Whumpee being paraded for everybody to see.

Bloody, beaten, weak, and limping whumpee dragged around by a collar or leash. They are so weak they can't even attempt to escape.

Pretty, beautiful, pampered whumpee. Dainty, starved, drugged and kept on whumper's lap with the shiniest, heaviest jewelry and thinest, most revealing clothes.

Killing machine whumpee, weapon strapped to their hip but eyes full of tears and flinching at whumper's scowls and frowns. Whumper's hand through their hair, throwing them on the floor in front of their team and whumpee turning limp under their touch, accepting each blow.

before you know about women, you hear that you do not need to love the man, just that you need to love him through his manhood. which is to say you have seen the future painted in lamb's blood over your eyes - how your mother shoots you a look about your father's inability to cook right. how your aunt holds her wineglass and says i'm gonna kill em. men, right! how your best friend bickers with her boyfriend, how she says i can't help it. i come back to him.

you learn: men are gonna cheat. men aren't going to listen when you're talking, because you're nagging. men think emotions are stupid. they think your life is vapid and your hobbies are embarrassing. men will slam things, but that's because men are allowed to be angry. if you get loud, you're hysterical. if a man gets loud - well, men are animals, men are dogs, men can't control their hands or their eyes or their bodies. they're going to make a snide comment about you in the locker room, about your body, about how you're so fucking annoying. you're going to give him kids, and he will give you the money for the kids, and you're going to be running the house 24/7 - but he gets to relax after a long day, because his job is stressful. the man is on stage, and is a comedian, and says "women!"

and you are supposed to love that. you are supposed to love men through how horrible they are to you - because that's what women do. that's what good women do. wife material. your father even told you once - it'll make sense when you're older. it was like staring down a very lonely tunnel.

it feels like something's caught in your throat, but it's all you know, so. it's okay that you see sex as a necessary tool, a sort of okay-enough ritual to keep him happy, even though he doesn't seem to care about happiness as-applied-to you. it is relationship upkeep. it is kissing him and smiling even though he didn't brush his teeth. it is getting on your knees and looking up and holding back a sigh because he barely holds you as you panic through the night. it's not like the sex is bad and you do like feeling wanted. and besides! he's a man! like... they're another species. you'll never be able to actually communicate, right. he isn't listening.

you just don't get it. you don't feel that sense of i'm gonna climb him like a tree. mostly it just feels fucking exhausting. you play the part perfectly. you smile and nod and are "effortlessly" charming. and it's fine! it's alright! you even love him, if you're looking. you could have good life, and a good family, and perfectly happy.

in the late night you google: am i broken. you google i'm not attracted to my husband. you google i get turned on by books but not by him. you google how to get better in bed.

the first time he yells at you, it almost feels like blankness. like - of course this is happening. this is always how it was going to end up. men get angry, and they yell, and you sit there in silence.

you mention it to your friend - just the once - while you're drunk. she shrugs and says it's like that with me too, i just try to forget and move on. men are always gonna hear what they want to. pick your battles and say sorry even though he's in the wrong. you play solitaire online for a month. you go to your therapist appointment and preach about how you're both so in love.

after all, you have a future to want. nobody lied about it - how many instagram posts say marriage is hard. say real love takes work. say we fight like cats and dogs but the best part is that we always make up. how many of your friends say happy anniversary to the best and worst thing to ever happen to me. if you really loved him - loved yourself too - you'd accept that men are just different from you.

the first time she kisses you, it's on a dare at a party. something large and terrifying whips through your body. you wake up sweating from dreams where her mouth is encrusted with pearls and you pick them off one by one with your teeth. fuck. you sit at the computer and your almost-finished game of sim city. you think about your potential perfect life and your potential future family. you google am i gay quiz with your little hands shaking.

you delete each letter slowly. you don't need to love him. you just need to keep going.

when i told twst to give me more FUCK I REALLY BEGGED SO HARD THEY'RE SMIRKING DOWN AT ME RIGHT NOW HUH I CAN'T I CAN'T NOT TWO IN A ROW I CAN'T TAKE THIS I CAN'T FIGHT BACK ANYMORE THEY'RE STEPPING ON ME THEY'RES PITTING ON ME THESUYR'ES TRUDIGNY TO DEVOIURDS ME WHOLES THGEY'ERS WINING RHYUER;E WINING I'AM SIGNING OFSF

[Tell me something about yourself that I wouldn't even think to ask.]

