#incredibly skilled creators can be found in the strangest places

[leviathiane]

#2 for the fandom end of year ask?

2. Favorite fic of the year

DOES THIS MEAN MINE OR SOMEONE ELSES AHHH

I'll just answer both bc I'm that bitch:

mine was said unposted undertale fic sdajkbhjvgdhbask if posted, I would said probably... either deeply whelved, or dead man's handle. Leaning more towards Dead man's handle, it unexpectedly gripped me.

IN TERMS OF OTHER PEOPLES FICS BOY DO I GOT A LIST

no shame. none at all. fuck it. yall deserve to have good reads and the authors deserve to not have their works hidden away in shame and embarrassment. I also will NOT be choosing one fic, bc i am not that bitch. yall getting SEVERAL.

DSMP

Swallow the Tide(pods) - merfic and kidfic. dsmp has a lot of those. Also very feral, and non-sexual size difference. There is eating of humans. There is also a mafia au element. It is mostly intense brooding instinct.

Evermore - A royal hanahaki au. It ends badly. That is honestly enough, in my book. It is long, it is painful, and there is no recourse. I grieved over this one.

The Secret of Being Colorful - Another wingfic, with a ton of brooding instinct. Forced adoption and consent issues in a very, very non-sexual way. Think of it as the "feral kitten grabbed hissing from the rainy alley dumpster" type fic.

POKEMON (specifically P:LA)

Alpha - Ingo's learning curve to being trapped in the past, largely his duties with Sneasler and how to keep the Highlands safe.

We Will Always Have Each Other - Takes place directly after Avalugg, as Hisui becomes distorted entirely. Ingo was taken prisoner by Kamado for being a risk as Akari was, only for him to vanish back into the future.

Next Stop, the Place Once Called Home - Emmet doesn't believe Ingo is dead, but he had to move on. Until a strange sneasel is spotted deep in the subways abandoned tunnels.

UNDERTALE (cmon. u got past the dsmp, hang on just a bit longer)

Ain't This the Life - The entire. fucking. series. every single part bangs. fucks, even. Severely. I can't even explain it. its a clusterfuck and its wild and its like 400k collectively and i reread it maybe 7 times in two months. I sent so many snippets of it to my boggers that they now recognize the style of the author despite having never read this fic themselves or even been interested in it. The writing is absurdly good. The dialogue is charged, funny, and tense. The sex is the least vanilla shit ever somehow even if it was missionary. There is so goddamn much going on. The stakes are so high and also so small sometimes. If I ever met this author I think I would burst into tears. Yes its sanscest. It's also one of the most intricate pieces of borderline straight up PWP ive ever fucking read. I can't even be ashamed of it. It's that good.

TMA

Take a Sad Song and Make it Better - This is in fact an ABO fic series, and also a poly!archivist team fic, focusing on subvocals role in relationships and society/culture. It’s also an excuse for me to read about everyone wanting Martin. 

Underdog - Another ABo fic series, this time involving a hysterical pregnancy and more brooding instinct social catastrophe ❤️ i have a type

#depths' ask #fic rec #i really went buck wild this year huh #this ask is vry exposing jdsakhjgvdahsbk #ive done my best not to really let dsmp or undertale bleed into my public life #bc like. its seen kind of lowly? esp if youre not like. 13 #but no im 22. i have nuance. there is beauty and complexity everywhere you look if you look hard enough. #incredibly skilled creators can be found in the strangest places #nilchance in undertale. wolfythewitch and SADist in dsmp. #yeah the fandoms and content may be considered cringey. a lot of it definitely is #i never even watched any dsmp actual content? just read fics and looked at fanart #but goddamn the sheer amount of it all? anything with such high density is bound to make some diamonds #and by god did i find quite a few diamonds #reminder that i build a literal personal library of all fandoms im in sdjkahjbahsd i have pages and pages of ao3 links #and yet i narrowed like 300 fics down to 3 #same with undertale and ive got WAY more than 300 #anyway sahdjbhdas ive been embarrassing enough i think bye bye #edited to add TMA bc i CANT believe i forgot tma oh my fucking god

[maxwell-grant]

On Lord Hawthorne

A lot of what makes Lavender Jack special to me is the way it’s so masterfully able to create engaging, modern material out of it’s influences, and it’s creation of a genuinely timeless pulp icon that I think should serve as the ideal baseline for any and all creators who want to create stories based on pulp characters, old and new alike, in the future. 

