I managed to find the time to play DAI for ten entire minutes and all I do is take pictures of my Warden during Sera's first convo in Haven Spoiler: Liesyn Surana LOVE HER, love her weird face
David Gaider wrote some Dorian fanfiction (his words, since he's not with Bioware any longer) and it's really lovely. Trespasser spoilers.
I don't know if I've posted this before (I can't find it in a cursory search of this thread but I might have missed it) but my best friend and I have a universe where we each have a warden, hawke, and inquisitor, and a few years ago we got a commission of our Hawke twins (Mara and Pyrena Hawke). Behold my children: Spoiler: the girlz working now hopefully?
Aww, thanks >.< They're both disasters (slightly different flavors of Purple Hawke. Pyrena is a bit of a party girl and humorous because she takes nothing seriously. Mara's humor is full of razors and while she is not nearly as self-absorbed as Pyrena, she's often a passive-aggressive little shit. Pyrena's the fun-loving Gryffindor, Mara is the witty Ravenclaw). And they're both magic prodigies, which does nothing to temper their egos. Cassandra was furious with Varric when he brought them to Skyhold, but I'm so sad we never got to see Cullen's reaction xD because I guarantee he walked into his office one day and found Pyrena sprawled on top of his desk. And he was greeted with, "Cullen! It's great to see another real person!" Then Mara appears from behind the door. "Indeed--why don't we real people talk about how our real people lives have been?"
Fandom reddits are always hit or miss and lately the DA one has been mostly miss -- case in point, there was a "If your Warden and your Inquisitor fought, who would win?" post and only one person said theirs would be more likely to smooch. smh.
My warden and Inquisitor aren't likely to smooch because Liesyn, to the general dismay of the entire population of thedas (and everyone I accidentally romanced) has a targeted monosexuality of Alistair My Inquisitor and my Hawke, on the other hand
Helios is a smoocher, as is Bleddyn, but I think most of my Inquisitors are just ‘diplomatically friendly to the HoF’. Except Sioned and Callias. Sioned only really clashes with the dude Cousland I have planned, who’s a bit of a despot, and Callias would fight his own goddamn reflection if he could.
tbh in my one completed canon, my HoF Iolis and Embriel would probably, after some wary getting-to-know-you, be trading FUCKING SHEMS AMIRITE warstories and compare notes on arcane warrior technique, because they're both enormous nerds (although you wouldn't guess it of Embriel since he's flirty, impulsive, and the same kind of fussily well-groomed that Dorian is). However, they'd definitely both give it more than a passing thought because they're both extremely cute, and Zevran might try to talk them all into a foursome. I don't think I'd really have any HoF and Inky pair that would have a reason to fight each other, unless it was a sparring match for the fun of it or a dumb drunken fistfight that they both feel sheepish about the next day.
... my first warden (Meraud) and my first full worldstate quizzy (Brejan) do get into slapfights occassionally because Meraud is an utter disaster and a total bitch and really needs to let Cullen go, ffs woman you are in a committed relationship with Zevran stop with the possessiveness. If those two kissed though someone would most likely die. Cullen. Cullen would die. Of sudden blood leavng his brain disease. Hallr and the Quizzy planned for his worldstate would and should absolutely kiss though Hallr is a tragic case of Monoromantic For Life. Àedàn is gonna deliberately take out a strike team of Dorian, Bull and Varric almost everywhere though, just for the eyecandy, there is no way he wouldn't attempt to smooch the prince of Orzammar
The mere idea of Lis and Idrilla being in the same room is enough to make my!Cullen sweat like a pig in the slaughter so I approve of this message wholeheartedly this is the best way that this situation can end
Oh nooo. Those two are gonna milk it for all it's worth, aren't they? Cullen's gonna have an aneurism before the night is out. If Ren and Mercy would like each other just fine if they met pre-Trespasser (and assuming Mercy is alive and not wandering around as a Fade Spirit). Though Ren is very grey/ace and also just not Mercy's type, so it's unlikely that they'd smooch. They also definitely wouldn't fight outside of sparring/training (Mercy is an Arcane Warrior and Ren wants in on that shit). They're both exceptionally laid back and would probably just hand popcorn back and forth while watching Zevran flirt at Cullen and Cullen get really flustered. In the post TP fic stuff that I will someday get back too I swear things are a little more tense. Ren is more tense in general, trying to deal with that big Solas-shaped problem, the fact that her relationship with Cullen has crumbled around her, and the fact that her best friend has left to go be Dorian's sidekick/arm candy up in Tevinter. She's a little more inclined to throw down and has zero desire to kiss anything. Something that certainly looks and acts like Mercy is wandering the Fade, giving Solas a headache. When Ren encounters her, there's no real fight, but Ren makes it clear that she's not obligated to be grateful to