Jul 9, 2024
whenever i don't have anything for Cullen to do at the War Table after giving Josie and Leliana the big missions, i just send the soldiers to go pick flowers (gather herbs) so he feels included
whenever i don't have anything for Cullen to do at the War Table after giving Josie and Leliana the big missions, i just send the soldiers to go pick flowers (gather herbs) so he feels included
#48 with Jacinth Lavellan for @songofsaraneth
very happy to share this second floral bust commission i got from @littlestpersimmon!! Of my Jacinth Lavellan 💜
the recent chatter about dragon age yuri/f+f ships/etc had me considering which f/f pairing i think is rarest or most unhinged in my own personal canon. which i think has to be when i did the post-WEWH Florianne judgement option where you recruit her as an agent and send her on some War Table missions (this is only an option if you have the Nobility Knowledge perk iirc) and i got knocked on my ass by how horny that option eventually played out with my f!inquisitor
like it starts with this letter from her once she's 'recruited'--after EVERYTHING AT HALAMSHIRAL--asking you to put your own people at risk so Florianne can expose all of the other nobles working for Corypheus in one fell swoop. The plan relies on her, this person you've already defeated and imprisoned and judged, to make a crucial move at the last second to save YOUR people. She phrases it like part of the Game, a daring little test of your resolve, and even acknowledges it would be insane to trust her on this. She insists it has to be a real stake or no one will believe it. and there's this undercurrent to it of like... she is begging to be used as a weapon. she doesn't want to sit an do nothing and if she can't make her own plans for glory anymore, she might as well them on your behalf. and she tries to taunt you into taking her bait.
Cullen of course says Absolutely Not, Leliana advises you to only pretend to put your people at risk and pick off who you can yourself, but of all people JOSEPHINE. who is the least ruthless and prefers negotiation to violence, and hates putting people at risk, and KNOWS what self-interested nobles are like. says actually you know what? do it. trust her.
If you pick Cullen's path, Florianne writes back that she is made useless and sitting at dinner parties is a waste of her skills, and wishes you'd sent her to the chantry instead. With Leliana's, she is entirely unsurprised you made a move to betray her first--it's what SHE would do in your situation. it's the smart move according to the game. and so she flees and removes herself from the entire mess, the Game and the Inquisition and the Elder One.
but if you pick JOSIES!!! the path that seems so naive!!!!!!! and you give Florianne the chance to prove herself--which she did NOT expect you to actually go for--it shocks the Game right out of her. your people are put at risk, the nobles allied with Corypheus show themselves, and Florianne does at the very last swoop in and prevent true catastrophe. Even she is shocked that she did not take the easy vengeance. the Inquisitor basically sees her make her power play, and rises to it not with tricky counter strategy but by saying "you know what? do it. prove yourself and keep your word." and you make a move totally opposite of what a well-seasoned player of the Game would do, basically refusing to play.
if it ended any other way you'd look like a total idiot and you just GIVE her that power over you. she asks you to be used as a weapon and then says "but only if I'm pointed at your own throat first." and you can do it!!! insane! and then she DOES in fact swing the other way and cut everyone else down instead. but she is basically at your complete mercy--if you let her live at the ball your options for her include manual labor, chantry imprisonment, exile, or literally turning her into your court jester, and if you kill her, you can then even choose what way you want to make use of or humiliate her corpse. what the fuck. but instead of that if you take all your power and give some back to her, she is so surprised she pledges herself into your service willingly from that point on.
and that's where the game content ends but HELLO??? the eroticism of it all did drive me a little insane the first time i read those letters. the TENSION? the IMPLICATIONS? and this is such a crazy nested decision tree (IF you haven't already killed her, IF you happened to take that perk, IF you pick that choice, IF you go with Josie's plan) that i think 90% of players never see this route unless they specifically go dig. but WOOF. whew! its hot. its so hot.
so anyway i do think she keeps doing a series of missions like this where she asks the Inquisitor for more leeway or power, and my quiz just keeps doing it almost like a dare to betray her after all this, and eventually Florianne comes back to Skyhold after several rounds of this and they have the most insanely charged hookup that's not at all about love and entirely about power. like the intimacy of having the ability to destroy someone so insanely trumps the intimacy of actually fucking it's basically like, where do you even go from that.
it's been on my 'eventual' fic list for ages but i already have too many in progress to start right now but like. hello. does anyone see my visions??? apparently not except for the TWO people who wrote fics for this on AO3 back in 2016. but i'm here. i'm rotating it like crazy.
i am so intrigued by the LavellanDog wip 🙏 please tell us more
ahahah, this is my early post-Tresspasser fic where my Lavellan has returned to Skyhold after the Exalted Council has ended, with too much knowledge and one less arm. she already has enough to deal with but Surprise, commander Helaine (the knight-enchanter specialization coach) is there, to 1. re train her how to fight one-handed and 2. give her a puppy.
