thinking about how as Aemond’s wife you are the model of perfection.
Your back is straight as you curtsy when you first meet him and hair neatly braided with fine jewels. Your voice is even and never waivers as you speak to him of your family and how grateful they are for this union.
You are intelligent and beautiful, the perfect wife.
It’s why Aemond hardly ever spends time with you.
He bears no ill will toward you, of course. There is no resentment or hatred to his lady wife, but there are no fond feelings either.
He knows of courting and romance, his mother taught him everything from a young age. The poor woman would hold her son’s hands tight and explain that a man must not only respect his wife, but truly cherish her. Love her in the eyes of gods and men. As he grew older he noticed the way his father would wave off her constant advice and concerns until the dreaded night where she was the only one defending him after he lost his eye.
But practice was one thing. When you were nothing but a concept. A figment of Aemond’s imagination when he was ten and marriage was only spoken of during his lessons. Before he lost his eye. Before he heard the ladies of the court whispering about his mutilation and before he watched a whore flinch at the sight of his scarring when Aegon dragged him to a brothel on his thirteenth name day.
He learned then that no matter how much he would love and worship his wife, it would not be returned.
Rather than attempt to force it (he was no brute and had no intentions of doing something so cruel) he simply let you be by yourself.
Yes you were married. You sat by one another at every meal and formal event and on the rare occasion he would even ask for your hand in a dance. But Aemond’s affections toward you were few and far to find.
But there were moments.
Where his icy facade would weaken and you found yourself able to slip through the cracks.
Alicent had told you of his “moments” when the engagement had been announced. The queen herself taking you by the hand as you walked through the garden and explaining gently of Aemond’s condition.
“There are times where he feels a great deal of pain because of the-” She paused, chewing on her cheek while trying to find the most inoffensive way to describe the tragedy that befell her son. “-incident he had as a child.”
You knew enough of it. Many rumors flew through court the day Aemond targaryen walked in with a patch on his eye after Laenor Velaryan’s funeral at driftmark. Some day it was from a sparring incident, others say it was a mark he bore from the first time he mounted the mighty vhaegar. Others say that the Rouge Prince Daemon Targaryen himself gave it to his younger cousin after crude words were exchanged behind closed doors.
You didn’t know what was the truth. Aside from the day the princeling got his scar, was the same he got his dragon.
A fair trade, some would say.
But they didn’t live with the attacks he did.
Nerve damage, is what the maester’s called it when you asked them for more information. His wound may have healed years prior but the prince would continue to live his life with constant bouts of mind-numbing pain brought on by the slightest touch or too sharp of a wind to his cheek.
“Senseless fits.” Aegon called it. When he heard about your curiosity about his brother’s condition he had all but cornered you late at night in the hall. “Anything will set him off and send him throwing a tantrum like a belligerent child. It’s quite entertaining.”
But there’s a moment where the elder brother frowns and you see a shred of concern in his eyes.
“He doesn’t like to be touched during those moments. It makes the pain worse. So if you’re trying to find some way to comfort him I’d recommend you do something else.”
What was ‘something else’ you learned, was simply being there.
Sitting by his side when he curled into himself, trembling fingers reaching out to grab yours and not complaining when his nails dig into the palm of your hand as he cries out in pain. When his breath evens out and the pain subsides, he crawls to you and presses his face to the crook of your neck. He’s far too tired to cover the gnarled scar covering the side of his face but you show no fear or disgust at the sight of it. Your fingers run through his hair, gently combing back the silver tresses and ignoring the tears that stain the shoulder of your gown.
The next morning your husband would wake in your arms and takes a moment to watch your peaceful expression and the way the morning sun kisses your skin.
That day Alicent notices her son sits closer to you at breakfast, speaking softly to you of something she cannot understand. But when she sees his hand reach out and grasp yours, she smiles.
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In regards to my last reblog on the scale of Thedas, latitude and stuff. I’ve been thinking about how much thought I give all this. Especially because this topic is one I’ve been talking with a lot of people about lately. It crops up a lot with people who, like me enjoy natural world building or are fanfic writers. Or really anyone who sits down and reads the lore at length. More times then not the question of Thedas’s scale comes up.