As I make my way through Season 2 and eagerly await Season 3 I’d like to take the time to talk a little about the often overlooked half of the villain duo of Season 1, Lord Hawthorne, and what I think is interesting about him. Out of the many ways pulp heroes have been reimagined into villains over the decades, Lord Hawthorne stands out to me as easily one of the best ones, as a thoughtful take on the Tarzan character.

Spoilers before the cut

The first thing everyone immediately picks about Lord Hawthorne is that he’s Tarzan, with hardly any ifs or buts about it. He’s Tarzan, and we quickly learn that he’s the villain, part of a villain duo with Lady Hawthorne, the real mastermind and kingpin in pearls behind the story’s events. Having Tarzan as the villain n a story that draws from pulp and Edwardian fiction is already an interesting start, as three of the most popular molds from which are pulp heroes are based on, three of the most popular characters as icons, are Tarzan, the Scarlet Pimpernel, and Sherlock Holmes, all three of which exist in some capacity in the world of Lavender Jack. The Gentleman Villain, The Great Detective, and The Wild Man.

Lavender Jack, as I’ve mentioned, is based on the Pimpernel, as well as other figures such as Spring-Heeled Jack and Bertie Wooster. Jack draws from icons that largely predate the pulp heroes because, in Schkade’s own reasoning, if you’re going to try and create an authentic pulp hero, it only makes sense to use as a base the characters that largely inspired them, and clearly that worked out very well. Jack is a Pimpernel remodeled and recontextualized into modern sensibilities, into an era of superheroes and webcomics.

In the Great Detective’s case, we have the figure of Madame Theresa Ferrier, who is called into the story by the Mayor to try and solve the mystery of Lavender Jack’s identity. Schkade describes Ferrier as a character that pulls from elements of detectives like Hercule Poirot and C.Auguste Dupin as well as Sherlock Holmes, in particular Jeremy Brett’s later year performances. As he describes:

In the series’ final years, Brett was getting older, sicker, hindered by bipolar medications that sapped his energy and caused him to gain weight, and he used it. His Holmes became a fading, melancholic shadow of his younger self, but with the spark of his brilliance showing through when it counted. I always found that so compelling

Ferrier is repeteadly described in-universe as “The Great Detective”, and she is both the oldest as well as the most brilliant character in the comic. Despite her age, despite her physical complications, and the tragedy that surrounds her love life, she is nonetheless incredibly skilled, strong and resourceful, able to unmask Jack and survive a confrontation with Lord Hawthorne and even nearly beat him. Ferrier draws from the Great Detectives of old, but this is a character that could never be mistaken for any of them. She’s not specifically based on any of them because, as Schkade puts it: “I wanted her to be someone I’d never get to draw in a leading role in most of my work-for-hire jobs”. 

Her role in the comic ends up being one of mentorship to Jack, and despite her age being emphasized as well as the idea of her belonging to an older generation of great heroes that now gives way to the younger and hot-blooded Jack as well as Ferrier’s new partner in Honoria Crabb, Ferrier is very much another great example of where the old meets the new in Lavender Jack. Pulling from the great old archetypes but very much recognizable as her own thing. 

Thing is, when it comes to Lord Hawthorne, we don’t really get that, because Lord Hawthorne isn’t really combining the idea of Tarzan with a splash of something new and outstanding and modern. He really is just Tarzan, and not a terribly layered character at that, for much of the story he’s largely just a voiceless bulldozer who exists to do the dirty work of Lady Hawthorne no matter how dirty. This isn’t at all a criticism, because I think Hawthorne being just Tarzan, with little to no bells and whistles and twists on it, is central to what makes him work not just as a great physical threat Jack must overcome (in a similar way to Bane as both a monstrous powerhouse and also having a strong connection to a powerful pulp hero), but also someone whose tragedy comes to light as we finally learn more about him. The fact that he is monosyllabic and largely devoid of any personal interests or life outside of being muscle for Lady Hawthorne is something deliberate, as outlined in a speech given by another character in Chapter 39

Her world's been changing for years, now. She's taking her place in a wider game. A more nuanced game. And you're still...Why, you're only good for one thing, aren't you? Well, maybe two, you old hound, you.

I know why you spend vast stretches of the year off in that jungle. It's not for sport, it's not to keep your edge...it's because when there's no need to fight, no struggle to win, no enemy...there's just...you.

And you know there's not really anything to you, underneath all those scars and muscles.

No dreams, no warmth, no depth. Nothing to love.

So you stay away...and that way, you can come when she calls you. You can sweep back to Gallery and show up all filthy and draw her into your powerful, savage embrace....and maintain your novelty.

All of this so you'll never have to endure a silent sunday afternoon where there's nothing to do, any no one to kill, and your lady simply...doesn't...need you.

