Julius • he/him • 30+
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atm:
these OCs that i cant stop thinking about
other times:
FFXIV, 7.5x, 8.0 spoilers
☆
Kajo Autereinen @dynamis/seraph
(WoL; PLD, DRG)
& Helios (Azem)
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Kukkakaali Ikuisuus @crystal/zalera
(main; SMN/GNB)
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ESO:PC-NA@komeeetta, come look at my houses
(fave aesthetic tags)
! occasionally nsfw !
please lmk if i rb something u think is genAI
thinking about ariel the lord inquisitor and dorian archon pavus getting married in an extremely visible and extravagant way some years post veilguard
firstly, it could be an inquisition (and also veilguard obviously theyre also invited) reunion, and secondly, also just like an absolute spectacle of fuck you to the tevinter of old-and-also-pretty-recent (on account of the. elf. inquisitor thing). and also its just a fuckass huge gathering of massively important people. the two divines making friends with one another etc. and yeah there are multiple (quite unprofessional, doomed to fail) assassination attempts. and yeah there are multiple unplanned-for explosions, both of the 'sera and dagna got bored' kind as well as the 'some evil fuck is trying to kill everyone in attendance' kind
(of course ariel and dorian would have had a small dalish ceremony with the lavellan clan many maaaany years prior. but. as soon as dorian even begins to hint at the thought of another wedding in minrathous, ariel would be like yeah babe ill marry you as many times as you want. you want this wedding to be like magically televised to the entirety of northern thedas? works for me)
(obviously dorian makes a very valiant effort not to cry at the altar and nobody brings up the fact that he fails. ariel doesnt have the gift of words that dorian does but he has hand-crafted him some jewelry which dorian refuses to take off for the next several weeks--)
and then, of course, there's the iron bull, who is. very happy to NOT be an active participant in all this getting married business. first of all he got their dragon tooth halves over a decade ago, done. secondly...theres so much dressing up and making up sappy speeches and scheduling and writing to invite people over and whatever all the other shit his loved ones have been doing for the sake of the wedding... meanwhile bull just gets to sit in the front row, look at the men he loves be sappy at one another while failing miserably at not trying to steal glances at him while they recite their vows, then get infinite free drinks at the bar, and then later on fuck the men he loves, who are now done being sappy and have since moved on to newlywed-horny. literally what could be better? nothing.
like a decade before this^ wedding, ariel of course took dorian and bull to his clan where they had a bonding ceremony. BUT! i think it would be hilarious if the keeper and More Importantly Ariels Cousin Shirel Who Is Basically Like A Twin Sister To Him They Were Born Hours Apart (ariel is the older one) Who Will Be The Keeper Of The Clan Once The Current Keeper Passes. INSISTS. that both dorian and bull have to individually prove that theyre worthy of marrying the beloved and long-missed clan member
and dorian is like WE HAVE KILLED. A DOZEN HIGH DRAGONS TOGETHER. ariel and i were stuck in an apocalyptic future for months!! we averted the end of the world!!!!!!!!! HOW. is that NOT enough PROOF. and Shirel is like well uhhh obvisouly you had ariels help for all of that. who knows, you might be a pair of some kind of useless lumps or something
bull of course has no problem with this. theres various wildlife in and around the river that the clan is camped around and he has a very easy, almost relaxing time killing some alligators for their leather and teeth and meat, or something.
dorian i think is less thrilled by the [this is me just straight up pulling biomes out of my ass] marshy swampy delta, and he ends up proving his worth without even meaning to by engaging in some kind of fun wordplay or pedantic trickery or something with regards to something that the wycome city council was disagreeing on
so they get to get dalish married to ariel after all :)
can you give some examples of the cozy colonialism trope from your previous post? i just feel like i haven’t encountered it anywhere but wondering if im missing it!