Gardening pals

A compilation of art for my Dadbastian fanfic Coattails that I commissioned from the incredibly talented @tomoyoo! They went above and beyond with the details... Each picture feels as cozy and warm as a storybook, right? I'm so delighted with how they turned out!! Thank you for making each one so beautiful! 🥹🥹🥹

Battle couple

listen I don't even know what I'm talking about anymore but on this playthrough of DA2 I found myself once more entranced and heartbroken to see hawke reenact their relationship with their mother with the entire cursed city of kirkwall. you can never do enough for leandra, and you can never do enough for kirkwall. leandra is proud of you, and kirkwall uplifts its champion, but no matter how hard you try for them you can't fix everything there that's broken, no one could, and even the fact that anyone would feel the burning responsibility to take that task on is a huge warning sign on its own. leandra will easily allow you to sacrifice yourself on the altar of the family's continued well-being again and again, even when she'll beg you to spare the twins from the same thing. it's such a sad, painfully realistic thing because I truly don't think leandra meant to fuck up her kids, and yet she primed her oldest for an abusive toxic codependent relationship with an entire ongoing dumpster fire of a city state better than she ever could have if she had meant to.

I think what leandra actually, deep down wants from you is something you can never ever give her and that is cruel to ask of anyone, but especially your kid -- to bring her back to a time when she was happy. to reclaim when you were all happy, when nothing was broken that couldn't be fixed, before malcolm died, before you had to leave behind bethany or carver's broken body on the ground. to get her childhood back from where she left it and found it all gone and in ruins when she returned. 'this is all your fault'. this is the tragedy of parenthood sometimes I think, that capacity to define a life: she said that once, in a moment of profound pain, and she probably wouldn't have said it under other circumstances and she apologizes later, but now hawke has to live with that forever. leandra can't bear her own emotions without letting them spill over onto someone else so she won't have to hold the discomfort of them anymore, and hawke is left to shoulder that burden and responsibility again and again, handed the impossible task of making it all okay again, somehow -- of stopping anything bad from ever happening again in the Nr 1 Bad Things Constantly Happening capital of thedas.

and then at the same time there's the mirror of how varric's whole family wants orzammar back (and to him orzammar is just a ghost he's seen in their eyes -- there's something in his voice when he says 'That stupid plate was the whole city of Orzammar to him' that gets me every time, how much he understands that he doesn't understand and how lonely that makes him among them, and on top of it all he's frustrated and ashamed and sad that he just doesn't get it and can't meet them on it -- like it's a betrayal that he actually belongs up here, when varric wants so badly to be loyal), just as the hawkes want happiness back. (I don't think it's Lothering in itself that longing is for, it's for being together. Lothering was just the place they stayed the longest.) they're all in exile, even as they try to make a new home out of that exile.

(varric and hawke's real 🤝 quality across all personalities, affinities and choices is 'parentified child' lmao. so much of varric's character makes perfect sense once you know he grew up supporting a mother who was an emotionally volatile alcoholic, honestly. between varric, the hawkes, isabela, seb if you have him and merrill's whole Situation with marethari I feel like DA2 covertly is to mommy issues what ME2 is to daddy issues fjsdjfa)

basically I think I'm trying to pick apart exactly why the fact that leandra is clearly proud of hawke and tells them so several times doesn't feel like it helps at all, almost feels more like a cage even though it's clearly meant well? and what I'm getting is that it's because my sense of what hawke actually needs, in general but especially from a parent, isn't admiration or approval but to be loved and supported and understood. I don't believe leandra ever quite understands them, and it scares her because it makes her think she maybe never even understood malcolm. (that's the subtext of a lot of what leandra will say about him in legacy, at least. he's slipping away from her as the years pass after his death and she fears she never really had him in the first place, if he had secrets like these.) she consistently treats her oldest more like a partner or peer than as her child, which considering hawke is always described as being very similar to their father… I mean I totally see how that could be easy to slip into for her after he died especially, but it doesn't make it any less fucked up or unfair.

