What's a Meta for?

Random musings and tidbits of my feelings, my fanfiction, and my fixations.

[warpedlegacy]

Attention:

I shall do my best to tag all Dragon Age: The Veilguard posts as "veilguard spoilers" for those who wish to block any info related to the game. If I miss one, feel free to let me know and I'll tag it. You have been warned.

Reprisals

So it occurs to me I’ve never actually created a promo post for my ongoing fic of Theresa Trevelyan, my Inquisitor OC. So here goes! 

Reprisals is about lies. But it’s also about the truth. In very much the same way a shadow comes from light. The Chantry has told many lies. Theresa Trevelyan is merely one of them. They called her a heretic first, then a savior, then a prophet. She rejects the myth they've made of her life and her suffering. But more than this, she resents their erasure of the truth behind her rise to power. You think you know the story of the Herald of Andraste? Now you will hear the truth. With a little help from Thedas's favorite serial author, of course.

Set within a frame narrative of Theresa telling her story to Varric, who is writing it all down with the intent that the world will finally know the real person behind the stories. Reprisals is about lies and truth, yes. But it’s also about being seen. About learning to see ourselves, to look inward and find our own truths. About relearning who we are after the pain - not because of it or in spite of it, but simply after it. 

This project started simply as a desire to get back into the writing groove after a long hiatus by documenting my headcanon story of DAI. And it kind of snowballed from there lol. You will see my writing change as it goes along, as I grow more comfortable with both Theresa’s character and my own voice. I hope if you choose to engage you will enjoy the journey as much as I am! 

Reprisals, main series

Book One: The Rise - Begins with the game’s beginning, up through their arrival at Skyhold and the naming of Theresa as Inquisitor

Book Two: The Reign  - Continues on from where The Rise left off, meant to go up through the end of the base game’s events. Currently WIP. 

Book Three: The Revelation - Has yet to be written. Is meant to cover the events between the end of the base game up through Trespasser. 

While Time Remains

Currently WIP, post-Trespasser series. Theresa and Cullen begin their new lives after the events of Trespasser. A multi-chapter series meant to bridge the gap between DAI and DAD. Mostly focusing on the domestic lives of Theresa and Cullen, but with some tidbits of angst, smut, child rearing, action, and espionage thrown in. There are at least four planned arcs, and a planned end.

’Til Winter’s End - The first arc for WTR. After the events of the Exalted Council, Theresa feels adrift. No Anchor, no Inquisition, no home, and no left arm. What she does have are two clear points of reference. The first is her steadfast determination to stop Solas from enacting his plan to destroy the world. The second is in her husband, Cullen. At his suggestion, they spend their honeymoon in South Reach with his family for a long-awaited reunion, where Theresa begins to recuperate. But when all the bustle of duty and danger is gone, she is left with only herself, and has to relearn who that is.

The Black City - WIP, Picks up where TWE left off. Kirkwall is known as the “City of Chains”. Its jet black walls feel like an appropriate backdrop for a site whose history is filled with dark and bloody deeds. It is also where Theresa and Cullen have decided to make their new home, now that the Inquisition has been disbanded. Together with Cullen’s youngest sister, Rosalie – an apostate and now Theresa’s pupil – and their mabari Cal, they make a valiant attempt at settling down and starting fresh. But the past will not stay quiet, and unresolved hurts begin to fester, spreading their corruption into the present, and possibly poisoning any future they hope to build. (fic banner created using concept art for Kirkwall, commissioned art by neonteeth with permission, and flycam shot found here)

Side stories set within the same canon

Swept Away: Set post-Trespasser, with Josephine Montilyet and Isabela as the main characters, with small tidbits of Theresa’s world state peppered into the background as passing mentions only. If you like Pirates of the Caribbean and Pride and Prejudice, and ever wondered what a story that combined the two would look like, then look no more! Josie/Isabela is a rare pair that I deeply love and think it deserves more attention.

350: A series of drabbles about various characters and moments within the DAI storyline, each one exactly 350 words. This was a personal challenge for me to help fix my at times overly-verbose writing. 

Seeker, It’s Cold Outside: Varric/Cassandra, trapped in a cave during a snow storm. No smut, just fluff and some humor, with some very strong hints at shipping. And vitriolic banter, because who’re we kidding it’s the whole appeal of this pairing. 

Fools (or, Truth and Lies): Varric/Cassandra. If you read the above story and thought, “okay but do they bang?”, this fic is the answer. (spoilers, the answer is YES). 

