I got inspired by the person who made Ras in BG3, and realised I could try to make him in Heroforge too! I've been following ITFOYL since what feels like 2020, and I just really love this boy so here, have him somewhere during the height of Elvhenan (peak flashback arc) having a stolen moment with Definitely Not Dirthamen:
The yellow in the braids happened when I encountered a bug trying to get the raven in there, but I decided I liked the look and have decided to call it a special occassion lol.
For the entire mini, it's https://www.heroforge.com/load_config%3D55778795/
Anyway, thank you for writing this wonderous fic and have a lovely day :D
Ohhhh!! Look at him and Definitely-Not-Dirthamen hanging out! Raven boy. Don’t mind the raven’s purple eyes, it’s a genetic thing. It’s Definitely-Not-Dirthamen.
It has come time again that I am overcome with the urge to read 'In the Face of Your Light' and its extras once more. (Well, it was the time because I just finished ><)
Out of this reread, I decided to start a BG3 playthrough as Ras. Since I can't really draw, this is the closest I can get to fan art for this story that I love so much~
Aww! Thank you for reading! Enjoy your playthrough! Remember to find a cause (or person) that you dedicate your every waking moment to and let it consume you utterly and in your hunger to be devoured by it, you devour it right back. Remember to enact change as a threat, not a promise. Remember to fear yourself.
And most importantly, remember to be a little silly goofy!
I’m but a humble, faceless roach creeping into your inbox to thank you for everything. It’s literally been years since I’ve read ITFOYL for the first time. Except saying “read” feels wrong, bc I feel as normal about it as Dipper Pines feels about the Journal. I’ve inhaled it, choked on it, except I was already drowning so it acted as ambrosia instead and kept me from joining He Xuan on the seabed or smth. For me ITFOYL is literally a sacred text. I’ve lost track of how many times I read it and your other works. It lives in my brain like cicadas in trees. Deafening. Pretty magical noises💫✨
Anyway
I'M HERE TO REMIND YOU AND YOUR ABSOLUTELY INSANE WONDERFUL TORTURED BRILLIANT SADICTIC MIND
Your writing is absolutely unparalleled. It’s like every single sentence and paragraph and chapter and arc is laced with stardust through and through, istg. Stories nestled within stories. Past haunts the present and the present haunts the past in an infinite loop AAAAAAh and the future just watches over them like a ghost over a dog with zoomies.
To me you are literally the goddess of the writing craft.
That’s kinda why I’m writing this ask btw. I've scrapped together the confidence to start posting a fic on ao3 and it got me wondering about stuff
I’m deathly curious: what goes on behind the theatre stage. I want to see the underbelly of the beast. Inside the maw of this ferocious procynoid.
When did you first traipse upon the dark path of word cultivation (writing)? What does the creative process look like for u? Are u a pantster or a plotter (or just a chaos gremlin)? How closely does your brainstorming process resemble a nap or a drug trip? Have u got any valuable lessons u learned throughout your storytelling journey/got any advice for newbies/ur past self?
What was writing such an insane behemoth of a work as ITFOYL feel like? How did u even get the idea & did it deviate much from your initial vision? & all the same questions for ALIL.
I WANNA KNOW ANYTHING YOU'RE WILLING TO SHARE FEED THIS COCKROACH CRUMBS please & thank yoy*dives back into trash*
Anon, I want to examine you under a microscope. This is one of the most fascinating asks I've ever received and I'm incredibly flattered and giddy with joy. I've been having a rough go of it lately so thanks for the smile and laugh.
(Had to google what a procyonid was and saw a raccoon. Everything made sense then)
And congratulations on posting a fic!! It's nerve-wracking putting yourself out there creatively but it's very rewarding and I hope you had fun with it!
Okay, I will answer the questions as best as I can. This is going to be extremely long so I'll put the questions under the cut.
When did you first traipse upon the dark path of word cultivation (writing)?
I began cultivating seriously writing when I was 10. I've always been a storyteller before that already. I used to pass pieces of paper to a friend during class as we wrote a story back and forth. At some point, I wanted somewhere to put the building ideas down and I just opened up a word document and wrote.
Planned my first novel at 10 (it was about dragons), then ditched that to plan another one at 12 (it was about a princess and a group of adventurers), then ditched that again to plan another (about a seer and a fugitive goddess), and another (pirates), and another (sapphic story between a priestess-turned soldier and the personification of War), and another (the fae and sorcerors with magic based off filipino influences). And another (ALIL! With my partner).