Tagging @mytly4 who also asked about this:
The problem comes from the fact that a lot of traditional SFF tropes—the invading orc hordes, the uninhabited exoplanet to settle, the adventurous archaeologist, the ancient aliens, the Lost World, the scary untamed wilderness—are rooted in colonialist adventure stories and attitudes from the 1800s and 1900s, and if you don’t really know what you’re doing with them it’s way too easy to accidentally just replicate their underlying colonialist and orientalist basis. Stargate is a famous example of this, but it’s missing the other half of the equation here: the desire to write something cozy, queer, uplifting, nice, and hopepunk.
When these two things crash together it can create some deeply unintended implications.
The problem with indie work in this space is that it has a tendency to be pretty conflict-averse, and it accomplishes this by presenting a protagonist or protag group who are nice as their primary defining characteristic. They’re nice, they’re good, they have correct and progressive beliefs, and narratively everything they do is framed as nice, good, and correct.
I wanted to contextualize what I’m talking about before I name specific works, to make it clear why I see this as a recurring issue. Links below go to more in-depth discussion of each example.
The exoplanet colonization audio drama This Planet Needs a Name is probably the purest distillation of this (from the title itself you can guess which direction this goes in). The short story “Dracanmōt Council of Human Study Report, Compiled by Usander Greystart” published in the queer SFF anthology Common Bonds was clearly TRYING to have a theme of “colonialism is bad” but what was actually presented was a replication of a shocking number of racist tropes about Native Americans, applied to marauding orcs.
Tradpub isn’t immune either, though. Becky Chambers’s novella A Prayer for the Crown-Shy contains no depictions of colonialism directly but draws unthinkingly from some deeply colonialist attitudes about nature, humans, wilderness, and religion, thereby presenting some bizarre and occasionally disturbing scenes that are supposed to be moving and gentle and sweet. I haven’t personally read The House in the Cerulean Sea by T. J. Klune but I have heard the controversy about its origins; admitting that your cozy fantasy book where inhuman/monster children are taken away from their families and raised in a state-run foster home by a state agent who Understands them and Cares about them better than anyone else was inspired by the Canadian policy of taking Indigenous children away from their families to place them with white families who would raise them “better” sure is indicative of some underlying assumptions about how the world works.
My favorite example, though, is Season 1 of the audio drama Travelling Light, which had a theme of “artifact smuggling is a victimless crime and really it’s about the friends we made along the way.” The writing team brushed me off when I raised concerns about this, basically telling me “you are the only person who cares about this” (which was evidently true tbh) and then blocked me on tumblr, then apparently sat on this, considering it, writing a behind the scenes blog post explicitly using my term “cozy colonialism” without actually citing me because I was still blocked on Tumblr, then doing a complete 180 in season 2 where the main character learns that artifact smuggling is not a victimless crime actually. Also, I’m pretty sure they wrote me into the show as an antagonistic character who repeats all the points I made to the protagonist and the protagonist hates him for calling them out, but begrudgingly eventually agrees that he’s kind of right. SUCCESS. Also, the official tumblr unblocked me at about the same time, making me think that this is related.
do i think having it in writing that my inquisitor hates solas after trespasser is making it less likely that hell get attacked bc like four fifths of the dragon age artists ive come across on the site so far have been s/olavellans? yeah
am i gonna change his description to omit that? no
installing origins because i 1. wanna figure out my suranas personality aside from 'weird lil guy (gender neutral)' and 2. should probably finish playing awakening for once in my life, right?
installing origins because i 1. wanna figure out my suranas personality aside from 'weird lil guy (gender neutral)' and 2. should probably finish playing awakening for once in my life, right?
Hallo, I don't know if you remember me (completely understandable if you don't!), but I sent you an ask last year about starting FFXIV after being inspired by how much you loved it. Yesterday I finally started Endwalker! It's been an absolute blast of a year, and I LOVE Old Sharlayan. I know I don't need to tell you, but never stop posting about your passions lol because this propagation of love truly changes lives <3
i do not remember, but im SO happy that youre back to let me know! this is, i genuinely think, one of the best things a ffxiv player can hear💖
i hope you enjoy endwalker, dawntrail, and everything thats still yet to come!!!
quarterly reminder that if i reblog something ai-generated it is 110% and always an accident and for the love of god please tell me so i can delete it from my blog
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