Xuebing Du
KIROKAZE
taylor price
Janaina Medeiros
Lint Roller? I Barely Know Her
wallacepolsom
祝日 / Permanent Vacation
blake kathryn
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NASA
⁂
Kiana Khansmith
titsay
Jules of Nature
he wasn't even looking at me and he found me
★
cherry valley forever
"I'm Dorothy Gale from Kansas"
occasionally subtle
#extradirty
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@professional-crybb
url change, trying to matchy~match across platforms
nevarran-hahren » professional-crybb
mik // she/they // 30
dragon age blog, mostly
I am more active over on bluesky these days, feel free to follow me at professionalcrybb.bsky.social :-)
fyi my personal blog is @queenofcarrotflowers-s !
**Too long, didn't read** Click the link and play the demo (it contains almost 1/3 of the full story, the prologue + 3 full chapters). Then
Cool project from and by Reddit user Eglwyswrw, a gamebook adaptation of Dragon Age: The Last Court - 'I am adapting DRAGON AGE: THE LAST COURT into a Choose Your Own Adventure format in order to help preserve its narrative. Here's how you can help out...'
Excerpts from post:
"I felt compelled to start this project as a volunteer in order to preserve a playable form of The Last Court that, in spite of being in a very different subgenre of interactive fiction, somewhat keeps a good chunk of the original's spirit... or so I hope!"
"What am I supposed to do if I want to help out? Play it, either on your phone or your PC. Keep a watchful eye for typos, random strings of code that might have sneaked into the text, bizarre balance issues (such as having negative values of something for too long, or having over 100 of them for too long), illogical narrative transitions etc. If possible, screenshot your final stats (at the bottom of the page) and send them to me/copypaste it in the comments so I can have an idea if the balance is OK. A single playthrough of the demo should last, I don't know, 15 minutes? There should be a lot of variations based on your chosen class and choices so please feel free to play it as many times as you would like! When can we expect a full release? Pretty soon I think. This includes over 37000 words and I took about 9 days to reach this point, with almost a third of the story done."
the link has a free playable demo which contains almost a third of the full story, "the prologue + 3 full chapters", "Forever free, available on itch.io".
[source and full post with more info] credit: Reddit user Eglwyswrw !
Thinking Solavellan thoughts this morning and in particular one of my favorite exchanges.
As much as I don't like to think of my Lavellan as an angry person, I really love the angry responses she can have during and after Crestwood, because it feels like she's clawed back a little agency and because Solas is honest in his responses in a way that I think in the long run would be comforting for her.
The immediate post-crestwood conversation in particular I like.
If you pick 'This was a waste of time.' while asking him about whatever the fuck Crestwood was, you get this:
Lavellan: "I don’t know why I even tried to talk with you."
Solas: "Because you are hurt. Because I made a selfish mistake. Because you deserve better. Pick any reason."
And Solas sounds SO frustrated/angry while saying it. He's angry at himself. Angry on her behalf. Because she, of all people, DOES deserve better!
Something about him getting angry on her behalf really got me when I first encountered this exchange. Solas is so frickin honest when he's angry that it rang true when something more placating would have had me questioning if his feelings had ever been genuine. It's so clear his hand is being forced and he's less than thrilled about it.
Because in the end there's two things Solas just can't seem to lie about: how much he cares for Lavellan, and how much he doesn't like himself.
You know what, since I'm thinking about it anyways, let's talk formalwear accessories. Most of these are traditionally menswear but a bit of gender fuckery is good for the soul, and frankly most of these are about making your mass-produced clothing fit and lay properly without having to go to the tailor.
Shirt stays: these go around your thighs to hold your shirt down, so that it stays smooth and tucked in. They're usually elastic, with 1-3 clips, and if you wear skirts frequently this is a GREAT way to make sure your top doesn't ride up. The clips will be visible if you're wearing something tight, so loose pants or skirts are where these do best. There's also an insane version that clips to your socks, but that is for lunatics. If you wanted, you could also use one of these clips to hold up thigh-highs.
These do a great job of smoothing and narrowing the waist area by keeping your shirt from bunching there.
Sleeve garters: usually metal, leather, elastic, or silk. These are usually worn with button-down shirts to adjust where your cuff falls on the wrist or hand. They're properly worn on the upper arm, and you pull the fabric of the sleeve above the garter until you cuff is where you want it. Because this creates a puff of sleeve at the bicep, it also broadens the appearance of the shoulders. It's great if you're working with your hands or if your sleeves are often too long for your preference.
Waistband clip or belt adjustment clip/buttons
Three different ways of tightening the waistband of a pair of pants or a skirt. You're not going to get more than an inch or so tighter without weird bunching, and for most of these you'd want them to be hidden under a shirt or jacket, but they do the job if that's something you're having issues with.
Collar pins: There are so many fun ones out there, both with and without chains. They're not terribly practical, though the slight weight may help keep your collar where you want it. Also consider collar tips, which pin (surprise) to the very tips of your collar points.