a human who held onto both a powerful artifact and a lost branch of magic that belonged to Ren's people. Spoiler: rambles about oc's fighting styles While I don't like the framing of "who would win in a fight," I do think it's interesting to see how my various OC's fighting styles would play off each other. Mercy Amell is a master of defensive magic with a focus on entropy magic and she's an talented healer to boot. She unravels hostile magic, disrupts enemy focus, and erodes enemy morale and will to fight. But she's got no killing blows, which is kind of the point. She much prefers to neutralize enemies than kill them. Mara Hawke is one of my more OP ocs, as she and her twin sister are prodigies at elemental magic. Her preference is for ice, and while she plays it a bit smarter and less brute strength than her fire-oriented twin, she wins fights because of her power. She's got some defensive skill to back her up, especially once she escapes the Fade and her magic has mutated to where she's more of a water bender than a DA mage. Ren Lavellan's strength is using the ambient magic around her to pull off feats that would be impossible with a typical mana pool. As a necromancer, she's learned to use little fade sprites and the magical disturbances left by death. Then in her further studies of magic, she learns how to use necromantic sources and the ambient currents that pass in and out of the Fade to give her magic an extra kick or, if she has time to prepare a battlefield, power glyphs and other sustained workings. "Who would win" is a useless question because the answer is ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ depends on context and what "win" means. If Ren has time to prepare, she has the most power available to her and a huge diversity of spells and tactics she can use. Mara has the most individual power by a considerable factor, fights smart, and she's a decent healer. Mercy is near impossible to hit squarely and even if you do, she's an excellent healer. The only thing to know for certain is they all drive Solas absolutely mad because he doesn't understand how they're using magic like this. It's not supposed to work that way and things I get mad at things I don't understand!
There's no way a meeting between these three is going to end with Cullen still being dignified. Well, almost? While Lissie is always, in a way, milking everything for all that it's worth cause that's just who she is as a person, she feels very guilty about what happened to Kinloch Hold and was hurt by her part in who Cullen became during the DA2 years - she only heard vague things about him being Meredith's lapdog from Anders in the brief period she assisted the Mage Underground and she honestly has no idea he is involved in the Inquisition until either Contact The Hero Of Ferelden or whatever circumstance put the three together in the same room. Cullen is healing from the thing but he has canonical hangups about what he said to her and all that, so before any fainting can happen they sort of... have to sort that out. But after that? My Cullen still remembers Lissie as the closest thing Thedas has to like, Gal Gadot, which is how he saw her when he was 18. He might be a grown mature adult who has gotten over his infatuation; he might not be seeing her through rose-tinted glasses anymore. He would still stutter. And Idrilla would never forgive or forget that. She would be the one milking it.
ok so my DA poetry headcanon that is just some dumb thing i thought about while trying to not die of boredom during literature review because highschool level lit is just. bleh Spoiler At 9:40 Dragon, Orlesians are going through a parnassianism phase. Poems about frivolous bullshit with the most elaborate language possible are all the rage, with special focus to composing poems for the different sides of the orlesian civil war; Brazil's national anthem is written in the parnassian style, and lot of anthems and march-like poems similar to it popped up in the last couple years before solving the dispute for the throne. Antivans and Rivaini poets take a lot from the poetry of Camões, with a certain fixed structure that's much less verbose than Orlesian poetry and many epics detailing sea voyages and battles and sinkings/drownings. Unlike Camões, though, most love poetry for Antiva and Rivain has a more... realistic quality, and there are a lot of poems dissing people. Camões's more idealistic view of love is seen in Fereldan poetry, which is also vaguely Arcadian - Arcadian poets here would write poetry about an idealized muse and calm quiet simple poems about an idyllic country life free of sin and worry, and Fereldans love writing calm poems about how Ferelden's mushy grey and beige fields are actually the very idea of earthly paradise. also dogs are great. lots of poetry about dogs.
i'm still very hung up on this pet-theory so now you all must suffer with me :p but yes please like. look at the whole saga of tyrdda bright-axe through the lense of assuming there is a reincarnation cycle or simply name-shift/epithets at work here.
Spoiler: I just finished Trespasser and this is adorable oh my god Cassandra is reading Varric’s novelization and she’s doing the voices, omfg!
This part is handsdown my absolute favorite bit of Trespasser everytime I reach it I just love it. so much.
