#i'm having so much fun thinking about all the similarities and differences between plum and book 1 quentin

[cpmhew]

-The Magicians

-The Magician's Land

[bumblewarden]

So!! I've been wanting to do this for a while, but life got in the way, so now I'm here to take that thing up again because!!! Fun!!!! This is about the relationships between OCs, and I don't want to impose anything but. Regarding how Novhen and Astala would get along:

What if they HAD grown up together? Maybe not in the same family (although, it would be fun 👀👀👀👀👀👀 they are very similar and very different from each other in different aspects. For example both are very loyal and community oriented, but also Astala is loud and boisterous while Novhen is quieter and more underhanded), but definitely the same Alienage. They'd know each others' quirks and habits. Maybe Novhen got frustrated with Astala because she'd always hide in these really obvious spots when playing hide and seek and Astala in turn would never be able to find Novhen? Maybe Novhen would at some point have stolen a plum tart for her and maybe Astala would've helped him against another kid who made fun of Novhen? Maybe, if we wanted them to meet up later during the Blight, Astala had to move away from Denerim at some point. I think she's a bit older than Novhen; maybe she got married elsewhere. Or, if not, now we gave more elves storming Vaughan's estate, which is alwats fun. I think Novhen would get to lead that one operation until Nelaros's death, because before that, stealth does seem to be the best option.

I think these two would get along well, differences aside. Astala would make an effort to lower her if needed, and having a familiar face to lean on during the Blight year would probably be a big comfort to them both. I think they'd be comfortable enough with each other to talk about the recruitment and how it didn't exactly happen willingly; they could gripe about nobles and politics; they could just. Sit in silence after Broken Circle and try and digest Sloth's nightmare. They could kill the slavers at the Alienage together!!! I think having a like-minded person from the same cultural background would help enormously.

One thing Astala probably wouldn't be on board with is the Cult of Fen'Harel. She'd let Novhen practice alright and defend him if accusations about this were levelled against him, but I think she would either have fallen out of it if she'd ever been introduced to it (it didn't save Adaia after all, so...), or never warmed up to the idea of this elvhen trickster god

These are my thoughts as far as they go. What do you think? Also I hadn't thought of it, but if you want to move this conversation to DMs, they're open ^^

(And if this doesn't tickle your fancy anymore, feel free to ignore ^^)

👀👀👀👀👀 I am eating this ask up like breakfast. Or, er, ramen. Which is the thing i am actually eating atm. But yes yes yes to all of this, i love it so much

Full response under the readmore for length, but i'm realizing now my response is mostly about them as kids 😅 Oops

[Ask Game]

The way i play with companion!Novhen, i'd assume he and Astala are probably either siblings or cousins (i waffle), except this time on their mothers' sides. I don't know Astala's exact age, but Novhen was born in *pulls out notes* Wintermarch of 9:7 Dragon. If we try to stagger them based on Adaia's death, that's probably close to a decade between them which seems a tad bit higher than it should be. We'll just have to dance around that matter

Even if Astala isn't significantly older, there's probably never a single moment where he's taller than her XD Add onto that that girls tend to hit puberty first, there's gonna be quite the height difference around age 10

But yes, their personalities go in very different directions but are probably pretty compatible, especially if given the benefit of a shared childhood! They're both very sociable, but i suspect most people like Astala more, especially authority figures. She's much less of a troublemaker, and Novhen definitely took a while to come into his own as a social mastermind. (This also would make her the ideal candidate for a distraction whenever Novhen’s a-scheming. That’s gonna do her a lot of favors when trying to get him to steal plum tarts for her XD These two are the real blight as far as anyone in the alienage is concerned XDD)

Oh, actually! If they knew each other, i can imagine pretty well him practicing with or studying Astala to get better at social situation! And clearly it worked! (A: "Ok now make an angry face... You just look like you can't find a chamberpot. You have to scrunch your eyebrows like this." *jams her thumb down his forhead*)

Astala seems to prefer her hair shorter during the Blight, but how was it as a child? Because if it were in some sort of puff, i can imagine her child-level object permanence resulting in her hiding in an empty barrel with the puff still peeking over the top! (Artist's Rendition Below)