Sweater clips/guards: meant to hold your sweater or cardigan mostly closed. Great if your cardigan doesn't button, or if you don't like it to be buttoned all the way.
There's tons of other stuff out there like this--etsy is a great place to find this stuff. A lot of these are old solutions to the very modern problem of mass-maufactured clothes not being as one-size-fits-all as advertised, but they're also a fun way to put a bit of personality into businesswear.
Okay I love shit like this and have to add: if you don’t like the garter shirt stays for any reason, next best is the stirrup kind.
But menswear doesn’t get to have all the fun! Here are a few traditionally womenswear accessories:
Hem weights keep your skirt from flying up. You can get sew in and temporary ones.
Lingerie pins keep the straps of your dress and your bra together! They can be hidden or very cute. You can go for vintage ones if you’re obsessed like me or just find either fancy safety pins or small bar pins.
Some also come in groups of three with chains that keep the straps from sliding off your shoulder.
(Often these will get mistaken for baby or doll pins because they are very small, 2-3 cm in length.)
Glove clips hold your gloves to your belt or purse whole you aren’t wearing them, but keep them close at hand (ha).
There are SO many things like this and I love discovering more of them. Humans like to be comfortable and not fussing with their clothes all the time. We’ve forgotten so many ways that people have solved common problems in the past.
The Mirroring of Solas and The Inquisitor
It’s incredible how extensive the mirror theme between Solas and the Inquisitor is from DAI to VG.
Beginnings: Solas left the Fade and was immediately thrown into war; the Inquisitor begins the same way, stepping out of the Fade straight into war. Both are blamed for world altering disasters they never intended - Solas for the Veil, the Inquisitor for the Breach. And both emerge with power that isn’t actually theirs: Solas, crafted through the blood of Titans; the Inquisitor, with the Anchor burned into their hand. Both are bound to the Fade and the Veil.
Rebellion and Titles: Like Solas leading a rebellion, so too does the Inquisitor - because at its core, the Inquisition is a rebellion. Solas rose against the Evanuris and their systems. The Inquisitor rises against every established system in Ferelden, Orlais, even Minrathous. And with rebellion come titles. Solas becomes Fen’Harel, the Dread Wolf, God of Lies, buried under propaganda while the Inquisitor deals with their own titles - Herald, First-Thaw, heretic. Harding’s line in JoH applies to both: “Every time you’re ‘more than just a person’ to someone, you’re also less than a person to them.” and Solas himself drives the parallel home: “You also know the burden of a title that all but replaces your name.”
Both wear masks to move their causes forward. Solas accepts the Dread Wolf because it’s a tool. The Inquisitor can lean into being the Herald, even believe it, regardless, it secures alliances. Both are divisive figures and divisiveness always comes with compromise.
Compromise and Division: Each is judged through the lens of perception: hero to some, betrayer to others. Solas used others as needed, hardening into ruthlessness and facing questions from allies. The Inquisitor also begins as a unifier but inevitably becomes divisive. Choosing between mages or templars empowers one side while condemning the other, and the “victory” at Halamshiral is legitimizing political corruption, no matter the faction. Both Solas and the Inquisitor are forced into the same arena - political machinations and choices that never satisfy everyone. “Sometimes terrible choices are all that remain.”
Breaking Free and Bearing Consequences: The mirror continues into Trespasser. The Inquisitor can roll the Inquisition under the Chantry and become its “lapdog,” or disband it - breaking free from a compromised structure, just as Solas once refused to join the Evanuris, exposing their corruption. Both reject broken systems. Both build networks of agents to pursue their cause. Solas’ own words in DAI apply to them equally: “…remember your goals, and do nothing that does not further them.” And what is the story of VG meant to be if not those goals carried forward?
Even the war table reflects this parallel. Every decision the Inquisitor makes spawns new operations, forcing them to face the ripple effects of their choices. In the same way, every action Solas took against the Evanuris carried fallout of its own - highlighted in the codices scattered through VG.
VG Parallels. Veilguard expands the reflection even into the story's structure. Solas is suddenly without his network and alone in VG. The Inquisitor too is absent of their agents, none of their companions about and barely mentioned aside from Dorian. Solas spends most of the game sidelined in the regret prison, while the Inquisitor is sidelined in the South - both stepping in when needing to help Rook. When Solas fights in Minrathous with the Shadow Dragons, the Inquisitor also shows up, helping Rook. Both claim responsibility as their own and are bound to duty. Solas to the past, the Inquisitor to the present. When Rook says to the Inquisitor, “Sounds like I’m cleaning up your mess,” the Inquisitor accepts it - just as Solas accepts responsibility for the Veil. And both even have their stories in VG delivered in similar ways - Solas through his 6 regrets and the Inquisitor through their 6 missives.
