okay liz i have a fic question. what was zara tempting lucanis with? sex? is that it? maybe this is simply the fact that i am ace, but i don’t understand why she thinks that would work
THAT'S A GREAT QUESTION firstly dw you're in good company i'm ace lucanis is ace everybody can be ace here. secondly ty for asking about my fic bc i love to talk about it. ok, i'm putting the answer behind the cut because 1. it's long (sorry, i wrote it late at night, you are not obligated to read it all) but also 2. for anyone who doesn't know, i'm discussing the sexual assault from ch6 of "the ossuary." my answer isn't at all graphic or anything but please consider this your content warning.
okay, so, short answer: yes, zara was more or less tempting lucanis with sex. it's a honey-or-vinegar, carrot-or-stick kinda sitch - since beating lucanis with a stick for almost a year has gotten her exactly nowhere, she, ON A VERY SURFACE LEVEL, has decided to try offering him pleasure instead of pain in order to get what she wants, which is for he and spite to turn into a monster that fights for her. what's actually happening here is that temptation doesn't really factor in at all; she wants to assert power over him and simply sees sex as the most appealing way to do it.
long answer w/ author analysis (sorry again): zara actually appeared in "the wigmaker job," a novella set in the dragon age series that takes place before the events of the game and also before the events of my fic, and that is where most of her characterization comes from. in the game, she's a bit of a generic villain. in the book, however, even though we only get her for a few short paragraphs, we get to learn a LOT about her.
first and foremost: zara is vain. in the game, your party confronts her while she is bathing naked in blood. she does the whole fight naked (covered in blood from the shoulders down to appease the censorship gods), and the longer the fight goes on, the more old and haggard she begins to look; she makes herself beautiful with blood magic. in the book, we see her do this: she stands naked in front of a huge mirror, with multiple slaves standing around her, ALSO holding mirrors, so we can see herself from every angle with no blind spots. the instant she finds a stretch mark, she has one of the slaves prick their own hand open and bleed on it, so she can use blood magic to make it go away. she is interrupted during this ritual with new of lucanis's exploits (more on this in a sec) and doesn't care; she's so vain that she enjoys that these people can stare at her body. she's so vain that every slave and servant in her house must also be beautiful; the book says none of them look "a day over thirty-five." there is nothing this woman loves so much as her own appearance.
the second thing to know about zara is that she is obsessed with lucanis and has been since she first heard about what he did. in the book, lucanis manages to kill some forty venatori (blood mage cultists) in a single evening by setting demons loose on a party they're having - but before he does that, he frees the slaves to get them out of danger. zara is impressed by his skill in killing, but she's also gleefully looking forward to exploiting such an obvious sign of weakness: his heart. zara wanted to turn lucanis into her own personal attack dog from the moment she knew his name. that being said, the entire time she talks about exploiting his weaknesses and punishing him for killing venatori, she is COMPLETELY NAKED SMIRKING AT HERSELF IN THE MIRROR, while other men blush and try not to stare. there IS a sexual undertone to this budding obsession.
and, of course, there are also hints of her being extremely controlling (of the appearances of the people around her, of her own image, lucanis's behavior, etc) AND of her being very sadistic (happy to bleed her slaves dry, looking forward to exploiting lucanis's weaknesses and punishing him for killing venatori).
the problem, then, arises when lucanis just. doesn't. break. almost a year of torture now and he's still absolutely useless to her. and not only can she not use lucanis as a weapon, neither can she not exploit his weaknesses or punish him the way she wanted (she can hurt him, but it doesn't get the results she's after). zara is getting absolutely nothing she wants, and furthermore, she has just found out from lucanis himself, who had no reason to lie, that she's NEVER going to get what she wants - lucanis couldn't break for her even if he wanted to because it so thoroughly goes against spite's nature to allow her the satisfaction.
