#knight-errant origin story

[merge-conflict]

The appeal of starting from the ending and working back is that you put a cap on every Might Have Been, every wandering tangent, etc. that your drafting mind might otherwise wind down. And there's nothing more irritating then having a good idea when wrapping something up only to realize you didn't have time to foreshadow it like you did the other 2 or 3 recurring consequences (TV writer woes).

Everything in the final conversation Abernathy has with Valentine has to be doing the work of two or three callbacks. Right now I've only hit the initial callbacks, and as I sketch out the ideas mentioned her in passing, which evoke certain strong emotions, then I know I need to do something with V's work involvement with Biotechnica, with some sort of clash with Jenkins, with what Valentine is like when she loses her temper. And I know that because it's what Abernathy is fixated on trying to control this breakup conversation, and also reveals what Abernathy herself is concerned about, and perhaps has been concerned about for a long time and never shown. (Or has she?)

Anyhow I love talking process, so this is the kind of skeleton script I'm going to be working backwards from. It will most certainly not survive exactly like this, but it's a good anchoring point:

<>

“If you tell anyone about anything, I’ll have you removed and handled as a double agent. You have been awful involved with Biotechnica lately.” - “I’m not going to warn you again. Do you understand?”

(dully) “You do that and they’ll know I was telling the truth.”

“It doesn’t matter what they know, it matters what they can prove.” (you know this. we've talked about this. don't be stupid.)

“I suppose next you’ll be asking me to use my new position to spy on Jenkins for you.” (petulant. bitter. a tool, you were always a tool, do you understand?)

“No. I know how you get when you’re angry.” (thinking. malicious. flippant.) “Besides, I thought you’d enjoy a chance to get your claws into him.”

(silently angry. is the implication that she’d do for him what she’d done for her? that she’s just a dangerous beast? that she knows her and her anger so well?)

“Well?”

“What do you want me to do? Beg for leniency? Make some emotional plea? You want me to ask if you ever even gave a shit about me? You want me to put on a show?” - “You wouldn’t believe a word I said anyway. Give me a cigarette.”

(hands one over, lights it. finally makes eye contact. this is real.) “Don’t look so glum. You wouldn’t have gotten half as far as you have without my help. You can cry into your bank account if you want, but it’s not like I’m kicking you out on the street.”

“Alright.” (inhale. peace. emptiness. drains her drink. drops the cigarette into abernathy’s.) “It’s done.”

<>

Re-reading this I already know I need to work in some reference to Valentine's mother and some warning/advice/celebration they have near the end of this reverse story. Something that ties back to her own failed marriage and divorce and dashed expectations. Something about finding a reason to keep going on until you can't bear to any more. Something that echoes the familial stubbornness which means Valentine in the damn things overlap will endure anything so long as she knows the expiration date.

The most fascinating part of writing these two to me is that Abernathy has this very strict rule about never admitting guilt or regret directly, but she'll say something like "I'd apologize but it's already done, isn't it?" and it's like YOU COULD STILL SAY IT! But she sees that as weakness. And Valentine picks up that same attitude here "What do you want me to do? Beg for leniency? Make some emotional plea?" They're mocking each other for the very normal human desire for acknowledgement. They're intelligence agents who think they're just making sure they're not fooling themselves (they're fooling themselves). Sincerity is only useful for pre-empting someone else trying to expose your vulnerability.

Anyway, they're operating on a certain set of fucked up toxic social rules that are in some respects even harsher than the normal corpo set. They're self-policing, because Abernathy is obsessed with gaining favor with someone who is a misogynistic homophobe, and she's playing for keeps against people who aren't reviled by this person. The idea might also come up that she doesn't NEED to be doing it to this degree, but she's warped her own idea of what she needs to do, and what kind of person she needs to be, and applied that to Valentine as well. The tragedy is that they love each other. They work well together. It's never going to work out. It didn't work out. But look at what they had, and how fucked up and funny and exciting it all was before it went to shit.

[david-talks-sw]

I'd say where the dissonance really starts, when it comes to the portrayal of the Jedi in more recent Star Wars stories, is the perception of what the Prequels are about.

They're not about the Jedi.

George Lucas said over and over that they're about:

How a democracy turns into a dictatorship, we see this in the background of the films, as the Republic descends into becoming the Empire.

That first theme is then paralleled with a second theme: how a good kid becomes a bad man. We see this in the more character-driven and personal exploration of Anakin’s fall to the Dark Side.

The Prequels’ focus is on Anakin and the Republic, these films are not primarily about the fall of the Jedi. In fact, I’d argue they aren’t about the Jedi at all!

And when you look at the original backstory, you’ll notice that it also primarily focuses on:

The political subplot of the Republic’s downfall and Palpatine becoming the Emperor.

Anakin’s turn and his betrayal of the Jedi. 

So, there too… the Jedi themselves aren’t really that big a part of the Prequels’ original idea. They aren't mentioned much, beyond their trying to save the Senate and getting wiped out.

The Star Wars movies aren't about the Jedi, they're about Anakin and Luke, they're about Obi-Wan and Padmé and Han and Leia, the Rebellion vs the Empire, the fall of the Republic.

They're not about Ben and Yoda and Mace and Ki-Adi and Plo Koon and Shaak Ti and Luminara.

Just like Harry Potter isn't about Dumbledore and McGonagall. Just like the Lord of the Rings isn't about Gandalf.

On a functional level, the Jedi are:

POV characters who witness the events unfold with their hands tied, they're our anchors, whose eyes we see through to see democracy crumble into dictatorship.

Embodiments/vectors of the message George Lucas wanted to get across through these movies, which is the conflict between selfishness & selflessness, greed & compassion (Sith & Jedi).

But that's about it.

However, if you ask today’s fans and Star Wars creatives, most will say the Prequels are about the fall of the Jedi Order.

This is a take shared by a big chunk of the fandom, including various filmmakers, authors, and executives involved with Star Wars, so much so that the time period the Prequel films cover has now been redubbed by Lucasfilm as the “Fall of the Jedi era”.

Which leaves us with a question... why? Why the dissonance?

My guess? It's because the Jedi are cool. They're awesome.

And deep down, they wanted the Prequels to be about the Jedi. About the Jedi Knights at their height, errant warriors like the Knights of the Round Table.

And they didn't get that. They got a bunch of diplomats serving a political institution. And that didn't make sense, right? That's not what they expected so it's bad. And it's Star Wars. It's Lucas. It can't be bad, right? So like... what were they missing?

Oh... wait... what if... that's the point? That the Jedi were supposed to be Knight Errants and being guided by the Force instead of like - ew - space ambassadors for the Republic. Yeah now it all makes sense.

The Jedi in the Prequels aren't what we wanted them to be and that's their failure! Like, it's not just that I didn't like them because they weren't likeable to me, it's that I'm not supposed to like them because the narrative totally says so--

-- it doesn't.

The Jedi preach and practice the same Buddhist values as George Lucas, mirroring what he says in interviews almost verbatim.

The relationship between Obi-Wan and Anakin/Qui-Gon mirrors the dynamic between Lucas and Coppola.

The designs of the Jedi and their temple had to be toned down because they looked too bureaucratic and systemic.

This is Lucas we're talking about. "On the nose" is his middle name. He named the drug-peddling sleazebag "Elan Sleazebaggano." He ditched an elaborate introduction of General Grievous in exchange for just "the doors slide open, in walks Grievous and he's ugly."

If he had really been hell bent on framing the Jedi as elitist squares who lost their way and were mired in bureaucracy, he would've made them and the Jedi Temple look like the authorities in THX-1138.

They weren't likeable to some fans because, well, they weren't developed or shown as much as someone like Anakin. Because it's not about them. It's not their story. It's Anakin's. It's Luke's. It's their respective friends'. Or maybe it's an adversity to "perfect goody two-shoes" characters (which the Jedi are not). But hey, it's a movie for kids. Some 2-dimensionality is forgivable.

Bottom line, had more time been spent on the Jedi, had Lucas made the Prequels into a limited show and give them a whole subplot, had he decided to do away with the 30s serial dialog and let someone else write the dialog, maybe the reception might've been different.

But that's what we got. And guess what it's fine.

It's more than fine, it's fucking awesome.

I proudly and confidently say that I love the Prequels, with and without The Clone Wars.

I love my space monks, I love that they're diplomat wizards, I love that there's such a variety of them, I love that Mace is a no-bullshit guy who genuinely cares about his fellow Jedi and how screwed the Republic is, and Yoda is wise and kind but also a gremlin weirdo who'll embarass you in front of a classroom full of kids, and Ki-Adi has a penis for a head, is constantly calm and yet goes down like a champ even though they take him by surprise. I love that Shaak Ti can kung fu an army full of Magna Guards and still have the energy to charge at Grievous. I love that Obi-Wan is a sass machine who is also hilariously oblivious to the fact that he's just as terrible as Anakin.

