#greypetrel

🌈 - Do you associate any colours with them?

Warm brown (and maybe some pale green peaking out underneath, like one of thoes pottery glazes!) is Sasha to me. Its cozy and comfortable and a complete dichotomy to how Sasha feels and what he lives through.

Maybe a bit unoriginal but I associate red with Victor! The game itself uses a lot it for Hawke but his hands are stained so much with the bloody red that at some point it just becomes him.

If I think of Yelena I think of the colours of all the different blue flowers you can find, but most especially the blue of an iris flower! Something about that purplish blue hue of it is so deeply intertwined with her that whenever I pass by a tuft of irises in early spring I immediately think of her.

❗️- What are their highest priorities to them (at a point of their life of their choosing)

For Sasha it was to survive at all cost. To say he was unhappy with having to become a Warden would be a severe understatement so he does everything in his power to defy the expectations that were set upon him with that fate.

Victor just wants to keep whatever shred of family he has left safe. That he has failed to do so time and time again is a diffrent story entirely.

During all of Inquisition, Yelenas' highest priority is to get away. She is nearly painfully aware that she, from the day she woke up in Haven up until Trespasser, was and continued to be a prisoner of the Inquisition. Just because she got crowned as their figurehead did not mean she was free.

✨️ - Tell something that makes them feel happy!

Just getting to play cards, no matter the game, makes Sasha feel happy. It brings him back to easier, less troubled days.

🌱 - Share one of their early memories.

Nothing gets Victor's mood up as the smell of rosemary and anise wafting through his home whenever he gets to cook, better yet when whoever is over to eat tells him it smell and tastes good!

Seeing the wind move endless fields of grass as if they were the waves of an unyielding sea and feeling it against her skin is something that brings Yelena joy, and makes her feel alive as little else does.

Crawling along the underbrush of the sunny clearing where Clan Sabrae was making camp and trying to forage as many raspberries as three children could is one of Sasha earliest memories. They had scrapes and pricks along their knees, shins, and forearms, but with every new bush their bellies got fuller and the jar that Tamlen, Merrill a Sasha were tasked with to collect the berries in remained unsurprisingly empty.

Victor doesn't remember much before the twins were born, so one of his more cherished, earlier memories is that one early morning where Bethany wanted to watch the sunrise! He woke the twins bright and early, the night just staring to bleed into lighter colours in the east and carried a sleepy Bethany on his shoulders and a bleary-eyed Carver gripping his pinky as tight as the little boy could and brought them up the hill near their home.

- Impression now: she is brilliant! why nobody notices that! By trying to restore the eluvian she is actually doing a keeper's job, and she didn't even get possessed despite doing an internship with a spirit/demon - that's impressive. And sure, sometime she can be a little awkward, but she comes from a completely different culture compared to the other characters - of course she is awkward. It’s like moving from Abbiategrasso to Amsterdam, I’d be a little overwhelmed too.

- Favourite scene: The "I believe in you, Hawke" moment during The Last Straw - everybody is (understandably) a little torn and full of doubts and yet she is the first one to be 100% on your side.

- Headcanon/story: since she cleansed the Eluvian, I guess that it’s almost-canon that blood magic could cure the taint? It’s kind of a shame that her relationship with Anders doesn't progress past his prejudices (and a few admittedly nice but short dialogues), because then you'd have a dalish mage that actually knows how to deal with spirits and can potentially cure the taint AND a possessed mage/grey warden. It’s pretty much 80% of the magical plot condensed in two characters, come onnnn.

(same with the whole 'tranquility' thing, since we saw very early in the game that interacting with a spirit can, albeit temporarily, reverse it. No I'm not over that quest)

- Unpopular opinion: I wish the romance storyline was... better written? I would have been 1000% more supportive lol. No really, they emphasized how much Merrill idolizes Hawke, while I would have opted for a more equal relationship.

- Relationship: beside the romance option, I'd say Varric and Isabela. And special mention to Aveline – I know she is not a particularly popular character but some of her dialogues with Merrill are quite sweet.

Tar-Miriel

- First impression: Cynthia Addai-Robinson could stab me and I'd thank her for her time.

- Impression now: same :P no really, this character has a lot of regality and grace, like some sort of fragile strenght. She really felt like a Tolkien character, so to speak.

- Relationship: not romantic, but I enjoyed her clashes with Galadriel and Elendil, and the overall idealism VS political realism contrast.

- Favourite moment: the whole sequence with the falling white flowers, and her final parting with Galadriel - she looks like a byzantine empress 90% of the time, so it's hard to pick one.

- Story/headcanon: not much of an headcanon, but I hope that they'll show more of her ruling in Numenor.

- Unpopular opinion: I don't think i have any? Are there popular/unpopular opinion about her?

Ishmael

- First impression: The novel starts with him explaning that he sails to fight depression (“with a philosophical flourish Cato throws himself upon his sword; I quietly take to the ship”) so I immediately liked him. And "call me Ishmael"? - he is the one that tells the story and we don't even know his real name. The epitome of the unreliable narrator, and he tells you that himself.

- Impression now: Pretty much stayed consistent – I appreciate how he is the opposite of what people expected from a male character in a seafaring novel: introspective, melancholic and prone to philosophical musings, with an unconventional approach to religion (a lot), not particularly adventurous in the physical sense, and gay.

- Relationship: “Thus, then, in our hearts' honeymoon, lay I and Queequeg — a cosy, loving pair.” What can I add? It’s like a marriage, "until death to us part" and everything- and even after that, since Ishmael avoid drowning by clinging to Queequeg's coffin.

- Headcanon / idea for a story: I don't think I can write Moby Dick fanfiction, really. I’ll leave that to Vinicio Capossela lol.

- Unpopular opinion: I don't find Ishmael’s musings about whales boring? They are definitely not the worst part of the book (that's the XIXth century racism).

+ cute seal bonus if you read all that stuff, congrats!