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Well This Isn't Good
@capnmarvl
Liz - 30ish - She/They 🏳️🌈
Chaotic Dumbass
Header from the wonderful @frankiesoup
DNI - Minors - Forgot you existed
Know me IRL? That's a you problem babe
Since I want to actually give this a go, figured I could curate my nonsense into one place.
Liz (she/they) - Queer/Bisexual - Mental Health Advocate
Self-portrait under the cut (1st pic)
Fanfiction and (aspiring) novel writer, occasional artist, committed yapper
Main Fandoms: Mass Effect, Dragon Age, and BG3
Writing Thoughts tag
Art tag
You can find me on ao3 @ capnmarvl
College Professor & Social Psychologist - Research focus in secondary traumatization and compassion fatigue
Teaching tag
Herder of 4 dumb cats (Aurora, Liliana, Silas, and Deacon) with my wife
Additional hobbies: Archery, weight lifting, playing dnd, asking farm animals to stop biting me, cosplaying, general crafting
Fic list, OC list, and some art under the cut
Mass Effect Fanfictions
Shakarian
AU - Fostered Rivalry - 3-part alternate first meeting w/ Extras
1. Priority: Old Friends and New - 26k; Mature
2. Priority: Making and Breaking Amends - 44k; Mature
3. Priority: Loved, Needed, Wanted - 38k; Mature
4. How to Raise Your Human (Currently Updating!) - 5k+; Mature
5. Priority: You've Got to be Kitten Me - Standalone - 2k; Teen
You can follow my shenanigans about this series here
2. Buy in for Skyllian Five - 10k; Explicit
3. Bare Minimum Functioning Adult - 5k; Teen
4. Asphyxiation Supernova - 2k; Teen
Vetryder
New Galaxy, Same Ryder - 1.5k; General
Novel(s)
The Lives and Deaths of Maple Feychild - Tag
Main Ocs (Mostly dnd characters)
Isbel Goldfluff(she/her) - Lupine Archdruid Circle of the Beast
Valiant (she/her) - Tiefling Warlock Pact of the Archfey
Goodberry "Berry" Goldfluff (he/him) - Isbel's son; Lupine Paladin Oath of the Ancients
Maple Feychild (he/him) - Main Character of my novel; Fey Elf Bard College of Glamour
Thomas Reynolds (he/him) - Maple's LI in LaDoMF
Varian (he/him) - Mass Effect OC; Turian - Part of Fostered Rivalry
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i can't fully articulate my thoughts rn but like. have i ever mentioned that maes hughes, as a character, fucks me up like nobody's business.
he's a loving husband and a doting father and a loyal best friend and a goofy photography nerd who just wants to share his happiness and make everyone as happy as he is.
he's also an intelligence officer who actively participated in a genocide.
i love that these are things which are simultaneously true about him at the same time. i love that fma makes it VERY CLEAR that there isn't a neat delineation between the Good People and the Bad People.
most of our good guys actively participated in a genocide and chose to survive and save their own lives instead of refusing orders or deserting. and maes hughes is one of the people who picked his own skin over countless ishvalans.
and he's. happy. he has a loving wife and an adorable daughter and he teases his best friend about getting married and settling down some day. he's a good guy who did horrible, horrible things.
and he's not, like, actively tortured every minute by the thoughts of what he did, even though he clearly regrets it all. in other words, he's not tim marcoh. he doesn't spend every waking second atoning for his crimes. he allows himself to be happy. to laugh and love and joke.
and i find it so fascinating that the entire fandom latches onto him and wants to give him a happy ending. nobody wants maes hughes to be dead.
even though he's a soldier who participated in a genocide. who maybe questioned his orders, but ultimately still followed them.
i don't think enough fma fans really look at that hard enough. for any of the amestrisan military characters, but especially for maes hughes.