They're awesome even if they're not perfect. They're awesome because they're not perfect.

But the movies are not really their story.

They're Anakin's. They're Luke's. They're the Republic's and the Rebellion's. And the fight against a space Nazi emperor/empire.

[donamori]

Please indulge me to speak at length about Don Quixote (post Warp Express Intervello)

Unfortunately, this will be riddled with spoilers, however, I'm not necessarily making this post to make any real predictions. I'm mostly just collecting my thoughts, crafting some theories, and talking at length about my thoughts on the upcoming canto, their possible themes, and to gush and wail about my most favoritest sinner ever. If you've finished Murder on the Warp Train then feel free to continue

Alright, end of the most recent Intervello, it was revealed (much to my surprise at least) that Don Quixote, our pride and joy and ever most excellent knight-errant, is in fact a Bloodfiend. A bloodfiend who apparently has their true form suppressed by Rocinante, the shoes Don wears that are named after the steed Don Quixote rides upon in the book.

This new reveal has millions of possibilities forming in my head for the upcoming Canto and here's the gist of what I've kind of formed and gathered from what we know so far in the world of Limbus and Project Moon as a whole, what I personally know about Miguel De Cervantes and his works, and the general thematic ties that are now unfurling within my noggin that I'm trying to spool together in this nice little indulgent post.

Let's start with Miguel De Cervantes:

For those who may not know, Cervantes is the author of Don Quixote, born in 1547, died in 1616. A few important tidbits that I think will be important in the upcoming Canto-

Something that has been known for awhile is that Don's battle sprite does not list her name as Don Quixote but as Miguel. For awhile now I had been wondering if within Don Quixote's Canto we are going to receive some sort of reveal that Don Quixote is actually Miguel De Cervantes. Originally the basis of this theory I had was a quote from Cervantes about how "[he] would not exist without Don Quixote." (Something that was expanded upon in a lecture about Cervantes and Don Quixote that I found on youtube). In fact a large portion of that lecture, which I will link here, contributed to this idea I had built up in my head about the relationship between Miguel and Don.

What this essentially culminates to in my mind is that the Bloodfiend will reveal that they are Miguel, but for some reason or another, they "became" Don Quixote. So, in many loose adaptions of Don Quixote, this connection is typically made. In my personal favorite adaption, The Man of La Mancha, a musical about the book, they present the story of Don Quixote as a play for prisoners after Miguel Cervantes himself is arrested. And who is the man that plays Don? None other than Cervantes himself!

(you should really give it a watch, it's a lovely musical)

Now, within the book of Don Quixote itself, our titular hero sadly perishes at the end. He loses to the Knight of the Mirror (who is actually the Bachelor Sanson Carrasco, a man hired by Don's family to bring him home) and returns home. He then dies in his bed after renouncing the name of Don Quixote and all of his adventures. Saying with much seriousness that he is not Don Quixote, but Alonso Quijana. He leaves money to Sancho and his estate to his niece and then soon passes (after a heartfelt appeal from Sancho to return to adventuring together once more.)

After his death, the book ends with the author who is detailing Don Quixote's history writing this final paragraph-

"For me alone was Don Quixote born, and I for him; it was his to act, mine to write; we two together make but one, notwithstanding and in spite of that pretended Tordesillesque writer who has ventured or would venture with his great, coarse, ill-trimmed ostrich quill to write the achievements of my valiant knight... And I shall remain satisfied, and proud to have been the first who has ever enjoyed the fruit of his writings as fully as he could desire; for my desire has been no other than to deliver over to the detestation of mankind the false and foolish tales of the books of chivalry, which, thanks to that of my true Don Quixote, are even now tottering, and doubtless doomed to fall for ever. Farewell.”

I've paraphrased it a bit, but you get the gist. While the author detailing Don Quixote's history is a fictional author made up by Cervantes, I believe it is a cheeky way of Cervantes to insert himself in the story and express his true feelings here.

Now, with Cervantes and Donqui being one and the same I believe the strong thematic thread tying this all together is one of dreams. It's now known to us this whole time that Don Quixote is in fact, both dream and dreamer. The monster that Don Quixote is sleeps while they allow for their true self to live, ever dreaming. But now that Dream is Ending.

I think we're going to see the 'death' of Don Quixote and some sort of joining of Miguel and Don. I think Miguel wants to keep dreaming. They are a bloodfiend, a horrible monster, one of the more powerful beings that are mentioned in Project Moon's games. But i think that Miguel doesn't want that. I think that Miguel wants to be cured. Something that has never really been done for a bloodfiend, an impossible dream, perhaps?

I think in Don's Canto we're going to see what we see within the book. Miguel/Don's family trying to get him to come back, to stop him, to get him to give up on this silly dream of Knight-Errantry. And I believe Dante will finally be able to help Miguel take the first steps towards realizing this impossible dream.

Some small little thoughts that I've had that i think push this a bit further.

Don Quixote was written by Miguel when he was 50 while he was in prison.

I've been wondering now whether this cell we see Donqui in within her base ego was actually some sort of representation of this. Don Quixote was born while Miguel was locked away. This looming shadow of Rocinante keeping the Sangre De Sancho locked away within this small starry-eyed girl <3

Nothing that I really have any like, evidence for, but based on vibes I think representing the specific sort of Spaniard from this time period as some sort of high class vampire is excellent and really fits thematically as well.

Cervantes has a bunch of quotes about the nature of oneself and death (bloodfiends are undead). Some that I think are quite fitting are :

“A Man Without Honor is Worse than Dead.”

“Take my advice and live for a long, long time. Because the maddest thing a man can do in this life is to let himself die.”

“I know who I am and who I may be, if I choose.”

“When life itself seems lunatic, who knows where madness lies? Perhaps to be too practical is madness. To surrender dreams — this may be madness. Too much sanity may be madness — and maddest of all: to see life as it is, and not as it should be!”

and finally, to conclude this,

“All I know is that while I’m asleep, I’m never afraid, and I have no hopes, no struggles, no glories — and bless the man who invented sleep, a cloak over all human thought, food that drives away hunger, water that banishes thirst, fire that heats up cold, chill that moderates passion, and, finally, universal currency with which all things can be bought, weight and balance that brings the shepherd and the king, the fool and the wise, to the same level. There’s only one bad thing about sleep, as far as I’ve ever heard, and that is that it resembles death, since there’s very little difference between a sleeping man and a corpse.”

If you read this whole thing, thank you for indulging me. I greatly appreciate it.

[lloydfrontera]

i will always find the relationship between javier and the fronteras endlessly fascinating and compelling especially because of the way it's shaped by the required narrative of the original novel versus what we see of them as people through the plot of tged. let me explain.

the thing about javier is that. he's not. a person when we first meet him. he's supposed to be a character. he's just about to go through his tragic backstory so he can then go on to be the hero of 'the knight of blood and iron'. this is what javier is. all his life before that is really nothing more than a footnote. the fronteras themselves are nothing more than extras that die in the very beginning of his story.

and this shapes the way their relationship is meant to be like. because they need to strike the right balance of them being close enough where it's justified for javier to be so loyal to arcos that he refuses to take any master after his death but not so close that javier feels the responsibility or has the authority to take over the estate after their deaths or even remain there at all to help in any way he can. for the sake of the narrative javier isn't allowed to really be a part of the frontera family despite being basically raised by them, because that would interfere with the plot destiny has set up for him.

and if that were it, that would be fine, no one would really pay that much attention to it because why would they. the only things that matters is that they kept javier alive, they were close to him in some regard and now they're dead. that's all that was needed from them for tkobai.

but then. lloyd happens. and he immediately derails the plot and saves the fronteras from death and javier from having to become an errant knight and now everyone is alive and free to continue their own lives and then we get to know arcos and marbella, not as just tragic extras of javier's story but as actual people with their own thoughts and feelings and. what we get to know about them doesn't quite track with their previous actions.

the arcos and marbella we get to know in tged?? they basically adopt lloyd as their son. lloyd. an adult stranger who replaced their son, kept the truth from them for years and who then came back looking nothing like their own kid. and they still love him and accept him as their child. by all accounts they straight up give him their family name, centuries later he's still known as lloyd frontera and nothing else.

this is the kind of people they are. the kind of people who would welcome a stranger into their family because he's kind and good and he's trying his best.

but you mean to tell me that these are the same people who took in a five year old orphan into their home and then just. kept him around. not really being a part of their family. they just raised him for 15 years and then took his oath as a knight and that was it. they don't even call him by his name. he's always 'sir asrahan'.

it doesn't make sense!! that doesn't track with the kind of people they are in tged! except it totally does if you remember they were never meant to be more than just extras. they were never meant to be more than some kind people javier is very distraught to lose but not enough to fall apart for.

that being said. there are a couple explanations that could be given in universe to explain why javier was never made a frontera, despite being taken in by them.

