wizardjail

[wizardjail]

its just that the veil is doing so much narrative and thematic heavy lifting that it can mean ten thousand things to ten thousand different people while also being a stand-in for real violence and/or genocide and/or fascism and/or whatever flavour du jour we want to interpret it as. it cannot be the physical manifestation of solas' hubris and a metaphor for artificial unequal systems like capitalism and a tool of oppression and a now-undeniable fact of contemporary theodosian life and the one thing keeping the blight at bay and a shorthand for the idealisation of the past and a metaphor for ecocide all at once. while also being a prop in solas' trickster deconstruction plot. it just can't. whichever way you slice it (heh) it will be narratively unsatisfying. it's a logic problem with no solution.

if the veil is unjust and tearing it down is an act of reparation, then why is trespasser!solas so candid about the sheer amount of destruction doing so will cause, and tells a befriended inquisitor that he hopes they can prove him wrong once again?

if solas is inherently justified in wanting to tear down the veil, as the veil is the root source of all the world's injustice towards spirits and mages and elves, why is he leaving an opening for a friendly inquisitor to stop him?

if solas is a trickster and his arc was betrayed when the veil didn't come down, then why is his overarcing storyline about the tension between godhood and personhood? is he a man or a god? is leaving the world as is a failure of reparative justice, or the conclusion of a single character's arc whose main themes have been about wrestling with regret when one's mistakes have world-altering consequences?

the veil, as a narrative element of the wider dragon age plot, is apparently at odds with itself because it's doing two incompatible things: it's the embodiment of systemic injustice while also being the macguffin of solas' own very-different-thematically personal plot, where accepting that the veil cannot be undone is part of accepting that the past cannot be changed and one must move on and build a better tomorrow with the imperfect tools of today.

and i kind of really like this messy tension. if we want to stretch the metaphor to its breaking point, i find it echoes a lot of what dreaming a post-capitalist society may look like. what kinds of futures are possible? what does revolution look like? who will sweep the floors once the revolution is over? who'll wash the dishes?

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d&d elves about fey coming to the material plane

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i liked rogue trader a lot but it didn't get the fic-writing hooks in me past a fleeting moment of hubris. when dark heresy drops though. all bets off

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explaining my city elf religion headcanons like

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swan queen this, rumbelle that. peak Dynamic in ouat is regina and rumple but the people weren't ready for that. yes he could have been her dad. yes she's a lesbian. yes they have a weird amount of sexual tension. that's just how it goes with you and your evil wizard mentor

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remembering that anna @wizardysseus tagged me in a "five things you might find in a story of mine" game like 3 months ago, and god knows i have no idea who to tag in this kinda thing, but mine would probably go something like

- biracial heroine - dad you should not love - complicated loadbearing dynamic between a woman and some type of creature - just like really grody imagery around death and decay - killing god

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whew!! don't even get me started on how unwell i am about the fact that city elves uniquely seem to have preserved the linguistic element "harel" in its original meaning ("rebellion"), as in "mien'harel" aka "when the government starts oppressing you too hard and you have to start violence about it"

like frankly i could talk and have talked at length about how a city elf inquisitor ties together so many of the opposed narrative, cultural, and religious threads that exist in DAI, and how the total absence of that origin option was a disappointing oversight that imho reflects a certain disinterest or unwillingness on the part of both bioware and the broader audience to engage with city elves as a distinct diaspora culture worthy of respect,

but also it makes the solas/felassan schism so fucking funny.

[wizardjail]

like frankly i could talk and have talked at length about how a city elf inquisitor ties together so many of the opposed narrative, cultural, and religious threads that exist in DAI, and how the total absence of that origin option was a disappointing oversight that imho reflects a certain disinterest or unwillingness on the part of both bioware and the broader audience to engage with city elves as a distinct diaspora culture worthy of respect,

but also it makes the solas/felassan schism so fucking funny.

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An attached note reads: "Given to agent Hurin in Hasmal by the former Inquisitor, who reportedly said that 'if the Dread Wolf wants to know what I’m thinking so badly, he might as well hear it from me.' " Collected fragments, 9:44–9:47 Dragon.

solas/elf-blooded inquisitor, 2.3k, post-trespasser epistolary fic.

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solas/non-lavellan inquisitor is like fem warden/morrigan 2.0 to me. got deeply invested in the friendship, brainworms set in, looked up the game-legal romance path and went "oh. that's worse" and now i live in a beautiful pocket dimension eating crumbs, reading between the lines, and remaining unburdened by whatever poorly-executed thing bioware does. i'm free

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In the spring, Chrysothemis begs Iphigenia to braid wildflowers into her hair. They gather a basket of anemones, white and gold and blood-red, from the meadow west of the palace. The greatest prize, though, is the blue bellflower that sprouts in clumps along the faces of Mycenae’s cliffs, like a boy’s first patchy beard. Iphigenia scales the wall of the citadel while Chrysothemis waits below, fretting over the height and the slick stones; but Iphigenia is sure-footed as a mountain goat, and knows that Artemis Acraea will not let her fall. She returns to her sister with a triumphant grin and a fistful of blue flowers.

