Tag: Dragon Age 2

To the Bioware Fandom Community (and really all RPers)

imafrakkincylon:

I would politely like to remind you all that Lesbians exist. Bisexual women who primarily find women attractive over men, also exist. They exist, and they should be heard and recognized.

I have lurked around a lot and have seen a lot of this outcry for more m/m pairings and shipping ALL the m/m pairings and yay for m/m pairings. And that is just fine by me. Homosexual men also exist, and they have a right to exist.

Read More

Some good points. Luckily my corner of the tumblr DA fandom is better about loving all types of pairings than some other circles of the DA fandom.

Fic: Shattered

Here is a fic of what goes through Robin Hawke’s (same Hawke in my Lifeline fic) mind during “A New Path.” Isabela and Aveline are the unlucky two who get to go along on the field trip of doom.

Angst abounds.

“But…if things go wrong…if he possesses me, I need you to strike me down.”

“I’m sorry, what?” Robin asks. She can’t have heard Merrill right. She couldn’t just asked–

“If something goes wrong, you’ll have to kill me.”

Robin isn’t sure what hurts worse, hearing her lover ask her to end her life if she gets possessed or the way she says it as if it would be the easiest thing in the world. Robin crosses her arms so Merrill won’t see the way her hands have started trembling. She looks away for a moment and tries to will her throat to untighten.

How could she ask that? After seeing what happened to Robin when Leandra was killed. After sharing her bed for going on four years and knowing the dreams she still struggled with of losing her mother and Carver. After knowing the nightmares she had of things happening to Bethany in the Gallows. After all those nights of holding Robin when she sobbed…how could she ask this?

“So you’re…sure about risking becoming an abomination? Just for a chance to fix that spooky mirror of yours?” Robin’s voice is lower than usual from trying to keep the waver out. She wonders if Merrill notices.

“Ma vhenan, I have to do this. I owe it to my people to finish this.”

The determination is there, still. Robin looks away, clenching her jaw. She feels ill. But she was never very good at saying “no” to a pretty girl, much less to Merrill.

“You’re the only one I trust. Please, ma vhenan.”

That settles it. Robin, never much for prayer, sends a silent plea to Andraste that it won’t come to having Merrill’s blood on her hands.

“All right. I’ll go.”

———————-

On the path to the base of Sundermount, Robin walks several paces ahead, as usual, with Isabela at her side. But she still manages to hear Merrill conversing with Aveline. Merrill asks the guard captain to look for Hawke, and for Isabela. Robin has to suppress the sudden urge to run behind a rock and vomit. She hates this feeling. It’s too much like the way she felt years ago, running after blood trails in Lowtown looking for her mother.

She feels Isabela’s hand on her shoulder and she glances at her friend.

“You all right, Hawke? You look a bit green.” Isabela raises an eyebrow.

“I’m fine,” Robin replies, with a smile that falters just enough to make Isabela frown. “Just…if anything ever happens to me…keep an eye on Bethany, will you?”

Isabela frowns again and gives her a gentle shove. “Don’t talk like that. You’re Hawke. You fought the Arishok and all his guards. Nothing is going to happen to you.”

Robin manages a chuckle. “I didn’t do that alone, though.”

Isabela gives her another shove, and for just a moment, Robin doesn’t feel so scared.

————————

They reach the altar in the graveyard, and Merrill stops to pray. To the mother of the Creators, no less. Mythal, all mother. Robin’s facade cracks again.

“Would it help if I prayed, too?” she asks, hoping Aveline and Isabela will pass it off as cheek.

Merrill smiles, and Robin’s heart breaks a little more.

———————-

They reach the demon’s cave, but the demon isn’t there. Robin feels relieved. Until the Keeper shows up.

The Keeper let the demon possess her, so that it wouldn’t possesses Merrill. Robin can understand the desire to save Merrill. And she could almost kiss Marethari for it.

Until she asks Merrill to kill her, and Merrill refuses.

Robin wants to shake her, to ask her why, if she can’t bring herself to kill the Keeper when asked…then why in the name of the Maker and the Creators did she think Robin could kill her? She wants to scream and she wants to cry, but she’s a grown woman, and -damned- if she’ll let a demon see her cry.

They fight the demon. It calls up spirits of dead elves–the hunters killed by the varteral, Pol, others–and they call Merrill traitor, useless, a curse upon the clan. It makes Robin angry enough to shove aside her own feeling for a moment. Long enough to finish the fight.

And then Merrill does have to kill her Keeper. Out of the corner of her eye, Robin sees Aveline turn away when Merrill draws the knife.

Merrill is distraught, wishes she could wake up, and this all would just be a dream. Robin knows that feeling all too well. She doesn’t say a word, but she helps Merrill stand and leads them out of the cave.

—————-

The elves meet them, looking for the Keeper. More accusations against Merrill, and the word “monster.” Robin bristles. Merrill tells them the Keeper is dead and they blame her. Robin can’t stand it.

“Stand down, all of you.”

That’s clearly the worst thing Robin could have said.

—————

Robin feels even more ill when the fighting is done. The Dalish camp is littered with the bodies of Merrill’s people, the people she risked everything for. And all for what? There’s nothing left now. Except Merrill. Robin can’t help but be glad of that. Even if she’s afraid to look at her just yet.

She’s afraid she’ll break, or that Merrill will. If Merrill breaks, Robin will break. They’re both covered in blood, and Robin wonders if Merrill will ever forgive her for slaughtering her clan.

She wants a bath and enough alcohol to make things go black.

—————

“I thought I could help them. I wanted to save them. But they wouldn’t listen…”

Robin wraps her arms around Merrill, not knowing what else to do.

Merrill leans back against her. “I don’t know what to do now. You’re all I have left.”

