nimthirielrinon

[nimthirielrinon]

“Why is God Gale his bad ending? That’s the only one where he stands up to his abuser!”

Well firstly I don’t think any of the endings are a binary of good or bad, they are breaking and perpetuating cycles.

And secondly, there is a lot of nuance in the relationship between mortals and gods. It’s a terrible, awful dynamic because they are not even starting on the same footing, they are so far from equals that it becomes reductive to frame it that way.

Because to meet her as an equal, to be able to address the awful thing that happened with the orb, he would have to sacrifice parts of himself (parts that she as Midnight had to sacrifice to become Mystra too) that make him human. To pursue his view of justice, which is really based in anger, shame and a desire for vengeance and recognition, he would have to let go of those things.

Sometimes the greatest victory isn’t that. Sometimes it is moving past survival into something new. Sometimes it’s looking across a room and seeing the patterns that made a person who they are, or even stopped them being a person at all, and deciding you just don’t want to lose yourself to the same things.

All of the endings where people break cycles come at a huge cost. Shadowheart and Lae’zel have nothing in the world but the clothes on their backs. Astarion loses his ability to walk in the sun. But they are able to start carving something for themselves, as imperfect as it is, and that’s the victory of this kind of choice (I won’t go into Wyll and Karlach here because I think their writing is even less defined in the binary of a good and bad choice, but that’s for another post.)

To be a cycle breaker is never the perfect neat conclusion you want it to be, and I’m glad they didn’t make it that. If Gale wants to practice magic he will always, always have to make peace with Mystra as his God, not his lover, and this is something that I think older people have probably experienced in a myriad ways in their own lives too, and that strange sadness is really profound to me.

[nimthirielrinon]

Reblog to hug the person you reblogged this from and tell them that everything's going to be okay

[nimthirielrinon]

I finally made a GFM because the friend who was helping us can no longer do so. You can also donate to us directly, because GFM takes 5 days to release funds:

PP: emeraldpleiades16

CA: paradoxicalfrog

VM: JessicaATaylor517

Please do whatever you can. It isn't safe to be sitting outside at night, especially around here.

[nimthirielrinon]

My Biggest and Most Annoying Fictional Horse Pet Peeve

Big Horses are a Very New Thing and they Likely Didn’t Exist in your Historical and/or Fantasy Settings.

You’ve all seen it in every historical piece of media ever produced. Contrary to popular belief, a big black horse with long legs and long flowing mane is not a widespread or even a particularly old type of horse.

THIS IS NOT A MEDIEVAL THING. THIS IS NOT EVEN A BAROQUE THING. THIS IS A NINETEENTH CENTURY CITY CARRIAGE HORSE.

All the love to fancy Friesian horses, but your Roman general or Medieval country heroine just really couldn’t, wouldn’t, and for the sake of my mental health shouldn’t have ridden one either.

Big warmblood horses are a Western European and British invention that started popping up somewhere around 1700s when agriculture and warfare changed, and when rich folks wanted Bigger Faster Stronger Thinner race horses. The modern warmblood and the big continental draught both had their first real rise to fame in the 1800s when people started driving Fancy Carriages everywhere, and having the Fanciest Carriage started to mean having the Tallest and Thinnest Horses in the town.

Before mechanised weaponry and heavy artillery all horses used to be small and hardy easy-feeders. Kinda like a donkey but easier to steer and with a back that’s not as nasty and straight to sit on.

SOME REAL MEDIEVAL, ROMAN, OTTOMAN, MONGOL, VIKING, GREEK and WHATEVER HISTORICALLY PLAUSIBLE HORSES FOR YOU:

“Primitive”, native breeds all over the globe tend to be only roughly 120-140 cm (12.0 - 13.3 hh) tall at the withers. They all also look a little something like this:

Mongolian native horse (Around 120-130 at the withers, and decendants of the first ever domesticated horses from central Asia. Still virtually unchanged from Chinggis Khan’s cavalry, ancestor to many Chinese, Japanese and Indian horses, and bred for speed racing and surviving outdoors without the help of humans.)

