#the sandbox is big and varied and that's what makes fandom fun <3

[snickerdoodlles]

hi I'm the anon that hates the kinn is a cheater trope lol

you're so lucky to have not come across fics like that bcs I unfortunately have. thank god I didn't read it but I saw the summary and it already made my blood boil cause our lovesick puppy kinn WILL NEVER DO THAT. And tbh, i feel people who write kinn as a cheater just doesn't understand his character AT ALL and just sorry, plain lazy writing, and just use the cheating trope as an excuse make their fics "interesting" or "exciting"

sorry for this 2nd entry I'm passionate about this and I hate when they make kinn some cheating asshole when he isnt!! he has TONS of issues but surely cheating is not.

oki promise I'm done lol 🤸‍♀️

(prev)

😂❤ lol no worries, you're good anon.

like. i don't want to just straight up complain about the concept? ultimately, cheating Kinn isn't for me and i'm going to scroll past it. but there's all sorts of reasons for why people might be drawn to those types of stories and fic is ultimately more about using characters like barbies. i do agree with you in that it's not a characterization/action i see in Kinn's character and it's not a type of story drama i'm drawn to in general, so i'm personally going to mute or exclude tags. but people are going to play with characters in every way and that's the cool thing about fandom, and i'm happy they're having fun in their corner while i stick to mine 👍

[therealmnemo]

Oh, a pinned post??

About Mnemo. I’m in my 30s, living in a state that went 70% red in this last election (gag) and live with my wife and our 3 cats, Persephone, Circe, and Pandora.

I’ve been hovering around tumblr for a few years. I kind of first dropped into the Supernatural fandom, quickly learned a lesson about posting hate in a tag, and decided that wasn’t for me. Got really into Dragon Age after playing DAI, but dove into the fandom after playing DA2.  Most of my mutuals and friends I’ve made are in this fandom and I’m really glad most are still around.  I’m very much about having a good time in this sandbox and making a space where others can have as much fun. I’m a weirdo who loves mermaids and likes to enable other artists and writers to just have a blast and make the weirdest, horniest things. 

I’ve been the mod of @teamblueandangry​, ran a few events centered on Anders and Fenris and their ships. I’m multishipping trash. 

I briefly had a blog for Dragon Age Weird Shit, which is the name of the Discord I started to encourage writers and artists to do really strange things. That Discord is still around and I’m open to having people join again. Once we get the rules sorted out again. 

I’m a big fan of fandom positivity, I’m to the point that I don’t feel the need to talk about what I hate anymore... unless it’s the Chantry... or Elthina... or assholes in fandom that decide they need to be the authority on meta or what is deemed acceptable. The blacklist and block button are your friends. 

Welp, if you’re interested in anything I’ve written, I’ve put links under the cut. If you want anything specific to my meanderings, my tag is mnemospeaks. If you want to scroll my writing, it’s mnemowrites. If you like spotify playlists, mnemomixtapes. i think my podfics are still under mnemorecords, and I might get back to those one day. My wife and I were also writing an original piece based on Urban Shadows that is on my ao3 as well, called Orchid. 

Anywho, I’m so happy to still see people really active here in the DA2 fandom and hope to make a lot of new friends and mutuals!

I write mostly around Dragon Age 2 and the characters involved. My biggest ships revolve around any combo of Hawke, Anders, and Fenris. Basically, anyway I can express how much I love those three characters. I have some Isabela x Hawke and Carver x Merrill down below, and some Karl x Anders too. I take prompts any time, which fall under the Kirkwall Friend Fiction Collection on Ao3. Prompts for kid fluff end up in the Glow Dads collection. You’ll find all my fics sorted below first by ship, then series, then drabble collections. 