And these are the original ideas. I've forayed into writing fanfic at 12 in the lawless days of FF.net and kept going then migrated to Ao3. No, I'm not telling you what fandoms I wrote for, that's a past best left unsaid...
As you can see, I left a trail of WIPS in my wake... Some I've ditched and keep in my mind file cabinet to reuse assets later. Some I've left to simmer and think about some more (seer story and fae story). Some in active planning (ALIL and 3pc).
What does the creative process look like for u? Are u a pantster or a plotter (or just a chaos gremlin)?
I am a mix of both! If I pants it, I lose track of the story and it devolves into a mess. If I plot it, I lose steam because in my head, I already 'wrote' the story. And half the time, I deviate from the outline anyway! So I do a rough outline, plotting out major beats I want to follow, but I leave it relatively open. My writing is largely character-driven, and I want to give them some room to wiggle free of the outline and shine.
Sometimes the major beats are preserved but I get there in a way I never expected. Sometimes, the narrative completely changes and I have to plan around that again.
How closely does your brainstorming process resemble a nap or a drug trip?
My brainstorming process is pretty calm. I do a 'vomit' draft where I just throw all my ideas into a document and see if something sticks and then I walk around my house like the ghost of a Victorian child and let myself be possessed by the characters and talk to myself and act them out to get a feel for them and sometimes cry if the emotions are strong, and then I sometimes do a mind map to focus the ideas even more.
Walks and listening to music are also a great time to let my mind wander and think about the story.
Like I said, pretty calm process.
Have u got any valuable lessons u learned throughout your storytelling journey/got any advice for newbies/ur past self?
Your writing's going to suck. And that's a good thing.
(Rambling ahead!)
Yep. It's going to suck BALLS. You keep going anyway. Because there are two important skills (though not the only skills) when it comes to any creative process — writing, drawing, acting, dancing, sculpting, so on. One is the technical skill. That's what we generally think of and try to cultivate when it comes to creative works. Techniques, grammar, sentence construction, dialogue, worldbuilding, prose, etc.
Then there's what I like to call analytic skill. This is your ability to assess your writing, especially in relation to other works and your personal standards of where you'd like your writing to be.
These two skills interact with each other. There was a very good graph about it but I can't for the life of me remember who made the post or where that graph is. Here's a shitty approximation I made of what it looks like:
Blue is your technical skill, yellow is your analytical skill. As your technical skill increases, your ability to assess its quality plateaus, so this is the nice part. You think you’re doing great, and you are, you’re progressing
And as your technical skill plateaus, your analytical skills improve so you now have a better eye. You can assess your work more critically, and this is the time you start seeing all the things you can improve on. This is Hell. This is when your work feels like Shit and you think it's not good enough. It's boring, it's dull, it's bad, never write again, and so on.
The problem as well is that this period is not as regular as the graph makes it look. This period of time can stretch on for months. It can be absolutely disheartening. But a thing to remember is to be patient with yourself. This period of time can be an opportunity. Now you know all the ways the work is not meeting your standards. What can you do to get it to your ideal state? What's the point of weakness? Is it your dialogue? Your descriptions? Your character development? So on.
And then you consume other media that executes those parts the way you would like to see happen in your writing. Read, watch, play a video game, listen to an audiobook, to a podcast. Whatever. Ask yourself how the media is excelling at your weak point. What is it doing?
Don't be discouraged. When you feel like your work is shit, that means you've improved your analytical eye, and it's time to get cracking. And have fun with it! Go with the media you'll enjoy.
Another thing to consider:
Are you depressed? Or stressed? Or ill? Or have no time? Or you're under some other circumstance that doesn't allow the chance to be creative?
That's a different ballpark. This is the time to rest. Rest is also important for the creative process. Be gracious with yourself.
I am personally in this creative hell right now. I don't like my writing at the moment, I think it's shit. I am also battling Life Stuff left and right. My ass has gotten kicked rather good. So I'm resting right now, but when I do have time/energy, I pick up a book that I think handles descriptions the way I'd like to handle mine, and read.
Again, a boatload of other skills do come into play. Workshopping skills are one, ability to handle critique (constructive!) is another, and so on.
What was writing such an insane behemoth of a work as ITFOYL feel like?
It was both hellish and very rewarding, and my favourite part about it was interacting with the readers. It was so encouraging to see people invested in the mysteries and I enjoyed reading all the theories. And definitely enjoyed seeing rereaders picking up on the foreshadowing I left behind.
