Rise Up, Oh Heart, For There is Another Battle to Win

Feb 20

packetofcrackers:

taiey:

sarah531:

I just realised where Kylo got his name from:

Ky = sKYwalker

Lo = soLO

Ren = literally just his birth name with an R


which means that when he was choosing his super scary Dark Lord name, he just mashed up the surnames of the most positive figures in his life. poor sod can’t even evil right

literally a ‘what is your star wars name’ meme

2nd two letters of your mother’s last name
Last two letters of your father’s last name

1st three letters of your name but with an R

(via princehal9000)

[video]

Feb 19

[video]

thesecondsealwrites:

chronicpainhawke:

ok but have you considered iron bull rounding a corner and throwing a snowball thinkin it’s like dorian or the inquisitor or krem he’s gonna hit but he hits vivienne in the face instead
his high pitched scream can be heard for miles

“Why’s the Iron Bull running?”

“I don’t know, your worship. But if you ever see Bull running away from something, it’s best to just fall in beside him and run in the same direction.”

(via skymurdock)

warden-alistair:

if you ever feel like you’re doing badly at dragon age the first time I ever played I gave morrigan two swords and alistair just had a shield

Currently doing my very first playthrough (my roommate @lathori just got Inquisition on her new PS4) and the Inquisition hasn’t even moved to Skyhold yet, and somehow I have been attacked by an inordinate number of bears. I’m not kidding, these bears did a better job of annihilating my party than any demon we’ve faced, I got down to a sole survivor twice in two minutes of the same attack. Almost every time I leave Haven this happens. Not one bear, not two bears, but SEVEN BEARS all told, I swear to god I’m more paranoid about these fucking bears than anything else, it’s a goddamn relief when I see a rift instead.

(Source: ocularum, via skymurdock)

Feb 18

geeky-jez:

notthatkindofwolf:

grandenchanterfiona:

beautifultoastdream:

siawrites:

lokiloo:

grandenchanterfiona:

fuck-arl-eamon:

grandenchanterfiona:

Speaking of Shakespeare:

So, Shakespeare’s impact on modern culture is felt by basically everyone. 

Even if you’ve never seen ‘Romeo And Juliet’ performed, you’ve probably seen a tv episode using it’s general plot. 

Or seen West Side Story. 

So, how does that work for Thedas, where, as far as we know, Shakespeare doesn’t exist? 

Does he exist and we’ve just not heard of him? 

Or are his works just…not there?

Maybe he has a Thedosian equivalent? I wouldn’t really think that Shakespeare himself would be included in Thedas, but it wouldn’t be a stretch to think that there’s probably a really popular playwright somewhere around. Or maybe even…a popular author…who publishes several books…that are well known in many countries…oh my god.

HOLY SHIT.

Nah, because Shakespeare was a bit if a hack who wrote for money, his works were basically just dick jokes…that even royalty loved…whose works were given too much importance…After the fact….oh no

1000 years later:  “There is no way the Viscount of Kirkwall could have written the Tale of The Champion and The Tale of The Inquisition and everything else that’s been attributed to him as well as fought alongside all those people!  One person is not that talented!  Not to mention, where would he find the time?  And that crossbow?  Such technology was clearly not possible in 9:30 to 9:50 Dragon.  Simply preposterous!”

An excerpt from The Tethras Cipher, by Valmont Sinthorpe (Lowis & Blackmont, Year 35 Empire Age):

… which brings us at last to the body of evidence which is often overlooked by critics of this theory. I speak, of course, of the works themselves.

Consider the Tethras heroes. A ragged, worn-out guardsman. A romantic, valiant lady knight. A humorous, unsuitable rogue raised to Champion. And, perhaps most notorious of all, the Herald of Andraste–depicted by Tethras not as a religious reformer or a controversial political figure, but as a confused elf who was in the wrong place at the wrong time and once put a dead body in a box on trial.

What do these characters have in common? Little to nothing. If they were indeed the product of one author, as the Tethras purists insist, then Tethras himself would have evidenced a precocity and life-experience far removed from the biography we have already examined. It strains credulity to believe that the filthy, hard-bitten world of Donnan Brenkovic could have come from the imagination of a Merchant’s Guild princeling, or that the undying passion of Swords and Shields (recently voted the Dragon Age’s most influential work of literature by the prestigious Chanter University staff) was produced by a man who, according to contemporary accounts, considered phallic objects the height of humor.

However, the texts themselves do betray one unifying principle: the fallibility of authority. It is here that the true nature of the so-called “Tethras canon” becomes apparent.

Tethras was, no doubt, an author. As his best-authenticated work, The Tale of the Champion was very likely a product of his pen, and his presence in Kirkwall from 9:31-9:37 Dragon is attested by Merchant’s Guilt records. But his other works betray the stamp of different personalities, all united under the Tethras name by a single goal: to subvert the prevailing social order and undermine the existing political structure via exquisitely-calculated metaphorical deconstruction.

