#pragtastic

Speaks-To-Heart was born in the Windhelm Argonian Assemblage, not long after her mother arrived by there by ship. As such, she was never really bonded to the Hist early in life-- she later received its blessings but she claims she did not become different afterward. It's possible she's just not very spiritual; she hasn't ever felt incomplete for it or bereft in any way.

But she has felt unwanted. She didn't know many children her own age and even when young she could feel the disapproval radiating off of Windhelm in waves. She knew they were poor, she knew others were rich, and even from an early age she had a good idea of why; the Nords just didn't share anything at all. Not their city, not their money, not their land or even simple respect.

Perhaps because of this and the icy feelings she sensed all around, she was a very quiet child. While obedient, honest, and playful, she associated only rarely with anybody besides her mother and very few, older children. Her name comes from that when she did first speak, it was actually a full sentence. She'd been able to speak before but simply held it back because she had very little to say. Her mother named her after the joy she felt to hear her daughter's voice.

Her daughter's voice would prove to be of utmost importance, for as she grew she became an able negotiator and cunning bargainer, setting terms and agreeing wages for loading jobs and fair sales to traders. Her mother fished as always, and with steady hands Speaks-To-Heart repaired and knotted her mother's lines and traps at night as supper cooked in the Assemblage.

But be careful, her mother would always warn-- the silver fish of your tongue cannot escape every net.

She was a young woman when her closest friend, Ren-Gaz was taken, pressganged by the Blood Surf pirates. Beside herself with anger, she took a boning knife, a spare lantern, an old hunting bow and some decrepit arrows, and some spare septims and told her mother she was leaving for a few days. Her mother did not stop her. She assumed her daughter would only get a day down the road and then turn around, never having left the Assemblage before.

Her daughter was gone for a day. Two days. Then a worrisome week.

But Speaks-To-Heart returned, with not only Ren-Gaz in tow but all the pirates' loot she and her friend could carry. The assemblage paid for medicine, clothes, and food for months afterward-- and then Speaks-To-Heart began to get "errands." Help recover a lost shipment. Look for missing persons. Investigate dangerous caves upriver. 

And dutiful as ever, Speaks-To-Heart would do them. Years of outmaneuvering the racist violences of Nords and negotiating with Dunmer in the Grey Quarter gave her a natural affinity for stealth, a budding talent for tactics and strategy, and a deep understanding of the reactions of others-- all of which combined with her unusually steady hands from knotting line after line after line nurtured a fine scout and archer in her, and a keen and cutty foe. She studied and practiced with a ravenous passion, to do all things better, faster, smarter, and most importantly six steps ahead of everybody else before they knew she even had moved at all. The avid competition with herself only escalated as she became literate. Then well-read. Then dangerously well-read.

When her aging mother died, she had enough loot saved up not only to leave Windhelm but to set up a small fund behind her to pay for medicine and warm clothes for the Assemblage for years afterward. She left an esteemed adventuress, minor hero, shrewd tactician and benefactor... as well as newly with child. The father, to her, was not of incredible importance. 

She meant to journey south, pass the border, and then continue far on to Black Marsh where her child could receive the proper rites where she had never had any, and then return to Skyrim and settle someplace less miserable. She augmented her purse along the way with spoils of many adventures-- some while heavily pregnant. 

She did give birth somewhere in Cyrodiil, and did make it to Black Marsh where she and her child came before a Hist for the first time-- she herself was mostly unchanged, but she did feel it was important for her daughter. Her pilgrimage done, Speaks-To-Heart traveled north again, plus one.

The journey back was more eventful. 

She was so close to making it to Skyrim unbothered when border bandits assaulted her caravan. With limited ability to fend them off with her daughter beside her, Speaks-To-Heart was forced to run, and cross the border illegally far from the checkpoint.

For once in her life, she didn't get away with it. And this time, her kind words did not aid her. She was captured by Imperial soldiers, put in a cart along with felons to be executed, and shipped off to Helgen for processing. She was not to receive the death penalty, due to her dependent, but certainly didn't appreciate the misunderstanding.

That was when, of course, the dragon attacked. Carrying her daughter in a sling, she managed to fight her way out of the chaos and escape to safety... for the time being. Discovering she was Dragonborn, and then being faced with the return of Alduin, and the threat of war all around her, was somewhat less safe. Especially for an Argonian-- and quickly discovering those who also faced rampant discrimination would remain in danger long after the ancient menace was handled. That, combined with limited childcare options for her daughter, now named Under-Stars, compelled the infamous adventuress to start her own guild: the Undesirables.

The Undesirables are dedicated to supporting races called "provincial" in Skyrim, and protesting racial supremacy on all sides of conflict, providing safe refuge for victims of social violence and peaceful as well as armed employment for those willing to join. It has offices outside several major holds, such as Haafingar, the Reach, the Rift, and Whiterun-- as well as a minor wayhouse in Falkreath. The Undesirables support neither side of the war directly-- Nord supremacists consider them a den of foreign migrants demanding Nord land and wealth and the Thalmor considers them a potentially dangerous social and political bogey that is not so easily manipulated as Ulfric and his followers.