So, I want to establish I am very well aware that I’m likely giving it more thought than the devs. I have that luxury as a fan and consumer of the series. It is extremely relevant for me because I like making maps for the series, plotting out travel paths, and scaling things for da ttrpg campaigns I write.
So because I think about it a lot, I notice all the many different scales of Thedas in terms of travel time. How the scale they gave the ttrpg doesn’t match up with any scale they established in the main games or books. I think if the devs sat down and thought about establishing a standard scale and also considering just basic stuff we also wouldn’t have the Deep Roads be 2-4 miles / 3.21-6.43 km below sea level and display a lack of geothermal qualities. I think they’d consider how they built a world with at least 9.1 million people and tons of mega fauna such as giants and dragons and 14’/4.26 m tall bears that hunt dragons, all squished into roughly 1/4 of Europe and how much that isn’t really sustainable. How there would be much more impact if nature encroachment in civilization and how common things like that would be in places. Which they do consider it to a degree, I’m not saying they don’t. But I think if they thought about it just to make the world something that holds up a little better to idle musings, it wouldn’t be a bad thing. That the world would feel more real and alive and also narratively give them more to work with.
The contradictions and lack of consideration for the natural world has always been one of my critiques of Dragon Age, among other things. The reason why that is, is mostly because of a noticeable trend the lack of natural world building in fantasy. It’s a topic that has been discussed elsewhere and at length by other people, but to summarize nature is slowly having less and less impact in fantasy even in an ambient quality. Obviously this isn’t a universal statement, nor a universally required thing for a story to explore and have. That there are things that do focus on and explore it, but speaking in general terms, it is a trend in the majority of media.
Which for me is a bummer as it is an aspect of writing and world building I enjoy. I really like themes of man vs nature and to have that you need to have a basic level of natural world building. Which BioWare doesn’t really explore in Dragon Age despite having elements of it - such as how regular raw lyrium is explosive, mages get sick around all lyrium unless it is diluted to a safe amount for mages, and raw lyrium straight up kills them if they’re in the same room.
So then you have questions of how do mages go/handle being underground with such a risk? Dwarves have stone sense but would mages be able to tell when they’re getting close to large lyrium deposits because they’re getting sick? Does this impact grey warden mages? Darkspawn mages?
Things that don’t get fully acknowledged or explored despite being mentioned casually in codices most people don’t read. And they don’t for a couple of reasons such as potential coding issues but also all the questions you’d have to ask:
How would you implement that as a mechanic? Would you lock mage players out of entire areas featuring raw lyrium? Would they take environmental damage if you wanted the players to explore it regardless? Would it be a mechanic only applied by in harder difficulty modes? Do you acknowledge it in banter but not in any other way? Create a way to explain why the pc mage and their mage companions aren’t dropping dead?
BioWare’s answer seems to seemingly just ignore it because it would make gameplay too challenging/punishing and likely might not be fun for a player to deal with. But they compromise by keeping the lore active in the canon through codices and low impact additions. Which is a completely okay solutions, not my preferred but I get why they do it.
When I approach this lore, I do so without expecting them to fully flesh out each nation or know which city has the most resources and the geologically rich lands in said country. Dragon Age, and BioWare in general, relies on semi-soft world building. The world was after all designed for a game. They only need to build out what they need and what hopefully won’t paint them into a corner with future installments.
Additionally, the writing style for Dragon Age doesn’t suit the hard world building that I prefer, I’m quite aware of that but also know that when it comes to talk about world building in any media, there is always the issue of people (like me) who world build for fun and consider all these small aspects but ultimately they aren’t always needed and necessary for the story a game like Dragon Age is telling.
Dragon Age is told with the intention of things being given from an unreliable narrator. Built on the concept of: there’s three sides to the truth, what x thinks happens, what y thinks happens, and then what actually happened. Which works and I love the premise.
That said, I think that it also impacts lore that shouldn’t be subjected to the unreliable narrator. Foundation or anchor lore points to be specific. Which, as we know, BioWare has always struggled with consistency in their lore, particularly with Dragon Age.