I don’t think he’d be too frustrated with her poor stealth outside of team games at least! (If they’re partnered is another story…) He does sometimes tease her that she’s not going to be a very good criminal when she gets bigger. Idk, how would she respond to that? Because how does she feels about the fact that she's not going to follow in her mother's footsteps (or how aware of that she'd be as a child) or maybe she would retort about how she’s already bigger or something else? Definitely a lot of ways to take that one lol

But also the idea of Novhen as alienage king of hide and seek is kinda cute. He's usually the last one left (all that damn thief training), so it’s not unheard of to see a parade of Astala, Shianni, Soris, and whoever else they've wrapped into their game (which with Astala could be quite a number) turning the alienage upsidedown to find him. There's probably at least one time he gets found in the first minute, and he thinks he's going to die of embarrassment. Because of that, they almost never let him be a hider in the first round. Sometimes when he’s hiding, they'll accidentally pick up seekers who weren't even playing along the way because they want to see him knocked down a peg XD That's what happens when you win too much!

Astala probably has him beat at wrestling tho! And the game where i imagine they’re most evenly matched would be arm wrestling. As an archer, Novhen has insane upper body and especially shoulder strength, but Astala has insane everywhere strength

On the less competitive side, imagine them as dance partners as little kids ☺️ Astala’s probably the more enthusiastic one about it, but i’d imagine she could drag him into it Easy whether through blackmail or Ole Reliable (puppy dog eyes). There have to be lots of events in the alienage that call for dancing, so it’s good to have a go-to dance partner! And if they ever get a Silly Urge while dancing, the one thing that i’ve found little kids most reliable to do is spin so fast they nearly make themselves sick, and when there’s two of them spinning each other, there’s no stopping them until the centrifugal force throws them both to the ground. At least they’re having fun lol

The Cult of Fen'Harel thing makes sense. I wouldn't expect Astala to be into that. I imagine in this case that Cyrion and Adaia agreed to expose the children to both sets of beliefs, so they could choose once they got older

It's a good thing Novhen's good at keeping matters hush because otherwise Astala would likely get stuck constantly mediating between Novhen and Ilanlas on matters of religion 🤭

Tbh Novhen would slightly begrudge her for choosing the Chantry, but i don't think he'd ever let her know if he could help it. It's just not worth it, and you can't talk about that without talking about Adaia's death which nobody is excited to talk about. Still, it's a potential source of drama, esp as the politics of DA:D are winding up

Back in the present day, if the endgame configuration is one where they live in the same location (which i think could only be the case if they were both companions), Novhen would offer her once for him to educate her child/ren in the way of the Cult of Fen'Harel and/or the Vir Banal'ras fighting style, probably get denied at least on the first one, and never bring it back up. He knows she's Andrastian and also wouldn't expect her to teach them that fighting style herself (too rogue-based), but if he had permission, he'd want to at least try to expose them to their family's traditions, so they could make a choice themselves like Novhen and Astala did

And honestly, if he's present for the origin, once Nelaros dies, Novhen would more than happily hand leadership of the mission over to Astala. Stealth only goes so far, and she has first dibs on revenge #SupportWomen

And with Unrest in the Alienage! As soon as Caladrius is dead, Novhen is scampering over his corpse to pick the lock on Cyrion's cage. Doesn't even wait for someone else to pilfer the key. Astala is free to react to that little scene however she wishes, and we get the whole Tabris family reunion after

Whoever’s Warden, i imagine those two leaning on each other a lot for emotional support during the Blight because not only are they the only alienage elves in the party, they’re family (or at the least childhood friends). Once we personalize the Broken Circle dreams, they get upsetting fast. If either of them get sent into that mission (or Maker forbid both of them), they’re definitely going to need to share a blanket by the fire for a minute

EDIT: the paragraph looks like it's been eaten but also! Novhen would be very cautious about Astala's Zevran romance at first. ("Yes, Stala, he's very dreamy, but let's not forget he's only here because he was hired to kill you.") We know he's very protective, and they're both so eldest sibling-coded

[hollowfaith]

[ indigo ]  when did you first start writing / roleplaying?

[ plum ]  are you more of a dialogue or a description writer?