Carpathian native horse / Romanian and Polish Hucul Pony (Around 120-150 at the withers, first mentioned in writing during the 400s as wild mountain ponies, depicted before that in Trajanian Roman sculptures, used by the Austro-Hungarian cavalry in the 19th century)

Middle-Eastern native horse / Caspian Pony (Around 100-130 at the withers, ancestor of the Iranian Asil horse and its decendants, including the famous Arabian and Barb horses, likely been around since Darius I the Great, 5th century BC, and old Persian kings are often depicted riding these midgets)

Baltic Sea native horse / Icelandic, Finnish, Estonian, Gotland and Nordland horses (Around 120-150 at the withers, descendant of Mongolian horses, used by viking traders in 700-900 AD and taken to Iceland. Later used by the Swedish cavalry in the 30 years war and by the Finnish army in the Second World War, nowadays harness racing and draught horses)

Siberian native horse / Yakutian pony (Around 120-140 at the withers, related to Baltic and Mongolian horses and at least as old, as well-adapted to Siberian climate as woolly mammoths once were, the hairiest horse there is, used in draught work and herding)

Mediterranean native horse / Skyros pony, Sardinian Giara, Monterufolino (Around 100-140 at the Withers, used and bred by ancient Greeks for cavalry use, influenced by African and Eastern breeds, further had its own influence on Celtic breeds via Roman Empire, still used by park ranger officers in Italy)

British Isles’ native horse / various “Mountain & Moorland” pony breeds (Around 100-150 at the withers, brought over and mixed by Celts, Romans and Vikings, base for almost every modern sport pony and the deserving main pony of all your British Medieval settings. Some populations still live as feral herds in the British countryside, used as war mounts, draught horses, mine pit ponies, hunting help and race horses)

So hey, now you know!

[nimthirielrinon]

A lot of younger people have no idea what aging actually looks and feels like, and the reasons behind it. That ignorance is so dangerous. If you don’t want to “be old,” you aren’t talking about a number of years. I have patients in their late 80s who could still handily beat me in a race—one couple still runs marathons together, in their late 80s—and I lost someone who was in her early 60s to COPD last year. What you want is not youth, it is health.

If you want to still be able to enjoy doing things in your 60s and 70s and 80s and even 90s, what you want to do, right now, is quit smoking, get some activity on a regular basis (a couple of walks a week is WAY better for you than nothing; increasing from 1 hour a day of cardio to 1.5 will buy you very little), and eat some plants. That’s it. No magic to it. No secret weird tricks. Don’t poison yourself, move around so your body doesn’t forget how, and eat plants.

If you have trouble moving around now because of mobility limitations, bad news: you still need to move around, not because it’s immoral not to, but because that’s still the best advice we have. I highly recommend looking up the Sit and Be Fit series; it is freely available and has exercises that can be done in a chair, which are suitable for people with limited mobility or poor balance. POTS sufferers, I’m looking at you.

If you have trouble eating plants because of dietary issues (they cause gas, etc.) or just because they’re bitter (super taster with texture issues here!), bad news. You still want to find a way to get some plants into your body on a regular basis. I know. It sucks. The only way I can do it is restaurants—they can make salads taste like food. I can also tolerate some bagged salads. On bad weeks, the OCD with contamination focus gets so bad I just can’t. However, canned beans always seem “safe,” and they taste a bit like candy, so they’re a good fallback.

If you smoke and you have tried quitting a million times and you’re just not ready to, bad news. You still need to quit. Your body needs you to try and keep trying. Your brain needs it, too. Damaging small blood vessels racks up cumulative damage over time that your body can start trying to reverse as soon as you quit. I know it’s insanely, absurdly addictive. You still need to.

You cannot rules lawyer your way past your body’s basic needs. It needs food, sleep, activity, and the absence of poison. Those are both small things and big asks. You cannot sustain a routine based on punishment, so don’t punish your body. Find ways to include these things that are enjoyable and rewarding instead. Experiment. There is no reason not to experiment—you don’t have to know instantly what’s going to work for you and what won’t, you just need to be willing to try things and make changes when things aren’t working for you.

You will still age. Your body will stop making collagen and elastin. Tissues you can see and tissues you can’t see will both sag. Cushioning tissues under your skin will get thinner. You’ll bruise more easily. Skin will tear more easily. Accumulated sun damage will start to show more and more. Joints will begin to show arthritis. Tendons and ligaments will get weaker and get injured more easily, as will muscles. Bones will lose mass and get easier to break. You’ll get tired more easily.

