friggen large popcorn! damn slurpy dammit!

icon by @eldtrchmn fig/dani | 30s | she/her | in my earnest era

[pickelda]

intro post

hi--I go by fig; she/her; in my 30s

this is overwhelmingly a dragon age blog, but I reblog posts about anything I like.

sometimes I share my art; even less often, I share my writing (here's my ao3).

my OC tags: thea lavellan 🌿 • nara hawke🩸 • philippa everhart 🕊️ (bg3 tav)

I'm friendly, just shy. I promise I'm more scared of you than you are of me :^)

[theesteppenwolf]

Daisy :3

EDIT: Updated the art a bit the red was kind of bugging me

[queam]

Hawke siblings

Serena Hawke

[urgetocreate]

John Michael Carter (American b,1950), Summer Reading, 1986, Oil on linen

[wilmomemo]

Sylaise • The Hearthkeeper

[eldr1tch-cr0w]

number one rule! never believe ur thoughts after 10 pm . unless its about The Character then believe all of your thoughts wholeheartedly

[klimtsonian]

“None of us can choose our destiny, and none of us can escape it.” 🏰🐉✨

[hollytree33]

JUDGEMENT

Finally, her fourth and final card for Trespasser!!

1. The Hanged Man

2. The Chariot

3. The High Priestess

[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]

[solanaceaae]

a rushed Indian anthy piece

[hceinarchive]

a daisy and a captn

[artgalore]

o captain my captain!

[cactusringed]

I think fanfiction as a medium is different enough from mainstream literature in the tools it offers writers that it's a shame that it's not talked about more often. And it's not me saying "fanfic is better than books xD" because that sort of mindset is a symptom of people who aren't particularly well read in either medium. I'm just speaking of like... The little things you get to do with a fanfic that you genuinely can't really do in an original story.

I had a big fanfic in a previous fandom where one of the big reveals was the involvement of a kind of infamous villain, whose presence was built up to and foreshadowed through the whole fic until his reveal without ever mentioning his name, so that the name drop would be a gut punch. It worked especially well because of who the villain was and his presence in that fandom space specifically (it's very complicated) and if it was an original story this reveal wouldn't work at all the way it was written in the fic. Because if you don't have a predisposition to think about that character and his relationship to the hero in a very specific way, then just seeing their name won't do much to you; the reveal and the recontextualisation it pushes upon you hinges on your previous knowledge of the source material.

I think it's an interesting tool fanfic authors are given. One of my favorite fanfic of all time is partially a re-imagining of its source material's canon, and something it does is introduce antagonists much earlier in the story or deepen npcs' stories. It then works to evoke a tragic irony that again wouldn't work if you didn't know the source material, and it's something the author obviously has a lot of fun with.

You could call it cheap or a crutch and I mean, yeah, sure, it is a little bit: the fanfic relies on previously established emotional bonds and stakes to achieve its goal, and in some cases it saves the author from having to 'properly' build up its stakes. But I think it's INTERESTING that it has that tool at its disposal. I think it's a fun thing to play with and I think these built in expectations and emotional bonds are especially why I find story driven aus in particular to be fascinating in the amount of ways you can play with them. You know??

[whetstonefires]

notably, a lot of those methods and approaches show up in the canon of world literature. because rewriting a known story with your own focus and wording has historically been one of the major modes, especially of narrative poetic traditions.

this is one of the better reasons people say that i.e. shakespeare or paradise lost is fanfic--not just 'original concepts are not necessary for literary value' but 'some of the stuff we do in fic shows up here.'

the narrative structure of the iliad is completely bonkers if you don't approach it with the understanding that everyone was expected to already know the Trojan War story, and probably knew loads of versions even, and this was specifically a tragic dramatization of the emotional journey specifically Achilles went on toward the end of it, leading up to his death.

there's non-Achilles parts, as context and to create a well-rounded narrative and probably to appeal to people who just like Trojan War poems and will be mad if their blorbo doesn't show up at all, but this is the wrath and grief of achilles character study piece.

this is perfectly straightforward if you're used to the dynamics of a fandom space, but fairly hard to parse if you're used to the expectation that a writer is a least pretending to be making up a new story.

people still write books by remaking familiar stories all the time, of course, but since this is regarded as lazy and derivative by default, there's a tendency to change things for the sake of changing them as opposed to in service of the actual demands of the story you're telling, which sometimes introduces weaknesses to the work that really didn't need to be there.

remake and sequel films would be much better on average if the scriptwriters and directors were versed in the conventions of canon-compliant fanfiction.

[knave3]

purple chronically ill wizard i have some thoughts about you

[kimiko24]

DOG MOSAICS (From Italy and Greece ××)

[mylibrasquartz]

loss is a gift, girl

[sunstone-nerding]

So beautiful!

[hai-resdaynia]

got this extremely adorable winter YCH from @commander-sarahs-art! as soon as i saw it the vibes screamed Haven to me, and i just had to see Vythral'a and Solas in it, early on in their developing relationship. they are both very bad at being subtle.