the real leandra in legacy is. she is SO absurdly self-centered, if you really pay attention. I don't want to keep dunking on her because I don't think she's like this on purpose, but it boggles my mind. if you do the quest in act 1 she gets so upset and overwhelmed that the kids just sort of sit there like :( at the end, which adds to the trend that through the game you constantly see hawke comforting leandra, and you pretty much never see leandra comforting hawke, beyond some light vaguely encouraging comments in passing. if you do legacy in act 2 while she's still alive hawke comes to her, tentatively asking if malcolm ever spoke to her about any of it -- clearly requesting some sort of emotional support or help to make sense of it. she then expresses her side of it, but never once does she say anything to the effect of 'hey that was a lot to go through, are you okay after all that?'.

instead she essentially hands them the responsibility of having a good life, to repay what malcolm did for all of them. and in theory that's not the worst takeaway I suppose, malcolm probably would want them all to be happy, but in the moment it only feels like more expectation heaped upon you somehow? especially since you don't really get to express anything about how it made you feel before she goes to the 'ah no use complaining' zone (after SHE got to express her grief at feeling like she's losing more and more of that old life, and hawke barely got to say anything fhsfalkjfs). in general she really doesn't do much like. parenting, does she haha. there is so much love there in that relationship, and yet so little comfort. Oh, those days. All of us, in that simple place. Well, that's neither here nor there, is it. This life, we have to make the best of it. And thanks to you, and him, I will. Oh well, mum, I'm uh. I'm glad you feel better after that, at least. Nice to be of service.

it's varric's ghost-leandra who actually acknowledges what a burden hawke has taken on, that shows an understanding of why they're doing it, acknowledges the loss they've been through and also reassures them in their sense of belonging that still can't be taken from them, despite it all -- The best of him is still with you. The best of all of us. It's what makes you try so hard. You'll always have that. We'll always be family. (you can't take 'loved' away, huh.) you get a bit more of a reconciliation/reconnection between hawke and their dad's memory by being reminded he got like this too, you know (implicitly you're not alone). varric through leandra is the one who tells them what they probably would have wanted and needed to hear from a parent right then -- It's going to be alright. that's what Hawke, The Champion means to everyone else, and for once they get to be the one to hear it. except only in a kind dream that never really happened. I. it. hmmmmmm. crushing. that is crushing. but also so incredibly tender from varric's side, and so moving to me that he's seen all this stuff and so desperately wants to give them that comfort. anyway DA2 is about love in some of the realest and thus messiest and most human ways I've ever seen and it makes my brain go wild it's my favorite game of all time goodnight

wanted to share maybe my favorite thing I've ever commissioned, this wonderful skin by Yelloweye! they are so incredibly talented and amazing to work with, I could not have asked for a more perfect skin for this guy.

Xun

the man is in a turf war with every convenience store in the city 

Screaming. Wailing. Sobbing. Whimpering. Begging. Bargaining. Screaming again. Giving up. Complying.

Handful of Friend

avatrice au fic recommendations:

i don't think there is a single avatrice au fic that i haven't read so here are some my favorites. i tried to find ones that weren't as popular, so hopefully there are couple here you haven't read.

I want to believe by puppybusby @yashastrongarms - x files au - basically 23k of avatrice flirting while being incredibly reckless with alien shit. unfortunately, it is only a one shot that doesn't delve into their relationship, but it is so worth it. and the tension. woof.