one is that they simply weren't allowed to adopt him. like someone in the replies of this post mentioned, some countries could be pretty strict about who nobles were allowed to adopt. maybe in the magentano kingdom it's the same and the fronteras couldn't legally make javier their child and so could only take him in as a ward or something similar.

or maybe they didn't want to take away one of the very few things javier has left of his family. he was a really small child when his parents were killed, he once mentions he doesn't even really remember his father, just a memory of waiting up for him late at night and that's it. he never really speaks of them nor does he seem to have a deeper connection or longing for them. by the time we meet him, all he has left of them is his name really. maybe when they took him in neither arcos nor marbella wanted to take away one of javier's last remains of his family by making him take their name.

or perhaps they thought adopting javier would cause them more harm than good. after all. they did have a little bastard of a son who took offense at the very existence of javier, despite javier just being *checks notes* a five year old orphan they picked up from the streets so he wouldn't starve or freeze to death. can you imagine the nightmare it would've been if javier had actually been adopted and not just taken in. if og lloyd had not only been forced to share a home but also his own name with him. it wouldn't have been pretty! and the one to pay for it would've certainly been javier! so maybe they thought the risk was simply too high. maybe they thought not giving him their name was a price worth paying to keep the peace at their home.

or maybe they simply didn't think it was their place. maybe they didn't want to make javier uncomfortable or force him into a relationship with them that he didn't want. maybe they wanted to wait until the loss was a little less recent, until the pain had had time to settle into something more manageable and then they just. missed the timing. maybe by the time they realized it was already too late and walls had formed between them that they didn't know how to take down.

in any case i simply don't believe that arcos and marbella are the kind of people to take in a child, raise him his whole life and then just. not feel anything deeper than fondness for him. it doesn't make sense from what we actually get to see of them.

i don't think their relationship with javier is that of parents with a child, but i also don't think it's as distant as what it looks like at first glance. personally i think it must be a mix of,,, habit, formalities and the awkwardness of a missed opportunity hanging between them that doesn't let them be as close as they would otherwise be. like. they all wish they could be something more, they wish the distance was a little shorter, they wish the walls between them could come down but they simply aren't sure how to do that anymore. they don't know if they missed their one chance and this is all that's left.

i don't know!! i just!! it's fascinating to me and i think about it far too much for it to be healthy!! halp!!

[holmesxwatson]

The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes dir: Billy Wilder, 1970

I only watched The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes for the first time a few days ago but it lights my brain up in that special way that I know I’ll revisit it a lot. Don’t get me wrong, it’s far from perfect, for one thing Colin Blakely’s Watson is a little too shouty for me, but it’s very worthwhile to check out despite its shortcomings, which I think mostly come from the fact that so much was cut from the intended script.

I absolutely love Robert Stephens as Holmes. His face is so good, he has a way of looking at Watson when he doesn’t know he’s being observed that is very soft. I thought I was hallucinating the beginning of this movie with Holmes telling the ballet dancer he’s gay and in a relationship with Watson. I thought it was going to be played for a joke, and it was a bit, but it didn’t just end there. Holmes and Watson have a conversation about the repercussions in a lengthy scene that turns very serious by the end. I can’t believe this was 1970 and no one has since tried to build on this specific dynamic in a more meaningful way. Someone needs to remake this into a mini-series exactly how Billy Wilder intended it to be, here’s hoping public domain can make it so.

[above: script page from the cut story The Curious Case of the Upside Down Room, where Watson creates a fake case to make Holmes feel better]

Also, the backstory of the making of this film is so out of control: Robert Stephens’s nervous breakdown and suicide attempt during the production, the amount of years Billy Wilder was trying to write it and get it made, the interference of ACD’s son, the Loch Ness monster prop that the crew lost in actual Loch Ness, the immense scope of the episodic story they were going for, the way it got cut down from its original 3 hour 45 minute runtime and how that cut footage was lost forever! (this is crazy! everyone go check your attics and storage lockers right now).

In one of the interviews I found, Robert Stephens says “if something is boring — if it’s three minutes long it’s too long, but if it’s interesting it’s never long enough…you don’t want it to end.” Big same Toby Stephens’ dad, big SAME. I didn’t want it to end. I read the uncut script and I am just floored at what we missed out on. Thankfully some footage and audio remain of some of the cut scenes (but still! check your basements too).

Just fully let it settle into your brain that they filmed all of these stories in the script, and then cut most of it away. Like that is mind-blowing to me, it existed at one point as it was fully intended to be. If this was made now during home entertainment times, they would have no problem releasing an almost four-hour movie, but at the very least there would be a big director’s cut dvd release and we would be enjoying all the small Holmes x Watson moments we deserve.

Anyway, in pretty short order I found a bunch of interesting links to stuff, details below. I also consulted my very well-thumbed Conversations with Wilder book by Cameron Crowe, but there wasn’t that much more information in there. I have Robert Stephens’ memoir Knight Errant and the TPLOSH blu-ray on order so I’ll add to this post if I find any more good resources. Let me know if I’m missing anything, and enjoy!

Full movie on YouTube (x) <-update: this link went private, but it's also streaming for free on Tubi and Freevee, and available to rent on YouTube, Google Play, and Apple TV

Original roadshow draft of script on Internet Archive (x)

Missing footage: Prologue [sound only plus stills] (x), The Curious Case of the Upside Down Room [sound only plus stills] (x), The Dreadful Business of the Naked Honeymooners [footage and soundtrack only, no sound dialogue] (x), alternate ending [sound only] (x)

Making of documentary that includes behind-the-scenes snippets of some of the cut scenes [this doc is in German, but you can turn on the auto-translate to English in the YouTube settings] (x)

Interview with Ernst Walter, film editor of TPLOSH (x)

Interview with Christopher Lee “Mr. Holmes, Mr. Wilder” 2003 (x)

My YouTube playlist with all of the above links in one place plus an excellent fan vid by Just Bee that I added to the list because it’s just so good (x)

Missing Movies: A Case for Sherlock Holmes from 1994 BBC Radio 2 on Soundcloud [includes interview with Robert Stephens and folks involved in the production] (x)

Articles about the lost Loch Ness monster prop (x) (x)

The soundtrack by Miklós Rózsa (x)

[dragonagitator]

"Dragon Age Studies" draft syllabus

I think it would be fun if a bunch of us (re)played, (re)read, (re)watched, and discussed the Dragon Age games, books, graphic novels, and shows as a cohort leading up to the release of Dragon Age: The Veilguard, like how Dracula Daily created a Tumblr-wide book club.

Below is my proposed order and estimates for how long it should take the average person to complete each installment. My estimates assume 325 words/page for novels, 250 words/minute for reading speed, 1 page/minute for graphic novels, and the upper end of playtime ranges per Google (because anyone dedicated enough to join the cohort is likely to be a completionist).

Dates to be announced once we get a firm release date for DA4. The schedule will spread the content out proportionally so there's a relatively consistent time commitment per week. The final version of the syllabus will break the games up into specific main quests or DLCs for each week, since each game takes most people more than a week to complete. There will also be links to YouTube "movies" of the games and to short summaries of the novels for people who fall behind or who can't invest enough time to replay and reread everything.

Please review and let me know if you think anything should be adjusted and why, thanks!

Novel: The Stolen Throne ~8 hours to complete (364 pages, estimated 116k words)

Novel: The Calling ~10 hours to complete (447 pages, estimated 145k words)

Game: Dragon Age: Origins & all DLC ~90 hours to complete

Web short stories: Dragon Age II companions prequels <1 hour to complete (7 short stories, ~7k words total)

Game: Dragon Age II & all DLC ~60 hours to complete

Web series: Redemption <1 hour to complete (total runtime 51 minutes)

Novel: Hard in Hightown ~2 hours to complete (72 pages, estimated 23k words)

Graphic novel: The Silent Grove 1-2 hours to complete (80 pages)

Graphic novel: Those Who Speak 1-2 hours to complete (72 pages)

Graphic novel: Until We Sleep 1-2 hours to complete (72 pages)

Novel: Asunder ~8 hours to complete (374 pages, estimated 122k words)

Novel: The Masked Empire ~8 hours to complete (382 pages, estimated 124k words)

Novel: The Last Flight ~7 hours to complete (304 pages, estimated 99k words)

Film: Dawn of the Seeker 1.5 hours to complete (runtime 90 minutes)

Book: The World of Thedas Vol. 1 ~3 hours to complete (185 pages with lots of illustrations)

Web short stories: Dragon Age Inquisition prequels ~1 hour to complete (3 short stories, ~13.5k words total)

Game: Dragon Age Inquisition & all DLC ~150 hours to complete

Book: The World of Thedas Vol. 2 ~5 hours to complete (314 pages with lots of illustrations)

Book: The Art of Dragon Age Inquisition ~3 hours to complete (184 pages, mostly illustrations)

Graphic novel: Magekiller ~2 hours to complete (120 pages)

Graphic novel: Knight Errant ~2 hours to complete (112 pages)

Graphic novel: Deception 1-2 hours to complete (72 pages)

TV Series: Absolution 3 hours to complete (total runtime 180 minutes)

Graphic novel: Blue Wraith 1-2 hours to complete (72 pages)

Short story collection: Tevinter Nights ~11 hours to complete (490 pages, estimated 159k words)

Graphic novel: The Missing 1-2 hours to complete (84 pages)

Web short stories: Dragon Age: The Veilguard prequels <1 hour to complete (7 short stories, ~5k words)

Deliberately excluded due to being out-of-print/offline/etc:

Dragon Age comics by IDW / Orson Scott Card

Dragon Age Journeys

Dragon Age Legends

Dragon Age Inquisition Multiplayer

Dragon Age: The Last Court

[ohthatphage]

Making Friends with Entropy

I just wrote this three chapter story for request via @a-system-of-giving and their AO3 plural writing exchange. It's original, as requested, to be released on AO3 under the Vanderkemp's names (a group of system members who are our AO3 voice), but with my voice and narration.