(also on the subject of tim marcoh, i love how every person who was involved in the ishvalan genocide chooses to cope with what they did in their own totally unique ways. no two characters make the same choice when it comes to how they cope and how they atone and i fucking ADORE that about this manga/show)
Latest chapter is up! Now I can go and read everything I've been saving for a treat for getting this done!
___
She found that interesting – there was a point in time when she had decided that if she couldn’t have Caesus, then no one could be happy. It had been the deciding factor in her decision to marry Sius. But now, watching Caes smile softly at the small boy they’d found – patient and sweet, just like his dad – she settled into the idea that she didn’t really care if he loved her back. She was just glad he was alive and was finding happiness where he could.
And with that knowledge she found a very unfamiliar peace. This mounting, looming conversation didn’t matter. Not really. Because Caes was alive.
She allowed herself a smile at that and let the words sink through every part of her body.
Caes is alive.
“So what the actual fuck, Sitina?”
Cyrus was asleep and Caesus was looking at her with an expression as close to a glare as she had ever seen on him.
Oh. Shit. The conversation did matter, actually. It mattered a lot. His disappointment was horrible.
We want snippets of what I think I’m calling Amaré es Conocaré [Fake Antivan for To Be Loved is To Be Known], right?
Whether all of these will make it to the final fic is debatable but I’m just playing around with the characters at the moment and trying to get into a headspace.
After Rook is picked up by Viago
Consciousness tugged at her in fits and starts. At times, her head would break through the surface and she would gasp for breath before exhaustion wrapped around her ankles and tugged her back under. Only once did she manage to wrestle her eyes open and she was greeted by the flicker of soft brown eyes and then quickly retreating steps. Something solid and warm laid against her chest. She clung to it as one clung to a buoy in a storm.
Through the murky waters of the unconscious, she heard voices that whispered and prodded and judged.
“She is no Crow,” came from a voice that was sharp and commanding, seasoned by a rasp that bellied age but did not undermine the calculated steel of its authority, “She is not even Antivan.”
“She is a child,” there was a bite to this voice, a willingness to push back against the authority of the first voice. The girl found herself rooting for this voice. It reminded her of her father, shoulder’s back, arguing in the market square about law and justice and things that were right. It was the same voice that had called her Corvita, and now it argued on behalf of someone else, “Since when did one’s nation of birth dictate their worthiness? Are we not a nation built on the unwanted? How-”
“Viago,” the bold one was interrupted by a hiss of a voice. The admonishment reminded the girl of her mother’s gentle reprimands of her outspoken father. But it was the lilting follow-up that nestled into her mind and reminded her of the warmth of the bay window in her family’s kitchen. There was safety in that voice, “Nonna, please, Viago is right, she is just a child. She is no Crow now, but if you had seen the way she fought for her life, you would know there is a Crow’s spirit within her.”
There was a silence and the girl nearly slid back under the now gentle, tugging waves of sleep. She was tired, so tired. As warmth and weight settled on her shoulders she heard one final response from the raspy Nonna, “Do with her as you wish then.”
Lucanis (teenager with a crush) tries to give Viago a knife
“We can’t let him go through with this,” Orion shot Illario an incredulous look.
“Oh yes we can!” Illario wrapped an arm around her shoulders and patted her cheek with his free hand, “it’s going to be hilarious.”
“Illario! He’s going to die.” She shook his arm off and jabbed him in the chest with a finger, “You need to go and stop him!”
“Why me?”
“You’re his cousin! Save him!”
“You save him!”
Orion stomped her foot and threw her hands up. Typical Illario, unhelpful as always. “He won’t listen to me!”
“I don’t see what the big deal is, it’s not like Viago is going to poison him over a silly little gift,” Illario sniffed and smoothed out the front of his shirt, carefully resettling his collar.
“It’s not Viago’s reaction that I’m worried about.”
The pair stared at each other for a moment before realization flashed across Illario’s eyes. He pivoted on the ball of his foot and shot away from Orion, a desperate “Lucanis, wait!” coming from his mouth and he ran across the training yard.
