Vanessa Dambach

"a PEACE cut from the ALL" A PEACE. A peace. Not piece. He was content once. Rememburnings. The memory of what he used to be burns. An infinity instead of a small shade.

Asexuality wasn't even formally recognized as a sexual orientation until 2012 (and the variations along the spectrum even later.)

I was 29 in 2012. I spent the first 3 decades of my life thinking I just "didn't have a knack for flirting" or that something was fundamentally broken about me, and it must just be an amalgamation of all my own insecurities and self-loathing that every time someone expressed attraction to me my entire being recoiled from it like touching a hot stove, like "haha you know what actually fuck this." Even if I liked them. Even if I, during several ill-fated attempts in my mid-20s, initiated it.

I clocked Lucanis as demi long before Mary confirmed it. Several of his banters make it painfully obvious. He loves romance in fiction but can't seem to make it happen for himself irl. He has made exactly one (1) other attempt, because it takes So Much respect and trust and time and mental energy to get him interested in the first place, and when it went unacknowledged/unreciprocated he just shrugged and went 'well thats how that goes I guess" and never bothered again. And now he's in his mid-thirties with a busy career (and trauma upon trauma) and assumes its just never happening. He expresses affection through acts of service bc it's all he can do despite believing its not enough (bc he knows other people need something he can't seem to give).

He understands some people have unusual kinks and thats fine, it's all the same shade of weird to him so y'all might as well have fun. He's obsessed with wyverns (this seems to be a very specific joke in the ace community lol).

He is absolutely desperate to hold onto his few remaining familial connections (however toxic), because that's all the love he ever expects to know.

And the almost-kiss? That wasn't Spite. The contrived attempt at swagger, not exactly fake but more like trying to ride a fleeting wave of mutual attraction long enough to communicate it with body language. The utter bliss of Rook's single finger on his chest because he is so terribly touch-starved.

Then the Flinch.

And then this expression of frustration and guilt and bone-deep sadness on his face and in his voice that I felt in my soul because that was me. That was me at 25-28 trying desperately to touch a hot stove on purpose because I was so abyssmally lonely. And I too blamed it on trauma. On self-loathing. On feeling othered and wrong.

I wanted to fucking cry for him.

Though not as much as when, at long last, we arrive at a relationship where while sex isn't necessarily off the table if both are feeling it, what matters to him above all else is that he ends the day asleep in your arms.

I was apart of a high control religion that told pre-teen to 18 years even looking at the other gender was a sin next to murder. But at 18 we were all dumped in a church for the sole purpose of matching us up and getting us married. I tried once to reach out at this church when I attended in my early twenties. Yet I seemed to be the gateway for guys to approach my friends and I could not understand why, or why I was icked out at seeing two people who barely knew eachother making out on the desk outside of sunday school. I knew I was Bi/Pan back in highschool but as an adult I didn't understand why I could not be like allo members of my family. I found out I was demisexual from fandom, specifically a writing mentor of mine who affectionately bullied me into publishing some of my not perfect works for fandom. She pulled me aside having come from the same cultural icongraphy as mine and said "I can't tell you what you are, but I think if you go google demisexuality, that will help you understand yourself honey." I can't tell you how much I cried reading about demisexuality, I thought I was broken and wrong. No I just needed connection. As someone in an long term relationship looking at marriage. At the end of the day, all that matters to me is being able to hug and hold my partner and fall asleep to the sound of their breathing.

Like it would be a stereotype if it came from outside, but its very much an insider observation (in the same vein as "wow we neurodivergent queers sure do love mothman huh"). The joke went like "oh lol we must actually be only attracted to powerful mythological creatures that don't exist, that explains everything! ;)"

(No one actually believes that joke obvs, despite the also well-known ace-to-monsterfucker pipeline, which has more to do with having a high tolerance for unconventional expressions of love/sex in fiction due to having no personal preferences or basis of reference, at least among non sex-repulsed aces.) (And also something something often being made to feel inhuman ourselves in an allonormative society yada yada don't worry about it).

Idk if its intentional with Lucanis but its still funny; though in his case it can't be high dragons bc he already sees those more often than he would like and they usually try to destroy his hometown or eat him and anyway thats Taash's territory. So its wyverns, which are endemic to southern Thedas and so far away they might as well be myth.

I would also like to submit that the reason Lucanis never bought himself a wyvern-tooth dagger with his grown adult money is bc Caterina used to discourage what she saw as an unbecoming childish obsession and probably shamed or punished him for wanting the dagger (its also likely not the most practical assassin's tool). So that little desire became painful and he just put it away the rest of his life, until out of nowhere someone (who incidentally also just got done saving his life so he respects them already) randomly gifts him one. The part of young Lucanis's mind that Caterina managed to lock away but not destroy suddenly lights up like fireworks and goes FUCK YEAH WYVERNS (while Spite goes FUCK YOU CATERINA) and he's momentarily *giddy* over it. ❤️

This is a man who does not know what to do with a compliment. He’s a little business boy who has a big job and an overbearing grandmother.

You say something sexy to him and he fucking chokes on his own spit.

Y’all hear the accent and think sensual right away but this man hasn’t slept in like 3 weeks, is literally running on Spite, and hides in the pantry most of the time.

No game whatsoever.

Dragon Age 2 release week: this game fucking sucks, they ruined the lore and the companions are cringe

Dragon Age 2, 5 years after release: this game is fantastic albeit rushed, the companions are my favorite

Inquisition release week: this game fucking sucks, they ruined the lore with these new implications

Inquisition, 5 years after release: this game is fantastic, I love the lore implications