Lavellan does NOT want a puppy. she is used to livestock not pets, even if the dog looks more like a horse than a canine and behave just as weirdly (it's a couple month old borzoi lol). she has TOO MUCH TO DO!!
“Good morning, Commander,” Lavellan says. She looks down at the dog. It stares up at her and yawns, showing a pink tongue even longer than the thing’s already ridiculously long snout. “Inquisitor. You may begin stretching.” Lavellan leans her staff against the stone wall, and begins moving through the familiar warm-up motions. She hadn’t kept to the routine as much the last two years—Helaine will be sure to point out all the ways she’s rusty from lack of discipline. But first, the commander starts with a lecture. “You know that the modern version of our tradition originated with the Emerald Knights, although earlier practices date back to the ancient empire of Elvhenan. To protect the Dales, which at that time still belonged solely to the elves, the Knights rode into battle on halla and fought alongside wolf companions, referred to as the Knight’s Guardians.” Ah. So this is what’s going on. “Whatever lineage of wolves they once cared for has long since been lost. It would be impractical or even useless to try to recreate the tradition with actual, wild wolves. As such, for the last several years, my colleagues Constables Talas and Mahariel have been reviving the practices with Nevarran hounds to take their place. While they lack the brute strength of wolves, they take to training quickly, and can move faster and with greater obedience. They can also alert their fighting partner to unseen enemies.” “I’ve lost an arm, not an eye, Helaine.” “During training you will address me as Commander once again.” Lavellan sighs. “Yes, Commander.” “The dog will still be useful. This litter was bred for both strength and speed, and both its parents have served admirably alongside their companions in battle for the last several years.” There is the very slightest of pauses before her next words, which might almost have been mistaken for a breath rather than the hesitation Lavellan still recognizes. “It’s a wolfhound.” Jacinth does stop stretching then, and turns to stare flatly at the other woman. Helaine doesn’t look away, though there is a flash of—something, across her face. From someone who rarely displays any emotion, it’s almost alarming. A wolfhound. To hunt a wolf. The meaning is not lost on her. This is not an argument she’s going to have right now; she’s had it already, with Cassandra. And Leliana and Cullen. And the Iron Bull, and Dorian, and Vivienne, and—everyone but Cole, really. She hadn’t been sure who all knows the truth—maybe there should have been more effort to keep things secret—but it’s too late for that now, apparently. “Fine,” Lavellan spits out finally, eyes narrowed. “I’ll train with the dog.” “You’ll do more than that. To establish the bond that will carry you through battles, you will do everything with the dog from now on.” “Wait, what—” “It will eat at your feet. Sleep beside your bed. If you expect to fight together, you must also live together.” “I—I don’t know anything about dogs,” Lavellan tries desperately. The Dalish don’t keep pets, not for pleasure. Only livestock. “Can’t it—just stay in the stables? With the other animals?” “It’s not a horse, Inquisitor.” “It’s good enough for halla and harts and—and that nuggalope, too. And… whatever dracolisks are.” “None of those are species of dog, either, Inquisitor.”
this is all bad enough, but then it turns out "Nevarran wolfhounds" are in fact as weird as other Nevarran magic/hobbies, and they're bred to accompany their owner not just in life, but into the Fade. so! some of the fic is Jacinth dealing with daytime practical matters, and some of it is coping with nightmares/change/inner turmoil in dreams, and she cant even be alone there either.
I've shared two other snippets of this one, here and here :) And this is prompt is from this WIP ask game!
my favorite hobby in dragon age is going into someone’s home, speaking to them for a minute, and then immediately after saying bye turning around and picking up their diary off their bed and reading it in front of them
Oh man, I hope I'm not too late for this. 💌 ⇢ how many unread emails do you have right now? and especially for you, a bug 🪲 ⇢ add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here
from these tumblr asks thank you :D
💌 ⇢ how many unread emails do you have right now?
for my personal emails: I live at inbox 0. as soon as i go to the tab and see there is a new email i either open it or mark it as read. i mean i guess i only bulk-clear out spam/promotions every couple months but otherwise! nothing for me.