Distance is one of those foundational points that shouldn’t change, and it’s also one of those points that you don’t have to give exact travel times. You can leave it vague and stick to the official statements like the ones we have of Ferelden being the size of England (or Ireland depending on the source you use). If you’re going to be giving specifics, then I think being consistent with how long it travels to get to point a to b and not changing it multiple times in one game should be a basic expectation that is met.
Other ones the series has and is pretty consistent with is how we know Thedas has 24 hours a day, they have seasons like we expect, and are in the southern hemisphere.
Do they sometimes slip up because editing doesn’t catch they’ve made a reference that applies only to the northern hemisphere? Yeah, and that’s not bad. There are a lot of people working on the project and things slip through.
I know I have the luxury to think about Thedas in a capacity that allows for the hard world building that I like. I also know I focus on and enjoy aspects of lore that are not exactly popular for their main audience and are pretty niche.
I don’t expect BioWare to world build how I do because I’m not world building for a massive and varied audience. Not even when I do world building for my tabletop games, because I’m catering to a smaller and more specific audience.
Still I think it’s valid and worth pondering these little elements of the world building. For fun, appreciation, and to nurture one’s own creativity and understanding of media, the world, and what they think makes a believable world.
Devs might not have time to consider it but we sure do and that’s half the fun of enjoying media I think.
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ok so im not very far into trigun (which. you convinced me to read/watch) but ive seen you talk about vash as a christ/messiah figure which. means im kinda obsessed with how you described his impact on the world in no name on the bullet (christ healing the lame, christ feeding the thousand... christ delivering his people from evil.) did you have any specific biblical references you kept in mind while writing?
i also think its super interesting how the fic seems to focus more heavily on healing as opposed to how (what ive seen of) trigun is a lot more gunman focused - is part of that influenced by how knives is a pacifist in a "cold turkey" way, or a choice on your part? i think it makes an interesting dichotomy, christ the gunman and satan the physician
I've gone my entire life without recommending Trigun to anybody, because I always felt it was too weird and ultra-violent and love-it-or-hate-it to actually ask people to watch it. Look at me now. Getting at least 3+ people into it. Boo boo the fool. Also I'm sorry that this response is so long skull emoji.
I'm ex-Catholic so you have asked the right question lol. Vash is very inspired by the Old Testament God. I have a strong mental image of him obsessing over the Noah's Arc story in his cute children's Bible. Sodom and Gomorrah is brought up again much later, in an extremely important way. Garden of Eden and Paradise, as the show does. The Plagues where every firstborn son dies. These is all imagery that Vash specifically evokes on purpose. Vash...uses the Bible to understand his own experiences and feelings and desires (that's the most neutral way to phrase it), but like a lot of people he uses the Bible/God partly as justification for his actions. God destroys cities for being sinful, and Vash is the closest thing to God this planet has, so he's entitled lol. God Complex McGee up in here.
And Vash's cult has no Jesus, because there is no forgiveness for humanity, and no way for them to be saved. Which is how you know that Vash's Jesus-ey actions as described in the story are very deceitful on a lot of different levels. Kind of like regular Vash lmfao - as I said earlier, he's VERY much also a messiah deconstruction. Vash is a pacifist partly because he needs it - he needs to be believed that people can be saved, that the world can be good, that nobody has to die, because otherwise the world is nothing but an endless parade of misery and death and his own suffering. It's about saving his own soul, and the memory of Rem.
For me, on a writing level: Cain and Abel, obviously. 'My brother's keeper'-ass mofo lmfao. It's more themes for me, though - redemption, salvation, forgiveness, original sin, sin in general, guilt, fate. Knives is pretty obsessed with all of these topics. I make fun of him for it. None of it's healthy. But Knives embodies a few other Christian ideals that I don't make fun of him for, such as the importance of good works and good actions, and dedicating his life towards helping others without the desire for a reward. There's also some subtle 'shepherd and his sheep' stuff going on later.
Re: the gunfights: can you IMAGINE Knives carrying a gun. He is WAY too proud of his own #biologicalsuperiority and #ultimatelifeform and #impenetrabledefense (literally Shadow AND Gaara-ass mofo) to rely on cheap human trinkets like guns lol.
