Let It Be

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The prices above are a rough guide, but are in the  $80/£61.50 - $120/£93 price range. I will charge extra if the piece requires more work, and will tell you upfront before it is started.

[my art tag] 

details after cut:

In a portal fantasy where the four seasons of a magical world are ruled by young men and women abducted from mundane realms, bitter highschool reject Caleb Miller finds himself abruptly appointed the King of Summer. He’s this world’s latest hope to finally end the King of Winter’s brutal reign… but it isn’t until Winter’s Champion, Milo Caldwell, flees to Caleb’s court, shattered in mind and body and begging for help in saving the Northern Capital from its own king, that Caleb finally sees a way to bring an end to Winter’s endless war. 

Caleb Miller, King of Summer: sad nerd boy turned exasperated nerd king. doing his best despite how many people would prefer otherwise. 

Milo Caldwell: primary H/C recipient who is more than ready for some C to start happening already.

Sir Adelaide Addison: small girl with a big horse. kicks ass nigh-continuously. probably needs a nap but won’t take one. 

Nick: a squire that would really have preferred we didn’t write him into this mess. 

Diana, Queen of Spring: usually a wolf. sometimes down to fuck. always down to fuck shit up. 

Chapters: 4/4 Fandom: Original Work Rating: General Audiences Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply Additional Tags: Romance, Fantasy, Magical Realism, Red String of Fate, Korean Characters Summary:

It’s exactly the same situation for Solas as it was for the Inquisitor when they time-traveled into the horrible future where Corypheus ruled. The Inquisitor had few qualms about sacrificing people in that future because it “didn’t really matter or exist” - the only thing that mattered was going back to the past to prevent that horrible future from occurring.

The Dalish derided and hated? The city elves in alienages? This is Solas’ Bad End Future. Solas does not consider the world around him to be truly real or right. He doesn’t understand the Dalish, and can hardly recognize them or City Elves as elves. He does not want to understand or even think about modern elves because it’s Solas’ fault that they were killed, that they were enslaved, that they have to live the terrible lives they do. He spends as much time in the Fade as possible because of escapism, frankly. Because some of his oldest friends still live there, and because he can still walk lost Arlathan’s streets in his dreams… he wants to be in the past again, where he didn’t fuck everything up. 

He’s very much a lost, isolated character looking for guidance, a true hermit of the tarot. Every conversation he has with the other companions is him desperately sound-boarding off them, “What should I do? What would you do? What can I do?“ His conversations with Varric about the Man On The Island haunt me, especially. (“How can you be happy, surrendering? Knowing it will all end with you? How can you not fight?”)

So yeah, he is a bitter sleepwalker trying not to invest in anything around him… because of self-preservation. Because if he invests emotionally in it, it will make everything harder. If he was truly an asshole, and if people truly didn’t matter to him, this wouldn’t be a problem for him. 

The touching part about Lavellan is not that he treats her better than other people, because he doesn’t. It’s that his feelings for her force him to confront the future that he made, and see it as real. (“You’re real, and it means everyone could be real. It changes everything, but it can’t.”) This future is real, and it’s something he made, and its reality matters deeply.

It’s the story of a god who is estranged from his people (literally, statues of Fen'Harel are not allowed inside Dalish camps) and his relationship with Lavellan helps him reconcile the reality of the world and decide what to do about it. It’s a sleeping god finally answering the call of the Dalish, who never expected to be answered. It’s a mortal convincing a god that his people still need protecting.

And, yes, the game makes it clear that while you and Dorian don’t consider the future “real,” the others do. As Leliana herself tells Dorian, “To you, this is not real. Just some hypothetical future you hope does not come to pass. But I suffered. The whole world suffered.” By going back to the past, you are effectively erasing them; their lives, their memories, their existence.

But what I find really disingenuous (and a cop-out) on the part of the BioWare writers is, conveniently, everyone is fine with you going back and changing the past. The future to which you have no personal part of is so terrible that everyone in it knows they’ll be wiped out of existence, and are fine with it. 

But imagine if the Inquisitor and Dorian jumped forward to the same dark future, only a hundred years into the future rather than one year. Everyone who knew the old world is dead and gone, and only people who’ve been born into the new world are left. They might have heard stories of the old world from their parents and grandparents and great-grandparents, but they just seem like fairy stories that have no basis in their day-to-day lives. They may know this dark future filled with demons and magisters and red lyrium harvesters is terrible, but since they have no basis of comparison it’s all they know, and thus something they feel they can live with.