The Catch: Theresa/the Iron Bull, set after Haven’s fall, during their time trapped in the mountains before reaching Skyhold. FWB. Smut as hurt/comfort. Some light D/s and sex-in-a-tent kinkiness. 

An Evening In: Cullen/Theresa. Set sometime during Book Three: The Revelation. The Inquisitor's latest excursion has had to be delayed due to an impending winter storm. With forward progress stalled, Cullen suggests they take the chance to comb through some much-neglected paperwork whilst secluding themselves in her quarters. This unexpected gift of extra time together leads to an unexpected revelation for Cullen.

Just Missing You: Cullen/Theresa. The Inquisitor finally returns after an extended journey, eager to reunite with her love, but she and Cullen seem to keep just missing each other, pulled apart as they are by the endless tasks of Skyhold.

Morningside: Cullen/Theresa. Porn with feelings. Theresa awakens after recovering from a serious injury, and is in the mood. Luckily, Cullen is right there. Mostly some light-hearted sexy fun, with a bit of character and relationship development thrown in as extra toppings.

Fluffuary: Exactly what it says on the tin. This is where I post all my filled Fluffuary prompts that are set within the Reprisals world state.

Blood in my mouth, and the bitterness in goodbye: f!Warden Cousland/Leliana. Leliana-focused story, takes place in between Origins and Awakening. Sort of a prologue for her story in Reprisals.

Fiercely Perish: You want Die Hard in Thedas? I got your Die Hard in Thedas! Sort of a crack fic, but also just a fun time. 

Theresa Trevelyan in other stories

The Storm Within: Part of DAFF server’s OC exchange event, written by @lalaenwrites. Theresa meets a Dalish Keeper with whom she seemingly has nothing at all in common... until they find common ground. 

Clearing the Field: Another OC exchange fic, written by MakjangCandy. Theresa and Cullen navigate a field of glyphs, both literal and figurative, together.

Silk & Steel: Another OC exchange fic, written by Gynedroid. The Inquisition has been disbanded, and the mark is gone. That means the Inquisitor's job is over, right?Well, not quite. Theresa Trevelyan will never turn her back on those who need help, particularly the mages she fought so hard to save. She no longer has the armies of the faithful at her back, or some of the best spies and diplomats the realm produced.  She has nothing but words at her disposal to persuade the famously iron-willed Queen Anora. Let it be enough.

Avatar by @neonteeth

Blog banner by @rakshadow​

[nananarc]

btw if you are a writer, a worldbuilder, a campaign maker of any kind, Kanka is a wiki-like website perfect for all that.

been using it for years now to store my worldbuilding, drafting, drawing and writing for my comics. free plan is still super powerful. weird that its not more popular.

[thelaithlyworm]

(Well, it’s the 2nd for me, but for the rest of you slowpokes… (Not entirely safe for work.))

[warpedlegacy]

It’s that time of year again!

[juniper-divination-and-witchery]

Celtic Reconstructionism: Theology, Cosmology, and What CR Actually Believes

Celtic Reconstructionism (CR) is a polytheistic, animistic religious movement grounded in pre-Christian Celtic sources. If this is your first time here, start with the basics and then the history.

For readers coming from Wicca or eclectic neo-paganism, the structural differences are significant. CR is working from a different theology, not just a different set of deity names.

Polytheism: The Gods Are Real and Distinct

Where much of Wicca and eclectic neo-paganism works within a soft polytheist framework (“all gods are one god” and “all goddesses are one goddess”), CR holds that the gods are genuinely distinct.1

CR is a form of hard polytheism, specifically grounded in the polytheist traditions of the Celtic nations (Brittany, Cornwall, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Scotland, and Wales). The gods are individual beings with distinct personalities, histories, and domains, not aspects of a universal deity or archetypes of the collective unconscious.

The Jungian framing popular in some pagan circles (gods as psychological archetypes, projections of the collective unconscious rather than external beings) is also not a CR position. The exact metaphysical nature of that existence isn’t dogmatically defined; the movement doesn’t require practitioners to hold identical positions on what, precisely, a deity is. What it does require is engaging with them as distinct individuals rather than as symbols.

CR is also animist. The land, rivers, trees, and other natural features have spiritual presence. Specific hills, rivers, and wells are named in the Irish sources as home to specific spirits or deities: the Boyne to Bóann, the Shannon to Sionann. Scholar Marie-Louise Sjoestedt, writing in Celtic Gods and Heroes, observed that the Irish medieval mythographers described the ancient gods as prehistoric tribes who “still dwell there invisibly present, side by side with the human inhabitants.”2

The Maiden/Mother/Crone Problem

If you’ve spent time in any pagan space, you’ve encountered the triple goddess: Maiden, Mother, Crone. It’s ubiquitous in contemporary paganism.

