Did A Quick Sketch Of One Of My Two Future Dav Protagonists. Lord Of Fortune, City Elf From Rivain, Mage,

Did a quick sketch of one of my two future dav protagonists. Lord of fortune, city elf from Rivain, mage, will romance Davrin, they're non-binary and use they/them pronouns

Honestly sick to death of all the takes insisting that Solas is doomed to die or needs to die or whatever variation thereof. There’s always this claim that it ‘makes sense’ or ‘it’s right for the character’ but rarely is there any sound argument to support that claim. And I simply disagree. I see no reason why it would serve the narrative or his character.

Why is this fandom so insistent on things being bleak? Call me oversensitive if you want, but hearing people talk about this very wounded and chronically depressed character as a lost cause, referring to his death as some foregone conclusion, it honestly makes me sick. I get people who hate him wanting him dead, but hearing people who supposedly adore the character so readily pronounce him as doomed is a bit fucked.

Why? Because he’s sad? You think it’s fitting for him to die because he’s depressed and in need of psychological help? Do you hear yourself? What would his death accomplish? No really, what purpose would it serve other than to fill the tragedy quota? What’s the message? How does it bring his or the game’s story to a satisfying and meaningful end?

Enough. I’m sick of hearing it.

I love the drama of the "Varric sees Anders when he looks at Solas" posts that have been going around, but I personally do not vibe with the common "I should have stopped Anders from blowing up the Chantry" narrative that some of them have but instead "I could have prevented it from even getting to that point." I've been putting some thought into how I would spin this for my own purposes. I'll place it under the cut since it's a little lengthy :)

To begin with, this was not an overnight decision on Anders' part. He held out for years, tried to find other solutions, tried to rally a group of supposed friends who would not hear it. Varric thought himself a listening ear, a supportive companion, but he was as deaf as the rest of them. Varric had the resources and connections to keep the templars away from his clinic, he had the fondness to invite him out to drinks and trade jokes with him, but when the threat grew larger and more serious, Varric's response did not.

Anders, who had spent most of his life in a prison surrounded by uncaring jailors watched his home, his friends--family even--become no better. And Varric became one of them, meeting every silent plea or cry for support with words and actions that protected those walls, those structures, but not the people who lived within. That was, of course, unless they were quiet, uninvolved. It was easier to face than the reality that the city he loved was rotten and diseased.

In the end, he never gave Anders what he needed. He never used his resources to fight or his words to speak out, he never even told him that he understood him, that mages shouldn't have to go through that. And in the end, Anders had to do what he could alone and Varric lost his friend and the city both.

Anders lived, but at the cost of his own freedom, his home, his friends he had tried until the very end to convince. But that didn't settle in for Varric right away. It was easier to be angry, even if much of that anger was turned inward. He disparaged Anders in the same breath that he called him a fond nickname, he protected his and Hawke's location while claiming he never wanted to see him again, he placed blame upon him for what went wrong in the world while pretending to himself that the world itself was not at fault.

It wasn't until he was faced with another friend, another mage, in a situation all too similar that Varric realized what he had done. Or rather, failed to do. And what he must do this time in turn. It was too late for Anders, he could never go back to Kirkwall and the trust he lost for his old friends must have been near irreparable, but it was not too late for Solas.

So to me when he looks to Solas and sees Anders he isn't seeing some mage who did a bad thing, he's seeing the friend he could have saved, or at least could have tried to understand, but didn't. So it's personal. He throws every resource at tracking Solas down, every contact, every favor, and when it finally pays off and he stands before him, he tries, even when it puts his life on the line. But, like before, it seems too late. He could look back and see every moment he could have offered his ear or his aid to Anders before things reached a breaking point, but he didn't have that time with Solas. He may as well have been trying to talk Anders down that evening in the Gallows when the culmination of so many years of injustice were ready to boil over. But he never tried then, he had to now for Solas.

Rogue Trader Aurelia x Marazhai for my lovely @holylustration

This piece is really self indulging because I got to draw all my fave things, like silky gown, chitinous armors, flowy dark hair, and weird vaguely mechanical structures lmeo

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Hot nurglite babe in your area wants to know your location (so she can lay a billion of fly eggs inside of your body).

The worst ending for Catalina in companion AU.

"Forget no insult, my sons, as I have never forgotten those of my father, of the Emperor, nor those of Horus. Forgive no slight or grievance. Hold your bitterness deep within, and there let it fester. Let it roil and squirm and churn, until you are filled with bile so poisonous that all you touch falls to ruin. Thus shall you serve Nurgle best. Thus shall you spread his virulent gifts across the false Imperium, and watch its final rotting..."

— Mortarion, Daemon Primarch of Nurgle

My part of art trade with @archdrukhari