It is perhaps a little too canon to the Tunnel Apparati Diaries. It's basically the prequel.

I don't know if I can publish it to AO3 without it functioning as a promotion for that writing. So, I'm publishing it here first, and then to our own website, completely free to read. And then, after reviewing AO3's policies, we might post it there as archived work.

If it looks like doing that may be a risk to them, and against their policy, then I'll write something else for the exchange. There's time, and this work represents 9,267 in one day. Shouldn't be a problem.

I'd like to thank @ashwin-the-artless for starting the Tunnel Apparati Diaries and then coaxing me to write for myself.

First chapter is in this post. Second and third chapters will be reblogs, and then Fenmere will reblog that. Enjoy!

Chapter 1: Bedtime

In the early 21s century of Earth, on a small farm in Thurston county, Washington, in the United States of America, the social construct known as Jeremy Schmidt spent one late evening pushing a plastic truck around on the carpet with city streets printed on it that he’d inherited from his father.

It wasn’t his favorite game.

He would rather have been on his mountain in the back yard, bathing the sky with gouts of flame and scaring errant knights away from his twin sister, who was mysteriously human.

He was not supposed to be awake.

It was 11 pm, and a school night.

A few years later, he would learn that most of his classmates stayed up much later than that, but he was not yet socially aware enough to pick up on their conversations. He was still too preoccupied by making sense of other things, such as why his hands didn’t have claws, or what his tail was doing when the Sunday school teacher was busy trying to convince everyone that they all had another bigger father or something absurd like that.

He thought every seven year old’s bedtime was 8pm. Similar to how he thought he was a boy.

Which is to say that bedtime and boyhood, and even humanity, were rules imposed by adults, and everyone like him was expected to follow them.

In any case, he couldn’t sleep that night, and instead of lying in bed with the lights off, terrified of all the darkest corners of his room, he was taking his mom’s advice in a way that she probably hadn’t intended.

But, he had just figured something out, and was pretty excited about it. And playing truck on the floor was his way of testing this idea.

When an adult gives you conflicting rules, maybe you get to decide how to interpret them and which rule takes precedence in a given situation. After all, rules don’t just come from adults, they also come from the world itself, such as the rule that if you trip and fall you will, nine times out of ten, scrape your knee and hand. And if you have a good sense of rules, maybe better than anybody else, you can explain how you were following the most important rules.

And the way this situation worked was this.

He was afraid of the dark.

He was supposed to get enough sleep for school. That was a rule.

But if there was any darkness near him, he couldn’t sleep. That was also a rule.

So it was ultimately up to him to figure out how to sleep at night.

And for a while he did that by sleeping with the lights on.

So his parents left his room’s lights on when he went to bed, and he’d been sleeping with the lights on since he was three. But, every other birthday, they’d coax him to try sleeping with one more of his lights turned off, because it was supposed to be healthier to sleep in the dark.

So, now, he only had his clip-on reading lamp on the head of his bed turned on as a nightlight, and his parents were telling him that after his next birthday, he was supposed to switch that out for a softer, genuine plug-in nightlight that would be placed in the wall across the room from his bed.

But the thing was, he was pretty sure he wasn’t sleeping at all at night. Just lying in bed absolutely terrified.

His parents claimed he did sleep, and that they checked on him and he didn’t notice. But he only ever remembered being awake and being extremely sleepy all day, and it was getting worse.

And his parents could see that he was struggling. And though the way they usually did things was to tell him what to do, and then restrict his privileges until he did that thing, after long enough, sometimes three or so years of fruitless restrictions, they’d sometimes try to help him meet their goals for him.

So, recently his mom had given him another rule, and this rule had sort of made things snap into place for him.

Initially, she hadn’t worded it like a rule.

It had been a conversation that had happened earlier that night, in fact.

At seven pm, he’d been told that his mom wanted to talk to him about something before bed, she wanted to help him with a trouble he was having, and he should be ready to talk to her at seven thirty. They gave him this “heads up” because they had long ago figured out that he needed time to “shift gears” and adjust to change from the usual routines. And, to compensate for this conversation, he’d be allowed to doddle a little on his way to bed, because he might need to be brushing his teeth at 8pm and instead of ten to eight, and tonight that would be OK.

He’d found that he was eager to have this talk, so he was ready five minutes before the time it was supposed to happen. And he spent that five minutes talking amongst himself about what the subject would be.

Which is to say, he talked to his imaginary twin sister about it.

She had no idea what the subject would be, either, but she was worried it was going to be about their eating habits.

He pointed out that if their parents wanted to talk about their eating habits, they’d schedule this talk for before dinner, not after it.

And she said that made sense.

Then she asked if she could talk to their mom, too, but he shook his head quickly and sadly, and said, “She doesn’t know about you.”

“And she doesn’t have to!” his sister, who didn’t have a name yet, replied. “She’ll just think I’m you!”

“That scares me,” he said, though. “She might figure it out. You talk different.”

“I do not!”

“Shsh.”

He’d realized at the last minute that they were both using his mouth at that point, and didn’t want to explain what kind of game he was playing to his mom if she’d heard.

But he was glad for the little conversation anyway, because it had helped make that five minutes pass more quickly.

Then his mom came into the room and sat down on the floor with him.

“Jeremy?” she said. “Can I ask you something I’ve asked before?”

He pretended to look up at her face and nodded, eyes blinking closed.

“What is it exactly that you’re afraid of at night? Is it the dark itself? Or what’s in the dark?”

Oh, it was this conversation!

This had been a conversation he actually wanted to have, but he was also, he was realizing, kind of afraid of it itself.

So, unfortunately, he fell silent and his mind went blank. He couldn’t even feel his sister thinking or having emotions. So he looked down at the floor and sort of shook his head and sort of shrugged.

“Are you afraid of having nightmares if it’s dark?” his mom asked.

He vaguely remembered his first nightmare. He’d been really small at the time, and all he could remember was waking up screaming, and both his parents coming into his room to see if he was OK, and then asking him if he had a nightmare. And he thought he could remember nodding eventually, and that’s how he knew he’d had a nightmare.

After that, he’d had nightmares he could remember. Recurring nightmares about being chased by his grandma’s dog, or falling off a cliff, or finding only darkness in his parents’ closet.

Maybe it was that last one that made him afraid of the dark. But, also, he knew that when it was dark and there was a shadow on the floor or in the corner, he was always certain that it was dangerous. That maybe there was a monster there.

Whatever a real monster actually was. Like, maybe a triffid or that invisible thing on the alien planet, or a troll, like in the movies his dad watched and laughed at. But different. Real.

Oh, he was thinking again! He did kind of like it when a prompt from his mom got his thoughts going again.

“I think it’s monsters,” he found himself saying.

“Ah,” his mom said, glancing toward his door, presumably in the direction of his dad. She gave him a sad, rueful smile and asked, “Are they like the monsters in your dad’s movies?”

“Kind of?” he said. “But more like the monsters that want to be in my nightmares.”

“What do you mean?” she asked.

“Well,” he explained. “When I have my falling off a cliff nightmare, I’m being chased by something, but I can’t look at it or it will be real. And it will get me. And then there’s the cliff. And I can’t stop myself from going off the cliff. And then I land in my bed and it shakes.”

“Oh, I’ve had that very same dream!” his mom exclaimed.

“Really?” he didn’t believe her, but he let her tell him she did. He knew better than to outright question his parents. And maybe she’d say something cool anyway.

“Oh, yes. It’s actually really common. A lot of people have that same dream,” she explained. “I’ve been reading a book about dreams and what they mean. And that one’s supposed to mean you’re avoiding something. Or something like that. But, there’s a cool part in the book about something called lucid dreaming that I think could help you, and something my grandma, your grandma’s mother, told me. It might help you stop having that nightmare, and maybe you won’t have to be afraid of the dark anymore.”

