#dags post

(week of 7/1)

thanks for the tags @gatesofminrathous and @epiphany-jones and for insisting I have interesting things to say @sorrygoldfish (I'm less convinced; here goes.)

... what I'm reading (books): Right now it's Ted Chiang's Exhalation because I needed some short stories to blow my mind (after wasting 400 pages on the Jerry Springer episode that was Memory Hunters).

... what I'm reading (fic): I'm a bad fic reader but I've been catching up on @gatesofminrathous Everything and Nothing to Lose (gymnast AU! bisexuality! delightful), but I've also got some homework to do reading @kogarashi-art's oeuvre because she challenged me to summarize her work for the reverse fic asks. I haven't read a lot of her Saadrah even though I love her art (especially the one with Saadrah bridal-carrying Lucanis!) and I did very much enjoy the one fic I've read so far, Shadow and Crow (what can I say, I'm a sucker for a childhood backstory). I swear I'm still coming for you, koga!

... what I'm listening to: The Assassination of the Washington Post by the Coward Jeff Bezos, an episode of If Books Could Kill.

... what I'm watching: Vampire Lestat and HotD (House of the Dragon; but in this house we call it "hot dee"). I truly aspire to write characters as complex and fucked up as Daemon Targaryen and the vampire Gabrielle.

... what I'm eating: oof. um? I swear I eat. I'm a regular human person who requires sustenance. But the anhedonia has been strong lately and I'm eating for survival.

... what I'm working on: chapter 2 of Coffee. Illario fucks it all up, Rook and Lucanis dance around the elephant in the room. Also chapters 4 and 5 of Bar the Door: Caterina and Violetta are gonna play chess. Like, actually literally chess, though. (Am I the only one who thinks playing chess is a euphemism for sex?)

... what I'm doing to touch grass: fun-dags-fact, I am allergic to grass. So no, I won't be touching it and you can't make me, and if you make me I'll break out in a rash and then you'll feel bad. Now leave me here in this cave where I dwell quite happily (I swear).

... what's making me laugh / ... what's giving me hope: I talked about the Bezos earlier in this post. I'm sorry to say he occupies space in my brain, because as a cultural figure he's impossible to ignore. But I remind myself to have hope because money can't buy him taste, nor class, nor immortality. And one day, a mortician gets to glue his mouth shut, just like everybody else. (This pic isn't about Bezos but I think it can apply to any kleptocrat you like!)

Tagged by @kogarashi-art and yeah, been a minute and also I'm making friends, I'm leaving comments, now's your chance folks - dags exists but as everything in life, it's fleeting!

Last Song: Very good friends of mine are karaoke people. My partner is actually a pretty good hobby musician and I'm a ham, so I've been listening to Gaston and I Just Can't Wait To Be King because those both look like duets we could nail - obvs: dags would sing Gaston (as a specimen yes! I'm intimidating!... and I will always gender-swap everything that won't get me run out of town with pitchforks), but I think I'd be the better Zazu to his Simba.

Currently Watching: I'm really caught up in Clarkson's Farm at the moment, I just love it when those dang animals express feelings (the british men, I mean). I also recently finished Unchosen (Netflix), which I picked because I've been thinking about religions and cults and strict social orders (I'm... always thinking about social orders.) But the series itself was a little flat, somehow more beige in tone than even the wardrobe could achieve.

Current Obsession: I don't have a fire burning in me at the moment. Yeah, it's a big problem, but what else am I going to do? I have been re-playing AC Shadows (it's mindless, Japan is pretty, the seasons change) and the thought of writing Naoe fanfic feels so silly that maybe it would shake something loose. I can't think of anything I would take less seriously than writing Assassin's Creed fanfic, but as @thewyvernrising pointed out in their recent (lovely) Tell Me Tuesday post, maybe it's right to shake things up and change one's perspective.

Currently Reading: Getting ready for @slothquisitor's summer book club, I'm about 15% into Memory Hunters (Mia Tsai) and withholding all comment. I'm also gagging to get caught up on @gatesofminrathous's fic Everything and Nothing to Lose (again and especially thanks to their great recent TMT, y'all are giving the realness and I love to see fic tenderly crafted)

Currently Working On: Existence. Having and maintaining connections that are meaningful. Doing work that isn't a net negative (someday). And wondering, mostly. Staring off into space. What does it mean to distance yourself from parents who have given you all you have and been loving and supportive but whose voiced beliefs you're finding increasingly abhorrent and hard to ignore. When being around them inspires the worst in (and out of) you. What do we owe one another?