Tumblr Only

The Truth May Vary . M . Incomplete

Anders x Fenris x f!Hawke

[Part One][Part Two][Part Three]

On Ao3 as therealmnemo

Anders x Fenris

I Have Promises to Keep, and Miles to Go Before I Sleep . M . Complete

I Need A Hero . T . Complete

Left Behind .  M . Complete

The Layover .  M . Incomplete

Anders x f!Hawke

I Still Hope . T. Complete

In Search of Andraste’s Blessing . E . Complete

Missing Bedtime Stories . T . Complete

We’ll Hold Each Other Soon . M . Complete

Anders x Fenris x f!Hawke

Flight, Sundered . M . Incomplete

Infinity in Pieces . T . Complete

Rogues Tie the Best Knots . E . Complete

Taking Bets .  M . Complete

The First and (Hopefully, Not Last) Time . E . Complete

When They Knew . T . Complete

Anders x Fenris x m!Hawke

Santa Hawke . E . Complete

Fenris x f!Hawke

Facing Demons .  NR . Complete

Morning Intrusions .  M . Complete

Poker Face .  M . Complete

Very Subtle, Hawke . T . Complete

Isabela x f!Hawke

Alone on Satinalia . T . Complete

Carver x Merrill

His Hands Shake . T. Complete

General

Critics Be Damned . M . Complete

The Healer of Darktown . T . Complete

Series

Fenris, Hawke, and their Little Bird. 

(Fenris x M!Hawke)

A Surprise in the Snow . T. Complete

She’s Not Made of Glass . T. Complete

Turnabout is Fair Play . T. Complete

Happy Endings . T. Complete

Happy Birthday, Beth . T. Complete

You Better Start Swimming or You’ll Sink Like a Stone.

Mermaid AU and all Side Stories. (Anders x Fenris x f!Hawke, Karl Thekla x Anders)

Dawn . T. Complete  

Dusk . M . Complete

The River Always Finds the Sea . M . Incomplete

Daylight Fading . M . Incomplete

Looking for Group Collection

MMO AU and all Side Stories and Prompts. (Anders x Fenris x f!Hawke)

Looking for Group: A Modern Kirkwall Story . M . Incomplete

The Best-Laid Plans . M . Complete

Date Night . M . Complete

Streaming for Three . E . Complete

GlowDads Prompt Collection

(Anders x Fenris x Genesis Hawke)

When Mama Isn’t Home . G . Complete

Lutes and Flower Crowns . T . Complete

Drabble Collections

I am a Question to the World . Complete . G - M . Multiple Ships

My collection of drabbles for Anders Week 2016 hosted by teamblueandangry. Link to the fanmix.

You Could Be Happy . Incomplete . G-M . Multiple Ships

My collection of drabbles for Fenris Week 2016 hosted by teamblueandangry.

FenHanders Week 2017 QotD Drabbles Incomplete . M . f!FenHanders

My collection of drabbles for the QotDs for FenHanders Week hosted by teamblueandangry.

[handstitchedcircuitboards]

Okay, I am totally digging your idea of the shimada dragons being eldritch horrors. How do they work besides being total agents of destruction? Can they converse with their hosts? Do they feel affection for them? Pls tell me ur headcanons. And hanzo having two dragons, oh boy. Is this still sticking with canon or is it veering off to au territory where the clan uses hanzo as a weapon? If we stick w/ the original timeline, obvs hanzo is still alive and kicking. But hes already nearing forty...

HELLO MY NEW FAVORITE PERSON PULL UPA CHAIR. YOU’RE LOOKING LOVELY, WOULD YOU LIKE  A DRINK?

So, I tried to explain some of thisin a fic about Genji getting his dragon, but it’s not done because it’s beingsuper uncooperative. Imagine that, Genji being uncooperative. Anyway.

The whole exercise was essentiallyme and my friend trying to figure out how the fuck blizzard gets off havingliteral magic dragons in their (admittedly al-dente) sci-fi universe, and yeah,I’m trying to make it not directly conflict with canon or the current timeline.Luckily canon is pretty vague about a lot, so I have a big sandbox to play in.If it becomes explicit lore that they’re literally magic, I invite Chu orKaplan to fight me behind the nearest Denny’s. I’m pretty sure I can take them, what I lack in height I make up for in sheer rage.

So, I looked at the dragons, andbeing a terrible person who loves sad things, my first thought was “Those definitelygive you cancer. That’s some high energy bullshit. These Shimada guys are turbofucked.” Next question, what the fuck do weird glowing cancer snakes care abouta random subset of the Japanese population? Well there’s something, probablygenetic because it’s only just them, about them that’s of interest, there hasto be. 