The plot has more action than my usual (yay! - that was what I was working for lol), but it's based off the skeleton of the Stampede plot, which is genuinely a lot more space opera than Western and as such its action looks different. Turns out that when you remove the Gung Ho Guns from a story, there are a LOT LESS gunfights, lmfao (I don't know what kind of errands Vash sends the GHG out on, I am afraid to find out). So partly there's less gunfights because a) Stamp plots don't require too many gunfights, and b) without a Gunman (TM) there's no reason for the group to use guns to solve their problems if at all possible.
It's also just that, basically, Vash's plots are partly man vs self and partly man vs other. When a character is level 99, the tension of the fight scene isn't if they'll win the fight - it's if they'll win the fight under their self-imposed conditions. In Vash's case, the Q in every gunfight is 'can Vash win the fight and save people without compromising his principles?'. For Knives, he is so ridiculously OP that it's impossible to write a fight scene with genuine tension, and he doesn't care nearly as deeply about casualties. So the most engaging plotlines for Knives are entirely man vs self, which tends to shake out into a lot of trolley problems lol. That's the answer to your Q from a writing perspective.
So it's mostly a choice for plot/writing reasons. But YUP the dichotomy is SUPER JUICY, and the fun part of the story is reading the Ultimate Killing Machine be forced to do literally anything else than Ultimate Kill - to do the only thing he wasn't meant to do. Because doing what he was meant to do reduces him to a biblical figure instead of a person - it makes him just a devil, who's never exercised the free will God gave him, and as such can't be called sentient. It's not what Rem would want. And it's a very juicy juxtaposition to somebody who interprets his own meaning in life as a Christ figure as a divine compulsion to brutally murder orphan.
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Combining the idea that Teresa wants to work in the ICU and the idea that Mac has energon poisoning, I've been given the following:
Mac, sitting in the emergency room holding a bucket of her own glowing vomit and looking like death warmed over: huh, that's new
Teresa: IT CERTAINLY FUCKING IS
Wig you have given me a wonderful idea for a drabble, please enjoy:
Teresa had bounced between multiple different hospitals in her time working as a travel nurse. She knows the ins and outs, the dangers of the profession, and what the various codes mean. Code blue is cardiac arrest, code red is a fire, code pink is someone trying to kidnap a kid, code aqua is part of the building is flooding, code white is get security to me now, code silver is someone's grandpa wandered off again, and so on. Those were the most common she heard on her usual shifts and she'd called a couple of them herself.
However, as she bounced between her two ICU patients, thinking about if she should text Emily about bringing home dinner, she freezes in place as the overhead intercom crackles to life.
"Code orange in emergency department, code orange in emergency department. Stay clear of area."
"What the fuck?" she mutters. The emergency department was a meager floor below them.
One of the nursing students with them on shift gives her a confused look. "What's code orange for?"
"Hazardous materials that aren't biohazardous. Usually radiation or chemical spills," she says, stepping behind the counter of the nurses station.
The phone rang and Teresa nearly jumped out of her skin. The charge nurse answers it and Teresa takes a few deep calming breaths. She tries to remind herself that it probably wasn't that bad. Someone probably cracked the container of one of the xray machines or spilled cleaning chemicals.
"Teresa?" She turns at the sound of her name. The charge nurse had one hand over the receiver of the phone. "You have radiation and hazardous material safety training right?"
Her stomach twists as she sighs, "Yeah."
Teresa had worked in her far share of various wards and units while traveling. She had oncological experience handling both chemotherapy patients and radiation patients. Whatever was happening must have been a mix as she had been told to gown, double glove, put on a respirator and face shield, and a lead vest with an EPD. She was pulling her disposable shoe covers on when the elevator dings.
Teresa was already in the patient's designated room. It was at the very end of the unit and had no one in the neighboring rooms to reduce the chances of cross contamination. She's not sure what she's expecting to be wheeled in. She had seen gruesome sights in her career. Everything from fourth degree burns to necrotic limbs to chemical burns down to the bone. She always expects the worst and hopes for the best.