I was also in a Bad Way during the period I wrote ITFOYL in (COVID pandemic didn't help). I was the most depressed and burnt out that I've ever been in my life and I wrote that fic for myself too. It was a way of giving myself a routine and telling myself it'll be okay. That's why the fic has such a hopeful undercurrent to it, because I needed it to be okay. And I know at the time, a lot of people also needed it to be okay, and I'm glad it served its purpose.
I didn't know how ITFOYL would end when I started writing it. But I knew it had to be an ending that would hold your hand and feel like an embrace. However it would end.
How did u even get the idea?
It started because of that damn Temple of Dirthamen, haha! I was obsessed when I played through that location. It was so intriguing and I'm a sucker for corvids and creepy shit.
As for the ancient Arlathan exploration and time travel, I've been intrigued by the concept ever since I read Feynite's Looking Glass a few years back . And I was already a sucker for time travel fix-it tropes so...
I also just couldn't let go of this new character concept. A devotee to Dirthamen, a shapeshifter who can change faces. I fucking LOVE themes of devotion and worship. I eat that shit up every time. Bonus points if it's unhealthy. And another thing I eat up is reincarnations.
The only thing I couldn't figure out for a long time was what kind of spirit he was. Hope felt too on the nose for me, and it felt limiting. So did Faith. Tried to dig deeper into it and finally arrived at Change.
So I tried to fit all of the above with the events of Inquisition and figure out what the implications were. Picked m!solavellan because I was sorely wanting more content for it ever since I learned Solas could have been bi and had voice lines for an m!lavellan romance. Be the change (hah) you want to see in the world, and so on.
Anyways, there were four premises I contemplated for ITFOYL's start:
1) Lavellan is sent back in time to Arlathan and that's where he figures out his past life.
2) He's sent back to the start of the game, with a Solas romance.
3) Same as 2, but no Solas romance. Just romantic tension that went nowhere.
4) No time travel. Figure past life out first run-through
I wrote off 1 because I wanted the inner circle. I would have missed them otherwise, and at the time, I still had a shaky grip on the Evanuris' characterisation. It's fine, because I wove 1 into the flashback arc anyways.
I wrote off 4 because I felt like the focus would be too scattered and the themes of second chances and mercy won't be as strong. And the premise bored me. If I'm bored, the readers will be bored. Dropped!
So it came down to 2 and 3. No Romance path was a strong contender because of the Pining and the Longing. But Romance path won out for the drama, and I've always wanted a story where the dynamic between Solavellan shifts in balance. I thought I could accomplish it best with path 2.
And then one sleepless night, I caved and opened up a google doc and started writing at 2 am. 'In the face of your light' was a phrase that kept ringing in my head so I put it down as a placeholder title until I could come up with a better one.
Lol, 'placeholder'. So much for that.
The rest is history.
So bottomline is, I took everything I liked/wanted to explore, shoved it together in my head, and executed it with great delirium and obsession.
Did it deviate much from your initial vision?
Dirthavellan.
That. That was the biggest deviation of all. Dirthavellan and DIRTHAMEN.
He was a VILLAIN. The first draft!! He was a villain!!! I swear on my life!
And then my best friend was reading over some short pieces and drafts I wrote about his and Lavellan's dynamic and they said, "There's something interesting here. I think you can explore it further."
And then he evolved from sort of 2D villain to THAT. I don't regret a thing! My friend was the first Dirthavellan shipper. They dug a pit that I fell into with no way out and fretted. Because what IF the readers aren't about that!
Then a lot of you fell one by one into the pit with me.
I'm sure plenty of others weren't really into it, which is entirely fair, but I was still happy with those who leapt into the pit and loved my interpretation of Dirthamen. He is now blorbo in my heart. I don't know how to explain to anyone that one of my favourite Dragon Age characters kind of doesn't exist.
All the same questions for ALIL.
ALIL was a little different.
It started from Minecraft roleplay with my partner (who was not yet my partner at the time).
Yeah.
It was a joke. They invited me to the server and suggested our characters be married. My ass was crushing on them hard (their ass was crushing hard too, I just didn't know because I'm a dumb mfer) so I said hell yeah let's get minecraft married 😭
And then it snowballed from there because I got jealous. Another character on the server was apparently crushing on my partner's character and there was art of this whole hair braiding scene between them and everything.
And I said 'bet'.
Then I radically changed the original canon to what it is today (Ink met Grey way after Moerani's fate originally but then I made Ink parent #2 instead), wrote about it, and broke my angst-loving partner's heart so badly with it that they made that the new canon >:)
And now we have tragic immortals. Also, plot. My jealousy gave birth to plot. Muses come in all sorts of forms...