Enter, two of my favorite things,multiverse and aliens! This shows up a little bit in the Hellboy comics, Tanis, and The City at the End of Time(which should have been so much better than it was). Also, uh, cough, a fandomthat I spent waaay to much time in despite the many, many problems. Anyway, ifthe dragons aren’t from this universe and need some kind of conduit to comehere for Dragon Reasons, then the Shimada clan could be that conduit. Eitherit’s something about their genetics or something about the place they’re allliving, but something about these people made them more attuned to whateverwavelength the dragons are on. So I think the Shimadas themselves representthin spots between their universe and ours, with the Well being the crossoverpoint where it’s easier for the dragon and the host to entangle, and the entanglementlasts until the host dies. (Sidebar: That all grew out of the antenna model forontological dualism) (Sidebar: I think they’re only dragons because the ancientShimadas expected dragons so that’s what they got. They could be anything, and theyinhabit more than just 3-space. This is kind of the vibe I’m thinking of. If they’d shown up in medieval europe, they’d probably look like angels or saints.) It seemed weird to me that they’re just hereto kill. They could be eating people, or some facet of people (heat, electricalimpulses in the nervous system, etc.) but that seems super inefficient. There’senergy everywhere here, once the meat people let you in, why would you let thembe your gatekeepers? But that got me thinking, what if they’re here to getsomething and the Shimadas are acting as an antenna or foothold for them? Is theirkilling for the Shimadas more of a side effect? If they do need the Shimadas tobe alive, then it makes sense they would protect them.

Circling back to multiverse for amoment, what if their universe is dying, undergoing its heat death?  They seem to be beings made of energy, atleast partially, (pulling from CatEoT, there were beings there whose minds transcendedmaterial form and were fucked whenthe heat death began.) Point of interest, there are supervoids in our universethat just seems weird. Fun fact, Earthis in the largest supervoid known to science, the KBC Void. What if the dragonsare actually here to strip mine energy and entropy and take it back to theiruniverse to keep it alive longer? A heat death is just the end of alldifference in energy levels, so if they’re stealing more energy from here tomaintain differentials to keep going, that would be a reason for them to behere that isn’t a weird crush on the Shimada clan.

Okay, but, uh, they’re killing thehosts. They give them cell-degrading radiation exposure when they manifest, becausethe Shimada doing the summoning is at ground zero for a second, roasting alive.Well, I don’t think the dragons actually grok that point! They’re beings madeof energy, and I think they mostly view the Shimadas as a web of heat and electricalimpulse and chemical activity, but I think very few of them understand them asconscious creatures because the way they think is so divergent. It’s like wonderingif your car has feelings. It’s real damn complicated, but is it thatcomplicated? Maybe, but probably not. So, like when your car squeals and you dosomething to fix it, that’s kind of like what the dragons are doing when themantra is repeated. But in using your car, you are damaging it through wear andtear, and that’s what the dragons are doing through repeated summoning. TheShimadas understand this as a kind of tit-for-tat, obviously the spirits wouldwant something so their lives must be it. And if this all started in prehistory youcan’t really blame them, when the conceptual framework for talking about the multiverse scientifically is so recent.

I don’t think they communicatelike humans do, through body language, touch, and vibrating the air withspecialized organs. I think they communicate feeling and intent more directly, probablywith energetic impulses. So, the mantras that the Shimadas recite (which varyfrom person to person) act as a sort of trigger or alert. Thinking about specific thingsexcites parts of the brain in a specific way, and there is some low levelelectric current involved. If the dragons learn to recognize that, kind of inthe way we recognize our phones have low battery because the meter changes,then they manifest and attack to protect their host. If the host dies theylose their foothold in this universe, so they do what they can to keep them alive.I don’t think the Shimadas grok that this is a side effect, I think theygenuinely believe them to be spirits. (My understanding is that a thought likethat wouldn’t be out of line with Shinto. A very devout Christian would believein angelic interference, for instance.) I do think the dragons recognize otherhosts, and try not to attack them generally if they’re in the line of fire, andthat the dragons, after a while, learn to pick out what their host thinks of asfoes. So, Genji’s dragon wouldn’t attack a friend (let’s say McCree is standingbeside him, providing covering fire) because it’s learned that the kind ofattention Genji is paying McCree is good attention, but will attack the guyjust as close trying to stab Genji, because that’s bad attention. It does takea while for that to set in, and some dragons are less discerning than others.

