#can tangentially be considered

[autumnalfallingleaves]

You guys have no idea how long I've been sitting on this idea for a shitpost lol

please do not repost my art

[lazycranberrydoodles]

kinktober day 7: swapping clothes

yippee yay xie lian in red! follow 4 more hua cheng bait 🚩

[hoofpeet]

imagine

[ziskandra]

listen, listen

I know this is gonna be a controversial take, but the more I think about it, the more obsessed I am with the idea of Varric voluntarily helping The Crimson Knight (especially in a worldstate where Hawke was left in the Fade).

I’ve talked before about how I view Meredith as the type of person who is motivated by her desire to protect her own at all costs, and how this leads her down the path of Well-Intentioned Extremism, and culminating in becoming the embodiment of the uh, Knight Templar trope.

And Varric is obviously motivated by his motivation to protect Hawke: he shielded them from the Inquisition, and when push came to shove and he was forced to expose Hawke to the Inquisition anyway, it can result in Hawke’s death. The Inquisition fails Hawke, who is basically Varric’s moral compass — without Hawke’s influence, he defaults to siding with the templars at the end of DA2.

Most of the Inquisitor’s inner circle scatters over Thedas and Varric returns to Kirkwall. Varric loves Kirkwall; he’s a Kirkwaller through and through: even though he’s never envisioned nor wanted a life of politics, he becomes the fucking viscount, because there’s nobody else left who wants one drop of the poisoned chalice of that role.

And Kirkwall is a city that has always been dependent on its templars for protection. They are the city’s military force, and the city is noticeably weaker once the templars abandon it — depending on world state, it can lose a significant portion of its territory to one of Varric’s former companions. If someone he knew and trusted can do that to Kirkwall, who else might take advantage of Kirkwall in its weakened state?

Varric is isolated and alone, away from anyone who might be able to help him see the situation in a different light: his main support network is Aveline and Seneschal Bran, neither of whom are known for their ardent support of mage rights. They’re doing their best to clear Kirkwall of the impacts of the war, of the red lyrium, and even though they’re doing their best to avoid exposure, being around that much red lyrium cannot be healthy. Slowly, the paranoia and increased penchant for violence settle in. It becomes impossible to resist spending more time around the substance — and sometimes, it talks! And it sounds like Meredith Stannard.

Varric is desperate and scared and has lost everyone he has ever loved. The Inquisition has been downsized or disbanded, and his only purpose is to serve his city: the same intention with which Meredith started, the same intention and fears that the red lyrium feeds upon in them both.

Varric fears becoming his parents: people who failed to protect him because they were too caught up in their past mistakes.

But sometimes, as people, in our attempts to avoid our fears, we end up barreling into them headfirst instead.

[the-one-who-lambs]

Me: I don't know if my ideas are worth sharing, I'm losing engagement from my readerbase these past few months so I must be doing something wrong, I don't think I've really accomplished anything as a writer.

Some person in my AO3 comments hyped as FUCK for the Risen Lamb/Fallen God rewrite:

[yuridovewing]

I briefly thought of combining AVoS and TBC for Razorverse before immediately deciding that it definitely wouldn't work, but in doing so I briefly thought about Ashfur and Darktail working together and being besties and my brain immediately went to toxic yaoi. sorry

[commsroom]

i know it’s a popular idea, but i don’t think i can ever really be on board with the idea of lovelace having some big post-canon revenge tour. like, i can appreciate the catharsis of a good revenge narrative in other contexts, don’t get me wrong, but given the themes of wolf 359 as a show, and particularly the values lovelace expresses in her own character arc, i can’t see it as anything other than a tragic regression into the exact type of person she chose not to become.

“the whole epic rampage of revenge thing? isabel lovelace wouldn't do that. the terrible wretch that you people made isabel lovelace into? oh, she'd do that. but... i’m not going to be that person anymore. i’m going to be isabel lovelace again. even if i never have before.”

twice near the end of s3 hilbert calls lovelace isabel, sees in her some shared experience and reflection of himself and his willingness to do whatever it takes, by any means necessary, but he fails to realize that what he recognizes is the result of trauma inflicted on her largely by him. hilbert is a constant reminder of what lovelace has lost and what’s been done to her, and in some sick way that makes him the last link to her past. they both die, and she comes back, and he doesn’t, and she decides to be isabel lovelace again. i don’t think that’s a coincidence.

wolf 359 as a show seems to believe in the futility of revenge - all of dirty work, “and then what? who pays for this? who owns up for this murder? and for the one after this one?” - and places its faith instead in the power of individuals to break cycles of violence and abuse. and i think that’s relevant to the wording of lovelace’s final lines in the show: “look up some old friends, take apart goddard futuristics brick by brick... maybe go to disneyland? but first, i’m going to take a long vacation, somewhere warm and quiet, where nobody has any idea who i am.”