Speaks-To-Heart, veteran of hundreds of adventures, ancient ruins, dragons, her voice fully-realized in the Thu'um, Dragonborn, mother, and leader, delves into the deepest dungeon of all: the heart of Skyrim's intrigues, fighting for the treasure of equality and respect for all those who follow her.

Well I’m gonna level with you.

At first she really is indifferent towards him and then she uses him to take out her anger towards the Templars since he’s the only one around and he has no choice but to stand there and take it.

I have it in my head that Yael goes from petulant and unwilling leader to unconventional leader and rule breaker and rebel to finally being a proper general and powerful individual who realizes that she doesn’t need to break rules when she can literally change the status quo on her own.

So when she first is interacting with Cullen she treats him like any other Templar. She’s suspicious, angry, and if Cassandra hadn’t been so adamant that his expertise was so very needed to this Inquisition she’d have killed him already.

But he does have this annoying habit of actually asking how she is.

He figures out pretty damn quickly that a lot of her sarcasm and arrogance is sheer bravado and she’s actually petrified of the role she’s been placed in. And no one else is checking in with her.

At first it’s annoying. Then it’s more or less welcome because he doesn’t let her get away with faking anything and he’ll humble her enough into getting her to admit when she’s wrong or if she shouldn’t just dash straight on into a mire of political chaos. If she should pause, reevaluate, reconsider.

And somehow she gets to a point where she not only relies on that check-in, she actively looks forward to when he comes to talk to her. And then she gets comfortable enough to turn it back on him and ask about him. And that’s how their friendship gets started. After a long series of misunderstanding leading to eventual respect and trust.

Cullen becomes this quiet, safe space in the sea of chaos the world has become. Like, the level of trust involved in these two letting their guard down around one another is immense given their histories.

Hello! *waves* Thanks for sending this! Sorry for the delay - had a visitor staying with me so I didn’t have time to sit down and type out a reply :-)

Anyway, onto your questions - all for the Dragon Age fandom, of course, as I haven’t written in any other fandoms…

2. Favourite piece overall?

Probably “Truth Or Dare”. Simply because for me it was the most fun to write - plus, unlike most of my writing, it seemed to just flow. Some of the stuff I’ve written has felt very painfully like attempting to squeeze blood out of a stone, so it was really refreshing to write something where I didn’t have to think too hard - the words just seemed to pour out.

Also, there aren’t enough drinking game fics. I had to add one :-)

3. Which was the hardest to write, in terms of plot?

I’m probably going to have to say “The Templar And The Blood Mage” for this one, as it’s the only longfic (and therefore plot-heavy) fic I’ve actually put out there. I made so many mistakes with that one - not least that it started out as a explicitly porny one-shot which then turned into a sleep-deprived caffeine-fuelled frenzied NaNoWriMo novel - but I’m now trying to tidy up what I do have, which has involved some heavy rewriting and editing. And I’ve had to actually change where it’s going from my original plan. 

There’s another fic, a Modern!AU (well, technically a British-university-and-some-nightclub-scenes!AU) longfic, that I’ve had to put on the backburner because the plot for that is proving extremely difficult to write, and I really wanted to answer this question with that fic - but since I haven’t published that fic anywhere (and I’ve learned my lesson from “The Templar And The Blood Mage” that I personally should not post something up until I’m at least nearly finished writing it), then I will go with my above answer :-)

4. Which has the most “you” in it, however you’d define that?

Hmmm. This is a tricky one. I was initially going to answer “Pancake Day” on the grounds that I love Pancake Day and I love making pancakes :-) But on second thoughts - and probably a better answer for this - I’m going to go with a ficlet I’ve written for the “Major Arcana” series.

I’m going with the 14th ficlet (currently the most recent one) that I’ve written for “Major Arcana” - “Temperance”, composed entirely of letters between Seneschal Bran and Viscount Dumar in Act 2 (with a brief interruption by Serendipity at the Blooming Rose), and based on the corresponding tarot card.

I chose that one partly because I love epistolary novels (or sections in novels) and got to satisfy myself with writing an epistolary fic; partly because, like Seneschal Bran in that ficlet, I can be pretty verbose and unintentionally long-winded - I simply don’t know how NOT to write essays about everything, and I’m very chatty in real life - and partly because a lot of the humour in that fic is fairly subtle (hopefully not so subtle as to be non-existent, though). Well, apart from perhaps the Serendipity letter.

