Hehe, love it when people watch something cos of me :3

😂😂😂

I don’t know about you, but it’s been like six plus years since I played Origins and I still viscerally remember the “oh shit” of accidentally kicking up a revenant. This is a scene that happens “off screen” in Mark My Skin, which Alistair mentions in passing while he contemplates buying gloves.

*

Zevran had been behind him. Alistair had made sure of it. As soon as the unmistakable spiked hand of the revenant had emerged from the soil, they’d fallen into their usual array, with Alistair in front. The others ranged behind him, ready to support and strike from distance and, in Zevran’s case, dart in when opportunities arose. This time there was only one enemy, and Alistair felt sure of his ability to stay in front, to keep the others safe.

But all at once, the revenant all but vanished, just a blur of motion, and that horrible coughing roar came from behind him–yards behind him. He spun, already charging towards the sound before he actually spotted the revenant’s towering shape in the dusk. There was Zevran, just a couple of steps away, spinning with him. Light and quick and graceful in battle in a way Alistair never was even at his best. 

And then he was not there.

There was a squawk of surprise, and Zevran was flying through the air towards the revenant, as if it had jerked on a rope round his middle. Alistair bellowed wordlessly and flung himself forward even faster than before. Harper swore and hurled a desperate slowing spell that the revenant shrugged off.

The revenant didn’t bother to catch Zevran. It simply brought up its sword and struck him with the full momentum of his own flight, flat across the chest.

Alistair screamed something–he had no idea what– and lunged the last few steps, cannoning into the revenant with his shield. It was like hitting a stone wall, but he gained perhaps a foot of distance from Zevran’s fallen form. The revenant fought terrifyingly, taking no note of the blows Alistair managed to land. He didn’t have time to think about the hits he took, either. Time enough later to see if any had gotten past the armor. He had to end the fight now.

Finally, he got in a blow that nearly severed the revenant’s neck, and it toppled, head flopping grotesquely to one side.

Wynne was already feverishly at work, but Zevran was horribly still. Alistair fell to his knees next to them. Zevran’s entire breastplate was sheared, hanging open, the tunic below turned from green to muddy brown by blood. Wynne slashed the tunic open to expose a ragged gash a good seven inches long and who knew how deep. Leliana came up behind her with a cloth, which she took and tossed to Alistair. 

“Hold it over the wound. Press firmly.”

Alistair did as he was told, glad for the wound to be out of sight. He looked at Zevran’s grey face, feeling sick. Somewhere, Harper was whispering to herself, a steady stream of “Shit, shit, shit, shit.” Alistair though he could see Wynne actually glowing pale blue with the force of her efforts. The passage of time became completely irrelevant; all that mattered was steady pressure on the wound and that still face.

Suddenly, Zevran’s eyes flew open. He sucked in a harsh breath and started coughing. Alistair sagged with relief. Wynne sat back, white as a sheet.

Zevran glanced around.

“My friend,” he said, barely above a whisper, “you are bleeding quite heavily.”

Alistair glanced down, confused. It looked like the revenant had gotten into the gap between his breastplate and pauldron after all. The entire right side of his breastplate was a sheet of glossy red.

“Oh,” he said. “Look at that.”

If your readers are anything like me, they're lost in a haze of "time does not exist" and have forgotten about *every* fic they'd been reading, not just yours... so updates are a nice surprise.

I assume from your fic that you have a LOT of time on your hands! 

This one is probably a little deceptive. I have a maximum typing speed of 130-150 wpm, and a ‘cruising’ speed of about 120 wpm, which means I get my daily wordcount down in about 1-2 hours pretty easily. (And that’s including like, thinking about/imagining the story, breaks, research, spending too much time on social media, etc.)

The fast typing speed and a relatively fast editing turnaround means I actually spend most of the day not writing. I have to sleep a lot, because of illness.

Generally speaking if I work 2-3 hours on a mixture of things in the morning (i.e. my daily walk, my wordcount, making lunch) I am wiped out until the evening. Usually from about 12-6pm every day I am not very useful as a human being. There’s sometimes exceptions to that but like, most of the time I actually have is spent sleeping, resting, or waiting for ‘enough energy to make food / write / function’ to hit and realising three hours later after I’ve stared the wall that it won’t hit again until I sleep.

On my best writing days, where I hit around 3-4k, I usually write in the morning and then manage to get some more words down in the evening. But I often pay for it in the subsequent days (it’s not uncommon for me to write 4-5k in one day, and then be too sick as a result of that for like 2-3 days after to write more than 200-300 words - if anything at all.)

All in all it works out to an average of about 40k a month in words, but in terms of actual hours spent writing, it’s likely a lot less than folks would think. I sadly just...need to sleep an awful lot. Like, if anyone’s imagining that I spend hours and hours writing every day, it’s more like, I spend hours and hours sleeping or resting and in the small amount of time I can seize to be productive, I will slam out as many words as I can, sometimes just an hour of writing in the morning makes me too tired to make lunch for myself, so it’s a tricky balancing act.

Illness makes me extremely time poor, and not time rich. I’m not a healthy person that just gets to write as many hours a day as I want, sadly.

And also a lot of experience in kink...             

This one is hard to quantify I think? While I don’t talk much about my personal life and kink here, I think it’s safe to say I’m experienced in a moderate amount of kink, and I’m surrounded by people who are also experienced in a moderate amount of kink. There’s some things I definitely feel more comfortable with than others (I have a pretty decent selection of corporal instruments, and I’m fairly comfortable using them). But there’s also stuff that I have literally zero experience with, that I’ve written realistically enough that people think I have experience with it.

*

I have heard it said that Crowley started this...

Currently, 179 applications have been submitted. So yes, a lot to sort through– but they’re looking great so far!