You do know this word, don't you, Hawthorne, old fellow? "Novelty?"

And how does he respond?

Not with a denial, but an affirmation that this is ultimately all personhood amounts to, in his worldview. Just one more thing to be conquered and then used as a club to batter others with. 

The very act of a character questioning their own worth and depth of personality usually tends to be a telling sign that they, in fact, have those things even if they are out of touch with them, but Hawthorne doesn’t particularly rebuff anything Van Lund’s saying. He just reaffirms his title as Lord while threatening him with violence, because violence is all he knows. 

As we later learn, Lord Hawthorne isn’t, in fact, the real Lord Hawthorne, but instead he and his wife usurped the title from the real one as they escaped from the jungle, where he was only known as “the wild man”. A man who’s been forced his entire life to live in a kill-or-be-killed world, to live as an animal in constant conflict with humans, was then captured and then brutally tortured every day for over a month, and then found for the first time someone who treated him with something resembling affection, someone who ultimately turned him into a tool for her evil designs, and he readily accepts this because he has no life, no identity, outside of her. He doesn’t even know his own name.

In fact, for all we know, he might as well be John Clayton himself, except he was born in a world where being Tarzan is not the greatest thing ever and there was no Jane or ape mother to guide his malleable heart into something resembling good, and there was only Sarah to mold him into an instrument of murder at his lowest point.

I argue that Tarzan is a character that’s all about freedom and vitality, as a heroic take on an archetype that’s long been the missing link between superheroes and monsters, where the dual nature of mankind between person and ape acts not as a disorder or source of conflict but instead as the ultimate power fantasy in a character who gets the best of both with none of the downsides. Lord Hawthorne isn’t necessarily a return to form, because there is no dual nature to him. There is no gentleman, no Lord Greystoke descendant of nobility, romantic hero and great adventurer and leader of men and whatnot. There is only the ape, and what little façade has been grafted onto him by his master so he can pass off as a person, only long enough until he takes his shirt off and starts murdering people for her. While we get long extended close-ups of the icy cruelty in Lady Hawthorne’s eyes, there is none for Lord Hawthorne, because he is not cruel, he is an animal. He’s not a fighter, he’s a survivor. He lives to kill and serve the person who tells him who or what to kill. 

Lord Hawthorne is what happens when you strip the Tarzan legend of the romanticism of fiction and you look at it for what it would likely result in: the tragic story of a child forced to grow in the jungle, where the concept of personhood and human decency are utterly meaningless and there is only survival, where his existence is at odds with the worlds of man and animal alike, and what happens when that sort of being receives a first contact with something resembling decency and love. Even if said first contact wasn’t with someone as evil as Lady Hawthorne, there was little chance Lord Hawthorne’s life was ever going to be anything other than just an extension of his life in the jungle, or end in anything other than tragedy, and ultimately even the characters start to pity the wild man.

Jack: All that power and stamina and fighting acumen, but yet all you seem to get to use it for is...this. Another laborious climb to another locked-room murder.

Ferrier: You've long passed the point where human lives hold any meaning. You are detached from our species, a...a stranger, loose among us. I thought the sight of you would stir distain in me, or even fear...but as I look at you now...I feel for you only the strangest sort of pity.

What I like most about Lord Hawthorne as a take on Tarzan is that, far too often, we see intended “deconstructions” or reinterpretations of the classic pulp heroes, or even superheroes, that largely just make them villainous by extrapolating the worst possible interpretations of the character’s traits or real-life circumstances around them to villainize them, or outright invent faults and problems that weren’t there in the source material, usually to put one character over the other. The entirety of League of Extraordinary Gentlemen is built on this, as is a lot of Superman parodies built on getting the most graphically shocking results possible. 

I'll admit it’s somewhat hypocritical of me to criticize this entirely, because it’s an impulse that I sadly admit I myself have fallen into in my own writings on characters not my own, as anyone who’s ever talked with me about Doc Savage, a character I do not like and cannot bring myself to like, can testify. I get why this happens, even if I understand why it’s shitty. Ultimately, the best “deconstructions” or reinterpretations will always come from people who are best familiar with the material they are using and know exactly the best ways to twist it, like with Mark Waid’s Irredeemable, an Evil Superman comic written by a huge Superman fan who knows exactly the absolute worst ways a Superman character can go sour, and was leagues ahead of works like The Boys and Brightburn who largely just take the “easy” pot shots. 