We are once again playing the ‘I wouldn’t wish to be a teenager/early 20’s ever again’ game
“It’s bad form to leave one’s own party,” the voice is at once as smooth as honeyed tea and as rough as poorly filtered coffee. There’s an edge to it that had not existed in the years prior, and a sureness to the movements of its owner that raised Orion’s hackles.
What a difference a few years makes.
Orion glanced around her hiding spot, sure that every one of her tripwires and alarms were still in place. Of course he got past them, she thought bitterly. He had helped her rig them after all. With a sigh, she flicked a glance over at him and was startled to see the makings of a beard growing on his face. Patchy and scraggly and yet daringly handsome, reminiscent of the style Viago wore. “I thought you were on a job in Rialto.”
“I finished early,” he shrugged and took up residence in front of her. The space was just large enough to fit them both with knees touching. He looked down at the contact and she craned her neck to look over his shoulder at the festivities below. “You know, I remember this spot being roomier.”
“Why are you here?”
“You disappeared from your own Hood Ceremony, Viago was worried.” Did a Hood and a couple of solo kills earn one nothing more than the right to be a self-assured prick?
“Then Viago should have come and gotten me himself.”
“Corvita-”
“You do not get to call me that,” she curled back her upper lip and hissed at him. There was a flash of something in his warm coffee eyes that she did not dwell on as she scrambled past him and leapt down to the balcony below.
Yeah listen the entire Ossuary bit is going to be… something else
His eyes alighted onto them for the barest whisper of a moment. Rook winced. There was not even a flicker of recognition or emotion in those brown eyes. They cleared their throat and tried again, “Lucanis, we are here to rescue you.”
Lucanis looked Neve up and down and crossed his arms. His voice was creaky, from disuse or overuse he was no longer sure, “Who are you and what do you want?”
Neve, poised as ever, flicked a brow at Rook before turning to their would-be assassin-for-hire, “As Rook said, we are with the Veilguard and we are here to rescue you. We were sent by Caterina Dellamorte.”
The pair watched as Lucanis turned the information over in his head before his eyes once more flicked to Neve, “Who is Rook? You’re here alone.”
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This week: Vetra has an appointment with Lexi before preparing for the landing on Eos.
Also wanted to provide an explanation for why squadmates don't run out of ammo. (Or at least in Vetra's case, since I felt I could make it work with her character).
"Straight down the business?" Vetra asked.
"Yes. Have to check if you're in good shape before I let Ryder take you out into the field." She stated clinically while listening in keenly on Vetra's chest to measure her heartbeat. The stethoscope carried different chest pieces of various sizes depending on species, since Vetra was a turian, the chest piece had a larger funnel to give Lexi a better ear through the carapace.
"Any previous illnesses or allergies I should be aware of?" She asked while extending Vetra's arm and evaluating her pulse and heart rate.
Vetra thought for a moment. "I got Cipritine flu a few months ago during the Uprising. Ended up bedridden for most of the whole ordeal."
She saw Lexi type away into her datapad before picking up a small flashlight and shining it at Vetra's eyes to check pupil dialation.
"Did you take the proper contagion measures? Levo species might not catch the virus from you, but if another turian comes aboard or we make a new acquaintance out here that shares your DNA, it could become a problem fast."
"Yeah. Got my shot in spite of all the shit on the Nexus. A doctor on the station owed me a favor for some salarian antibiotics I got for her."
"Hope I never have to owe you favors." She joked.
Vetra laughed back. "It's not so bad. You get a deal for being one of the crew. First one's free."
Lexi smiled quite widely, shoulders slumped in relief. "Thank you Vetra." She said with gratitude while inputting Vetra's checkup results into a diagnostic.
"You look to be in good health." Lexi said with a nod.
"That's a relief, wasn't gonna miss planetfall cause of a cold."
"Take this before you leave. Eos has a radiation problem from what I've been told." She handed Vetra a peculiar looking pill and a glass of water. "It will also prevent you from getting Corpalis Syndrome later in life, radiation can create cancerous cells that develop the disease in turians."