It is a fact that there was, indeed, at least one other rising author in Kirkwall during the crucial period. Someone whose works must have been immensely popular, judging by the number of fragments which have been found (see J. Lowry Hammertong, Cri de Coeur: A Philological Examination of Kirkwall Manuscript B, University of Orzammar Press, 27 Empire), and who abruptly vanishes from the historical record after 9:37 Dragon. Is the so-called “Mage for Justice” truly the voice of Varric Tethras? Or was he one of many? These are questions the academic establishment refuses to answer …

This is beautiful.

I am so glad that I have seen with my own eyes, a parody of anti-stratfordians with Varric Tethras as Shakespeare. 

@mythalll

*SLAMS REBLOG*

I get to enjoy my love of Shakespeare AND my obsession with Dragon Age?! I feel like this post was made for me. 

(via skymurdock)

slackeremeritus:

glumshoe:

bigwordsandsharpedges:

keyhollow:

glumshoe:

When my godsister and I were kids, her parents got this wolf-shaped cookie jar that howled whenever the lid was opened to prevent her sneaking her hand in and stealing cookies.

I couldn’t wrap my head around why they got that cookie jar in the first place. Sneaking just wasn’t her style. It was my style - I’d wait for the perfect opportunity to strike, create a diversion, plot three excuses in case I got caught, and attempt to calculate the maximum number of cookies I could steal at one time without rousing suspicion and where I could store them safely until I was ready to eat them.

My godsister, on the other hand, was the sort to walk up to the cookie jar, shove her hand in, and stuff her face while staring at you defiantly, as if challenging you to stop her. What are you going to do? The cookies are already in her mouth. They’re hers now. She’s won.

I guess it’s no surprise that she became a pro kickboxer and Muay Thai champion.

Holy shit

how do you know the jar wasn’t meant to stop you instead of her?

‘Cause I never got caught.

Rogue approach vs. tank approach.

(via windbladess)

[video]

semiotickitten:
“ inquisitorhierarch:
“ betterbemeta:
“ volfish:
“ evnw:
“ railroadsoftware:
“ handsomejackass:
“ horse people are weird
”
what does this mean
”
horses can see demons
”
@betterbemeta are you able to translate this? Is it true horses...

semiotickitten:

inquisitorhierarch:

betterbemeta:

volfish:

evnw:

railroadsoftware:

handsomejackass:

horse people are weird

what does this mean

horses can see demons

@betterbemeta are you able to translate this? Is it true horses can see netherbeings?? Will we ever know the extent of their powers???

I think I have reblogged this before but I’ll answer it again bc its a fascinating answer I feel and i was more funny than informational last time.

The truth is that horses see what they think are nether beings, I guess. They have a perfect storm of sensory perception that, useful for prey beings, marks false positives on mortal danger all the time. Which is advantageous to a flight-based prey species: running from danger when you’re super fast is much ‘cheaper’ than fighting, so you waste almost nothing from running from a threat that’s not there. Versus, you blow everything if you don’t see a threat that is there.

Horses also have their eyes positioned on the sides of their heads, which gives them an incredible range of peripheral vision almost around their entire body with only a few blind spots you can sneak up on them in. But this comes at the cost of binocular vision; they can only judge distance for things straight ahead of them. Super useful for preventing predators sneaking up from the sides or behind, but useless for recognizing familiar shapes with the precision we can.

Basically we now have a walking couch with anxiety its going to get attacked at any second, that can see almost everything, but mostly only out of the corner of its eye. It has a few blind spots and anything that suddenly appears out of them is terrifying to it. Combine that with that it actually has far superior low-light vision than us, and that its ears can swivel in any directions like radar dishes, and you’ve basically given a nervous wreck a highly accurate but imprecise danger-dar.

To be concise: all horses, even the most chill horses, on some level believe they are living in a survival horror.

This means that you could approach it in a flapping poncho and if it can’t recognize your shape as human, they mistake you for SATAN… or you could pass this one broken down tractor you’ve passed 100 times on a trail ride, but today is the day it will ATTACK… or your horse could feel a horsefly bite from its blind spot and MAMA, I’VE BEEN HIT!!!… or you could both approach a fallen log in the woods but in the low light your horse is going to see the tree rings as THE EYE OF MORDOR.

However, they actually have kind of a cool compensation for this– they are social animals, and instinctively look towards leadership. In the wild or out at pasture, this is their most willful, pushy, decisive leader horse who decides where to go and where it’s safe. But humans often take this role both as riders and on the ground. They are always watching and feeling for human reactions to things. This is why moving in a calm, decisive way and always giving clear commands is key to working with this kind of animal. Confusing commands, screaming, panic, visible distress, and chaos will signal to a horse that you, brave leader are freaked out… so it should freak out too!

On one hand, you’ll get horses that will decide that they are the leader and you are not, so getting them to listen to you can be tough– requiring patience and skill more than force. On the other hand, a good enough rider and a well-trained horse (or a horse with specialized training) can venture into dangerous situations, loud and scary environments, etc. calmly and confidently.