“Really?” he asked again, actually looking up to her eyes this time. He was hopeful. This sounded actually cool. Like maybe he’d be taught a super power. Even if he was also skeptical about it. But he only glanced at her eyes for a split second, long enough to make that emotional contact and check her sincerity, but not long enough to make him hurt.

“Yes, I think so,” she said. “My grandma told me that the secret to beating a nightmare is to turn and face it. If you have something that is chasing you, you need to stop and turn around and face it, and tell it to be your friend. Because it’s only a dream, and if you do that you take control and it can’t hurt you.��

This sounded totally bonkers to him. The idea of doing that made his heart race. He couldn’t at all imagine doing that.

“But what if it gets me?” he asked.

“Tell it that it can’t,” she said. “Say to it, in no uncertain terms, ‘you cannot get me, you are not allowed.’ Make it a rule.”

“No uncertain terms?” he asked.

She nodded, “No uncertain terms. ‘You cannot get me, you are not allowed.’ In fact, you can tell it I said so. It’s my rule. Your nightmares aren’t allowed to get you.”

“I don’t think they care about you,” he told her.

“Well,” she said. “The important thing is that it’s your rule. It’s your mind, and your dream, and you make the rules. That’s how it works. It cannot hurt you if you don’t want it to.”

“Really?”

“Yes, really,” she nodded. “This works for falling off the cliff, too. If you still can’t face the monster behind you, when you fall off the cliff, you can fly instead. Just spread your arms wide, close your eyes in your dream, and imagine going up instead of going down. Imagine the ground falling away from you.”

“How do I do that though? I can’t control my dreams!” his voice maybe got a little loud.

“Well, you can, though,” she said. “It’s a skill, but you can learn it. That’s what the book I’m reading meant by ‘lucid dreaming’. It’s when you realize you’re in a dream and that you can do anything you want.”

“How?”

“Well, usually, what you do is before you go to bed every night, you tell yourself that you’re going to have a lucid dream,” she said. “It doesn’t usually work right away. But it helps, and if you do it repeatedly, you’ll eventually start to make it work. And then, you keep a lookout for things that tell you that you’re dreaming, like a monster chasing you.”

“What do you mean?” he felt like he was supposed to ask this question when she paused, so he did. He knew what she meant.

“Well, monsters don’t actually chase you when you’re awake, do they?” she asked.

This was becoming a long conversation and he could feel the darkness closing in as the night fell. It felt dangerous.

He shook his head, but then stopped and said, “Kensington chases me.”

“Yeah, but only when you have a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or a carrot in your hand, right?”

“Yeah, like I’m still a toddler or something.”

“He’s a naughty airedale,” she said.

“Only when I have a sandwich or a carrot, though,” he agreed. “But in my dreams he just chases me.”

“Exactly,” she said, patting his knee. “So, if he’s chasing you when you aren’t holding food, you know you’re dreaming, right? Or if you’re being chased by something that you don’t even know what it is because you haven’t looked at it.”

“Yeah.”

“Also. Can you tell you’re not dreaming right now?”

“Oh, yeah. I’m definitely not dreaming right now!”

“That’s another way for you to check,” she said. “Some people have a hard time telling whether they’re dreaming or not, because their brains work like that. Maybe sometimes they actually dream when they’re awake, too. So it makes things complicated. But because you know you’re awake when you’re actually awake, if you ever find yourself wondering if you’re awake or in a dream, you’re probably dreaming. But, then, ask yourself if you’re being chased by something that can’t be real, just to make sure. And if the answer is yes, then you know it’s a dream, and then you make the rules.”

“Oh.”

And that’s what she’d told him.

The important part was, “And then you make the rules.” That was so crucial. That’s where the actual power lay. That was permission. And it didn’t just come from his mom, but from a book and from his great grandmother. So it was extra right.

But, and as he brushed his teeth he thought about this, it was the part about how some people dreamed when they were even awake that made everything click into place for him.

Because maybe the monsters behind the darkness he felt were there when he was lying in bed were really dream monsters. So, he should have power over them if he faced them.

Which was why, at 11pm, he was brazenly playing with his truck on the printed town carpet with only his bed lamp on.

He was playing innocent, to try to lure a monster out so that he could face it.

He’d started at 9pm, after laying in his bed for a while thinking more about what his mom had said. It had taken about that long for him to formulate his plan and then work up the courage to carry it out.

And after he forced his body to move and climb down out of his bed, he played with a few different toys, getting into the routine of them to let the time pass, because, it turned out, the monsters weren’t brave enough to face him, apparently.

But he wasn’t playing make-believe with his toys. He was just pushing them through the motions of play, like he used to do as a toddler. Making the wheels spin. Feeling the changes in friction against the texture of the carpet as he made them turn corners and skid. Transforming them into robots and then back into cars and trucks, and appreciating their construction and the way the hinges worked.

And his sister just watched, because that’s usually what she did.

And time did pass really quickly then.

And it was around 11pm that he started to wonder if monsters were even real.

But, the really important part about 11pm is that that’s when his parents finally fell fast asleep and were unlikely to hear him talking to someone or something. And while he didn’t know that, I did.

So that’s when I stepped out of the darkness.

[kemendin]

Been feeling the WildStar nostalgia this last week so I thought I'd talk a bit about these lads - Caspian and Darius Serapis, who were both born in WS and more recently made their way into SWTOR.

Caspian's known as Seeker in WS, having discarded his clearly Cassian birthname when he defected from the Dominion about a year after his arrival on Nexus. Being both a) from a prominent Highborn Cassian family and b) one of the Dominion's foremost Eldanologists, this didn't sit too well with his loyalist older brother. A respected officer in the Radiant Legion, Darius spent over a year hiding the shame of Caspian's defection, while at the same time tracking down his errant sibling with the intent of physically dragging him back to the Dominion if necessary.

While they were close as children, Seeker and Darius come to borderline hate each other by the time they're adults. Darius' heavy-handed, militant manner and fierce devotion to the Vigilant Church clash constantly with Seeker's defiant questions and growing disillusionment with the so-called destiny of the Dominion. This comes to a head when Darius finally catches up with his brother. Seeker makes it clear that not only does he reject the Dominion and the Church, he has every intention of plumbing the secrets of Nexus for proof that the Eldan were false gods, and he will hurl that evidence into the face of Emperor Myrcalus himself if he has to.

Fortunately, Seeker manages to escape his brother's custody before an incensed Darius can make up his mind about executing him on the spot for heresy. They don't meet again until a worsening of Seeker's genetic disorder - a side effect of his Highborn lineage - requires the primal pattern of another blood relative to stabilise his own. By this point both of them are Extremely Tired And Done with this whole situation, and ultimately Darius agrees to a) save Seeker's life and b) take a record of Seeker's death back to the Dominion so they'll stop hunting him, and they go their separate ways.

Given this whole history, it's been very interesting to spin them a new story in SWTOR. For one thing, with Caspian as my canon (ish) Jedi Knight and Darius as my also canon (ish) Republic Trooper, they're actually on the same side, which from the outset meant that they do get along a hell of a lot better than in WS. Caspian is still the defiant, logical disbeliever, but the Force is as close to 'faith' as he actually gets in any universe so far, and overall he's less steely than his original WS self. Darius is still the stern and hardened soldier, deeply loyal to the Republic, but he doesn't have the unyielding fanaticism of the Church. And I think the fact that Cas is also a warrior, in a way, gives them something significant to have in common. They're not best friends by any means, but they respect each other's roles and do care about each other in a usually unspoken way (unless it's Darius openly yelling at Satele Shan over letting his little brother run around with the Emperor's fucking Wrath. He has Concerns. They are entirely warranted).

I've got at least one SWTOR fic I want to write with the two of them, on Corellia during the class story. So it'll be fun to see how Darius' voice emerges here in the galaxy far far away.

[probablyfunrpgideas]

The Graveyard Book

Shout out to Divinity: Original Sin 2 for having a graveyard that contains different burial practices for the different cultures. What a neat way to show off the depth of your worldbuilding! And each one also has things for the player character to interact with, so they're fairly memorable.

In my world of Tephra, humans usually are cremated while family and friends tell stories of their life. Usually, they ask for their remains to be buried on the site of a new endeavor - beneath their granddaughter's first shop, or scattered in the orchard their best friend is planting. Orcs are buried facing east, into the sunrise. If they die of natural causes, they are are buried with a weapon so their spirit will not be defenseless. In Estier, the grave goods may include a protective magic amulet made from quartz, while the orcs of Dorend prefer to leave a bone flute or whistle. The burial practices of the gnomes could fill a dozen books, but for simplicity's sake, family ties are paramount. A gnome's body must be returned to someone who knew them or was a relative (through blood, marriage, or choice) so that they can be remembered on special days of the year at the family shrine. For the sake of hygiene, this means skeletal remains are kept in almost every gnomish home, though some wealthy families have the means to keep up magical preservation spells in a mausoleum of some sort.

