thedragonaspect

[thedragonaspect]

✨ Please reblog the polls to make them reach out to as many people as possible, but KEEP IT SPOILER-FREE to make people listen to the music with an open mind 💖 Artists and titles will be revealed after the poll's conclusion, check the original post for an update! ✨

Please don't spoil, this is not a quiz. :)

[thedragonaspect]

The thing with vampire romance is that they have to be supernaturally older for it to work. 72-year-old vampire? Like, your grandad's age? Doesn't feel right. But a 172-year-old vampire, that's intriguing. They're out of their time, and have watched their contemporaries grow old and die. You need that extra century to get all melancholy and brooding.

Legitimately the funniest thing just happened in our virtual book group after someone rec’d a vampire romance to me and someone else piped up that it had a “problematic age gap.”

In a vampire romance novel.

Like, yah. I sure fucking hope so.

[thedragonaspect]

The Worst Timeline:

Todd comes on stage.

"How’d that get there?"

Removes I.

"SKYRIM EXTREMELY SPECIAL EDITION OUT NOW!!!"

[thedragonaspect]

A question for Hannah - what was an instance when she genuinely felt she'd done good by Sam? Was she right? What about Daniel?

You ask the BEST Hannah questions.

As an adult, Hannah was absolutely responsible for getting Sam back into the N program after he washed out. She played politics, pulled strings, threw her weight around, abused her power. It's something that risked her career to do. And she took credit for none of it. She let Sam believe that Anderson did it for him, because that's what she thought he needed to hear. I think she genuinely felt like she had done something good for him. She didn't do it for herself - she did it for him.

The irony, of course, is that half the reason he did the N program was the debt he felt he owed to others - like his father - and his driving need to feel like enough. But his path was already on rails by that point, so to quote Eleanor Shellstrop, she both helped him and didn't help him at the same time. In doing it, she reinforced a lot of things that Sam needed to unlearn, but the Sam who was so driven to succeed in the N program got the second chance he badly needed.

As a child, I think there were moments where she shined for him. They would have been few and far between, but just enough to keep his hopes high that one day, she'd want to come back for him, or take him with her to the stars.

I imagine there was a time where the stars aligned and she got to take a pre-teen!Sam on a tour of the ship she was serving on, or even let him tag along on a simple survey mission of the Arcturus star, where he would have learned all about the galactic halo and Arcturus' anomalous orbital path. Sam would have loved it (though Daniel might get a few grey hairs when his son comes home yammering about how Arcturus is going to crash through the galactic disc). An excursion like this would have put both Sam and Hannah in their element, letting them connect in ways she understands - through her profession. He'd have talked about it for months. Years. Hannah would have genuinely enjoyed the experience, and it probably laid the groundwork for how hard she works to help his career. She doesn't know how to be a mother, but the stars in his eyes that day would have moved her to do whatever she could from afar to get him to those stars.

The more I learn about Hannah the more I ache for both her and for Sam.

[thedragonaspect]

Some recent commission examples + a new YCH commission option

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every pokemon is someone's favourite and i'm determined to find a person for every pokemon so please reblog this and tell me what your number one favourite pokemon of all time is

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For me, there's character resonance in ME3, fighting to save Earth for humanity even though it was never Darcy's home. "Save Earth" is the simple motivating tagline against the Reapers, but a part of her knows it's not going to be that simple.

Another random poll cause I'm bored

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Lis (mostly monochrome) in the Astral Sea (yay, purple everywhere!)

I was tagged by @pickel182 to make my Tav in this picrew here and (shhh) I'd already done this one before so here's Jen along with a version of Astarion I'd made:

Jen: tall buff Paladin who is half-elf and half-Deva and loves our little bitey boy. She makes an appearance in my BG3 fics over on AO3 all of which are collated in The Blood that Sings in Your Veins collection

I ofc had to give her wings and a starry background; as for Astarion we all know him and I had to give him some earrings and a bottle of something that is likely poison for his weapons

If @thedragonaspect is interested I'd love to see Lis in this - otherwise anyone who sees this feel free to do it

[thedragonaspect]

Day 3 - Love, Day 4 - Home, and Day 5 - Struggle.

From my to-write list, this is the start of Kaidan's POV in between ME2 and 3. He explores the stripped-back ship during the overhaul from Cerberus to Alliance.