Vetra took the pill without hesitation.
Soon after, Kallo's voice came on over comms again.
"We're landing. Pathfinder wants you, Liam, and Cora with him. Good luck, by the way!"
Vetra's mandibles flared in excitement as she rushed to get her gear. The Tempest floor seemed like a blur while sprinting from Lexi's office to the weapons locker for the crew.
Out came her cyclone, a weapon she'd modified with parts she'd acquired from various odd jobs and favors back in the Milky Way. It wasn't a standard issue cyclone, normal ones couldn't be turbocharged and couldn't fire a concussion shot without overheating, but through a lot of weapons tinkering she had figured out a way to make it work. Did mean repairing it required materials that weren't standard either though.
She checked the barrel and the stock of the weapon to make sure the heat sink was still functional, her weapon, contrary to others of its class, had been modified by her to operate 'the old way' meaning she didn't have to rely on thermal clips beyond a rare check-in. Very useful in scarce environments, and in her opinion, extremely valuable in a galaxy where thermal clips weren't being mass-produced. She was never fond of the switch everyone did after the whole debacle at the Citadel in 2183.
On my drive to and from work today both Baby You’re a Haunted House and Silver Springs played and it got me thinking about BYAH. Can you tell us a bit more about your song choices for the chapters and how those influence the writing of them?
Oh my goddd yes I can but be careful what you wish for.
So Baby You're a Haunted House was my first song pick because, like, come on. It's perfect. She is literally a haunted house. And 'gonna stay in love somehow' is the vibe I wanted to give throughout the story.
Chapter 1 was Silver Springs. So Stevie Nicks wrote Silver Springs as a way to say 'this is what we could have been, we could have had this all but it's gone now.' We've all seen the video of the 1997 performance where Stevie Nicks looks directly at her husband and screams 'you'll never get away from the sound of the woman who loved you;' that kind of rage and sadness and just general wall of emotion is the vibe that I wanted this chapter to have. He's presented with the chance for the family, the job, the peace, the kid! But none of it is what he wanted because he wanted all of that with her, and he carries a lot of frustration along with his grief that it all went down the way it did.
Something I've briefly mentioned on Tumblr is that for every chapter name that gives insight into Garrus' perspective, there's one behind the scenes for Shepard ex Machina. So hers for this chapter is Everywhere by Fleetwood Mac. She wants to be with him, and everyone, everywhere.
Chapter 2 is Nothing Compares 2 U, and I chose that because it's about living in the past when you have everything you want. The singer (Prince originally, but I was listening to the Cat Power version), talks about having the job of their dreams, having money and resources, and still only ever seeing their past love in everything around them. It's also a joke about Miranda's attempt to clone Shepard and Garrus' extremely mixed feelings about all of that.
Meanwhile, Shepard's song for that one is My Love Mine All Mine by Mitski (my baby here on Earth/Showed me what my heart was worth) and that reflects her attempts to try and comfort him in that chapter.
My mini-chapter three is Fernando by ABBA and that reflects both of their perspectives at that moment. Both of them feel a nostalgia for what was, but it's at this point in the story that Garrus starts looking toward the present instead of the past and in that way he's catching up with Shepard.
Spoilers past this point!!!!!!!!!!
The last chapter is going to be Heaven by The Talking Heads. I'll let you speculate on that. I have such a clear vision for it and I just! need! to! get! there!
got a crick in my neck and a frog in my throat and a chip on my shoulder and a stick up my ass and now you're gonna stand there puttin words in my mouth? haven't I been through enough?
Having now done all three of the boys' romances in veilguard, the difference between davrin and emmrich taking you on dates and giving you cute kisses and making sure you get along with their sons before working their way up to talking about more serious feelings really makes you realize how unhinged lucanis is. He spends the first 2/3 of the game being like don't look at me, don't touch me, don't acknowledge me. then after you literally go in his brain to find out what's going on with him and save him he's like. fine. ok. you're special to me. and that's it, he doesn't even kiss you. then you get to endgame and he's like btw I would kill god for you. let's have our first kiss, declaration of love, and full penetration in one night. something deeply wrong with him.