Halflings are buried at liminal spaces, the edge of a grove or a crossroad or a shoreline. In the south of Estier, they usually plant a tree where the body lies, and discern the age of a village by the size of their grave-forest. In the northlands, there's a tendency to make reference to the local earth spirits in an epitaph or ceremony. Some outsiders say that dwarves value the community more than the individual, but a dwarven cemetery is a testament against that. Some outsiders also say that dwarves turn into stone when they die, and this is a more understandable mistake. For in that peaceful cavern or quiet field, life-sized statues stand over each grave. The sculptors who work on these are usually masters of their craft, capturing facial features and showing the subject's role and personality. Rare is the Elf who leaves anyone behind to think of their burial. They are so solitary and long-lived that most end up returning to the life cycle of the Forest. One famous exception is the Lavender Flame, a magical knight-errant who asked her noble paramour to build a splendid tower when she finally fell in battle. This tomb still stands in the town of Flamerest, where the steppe rises into the Shield Mountains.

Goblins seem to decompose very rapidly, and it is unclear whether their kin on the airships have a meaningful ceremony for the remains. They claim to be unconcerned with death, but avoid it as much as anyone else does. Shoalsali (or Lizardfolk) keep written records of all the family and apprentices who have been part of their tribe, but they leave the bodies for birds or fish.

[erasedcitizen2]

ATTEMPTING TO GET THROUGH THIS LIST OF DRAGON AGE MEDIA IN CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER IS HOW I'M DEALING WITH MY DRAGON AGE: THE VEILGUARD HYPE LMAO

(pls send help)

Disclaimers: I put this together by looking at a couple of lists other people have made to see if multiple people put things in the same order, things might still be incorrect tho and dates especially might be incorrect I haven't spent a whole lot of time double checking everything. Sorry that it's messy I was just making it for myself but maybe someone else wants to do this too so here ya go. I also skipped some minor things like short webcomics that I personally wasn't interested in.

Book: The Stolen Throne, 9:00-9:17 Dragon Book: The Calling, 9:10-9:11 Dragon Movie: Dawn of the Seeker, 9:22 Dragon Short story: Sebastian, 9:22 Dragon Short story: Aveline, 9:25 Dragon Short story: Fenris, 9:28 Dragon Origins DLC: Leliana's Song, 9:28 (before Origins) Game: Dragon Age: Origins, 9:30-9:31 Dragon Origins DLC: Warden's Keep, 9:30 Dragon (DURING ORIGINS before final battle) Origins DLC: Stone Prisoner, 9:30 Dragon (DURING ORIGINS before final battle) Short movie: Dragon Age: Warden's Fall https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8vbs_FaXNyI Origins DLC: Awakening, 9:31 Dragon (after Origins) Origins DLC: Golems of Amgarrak, 9:31 Dragon Short story: Anders, 9:31 Dragon Short story: Varric, 9:31 Dragon Short story: Isabela, 9:31 Dragon Short story: Merrill, 9:31 Dragon Origins DLC: Witch Hunt, 9:32 Dragon (after Origins) Game: Dragon Age II, 9:30-9:37 Dragon Web series: Dragon Age: Redemption, 9:34 (DURING Dragon Age II after act 1 before act 2) II DLC: The Exiled Prince, 9:33 Dragon (DURING II you meet him in act 1, becomes companion in Act 2) II DLC: Legacy, (DURING II Before 9:37 Dragon) II DLC: Mark Of The Assassin, (DURING II Before 9:37 Dragon, Act 3 before end of game) Comic: The Silent Grove, 9:38 Dragon Comic: Those Who Speak, 9:38 Dragon Comic: Until We Sleep, 9:38 Dragon Book: Hard in Hightown, 9:40 Dragon Book: Asunder, 9:40 Dragon Book: The Masked Empire, 9:40 Dragon (Game: The Last Court web game) Short story: The Riddle of Truth Short story: Paying the Ferryman Short story: Paper & Steel Game: Dragon Age: Inquisition, 9:40-9:41 Dragon Comic: Mage Killer, 9:40 Dragon (DURING Inquisition, before final battle) Inquisition DLC: Jaws of Hakkon, 9:40-9:41 Dragon (could be either during or after Inquisition) Inquisition DLC: The Descent, 9:40-9:41 Dragon (could be either during or after Inquisition) Comic: Blue Wraith, 9:40-9:44 Dragon Book: The Last Flight, 9:41 Dragon Inquisition DLC: Trespasser, 9:43 Dragon Netflix show: Absolution Comic: Knight Errant, 9:43 Dragon Comic: Deception, 9:43 Dragon Short stories: Tevinter Nights, 9:44-9:45 Dragon Comic: Dark Fortress, 9:45 Dragon Comic: The Missing, 9:45 Dragon

[sublimenol]

Sonic OC Questionnaire time!

Since the @sonic-oc-showdown is starting up soon I thought I should do something to write up a bit more about my OC Deirdre. Shoutout to @bunnymajo and @nintendoni-art for bringing this easy to chew set of questions to my attention. Art here is done by the always wonderful @bunniibones.

✨- How did you come up with the OC’s name?

Short answer, it's a pun. Long answer is that I was playing around with the way naming conventions seem to exist in Sonic where you have Word-the-Animal but also some characters have "proper" names, but tend to be playfully named. Sally Acorn, Bunny Rabbot and such. Deirdre was made with a bit more of Archie in mind at the time and as such she was dubbed Deirdre Whitetail. Since she's a deer.

🌼 - How old are they? (Or approximate age range)

I'm always leery of specific age when it comes to these characters given the overall aesthetic is fairly neotenic. She is intended to be a young adult though. Experienced enough to have gone through a few troubles and to set out on her own, but she's yet to be worn down much. So probably an early 20s.

🌺- Do they have any love interest(s)?

She currently does not have any love interests in any official capacity. At one time a friend was considering a roboticized one but that never got beyond the idea phase and isn't really "canon" for any value of the term.

🍕 - What is their favorite food?

Cocoa. Deirdre takes her hot chocolate very seriously. She sticks to the finest ingredients. Particularly in her own dried and crushed chili that she uses to add heat to the sweet.

💼 - What do they do for a living?

She considers herself a modern knight errant. Her family is old nobility that hold no real application in the modern world but she still holds herself to noblesse oblige. As she doesn't have any skills she considers worthwhile besides physical conflict, she works for the Restoration in trying to put a stop to the seemingly endless problems in Sonic's world. Especially if she can whack a badnik with an axe.

🎹 - Do they have any hobbies?

She's yet to really find any hobby. She's trying to break out of keeping herself busy through self appointed responsibilities.

🎯 -What do they do best?

She's a fighter and that's what she does best. She was raised with the fantasy of knights in heroes and that's been what she's put her all into becoming.

🥊 -What do they love to do? What do they hate to do?

She absolutely loves the moment of conflict. The world is simpler and more direct then. She can lead and she can put everything into fight. Directing allies, protecting allies, swinging an axe through a robot, all of that is where she feels most alive.

She really hates social situations. She loves other people and she enjoys being around them, she is just woefully outclassed when it comes to things like parties and gatherings. She tends to default to being silent, aloof and posing gracefully to carry through the fact she's screaming internally about looking like an idiot.

❤️ - What is one of your OC’s best memories?

During the Resistance Era against the Eggman Empire, where she was surrounded by others trying to get by. The hope and comradery she felt during the conflict was the closest she's felt to comfort, despite the physical dangers.

✂️ - What is one of your OC’s worst memories?

Metal Virus. She discovered early that a weapon was of no use. She was not infected, but forced to flee to her mountainside home. There she lived with the ghosts of her failure and perceived cowardice as she hunkered alone in a big empty house knowing there was nothing she could do to help anyone.

🧊 - Is their current design the first one?

Yes, she hasn't changed much except her hair has gone from lilac to a more pinkish color. And before she was a deer she was almost a fisher cat.

Story wise she has gone from a more Archie era character to one that's more set in a slightly AU take on the IDW series.

🍀 - What originally inspired the OC?

A friend wanted to do some RP and at the time I had no Sonic OCs to do anything with. So I sort of cobbled some stuff together from things I remembered from the mid 90s comics and cartoons.

🌂 - What genre do they belong in?

She is firmly in the Action genre. Fairly Shonen too with the bouts of melodrama and emotions.

💚 - What is your OC’s gender identity and sexuality?

She is female. Sexuality is not fully defined. Biromantic Asexual is probably the most likely.

🙌 - How many sibling does your OC have?

She is but an only babby. A lonely only babby.

🍎 - What is the OC’s relationship w/their parents like?