The framework comes from Robert Graves’s The White Goddess, published in 1948. Graves was a poet and mythographer, not a scholar of Celtic religion. The Maiden/Mother/Crone model imposes a specific meaning (female divine power organized around reproductive lifecycle stages) that the Irish and other Celtic sources don’t support.

Celtic goddesses do appear in triple form, but these are functional groupings, not age-based progressions. Brigit appears in the sources as three sisters: one of poetry, one of healing, one of smithcraft. Sjoestedt says the triple Brigit is “adored by poets, smiths and leeches,” three domains of skill, not three life stages. The Morrígan similarly appears as a triple figure whose aspects relate to battle, fate, and sovereignty. Sjoestedt identifies the trio as the Badb, the Morrígan, and Nemain (or Macha, depending on the source), figures differentiated by how they manifest on the battlefield and in relation to fate, not by age or fertility status.2

Graves’s model ties female divine power to the reproductive cycle in a way the actual sources don’t. A goddess in Irish tradition is categorized by what she does and where she holds power: her domain and function, not her age or life stage.

Three Realms: Land, Sea, and Sky

CR’s cosmology, its understanding of how the universe is structured, is built around three realms, not the four elements or four directions familiar from other pagan traditions.

In Old Irish:

Nem: sky (niv) Talam: land (TAH-lum) Muir: sea (mwir)

Swearing by sky, land, and sea was a standard way of invoking the whole of existence, the complete structure of the world, not three symbolic categories. Erynn Rowan Laurie describes this directly in A Circle of Stones: “It is upon this division, rather than the traditional western four elements of earth, air, fire and water, that the ancient Celts based their concept of the universe. Oaths were sworn by land, sea and sky. All things lived within the circle.”3

The four-element, four-direction ritual framework in Western neopaganism descends from ceremonial magic, specifically the Hermetic tradition as transmitted through the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn in the late nineteenth century.

Connecting the three realms, in Laurie’s framework, is fire. Specifically imbas (IM-us), the fire of poetic inspiration. Fire is the presence of the gods and the link between humanity and the divine.3 The imbas tradition in Irish mythology names a specific form of inspired vision sought by poets and seers. It involves altered states and deliberate withdrawal from the mundane world, and it gives the cosmological concept direct ritual application.

The three realms give CR practitioners a working map of who they are in relationship with: the gods, the spirits of the land (including the Aos Sí), and the ancestors. These aren’t rigid categories. A deity like Manannán straddles sea and Otherworld; the Tuatha Dé Danann, after their retreat into the sídhe, became the spirits of the land they once ruled. The realms orient the practitioner, not constrain the beings.

The three-part structure operates alongside a second, fivefold layer of sacred geography. Ireland was traditionally divided into five provinces (Connacht, Ulster, Leinster, Munster, and Meath at the centre), each carrying not just a directional orientation but a conceptual quality: learning in the west, battle in the north, prosperity in the east, music in the south, and kingship at the centre.4 Archaeologist J. P. Mallory describes this system as a “cultural cosmology, a way of partitioning the world” rather than a straightforward political map. The provincial capitals (Rathcroghan, Navan Fort, Knockaulin, Cashel, Tara) functioned as ceremonial centres whose Iron Age origins predate the medieval literary accounts by centuries.4 The three realms and the five provinces aren’t competing frameworks; one structures the cosmos vertically, the other structures the land horizontally, with Tara at the sacred centre.

The Otherworld

The Irish Otherworld, An Saol Eile (“the other world/life”), is not an afterlife in the Christian sense. It’s a parallel realm that coexists with the mortal world, accessible at certain places and times. It appears under multiple names in the sources: Tír na nÓg (Land of the Young), Mag Mell (Plain of Delight), Tech Duinn (the House of Donn, where the dead gather), Tír fo Thuinn (Land Under the Sea). These aren’t synonyms for a single unified realm; they name different regions of an unseen geography.3

The Otherworld coexists with the mortal world, accessible at certain thresholds rather than located at a remove from it. Access points to these other realms include the sídhe mounds, caves, lakes, and the western sea. Liminal times, especially Samhain and Bealtaine, thin the boundary between worlds.

