#lvoriginal

Inspired by this gif: 

No one's slick as Tethras No one's quick as Tethras No one's neck's as incredibly thick as Tethras For there's no man in town half as manly Perfect, a pure paragon You can ask any Tom, Dick or Stanley And they'll tell you whose team they prefer to be on

No one charms like Tethras Has ripped arms like Tethras No one's got a repeating firearm like Tethras As a specimen, yes, I'm intimidating My, what a guy, that Tethras

Give five hurrahs Give twelve hip-hips Tethras is the best And the rest is all drips

No one fights like Tethras Douses lights like Tethras In a wrestling match nobody bites like Tethras For there's no one as burly and brawny As you see I've got biceps to spare Not a bit of him's scraggly or scrawny That's right And every last inch of me's covered with hair

No one hits like Tethras Matches wits like Tethras Writes lit’rature about mashing bits like Tethras I'm especially good at setting up cliff-hangers! (Gasp) Five stars for Tethras!

When I was a lad I ate four dozen eggs Every morning to help me get large And now that I'm grown I eat five dozen eggs So I'm roughly the size of a barge

No one shoots like Tethras Makes those beauts like Tethras Then goes tromping around wearing boots like Tethras I use antlers in all of my decorating

Say it again Who's a man among men And then say it once more Who's the hero next door Who's a super success Don't you know? Can't you guess? Ask his fans and his five hangers-on There's just one guy in town who's got all of it down And his name’s Tethras

Tagged by @metatiki. If I’m understanding correctly, this meme is for things that got cut from fics. Honestly, a lot of what I’ve cut, I cut for the very good reason that it’s terrible writing! So, uh, yeah.... but here’s a bit of not-too-embarrassing conversation between Mahanon and Dorian in my very first DA fic, Playing With Fire. This is the original version of their conversation about why Mahanon took Dirthamen’s vallaslin.

~~~

“I take it the Dalish don’t look kindly on the idea of two men as lovers?” Dorian asked.

Mahanon sighed. “It depends a little on clan, but no. It’s not that different from what you’ve told me of Tevinter, except we’re trying to preserve the whole race, not an individual bloodline. Everyone’s expected to marry and help raise up the next generation in the Dalish ways. My clan’s not too bad about it. I managed to stay single this long, after all, although my Keeper is starting to get pushy. It’s part of the reason I was chosen to go the Conclave actually. No bondmate or children I’d be leaving for months. And I think Keeper Istimaethoriel thought I might actually be happier among the shemlen. Or at least she’s sick of trying to push a bondmate on me.”

“Are you? Happier among humans?”

“Dorian, the world is ending, I’m apparently the only one who can fix it, and I’ve been given more power than an elf has had since the Exalted March in the Dales. I have no idea what I’m feeling half the time, and if I did, it would hardly be a good measure of how well I like living in human society.”

“Point taken.”

They rode in comfortable silence for a few minutes after that, listening to the clack of the horses’ hooves against the uneven cobblestone. Trees lined the road, leaves not yet the dark green of full summer. To their left, Mahanon caught occasional glimpses of Lake Calenhad, deep blue and glinting white in the sunlight.

“Someday it will be funny, you know,” said Dorian.

“What will be?”

“We’re both here running from unwanted marriages, and now here we are trying to save the world.”

~~~

Chapters: 6/? Fandom: Dragon Age: Inquisition, Dragon Age (Video Games) Rating: Explicit Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Relationships: Cullen Rutherford/Solas, extremely minor Lavellan/Josephine Characters: Solas (Dragon Age), Cullen Rutherford, Varric Tethras, Cole (Dragon Age) Additional Tags: Touch-Starved, Touch-Starved Solas, Touch-Starved Cullen, Dares/bets, Other Additional Tags to Be Added, Pining, Sexual Tension, Jimterruption, Resolved Sexual Tension, Oral Sex, Teacher/Student Roleplay, Sort Of, Praise Kink, If You Squint Summary:

Cullen is bad at card games, and Varric doesn't always play for coin. The cost of a lost game of Diamondback? Cullen has to kiss Solas. It goes both better and worse than he had expected.