They sit beside the window as Iphigenia works Chrysothemis’ hair. Her sister’s curls are chestnut brown, lighter than Iphigenia’s own, like those of their uncle Menelaus. She weaves in the flowers as she goes—garnets and sapphires to set in the crown of braids. Electra, four years old this past winter, hasn���t the patience for Iphigenia’s ministrations. She plucks the petals from her anemones, and soon she’s tugged her nurse away to the courtyard to watch the guards in their shining armor pass by.

“On the day I am married,” says Chrysothemis wistfully, “I’ll wear roses in my hair, and violets. Will you weave them in for me then?”

“Of course I will,” Iphigenia tells her. “Roses and violets, and lilies for Hera, and carnations like we wear to the Thesmophoria.”

Chrysothemis hums, leans against Iphigenia’s side. “You will be there, won't you? For my wedding day?” The question is tiny and plaintive. Chrysothemis is the gentlest of Agamemnon’s daughters, keen to be liked and afraid to be left behind.

“Of course,” Iphigenia says again, seriously, because her sisters are prone to fits of temper if they feel they’re being patronized.

“You won’t love Thrasymedes’ sisters better than me?”

“What?” asks Iphigenia.

“Thrasymedes,” Chrysothemis wails, looking up with wet eyes. “He’s to marry soon—Nestor sent a messenger. I heard Father speaking of it to Mother this morning. I don’t want him to take you away to Pylos, Iphigenia.”

They say Pylos is a place of sandy shore and western wind, a city perched upon the sea. Nestor of Gerenia rules there, surrounded by a sizable brood, among whom Thrasymedes is the eldest son. Are there forests in Pylos? Iphigenia wonders, gazing out at the groves of pine, cypress, and yew that spring from Mycenae’s rugged hills. Or is it all sea and sky? Would she spend all her days at her window, a caged gull watching over the harbor?

“Don’t cry,” Iphigenia says. “I won’t marry Thrasymedes.”

Chrysothemis sniffs, blinking away the threatening tears, grasping again for the veil of composure she’s lately learning to wear. “Maybe not Thrasymedes, but you must marry somebody. And then you’ll leave me, just as Mother did our aunt Helen.”

She speaks true, of course. Little Orestes has hardly begun walking, but someday he will sit on the throne of Mycenae; his sisters, in turn, will sail to allied lands and wed their kings. Iphigenia is just shy of fifteen. Fifteen, the age that Helen was when princes from every corner of Achaea came to fight for her hand. Old enough to be a bride, certainly.

She knows the old noblemen of the city mutter their disapproval when her father is out of earshot: of her flyaway hair and rumpled skirts, her tendency to steal away to the woods, the willfulness for which her Lacedaemonian mother must be blamed. (This last, most of all, leaves her burning with indignation.) King Agamemnon has indulged her far too long, they say, but he will see sense. If not queen of Pylos, she’ll be queen of Crete or Salamis or Thebes, the nuts and amaranth flowers she lays at the altar of Artemis replaced with honey cakes for cow-eyed Hera.

Will the queen of beasts still speak to her after she crosses the threshold of her husband’s house?

“I won’t,” she says to Chrysothemis. “My bridegroom will be a bear, you see.”

A little laugh slips from Chrysothemis’ throat—slightly wet still, but a laugh nonetheless. Iphigenia continues. “A great king of the wood and mountain, crowned with laurels, who wanders the forest carrying me on his back. We’ll feast on hare and pheasant and berries, and every summer, I’ll bring you baskets of fresh figs.”

She lets herself believe it for a moment, that she could be a woman with windswept hair and skirts hitched to her knees, darting among the trees like the nymphs loved by far-shooting Artemis; that like Persephone, she could return at the dawn of each spring to hold her mother in her arms; that her father, who looks so fondly on his wild-eyed firstborn, might let her remain a part of his house until the day she dies. It is a lovely dream.

“Not figs,” says Chrysothemis, finally. Her head drops against Iphigenia’s shoulder, and one of the flowers in her hair smears a saffron streak of pollen across Iphigenia’s cheek. “You must bring me bellflowers. No one gathers them as well as you.”

[wizardjail]

i mean, you know, people are entitled to their sexual proclivities. let there be a thousand blossoms bloom, as far as i'm concerned. but i ain't spending any time on it, because in the meantime, every three months, a person's torn to pieces by maenads in thebes

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Hittite carved crystal hedgehog, Anatolia, c. 1,500 BCE. (my dad has weird things in his house)

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oof! ouch! hang on there's something stuck in my shoe *I remove my shoe and turn it over and a small wooden structure tumbles out* well fuck. looks like someone built a little birdhouse in my sole

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last christmas man me a sand but the very next day man car door hook hand

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🏚️ sentienthouse Follow

Man I fucking wish these stupid ass humans would stop renovating me

👺 bloodstealingdevil Follow

I have a suggestion

🏚️ sentienthouse Follow

what do you suggest bloodstealingdevil

[wizardjail]

me receiving one extremely pointed omen after another: haha cool bird