In the Lebor Gabála Érenn (Book of Invasions), the Tuatha Dé Danann don’t leave Ireland after their defeat by the Milesians. They withdraw into it, retreating into the sídhe mounds, the hills, and the rivers. This is why the Aos Sí (the fairy folk) and the gods are related concepts in Irish tradition: the gods became the spirits of the land. Sjoestedt describes the Irish mythographers presenting the ancient gods as beings who still dwell invisibly present beside the human inhabitants.3

The relationship between the dead and the Otherworld is complex in the sources, and CR doesn’t flatten it. Irish cosmology offers no single unified afterlife, and CR doesn’t impose one.

Ritual Structure: What CR Practice Actually Looks Like

Circle-casting and quarter-calling framework comes from late nineteenth-century ceremonial magic, specifically the Golden Dawn tradition, and was absorbed into Wicca through Gerald Gardner’s development of that religion in the 1940s and 1950s.

CR ritual centers on prayer, offering, and hospitality. Daily devotional practice is weighted more heavily than periodic elaborate ritual. In practice, this usually means a home altar: a cloth, a candle, images or symbols of the deity or ancestors being honored, a bowl for offerings, kept and tended regularly.

Offerings are simple: milk, ale, mead, hazelnuts, wine, apples, oats, butter, pork. All are well-attested in the mythology and folklore as preferred by gods and spirits.3 Nothing needs to be sourced from a specialty shop. Regular, modest practice carries more weight than an elaborate occasional ritual that rarely happens.

Reciprocity is the underlying concept. Offerings are expressions of ongoing relationship, not transactions. Flaithiúlacht (FLAH-hyoo-lacht), meaning hospitality, is both a social virtue and a ritual one in Irish tradition. Laurie puts it plainly: “In the Celtic world, hospitality is a sacred duty.”3

Ethics: Where CR Draws Its Moral Framework

CR ethics come from Celtic primary sources, not the Wiccan Rede. The primary texts for Irish CR are the Triads of Ireland (Tríada Éireann), a medieval collection of wisdom sayings covering kingship, personal conduct, and social obligation; the Instructions of Cormac Mac Airt (Tecosca Cormaic), advice attributed to the legendary king on truth-telling and right behavior; and Brehon law (Fénechas, “law of the freemen”), the pre-Norman Irish legal system, restorative rather than punitive and focused on compensation and the repair of social harm.5

Three concepts from these sources appear throughout CR practice:

Fír (feer): truth, meaning not simply honesty but alignment between words and reality at a structural level. Oath-breaking and false witness were among the most serious violations in Irish tradition. The concept runs through law, mythology, and the ethics of kingship: a king who spoke falsehood was believed to cause physical harm to the land itself.

Enech (EN-akh): literally “face,” meaning honor or social standing. Your enech is your reputation as maintained through right action, damaged by lying, cowardice, or failure to meet your obligations. The related legal concept, lóg n-enech (logue n-EN-akh), is the “honor price,” a person’s assessed social value under Brehon law, which determined the scale of compensation owed when they were wronged. In early Irish law, enech and “face” were the same word; to shame someone was to make them red in the face, synonymous with an offense against their honor.6

Flaithiúlacht: hospitality, introduced above as a ritual virtue and equally an ethical obligation. The CR FAQ describes CR ethics as a “virtue theoretic ethical system,” meaning positive guidelines for behavior rather than a list of prohibitions.1 Hospitality is one of those positive obligations.

All three concepts are embedded in a specific historical and cultural context, developed within a society that treated the social and spiritual worlds as continuous with each other. A CR practitioner engaging with them is engaging with a real historical ethical system.

Related Reading

CR sits inside a wider ecosystem of Celtic tradition. These pieces offer practical entry points into the Irish practices and folk beliefs that surround the theology:

The Evil Eye in Irish Folklore: how folk belief in the evil eye operated alongside formal religion, and the folk cures that responded to it.

Bealtaine: Irish May Day Traditions: one of the liminal thresholds named above, with the seasonal observances that grew around it.

St. Brigid’s Day Crosses: the continuity between Brigit as pre-Christian goddess and Brigid as saint, expressed through a surviving folk practice.

How to Read Ogham Divination: the Irish tree alphabet as a ritual and divinatory system that fits the CR framework.

Irish New Year Folk Magic: Lá Coille: seasonal folk observance drawn from Irish sources.

The New Moon in Irish Folklore: how lunar observances entered Irish folk practice.