With Lord Hawthorne, we get a character who’s an evil take on Tarzan, but whose evilness isn’t made from exaggerating or adding faults to the source material character, which could very easily be done. I never got the sense that the author hates Tarzan and wants everyone to hate Tarzan and is willingly to sacrifice immersion just to get across how much he hates Tarzan (again, something LOEG does way too often), in fact it really doesn’t matter how the author feels about Tarzan, because those feelings are irrevelant to what’s on the page. 

Instead, Lord Hawthorne is an evil take on Tarzan whose characterization is largely based on just looking at the source material, the character’s origins, and extrapolating the circumstances in which that could go sour. What would a “wild man” forced to grow up and fight for survival every day in the jungle look like, what would that person look like when making it’s first contact with human affection, how could that person be twisted and manipulated into becoming a villain, what’s even left to that person outside of violent action scenes. How little it would take to twist a childhood hero into a brute that murders old women in their hospital beds, just by tweaking a few details about the context surrounding him. 

He is not a caricature of Tarzan, he’s not a parody, he is just Tarzan, but no longer the power fantasy. No longer the center of fantastical adventures. No longer getting the best of both worlds, but instead having to contend with the worst of them. Ultimately only finding some dignity in death, with his nemesis expressing hope that, maybe somewhere else, he’s going to have better luck than what this world afforded him.

#lavender jack #pulp heroes #comics tag #lord hawthorne #dan schkade #far from my favorite thing about this comic but #that in itself should be a testament to just how amazing lavender jack is #please go read it

[inquisitorananilavellan]

Journal Entry #1: The Beginning

It seems I lost my old journal in the fade, so Cassandra gave me this new one. I would say that was kind of her, but I think she only did it because my constant pouting irritated her.

"You lost your journal in the fade??" You may ask, person who isn't supposed to be reading this? Well well, that's quite the story. Where to start...

I woke up in a dungeon. That's new, never happened before. Kind of exciting.

I was interrogated for something I had no knowledge of...

Well, maybe that isn't completely true. I have these... blurry memories. I awoke in the fade, with what appeared to be giant spiders chasing me. Lovely, right?

I, of course, ran as fast as I could away from those monstrosities and towards this... light. The closer I got, the more I could make out what it was. A woman.

I reached out to her, but... that's all I can remember. I woke up bound in a cold dungeon after that. I was made aware that the conclave had been destroyed, and everyone in it- everyone but me- was dead. The sky had been torn open as a result, a thing they called the Breach. I was to be blamed, seeing as I was the only visible suspect. Oh, and did I mention I also now posses a glowing green mark on my hand that reacts to the Breach, as well as closes smaller rifts? No? Well, yes, that's a thing.

This is also where I met Cassandra, the human woman I mentioned earlier. The one who gave me this journal. She's a Seeker, a title which I had never heard of prior to her. I should make a note to ask her more about the Seeker order later...

Anyway, she did the interrogating, along with a redhead named Leliana. The Inquisition's Spymaster. She was much more level headed than Cassandra.

That mark I mentioned earlier, I was told that it was killing me. Which honestly wasn't surprising because it felt like it was killing me. I don't think have ever been in that much pain before... Whenever the Breach expanded, I could feel it. From my palm to my jaw bone, this... burning. Like my whole arm was melting, on fire... I've started to refer to it as a "flare".

I was told that my only chance may be attempting to close the Breach. I would've agreed anyway, I wasn't so eager to die, but when I looked around at all the chaos... everything on fire, demons everywhere, the sky literally falling down... I felt like I had to do something. I was in over my head, I knew that, but I also knew I had to stay and help. That's why I haven't run yet, even after being freed.

But we'll get to that later. First, let's continue before I get ahead of myself...

We left Haven, the place where I was being held. Our first stop being the forward camp, then the Breach.

I have never felt such fear before. The way to camp was littered with demons. Sure, I had seen such creatures before, even fought one or two, but the sheer number of them... I felt as if I was facing down an army, and I had barely even left the relative safety of Haven.

We managed to survive, thankfully. I kept my composure, and Cassandra turned out to be an incredibly skilled warrior. We got more help along the way, as our paths crossed with two others. Solas, a fellow elven apostate, and Varric, a dwarf with a crossbow named Bianca. Solas, as it turns out, was the one who kept The Mark from killing me. I'm not exactly sure how, but he did.

... It just occurred to me that I never thanked him. I was very overwhelmed at the time, but still... He deserves thanks. Another thing to remember for later.

I won't bore you with the rest of the details, so in short, we killed some more demons, The Mark had another flare, I met an ass named Chancellor Roderick, an important choice was left to my hands for some damn reason, and we saved some scouts. Normal day, really.