Both are the outlier voices of a group. Any Inquisitor stands alone among powerful voices in that room before the final battle, highlighting an alternative: maybe Solas can still be reasoned with. That was Solas once too, the lone dissenter in a council of 'gods', his wisdom often ignored. For a romanced Lavellan, the mirror reflects deeper in that scene. Morrigan teases, “Speaking from the heart, Inquisitor?” In Dragon Age, Lavellan is named Solas’ heart, so in that room, whose words are really being spoken? Hers, or his? When Solas once begged Mythal to turn from the Evanuris, he failed. Now his heart itself stands in his place, making the same plea to others: to see another way.
Endings: Solas freed elves from enslavement, “Ar lasa mala revas”. In the Atonement ending, the Inquisitor returns that gift to him - you too are now free. For a romanced Lavellan, the parallel deepens. Both walk the din’anshiral and in her words to Solas - “You think you’ve gone too far to come back, but you’re wrong” - she reflects his own plea to Mythal long ago that maybe she can join him instead. Both moments are each of them reaching out to another, insisting there is another path to walk.
Left Hands: Both use their left hand to hold the Veil together. The Inquisitor loses theirs when the Anchor turns destructive; Solas cuts his when he binds himself to the Veil. That feels pretty deliberate - marking his own left hand where the Inquisitor once bore his Anchor? One loses the left hand to survive; the other cuts the left hand to atone. Both surrender bodily autonomy to the same burden - the veil.
Regrets and Missives: Even Solas’ six regrets and the Inquisitor’s journey mirror each other. Each regret is a map of what the Inquisitor experiences in DAI through to Trespasser . Maybe that’s why the wolf statuette tied to the Evanuris’ “ascension” is the one that the Inquisitor gets (if you take that initial statuette straight to the Lighthouse after getting it from the Inquisitor, it’s the regret that plays first). For Solas, the betrayal was Mythal joining the Evanuris as gods. For the Inquisitor, the ‘betrayal’ is Solas revealed as the Dread Wolf - his own kind of ascension to godhood unfolding before their eyes. (But that’s another post, this is already too long.)
I don’t know if BW ever meant for the mirroring to be this thick, but playing through the Inquisitor’s story in DAI and Trespasser was, in many ways, playing through Solas’ story too. Two halves of the same story, walking the same road - and if a romanced Lavellan - walking that road even beyond Thedas.
I'd love it hear if anyone has any other examples I might have missed.
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Jaheira must defeat one of the worst evils of the Sword Coast: The Urge To sneak into the cookie jar before dinner time.
fenris and hawke commission :)
Defanging Skyhold
From Callback:
“Skyhold itself posed a unique problem. The ancient fortress had been the heart of the effort. It was too symbolic to be razed—there was only so much insult its former occupants would allow. And it was too fortified to be left for just anyone to claim... It was eventually decided that Skyhold would be preserved, but also defanged.”
Interesting use of the word defanged.
It casts the Inquisition as a beast - something once powerful, dangerous, and barely contained by the powers that be. To “defang” Skyhold is to remove its bite. In doing so, the Chantry symbolically neutralises the Inquisitor, who once carried near-divine authority within those walls.
But who else once posed such a danger to the powerful? This becomes a quiet nod to Solas, the Dread Wolf as well.
Skyhold originally belonged to Solas, and many theorise it is the very place where he raised the Veil. If so, the symmetry once again is loud: where Solas broke the sky, the Inquisitor later healed it. By guiding them to Skyhold, Solas led the Inquisitor back to his own place of power, handing them the same weapon he once wielded - a fortress from which to challenge the established order of it's time.
To defang Skyhold is, symbolically, to defang Solas himself — the Wolf whose bite once rebelled against the Evanuris’ tyranny. It's also to defang the Inquisitor, who, guided by that same Wolf, led a new rebellion under the same sky - the place where the sky was held back. In this way too Solas and the Inquisitor are mirrors - Solas held back the sky literally by creating the Veil and defeating the Evanuris. The Inquisitor held back the sky by healing the Breach and defeating Corypheus.
Zevran is canonically alive so it’s all good 😌
Bonus:
First time I played the game he took me by surprise. I just ended up loving him so damn much.
“Don’t play diamondback with Solas. You’ve been warned. Taught him the game last night. He turned around and beat me at it! Lost everything! Had to walk back to my quarters with only a bucket for my bits.”
– Blackwall, Dragon Age: Inquisition
The Haircut
Remember the reading short comic? Fenris receiving the letter? He sure didn't take that one well and he's on a mission now...
I've never seen a more deserved cat slap
DAO folks, plus DAA cause I love them. All of them a drawn to look about how I headcanon them at the start of DAA (hence why Anders is still a golden boy). Plus some general headcanons.
Specific praise to @kesterite cause I used their art as inspiration for specifically Sten and Alistair.
Fen'Harel smelled your scent.
I drew wolf as part of the #inktober.
zevran first meeting my beloved
