Kitchen And Craft Wix Corner (Exciteable Bird, Enter At Own Risk)

okay but it's even a pun with the soldiering

 

..............................................................
you make a compelling point

 

It may please you guys to know that i have now produced ~2600 words for this nonsense AU and I'm enjoying writing Dorian? a lot? I was mildly concerned I'd lose my nerve but I'm not throwing away my shot I'm doing okay i think

 

i interrupt bad tevene live choices with crying far too much about merrill

Spoiler: act 3 aveline and merrill banter

• Merrill: Aveline, you'll look after Hawke, won't you?
• Aveline: The champion of Kirkwall doesn't need my protection (Rivarly with Hawke)
• Aveline: Of course I will. What kind of a question is that? (Friendship with Hawke)
• Merrill: And sometimes Isabela gets into awful trouble. You'll watch out for her, too?
• Aveline: Merrill... what brought this on?
• Merrill: Anything could happen. You'll protect them, though. It's what you do.
• Aveline: There's nothing to worry about, Merrill.

also oh man i could cry about cullen every damn day of the week huh
he could cough in my direction and I'd break into tears
Also for all fenris and anders are at eachother's throat fenris is very quick to immediately go 'no fuck this' when sebastian suggests just getting him arrested. Which is. a real testament to how seb is always kind of the odd one out?
the fate of being the downloadable straight.

 

... not just anders actually. Merrill too, and Fenris is a lot more terrified of merrill than he is of anders, deep down.
like.

Spoiler: banter in question

• Sebastian: It's our duty to tell the templars.
• Fenris: Then why haven't you done it?
• Sebastian: I guess I was hoping they'd come to it on their own.
• Fenris: And then you wouldn't have to betray Hawke's friends, right?
• Sebastian: That's not reason enough to allow a maleficar to walk free.

(If Anders is in the party)

• Anders: You think the templars don't know I'm here? They just haven't caught me yet.

(If Merrill is in the party)

• Merrill: Are you talking about me?

• Sebastian: Which of us should do it? Shall we draw lots?
• Fenris: Uh-uh. You want to turn them in, you work it out with Hawke.

And fenris doesn't sound one bit conflicted either. He'll complain and needle and even be deliberately cruel to anders and merrill about their choices, but turning them in is something he won't do. Not even when being rivaled by a mage hawke. These dysfunctional asshole mages are *his* dysfunctional asshole mages dammit

 

makes you wonder if part of the underlying (and unstated) reason behind the refusal is also, like... for all that fenris thinks mages need to be limited because without that they're monsters, he's very much still an escaped slave and refugee that probably has a kneejerk response to the idea of 'handing over' any other Undesirables to authority figures primed to punish and abuse them

 

Merrill is such a sweetheart...

 

YEA
i feel like... with cullen and blackwall being foils in inquisition, i almost feel like fenris and cullen are foils for eachother in DA2?
So obviously fenris, who in many ways is both more stable than he's ever been and the quickest to jump to immediate murder as the go to solution in Act 3 still holding onto the people he has now spent a decade with, the only constants in his life? Makes perfect sense when contrasted with cullen who is slowly coming to realize that the woman he has spent the last decade blindly following is actually a dangerously tyrannical murderer.
Let's not forget, it's not just the EOA3 where he changes his tune.
Casual conversation in act 3, at least if you end with the top branching option (It as nice to catch up/"I just wanted to see how an old friend is doing in this difficult time.") (And hoo boy that's a canon damn acknowledgement of hawke's and cullen's relationship right there, don't fucking try to fool me bioware), ends with Cullen going

Which like. Given his history? Fucking heartwrenching! and that with his beaten down tired and pale DA2 model. The one where he looks like he hasn't slept or eaten right in a month. And he's surrounded by templars babbling paranoid and half-delusional nonsense in a way that makes it very clear Meredith has been restricting their lyrium for a while already when Act 3 begins. Fuck!

She is so good and I love her so much, despite being such an utter trainwreck of a woman.