Most of the intended humour was based around Bran’s polite yet increasingly disdainful obsequiousness. Not to mention the use of a gift of fine wine to soften the blow of bad news, and the Viscount getting more and more dependent on said fine wine in the face of his helplessness regarding the city. The increasingly sycophantic sign-offs from Seneschal Bran to the Viscount (“I remain, Sir, your most [insert flattering and deliberately untrue adjective here] servant”) at the end of Bran’s letters are deliberate, too. A lot of what I wrote in those letters - and their sign-offs - was sort of my attempt to parody the office politics and cloak-and-dagger social mind-games that go on in many offices, particularly in the field I used to work in. But parodying them in medieval fantasy letter format, obviously.

20. Go nuts, and talk about writing. Or write me a little ficlet-whatsit using a character/image/line I shall now specify.

Haha, you want me to go *more* nuts and talk *more* than I have done already?!?! OK, then. You asked for it :-D

I struggle with writing. I struggle with the belief that everything I do is crap, that everything I write is a steaming pile of turd, and the one thing that reassures me is that EVERY writer feels this way. Without exception. Perhaps some of us feel it more frequently than others, but doesn’t matter - we all feel it. And I still feel it even after five years of writing for a living (freelance journalism; something I recognise I am incredibly blessed and lucky to be able to do).

Sometimes I get so consumed with the terror that I can’t write anything worth reading, that it paralyses me into not writing. I wish I could say I know something that banishes that paralysis once and for all, but I don’t.

But what I do know is this: no one’s paying me to be the best writer on the planet. They’re just paying me to write. That’s all I need to do. If the actual writing itself isn’t so great, my editor will sort that out for me - as long as I’ve written about and included the specific points set out in their editorial brief. (Having said that, my editors aren’t stupid - if they thought my level of writing skill was way too crap for their publication, they wouldn’t hire me.)

I suppose it’s the same with writing anything. No one needs you to be the best damn writer on the planet. Good grief, it doesn’t even matter if you’re the worst writer on the planet, because (a) you can get better - and I say that because I very firmly believe talent is not born, it’s made - and (b) someone, somewhere, probably will enjoy what you’ve written. It’s entirely possible that someone may even enjoy what you’ve written *in spite of* how badly you’ve written it. Just look at Fifty Shades Of Grey. And you can’t possibly know whether anyone will like what you’ve written until you’ve written it. Sure, someone - maybe even lots of people - might hate it, and might even have valid reasons to do so. Doesn’t matter. It takes as much effort to write something bad as it does to write something good, but you won’t get better if you don’t write at all.

The first character I first fell in love with: To the surprise of no one at all - Anders lmao

The character I never expected to love as much as I do now: Carver omg

The character everyone else loves that I don’t: don't flay me but Varric??? I mean I certainly don't dislike him, but I just....don't get the hype?

The character I love that everyone else hates: does.....does Anders count? maybe Cullen?

The character I used to love but don’t any longer: hrrrrrrrm no one I guess

The character I would totally smooch: default m!hawke i mean

The character I’d want to be like: Anders tbh. He is SO selfless and brave and strong and I just aldjaksjfsajlkas I really admire a lot of his qualities ok

The character I’d slap: Elthina lmaoooooo

A pairing that I love: Handers

Have you finished the game? If Fenris doesn’t kill his sister she tells him his birth name. At some point he tells Avaline in the banter that his master named him Fenris.

I finished the game but I didn't meet a sister.

Fenris’s master gave him that name and he wasn’t an elf. His birth name is Leto.

Rule 1: always post the rules

Rule 2: always answer the questions the person who tagged you asked and write your questions

Rule 3: tag 10 people

Rule 4: actually tell them you tagged them.

Oh no, goodness me no. He’s entirely skin and bones with his ribs showing through because he has a Warden’s superhuman metabolism but not money to afford the amount of food he should be consuming. And he works himself to exhaustion on top of that. He’d be ragged and threadbare and bone thin. 

And Hawke somehow doesn’t care. I mean she cares in the sense that from the day he moves in she makes sure he’s fed properly. Three damn meals a day and she brings more food to his clinic (enough for all his patients or he won’t eat a thing ‘cause he’ll just give it all away), and if she’s not with him for the day she’ll swing by the clinic to have lunch with him or something because he’ll take a damn break if it’s to be with her for an hour or two. 

But I mean Hawke doesn’t mind how he’s all sharp angles and skin and bone. Most nights she forgoes pillows and sleeps with her head on his chest, ribcage be damned. 

Over the years of living with her he’d likely put on a little more weight, but stress and overwork probably regulate just how much he manages to put on. 

And I can’t quite decide how self conscious he is about his own body? Or even if he cares enough to be conscious at all? Like before the Wardens he probably looked good. Damn good. It’s clear he was a little vain being a lady’s and gentlemen’s man an’ all. A year in solitary probably thinned him down a bit though. 

And maybe he’s self deprecating about it? Odd jokes here and there about how half his skeletal structure is visible through his skin. But it’s hard to find anything to joke about when Hawke runs her hands over his stomach and chest and she has that look on her face that makes him feel like the handsomest damn person in the entire damn world.