#worrytoken

@worrytoken

kiss kiss fall in love

Vigil’s Keep was... well, a lot like the relationship that brought her here: MESSY. But it was definitely big, which was MORE than she could say about her old home. And the children loved having the room to run around. So perhaps she COULD at least thank Alistair for inviting them. Luckily, it wasn’t hard to find him, as everyone tended to need the WARDEN, so tabs were kept at almost ALL times.

❝ Alistair... ❞ Maker this is hard. Just... get it OVER with. ❝ It just... you know... it means A LOT for inviting me and the children here. Even if I WAS a bit of a stubborn ass about it. So... I guess thank you. ❞ There may have been some hesitance to her tone that MIGHT convey some insincerity, but it was the TRUTH. She really was grateful, she just... was really bad at telling him. So she could SHOW him ?

meta or die fuckers!!  /  accepting  /  @worrytoken

helena starts out the game lawful good because she believes that the law is good.  she’s enormously naive about the actual state of the actual world.  this isn’t to say she’s blind — she knows the poor suffer, and there are injustices, but by and large she expects that the law works.  that if the privileged hurt the oppressed, the law and authority will stop it and punish the perpetrator.  the thing is —— this is not at all how the world actually works, and it doesn’t take helena long to figure that out once she’s out in the world.  she’s horrified that the templars are willing to slaughter innocent mages when the templars should exist to protect mages.  she’s horrified at the state of the alienage and the treatment of the elves within.  she’s disgusted at the way she sees the nobility, the guards, all the authority she’d trusted in turn a blind eye.  helena is good more than she is lawful, and once she realizes that it’s not possible to be both in the current system, she naturally shifts to chaotic good.  it’s a huge part of why she becomes queen — she wants the law she believed in as a child to be a reality.  she wants authority to protect.  she wants those in power to lift up those without it.  despite the fact that she doesn’t want to be queen, she views it as a responsibility she now has —— she has to fix the system, or at least try, and being queen is the best way to make that a reality.

the transformation isn’t complete until awakenings, for many reasons.  notice the words ‘responsibility’ and ‘authority’ and ‘system.’  even after becoming queen, she’s working as lawful, not chaotic; it’s just that her current goal is to fix the law.  and that remains, sure.  but after awakenings — after attempted regicide by a templar all in the name of capturing one single apostate! — her faith in the system as something that can be reformed lessens.  it doesn’t disappear entirely, but it suffers a lot.  that awakenings is essentially when lena goes through her hardening — which is good, i need to emphasize, it makes her better and much more herself — is certainly a factor, as well.  her queenliness becomes less her trying to fix the institution while still working within the law to a way to exploit the law to help others — i’ve talked about helena leveraging political power to free anders if he’s ever captured, or even to outright break him out, which is a big example, but there are others.  she makes ferelden as much a safe haven for mages as she can.  i do headcanon that while alistair is verbally dueling with meredith, lena is in the gallows, sneaking around and rendering aid / resources / directions to the mage railroad etc.  she actively works with the mage underground, if covertly.  she eventually outlaws the purging of alienages in ferelden.  she redirects coin to the poor as much as she can.

meta or die fuckers!!  /  accepting  /  @worrytoken

complicated.  mother she quietly resents and father she felt distant from.  sybil isn’t sensitive in the traditional sense, but much like her father, she has high expectations for herself and berates herself when she doesn’t achieve them — something her father unknowingly fed into every time she failed to meet his high expectations and he let her know.  “strict.  high expectations.  and if you didn’t meet them, you’d hear about it.”  he wasn’t a yeller, but she was very attuned to his disappointment or anger with her, and he could wield guilt like nothing else.  like carver, she resented him somewhat as a result, and it’s part of the reason she and carver are comparatively close as a result.  sybil never felt like she could live up to being the kind of mage he wanted.  or the kind of daughter he wanted.

this isn’t to say she doesn’t love him dearly and desperately, or that they never had good times.  he scooped her up and spun her around in the air, laughing bright.  held her when she dreamed of templars hurting carver for hiding her.  it’s just that hanging perpetually over her head with all those interactions was the fear of disappointing him.  she could never 100% be totally free or without walls or artifice with him; she felt as though she perpetually had to project an image of herself that didn’t always feel good, or that she wasn’t allowed to be furious or vengeful or bad with her magic, even when she desperately needed to at least vent those frustrations, so they were never able to get as close as she would have wanted.  i don’t know if malcolm ever knew how she felt.

with leandra, it’s complicated.  prior to malcolm’s death, it was better, and leandra was more willing to indulge sybil’s moods or frustrations and didn’t have the same high standards.  they were closer, and sybil went to her with any problem she had that wasn’t directly magic - related and some that were.  after malcolm’s death, though, sybil felt stifled by how leandra just assumed that sybil would become head of househould, and quietly resented her mother for doing that to her.  that being said, she also thrived being the leader of the family and, given her innate desire to protect and be good and be the hero, never voiced this frustration, leaving carver to bear the burden of her griping.  (  she never mentioned any of it to bethany; she knew her sister felt guilty enough for the trouble she caused without sybil outright adding to it.  )  this ended up pushing carver and sybil apart somewhat, something else that sybil can’t help but internally fault her mother for.

she’s horrified when leandra dies; i’ve talked about how she retreats and goes sick and sad and bad.  lets herself start to decay.  part of it’s because leandra is the last of her blood.  part of it is because leandra was her charge in some ways.  some of it is that she feels guilty as hell for resenting leandra right until the end instead of loving her unconditionally; how many conversations did sybil avoid that she’ll never get to have?  how many sharp words that she’ll never be able to apologize for?  and her mother — her mother would blame her, she’s certain, as her mother blamed her for both bethany and carver.