except: got depressed over the summer (and it did not lift) and my grad school email was Overwhelming. bc i get like 20-30 per day because there's So Many Fucking Lists and like 99% of them are Useless, and its a waste of time to even look at them. so now there's 1741 emails in there and they Haunt me. i should just mass mark-as-read them but every time i hear the outlook "new email" ding it activates my flight-or-fight response so rip
🪲 ⇢ add 50 words to your current wip and share the paragraph here
oh goddammit you are CRUEL 😭 but i cannot deny i love a good bug. i'm picking the doc that's fastest though which is the post-trespasser one where i give Lavellan a borzoi puppy (curtesy of the Knight-Enchanter trainer) bc i think its funny
Lavellan’s eyes burn, and her head throbs in time with each step she takes up the stairs. She can hear the hound’s nails scrabbling against the cold stone behind her, and when she opens the door to her chambers and walks inside, it slips past her legs and begins to make a circuit of the room, sniffing curiously at the edges of the furniture. She ignores it as she drops to sit on the edge of the bed, breath rushing out in a huff as she flops backwards onto the covers. She can’t avoid sleeping anymore, after two days it’s pointless to keep putting off. But sleeping means taking off her uniform, and that means putting it back on in the morning, with all those damn laces and buttons she has to fumble with only one hand and her teeth now. That, or bear the indignity of asking a servant to dress her, just like the cold and glittering nobles in Orlais—with their masks staring down at her as voices ring out all the ways the Inquisition cannot be allowed to last. The memory swims behind her eyelids, until she digs her fingers into the corner of her eye to erase them with a swirling mess of color and light. There is a light thump on the bed next to her, and she jerks her head sideways to see that the spindly animal has leapt up onto the quilt beside her. Its dark eyes stare intently at her face, far too close, and after a moment she can smell the carion-tang of it’s breath against her cheek. “Absolutely not,” she says as she sits back up, awkwardly half-lifting the beast with her one arm until it relents and bounds back down to the floor. “You can stay down there.”
For the WIP ask game, I'm super curious about these three:
DeathOfClanLavellan Lucanis/Rook boat scenes Vivienne_preWEWH
I'd love to know a little bit about one or all of them!
(And thanks for the tag to pass it along to me. It looks like I have some WIPs to herd!)
thank you!!
DeathOfClanLavellan: this was another k!meme prompt I never finished--but basically looking for more of a reaction to the fact that your entire clan can get wiped out and there's pretty much no in-game comment on it. At the time I was debating if I wanted my canon Inquisitor's clan to survive or not (they did on my first run but i do love an angst moment), and while I ultimately decided not to go that route, I wrote just a little bit of thoughts on what it might look like.
She wasn’t supposed to find out, not like this. Standing at the stairwell, listening for echoed snatches of conversation, she’d only supposed she’d pick up trivial court rumors or gossip. She hadn’t realized it was a pair of Leliana’s agents, hovering at the edges of the ball in case they were needed. “…the rebellion at Wycome,” one had said to the other. “So many died. Did any of the elves make it out?” “Some managed to flee the Alienage before it fell,” the other replied. “It was the Dalish who were blamed. They didn’t find any, afterwards. Poor fools.” They say more, after that, but none of the words matter. Lavellan stands frozen, rooted to the fancy plush carpet as the words echo around and around the inside of her head. It cannot be possible; cannot be true.
Lucanis/Rook boat scenes: A lot of my unpublished writing is just unconnected scenes/interactions between my protagonists and other characters so I can solidify my sense of their dynamic, and this is basically that for Juniper Aldwir & Lucanis. Scenes sort of centered on time spent in the Lighthouse/Crossroads, aka Juniper getting the Caretaker to ferry her around to try to make some sense of what the Crossroads actually are.
I actually did throw one two and three of these scenes on tumblr at the time since I was traveling around then/didn't have my whole disaster file system on hand, though I think there's also sections I never posted. The whole thing is kind of meandering/rough/doesn't have a clear goal, because it's just some exploration!
Vivienne_preWEWH: this one is a just a little bonding moment between my Jacinth Lavellan and Vivienne before The Winter Palace. Lavellan goes to her for extra etiquette lessons/advice for navigating the Game. I shared a snippet once before about this scene also being when my Inquisitor's eyebrows get a makeover haha.
“Vivienne, do you have a moment?” Lavellan asks, pausing a few feet from the sette the older mage reclines on. She does not look up from the book in her hand as she replies. “Of course, darling.” “We’re going to the Winter Place in two weeks, for the Masquerade.” “I am well aware.” “Well, Josephine has been giving me waltz lessons, to prepare. She says I will be expected to dance, at least a few times.” A heartbeat of silence. “She says I’ve learned it very well.” “And why exactly are you here now then, Inquisitor?” Vivienne finally closes her book, and sweeps her gaze up and down Lavellan. “Because I think if you were the one teaching me to waltz, you’d tell me I’m awful, and how to do it better.” Vivienne does not laugh at that, not the way another would, but she does smile and let out a brief hum of amusement that is essentially the same thing, Lavellan hopes.
Unfortunatelyyyyyy the next sections of this were one of the casualties of my hard drive failure in May, and I never got around to rewriting them 😔
these are all from this WIP ask game!! :)