“Stay with me,” Robin murmurs, nuzzling Merrill’s hair. “We’ll…muddle through somehow.” Merrill turns in her embrace and hides her face against Robin’s shoulder and cries. Robin strokes her hair and holds her close. Now they’re both broken, she thinks, but maybe the pieces will find a way of fitting back together better than they did before.

Fic: An Interlude at the Rose

This tiny fic grew out of the idea of a Hawke somewhere in Act 2 (prior to “All That Remains”) who has fallen for Isabela and feels the need to tell someone, but doesn’t see telling her companions as a good idea. As she sees it, Varric might write something and Isabela might see it; Merrill might slip up and say it; Anders is too busy; Fenris doesn’t seem the type to talk romance with; Sebastian would give her a sermon; Aveline does not need to know her love life, and neither does her mother; and she obviously can’t tell Isabela.

So she tells Serendipity. And I would say in this scenario, that would be start a shift where this Hawke starts seeing Serendipity more to talk with than for sex.

Anyway, on to the tiny fic.

————————————————

Serendipity ran her fingers through the dark hair of the woman sprawled across her. She’d have to tease Hawke later about how often she fell asleep almost immediately after sex lately. But if even half what the gossip-mill had to say about Hawke was true, she couldn’t blame her. Running all over Kirkwall slaying bandits and Coterie thugs. And there were rumours of dragon slaying, too. That would make anyone tired, if they managed to live through it.

Hawke was a better customer than most, anyway. Everyone in the Rose could attest to that from personal experience. Hawke wasn’t a skinflint, and she didn’t talk down to the prostitutes. She gave Sabina’s brat some coin once, which had managed to keep him relatively quiet for the rest of the day. Hawke also hauled that sleazy uncle of hers out of the Rose once when he was drunk and refused to believe Viveka was just a waitress. Hawke also seemed to manage a bath on a fairly regular basis, which was highly appreciated.

Lately, though, there had been something different about Hawke, as if her mind wasn’t always in the same room as her body. Serendipity wasn’t one to pry; if Hawke wanted to talk, she’d talk. If she didn’t, it was her business. She did have a theory that it had something to do with the way Hawke looked at Isabela when Isabela wasn’t looking. That could certainly be interesting.

Hawke stirred, groaning softly. Serendipity chuckled, and Hawke shifted to look at her, bleary-eyed, not yet moving her head from its resting place on the elf’s stomach.

“Is it morning already?”

“Mm-hmm. Sleep well, blue-eyes?”

Hawke grunted and buried her face against Serendipity. Serendipity smirked and waited to see if the other woman would fall back asleep or decide she had bigger and better things to do than spend all day in bed with a prostitute.

After a few more minutes, Hawke’s muffled voice emerged: “I love her.”

Serendipity didn’t need to ask who this ‘her’ was. “That’s just asking for heartbreak. But I can’t blame you at all.”

The pirate captain–well, former captain–really was a lovely specimen of a woman. And even though it didn’t pay to fall in love her line of work, she could sympathize. The heart was a mystery, and you couldn’t guard it every hour of the day. Things slipped through.

“I know. I laugh it off, when I can. I can live with it being just sex. That’s something, at least. But she’s my best friend, too, and as often as we end up drunk together I’m afraid it will just…slip out some night and she’ll run away.” Hawke went silent for a moment, then added, “I don’t think I could live if that happened.”

Serendipity clucked her tongue at Hawke. “You have it -bad-, that’s for sure. Don’t get so hung up over this that you lose what you do have, though. And on the off chance you get more than you expect, don’t be a stranger. We’d all hate to lose you. Or her.” She gave Hawke a smug grin and a wink when the woman turned to look at her again.

Hawke managed to chuckle. “Me? Stop dropping by to see you? Perish the thought.”

Now that it has officially been proclaimed Serendipity week by B-mommy (who needs nice things after wading through massive amounts of fail from the confessions blogs lately), I am re-posting my exceedingly beginner drawing of Serendipity. Because this is the first thing I’ve managed to draw in ages without quitting half-way through (or even before half-through).

Musings on the Qun

Yesterday, I ran an f!Hawke through “Sheparding Wolves.” It’s been awhile since I did that one, as I have a ridiculous amount of Hawkes, and have been running the four or five completed ones through Legacy and/or MotA (and some non-completed ones to see how things go differently. So many Hawkes, so little time).

The Hawke in question is a rogue, and chose to fight the Arvaraad on the basis that Ketojan should be free. After he expressed the belief that the only correct thing for him to do was to die anyway, she washed her hands of the matter with the “I agreed to get you here; that’s all I really signed up for, and I did that. This is no longer my problem” option.

And then Ketojan said, “You know of certainty and borders. You are closer to the Qunari than you admit. Your role would change little if you accepted the Qun,” and a kind of side-eyed my screen.

“Your role would change little if you accepted the Qun.” Interpreted one way, this seems to say, “Carrying out instructions would not be a new thing for you.” Read another, more inferential way, it could potentially be interpreted as, “They too might use you as a fixer of problems."I expect this dialogue is the same on m!Hawke, though I have not gotten an m!Hawke anywhere near that quest in ages,

Except that Tallis’s background is made of "WTF is up with this” and apparently she was a slave first, then freed by the Qunari (how in Andraste’s name did she manage to get assassin skills as a slave? sense, it makes none), instead of being an assassin who converted, I would wonder if this was the interpretation of ONE LINE OF GAME DIALOGUE that Felicia Day seized upon as saying “female Qunari fighters totally a canon possibility.”

Yes, I just tried to make MotA/Redemption make semi-canon sense 😐 I am filing Redemption under fanfic and MotA under “I am wondering if half of this is Varric trolling Cassandra.”