The SR-2 is not Normandy, and never will be. Kaidan wants to make that very clear, but there’s no one to tell. Shepard isn’t here. With the way the ship has been gutted, there’s no sign that she ever was.

What he doesn't know is how much that's an echo of what Darcy woke up to. Separated by six months, they both step onto that ship and feel the absence of home.

A little something for the Mass Effect Trilogy Appreciation Week.

Day 1 - Family, and Day 2 - Friendships have a lot of overlap centered on one OC and the impetus for my first Mass Effect fic. And she wasn't planned in the slightest.

It started with revisiting ME3, reaching the 'Lola' scene, and wondering if and why my Darcy Shepard would tolerate that nickname. Then, the notion that she'd had worse nicknames - and that left the empty space of 'who from?' Enter the OC.

Her surname, Graves, came first, then Kayla - she just kept mentally turning up during my commute, familiar like she'd always been part of the story. There was a physicality and attitude, all forming with inexplicable clarity. In hindsight, I've figured out a few of the influences, but it remains the most forcible manifestation of an OC ever I've experienced.

Mikayla Graves is a spunky, non-combat L2 biotic and Darcy's best friend and de facto adopted sister, making a family of 3 with Hannah. Because Darcy isn't a biotic, it's Kaidan and Kayla who provide the lens to flesh out the muddy history of biotics and L2s - Kaidan as a (mostly) success story, and Kayla as the could-have-been-worse civilian. I've got so much more to say for my fic interpretation of ME, and hopefully there'll be time for it one day.

[thedragonaspect]

Tagged by @swaps55 to post a gif from 10 12 favorite films without naming them.

In trying to narrow these down, I realized a lot of my favourites are heavily influenced by a good soundtrack. For context, I got into Star Wars as The Phantom Menace came out - I was never primed to hate it, and really enjoyed the prequel trilogy. And the Mustafar duel was so good - choreography, cinematic location, and epic music.

Avatar is frustratingly flawed (and a huge time commitment), but the music does so much for it. I have the soundtrack for At World's End, and Drink Up Me Hearties was such a perfect musical close to the trilogy.

Ophelia makes the honorable mentions because of my favourite negative movie review of all time. Someone who attended "Ophelia", with the tagline, "Hamlet Through Her Eyes," and left a review complaining "I didn't like it, it's just Hamlet from Ophelia's point of view." I mean, yeah, that's exactly what the film advertised itself as...

And Cowboys vs Aliens, I love for committing to exactly what it said in the title, and it was one of the first films I saw with my husband.

[thedragonaspect]

Just wanted to say, regarding female characters - one of the strengths of Opus is the combination of Aslany and Pendergrass. One of my pet peeves is the rule of The Trio - almost exclusively, two guys and one girl. Han, Luke and Leia. Harry, Ron and Hermione. Katniss, Peeta, and Gale. Aang, Katara and Sokka. Ash, Misty and Brock. Every 3-man cell in Naruto. And so on. There's some overlap with love triangles - Bella, Edward and Jacob, for example - but the upshot is that the main character relationships can only explore how the guys get along with each other, and how they get along with the girl. How girls relate to each other is skipped over entirely because there's only one girl.

Then, the one girl is often relegated to being The Girl. Answerable for all womanhood. Like when Ron gets offside with his friends, it's because he's being a dick. But if Hermione does, it's because girls are weird. It perpetuates the two genders of Normal and Girl, and the reader is invited to sympathize with how hard it is for the Normals to relate to the feminine mystique of girls. But of course, girls are mysterious when they're never portrayed together, just existing. Normally.

Opus has two wonderful lead female characters who aren't so easily pigeonholed, and the story is as invested in how they play off each other as how any of the others interact. The thoughtfulness in what makes all the characters tick, and how they serve the story really comes through and makes it more engaging. And then there's Hannah, a powerhouse of a minor character in just a few scenes, you know she's my fave.

Fanfic is an adjustment after conventional fiction - it's more diverse, and the sheer novelty can provoke a kneejerk "why did they make that character [anything other than straight cis white]?" Not because there's anything wrong with it, but because it's new. But in sci fi especially, there's a verisimilitude to diversity.

This unexpectedly turned into a bit of novel, sorry! Aslany and Pendergrass are great!

Oh gosh, thank you!!!

