peyton

Ar lath ma, vhenan 🐺

Something something archdemon blood smeared across our lips like lipstick stains idk

I've finally finished my Dread Wolf tarot embroidery from Dragon Age Inquisition! Clocking in at 64 hours of work, it measures 11.5 X 19.5 cm and I've been chipping away it during my downtime at work. My fellow community council members on Dragon Age: The Veilguard may have been biased while helping me choose which character's card to do, but I'm so grateful they did because it was so much fun to work on, and so different from the previous ones.

This is my fourth large Dragon Age character card project, and the first one I started since I uprooted everything to train as a costumer. Having a portable yet elaborate project was comforting while travelling for new experiences.

Love as Acceptance

yes, that dracula. yes, that barbie.

a crackship taken perhaps a little too seriously.

–

“Well,” she says, long and drawn out, and from the glint in her eyes he can tell this is some kind of inner joke, kept from him. “I’ve been a diplomat, and a race car driver, and a chef, and an astronaut, and a veterinarian–”

“An astronaut,” he repeats dryly. He wants to call her on her lie - but. But. How strange. There’s no indication of a lie: no rise in temperature, no quickening of her pulse, no change to her eyes, nothing.

She laughs. “You don’t know the half of it.”

–

Read on AO3

suzanne collins and ka applegate are cut from a similar cloth and that cloth is refusing to shy away from depicting how brutal, how senseless, how cruel war is. prim died for no reason and that is the point. it had absolutely nothing to do with resolving a love triangle.

also Y’ALL COME ON the presence of romance in a book does not make the book A Romance; the ‘love triangle’ was literally never ever the point - which is why it’s what the capitol focuses on. 

also katniss’s happy ever after: she fuckin grew up, y’all, come on. listen, I get the knee jerk hate for a baby boomer-style happily ever afters (I will sue jk rowling in court for the epilogue) but the fact that katniss, after everything she went through, felt comfortable enough to settle down with peeta and actually have kids - kids she knew were not going to be thrown into a gladiatorial arena for the entertainment of the super wealthy - is proof that what she did mattered. it cost katniss goddamn near everything she had - her family, her friends, her hearing, her home - but it was still the right thing to do.

there was once a little boy.

he is born disabled. his body hurts, and he can’t walk properly the way the other children do. he doesn’t understand why. he’s a little boy. but he plays with wooden boats and pulls toys on a string.

somebody makes him a tunic. they sew ducks onto it in red and green and yellow and blue. the bright colours of a child.

the little boy is eight years old, and he’s going to be king now. there’s a big ceremony about it. he doesn’t really fully understand what’s going on, because he’s eight, but he wears the tunic with the brightly coloured ducks for the occasion because he loves it. look at his ducks! aren’t they great?

he is a child. the adults around him manipulate and coax him to gain more power for themselves. he still plays with toys.

as a teenager, not yet an adult, he fathers children. they do not survive. he’s not even old enough to have full agency in his job and is still being manipulated, but he had babies and they died.

he does not make it to his twenties. at eighteen or nineteen years old he dies, and is buried. his babies, so tiny, are buried with him.

and so is his tunic with the little ducks that he loved so much he kept it long after it no longer fit.

yeah i think that like. especially with historical figures in your mind people who were kings and queens or important nobles were adults. even if you know how old they were it doesn’t really click. it doesn’t seem real

but then you get something like a little tunic with brightly coloured ducks on it and it hits you like a fucking truck that this really was a little kid and no matter how far removed you are a little kid is still a little kid. their brains didn’t develop any quicker back then. he was just as developed/mature mentally as any 8 year old now. he had cartoonish animals on his clothes and he played with toy boats and probably terrorised the local cat population.

tutankhamun was a child and he didn’t make it to adulthood because he was unfortunate enough to be a very important child

his dad died when he was 8. he saw his own babies die when he was still just a boy himself.

tutankhamun had a little pair of sandals with ducks on them. he had earrings decorated with ducks. he kept those, and other items of childhood clothing. some toys. keepsakes. things he loved, and treasured. he kept them all in a little wooden chest. the chest… was carved with ducks.

and that little duck chest, filled with things he kept from his childhood, was buried with him. maybe he was keeping them for the little babies who did not make it. maybe they just reminded him of good days and fun times.

WITH PLEASURE

(greyscale makes it hard but the duck head is on the right above the toe strap. always takes me a while to find it too)

magic or mythical deer in film and tv (see also: fucked up deer)