Fool of a Rook

🏳‍🌈 shapeshifting fae Art blog @haeluin-art

[haezelnut]

fabricated in the nineteen hundreds

will post grown ass shit, don't like it -> dni

will obsess over video games, art, history, animals

will most def be horny on main

queer, chronic illness, disability

fuck fascists, fuck censorship, fuck religion, fuck AI, eat the rich

[dirthera15]

Illustration Dump

These accompany chapters of my Solavellan Longfic, Divergent Paths.

Bonus illustration for Chapter 16: Packmaster.

Chapter 17: Warden. We finally recruited Blackwall!

Chapter 18: Fool. I love elfroot and the Blackwall banter about it. 😉

Chapter 19: Pamplemousse. We made it to Val Royeaux! Almost.

Dia followed the others, hefting her pack. The tavern door opened to a spacious room with tall ceilings and elaborate chandeliers laden with burning wax candles. The warm light illuminated colourful walls depicting dancing citrus fruit drinking from comically large bottles of wine. The support pillars had decorative mouldings at the top and colourful banners with words embroidered on them stretched from wall to wall. Cassandra stepped to the bar, where a human man with a moustache was polishing a glass. “Bonjour Madame, what can I get you?” Said the moustachioed man. “Bonjour. We would like some rooms for the night please.” Answered Cassandra. “Do you have an… reservation?” Asked the man in a heavy Orlesian accent. “No, we do not.” Said Cassandra, clearly a bit surprised. “I see. I am afraid we only have two rooms available tonight, and ze rabbits cannot stay ‘ere. Ze accommodation for them is across the street, and no guarantee zere will be room anyway.” Said the man in a bored monotone. Dia just blinked, needing a minute to let the words sink in. Varric hissed and Cassandra reacted. Loudly. “Excuse me!?” “You ‘eard me, Madame. Zis establishment does not offer mixed accommodations. Ze elves will have to go across the road. The sign says ‘Cobbler’, but ze upstairs belongs to the Pamplemousse Ivre. You must ask at ze desk.” The innkeeper remained unbothered by Cassandra’s offence. Dia almost admired him. If Cassandra looked at her the way she did now at this moustachioed man, Dia would try and find the nearest hole to hide in. “You cannot be serious. This is clear discrimination.” Fumed Cassandra. “I assure Madame, le Pamplemousse Ivre operates in accordance with Orlesian law. If you have any complaints, I advise you to take it up with your local representative.” Droned the human, he sounded bored and rehearsed.

I am very proud of the chapters that span the Val Royeaux arc, I thought about holding this last one back and grouping it with the others, but I'm too excited about it, so I'm sharing! Also this is the one I shared a sneak peek of, so it seems only fair. If you have any questions or comments, I would be glad to hear them! Thank you for looking! Happy creating!

[wtf-is-hockey]

God sometimes I'm writing smut and I'll like, delete a sentence because I'm like, no, I can't write that. It's too indulgent. And then it's like. Girl, what the fuck are you even going to the candy store for if you're just going to buy raisins. Get real.

[pseudospaceship]

"what the fuck are you even going to the candy store for if you're just going to buy raisins" is honestly the thing I needed to hear today

[tigrecotone]

[octobersociety-deactivated20241]

[stalker-among-the-stars]

There is another way

[saintofpride201]

By the Nine, keep your whore mouth shut

[lierdumoa]

Pretty sure the other way involves keeping your whore mouth open

[space-blue]

[taschaka-blog]

"A Dread Wolf might choose an unremarkable appearance—for example, a wanderer who knows a lot about people and their souls."

Solas Fen'Harel. Or rather, young Solas.

I wanted to draw a young Solas.

[tigrecotone]

[blue-noir-art]

try me

full ver. on my раtrе0n

patreon | commission info | twitter | bluesky | instagram

[the-boring-distopia]

Writing about things humans don't understand is fun, but recently I found writing about inhuman creatures not understanding humans at all is more entertaining.

"Mammals operate on a red fluid called "blood", if you take the blood out they die. We don't know where and how they refuel but we're on it."

"Humans have an organ called "the brain" which is responsible for reasoning and "thinking". Humans claim this is their most important organ but they used their brain to come to this conclusion so it's not a subjective conclusion. Rejected"

"Humans have evolved a thing called "gender" where their clothes and entire life revolves around what shape their reproductive organs are, which does not make sense because humans forbid referencing their genitals in public."