The next article in this series will cover the gods themselves: who the Tuatha Dé Danann are, what the sources actually say about them, and how CR practitioners relate to specific deities today.

CR FAQ ↩︎ ↩︎

Celtic Gods and Heroes by Marie-Louise Sjoestedt ↩︎ ↩︎

A Circle of Stones: Journeys and Meditations for Modern Celts by Erynn Rowan Laurie ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎ ↩︎

The Origins of the Irish by J. P. Mallory ↩︎ ↩︎

Wikipedia: Early Irish Law ↩︎

The Honor Price in Brehon Law ↩︎

[dragon-age-tournament]

Ship Tournament — Round #1 / Match 22 of 88

Maddox/Samson

"Extremely devoted friendship going on over here, also see Inquisitor Maddox."

vs. Isabela/Josephine

"josephine says her family founded the first trade routes to rivain and once sent whole fleets across the waking sea, and the montilyets spent generations getting targeted by rivaini pirates. so putting her with ISABELA, an actual rivaini pirate captain, is just instantly delicious. it’s the perfect mix of history, friction, and “well this would make family dinner weird.” and beyond that, i think they’d genuinely fascinate each other - josephine all poise and diplomacy and careful words, isabela all swagger and instinct and saying exactly the thing she shouldn’t. that’s a very fun ship."

"Josephine spends her life handling nobles, liars, and political disasters without losing her composure, and Isabela is used to breezing into a room, causing trouble, and staying three steps ahead of whoever is trying to catch her. That makes the dynamic really appealing, because Josephine wouldn't be easily overwhelmed by Isabela, and Isabela would probably find that irresistible. Add in the fact that Josephine comes from an old Antivan merchant family with deep Waking Sea history while Isabela is exactly the sort of pirate that history would have warned her about, and it gets even better."

Which is the better ship?

Maddox/Samson

Isabela/Josephine

Voting ended onApr 12

[byjove]

embarked on the Grail quest wrong, came back from the Grail quest wrong

[crabkick]

Inspired by @r0ck-the-casbah's brilliant post. Male living space Cullen :p

[writingwithcolor]

Avoiding Orientalist Language While Writing MENA Characters in Historical Setting

Anonymous asked:

I have a question around linguistics within dialogue: my story is set in the early crusades with a character list that include European Christians, Middle Eastern Muslims, and Middle Eastern Christians. As - particularly during this time period - characters coming from different backgrounds would have different linguistical styles, I’m trying to avoid my Middle Eastern characters using expressions that are clearly of English origin, note which characters are speaking which language where necessary, and include transliterated Arabic words/phrases when appropriate. (Your ‘how to convey arabic language in a specific dialect is being spoken without lengthy descriptions of how words/specific letters are pronounced?’ answer was really helpful here, thank you!) However as a non-Arabic, English speaker I’m also wary of ‘over-peppering’ these Arabic idioms to the extent that the Europeans’ dialogue comes across as ‘standard’ and the Middle Eastern characters’ as ‘exotic’ (I’m conscious that overly formal and ornate language has been a pretty orientalist trope in the past, which I’m trying to avoid). Would you have any recommended rules of thumb on how to keep a good balance, or anything to be wary of/outright avoid here? Thank you so much for any advice you can share!

Love this. I’d try the placeholder method (just made this up.) Honestly, the best thing to do is just write the story first using whatever English expressions come naturally — even if you know they’re super modern or wouldn’t make sense in the time period and setting (like “a dime a dozen” or “barking up the wrong tree”). Don’t stress about making everything historically or culturally perfect right away. That’ll stall the writing process. These non-suitable phrases become ‘placeholders’ to switch out later. 

So keep track of those lines (you can highlight them or jot the the page/line # down somewhere), and then later on, if you know someone who speaks Arabic or is familiar with the culture, ask them to help swap in more fitting phrases, and do a sensitivity read overall. They might not translate word-for-word, but they can help you find alternatives that still match the vibe or emotion of certain idioms. They can also find spots for Arabic idioms that you wouldn’t have expected. 

I found this list from Reddit user AgileCzar about gulf dialect idioms from a decade ago:

خيرها في غيرها - "a better (one) in another (one)". Kind of like better luck next time, but without sarcasm

انا في وادي وانت في وادي - "I am in a valley and you are in a valley" - describes a situation where you and the other person are on different pages, not seeing eye to eye etc...

يوم عسل ويوم بصل - "A day of honey, a day of onions" - a response when someone asks how you're doing. Basically saying some days are good and some are bad.