They are fine, but very independent and professional. It appears cold on the surface but they do love and respect each other deeply.

🧠 - What do you like most about the OC?

Honestly because she's kind of a brainworm. She really should have just been one a million discarded one off RP characters and not have clawed her way back again and again when I've wavered on the Sonic fandom in general.

✏️ - How often do you draw/write about the OC?

Nerve issues have kept drawing off the table for me on a regular basis. I should write more, and love creating things for her, but I usually don't write because I figure no one wants to know much about OCs

💎 - Do you ever see yourself killing off the OC?

Probably not. There's just always more story to tell.

💀 - Does your OC have any phobias?

Nothing so overt or direct. Mostly existential fears related to her utility to the world and her past failures.

🍩 -Who is your OC’s arch-nemesis or rival?

Most of her antagonists aren't "arch-nemesis or rival" levels. So I'm going to say no to this. There just hasn't been quite that emotional tie to any of them to make them something other than enemies at cross-purposes.

🎓 - How long have you had the OC?

Probably since around 2015 or 16 in concept and off hand use in RP. She has only been formally designed and really made solid in the last 5 or 6 years though.

[pangtasias-atelier]

A Portly Knight Lord

Warning: This is a fetish story!

I am so incredibly upset over the lack of any news about new game that I needed to write something quick. And like, god I love Deirdre and Sigurd so much abshsbhdsb. Also, realized how much I need to do more quick drabbles even though them being short kind of means you can't put much in the story like I love to do.

"Did you enjoy the meal, lord Sigurd?" Now standing when she was seated only moments ago, Deirdre picks up the table. She reaches for the porcelain dishes, stacking her and Sigurd's salad plates on top of her own dinner plate. Her own portion had been small yet sufficiently filling for her usual appetite. A rich, spicy pork and rice paired with a creamy salad.

Sigurd still eating, the portion Deirdre served him had been twice the amount of his wife's. The surplus of food is clearly a usual occurrence for him with the state of his body. No longer able to blame his figure on a lapse of discipline, Sigurd's plump figure is past being just pudgy; the small ounce of flab that presses against his outfit is no more, his stomach replaced by a noticeable stomach that is always outlined by the fabric of whatever outfit he wears—even after visiting Chalphy's seamstress to obtain larger clothes that can properly cover up his bulk. His pristine white clothes show off the soft curved flab that makes up Sigurd's belly. His stomach goes slightly past his waistband, the squishy, hefty underside roll of flab pressing against his pants that ever so slightly dig into him. His stomach now has motion to it, the small mound for a gut jiggling with each step he takes. Sigurd rather top heavy, his chest has also received an ample amount of adipose. Now, the once defined pecs are a pair of breasts that are just large enough to be cupped by a hand. The bottom most curve of his breasts currently graze against his stomach with him still seated. 

Sgurd still has his refined etiquette despite his increased size and hunger, yet he eats his food with an increased sense of urgency, the still juicy pork from Verdane seasoned perfectly to Sigurd’s preferences. His fork is close to being overfilled with food as he not quite crams the meat and rice into his mouth. “Of course Deirdre,” He responds after wiping the nonexistent errant drips of sauce on his face. “Anything made by you is something I will always cherish, dearest. And your culinary prowess is already outstanding. I am lucky to have you by my side,” 

“Then I am blessed to hear your praise,” The table is now organized, the used dishes stacked to the side. “I am glad that Ethlyn’s advice worked out well,” Deirdre smiles to herself, the fresh memories of Ethlyn’s tips and advice on her brother’s preferences all merrily dancing around in her mind like all the Spirit Forest festivals she was unable to partake in.

Sigurd’s brows raise at the mention of Ethlyn. He can’t help but allow the small burst of subdued laughter to escape him as he understands and recognises the familiarity of all the cooking. He keeps the note of oversized portions and abundant use of oil and butter to himself. Well aware of his sister’s preferences, Sigurd had congratulated his best friend and wished the initially confused Quan the best for the two along with his waistline. And it didn’t take long for him to blimp out, the shorter man clearly taking well to Ethlyn’s cooking and preference in men to eventually become a rather obese man weighing more than twice his original weight. And that had been when he had last seen Quan; so much of Quan’s weight went to his rear, his enormous thighs and ass requiring another chair simply to hold his bulk without destroying the seat. And yet, neither of the loving couple clearly seemed to take any issue with his size, the two even seeming to relish Quan’s immense size that dwarfs his slimmer self back when he and Sigurd were nothing more than fresh teens back when they were in Belhalla’s royal academy. 

And as Sigurd thinks about Quan’s hefty size—his friend apparently close to pushing the quarter ton boundary last he saw of him—he takes no umbrage regarding his size; he also doesn’t dismiss the idea of perhaps gaining some more weight himself, the small pebble of an idea starting off with ambivalent reluctance regarding his current weight before growing into a boulder of a thought about being as fat as Quan. Especially with how well his friend holds the weight with such large thighs that are wider than Ethlyn’s waistline along with an ass that smothers chairs, the lower half of Quan’s obese figure paired with a smaller upper half that still has a rather sizable gut that sags past the stretchy waistband of his pants to reach his groin along with a pair of breasts that surpass Ethlyn’s own modest set. Sigurd’s thoughts shift over to his own ample figure, the fascination of the idea taking hold as he imagines himself—a massive gut that juts in front of him, the enormous stomach a result of his gorging combined with Deirdre’s expertise, a shelf of a chest with breasts that always splay down the side of his dome of a gut, each swollen tit larger than his wife’s impressive chest,  and a hefty set of arms ready to hug and caress his wonderful wife. Lost in the temptations of his own thoughts, it takes several moments for Sigurd to break out of his wondrous daze, the ideas dissipating from feeling a hand on his stomach. 

“Deirdre,” Sigurd’s voice comes out in a near whisper. His own face red, he holds back the bubbling wince as he moves around and disturbs his stuffed stomach.

Broken out of her own trance, Deirdre’s lilac eyes stare wide eyed at Sigurd before narrowing them; a blush tints her face along with the onset of a gentle smile. “Forgive me, Lord Sigurd. You seemed full after such a meal-”

“You never need to apologize to me, dearest,” Sigurd pushes himself off his seat and embraces her. His churning stomach presses up against her flat stomach as he holds her tightly, as though Naga were to take such a wondrous human away from him. He lowers his head, burying his face into the crook of her neck. "You are enjoying yourself. That is all I ask of you," He pulls back and, caressing Deirdre's hand, he places the palm of her right hand on his grumbling belly. "And I must admit, I find this rather enjoyable myself,"

Deirdre smiles. She relaxes into the embrace even further and rubs Sigurd's belly. "I am so very happy," Her slim figure rests against her husband's soft, doughy body, her back slightly arched from his gut. Her cheek rests on his pillowy breasts. 

The two's moment ends up interrupted by Sigurd's grumbling stomach, the pile of flab suddenly hungry and demanding for food. 

"Perhaps we should go to the kitchen and see what else you might eat," Deirdre whisks her husband away, to feed him some more, the merry couple hand in hand as always.

[myfirstbreakcharacter]

I enjoy the Histories in BREAK!! being a mix of lifestyles. The last edition of D&D is probably the game most people have played that involved some kind of history/background mechanic, although I think we can all name some games where that's a much bigger factor. I think something that got missed in the way people treated those was that the initial PHB offerings were effectively all reasons one might travel. Even the Hermit: they lived a secluded live, discovered some secret or insight, and are out in the world now spreading that around. Over time this remained mostly true even if the became more tied to specific careers and experiences, a mix of superhero origin story and CV. In a world where you're constantly beset by giant beasts, ghoulies, magic monsters etc, the average NPC leads their life in one place.... content with their lot and awaiting a wandering party to fix their problems. When the world is wild, civilization is small. BREAK!!, on the other hand, is not terribly wild at all. There are places OF wildness, and places where time has gouged deep wounds into the world, but the world is largely known and "mapped" such that there are few places to leave blank for "here be dragons." Indeed, BREAK!!'s map indicates explicitly where there WERE dragons... What great nations and city-states exist do so with something approaching a modern awareness of one another that recalls at least the European colonial era if not late Victorian explorer accounts. Folks in Berry Town may have heard that the junkers of Stahlfield eat babies but they know where they are and what their overall deal is apart from those rumors, at least. One scholar of ancient culture I read in college had a definition of civilization as the point where a shared language is adopted, and since Low Speech is baked into the Outer World and spoken by all sapient things one could argue for BREAK!! being among the most civilized and connected fantasy settings on the market....