The joke in OP though is that many horses that are bred to be very fast, like thoroughbreds, are also bred and encouraged to be high-energy and highstrung. Making them more anxious and prone to seeing those ‘demons.’ All horses in a sense are going to be your anxious friend, but racehorses and polo ponies and other sport horses can sometimes be your anxious friend that thinks they live in Silent Hill.

Reblogging some horse knowledge for certain people who write fantasy books but know nothing about horses *cough cough*

THIS IS BOTH HILARIOUS AND TRUE.

(via primarybufferpanel)

How to boarding school au

buckyballbearing:

draconiclullaby:

buckyballbearing:

draconiclullaby:

buckyballbearing:

Oh hey bc I’m sick and I don’t see this around a lot, let’s talk boarding school AUs! Because yeah, college AUs are good start, but there’s a few fun details that make boarding schools stand out:

  • First of all, everything you read in fanfic about situational gayness is true. I’m serious. When you’re set up to live, work, and play at school (and usually with strict controls preventing you from leaving campus) you start to seek affection wherever you can find it. One of the reasons I didn’t realize I was bi for years was how completely normal it was for people to cuddle regardless of gender or sexual preference. Packs of completely straight-identified dudes and even dating het couples would curl up and do homework on the regular. Imagine how confusing it would be for your OTP if they first met bc they were cuddling in a puppy pile along with tons of other potential partners.
  • Not all boarding schools are for the rich. Some are reform schools. Some are organized around a specific topic, like science or the arts. Some exist simply because students are spread out too far to commute back and forth. My school was sponsored by the government, so the most I had to do was pay for supplies and a train ticket up there once a quarter. (Yes, just like Hogwarts.)
  • The true enemy is the staff. Not that bullying doesn’t still exist, but when you live together 24/7, a funny thing happens. You might not always like each other, but you quickly start to realize you have a common enemy - the adults in charge of this zoo. And when you have a common enemy, it’s easier to get along. 99% of our teenage spite was redirected from each other to the security guards who prevented us from innocently taking each other’s clothes off in the bushes, which meant we didn’t beat the shit out of each other so much.
  • Related, everyone becomes an exhibitionist. Similar to the confusing lines around being gay/straight/whatever, when you’re trapped at school you have no place to go to get it on. So when people do become involved, they either have to find a super secret hiding place (like a jammed elevator) or get used to banging next to three or four other couples at the one makeout spot with low visibility. (Which may change weekly, given the aforementioned staff. I remember one time watching a lazy security guard mount a giant headlight assembly on a pole, stand back, and sweep the high beam back and forth over a hillside. Half-naked couples scattered like rabbits.)
  • You will probably almost kill yourselves once a semester, but it will be okay as long as no one notices. Unless you’re at one of the mythical rich kid schools where idk, everyone has their own helicopter, you pretty much have to invent your own fun. My school had restrictions around tvs and video games because blah blah “being healthy”, so we also spent a lot of time outside trying to figure out what the fuck to do. Protip to staff: this is actually way less healthy than video games and computers, because bored teens can and will fucking destroy themselves by accident. Example: one trend we came up with was human versions of all board games, not just chess. This sounds kind of adorable and innocent, until the incident where we attempted Human Jenga. Protip to everyone else: DO NOT PLAY HUMAN JENGA. Even if you’re being very careful about stacking people, eventually the sheer weight of the stack will start to smother the people down below even if you thought their chest was clear. And if they can’t breathe, they can’t let you know they are dying. We almost lost the bottom row over that. (No staff ever found out.)
  • Prank wars are real, and they get out of hand. Again, when well-meaning adults force you to make your own fun: fun is prone to escalate. Food fights become whole dorm events; nerds get revenge by fucking with goddamn everyone. One time some friends and I got access to a guy’s computer, put a back door in it, took control of his machine remotely and convinced him he’d created an emergent AI. Another time I got line of sight to a window in a rival dorm and took down their computer every time someone started a paper. In retrospect these are all extremely dick moves but uh I was not always aligned good in high school.

That’s all I can think of for now - go forward and sin with pride!

You learn how to sneak around really well…. 

Shit yeah that is also true

My roommate had a boyfriend who learned how to climb gutter pipes for illicit visits at night

Also we played Assassins a lot on campus which required both stealth and intense paranoid

You were assigned a target name and snuck around school with a plastic knife at all times ready to stab them

Jeez! I learned how to be invisible and literally hide in front of the dorm counselors faces. It was so wild. One evening after lights-out I snuck down to a friends room and was literally 3 feet away from the door when the dorm counselor came in. All they needed to do was glance to the right. 

Another time I was sneaking to my girlfriend’s room after lights-out. My dorm counselor (different one from previous story) was still awake and her office was still wide open. She was sitting in a chair watching TV. Did I mention the chair was facing the door? So, I recalled all the stories about no sudden movements blend into the background etc. I creeped by pretty as you please without her even noticing that I was there. 

 A friend of mine became the equivalent of a mob boss. She had people who owed/did favors for her and she monopolized the ramen and soda industry within the dorms. 

Also, one never stops jumping at the sound of jingling keys…..

THE KEYS ARE TOO REAL

(via cthulhu-with-a-fez)