loniscera

anyway, she's just like the rest of the da2 crew in that she's always angling for 'smartest person in the room' award, and she goes abt it by pretending she's unaffected and above it all. she doesn't have a problem utilizing the fact that she's an attractive woman a lot of ppl would love to see put in her place, etc — castillon falls for it!

but that's not how she wants to seem. she wants to drink w the best of them, fight w the best of them, fuck w the best of them, and what i love most abt her (sorry) is how deeply patronizing she is to those aforementioned young, naive, and inexperienced ppl:

Merrill: How do you do that? Isabela: Do what, Kitten? Merrill: You sort of... swagger when you walk. I've been trying, but I trip over my own feet when I do it. Isabela: You just strut. It's not something you practice. Merrill: How do I learn it, then? Isabela: It comes to you. Usually at night. It's like a lover... or maybe a burglar. Isabela: Either it ravishes you or runs off with all your jewelry. And you have to run it down and stab it in the heart. Isabela: And... that metaphor got a bit away from me, didn't it? Merrill: I think it did, but it was certainly exciting!

like who is this for. she loves that merrill calls her walk a swagger. she loves that it's smth merrill can't do, and therefore it's smth isabela has to teach — but first she indulges in an extended metaphor that even she admits makes no sense but allows her to imply she's lived a life where maybe she caught someone in the middle of stealing and then they fucked. endless isabela tall-tales.

she does it to carver, too:

Isabela: You look like a man I once dueled. Isabela: He was a little intimidated by my reputation as a vicious pirate, but rose to the challenge. Carver: He looked like me, you say? Isabela: It went on all night, under the stars, the waves lapping at our ankles. Carver: On the beach? In the surf? How did you get proper footing? Isabela: We didn't. There was quite a bit of tumbling around, and we were soaked and sore by the time the sun came up. Carver: Did you... win? Isabela: I managed to get on top in the end, but I considered it a tie.

idk that she'd actually fuck carver, but she wants him to be attracted to her. she wants to tease him and fluster him. she wants to wink at him so he blushes. she wants to feel powerful, and she gets a lot of gratification from using her sexuality to do this. the painful nitty-gritty of personhood and intimacy is a real chore for her, so she lets ppl idolize her as a way to keep them at arm's length.

she thinks she's on exclusively the receiving end of merrill's idolization, but isabela makes up an almost entirely nonexistent merrill who's going to live a kinder and better life than isabela ever could. isabela isn't shameless, she just wants to seem that way. isabela is in fact drowning in shame.

Merrill: You've had many lovers, haven't you? Isabela: Fewer than some think. Merrill: But you never stay with them. Isabela: No, why should I? Merrill: But the act of lovemaking is so... intimate. Isabela: I don't "make love." What I do is only skin-deep, Kitten. Isabela: Don't worry your pretty little head about it.

that she pseudo-successfully masks it by being wildly condescending to merrill in particular is beside the point.

and then there's bethany. obv i am most interested in how she does this w hawke's little baby sister, but i think it's objectively fascinating:

Bethany: That book you were reading this morning, "Hessarian's Spear"— I don't think he had a spear in the legends. Isabela: He does in this one. Read the description. Bethany: "Andraste knelt before no man but her Maker, but she hadn't counted on the archon Hessarian." Bethany: "Can Hessarian penetrate the tight-knit defenses of the warrior-prophetess? Will she be prepared to face the full blast of his... power?" Bethany: Wait a minute... Isabela! This is a vulgar thing! Isabela: You want to borrow it? Bethany: No! Isabela: You sure? It has pictures! Bethany: Not listening! I'm not listening!

ooh she's so edgy. she reads religious smut. bethany finally caught on — don't you want to see the pictures? but this doesn't feel like mean bullying. she's v fond of bethany, and she sees bethany as a victim: this is a trapped, inexperienced, vulnerable young woman, and isabela can play the emcee w her. then life deals bethany a Shitty Hand if she doesn't just straight up die, and like. most of isabela's dialogues w her in the dlcs post-circle/the wardens are so unbelievably fucking sad. i will never shut up abt this:

Isabela: It's good to see you back. It's like old times again. Bethany: You know it's not. It'll never be like it was. Isabela: We can always pretend. If we do it well enough, we might forget that things have changed. Bethany: (Laughs) You're ridiculous. Isabela: Whatever works, sweetness.

anyway. anyway.

the point is that i think isabela doesn't always want to be the person sitting in someone else's lap. i think she'd love to have someone on her knee while she wins a round of cards off of a bunch of men who thought she'd fold halfway thru. part of this is abject condescension, which i think is prob a requirement for da2 companions. part of this is a protective instinct that's too earnest for her show, and it is a protective instinct we see most often w vulnerable young women.

Aveline: I had trouble with another one of your women, Isabela. She stole from a... distracted client. You're lucky she wasn't jailed. Isabela: My women? I am but a shepherd. And what free enterprise are you oppressing now? Aveline: Theft is not enterprise. Isabela: Opportunities insufficiently guarded. Victimless crimes. Aveline: Except for all the victims. Isabela: Details. Victimless details.

'another one of your women.' / 'i am but a shepherd.' who me????

like. yeah. she's the pied piper. she's the siren's call. she's alluring and always just out of reach and more of an idea than a person. and yeah i think she'd be wildly into being someone's first sexual experience, and if she's riding high, then she's just doing her duty, she's just 'a giver.' but if she rly cares abt this person, i think she'd have a complete freak out, similar to the one she has when she has to admit hawke means smth to her and handles it so badly she has to leave for three years.

she isn't actively seeking out virgins to deflower — but she wants to seem like she's that kind of person, right? hypothetically, tho, if confronted w someone's big, brown eyes (i have an agenda and i'm not sorry) looking at her like she's opening up the whole world for her bc having someone go down on you for the first time will do that to you.....................................well, she wants to have her cake and eat it, too, right (badumtsh)? and that's impossible, and that tension is where the panic attack lives.

like isabela the pirate, the queen of the eastern seas, the woman who had her husband killed and sailed away on his ship — that woman, who is always right and always saw the bad thing coming bc she's mistaken cynicism for wisdom, the woman who can absolutely keep it a secret that she's the reason the city's going to go up in flames bc she'll figure it out before that happens 100% for sure, that woman has a sweet thing in her lap while who's looking at her like she's a swashbuckler out of a bodice ripper. that is hot. we should all be so lucky etc.

but isabela the person doesn't actually want that sweet thing to have much interiority, bc it would require confronting her own interiority as a woman who was victimized as a v young person. and she needs the other person, as she instructs fenris, to keep their spiky armor on, bc she needs to know that the arrangement is not a feelings thing. and then as soon as it becomes a feelings thing, she bolts.