The Histories on offer do have some typical genre conventions (e.g. Knight Errant, Street Rat) but they're typically very specific and very tied to the demands and expectations of their associated regions. Some denote training, some denote upbringing, and some denote circumstances, but whereas I think a lot of D&D5's Background were designed from the perspective of "Why have you found yourself on the road in an adventuring party?" as if being "an adventurer" is something you can just fall into, BREAK!!'s Histories seem more designed around what your character would be doing if they weren't ON AN ADVENTURE. Tom Hanks used to be a teacher in Saving Private Ryan and that does inform his character and his behavior when you know that, but it's wildly different from how everyone in his command pictures him. He's on an adventure because of a convergence of unique circumstances, some of which arose our of necessity and some of which seem almost contrived against him. He's going to go back there some day, just like Gonzo the Great. There are others in his company who feel differently, who can't wait to leave their old life behind and use the money and experience from their military service as a launchpad into something new, something better than the circumstances they left behind.

That's because the Histories in BREAK!! represent a choice. There are some folks bopping around doing good deeds because it's what they've run towards, and there are others for whom these wonders and horrors are only something to run THROUGH. Sometimes the choices are easier than others: someone devoted to "vanquishing all evil" after a life of pious service will find being a vagabond savior a smooth, imperceptible transition. A merchant or craftsman might easily find opportunities to ply their trade during travels, or might commit to this new way of life precisely because of the opportunities it affords them for when they elect to walk away. That's life, though: depending upon our circumstances and resources, some lifestyles might make some choices easier or much much harder depending on the person.

But it is a choice. That's why they're Histories and not Backgrounds. Do you long for the Shire and wish you'd never left, or do you embrace the riches and spectacle that you've found walking man's road: your past or your present? Known or unknown? You have to reconcile it somehow to have any future worth speaking about at all.

[coffeeworldsasaki]

meowdy my dear, tis later and i humbly request some Dragon Age ... explanation? of the medias.

Oooh yes this is long! So there's obviously the games

Dragon age origins (2009)

Dragon age 2 (2011)

Dragon age inquisition (2014)

Dragon age the veilguard (coming out this summer)

Which are the main thing, if you're not extremely obsessed you can ignore the rest but I'm very obsessed so obviously I've read almost everything else which are in order and with a vague explanation of why they would be a good read:

Books:

The stolen throne (dao prequel, I don't remember much about these first 2 books tbh there's hhh lots of one of the main adversaries of dao?)

The calling (another prequel of dao, mostly interesting because there's one of dao's characters mother and I love her)

Asunder (post da2, first apparition of one of dai's companions, the spirit boy, and a return of 2 of dao's characters. Important background to know how some mess in dai started)

The masked empire (important background for one of dai's main quests, all characters in this appear as npc in dai, THERE'S FELASSAN. Also a nice reading in general because Patrick Weekes is a good writer. Toxic canon yuri)

Last flight (I... I've never read I this because my package got lost and I didn't order another. I'm gonna read it for the first time now. It's apparently where we find out the griffons aren't extinct)

Tevinters's nights (short stories collection, it sets up a lot of stuff for datv and introduces 2 of the companions, lucanis and Neve. There's also a story I've enjoyed immensely about the assassins group)

Comics:

The silent grove/those who speak/until we sleep (honestly, totally missable in my opinion. It was boring and out of character from what I remember. Post da2)

Magekiller (it hhhh I've read it and I didn't dislike it? But I absolutely don't remember what this is about tbh)

Knight errant/deception/blue wraith/dark fortress (these are good!!! I still haven't read the last one because I was waiting for the game but I've read the first 3 and I've enjoyed them. Also in there appears fan favorite Fenris and only by me favorite Sebastian. The last volume looks important for datv)

Extra:

Some very short stories on the website that I still haven't read but one of those is about the old man necromancer that everyone wants to fuck that will be a datv companion

Dragon age absolution, a 6 episodes animated miniserie apparently not connected with the games but I'm still holding hope to see some of them in datv

So mmhh this is a lot obviously and I'm not even particularly sure on how someone new should start? I think dai would be a good start if you're mostly interested in the new one. I wouldn't go into datv without dai because there's no emotional impact like that. I do think that da2 is the best one but if you like dai you can always go back. Or also you can just get datv to pet the griffon and then start from the beginning, whatever you prefer fjdkdk

Anyway my personal list of stuff I wouldn't miss is in order

Da2 -> dai -> tevinters's nights

[rexinasuperomnes]

Dragon Age Media Timeline

Here's my best estimation of when in Thedas these stories take place. They are listed chronologically, earliest to latest. I broke down the Tevinter Nights short stories as well as the individual short stories posted on EA's website. I might go back later and justify some of the dates and add links. Please let me know if I missed something.

Legend:

"Title" - "Confirmed Start Date - Confirmed End Date"

"Title" ~ "Estimated Earliest Start Date/Estimated Latest Start Date"

Last Flight - 5:12-24, 9:41-42

Stolen Throne - 8:96-9:00, 9:17

The Calling - 9:10-9:11

Dawn of the Seeker - 9:22

The Flame Eternal - 9:22

Dragon Age: Origins - 9:30-9:32

Leliana’s Song ~9:25

Awakening - 7 Ferventis 9:31

Witch Hunt - early 9:32

Dragon Age 2: 9:30-9:37

Prologue - 9:30

Act 1 - 9:31

Act 2 - 9:34

Act 3 - 9:37

The Silent Grove - 9:38

Those Who Speak - 9:38

Until We Sleep - 9:38

The Masked Empire - 9:40

Asunder - 9:40

Magekiller - 9:41

Dragon Age: Inquisition - 9:41-9:44

Jaws of Hakkon - 9:42

Descent - 9:42

Trespasser - 9:44

(Last Flight - 9:42)

The Next One ~ 9:42/9:48

Dragon Age: Absolution - 9:43

Tevinter Nights: Murder by Death Mages - 9:44

Knight Errant - 9:44

Deception - 9:44

Tevinter Nights: Three Trees to Midnight - 9:44

Blue Wraith - 9:45

Dark Fortress - 9:45

Tevinter Nights: Herold Had the Plan ~ 9:45/9:47

Ruins of Reality ~ 9:45/9:48

Tevinter Nights: Eight Little Talons ~ 9:45/9:48

Tevinter Nights: Down Among the Dead Men ~9:45/9:52

Tevinter Nights: Horror of Hormak ~ 9:45/9:52

Tevinter Nights: Hunger ~ 9:45/9:50

Tevinter Nights: An Old Crow’s Old Tricks ~9:46/9:50

Tevinter Nights: Callback ~9:46/9:50

Minrathous Shadows ~ 9:46/9:52

Tevinter Nights: Genitivi Dies in the End ~ 9:46/9:52

Tevinter Nights: Luck in the Gardens ~ 9:46/9:52

Tevinter Nights: The Wigmaker Job ~ 9:47/9:51

Tevinter Nights: Half Up Front ~ 9:47/9:51

Tevinter Nights: The Dread Wolf Take You ~ 9:47/9:52

Tevinter Nights: The Streets of Minrathous ~ 9:47/9:52

As We Fly ~ 9:47/9:52

The Wake ~ 9:48/9:51

Won’t Know When ~ 9:48/9:52

Vows and Vengeance ~ 9:51/9:52

The Missing - 9:52

[matchalilly]

So you know how Luis loves referencing Don Quixote?

I sat there for the longest time, wondering why it sounded familiar to me, IT'S A REFERENCE TO A BOOK AND A MOVIE (in Luis's case, probably just the book)

Now I read the book back in high school didn't watch the movie till college but Luis has rekindled a memory and I need to hunt the book down again like I want a hardback copy on my book shelf.

I'm also just sitting here imagining that man having a well-worn and very loved copy of Don Quixote, I mean, there's no way he doesn't have a copy with how heavily he references it.

And it's actually cute that he calls Leon, Sancho Panzo, because their banter checks out, and it implies (at least for me) Luis saw Leon and went "yes him, that one will be my squire. I like him."

If you are curious about the books plot...

The plot revolves around the adventures of a member of the lowest nobility, an hidalgo from La Mancha named Alonso Quijano, who reads so many chivalric romances that he either loses or pretends to have lost his mind in order to become a knight-errant (caballero andante) to revive chivalry and serve his nation, under the name Don Quixote de la Mancha.[b] He recruits a simple farmer, Sancho Panza, as his squire, who often employs a unique, earthy wit in dealing with Don Quixote's lofty rhetoric often concerning knighthood, already seeming old-fashioned at the time or incoherent to most, and representing the most droll realism in contrast to his master's idealism though at times left being very impressed. In the first part of the book, Don Quixote does not see the world for what it is and prefers to imagine that he is living out a knightly story meant for the annals of all time.

The book was also originally in two parts, and there was (not sure if it's still performed) a play inspired by it ,MAN of La Mancha.

Like I could go on about Don Quixote... if you want me too, I'm sure Luis would enjoy it XD

And, of course, Leon isn't going to get what Luis is referencing at all. It's going to be nonsense to him, which makes their enteractions whenever Luis references the book, even funnier.