lovelace feels a sense of duty in dismantling goddard and holding them to account, but it’s a world away from the all-consuming ire and drive for revenge “run and hide” contained. i think that’s where the focus should be. it’s not about hurting the people who hurt her, not anymore. it’s about preventing them from hurting anyone else. it’s a final act of love and closure for the people she couldn’t save, to say: i’m still here. i remember you. i’ll make sure your families know the truth. i’ll make sure they never hurt anyone else, ever again. i can’t bring you back, but your deaths won’t be in vain.

i think it’s important to emphasize that lovelace is NOT a violent person. she doesn’t want to be. she doesn’t enjoy it. whatever she may have been driven to by fear and trauma and desperation, she chooses to be isabel lovelace, and that’s not the person isabel lovelace is. i hope she does help take goddard down. structurally. brick by brick. and then i hope she lives a good, peaceful, happy life, in the memory of all her loved ones who couldn’t. like minkowski in boléro: “so that we never forget how important it is that we're still here.”

[locomotum]

hello! i'm working on a flag and coining post for the term “locomotum”, but i'm having trouble figuring out the best way to define it, so i thought i'd ask the community for help.

i chose the base word “locomotive” mostly because it sounded nice with the -um suffix, but the word can be fairly strictly defined. i think the best option for making the term useful – capturing a lot of similar objectum experiences – and easy to understand is to have it include any 1. powered, self-propelled vehicle that 2. runs on rails.

this would encompass technically non-locomotive rail vehicles like railcars/railmotors, motor coaches, and power cars; to quote wikipedia, “a locomotive can be physically separated from its train and does nothing but provide propulsion and control (and heat or electricity for passenger trains)”. this definition would also still exclude (as a strict definition of “locomotive” does) some related but non-rail vehicles like steam cars, buses, wagons, and traction steam engines. of course, it would also exclude any unpowered rolling stock.

i'm also curious to hear if anyone knows of previously-coined terms for this, or anyone who's talked about it at all. there's an existing outsider-coined term, “siderodromophilia”, but its etymology and history is sort of odd and it's only been used in disdainful and pathologizing ways...and particularly for people who just like using trains as a setting for their interactions with other humans. i haven't found a term coined by anyone who's actually objectum, but i know things can vanish off the internet easily, so there's a chance i just couldn't find it.

i'd be grateful for input from anyone who considers themself objectum or adjacent, even if you have no investment in locomotives specifically!

[roseverdict]

when you think so hard about an au idea that's even further from canon than your usual au faves and get the Wonderful Idea to make it become its own story idea.

so

idk maybe i'll fixate on that at some point

[thasdorah]

alleria is very aware of how much she misses hearing thalassian, reading thalassian, speaking thalassian, just having it spoken by people on the street or hearing it in song. she stays a long time completely isolated from anyone who shared her native language, and i think it's one of the things she loves most about being around the ren'dorei. it feels like a little piece of home, in a way.

when she talks to other thalassian elves - like her sisters, regardless of context - she's likely to default to it unless they speak in a different language, regardless of other people being around if the conversation doesn't include those people.

[commsroom]

In BNW, pryce says that destroying memories gives her the new ones... does this mean that hera has all of eiffel's memories???

i don't think so... when pryce destroys eiffel's memories, she's not really... destroying his memories. i mean, i assume she was planning to rid herself of all the extraneous ones afterwards, but the actual act of breaking objects within his mind storeroom is just a visual representation of the transfer of information. hera 'running a comprehensive purge on the mindspace' manifests as a storm, and is a different process. and it's a process that requires the link between eiffel's brain and pryce's to remain intact.

like, i think it's theoretically possible that given more time and/or a different set of circumstances, hera could have transferred that information or backed it up somehow rather than just deleting it. it's even possible that some backup of eiffel's memories does exist, considering they planned to use similar technology for exactly that purpose re: hilbert and that they did scan his memories back in ep 55 (unclear on how comprehensive that was, and it really depends on where the information would've been stored, and for how long, but 'it'll take some time to uncouple it from all the star wars trivia' at least implies there is some data being recorded and stored for future use.)

... which i guess is to say. i think you can make the case a lot of things are possible, since wolf 359 'science' is extremely malleable in service of plot/character advancement anyway, but. i don't think that specific thing is intended in the show itself. it’s interesting to consider the implications of, though.

[nomaishuttle]

the thing abt me is i do hsve goals for therapy snd i do want to delve deep into my psyche but i also never get to talk to ppl irl so when i go in and realize i have a captive audience for the next 50 minutes i just cannot shut up.