Aslany and Pendergrass are so much fun and so very important to me, and it's absolutely incredible that they strike such a chord with others. I share your frustration on how often a solitary female character is expected to represent all women. "The Two Genders: Normal and Girl" is an amazing way to put it.

I've probably mentioned it before, but I have rules in Opus when it comes to supporting and background characters: they cannot be cis, white, male unless I have a good argument for why they should be, and to combat my biases when it comes to defaulting to male background characters (and BioWare's inability to conceive of female alien who aren't a sex fantasy), I try to start with female as default and then argue for why someone should be male.

And Opus, of course, is a story centered around a male/male relationship, which means I need to make a concerted effort to include women and their stories around that central through line. I wanted some of Sam's primary influences - good and bad - to be women. Hence Hannah Shepard, Guthra Tulak, and Anya Oseguera.

When it came to the 'Yang, I knew I already had two male lead characters, so I wanted to balance them out. Of the primary 'Yang OCs, only Clay Beaudoin is male, and he isn't white.

Okay, there's Wong, but because he's a plot device and effectively got fridged, I wanted him to be male. XD

Hannah Shepard is a lot of fun (I love how much you love her SO MUCH) because she takes so much blame for things most male characters don't. In many ways she's a parallel to Thane, who never takes much flak for being an absent father. Now, that's not something the reader should be blamed for: the ME2 narrative centers around Thane's perspective, which makes you sympathetic to him, while Opus very much looks at Hannah through Sam's lens, which makes her very unsympathetic. Which is why I so enjoy her occasional POVs when you realize that the world looks very different through her eyes, and maybe everything you're led to believe about her isn't the whole picture.

But Aslany and Pendergrass are really special, with their own motivations and complexities and strengths and flaws that, while sometimes making Opus more challenging to write, make it better. I'm really glad people have latched onto them, because it gives me more freedom to expand their role in the overall narrative.

[thedragonaspect]

A little something for the Mass Effect Trilogy Appreciation Week.

Day 1 - Family, and Day 2 - Friendships have a lot of overlap centered on one OC and the impetus for my first Mass Effect fic. And she wasn't planned in the slightest.

It started with revisiting ME3, reaching the 'Lola' scene, and wondering if and why my Darcy Shepard would tolerate that nickname. Then, the notion that she'd had worse nicknames - and that left the empty space of 'who from?' Enter the OC.

Her surname, Graves, came first, then Kayla - she just kept mentally turning up during my commute, familiar like she'd always been part of the story. There was a physicality and attitude, all forming with inexplicable clarity. In hindsight, I've figured out a few of the influences, but it remains the most forcible manifestation of an OC ever I've experienced.

Mikayla Graves is a spunky, non-combat L2 biotic and Darcy's best friend and de facto adopted sister, making a family of 3 with Hannah. Because Darcy isn't a biotic, it's Kaidan and Kayla who provide the lens to flesh out the muddy history of biotics and L2s - Kaidan as a (mostly) success story, and Kayla as the could-have-been-worse civilian. I've got so much more to say for my fic interpretation of ME, and hopefully there'll be time for it one day.

[thedragonaspect]

There's a fundamental break between Darcy and Joker in ME2. He gets the Normandy back. He loves the SR-2. Darcy hates it, it's not the Normandy and never will be. Everyone else has finished their mourning for the SR-1 before she's even started. But since they have a mission to accomplish and there's nothing to gain in wallowing, it stays unspoken.

[Weird parallel to being a player who loved ME1 far more than the sequels which were celebrated for being better.]

God The Normandy in Mass Effect 2 is almost spooky in how similar it is to Shepard's old ship. Seriously; I can't imagine Shepard feeling anything other than uncanny valley about it. The spaces are the same except not. The decorations are the same except not. It's bigger and your quarters are huge and there's an AI. Sometimes I bet it'd be easy to just....believe you were where you used to be. Except no. Where Kaiden stood there's now a kitchen. The AI core is where Liara should be sat. You made a home and now that home is back but it's slightly Off Slightly Wrong just like you.

[thedragonaspect]

After watching the Mighty Nein (again), I have this feeling that at some point in the future, someone will come to the Blooming Grove drowning in grief for who they have lost. And they will leave holding a little white cat who seems to understand.

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How writing in 2025 is going so far

Not the smartest pup