Currently Wearing: Cotton from who-the-fuck-knows-where, assembled in Vietnam, with a brand acquired by predatory capitalistic interests (just kidding: those interests were there from the start, but goddamn how does one even buy a tee shirt these days).

Last Internet Search: Sometimes, when the world is really getting me down (see above), I like to remember what our ancestors knew all along: that your aging body is not only fine but that this is the desirable outcome. These are the venuses of Moravany (24,800yo) , Willendorf (30,000yo), and Hohle Fels (41,000yo), respectively. Sometimes I google them and imagine the mother 100 generations back in my own genetic tree and wonder about her body and her world and her life.

(Which is to say, if I personally had Memory Hunter powers @slothquisitor, I would take a trip to every archaeology museum I could find, WHEEEEEEE, could you even imagine?!)

Favorite Flower: I almost just performed an internet search for an appropriate flower to have as a favorite (what a nerd). My reticence to name one is partially because I don't often receive nor give flowers as gifts, nor do I really want to encourage it by having a favorite - And also because actually my favorite are the wildflowers in their fields. Leave them where they are and let me enjoy them as we are. I have also been reading The Comfort of Crows (Margaret Renkl) and this might have a lot to do with my opinion at the moment.

Thanks for the tag @chaosherald! I haven't played too many video games, having not discovered being an absolute burnout til my early-30s (haha), but I've been making up for lost time ever since.

Here's Dags' top Four:

Thank you for the game @adejareve, but in proper Dags fashion, I'm gonna break the rules of this game! (Who saw that coming? Everyone? Everyone.)

Because dearest dags-Readers, I'm looking for you to tell me, today.

Shameless tags (ok, I announced it, so you can't shame me about it) to some darlings and buds and Purple Haze commenters: @sorrygoldfish @epiphany-jones @chaosherald @madamemortem @woundedsoul12 @genjyoandgojyoandhakkai @shmoopie313 @teawithshakespeare and double tag @adejareve because I want your opinions too

Now that the prequel when-they-were-young fic is concluded (Back when you were mine, I was too young to know: read it on Ao3!), I'm launching into the in-game arc for my Rookanis series Purple Haze.

And here's where I admit something awful about myself: I hate reading VG storyline retellings. I usually don't read the fics that hit the major plot points and I especially hate when I see the same dialogue wheel options over and over again. There is no level of characterization or interiority that makes such things interesting, for me.

(Which is to say for my tumblr buds: if you have one of these, I'm sorry. I haven't read it. Also, if you have a Rook de Riva... I probably haven't read it either - unless you're @gloaminghagette, who got me with her Mercar and then tricked me into loving her Antivan Crow, too. Please know: the problem isn't you, it's definitely me.)

So: a call to other fic writers, my readers, or strangers-online who have an opinion (and oh my, do I know you've got them) - how does a fanfic writer go about making and/or keeping a retelling interesting?

And more self-indulgently, if I structured the Purple Haze adult arc around these scenes-we-know (but perhaps hardly recognizable), would that feel like a satisfying fic to follow?

Here are some things I've tried so far:

Of course, there was my first stab at ficcin', The darkest nights always make the stars so bright (read it on Ao3!). The first three chapters comprise my stab at retelling the (in)famous almost kiss scene in the pantry. It starts with Taash and a few of the lines we recognize from game but diverges pretty significantly from there.

I also wrote You tell yourself it's raining (the clouds are in your head) (also on Ao3!) as a replacement for the very first Lighthouse scene with Lucanis (you know the one, in front of the fireplace, with Neve and Bellara, and Spite wants to talk to Rook?). Well, my Rook runs away and hides when Lucanis first comes to the Lighthouse, so this was my re-imagining of what it might look like for Rook and Lucanis to meet again, solo, without the prying eyes of the others.

I've also done some drabbling for some of the scenes we already know across the arc:

A reimagining of Coffee with the Crows, for a Lucanis and Rook who have shared a honey-and-lavender first kiss: this post.

You asked me this so long ago and honestly, I never answered because I have complicated feelings toward my own taste in music. Sometimes I think I'm just not a music guy because I tend to get stuck on albums and artists for a long long time. I don't really know anymore how to keep up with new music or discover things so... my portfolio is aging as rapidly as me.