I intended to remain in Solas’s POV for “Keep Your Hands On Me,” but I got stuck in chapter 2. I switched to Cullen’s POV, and that went a lot better. Chapter 2 will be posted to AO3 momentarily, but I thought I’d share the chunk I wrote from Solas’s POV just for fun.

Outtake after the cut!

Oh gods, I started rereading Summer Wind for this. It’s like reading cotton candy for me, a wish fulfillment fic for wishes that I’m not sure I personally have and yet... I’m terribly attached to it.

There’s so much weirdly personal stuff in that fic, which I feel is a jackpot for “director’s commentary.”

There’s the obvious - it’s set in my home state, in a town smaller than mine but nonetheless very similar. There are warm cheese curds and dairy cows. It’s clearly Wisconsin.

The names of two local establishments - the Spinning Wheel Inn and the Blind Squirrel (a bar) - are stolen from Shawano, WI, where my in-laws have a cottage. This fic was written brainstormed on the drive to Shawano last summer and written over a long weekend at the cottage.

Cullen’s dog, Belle, is named for my friends’ dog.

There’s a bit where Cullen says he learned wine pairing from his father, who learned it in high school German class. That’s my dad right there. Don’t ask him about spatlese. *glances back at fic* Shit, I even used that same line. Told you - weirdly personal.

Then there’s the realization I had about two months after writing this fic, which is that I’ve written Dorian and Cullen as two different aspects of my own psyche. Dorian pursues the career goal I had when I entered college: publishing. He’s intellectual and career-driven. He’s basically my intellect. Cullen is Lutheran af, sings in his church choir, stays close to home. He’s basically my spiritual side.

New chapter of my Cullen/Solas fic is up! 

Solas takes time to consider the implications of a relationship with Cullen. Featuring our favorite compassion spirit!

I was tagged by @enigmalea to share a last line of a fic.

“I love you too,” Dorian said, and there were absolutely not tears in his eyes.

From Summer Wind, the main story of my Cullrian Wisconsin!AU. (All of the last lines of chapters of my WIPs are terrible on their own. Maybe I should work on that.)

Thank you @metatiki for tagging me! I didn’t see the tag until today, sometime after 7 pm, so it’s a bit late, but better late than never I hope! This is from my Cullen/Solas WIP - a little Solas-and-Cole dialogue from the chapter I’m currently working on.

~~~

“Wondering and worrying: will it even work? It’s all different now. If it works, does that mean it’s less different? More real? If it works, is he real?” Cole paused. “Why do you think Cullen isn’t real?”

[There’s more stuff here in the actual fic, but I’m omitting for brevity.]

“Would you consider a nug a real person?” he asked Cole, quite seriously.

“Yes? No. Maybe?”

Solas sighed. Perhaps Cole would not be of much help to him in this. 

“Do nugs think and feel like people?”

Cole thought for a long time on that one, head tilted like a puppy dog. Perhaps he was listening to someone at a distance, trying to see their thoughts differently to answer Solas’s question.

“Nugs can be sad,” he said finally, “But people can be - guilt-grim, shame-shattered, locked in lies, loving but unloved, racked by recollections.”

“There’s more complexity in people,” Solas said.

“Yes. Knots to untie before they can be free,” Cole confirmed.

“When you hear my pains, are they more complex than other people’s? Just like people are more complex than nugs?” Solas asked.

Cole listened again, for even longer this time, his face furrowed around his concentration.

“Your hurts are older,” he said finally. “You used to feel them louder than the others, but you cut a channel, canal them, to keep the ocean from overflowing.” He paused. “Can oceans overflow?”

“Not exactly,” Solas said. “So my emotions are ‘louder’ but not more complex?”

~~~