move in order to take advantage of Spite's wings. That takes practice, collaboration, and patience.

He's mentally and physically strong enough to hold a demon back while Spite is furiously trying to stab someone at point blank range.

Basically? Outside of the Avvar, what Lucanis has done is basically unprecedented. He's also experienced and talented enough to adapt to an entirely new fighting style within the span of one year.

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COMPLAINT CANCELLED? SCHISM TIME?

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had an extremely exhausting and stressful few days and i just keep thinking, if rumi can defeat gwi-ma after the stress of the idol awards, i can make it through an eight hour shift 😭

[nateeseart]