They can, however, learn to ‘talk’.They mostly just don’t bother. It’s a pain exciting the aural nerves in theright way, learning what the right way is, and they usually misinterpretfeelings when shared directly and dump a bunch of cortisol and freak out. Imaginetrying to learn to talk to your cat. (Spoilers for a fic I may never finish, Ithink Genji’s does talk to him. I think Genji has a very close relationshipwith his dragon, and that is basically unheard of. He’s a natural adorcist andlearned more from his dragon that the clan had in hundreds of years. Genji’sdragon is enamored with him, and Genji with her. It’s part of why he’s stillalive, she shielded him from a lot of the damage Hanzo’s dragons would havedone and shunted a lot energy away from his vitals because she learned from himwhat to protect. Genji would probably have just been burnt to a crisp if she’donly been on the offensive. She also helps soothe some of the phantom pain bypulling strings in his nervous system.)

(Okay, this section is pretty dark.)

Hanzo’s dragons think there’ssomething wrong with him. He keeps hunting down other hosts, making it harderto do their work, and keeps getting damaged. I don’t think Hanzo thinks hedeserves to do the honorable thing and kill himself directly, but I do thinkonce or twice he’s thrown down his weapons to let someone kill him, right afterGenji. His dragons won’t let it happen, they come on their own and attackeverything around him. They do not trust his judgement, and they’re harder forhim to summon and sometimes come when he doesn’t want. They don’t understandthe family politics that when into attacking Genji and then attacking the others,they think he’s just a malfunctioning machine they have to put up with.

(Uh, that’s over)

So, with two dragons, I do think theclan wanted him to be their weapon. I think, in the lull after the Crisis,there had been a kind of status quo with the various yakuza clans and Sojirowas content to maintain it. Others, now that they had a WMD in their pockets, wantedto expand territory and influence. Sojiro was like “HARD FUCKING PASS” and as long as he wasalive, he prevented Hanzo from going on more assassinations than necessary, and kepthim to more administrative things, even if that meant doing more work withdragons himself and dying faster. (Sidebar, I think the assassination thing iskind of a secret. Only people in the know would ask, and they don’t take money,they take favors. Money can be tracked. Favors can’t. Only the family is involved at any stage of planning orexecution. The client families and client organizations and random mooks haveno idea, because the rest of the clan’s business is grey market brokering or smuggling.) That’s also part of the reason the elders were so adamant Genji getin line, because if Hanzo died young they needed him to take charge. Sojirokind of let Genji be a useless fuckboy because it would keep Hanzo safer if hewas the only viable heir. It broke his heart to do it, because it ruined hisrelationship with Hanzo and the brothers’ relationship with each other, but hewasn’t going to bury Hanzo. Hanzo never puts it together, he thinks his dadjust liked Genji better and he wasn’t a good enough leader to bring him in line. Genji didn’t fuckingcare, because he was a spoiled brat, but kind of kens the truth in Nepal afterhaving to sit down and actually sort through his life and his choices.

So, because Hanzo has fuckeddirectly off, he’s done less damage to himself with the dragons than he wouldhave otherwise, but he’s still getting sick. (For a long time, it was a realworry of Genji’s that Hanzo would die before he could kill him. And then, whenGenji forgave him, that’d it’d be too late.) Nobody in the clan actually doesanything to fucking TREAT the cancer, because they think it’s part of somemagic bargain. The dragons do not fucking care if you get chemo, Genji knows asmuch. So, Hanzo’s bought himself some time by running away (and killing otherShimadas by being sneaky rather than dragon fights when he can, since hisdragons are flaky, per the dark paragraph.) If Genji can bring Hanzo to Dr.Ziegler, she can absolutely get it under control. (He’s probably got someconcerning nodules, but not full blown malignant tumors in all of his him.) Hermethodologies could absolutely target and destroy cancerous cells and repair thedamage, if Hanzo will accept the treatment. So he’s not doomed, if he doesn’twant to be. (He’s trying to race liver failure and cancer on his own though, soGenji needs to get the lead out if he’s gonna put out this tire fire.)

I think I answered most of yourquestions? I love talking about this, so if you weren’t clear I’m happy toelaborate! Please forgive any spelling/grammar fuck ups, I wrote this all downkind of stream of consciousness.