#bendingwind

[surnumanaja]

for @bendingwind in viperquin exchange (southern thedas au + hand holding)

[hidneysussex]

@bendingwind

On the morning of the solstice, Tarquin is content to stay in bed. He can hear the nearby fire crackling in the hearth; the padded silk of the coverlet is heavy and comforting over him; there’s a snap in the air that hints at a deeper cold outside, unusual for Minrathous even in midwinter.

He’s never woken up like this before. In his tiny, dingy flat, his thin sheets barely keep out the chill. There’s no one to light a fire for him and no magic for him to light his own without getting up, even if he had a place to light it. His window doesn’t seal, so the cold drifts in alongside the sounds and smells of the docks and there’s no more reason to stay in his bed than there is to get out of it.

Here, though, it’s warm. The bed under him is soft and gives way when he rolls over, no inexplicable lumps he can't beat out of the straw ticking no matter how hard he tries.

And, of course, there’s the company. Ashur’s breathing beside him is soft and even. Later, he’ll have to go and hold services at the chantry. Probably kiss babies or hand out soup or something. He’ll have to be the Divine today and Tarquin will be his Knight-Templar, at least until the day is over. But it will be the shortest day and, when it’s finished, it will be this that they come back to.

He’s had worse days.

[sidneysussex]

hello for the WIP meme I would like to know what's up with "what the absolute fuck" 😂

I think you actually already know about “what the absolute fuck”:

They say the blight recognizes its own. That this is the reason Grey Wardens can sense darkspawn and darkspawn can sense Grey Wardens. There are other things, too, other senses, other songs, but Ashur Vesperian doesn’t know about those. The Magisterium doesn’t know about those (and wouldn’t care if it did). But blight calls to blight, and the blight in Ashur Vesperian’s veins… it doesn’t feel like something that shouldn’t be there. Not quite. Almost. But not quite.

[pearwaldorf]

why do we hate david gaider (I am fully prepared to board this train i just want the wank)

When he was still on Tumblr, he was kind of a fucking dumbass prone to Word of God pronouncements, and definitely played favorites. He’s also just--you know how some (presumably) cis white guys think that because they’re gay they understand oppression/being marginalized? Yeah.

I’m kind of vague on the details because I didn’t follow him/the fandom too closely at the time but apparently there was also some transphobia nonsense? I can’t find any receipts so I’m not going to say it’s for sure but I recall reading something about it. (It may also have an accusation from one of the nutty fans who eventually drove him off Tumblr; Bioware fandom here has always been a fucking shitshow.)

Also he’s said some ridiculously cringeful things on Twitter that make a lot of the Chantry worldbuilding make sense (cf that one missionary guy who got killed trying to proselytize to that tribe), and it’s just--please shut up. 

I also think he’s incredibly wrong about characters I thought he would have understood better because he fucking wrote them (Alistair, Fenris), but I realize that is subject to interpretation. Still judgey about it though.

He did write a really lovely story about Dorian and his father that I liked. It’s very strange to call a thing written by the original character writer fanfic, but it’s definitely not game canon and not a tie in.

[caphairdadbeard]

10 and 22!

ok i had to go back to 20fucking17 in my archive to remember what my tag for asks was. wowzers.

10. Something that made you cry this year?

my job. quitting my job. starting to recover from the burnout that led to quitting my job. relationship stuff. being a human in 2025.

also multiple things in "the last battle" of wot.

22. Favorite place you visited this year?

i traveled so little this year!! chicago was lovely, as always, though, so i'll say that.

--

meme here

[kmackatie]

14 for the fanfic asks meme!!!

Thank you for the ask!

(ask me a fanfic author ask)

14. What is something you really like about your work(s)?

In general, I think it's the community that exists around them as this has always been a big motivating factor for me and writing. I tend to write for smaller fandoms where there is a closer sense of that community, and sharing creatively really motivates me. In terms of the actual work I have written, I really enjoying seeing improvement and finally feeling like I have a 'style' that I enjoy writing in for the most part. I see it as being emotional humour, in that there's always an element of comedy through most of my fics with an underpinning of emotional moments.

[pearwaldorf]

4 for the DA ask meme!

What does your worldstate look like going into DAV?

My canon world state is all mages all the time. Extremely Templar-unfriendly. In Inquisition, I made Leliana Divine. There's definitely more but fuck if I can remember any of it right now.

Veilguard hype meme

[pearwaldorf]

7. How do you choose which POV to write from?

Mostly vibes? There's been a couple times where a story wasn't working and it's because the narrative POV was wrong. I've also had the extremely weird experience of stalling at a certain point on stories written from a particular character's POV. And it was deeply strange to realize that was the common thread only after looking at everything in aggregate (I work on way too many things at once because ADHD).