But you know what makes the difference between being dead, or as good as, in your 60s vs your 90s? Activity, plants, and quitting smoking. And don’t do meth. Saw a 58-year-old guy this week who is going to have a heart attack if he doesn’t quit whatever stimulant he’s on. I pretended to believe it was just the cigarettes, and maybe it is, but meth and cocaine will kill you quicker. Stop poisoning yourself.

Baby steps; take it one step at a time; you don’t need to have everything figured out right now. But you do need to be working on figuring things out.

[nimthirielrinon]

Chapter 26: The Harrowing Chamber

Dania, Wynne and Alistair confront Uldred, who has been torturing mages and forcing them to become abominations. The experience is, well, harrowing.

Content warning for explicit violence.

[nimthirielrinon]

not to sound old fashioned or whatever but getting rid of payphones is a mistake, and the only reason we should do it is if we're replacing them with free, public use phones. Having the ability to reach out to others in every place of public congress and transit is an important safety feature and the advent and adoption of smartphones does not negate their utility.

I know i've already lost this battle, so it's somewhat pointless to say, but smartphones die. chargers aren't always there. smartphones break. some people don't have them. Being able to call someone and ask for help, to get in touch with friends and family, without relying on something you yourself own, is a societal good.

Furthermore, expecting everybody to have a single piece of fragile technology on them at all times to the point that critical services are not available without them is truly mind-boggling to me. This goes for things like restaurant menus and transit maps as well. you should be able to navigate the world without a brick made by Apple or Samsung, and if you can't, then something is fundamentally broken. It's one thing for new technology to augment an existing real-world experience, it's another thing to usurp it entirely.

[nimthirielrinon]

People having fun with Alastor's shadow, Part 1

[nimthirielrinon]

William Ireland - Morning Visitor

[nimthirielrinon]

Dania’s Tale: Ch 25

Making their way through the senior mage quarters, Dania and her group face more death, destruction, and moral dilemma than they have so far. Dania is experiencing huge amounts of trauma and anxiety, understandably, and I'm beginning to think I might give them all a week or two back at Redcliffe Castle to recover from all this. But that's in future chapters! First they have to survive this one...

[nimthirielrinon]

[nimthirielrinon]

‘A good tragedy is always both preventable and inevitable’ is one of my main hills to die on. It’s literally so important to me. I’m fucking correct

[nimthirielrinon]

Chapter 26: The Harrowing Chamber

Dania, Wynne and Alistair confront Uldred, who has been torturing mages and forcing them to become abominations. The experience is, well, harrowing.

Content warning for explicit violence.

[nimthirielrinon]

If you're fifteen or older an still sleep with a stuffed animal please reblog this.

[nimthirielrinon]

songs used to have a bridge and a third chorus

[nimthirielrinon]

Chapter 26: The Harrowing Chamber

Dania, Wynne and Alistair confront Uldred, who has been torturing mages and forcing them to become abominations. The experience is, well, harrowing.

Content warning for explicit violence.

#dragon age #dragon age origins #fan art #fanfic #fanfiction #dania’s tale #dragon age fanfiction #da:o #da: origins #da:o fanfic #dragon age oc

[nimthirielrinon]

Okay, I’m taking the plunge because I’m broke AF and I honestly cannon cope any more. So, I’m going to start taking commissions for pet portraits.

Some of my work so far:

Pricing will be as follows:

Deposit: $30 (non-refundable)

Print: $70

Postage for print: $12

Digital only: $50

You’ll need to send me a photo (or several) of your pet in the pose in which you want them painted. Ideally one that is clear and well lit, with as few things obscuring the view of your pet as possible, eg cushions, blankets, unless you specifically want it included, in which case, let me know. That may take longer and cost extra, depending on how complicated it is to paint.

It should take me around 2 weeks to complete a portrait before sending it. I’ll update with any changes, as this is something I’m doing alongside my fulltime job (which by God doesn’t pay me nearly enough), but I’ll do my best to keep it within that time frame.

Message me if you’re interested!