[ mulberry ]  what tips would you give someone with writer's block?

[ coral ]  give a shoutout to one of your favorite blogs.

🐝  *  ―  𝑪𝑶𝑳𝑶𝑼𝑹𝑭𝑼𝑳 𝑰𝑵𝑻𝑬𝑹𝑽𝑰𝑬𝑾. ( send one or more of these to get to know the person behind the blog a little better. )

(these are going to get long so i'll put a readmore to spare the dashboard lol)

[ indigo ]  when did you first start writing / roleplaying?

for writing (stories) i'd say in early middle school when i realized fanfiction was a thing. before that i just did a lot of journaling, or i'd finish a trip with family and write a long essay about everything we did on the trip. anyways when the fanfic itch hit i wrote obsessively and even titled my story journals as i finished them so i could keep them in chronological order. (like i had one named after spring, another for summer, fall, winter, etc. and then a series named after favorite gemstones x flowers). i think i filled 40+ notebooks of various sizes by high school? they're still somewhere in the basement at my parents' place probably.

then i found ff.net and realized people posted their stuff online so i tried that a bit, and when ff.net started getting dated i moved onto ao3. i don't have as much energy or drive to write the crazy crossover AUs i used to do but it's still nice to post there, or make up original short stories for fun. anyways TL;DR i'm always writing something somewhere sometime~

for RP i wanna say...early 2000s? back when forum RPs were a thing. and i don't mean the fancy kind they have now where you can custom-theme your posts, but just plain message boards where you started a topic to make "threads" and replies to that thread made up your interactions, and the rest of the board was divided up so you had locations in one place and character profiles in another, etc etc. they were everywhere and constantly opening and shutting down so i went everywhere too, lol. also signed up for this digimon PbEM RP group where they had a plotline and an all-original crest lineup but you had to make up your own digidestined and digimon and apply to join. then we'd RP on a word doc and email it to the next person in the group to get the story going. it was sooo old school but it was genuinely fun. i also applied to join a livejournal MFRP group but got rejected because my app wasn't good enough hahaha that got me a little scarred so i hid away from MFRP for awhile

(also a special bonus to the time my friends and i RPed as neopets faeries in a composition book we'd pass around in school between periods.)

for tumblr RP i think it was like 2014 or 2015 after a RP hiatus? the messageboards were dead or dying by then and heck if i was going to learn livejournal and its weird system so i joined some ancient chinese themed MFRP group with a similar chinese drama-inspired muse but that shut down within a month so i wandered around until i found a bigger more active group and stuck around there. and now i'm on and off here. :)

[ plum ]  are you more of a dialogue or a description writer?

when it comes to RP, i think i lean more towards description because i need to give context to my muse's lines. but for stories i'm more dialogue heavy, and i enjoy writing exchanges back and forth between characters.

[ mulberry ]  what tips would you give someone with writer's block?

i don't know if i'm the best person to ask but when i'm stuck on writer's block i work on a different...writing project..... you know they all have different vibes and stuff so a change of scenery gives the mind a break and stuff? it's good.

and it works because i still wanna write, i just don't want to write for Thing A so why not Thing B lol.

it also helps to find a focus, most of my writing block woes come because i don't know where/what to do next, so maybe i find a song, a pretty quote, or an icon that gives me the right "vibes" for what i want to express and think up the rest of the post from that.

it also helps to have a smaller goal to work towards even if you don't know how the ending will turn out. for example, if in a thread my A is interacting with your B and i think to myself "well according to what i've read in B's app he'd prolly hate A and think him a prick, so it'd be interesting if A gets a chance to showcase his prick side in this thread eventually," then i'd insert stuff into my replies to gradually make A more annoying and play off what B replies to work towards that "goal."

of course since RP is directed by both sides those mini-goals sometimes get sidetracked, but then it's fun to see in what new direction we take the interaction instead haha

[ coral ]  give a shoutout to one of your favorite blogs.

i can’t stress enough how helpful quotes/musings blogs are for like aesthetics or muse inspirations for me and the nice thing is most of them are still around even if they haven’t updated in years so HERE HAVE THIS POST WITH LINKS TO A BUNCH MORE GREAT MUSINGS POSTS BLOGS