 

i... didn't realize i automatically did that as her sub, but you know. canon. Sylvia jumps out of trashcans and laundry hampers to gush about her wife.
also have a screenshot of cullen being a sad dumb baby nerd

 

no one:
ivy leif briar, falling throwing themselves through your window with a full box of tissues: CULLEN STANTON RUTHERFORD IS SO SAD AND BEAUTIFUL AND I AM SO SAD ABOUT HIM HIS VERY EXISTENCE PHYSICALLY PAINS ME WITH DEHYDRATION BECAUSE I CRY EVERY TIME I REMEMBER HIM

 

will i ever stop writing weird shit about my blood mage hawke goblin daughter fucking cullen up worse and worse? signs point to 'not a chance'

Spoiler: this is not kind to anders act 3 actions, you have been warned

Sightings of an unnatural blizzard had drawn Cullen from his patrol along the Wounded Coast over to the Bone Pit, skidding to a dead stop at the mouth of a clearing.

The scene looked so utterly like 3 years ago he could feel the sick terror and foul taste of death in his mouth again, and yet it looked nothing like it.

Kneeling between the pronged horns of a High Dragon’s steaming corpse, leaning on a staff with its blade embedded deep in the beast’s skull, Hawke looked like a Chasind Wilder Goddess, her hair and face almost black with soot and blood and slick with sweat.

That horrid monstrosity of a coat she had worn ever since he met her hung about her frame in jagged, flaking, charred ribbons. Hoarfrost dusted her lips, cheekbones, the knuckles of her fingers.

She slowly looked up. Tear tracts were lining her face, making him hesitate before he raised his hand in greeting, almost in a trance as he picked his way over rubble and charred corpses and still smoldering fires. She moved no quicker, swaying slightly, her hair longer than usual, falling into her eyes in thick clumped together strands.

Cullen hardly noticed Hawke’s companions slowly dragging themselves to their feet as he reached a hand out to help the Champion down. He should have pushed her away, threatened to arrest her, and yet--

He did nothing as she pulled herself against his chest with a nigh on silent, broken sob, using his outstretched arm just so she wouldn’t slip.

“I let them die. Cullen. Cullen I’m letting so many die.” She whispered, and Cullen’s heart broke for this woman who never let herself be anything but strong, witty, and senselessly optimistic in public, beaten down and exhausted enough now for such an outburst. Only a momentary one, sure enough, because she took a sharp breath, then straightened up, blindly grabbing for his face, forcing him to look at her. She was so small, He normally did not notice it, but--

“No, listen, this is important. I was here before, just two nights ago, and I didn’t pay attention to what was happening then, and now I bear the weight of hundreds of miners and their families mourning them because I was too focused on frivolous nonsense. I cannot do this again. So you have to listen. There’s something in the chantry. I cannot tell you what, I don’t know, but something is going on. Someone is conspiring against the chantry. You have to warn people.”

Cullen’s eyes flicked from her over to were Anders was healing a snarling Fenris who was trying to shove him off, Merrill a limping, frail shadow dragging herself over to him and Hawke step by pained step. Back to Anders who looked haggard and pallid and yet alight with furious drive.

“I… suppose I need not ask which of the known apostates you’re talking about.”

Hawke winced slightly, closing her eyes. Cullen could not… could not bear tossing her aside to arrest Anders as he damn well should have. Instead he let himself rest an awkward gauntlet hand on her shoulder.

“I will pass the warning on.” His other hand came to rest on the back of her head, gently, gently pulling her back against his chestplate for a clumsy hug she clearly needed by the shaky little exhale she gave.

“Don’t hurt him. I’m trying to fix things. I can still fix this. I swear it.”

Cullen’s eyes stung as he looked blindly in the direction of Anders, always Anders, ruining things for himself and making the Order pay for it. Driven and passionate to the point of being a violent madman.

“You shouldn’t make yourself an oathbreaker for someone like him,” Cullen Rutherford breathed as he stepped back, released her so Merrill could take his place hugging Sylvia Hawke, propping her up. There was no place for him amongst her family. They all had their parts to keep to in this tragedy.

 

Hey! Hey excuse!

 

sooooo i know we all love to meme Cullen' Inquisition coat but uh
consider the following




i think i know who he got the idea for that fur collar from

 

Anderses feather pauldrons?