The story just kept growing and growing over time, worldbuilding getting fleshed out, character backstories coming in. Augh! There's so much new stuff. The draft I shared on the drive is just the tip of the proverbial iceberg! There's so much now about Primordials (especially a specific triad -- I like my trios), about demons, about our pair! Argh!
Ink's name also got changed to V (nickname for Vharagh). We refer to them as V now. This was before I played Cyberpunk lol. (Ofc I made V in Cyberpunk. I might as well since they share the nickname.)
There were quite a number of changes...
Also, I made up a whole new language and alphabet for ALIL. I am a nerd. I like conlangs.
There we are! I hope these are enough crumbs to feed you! From one trash panda to a trash cockroach. I am happy to yap any time about writing.
Hello!!💮🌸🌺🌼 Would you mind telling us more about Revasha? How's our little tigress's Veilguard run going? How's her meeting with Hanon?! Anything, tell me ANYTHING cus oh gosh I just adore her💖🏹💘🐯
Hello! Thank you for this ask <3 I was so happy that someone adores Revasha this much! I'm taking this as permission to yap
Our little tigress is running with the Veil Jumpers and she is fumbling this new gig pretty bad. Everything is so beyond her comprehension and she's holding on with grit and prayers.
Except she can't even bloody pray anymore because her gods are running around everywhere giving her problems. What's she supposed to say?
"Dear Ghilan'nain, please guide me and show me the way so that I can skewer all your tentacles and grill you for dinner"?
"Dear All-Father, grant me the strength and fury to slam dunk your decrepit ass into next Tuesday"?
She would probably pray in front of Solas though. "Dear Fen'Harel, please stop being a little bitch for five minutes and help me clean up the mess you made and stop blaming me for your problems. Sincerely, tired of your bullshit."
There are a lot of clashes between in-game Rook's dialogue outside of the dialogue wheel and Revasha's personality though. Which is just inevitable, and I fully expected it. In-game, Rook is quite eloquent at comforting their companions (therapy speak, some have said), but Revasha is just not that person so those bits are particularly hilarious for me. She's never been good at comforting words. She's more a comforting action person. She'd say "damn that sucks, do you want a fruit? I'll peel you an orange" and then disappear and reappear with peeled orange before you can say no.
Companion: I feel bad
Revasha: That's nuts, I sliced you some apple
Her meeting with Hanon would have gone quite differently to in-game, for obvious reasons. They already have history. Although since this would be first timeline, they didn't actually meet until after Trespasser. Either way, she would have been so relieved to see him again and she'd have given him a big hug.
And then she would complain about Solas. Probably invite Hanon to the Lighthouse too. Ask him for advice, confide in him about being afraid and overwhelmed.
Romance-wise, she's got her eye on Davrin. They have many similarities and she appreciates his pragmatic approach and outlook.
Anyways, I better end my yapping here, sorry this was so scattered!
I lovingly blame you for my love for Dirthamen. It's terrible. I look for any and every scrap of info about him anywhere I can. That lore drop in Veilguard FED me. And gave me hope.
We are processing it for sure... Had to think about this ask for a bit.
I don't have the game and can't play it for a long while yet so I've just been receiving second-hand information, and watching my partner stream it (we're technically playing together since I'm picking the dialogue options with them...?) So I'm still trying to get as much as I can about it and then sitting with it.
I know some people have been having an absolute blast, while some have already told me they're disappointed and/or upset. I'm glad people are enjoying it and feel satisfied with the story, that's amazing. It's been a needed closure for sure after ten years. On my end, I'm personally a little underwhelmed.
Because look, I can see the creative direction, and I can see the messages and themes and all these beautiful narrative frameworks that the writers wanted to convey. I can see the story they wanted to tell, but the execution has suffered because the writing couldn't hold it up. Which is a shame because Dragon Age has always shone with its writing. It hasn't always been perfect but it's been solid. I've already been apprehensive and worried because of all the layoffs and turnovers, and I can definitely feel it in the final product.
I'm gonna ramble for a bit, I'll put it under a read more. Woe, spoilers ahead, including the ending!
Everything feels too clean, I'd say, which has been a common criticism for this game and I do agree with it. Dragon Age hasn't always been perfect with it, but it's still presented a lot of its conflicts in a morally grey light. It facilitated discussion (and discourse) about the characters' actions and motivations. But Veilguard's been very didactic about what you should feel. "This is bad, look how bad it is. We think this is bad. This is so bad. We don't condone this."