when zara approaches lucanis, her real goal is to assert power over him bc she's tired of not having it. but she's not self-aware enough to like...think of it that way? in zara's mind, she is so beautiful that there is no one, NO ONE, who would not jump at the chance to have sex with her,. people who don't like venatori might deny it, but deep down, ANYONE would do whatever it took, whatever she asks, because she's irresistible. she thinks what's going to happen is that she's going to go in there, reveal the trick, seduce him while he's weak and vulnerable, and then, when he gives in, hold it over him and taunt him with it, and later figure out how to use his desire for her as a new tool with which to break him. i don't think she thought it through much beyond that - she's tired of not getting her way, she wants to be desired, she thinks lucanis is hot, she's gonna go fuck him, that'll fix everything. she might not get him and spite to turn into a weapon on the spot, but she's expecting to make progress, AND scratch an itch a year in the making while she's at it.
what she was NOT expecting was for lucanis to 1. be ace and not desire her at all even a little bit 2. call her out on her bullshit. she was expecting him to cave and beg her to fuck him, because hey, she's the most beautiful woman who ever lived, that's what anyone in thedas would do, right? no one has EVER turned her down before, either because they couldn't or didn't want to. but lucanis does. worse, he tells her "i know what this is." it's rape, he knows it's rape, and the point of rape is power. he KNOWS she's frustrated with her inability to force him to do what she wants in any other way except this. furthermore, he also knows she's secretly ugly - he and spite can smell the blood magic holding those good looks together like safety pins and duct tape.
this is the worst possible thing lucanis could do to zara in this moment. not only is he NOT becoming the weapon she tried to turn him into, not only will he NEVER become a weapon, not only has he sensed zara's WEAKNESS (or feeling of weakness, for not being able to force him to do what she wants), he DOESN'T WANT TO FUCK HER. her, zara, the most beautiful woman who ever lived! in one version of this scene, lucanis reading her for filth like that temporarily shocked her into leaving - though she did come back and assault him eventually. in the scene i have as it is, this is why she finally breaks eye contact with him. because even though he's the one strapped to the table, he has just humiliated her. it won't save him - he knows it won't save him - but he is defiant to the last because that defiance is what drew spite to him to begin with.
and so she doubles down: if he won't fuck her by choice, he won't get a choice. she'll make him want her whether he likes it or not. ultimately, though, the whole thing is still very unsatisfying to her: like, yeah, she can force him into a state of arousal and she can force him to finish, but she can't MAKE him WANT her anymore than she can MAKE him turn into a weapon. that's why this is her last scene in this fic, and also my explanation for why she isn't in the prison when your party arrives there during the game. he humiliated her, and she can no longer bear to look him in the eye. in a way, lucanis won, even if it was a pyrrhic victory: she raped him, yes, but aside from sex, she still doesn't get anything she wants.
ironically, this was probably the closest lucanis ever came into finally goading someone in the ossuary into killing him and releasing him from the torture - if zara kills him, no one ever has to know what happened (that someone didn't want to fuck her), and he said himself that he couldn't become the weapon she wants even if he tried. the only reason she threw him back in his cell instead was because she knew he'd find death so much more preferable and wanted to punish him for hurting her.
so, yeah! she was both tempting him with sex and not actually tempting him with anything at all. sorry the explanation got long-winded. i thought about this scene a LOT prior to writing the fic and i adjusted it many times in my outline and after it was down to get it just right. so i have a lot of thoughts about it!
something happy: there’s a retired guy who takes his golden retriever onto my college’s campus and sits there for hours so that students can pet her. her name is nugget and she gets SO excited when you walk up to her
oasldkjasdf oh no please tell nugget that I love her and she’s a good girl
For costumes: Yuzu’s Otoñal, Evgenia’s FS one, and Kévin Aymoz’s Horns SP
Yuzu’s Otonal: already answered! You can find the post under #askquadaxxels :)
Oh god, Zhenya’s changed costumes for Libertango for p much every comp so which one?? hahaha I’ll just going to pick the first version that she wore to the grand prix, for future asks please tell me which version guys!!
Zhenya’s Libertango ver.1: yuri plisetsky would wear this (actually love the asymmetric mesh detailing and the purple mixed in, i’ve noticed that zhenya doesn’t really tend to wear contrasting colours, she prefers either monotone or costumes w colours of the same colour family so this was really nice, tbh this is my fave of all the libertango costumes this seaon)
Kevin Aymoz Horns: “this is my rave side and this is my meet your parents side”
hi liz please can you give me a spirk fic rec (besides yours, obviously i’ve already read that) (something with good spock characterization would be great!!)