"Human offspring cry upon entering the mortal coil because they know they will have to learn how to communicate with other humans and they don't want to. Humans scream at each other all the time which is clearly the intended way of communication. I tested this theory by screaming at a human and it instinctively screamed back, honouring its true instincts."

"Humans claim to not be able to "see" infrared light and yet their entire society is obsessed with fire, concluding that they are lying because they can "see" said fire. We all know there is no other way to sense "heat" than "seeing" infrared light."

"Humans have invented this cultural staple called "mondays" to make sure they can never be truly free or happy. They hate every day of the "week" but hating "mondays " united them against their true enemy: Capitalism George, ruler of mondays."

[valdevia]

Making Found Footage Pride Flags to scare the TERFs and bigots!!

[valdevia]

More of them!

[valdevia]

A few more!

Pride Month PSA: these images are all free to use! I always get asked around this time of year so I thought I'd make it clear in writing! Feel free to download, post them around, make them into profile pics, banners etc.

Go wild, and happy Pride!

[thelostcanyon]

Mesquite Creek Canyon, Superstition Mountains, Maricopa County, Arizona.

[owlet]

thank you scherz et al. for bringing us the frogs Mini ature, Mini mum and of course, the Mini scule

[owlet]

[wickedsnack-art]

it’s 2am, mods are asleep, post wip

[monstersovka]

➰☁️

[haezelnut]

I have received a tag from lovely @dirthera15 to answer some solavellan questions, and can't thank you enough for it 💖. There is one in particular that I would like to answer separately from the rest, because it gives me the chance to talk about something that I've been thinking of for a very long time. (so I can answer more immediately than I can the others) ((I will answer the others too, in a separate post)).

💘What is the most ordinary thing Lavellan does that absolutely wrecks Solas? What about the other way around?

The short answer is: Whenever Lavellan is enjoying something very trivial, like the taste of her food, touching grass on a sunny day, or petting a fluffy animal, it sends Solas down a spiral of how meaningful their short time together truly is. And for the other way around: whenever Solas gets fired up (in a positive way) and nerds out for minutes without end about something, becoming very lively and expressive as he goes on, it makes Solstice wish she could stop time and see him happy forever.

The long answer:

There is one thing that all organic life forms experience that ancient elvhes never did, and that is: the inevitability of death. We learn from Veilguard that the elvhen race just manifested into existence and for the longest time they didn't have to worry about degenerating or extinguishing, unlike all other life forms. And when they did meet with the impermanence of the organics, they panicked and sealed themselves off (and blamed humans for carrying diseases). Basically, the original elvhes never wanted to experience life for what it truly is, temporary and fleeting, they only wanted to indulge in hedonism (which Solas condones), and without natural order putting a stop to it, it lead to excess and corruption. Now, millennia later, Lavellan may have elvhen blood running through her veins, but she is just as organic and mortal as the rest of the world, and modern day Thedas elves have had enough time to adjust their lifestyles and mentalities to the inevitability of death (in fact, the Dalish built their entire culture around the sorrow of losing immortality and trying to preserve the past). So, for Solstice, life is a series of chores and duties, and it's up to her to find the moments of bliss. And when she does find something that brings her joy, she savors it with an excitement that can only be described as "being drunk on life".

So, we have an ordinary day in the inquisition: sleeping in tents, exploring new territory, sealing rifts, saving people, taking major decisions that affect the entire world, climbing, crawling, digging, falling, failing... and.. between all these, Lavellan will find a moment to relax. All in the party are sweaty, muddy, bloody, hurt and tired and they need to rest, breathe, drink some water and grab a bite. And Lavellan will take just a little bit longer than everyone else to prepare her favorite meal, calmly and meticulously, following every step that's as instinctive to her as is breathing because she has done it a million time before, all to make sure that the result is just as she expects it. And then she will take the first bite and her taste buds activate and her brain lights up like fireworks, and she relaxes her shoulders and leans back and exhales and voices out something like "what is the meaning of life?!" with an "if not this?" left unsaid, lingering in the air for everyone else to decipher. Because yes, life is work and you need to do a lot of little things to survive and everyone does them instinctively, like eating, so why not, at the very least, find pleasure in it.

