Zevran

DAMN HIM

Memory is an enduring pattern of motion, like the whirlpool, rather than an enduring substance, like a mirror, a wax tablet, or a sheet of paper. If memories are stored in neurons, there is no standing aside from the stream of events, for neurons flow along in the same stream as events outside the skull ... All our insides are outside, there in the physical world. But, conversely, the outside world has no color, shape, weight, heat, or motion without "inside" brains. It has these qualities only in relation to brains, which are, in turn, members of itself.

Alan Watts, The Book: On the Taboo Against Knowing Who You Are

"I am dying of something worse than death... Betrayal."

Hespith's tragedy still haunts me to this day.

i like to think about how devastating & jarring it must feel to be resurrected. like especially right after first Coming Back. wrenched back into your body. like surfacing from being held underwater. limbs feel fucky. everything is too heavy. loud. bright. too many sensations at once. but also i fully believe at some point there is a period of euphoria and burst of energy that feels like it has nowhere to go. this is what i call “the zoomies”

so we all agree that kirkwall is both horrifying and fascinating and i wish they'd delved more into its bloody history beyond the snippets we get from the codexes of the band of three. like hello?? three seekers of truth - among which a dalish mage - scurrying about the sewers and lower passages of the city, discovering that kirkwall was designed as some sort of magical symbol, has grooves in the sewers allowing the flood of blood downward for blood magic purposes, and last but not least realizing that its circle of magi had a much higher number of failed harrowings & episodes of blood magic hysteria than basically any other circle in existence??? you cant leave me hanging like that. why was the veil so thin there even before tevinter came? why were they weakening it further?? what was tevinter doing with all those disappeared slaves every year and the huge blood magic ritual involving thousands of slaves and the city itself being a magic symbol??? did the band ever find out if the Forbidden Ones are the same Forgotten Ones of dalish lore??? why was xebenkeck called 'forgotten one'??? hello????? what the fuck is up in kirkwall??????

I haven't seen it anywhere on tumblr, so just so you know there's been a huge data leak reported with over 26 billion records compromised in many, many websites. Aside from the usual suspects of shady websites with tons of ads, the leak includes twitter, linkedin, adobe, canva, dropbox and tumblr.

please change passwords associated with those sites if you use them, and jic also change your gmail password as it's used to sign on/authenticate people in several websites. here are some tips on creating safe passwords:

make them long! 8 to 12 characters at least

use a combination of numbers, letters and symbols to create a phrase you can remember. for example, if I used my username as a password (which don't. don't do this) you could turn it into: V4mp1r3.$uns

Avoid multiple character repetition if you can. ie. don't add the same number, symbol, lowercase or uppercase letter more than twice

write them down in a notebook or paper only you have access to, or use a password manager

and remember! firefox comes in with more built in protections that any other web browser, install them in your phones if you haven't, and it comes with built in password managers that are accessible in all your logins if you log into your web browsing session. stay safe online!!

So I’ve been looking through the Valo-Kas war table missions and… boy, the Valo-Kas lose a lot of people.

I assume that many of them didn’t survive the explosion at the Conclave. There are missions available to Inquisitor Adaar to rescue some survivors, and at least in one of them, the advisor you choose also determines which people come back. So Adaar loses people before the game even begins, and then loses more as Inquisitor - and, no matter which options you choose in the war table missions, at least three Valo-Kas will wind up dead because of Adaar, because some fanatics who believe that the Inquisitor is an agent of the Qun decide to capture and torture the first qunari they saw.

That’s. Uh. That’s messed up.

2024 is the year where I create with abandon, love and no explanation. The creativity will be limitless and abundant, and canon may speak but it's not our master. so may it be, god bless, it has been said so it is done, etc etc.

WIP Whenever

Thank you to my beloved friends @dirty-bosmer @aria-i-adagio and @ollifree for the tag! I hit a block with my main fic so I was idly adding to a couple of other WIPs, this one is from Seven Thousand Steps, featuring my dragonborn, for a change.

Tagging @cumbiazevran @ollifree @greyvvardenfell @dirty-bosmer @memaidraws @aria-i-adagio @cleverblackcat