شو لونك (shoo lunak) - "What's your color" - used in Kuwait as a greeting (like what's up)

I would never have thought to do any of these, but they’re really fun! Scouring the internet for options and figuring out where these go is a total second-pass sort of edit. You don’t want to put pressure on yourself to get it all right on the first draft. It's a lot easier to fix language stuff when you already have the story down.

I do this in scripts a lot when I know something needs to be in Spanish or Arabic, but I’m not clear on the exact wording because finishing the story is more important at that moment.

Good Luck and Happy Writing!

-Melanie 🌻

(Note: this ask has been reviewed and approved by a MENA WWC mod)

[catchymemes]

[crabs-with-sticks]

Thinking about the Inquisition wearing military dress to Halamshiral, and I actually love it as a choice so much. I fully get why lots of people don't like the choice (and lets be real, I love all the fancy designs people have done!!) but honestly. What a power move.

To me, the Inquisition showing up in military dress and sans masks reads as a refusal to play Orlais' game. The Inquisition arrives at Halamshiral on its own terms.

It is a refusal to make people comfortable, a refusal to let people act like it is just another ball, that they can continue as normal. It is a bold statement that Thedas is in crisis, and it forces the nobility to confront that. Its a constant reminder that these are peace talks.

And, it is also a firm statement of power. It is a statement that the Inquisition has order and stability where Orlais is caught up in a chaotic civil war. And it is the sort of move that only works because the Inquisition has the power to back it up, both in armed forces, but also social, cultural and political capital.

Because Orlais is in a very weak position. They have been in civil war for two years with little sign of reprieve. No war is good for a country, but civil war is brutal. You can't really gain anything as a country in a civil war, you can't plunder or take home treasures and new lands. And we see in multiple locations in Orlais how bad the civil war has been for the country, with farms and estates in ruins.

And even Orlais' other element of power in the Orlesian Chantry has been basically destroyed and replaced by the Inquisition. They have no Divine, and the Inquisition has control of either the mages or templars. Orlais is powerless and is only managing to hide that fact by the trappings of wealth and luxury. If nobody acknowledges the elephant in the room, is it even there? If everybody pretends like everything is fine and Orlais is still powerful then it might as well be.

But the Inquisition doesn't try to hide the chaos and conflict going on in the world behind beautiful riches. By dressing in military fashion it is an uncomfortable reminder of everything going on outside the palaces and music and jewels and masks. And played right, it really forces the two sides of the civil war to come to the table and attempt to solve the issue. Because it just calls those in power out.

Its such a bolshy move to wear military dress and I love it. It catches Orlais in its own delusion of power and forces it to acknowledge the influence and power of the Inquisition.

[rhythm-of-lesbianism]

I need people to know: femslash does not have a higher barrier of entry than mascslash. writing women does not require you to be a better writer than writing men does. you can write femslash that is low quality and i actually encourage it. you should write femslash that’s shitty, that’s underbaked, that you wrote in one night, that you didn’t proofread. you should write femslash for that one ship, yeah even that one other people might think is weird. you should write femslash whenever you feel like it and you don’t need to tackle misogyny when you do it, it can just be escapist, you can invent a fictional world where two women can be in love with each other without consequences. I promise you the people in fandom who enjoy femslash will love it.

[nest-deactivated20181209]

TV show: This is a TV show called Shits&Farts. It is about shits, & farts. The main characters are two men named Shit, & Fart. They tell shit & fart jokes to each other for the whole twenty-minute runtime.

at least one person you follow on tumblr, instantly: omfg im WITHERING from last nights ep….. the dynamic between shit & fart is so fucking  tense and erotic……im still fucking sobbing i hate my sweet babies….. why do they treat each other like this im fucking BATHING IN ACID….. its so good…….. im EMBALMING MYSELF and then DESECRATING MY OWN CORPSE…..

[platano]

[mosticonicposts]

certified iconic post

[which-ocs]

Which OC ship?

[lightwolf]

Editing? Oh you mean fic patching.

[lightwolf]

Protagonist now has more complex motivations.

Protagonist now remembers key facts about important people. He no longer develops convenient amnesia between cutscenes.

Protagonist now has a cooldown on certain adverbs. Adverbs have been buffed by 30% to compensate.

Developer note: Adverbs are important to writing but they are sometimes overused. This change keeps adverbs relevant while encouraging the use of adjectives and verbs.

The horse now has a name.

Deuteragonist snark power has been increased to 150, up from 75.