 

Fur Ruff Is Ferelden Fashion txtit

 

anders's feathery pauldrons are based on tevene fashion tho, and they sit very differently from the fur collar on the mantle of the champion (mage version, but there's fur collars on rogue and warrior versions too iirc. I'm just sticking with the mage version bc Mage!Hawke's mantle is the one appearing in most promotional material and the box art. I don't actually recall class and personality of the default default hawke for worldstate purposes?) and cullen's coat.
like that's. That's a thing. It's a carry over from his first appearance in Awakening where he wore a tevinter-robe-variant. (Something that's also a bit of a theme for him that's acknowledged in his DA2 Act 3 gift)
The same kind of robe Marethari and Velanna wear actually. The cut kind of fluctuates between being explicitly assigned to tevinter and vaguely to the dalish which is.... weird...
The feathery pauldrons have more in common with merrill's fur bits on her Vestments Of The First armor, which makes sense since in DA:O merrill also wears a tevene robe variant.

 

blue male mage, sided with the mages

 

thenk
so yeah mage hawke still default in all aspects, hence robes of the champion is default hawke appearance

 

Solavellan, just post Here Lies The Abyss, fair warning this is violent and filled with rage and prelude to inadvisable bad decisions snarly hissy angery fucking that borders on kind of throwing both 'safe and sane' and 'risk aware' out the window, and also solas apparently has a thing for worshipping when I write him, no matter what I do so there's that.
No actual fucking as of yet.

Spoiler: it's probably still nsfw

The first sensation that hit Solas was blistering heat, trapped within desolate crumbling stone walls, billowing up in thick blackened clouds. The bare soles of his feet stung slightly, but he ignored the sensation, beginning to pick his way through the rubble in search of that presence which pulled him deeper into the heart of flames like a lodestone. Flames licked over his skin in a horrid parody of tender gentle caresses but he pushed this sensation aside as well, treading deeper and deeper into a blazing inferno, the source of which was almost painfully familiar.

Even without the barely elven wordless scream of rage and anguish ringing through this nightmarish scene.

A muffled curse was all he permitted himself, hurrying his pace until he rounded a corner to find the source of both the scream and the flames.

Silhouetted against the dancing, hungry flames stood a slight dark woman, clad in scarred, charred, ripped asunder leathers barely substantial enough to keep her decent. Her wild untamed curls looked to be gleaming with embers in places or maybe it was the light from her vallaslin, gleaming with a sickly hot golden light in trailing thorny vine and branch designs all the way down to her navel and along her arms. Even as he watched she seemed to be unaware of his presence, pulling some sort of decorative piece of stone broken from a staircase or other and using it as a maul to wreck a large pillar, sending a section of the roof tumbling in a shower of spitting and cracking sparks. She barely seemed to notice one piece of rubble hitting her in the shoulder, splitting skin and adding slick almost black looking blood to the soot and dust coating her skin.

He had seen things like this before, it was merely… unexpected. Normally these kinds of outbursts came from restrained individuals, those unable to express themselves unless brought to a breaking point. Watching the elf before him tearing through architecture with single minded methodical determination made it clear that even the relative power and ability to express her hatred of humans and unbridled anger with so many things in the world was not enough to fully expel violent urges for… this woman. He would not unduly claim her to be something she was not. Lavellan was many things to him, the Inquisitor, a capable commander, a wickedly talented mage and a rare, unusual beauty reminding him painfully of bygone times in a way no other man would ever truly be able to appreciate, but… but nothing besides that.

At least he liked to tell himself that even as her ears pricked up and she rounded on him with an animal snarl, left hand immediately reaching for one of the licking flame to mold it into a mage blade. Kings, Emperors, gods, they paled in comparison to the incomparable feeling of being stared down by a woman so beyond any restraint and consideration for law and propriety as to practically burst at the seams, who yet remained so fundamentally loyal and pure and good there would never be need for second thought in following her.

He allowed himself a single moment to dwell on the sharp, almost aching desire to lift her above these petty lordlings and kings and emperors, mold and shape her to be the force of nature tempered to a cutting edge she could be.

If only the vallaslin meant what the Dalish thought it did. It would have been a good choice for Lavellan. As things stood the garish brands marred the fantasy of what his Inquisitor could have been once upon a time, when talent and drive and indomitable will like hers was still valued.

 

Solas is such a snot omg, and I'm loving Atish'an