It feels like the game is backpedalling so hard out of fear that something will be presented "wrong" or that it will be problematic, and this ends up stripping the narrative and characters of their nuance to the point that it starts feeling generic and lifeless.
I've also noted the handholding in the dialogue but I've been told it eases up some later on in the game so there's that at least. I know it's to cater to new players, but at points you end up feeling like the game thinks you're a goldfish with short-term memory loss.
There's so much telling too in the dialogue. Off the top of my head, an example would be the point when you're first approaching D'Meta's Crossing and Bellara notes that this port used to be busy and so forth and it's always busy and then Neve remarks something isn't right. The dialogue feels clunky to me here. Yes, I can see that. The environment is already doing the storytelling. I can see crates and fresh produce and stacks of bags along the port. I can infer it used to be busy. You've set up this uneasy lighting and fog and desaturation so you feel something isn't right. Your environment is showing the story, so rely on it a bit more. There's no need to double down on it.
But again, this is just the first bit of the game, and maybe it gets better.
Then you have Mythal. Oh, Mythal. You are so interesting, so tragic, and so complex. But something about how her character was executed felt so... scattered? Something's nagging at me. Her character doesn't feel fully realised. I still have to get my thoughts in order about her, this is already getting too long lol.
I'm also baffled as to why the Inquisitor doesn't play a greater role. I honestly thought they would since this is a direct continuation of Inquisition. They're the reason Rook was even recruited by Varric in the first place.
Honestly, a lot of past choices just feel like they don't matter at all, which is also a shame because that's another charm to Dragon Age. You get to see this world that you've built over the course of the games, but that's just. Not here. I guess. Oh, and the Crows are good now, apparently? Did they go through a reform since Zevran's time or something...?
Look, I have a lot more thoughts on the game regarding other points, but maybe that's for another day. Can't reliably comment on the companions either as I haven't explored a lot of their stories yet.
Don't get me wrong, Veilguard has its strong points too. The environments are absolutely gorgeous and Ghilan'nain has a chokehold on me but that's just my love of body horror and female scientists who've thrown the book of ethics into the bin showing.
Also, FELASSAN. My boy!! I get to see and hear my favourite novel character at last! I'm so happy I got it right that he was a soldier. Got the rank wrong; he's a general, not a lieutenant, but close enough haha. His voice for sure surprised me but I loved it.
It's also so interesting to see the Dread Wolf side of Solas. He's not trying to hide anymore. Except, he still is. In Inquisition, the humble apostate was his armour. Now, it's the Wolf. It's a very fascinating intersection. The Solas we see now is running on fumes and desperation and has presumably been isolated for a decade (also, where the fuck are his agents??) and he's pulling out every trick he knows in the book just to get his goal done.
And the endings? Well, they're okay. I know some are happy with it, some not so. I'm lukewarm about them... I did enjoy the tension and I think 'satisfying' is a word I could use for it. But satisfying in the sense of "yeah okay, I'll take it". I can see the destination, and I can appreciate it, but the strength of the writing needed to get there didn't quite reach for me. Could've been way worse though (saw the alternate in the artbook for Veilguard), so small mercies with what we got.
A few parts shine for me still. I love Solas' body language in front of Mythal when she shows up. He looks so broken. It's so TELLING. That, for me, did so much more to convey their dynamic than the murals, I think. I also loved when Solas gets outwitted by Rook and he does that bitter chuckle and calls himself a fool. Delicious. Gareth David-Lloyd fucking killed it yet again with his voice acting in this game. I was also reminded a little of Loki's ending. Trickster god in a green realm and upholding the structure of the world anyone?
But yeah. Look, do I think Veilguard is a bad game? No, not at all. It's got its strengths and again, I can see the creative ambitions the writers wanted to get at, but it just wasn't fully realised. Likely due to all the complications during development. I think it's a good game if it's standing on its own. But as the fourth game in the franchise? It's mid for me...
Again, I'm genuinely happy for the people who are enjoying it and think it's delivered everything they've ever wanted. I'm also happy for the people who feel seen with the exploration of gender and identities in the game, and those whose headcanons have been confirmed. That's such a fantastic feeling. Definitely did a little dance myself at the whole "blight was sealed away" and "Solas was a spirit" confirmation, though those ones, I feel, were among the more obvious ones haha.
Let's be real though. We all know what the real best parts of the game are.