Everyone else in the party will either ignore it or silently agree and not think twice about it, but when Solas overhears her say this, it absolutely wrecks him for reasons he doesn't even understand. Because Solas never wanted a physical body to begin with. The meaning of existence is completely different to him. He may have indulged in the same carnal pleasures at some point, but he spent the last millennia at war (with all the horrors that it brings), or sleeping, in the fade, so... not experiencing the same gratification of those with a corporeal form. A concept that he never even considered as a missing element. And once again he finds himself pulled back into reality (hop there goes gravity), against his will, with more duties to enact, followed around by a loneliness that only the last member of a species can truly feel, but this time around, he meets her. And as he puts it, she changes everything. Because she ends up teaching him how to truly feel alive. And it triggers in him a rollercoaster of emotions.

Through her attitude, Lavellan shows that mortality, even if tragic in itself, is not inherently a bad thing; it is not unnatural, and not something to seal yourself away from, like the ancients elvhes did. Mortality is, in fact, what assigns major significance to the fleeting moments of joy they can find in the sea of suffering. For the first time, having a material body allows Solas to take in these pleasures with her, not in the way of hedonistic excess the ancients did, but with measured meaning. It hits him like a pile of bricks that he will lose her at some point, whether to his duties or to time, because, what everyone else in the world understands by default compared to him (and I don't think he ever actually addresses this or learns how to cope with it) is that the true tragedy of loving someone enough to spend your lives together, is that eventually you have to watch each other wither and die. As he is immortal, he knows that if he chose to stay with her "as Solas, as [he] wanted", he would have to watch her die. And the rollercoaster goes full circle; just as she wants to taste as much of life as possible before her time runs out, so does he want to experience as much of her as possible in the short time they are allowed together.

✿✿✿✿✿✿

Now, for the other way around, one thing that Solas regularly and ordinarily does is simply talk. Solstice would address him questions, ask for his opinions, for his stories, for his memories, and every so often she would touch a subject that he is particularly fond of. And when that happens, Solas would get livelier as he talks; he would not only answer the question, but would go on about the subject, volunteering information, smiling, doing large gestures with his hands, raising his voice a little unaware of his own excitement, chuckling when he pauses for breath, and it's all of this that makes her fall in love with him, before she even realizes. Once she does realize that she's in love, and how much she appreciates his passion for things, she starts looking for those subjects on purpose.

It is particularly wrecking during a key moment in their canonic story: the very long and awkward time between their fade kiss and him confessing his feelings. Because he asked for time. Now keeping in mind everything I mentioned above, Solstice knows that her time is limited, and she gives it anyway. Weeks go by, when they have to continue working and living together as if nothing happened. They have to continue trekking, exploring southern Thedas, closing rifts, nosediving into danger to save civilians, fighting demons and outlaws and cultists, then share tents and meals together, all while she has to keep her distance. She gives him the time he asked for. She doesn't want to pressure him. She can't pour out her heart and feelings for him, she can't kiss him, nor touch him, she can't even stand too close to him, out of respect, to give him space. The one thing she can do is seek out his happiness. And she is under the impression that allowing him to talk about certain subjects makes him happy. So she keeps asking and she keeps listening and she keeps watching his face change from frown to smile, all while she keeps her distance one bonfire away and die a little bit inside that she can't hold his hand while he's gesticulating.

[haezelnut]

Continuing to answer the questions from the tag from @dirthera15:

🛠️ What modern Thedas invention does your Solas begrudgingly admit is useful?

[someone please correct me if this wrong] I was unable to find an in-lore explanation for fast travel in Thedas. I get the impression that it is only intended as a game mechanic and that it implies that characters get from point A to point B the old-fashioned slow travel way. But I headcanon that fast travel is an actual concept in Thedas, and it is an invention of the modern age, which Solas secretly admires.

So we know that, besides the Vi'Revas, the Eluvians worked as pairs, or would connect to the Crossroads. So ancient elvhes wouldn't simply teleport from Point A to Point B when they needed to reach a more distant place in the empire, but it would look more like A -> D -> Z -> T -> F -> and then, eventually, B. Much like us, in the real world, would take a train that stops at multiple stations before we reach our destination.

But modern Thedas fast travel would work in the form of the poles or pillars that we see in the games, with runes and spells and specific coordinates. So a thedosian could easily reach any point in the world, if they have the correct combination for the specific pillar. This to me explains why in DAI you need to send forward scouts to unlock an area and only then you can teleport to the new place. The scouts can set up the fast travel point and then the Inquisitor's party can magic themselves there. Solas would definitely appreciate the usefulness of this invention, but would also probably hate that he wasn't the one to think of it centuries ago.