HELLO sorry for taking so long to get back to you. this is haaard bc so many of my favs also involve the ot3 (bones i love you) and also i wanna make a longer rec list someday but i am going to give you just a few that come to mind first so that this doesn't languish forever in my ask box. i'm not copypasting summaries notes etc like i would for a Proper Rec List so please READ THEM read the warnings everybody always read warnings. mix of aos/tos since u didn't specify and since you read mine i'm assuming you don't mind either <3 and in no particular order. ok here we go <3
Bare Your Faces of the Veil by flippyspoon - TOS - spock gets split into human and vulcan halves and he is really dead forever (until he isnt). this one actually got me misting up, it was awful, and it's more kirk-centric, but it's really good
anchor by Sir_Bedevere - TOS - post plato's stepchildren coda. it's again mostly kirk but also very quiet and a really good comedown from All Of That
The Black Knight and the Moon by Waid - AOS - pon farr fic will absolutely fuck you up. double read the warnings on this one bc it's not just sad it's EXTREMELY upsetting, intentionally extremely upsetting, but it's probably the best characterized AOS spirk fic and most realistic thought experiment i've ever read
Grief as a four-dimensional figure by Moreta1848 - mostly AOS with some TVH elements - everyone goes back in time to try and save vulcan. GREAT spock stuff in this one. i bonus rec most of this author's stuff actually (they have an au of earth being hit instead of vulcan in aos and tos intersex spock) - a lot of it is verrry long but i read as they update so the little pieces are fine.
Cosmic Fuck series by Gayle F - 1 2 3 4 - TOS - this is just straight smut, but it's VINTAGE smut, and also first fic to feature the famous vulcan double ridges. the last one is the first ever kirk/spock/bones (sorry i know you said spirk) so it's just full of historical relevance. sometimes the smut gets a little weird (the first fic is technically a dubcon situation because of pon farr and in the last fic they get off on a tangent about toe-sucking) and since it's not tagged you do have to go in a little blind. i've only read the middle two once and don't remember them well (so i can't help you out with warnings) but i reread the last one alllll the time. it's a really refreshing writing voice and feels so different from fanfic today wrt to how it talks about sexuality. the final fic (SORRY AGAIN) stands well on its own and is actually my fav TOS fic of all time <3
i’m reading your lucanis fic without knowing ANYTHING about dragon age (thanks for making it so accessible). BUT i just saw your most recent snillario post and DID ILLARIO TURN IN LUCANIS???? HE SENT HIM TO THE OSSUARY?
okay, first of all, congratulations, this is a contender of funniest ask i have ever received. secondly, i am so sorry for ruining the big plot twist of dragon age: the veilguard for you, which is that yes, illario sold his beloved brothercousin out. not only did he sell him out he sold him out by SEDUCING ZARA RENATA. illario and zara are fucking and this is canonical i did not make it up and the more of this fic you read the more terrible that truth becomes. the thing about illario and lucanis is, lucanis is their grandmother's favorite. she always picks lucanis first and she was gonna pick him for job of first talon and illario Could Not Take It. a very golden child/scapegoat child of s situation. a very dean and sam of a situation, if you will - her behavior fucked them up in equal but opposite ways. so illario MEANT to have lucanis killed by zara...what he did not mean to happen was that lucanis gets put in elven ocean hell jail for a year and possessed. illario thinks lucanis is dead. the only one who knows otherwise is zara. also, i'm a proud illario defender. he only wanted lucanis DEAD, not tortured! it's totally different! this stuff is normal for assassins!
thirdly, i am so thrilled the fic is relatively accessible for people who know nothing about dragon age. neither of the people editing it are unfamiliar with dragon age so i didn't get to like...test it ahead of time. i'm glad you're so shocked by the illario reveal because lucanis in the game was equally blind to the possibility until he just. couldn't be, anymore. i think that means i've done a good job getting inside his head.
finally, thanks for liking the snillario post. i feel very passionately about snillario <3