Truly a Steadfast Love by StoicLastStand - medieval au - they have a whole series of ficlets, but this is one of my favorites. there's a tournament to win ava's hand in marriage, ava goes undercover to fight for her freedom, but she ends up falling for the very knight who everybody wants to win. i also love their lucifer au, Greater Sacrifices.

a lover, or something of mine by Smokestarrules - reincarnation au - each chapter is a different life with a different story, and i promise you, if you have anything that even resembles a heart, you will cry. i keep going back and rereading chapter 4 because apparently i love to hurt myself. i also love the world is just illusion (trying to change you) by them, it's a road trip au.

i should love you (and i swear i do) by Noteveryonefitsintothebadbitchgenre - harry potter au (fuck jk rowling) - its that trope where they're married and they talk about each other constantly but nobody actually knows they're married. their students all think that professor silva and professor young have a friendly rivalry, but there are a couple of moments that don't add up.

purple by sxftmelody - hitman au - technically, but really it's just sad, i always cry at the end. beatrice helps ava run away after a job, and slowly they open themselves up and start to fall in love. tw: major character death. also love turning page by the same author, mercenary/princess au.

in our corner of the world by definitelynotthere - roommate au - i know, i know, there's a thousand roommate aus, why would i recommend a fic that isn't even finished and will probably never get finished? i don't know, i just really love this one, and if you're like me, you'll go "ooh, two cakes" and read it anyway.

The last hero of Ogygia by jessnope - percy jackson au - specifically calypso au, ava is calypso and beatrice is the flirty hunter that washed up on her shore. it's super cute.

stay there, 'cause i'll be coming over (while our blood's still young) by britishngay - spiderman au - ava's character voice is actually designed to be spiderman, and bea is the perfect doctor lady that patches spidey up when she gets hurt. plus beatrice telling lilith to "shut up and sit down" will never not be iconic.

sunday people (sunday shines for you) by gilligankane @piratekane - another roommates au - jealous ava is back again and out for blood, specifically jenn-with-two-ns blood.

this is my prayer (I'm in love with you) by nyxtyka - my best friend's wedding/spies au - i'll be honest, this fic went to my marked for laters to die. i don't know if it'll ever be finished, but it is one of my favorite aus, i promise it'll be worth the pain.

spellbound by onomofication - witch au - beatrice is the witch in the woods that ava goes to to finally find a way to explore the world like she has always wanted to. but as she gets to know the surprisingly kind, serious, kinda-sorta witch, she discovers that maybe the world was smaller than she had once imagined. i also love another fic by this author, hit me with you best shot, which is basically a cupid au, where ava runs around trying to stop jc, a cupid, from shooting the love of her life, beatrice.

the celestial glow is blinding by understreetlights - firewatch au - did i think ava and beatrice sitting around, looking at trees, and falling love with each other through walkie talkies was going to be interesting? no, but the world loves to prove me wrong.

too cold, it's withdrawal by KatieQgle - captain america au - give this one a chance, even if you don't like marvel. beatrice is hot as fuck as bucky and honestly the winter soldier plot line needed a little sapphic yearning. come on, avatrice in the army in the 1940s, being badass and fighting nazis together? who wouldn't love that?

i have a ton more, reach out if you want them!

I want them to get married so during the vows Tommy can take the piss out of Evan 'I'm an ally' Buckley for a disastrous first date

My feelings towards ao3 this morning.

Sometimes I see posts about how "I, Strahd" Tatyana has the personality of a cardboard but I don't think I agree honestly.

We only see her in very few scenes (all from Strahd's POV) and she's always very gentle and soft spoken.

Which makes completely sense since she was a lowborn orphan trying to make a good impression on her future brother in law, who is not only the ruler of the valley but also a feared war criminal. Of course she would try to be as nice as possible in front of him.

I also think that Strahd was extremely genuine in thinking he was in love with Tatyana, it's just that he never really knew her the way Sergei did. He only knew a facet.