👄 Who talks more while travelling?

This very much depends on whether they are with the entire party, or just the two of them. Lavellan would definitely engage in party banter more often than Solas. There would be a lot of jokes bouncing between her and Varric, Bull, Sera and Dorian, lots of filth and roasting too as they get very familiar with each other. She'd do mental gymnastics trying to decipher whatever Cole is on about at any given time (and I headcanon that sometimes he just speaks in anagrams, but doesn't give any clues about it, so she's basically failing miserably at solving them). And she would engage in long debates about religions, morality and ethics with Cassandra, Blackwall and Vivienne. So, apart from the canonic banter between Solas and the other members of the inner circle, I think he would mostly assume a silent posture, probably biting his tongue trying not to correct their assumptions about the history of the world, as to not give away his identity.

But the silent facade drops when it's just the two of them, because he knows Solstice actually listens and is interested in his experience and opinions. He would share what he could about ruins they encounter, all masked in the way of having explored some already in his dreams; he would impart knowledge about various forms of magic that are entirely new to her and all too familiar to him. They would even gossip about the others or chat about trivial things, develop inside jokes or laugh when one of them gets their foot stuck in something in a hilarious way. I think when it's just the two of them, Solas can be closest to his real self, he can share unfiltered opinions and he definitely has more to say than she does.

🍵What habit did they pick up from each other?

Swearing! Solstice would throw a lot of "piss off" and "go fuck yourself" in the face of enemies, and even at inanimate objects when she is too tired to untie her sleeping bag, for instance, or when she stumbles her pinkie in some rock; basically any thing or concept that is mildly inconvenient gets told off. So, involuntarily, Solas picks it up.

The first time Solas tells a branch to piss off, it takes him by surprise, because why would he curse an object?! That's how accustomed he got to her behavior. But it happened when it was just the two of them and it made Solstice laugh so hard, he decided to stick with it. The second time, he directly quotes her: "as our inquisitor would say, piss off!" After that, he decides to teach her some ancient elvhen curses in return. Cultural exchange, basically.

(About a decade later, Solas tells the idiot Rook to piss off as well, and was even more surprised when Rook replied with one of the ancient elvhen curses that they learned from Lavellan.)

[ashillayn]

So, throughout Trespasser we see Solas from the past trying to convince his followers that he is not actually a god and the evanuris are actually (if you'll excuse the term) mortals. In order to make him seem like a legitimate threat to the evanuris, he has to be equal to them and he chooses to bring them down instead of raising himself up. Now obviously that tactic fails and Fen'Harel becomes remembered as a god.

But my question is who do you think started that belief? Because it really does benefit both the evanauris and Solas's followers.

Since there apparently were more evanuris than just eight, and Solas successfully killed some of them, it really doesn't make the survivors look very godly if one of their number got taken out by some average Joe with a grudge. So they deify him, hope to kill him, and nobody else will be able to take his place because they're clearly not a god. It's sort of a last ditch attempt to control the narrative once they realize they can no longer just brush him off.

But Solas's followers also definitely benefit from that narrative because it's so difficult to take beings worshiped as gods and humanize them (if you'll forgive that term). That can give them hope that their struggling isn't pointless, that they aren't raging helplessly against these cruel gods, because they have a god on their side as well.

This is something that plays out during Inquisition as well. While technically none of their followers are calling the Inquisitor a god, people definitely believe Inky is more than just a simple person and you can't convince me that in another century or so a break-off group starts worshiping them (probably started by that cult in the Hinterlands). And on the other hand, Corypheus repeatedly talks about Inky like they're also trying to become a god, like he is. And it doesn't matter how much the Inquisitor may try to protest, everyone is trying to elevate them to be more than human (elf/dwarf/qunari).

Throughout Inquisition, Solas must have been feeling an extreme case of déjà vu.

[cryptid-catt]

I can't get enough of this train of thought. How the narrative changes and gets twisted over time. How myths and legends form. How (mortals) become gods. I don't think it gets talked about enough how that would feel for the Inquisitor. A character who is not an exceptionally powerful immortal elf, who has no or little experience being a leader. For me, I think it would be terrifying and sickening. But you can also play into the character getting off on the attention and power, or even believing the narrative. I can believe Solas genuinely did not want that reputation. He just wanted to do the work, and show others they can do it too. And if he felt that way... how much more would the Inquisitor struggle with it? God, the parallel of their experiences being leaders who are deified. It is such good storytelling.