Then you, some spectre of the past shows up, claims to know how this happened, and explains that you need to find the Elder One’s glowing green necklace so you can go back in time and fix it so this horrible post-apocalyptic world filled with demons and blood mages and red lyrium harvesting and mass torture and possessions and general hell-on-earth  never happened.

Can you imagine how they’re react? Probably not well. “But if you go back that means that I (and my family, friends, memories, world) never existed. I can’t let you do that!” You, the viewer, the Herald, know what the old world was like and can see how horrid and post-apocalyptic this new dying world is compared to the old one… but they don’t know, so they don’t care.

Can you imagine how outraged palyers would be if the writers threw all that bullshit in our faces? The story starts off as an idealistic “close the hole in the sky, stop the bad guys, and save the world” plot, then we suddenly get thrown forward in time to a dark future that’s so obviously horrible and post-apocalyptic, and the answer seems simple: go back in time, fix the past so this horrible present never happens, then save the world as originally planned.” But then you get thwarted by the locals everywhere you turn because they’ve never seen this idyllic past you’re from, and they’re not keen to throw away the world they know, nor their very existence, on a past they’ve never seen and have no connection to. They expect you to “just get over the past already; your world is gone; stop being such a sore loser of history who’s unwilling to accept that your world is gone, and just appreciate the good in the present already.” (Even if it’s just a warm fire and a hot meal in a little rat hole in the dirt while demons and slavers look for new victims outside, which seems paltry to you but heavenly to them.)

So, what do you do in that situation? A) Just abandon your quest and get used to a short, difficult, painful life in the dirt until taint exposure drives you into an early grave (compared to the lifespan you’re used to) if demons or slavers don’t kill you first? Or do you B) Keep trying to fix the past (Veil, Chantry, Inquisition, your companions, etc.) with a heavy heart knowing that these people are people, but you feel this future is just too horrible to be allowed to stand anyway?

I suspect, personally, that most players would opt for B.

So, why do we expect Solas to go with option A? 

Push your shoes off with your toes or with the tip of your shoe, most likely. Props for drama if you yank your converse or your vans or your boots off like a soldier in a scyfi drama, but otherwise, you’re “toeing your shoes off”

Humans are much better at dissecting scents than we give ourselves credit for. If you sit there long enough, you could dissect how your friend smells. I smell like “old, beat up cars, the sour citrus he isn’t supposed to have, and something musty and natural and unique to him that clings to all of his clothes.” In order that’s old flannel, three day old hair mousse, and fish tank water. Smells like cigarettes and oils cling to your clothes, stuff like fishtanks and the food in your kitchen seeps into your belongings. Don’t feel bad about describing scents, people carry our houses with us everywhere. 

Have you ever pet someone else’s hair? That’s “carding your fingers through.” That’s it. It’s the same thing.

Ever walked around barefoot? Its three am and you’re trying to make Dark Lunch? You’ve padded around. You signal to other people nonverbally whether its coughing or sighing that you’re there so that you don’t scare them. 

Smirking is a thing most of us do with our face. Grinning, looking cheeky, and raising our eyebrows are also all things your face does. Sorry :/

You might not get this if you’re a straight girl whose never had sex, but sometimes that little strip of skin between ya shirt and ya hips? The mouth can go there. That’s an intimate place to touch and its a vulnerable place to be exposed. Overused maybe, but a valid way to show a shift in the situation. 

We all sigh!! Are some of y’all really saying that sighing isn’t a thing you do ten thousand times a week?? You don’t sigh when someone says something stupid as shit?? You don’t sigh when you gotta get up?? 

SAID IS A VALID WORD

Everything on your face casts shadows, I’m sorry you have weak eyelashes, or that somehow your brows are flat with your eyeballs

People laugh silently! I’m sorry you’ve never laughed that hard!! People giggle! People snort! People double over and move and flail! Have you ever fucking laughed?

For that matter how do y’all not blush and can you teach me

I’d also like to say sorry if: your heart has never skipped a beat reading something terrible, or when you saw someone you liked even platonically, or if you’ve never been so surprised all you could do was blink, that you never looked at someone like you loved them, and that you somehow never fucking show any emotion in your voice or your posture at all