The bed is wheeled into the room and Teresa freezes in shock.
Her patient is a young woman, looking small against the stark white sheets, still wearing street clothes, and clutching a bucket in her lap. Her eyes are glossy and something bright blue is dribbling from the side of her mouth.
Transport gets the bed into place and Teresa steps into the hall to take report. The patient, Mackenzie Adam, came into the emergency department complaining of gastrointestinal distress, high fever, trouble focusing, and a migraine. She then proceeded to vomit into a bucket, the contents of which were described as "unnaturally blue" and set off the radiation warning system. Vitals had been taken, blood type and allergies unknown, and she scored an eleven on the Glasgow Coma Scale.
"Great," Teresa says, clapping her hands together.
"We're trying to pull doctors to come and see her right now, it's just, we don't know what's wrong so we don't know who to send," the nurse says.
"It's fine. I'll take vitals and see what her complaints are," Teresa says.
She steps back into the room and smiles wide enough that it translates to her eyes. "Hi Mackenzie, can you tell me where you are right now?"
Mackenzie blinks slowly before mumbling, "Hospital."
Teresa gently places a monitor onto one of her fingers. She glances into the bucket and bites back a wince at the glowing contents. "Wonderful. Do you know which hospital?"
"Mercy," she mumbles.
"Correct," Teresa says. Slowly increasing that GCS was always good. She taps at her patient monitor, bringing it to life, and begins reading her vitals. Then she does a double take and reads them again. Just to be sure, she fishes a thermometer out of her pocket and swipes it across Mackenzie's forehead.
"What's wrong?" the woman asks her.
Teresa hesitates before answering, "Well, your vitals are a bit concerning. Your heartrate is a little high, as is your blood pressure, but still within range. And your oxygen saturation is phenomenal. But your temperature is very high and we need to bring it down."
Teresa had seen high temperatures before. She had encountered her fair share of hyperpyrexia patients and coaxed their 106 degree fevers down within normal range. She had seen patients hit 108 and watched their bodies give out.
The temperature on the monitor and her own thermometer read 125 degrees Fahrenheit. By all modern medical logic, Teresa should be standing next to a corpse, not someone who looked like she was suffering through the worst hangover of her life.
"Oh. I do feel kinda warm," Mackenzie says. She begins to shift around, pulling at her coat, and Teresa breaks out of her daze to help her.
With her arms free, she should start an IV line on her, start getting fluids in at the very least, and pull blood samples. But that grinds to a halt when she looks down at her patient's arms.
"Do you know what's wrong with me?" Mackenzie asks her. Her heartrate has increased.
Teresa snaps her eyes back. Normally, this was the point when she should be forcing a reassuring smile onto her face and saying she'd get the doctor. But there was no doctor right now.
"I am not a doctor, so I cannot give you an official diagnosis," Teresa begins. "But I can point out abnormalities."
She walks over to the light switch and flicks it off. The room is illuminated only by the meager light from the hallway, the dying sun outside, and a third source. She walks back to the bedside and gently grabs one of Mackenzie's wrists, turning her arm over to expose the underside of her forearm.
"See how it looks like your veins are glowing?" she asks.
Mackenzie nods and in the low light Teresa sees that it's not just her veins. The sclera of her eyes were tinted the same luminescent blue.
"They're not supposed to fucking do that," Teresa says.
"Oh," Mackenzie replies and Teresa has to bite back a nervous laugh. The whole situation felt so surreal, so fake, so inane. She wondered if she was going to wake up to this all being some wild dream.
As she snaps the light back on, she hears Mackenzie mumble, "I don't feel good." It's the only warning she gets before the woman goes lax and the monitor screams as she flatlines. Teresa curses to herself before calling a code blue.
Twenty-eight minutes of chest compressions and an ungodly amount of epinephrine later, Mackenzie is sitting up in her bed, asking for some water, surrounded by confused neurologists, cardiologists, hematologists, and toxicologists.
Teresa has retreated to the clean stock room to take a moment to compose herself by sitting on a box of clean linens and whispering, "What the actual fuck."
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