Sometimes I get followed back by people I think are way cooler than me and anytime I see them in my notifications I'm like ok ok be cool be cool don't ruin it. And then I make posts like this.
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you solve the mystery of what to have for dinner one night and you think "hell yeah case closed forever" WRONG there is a dinner mystery the next night too
WIP Wednesday: I promise I'm working on the end of Caes and Sit's story, but I did find my earlier drafts for my DA offering so.... here is something from chapter one! Let me know if you'd like to read more of it <3
She handed the slip of paper she'd so diligently carried with her to the crier. His eyes snagged on the way her name looped across the page, then scanned her face.
"Your ma-" he began, his voice betraying his shock as his face fought to remain neutral.
"Don't finish that title," she snarled, hand automatically at her the weapon on her belt, "Read it as it's written."
He nodded, gulped, and cleared his throat.
"Warden Commander Stevaine Cousland," he cried.
Silence passed like a wave through the crowd from where she stood.
And the king rose from his throne and stared at her.
This was the moment she'd been dreading, the moment she'd been avoiding for the past five years. But blessed protocol kicked in and she sent a silent prayer of thanks to her mother for forcing every single boring gathering on her in adolescence.
Stevaine Cousland, Warden Commander of Amaranthine and Queen Consort of the Ferelden Court, stood patiently in line and waited to greet King Alistair.
Just ahead of her, the Du Pont's flapped their mouths, unsure of what to do. Stephanie pointedly ignored them, and was relieved when protocol won out for them too. Automatically, they made their way through the great hall and bowed to the throne, then took their places at the side of the room.
I have got to remember to mute my notifications on my watch when I’m teaching because how am I supposed to keep my composure mid lecture on adhd and autism when I get a text that reads ‘so dinosaurs, am I right?’ as I’m discussing hyper-fixations and special interests
so essentially there’s this cool horse drawn into the hills in england made out of chalk and it’s like 3,000 years old.
people carved trenches 3,000 years ago and filled them with chalk in the shape of a horse but what’s interesting is that if you fail to maintain the horse by adding new chalk regularly, it will disappear. for 3,000 years, we’ve been filling in chalk in this horse so it doesn’t disappear.
we’ll never know what the purpose of the horse was originally. we’ll never know if it had ritual or spiritual significance or if it was just art. but we do know that people maintained it then, and, even though the meaning of the horse has long been lost to time, we continue to maintain it now.
the people who made this horse are long dead, but they live through us still, don’t you think?
well maybe you should blearily wake up at 5:08 in the pre-dawn light and find the sleeping soft tiny mammal body of your cat just inches from your head like a miracle too beautiful for speech, and you should rustle one hand out from your blankets to rub fingertip circles across the warm eggshell dome of her little velvet-wrapped skull and on the bristly patches just where the cups of her ears begin, and as she inclines her head into your fingers and purrs without ever opening her little eyes you should feel a love so tender that you understand how that love could have reached out from the fireside into the inky spangled nights long gone to reach her, and then you'll feel better
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i do unironically think the best artists of our generation are posting to get 20 notes and 3 reblogs btw. that fanfic with like 45 kudos is some of the best stuff ever written. those OCs you carry around have some of the richest backstories and worldbuilding someone has ever seen. please do not think that reaching only a few people when you post means your art isn't worth celebrating.
Anyway, pansexuality is both biphobic and transphobic, thus pan people don't belong in the LGBT community.
Asexuals aren't inherently LGBT and don't belong, either (unless they also happen to experience same-sex attraction or gender dysphoria). Some aces are also pretty homophobic.
As for nonbinaries...well, I'm nb-neutral, but I do find it odd how no one identified as nonbinary before it was cool.