The beastblood ran hot and hungry. It turned her stomach, sharpening the edge of her shame into thin, reckless claws. That first time, that other time, Azadeh’s grief had cried out like a wounded child for her to be still. To shut the door behind the night without end, to curl into a patch of nothingness, to stop speaking or breathing or growing for the hope it’d take her back to when she was small and guiltless. She’d chased the eye of the storm for all the years since then, that fragile, short-lived peace concocted from so many potions of calm.  This time, the potions sat untouched. All she craved instead was the sweet silence of the hunt.  She spoke quietly, careful not to wake Ria, who was sleeping in fits and starts against her shoulder. “I’m cursed, aren’t I?” “We all are.” Vilkas tipped his head back. His eyes were heavy, bloodshot. Fresh tears dampened his tired face. Ria would agree, should she confess. Athis, who had stood by the pyre and whispered a prayer to Azura, would flinch away from them, if he knew. The secrets they kept were unfit among siblings. This much, Azadeh understood; she would have told Eleeda in a heartbeat if she could. She would have had Eleeda despise her sooner than have her betrayed.  Merciful Tava, when courage is asked of me, why do I always fall so short? Selfish. She was being selfish again, falling apart and spiraling into herself when they needed her. They’d belonged to Kodlak the way the Firdaus had belonged to her father. And every vessel left so bereft needed a Captain. She squeezed Vilkas’ hand. “You mustn’t carry this on your own. The fault–” “Aye, I know whose sword it was that struck him down. It wasn’t yours, either, Azadeh.”  I wanted Aela to be safe. She wanted to say. I didn’t want her to be alone. Then the rest. The rest had been too easy.  But this was no time for justifications. Let them rot, bitter in her chest, tangled with the guilt she kept stowed away, growing like a living thing.  “I’d rather you blamed me than yourself, Shield-Brother. I’d take it readily. But I wasn’t going to suggest portioning blame at all. Not at this hour. There’s something you need to do so all of you can rest. When you know what it is, I’m at your back.”   She gently brushed Ria’s hair away from her forehead. Vilkas watched her for a moment, softening. “Take her to bed, if you will.” He said. “And then join us in the Underforge. There’s no rest for us till Kodlak gets his.”

Inspired by this post (x). I keep thinking about how gender is viewed differently in Qunari society and is determined by job. But what if the job itself WAS their gender? 

Bull being from gender nonconforming Qunari society would lead to witty situations like this:

Orlesian: Are you a man or a woman  Iron Bull: I’m a spy  O: No I meant biologically  IB: A Qunari  O: No I mean what’s between your legs  IB: On a good day, someone’s mouth ],) ],) ],)

i dont think i will ever be over dragon age 2. like. bioware made an epic fantasy story about a chosen one having to save a country and stop the apocalypse and then they made the second installment of the series be about the sociopolitical climate in ONE city through the lens of a family of refugees fleeing from the war of the first game and just. made it about political tensions and class dynamics and the influences of living in a church-mandated state and the growing tension over an occupied piece of the city and political killings and interpersonal conflict and power and its story is ENTIRELY character-driven. it has easily the most iconic set of companion characters. the premise of living through a story told over the course of ten years and knowing from the start that something really bad will happen in the end was so fresh and exciting. the fact that the acts really built on top of each other andhow much the city changed over time. and the game was so mature in terms of the topic of fighting against oppression in so many ways (im usually generous and say that the short development time left some things a bit wanting), and as much as some people say that the game treats mages and templars as being equally bad, i don't think that that is actually true about the game and it very earnestly tries to grapple with some pretty complex political dynamics.

and then the game completely flopped financially and was almost universally hated for its queer themes and its "sympathy for terrorism" and a lot of the things that stemmed from basically having no production time at all and then the studio just made another epic fantasy story about a chosen one that has to save the world from the apocalypse

🔥 choose violence ask game 🔥

the character everyone gets wrong

a compelling argument for why your fave would never top or bottom

screenshot or description of the worst take you've seen on tumblr

what was the last straw that made you finally block that annoying person?

worst discord server and why

which ship fans are the most annoying?

what character did you begin to hate not because of canon but because how how the fandom acts about them?

common fandom opinion that everyone is wrong about

worst part of canon

worst part of fanon

number of fandom-related words you've filtered

the unpopular character that you actually like and why more people should like them

worst blorboficiation

that one thing you see in fics all the time

that one thing you see in fanart all the time

you can't understand why so many people like this thing (characterization, trope, headcanon, etc)

there should be more of this type of fic/art

it's absolutely criminal that the fandom has been sleeping on...

you're mad/ashamed/horrified you actually kind of like...

part of canon you found tedious or boring

part of canon you think is overhyped

your favorite part of canon that everyone else ignores

ship you've unwillingly come around to

topic that brings up the most rancid discourse

common fandom complaint that you're sick of hearing

BioWare announces that in Summer 2024 Dragon Age: Dreadwolf will finally be taken to a farm upstate where it can run and play with lots of other RPGs

tbh I haven't paid attention to the da4 trailer bc I don't want another 46 to 80 seconds of cinematic content. i want game notes and features but most importantly how many gB, if bioware/EA devs have unionised & most importantly if it fucking works. yeah yeah that's a pretty storm, does the game work or is it a very pristine display of technology and modelling with like, annoying game dynamics like inquisition

Please but your whys in the tags! I'm very curious

If you put Dorian, Merrill and Dagna in the same room together for approx. 3 hours they'd cure the blight. I'm certain of it.