[mmedemerteuil]

Characters now no longer reference the previous version’s climate and have been updated to react appropriately to the currently set season.

Solved a glitch where supernumerary limbs would sometimes emerge during complex physical interactions.

Should no longer display “[insertnamehere]” during conversations and narration. All of such occurrances have been replaced with the appropriate tags.

Conversation continuity has been improved. Characters will no longer inappropriately respond with lines from previous iterations of the narrative.

All references to “Event A” have been purged to reflect changes in narrative structure.

Now with more thematically-consistent swearing.

[kedreeva]

Back-to-back repeated words that resulted from sentence rearranging or start/stop editing have been cleared.

Paragraphs which contained two or more instances of the same adjective have had their adjectives updated to accurately reflect a player’s vocabulary inventory.

Minor time traveling issues have been resolved, all characters should now exist in the same tense.

Punctuation has been improved. Commas have been reduced by half.

Characters sighing has been reduced by 30%.

Characters looking at things or people during conversations has been reduced by 40%. To make up for this, characters thinking about the conversation has been boosted and descriptive narrative has been added.

Title has been applied.

[mortalityplays]

hi, a lot of you need a perspective reset

the average human lifespan globally is 70+ years

taking the threshold of adulthood as 18, you are likely to spend at least 52 years as a fully grown adult

at the age of 30 you have lived less than one quarter of your adult life (12/52 years)

'middle age' is typically considered to be between 45-65

it is extremely common to switch careers, start new relationships, emigrate, go to college for the first or second time, or make other life-changing decisions in middle age

it's wild that I even have to spell it out, but older adults (60+) still have social lives and hobbies and interests.

you can still date when you get old. you can still fuck. you can still learn new skills, be fashionable, be competitive. you can still gossip, you can still travel, you can still read. you can still transition. you can still come out.

young doesn't mean peaked. you're inexperienced in your 20s! you're still learning and practicing! you're developing social skills and muscle memory that will last decades!

there are a million things to do in the world, and they don't vanish overnight because an imaginary number gets too big

[roach-works]

it is an incredibly joyous thing to look around at your friends as you're heading into your 40s and everyone is so much more themselves than they were when you were all scared and fragile 20-somethings. we're different genders now, we've gotten out of bad relationships and into good ones, we worked shit jobs and got better ones, we all cook a lot better and we eat better too, we casually pull off the kind of art we could only dream of as kids, we've figured out who we are and we do it on purpose now. the self-harm scars have all faded away and we complain about our bad backs and picky digestions instead.

we still lose at trivia real bad.

[the-cryptographer]

There's a whole issue "The purpose of a system is what it does" with regard to the Circle. But I'm going to drop a hypothesis here, because I think the positions of Knight Commander and First Enchanter were actually designed with the intention of being equals within a checks and balances feedback loop. And arguably a lot of the failures of Irving and Greagoir come from their attempts to fulfill these idealistic roles despite the clear practicalities getting in the way of it. So here it goes:

A First Enchanter's job is to manage the workforce of labourer mages within the tower in order to maximise the economic effectiveness of the Circle. This includes making decisions on which mages to make Tranquil and used as part of the production of enchanted goods (the way Irving singles out Jowan), steering mages that show particular talents into specialized fields of work from which the Chantry can profit from (this would be Irving pleading for mercy for Anders on the basis of the investment they put in training him up as a spirit healer, but also includes mages chosen for martial or court positions), and deciding which experimental magical research projects are worth the resources to pursue on the chance of future profits. I think from a lot of the more traditional Templars in the game, we can at times see the attitude that the study and practice of magic is something that should be left to the professional expertise of mages.

A Knight Commander's job, on the flipside, is to perform checks on the First Enchanter to make sure they're not being recklessly avaricious and ambitious in their economic and intellectual pursuits, veto projects that seem too dangerous, and intervene to stop mages that are abusing their powers both within and outside the Circle.

So it's a negotiation between the First Enchanter, who's looking out for the wealth and productivity of the Circle as an arm of the Chantry, and the Knight Commander, who is looking out for the safety and order of the realm the Chantry is governing.

In practice Knight Commanders have the power to undermine their First Enchanter's work at any time (I can't imagine Meredith allows Orsino much say in what apprentices are safe enough to assign to any job or what research projects are worth pursuing), and when they don't undermine that work you end up with Irving running circles around Greagoir, who doesn't even know what the hell is going on with Uldred, because Irving has to be way more canny than Greagoir about managing an enslaved workforce and deciding which members of an oppressed population (whose ranks he fought up) live or die. So I altogether think the system was designed to fail. But I think this is the vague intention of ~how a Circle is meant to work~ in the minds of the most idealistic think tankers in the Chantry.

