life's too short, bisexualize everything

What’s One More Dance? by @hollyand-writes

I was asked to create art as a pinch hitter for What’s One More Dance by hollyand-writes for Glowbang 2016! It’s such a sweet handers fic, you guys should definitely check it out <3

Honestly, thank you SO DAMN MUCH for producing such a beautiful artwork for the M!Handers fanfic I wrote for the @teamblueandangry Glow Bang last month! 

So delighted to FINALLY reveal my fanfic “What’s One More Dance?” at long last – you have NO IDEA how hard it was for me to keep quiet about this over the past three weeks, LMAO – and with such beautiful fanart as well! Thank you so much for stepping in at the last minute as a pinch-hitter @drawsshits, I could not have asked for something more perfect than this! 

Obviously, he’s trying to make Merrill feel better about her alienage situation.

In the Circles, some amount of military-esque cleanliness and organization were required of the mages and Anders really really hated that. He likes to fling his papers and quills and books everywhere he can manage in his clinic.

okay, so. dragon age 2 runs on nested foreshadowing and a limited set of themes that almost every character and plot beat fall into: love is not enough, wealth is not enough, power is not enough, good intent is not enough. the problems you run into are structural, rather than individual, and your ability to resolve them as one person is strictly limited. the arishok is a central figure for this, because he prefigures every other tragedy and makes the game's thesis statement as clear as possible. he doesn't want to be in kirkwall, but he is compelled to remain until he gets back what was stolen. he doesn't want to lead a coup attempt, but he is compelled by qunari codes of justice to act. he does not want to die and fail his duty, but but he is compelled to by the other two impossible demands. every tragedy in kirkwall is the result of too many people with wildly different definitions of justice crammed into one place specifically designed to maximize human misery and suffering, and so you get a wonderfully nested narrative onion where each quest reinforces that idea, where there are no good options, just positions you can take — even the affinity system plays into that, where constantly gassing up your friends or constantly pushing them to change are equally correct ways to go, but ones that won't ultimately make a huge difference in their lives or characters, because no matter how much they like you, they're not under your control.

this coherence is even justified by the framing device. of *course* the moral of the game is "insisting on a dogmatic, narrow idea of justice destroys individuals and societies," it's a yarn being spun by varric the con artist to a chantry cop!

okay, pulling this out of the tags because i disagree with this take — action adventure games aren't inherently more linear than an rpg, and the looseness of approach in an open world game is also not inherently opposed to telling a structured story. indeed, DA2 does a good job of being open AND structured, and that's absolutely one of its strengths. you have a tremendous amount of freedom to tackle things in almost any order you choose within each chapter, and to resolve things successfully or not.

the issue isn't the openness of the structure, it's the agency of the characters within the narrative — origins and inquisition are games about *powerful* characters, ones who force society to bend to them, which leads to a much wider spectrum of potential outcomes. hawke, despite achieving much greater normal social power than either the warden or the inquisitor, is a much more powerless character. their ability to respond to individual quests or handle them in a variety of ways doesn't really alter the shape of kirkwall or their own life substantially, because the issues with kirkwall aren't ones that can be dealt with through violence or magic. THAT'S how DA2 builds its story, by giving the player a tremendous amount of freedom in the day to day moments of their character's life, but substantially LESS freedom in the greater arc of it. that's something that you could handle similarly regardless of whether the game is mechanically a twitch shooter or a turn based stats driven rpg.

up from the tags on this undying post, like thor pulling jormugandr out from the waves

oh, i love the arishok in two, he's the best view in qunari society that we've had, i think, and he's fascinating for the amount of agency he has for what is in most respects a very static character.

see, because sten and bull are both functionally in exile, in practice if not in strict terms (and taash is rivaini qunari, which is a bit of a different beast, but that's a whole other post): they're severed from the qun-as-community, sten by his murders and bull by his spycraft, and so they can't act or not-act fully within the qun. sten, by trying to redeem himself, is violating strict principles; bull is forever torn between his duty and his daily life. but the arishok isn't alone, he's the head of an enclave of qun, not just the leader of a community but also part of one. he acts by and for that community, and more importantly, does not act in similar ways. he talks to you about this, too, how the injustices of kirkwall are an outrage to the clean order and communal utopianism of the qun, but he's not there to clean the city, so he holds himself back from doing so until forced. his inaction, both within the city and within the game becomes a matter of intent, then, one that parallels the willful inaction of the dalish keeper, the human viscount, and the chantry mother. kirkwall is a polyglot community, and each community within it is aware of the tensions and trying mightily to keep things from happening, because breaking that inaction leads to violence.

and maybe the violence is necessary to change things, but it's also still violent; people die when those various tensions are broken, and we don't get to see what the aftermath is like.

“For what it’s worth, I’m glad it’s you.”