But! Fuck all that noise, I know songs!, so here's my

Rookanis Tight Five:

the five tracks that I listened to on repeat while working on Purple Haze. The tracks I come back to again and again to pick up their POVs.

Thanks for the tag, @kogarashi-art and @genjyoandgojyoandhakkai

1. Origins of your blog’s name: yeah, it’s a reference to Snatch (“Y’like dags?” / “Sure. I like ‘dags.’ I like caravans more.”) I chose it when I started fanficcin’ again in early 2025. I suppose it just felt right to have an outdated reference for my handle and we do actually quite like dags. (Parenthetically, my partner recently learned that his great-great-grandfather was a Traveler, so I guess it was fate?)

2. My “I’ll always order this” food: Yu Xiang (Yushan) eggplant. Or baba ghanouj. Or baingain bharta. I guess what I’m saying is: slow-stewed eggplant is my love language. (Fuck off, eggplant parm, I’m disappointed in you.)

3. Overused emoji: gotta be 🤌 but 😂, classic

4. Current comfort movie, show, and book: this was a while ago, but I always watch the Gilded Age a few times whenever a new season comes out (Carrie Coon can get it). There’s usually old episodes of Top Gear playing in the background at my house (I don’t give a shit about cars). And Animal Farm, the book of my very soul. One day, I’ll lead the other farm animals to revolution (and everyone named Napoleon can get fucked).

5. Song on repeat: Forever Half Mast. It’s Lucy Dacus all the time in the dags house lately but especially “yes you’re evil but you’re not that bad” is the current anthem (for my toxic lesbians Caterina fic).

6. My current hyperfixation: the end of year PS5 sale and @sorrygoldfish convinced me to play Dragon Age: Inquisition, so it’s Sera. Maybe Josephine? Probably Sera. But I do love my Antivans… Time will tell. My Inquisitor has a long way to go.

7. Oddly specific thing that brings me joy: dancing in Bollywood movies, specifically when some of those dudes are straight 4s and yet they dance with the unearned confidence of a 10. I would like to adopt these vibes as my own.

8. What smell makes me happy: ok I know this is nuts but — the musty aroma that plumes from my rescue dog as she unruffles herself from a cozy, tightly-curled nap. It speaks directly to my very soul: she’s happy and warm and safe, and she knows it.

9. Something I loved as a kid and secretly still do: not secretly but, let’s say, the entire Mulan movie soundtrack. It was my first-ever tape and you better believe I wore that shit out.

10. Phone wallpaper right now: my phone is boring but my iPad is where I have fun so have those backgrounds instead! (Extra tag and thanks to @kogarashi-art who made the art on my Lock Screen!)

11. Are you an early bird or a night owl: Owl. But I prefer to identify as a lion, in that I need to sleep 16-20 hours per day, pretty please.

12. If you work, what is your profession and do you like it: I’m a tech consultant and I can’t recommend it, but it pays the bills and also I commit egregious time-theft by ficcin’ on the clock. (Take that, Private Equity Overlords, ya filthy animals.)

Oh it's been so long. My drafts accuse me of having not touched them in two months and I shan't believe them, darlings; doesn't our love exist beyond time and space? Like the love of Purple Haze Rookanis? Like the (tormented, tortured, jesus-gawd-give-up-already yuri) that is, say, Caterina Dellamorte and Violetta de Riva?

Here's the entirety of ch 4's WIP for Bar the Door, as she sat two months ago... for those who may enjoy it:

the fourth Friday after the Trial

Caterina

These days the dinner table of la famiglia Dellamorte is laid more sparely.

With chairs for eighteen, the broad expanse of heartwood overwhich Caterina lords shines with regular buffing (and disuse).

Thanks for tags @kogarashi-art @sorrygoldfish, passing on to usual suspects if you wanna post something @adejareve @epiphany-jones @blightwashed @genjyoandgojyoandhakkai and @slothquisitor whose writing I’m currently enjoying! (No tag lists. I do what I want and no one can influence this, not even me.)

It’s Caterina’s turn to be under the yoke of Dags’ yearning style: I’m working on chapters 3 and 4 of my toxic yuri Caterina fic, Bar the Door.

Four weeks ago, she’d recognized the look in the boy’s eyes. She might have dismissed it—the enamor of youth, a pup’s crush. A single flame, easily and simply doused.

But against his cousin’s teasing, the boy had sat firm. (Good. Her daughter’s nose had crinkled just that way, too, when she’d been determined.)