[lola1b]

Official Dragon Age Map with Distance Key!

I bring you a Dragon Age Map with the OFFICIAL distances calculated in miles! Higher rez version here for the regular map and here for the map with extra large boxes to help with reading larger distances.

Details under cut.

So I had been on the hunt for a Thedas map that actually had any distances calculated on it for years. There's some fan maps, but none were official.

Well, imagine my shock when I opened my dragon age ttrpg book to find a map at the back that DOES include official distances!! If you have the book, check the back, it's glued in there.

I found no one had uploaded this map online, though. So I took a photo, lined it up as best as I could with a map I found online of the same style, and then pasted in the distance calculator in the corner. I then added a grid on top. I couldn't find a better way of doing it than 5 squares for every 70 miles, which means each square is about 14 miles. I thought that'd be easier to calculate than trying to break a 70 mile chunk down.

Then I realized by looking at the map that trying to calculate longer distances using that map will suck cause they're such tiny squares... so I added another grid on top to make it so the large grid is 70 miles. I included both versions of the map for anyone to use.

According to this map and some online calculators, Varric was wrong that it took Hawke 2 weeks to get to Kirkwall from Gwaren. it should have taken closer to 20 days. But eh, not too big an error and 2 weeks sounds neater. Plus, we know he's an unreliable narrator.

The funny thing is, it takes nearly (edit: MORE than) 2 weeks to get across Ferelden. On horseback. Warden was walking. Warden... how far did you walk... How many miles did you cover...

Anyone feel free to spice up the map however you'd like! I hope this is helpful for anyone out there!

[exhausted-archivist]

Never realized that this wasn't already done by someone, I think just because I've seen so many versions relying on the other "official" scalings. Really cool to see this done!

I love (and lament) the variations of scaling across the different versions of the Thedas maps. So here are some fun facts about the scaling of this map because they're are just kinda neat.

Note: I'm putting official in quotes because there is next to no consistency and the ttrpg scaling actively contradicts most of the other canon travel times that it is definitely not the one being used by anyone in BioWare. Though sometimes used by novels and other 3rd party material. Officially for the ttrpg, they made some decisions that BioWare says is canon as long as it isn't directly contradicted by the games - which this is so really up to you.

- This is one of the "official" scales, there are actually about four or five depending on how you want to decide “official”. This scaling contradicts about 8 canon time travel points.

Dao’s scaling - where it is a week to travel from Orzammar’s entrance to the circle one way - Two weeks round trip.

One of the more common ones that OP probably saw was based off Varric’s statements of travel times at the start of DA2. This person did a wonderful round up of distances that if you want to use the scale in this post you can convert.

Asunder asserts it takes a month to get to Adamant from the White Spire.

Last Flight’s assertion that on horseback it takes 2 weeks to cross the Anderfels from Weisshaupt to the Wandering Hills. Which contradicts all scaling lol

Dai’s scaling that says you can traverse all of Southern Thedas in a year. Which is 3 1/2x the size of Ferelden which is also traversal in a year (barely).

Dai also asserts it take a week for a letter (and Barris) to get from the Free Marches to Skyhold.

The official cookbook that says you can travel the entirety of Thedas in a year by carriage/on-foot. Which contradicts both dao and dai, as well as Varric's statement of travel times and all the novel travel times.

- This interactive map uses the scaling of a couple theories based on canon travel times. Which I think is neat and could be helpful for any map shenanigans you all may have.

- The printer map is about a half inch off from if you were to print out the WoT map (a version of the map op put the grid on, though that might vary depending on the image source. When making my consolidated map of Thedas there seems to be about a 1/2 to 3 inch wobble across any official map that can be found online or supplied through digital copies of the books. This is where my lamenting of the scaling variations comes from lol)

- Officially it is stated that Ferelden is the size of England. The ttrpg contradicts that. Which I saw somewhere in the reblogs that this scale puts it on par with Poland, which is about 2.35x bigger than England. 312,696km (poland) vs 132,932km (england)

- According to the ttrpg scale, Anders swam 13 miles / 20.92km to get to the docks when he escaped. It also makes it so the horizon for Thedas is further than that of earth by I believe by nearly triple the distance, which is super interesting. 13 miles / 20.92km vs the 4.97 miles / 8km