Before he rolls onto his stomach, Zevran spit onto the ground, trying to get the blood out of his mouth. He ran his hand quickly under his nose as he ran his tongue over his teeth, spitting again. Hard to have a charming smile if it was full of blood, and Maker knows he needs it now.

SEND ME A TOPIC TO WRITE A META ABOUT MY MUSE ON  // meme cache // always accepting

I had like half a reply written to this like twice or so, so now I’m just gonna list all the reasons why Varric skirted away from the Merchant’s Guild!

i. lazy writing

This has nothing to do with Varric, however, as a whole --- it does. The writers continuously forget that Varric has a reputation not only as a Tethras, but a reputation politically. The choice to have Varric converse ( or not ) with the Guild was due to time restraints and well laziness. Varric is a bigger powerhouse than people give him credit for and the Inquisition was all about allies, and there was a good chance that if people wanted a more corrupt ( aka smuggling, spy, trade heavy ) Inquisition there could have been a choice for Varric to converse with the Guild, even if it was a simple War Table mission. While we did get a taste of that, it really wasn’t the authentic flavour of espionage that gets the blood pumping!

ii. varric and the protection of the inquisitor

Let’s face it, the Guild and the Carta are two sides of the same coin, one is composed of surfacers and the other composed of Orzammar dwarves. Both don’t really fit it, both have an archaic hierarchy and sometimes seem opposed to change as a whole. They’re both smuggling rings, illicit crime rings, and hold tiers of influence. However, Varric understands the nuances of political machine that is the Inquisition, he saw it start out on rocky footing and was there for the messiest birth of gang of happy misfits SINCE the Kirkwall bunch, and as a seasoned hell-worn companion he has unique insight on what may or may not be needed in these cases, and a highly conservative dwarf smuggling ring is not one of them. Varric may have skirted the other kalnas mainly because instead of the Inquisition having some benefit from the alliance, it was more likely that the Guild would have made away with something much more beneficial. So he ignores letters to protect his Inquisitor, simple enough --- right?

iii. the makeup of the merchant’s guild

The composition of the merchant’s guild is another thing to consider! We don’t have much information on how many members are within the upper circle, but we do know that Varric inherited Bartrand’s seat upon his death and according to the wiki, he’s the only listed ascendant, which means he’s the only new-age thinker. This makeup means that the Guild is more likely to keep to themselves and work as if they were part of the Orzammar caste system, even abiding by old laws and treaties if the moment called for it. It’s evident at the Winter Palace that they do not really keep to themselves, but that can be chalked up to them simply playing on the insecurities and uncertainty of Orlais, which means that they were MAKING SO MUCH MONEY ( and essentially Varric lost out on this, so ---- the Guild may have some questions ). This make-up is unfavourable to any of Varric’s canonical stances and ignoring the letters may have been easier than dealing with the make-up of the guild that still remembers Varric’s brother who was also a Kalna, those who would rather run the guild by Orzammar rules ( but modify them ). 

iv. varric’s reasonable time constraints

The only book that Varric publishes between his interrogation and the closing of DA:I ( not Trespasser ) is one chapter of Swords & Shields and even then he hadn’t really touched that book since he had been on the road. His banters and other comments in conversations lead us to believe that he is working on paperwork for Kirkwall and Her Interests, which means he may have skirted his other duties and let them fall to the wayside. He had to pick a couple of things, so he picked the Inquisitor and Kirkwall. So for his health and lack of time, he most likely just ignored the letters or better yet burned them!

v. varric and his reasonable expectations of people

we doin’ this bitch

Rowena wipes a hand across her brow as finished hanging up the clothes , freshly washed , on the drying line that she had set up between the trees at the edge of camp. She smiles at Sten , who only gives a nod in response before he returns to his spot. The elf sighs and shakes her head , but not in a defeated way. A nod of solidarity was better than some of the comments he made on her gender , magic , AND race when they first met. It was progress.

Out of the corner of her eye , she spots Alistair approaching , and her smile only widens. She wipes her damp hands on the one clean set of robes she had on as she walks over to meet him. It’s only once she’s a few feet from him does she notice that he seems... nervous ? Before she can question it much further , he presents her with , of all things , a rose. He asks if she knows what it is and she grin turns to a smirk.

oh you’re in for it now, Ro. he missed what you said so now he’s gonna pester you until you tell him

@worrytoken

SWEET ANON MESSAGES