Well, almost normal. When we got closer to the temple... One thing that'll forever haunt my dreams are the bodies of those caught in the explosion. Faces melted, forever frozen in horror... The pain and fear they must've been in... I don't really want to write anymore on it, I think you get the picture. It was horrible.

When we finally made it to the Breach, something... strange happened. We heard disembodied voices, both unfamiliar and familiar. We found strange red lyrium, too. Something Varric seemed to recognize. And yet again, another thing to ask about later.

We got closer to the first rift that had spawned, right in the middle of the Temple of Sacred Ashes... Which, ironically, was now actual ashes.

As we did, a vision hit us all. Or, more like a memory. My memory... The Divine's? That... Thing's? I couldn't say. But we saw it, blurry as it was. It started with me, blindly barging into trouble as usual. Something, a great shadow with red eyes, and the Divine, restrained by red... energy, I suppose. She yelled to me, told me to run and get help, and the shadow ordered someone out of sight to kill me... and that was it.

It was the strangest feeling, watching something I should remember through what felt like somebody else's eyes. And I still couldn't actually remember a damn thing.

It was clear now I was there for whatever happened, but I didn't appear to be the guilty party anymore. That didn't stop Cassandra from going back into interrogation mode, but I could hardly blame her. I want answers, too.

Solas said something, but my mind was swirling too much to really pay attention. Something about... echos? "Echos of what happened here.", is how I believe he put it.

He then mentioned the rift had been closed, but not sealed. I could open it, then seal it, but in doing so it would attract demons. And that it did.

A pride demon, to be specific. I had never seen one until that moment. It was... terrifying, to say the least. The whole day was terrifying, honestly.

But we made it. We beat the demon, sealed the rift, and I, like a total badass, was knocked unconscious. At least I lived, I suppose.

When I awoke, I was back in Haven, a frightened servant there to greet me. I still can't tell if she was scared of me, or just scared in general... She fell to her knees, and begged my forgiveness for a fault she hadn't even committed. Or at least one I wasn't aware of. Honestly, I've never felt more confused in my life. I had barely been awake for a minute, and this is what I had to deal with.

She then called me, "my lord" which made everything worse. Nobody should be calling me that, much less bowing to me. It was... wrong. It made me feel wrong.

She then told me that I had been brought back to Haven, and that the Breach and my mark had stopped growing. I was safe, for the moment. And so was everyone else, though they thought I had saved them.

I had a part, true, but I wasn't their savior... Just a helper. I really couldn't have done it alone.

Regardless, Cassandra needed to see me in the Chantry as soon as I woke, so when the girl ran off that's where I headed.

The walk there was the most uncomfortable and surreal thing I have ever been through. People stood, waiting for me. Kneeling for me. Saluting me. Me. A Dalish mage. I still can't quite get my head around that.

Long, boring details cut short, Chancellor Roderick thought I was still guilty, Cassandra and pretty much everyone else in Haven had changed their minds. Cassandra even went as far as calling me the Makers "chosen one" for the mark on my hand. I was quick to point out how ridiculous that thought was. A human God choosing an elf as his chosen? An elf who didn't even believe in him? How could that ever be? And why would anyone ever believe that?

The Chancellor objected, but Cassandra silenced him by pulling out a writ from the Divine. If I hadn't respected her before this moment, I do now. The way she practically backed the Chancellor into a corner was quite a site. I was kinda in awe of her, not going to lie.

In that moment, she declared the Inquisition reborn. The Inquisition... "People who banded together to restore order in a world gone mad."

I will admit, when Cassandra and Leliana asked me to join I was tempted to leave. Not that I didn't want to help, but I just couldn't help but think of my clan, of Athine... I wanted to be there for them as the world crumbled, to protect them. I still do. But what kind of person would I be if I didn't stay? I'm needed here, this mark is needed. And... people believe in me, as strange as that sounds. What kind of person would I be if I turned my back on them?

And... I believe in the Inquisition, I truly do. It's rare to find people who genuinely want to help, to do good. Most people are power hungry, or just cruel. Or both. But the Inquisition... they don't seem to be like that. Not yet, anyway.

So, we got to work. Ravens sent, new armor made, even a ceremony with a giant crowd as we raised the Inquisition banners. Standing there, with all their eyes upon me... it probably should've been inspiring, and I guess in a way it was, but I'm just glad I didn't puke or faint or something like that. I've never done well with attention nor crowds.

But anyway... it's official. I'm now directly in the middle of this mess.

Creators preserve me.

#anani lavellan #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #lavellan #the inquisition #the inquisitor #anani lavellan's journal #inquisitor anani lavellan #anani's journal 1