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ravenqueen89 · 5 years

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For Luck

Woop, making some strides in my backlog! I’ve been feeling generally very low and not being able to write did. not. help. We’re getting there!

Patreon fic #1 is the patron reward for the beautiful and amazing @effelants, who requested my take on the DAI coin scene during Cullen’s romance.

This is PEAK RAMBLE, my dudes, I get caught up in The Feels rather frequently, and it just...cascades. Literally no dialogue and very little coherence.

I also apparently can't write fluff without hints of angst anymore ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Fandom: Dragon Age (Inquisition)

Title: For Luck

Pairing: fem!Trevelyan/Cullen Rutherford

Rating: PG

Summary: They steal moments amidst expeditions, just the two of them in hidden corners of the fortress, and everything in him grows quiet around her, even the voices that tell him how inferior he is to her. She is a Trevelyan still, regardless of being a mage or not, and she is the Inquisitor, but when she holds him there is nothing else, just his heartbeat and her breath and the lack of space between them.

Notes: a rather vague fem!mage!Trevelyan, mentions of Cullen's past, mentions of withdrawal, mentions of past angst, and the usual 'dude has inferiority complex and is fine with it' pattern.

Also on ao3.

Cullen refused to even look at the coin for a long time, finding no luck during years and years of anger, and misery, and wretched choices. He carried it with the rest of his belongings, but it only returned to his pocket after Kirkwall’s Chantry, when he was once more despairing and adrift, holding onto it and praying to no one in particular. By the time Cassandra’s letter found him, the coin had preserved him during the aftermath of the explosion, tucked safely under his glove with its memory of home and its illusion of safety.

Now it keeps him company in the darkest moments of the night, before dawn breaks, when the lyrium sings its false promises loudest, when the pain hooks into his skin, into his bones, unwilling to let go.

The coin is with him in Haven, in Skyhold, in his daily attempts to lose and find himself in the rigorous discipline. It is with him when he meets her, when he picks her up from the grip of the snow after Haven and realises he can't lose her, when he figures out that he doesn't associate luck only with the idealised memory of his childhood anymore.

At night, the coin catches the flickering candlelight and for a fleeting moment it shines as golden as her hair, as her eyes, as the glow of her magic. He holds on to it when he wakes up with screams tearing themselves from his throat. He holds on to it when he tells her, when he confesses his sins to her because she is what sustains his faith now. He tells her about the past, tells her about the anger, and the misery, and the wretched choices, and she looks at him like there is nothing tainted about him, her fingers in his hair and her lips whispering against his skin. He knows that there are things he can never stop apologising for, but on the battlements he finds redemption, he finds forgiveness, and as the wind wraps itself around them the pain grows quiet.

Later, he tells her about the lyrium, tells her how it sings to him, and her eyes are soft and concerned and then steel when she tells him to continue on his mission to be fully severed from its spell, and all he can think about is how the golden glow of her magic has become familiar, the dread that used to grab him by the throat in the face of any and all magic slowly fading.

They steal moments amidst expeditions, just the two of them in hidden corners of the fortress, and everything in him grows quiet around her, even the voices that tell him how inferior he is to her. She is a Trevelyan still, regardless of being a mage or not, and she is the Inquisitor, but when she holds him there is nothing else, just his heartbeat and her breath and the lack of space between them.

He holds on to the coin when she is gone, out of the reach of his protection. Cullen knows only too well that each time she leaves it might be the last time he watches her from the bridge, her golden hair escaping its constraints in the frenzy of the wind. He is not sure how to bear the weight of her absence, and it doesn’t get easier.

One morning he falls asleep at dawn, his head on his desk, only a short and embarrassing doze that no one witnesses, but he dreams of the lake, and he wakes up with the coin clutched in his clenched fist. After running drills, he informs Leliana that he will attend to affairs in Ferelden after the Inquisitor returns from Val Royeaux. The spymaster says nothing with words and everything with her eyes, as usual, but it doesn’t feel like judgement.

The Inquisitor joins him on his impromptu trip without asking questions, trusting him in a way that makes his heart soar and his words stumble over themselves when he tells her about his home and his family on the journey there. She falls asleep with her head on his shoulder, and he feels more peaceful than he’s ever known before.

At the lake, he places the coin in her hand with a kiss pressed to the metal, and it shines bright in her palm, her smile overwhelming. He takes his gloves off despite the chill by the shore, and she takes his hand, the coin absorbing warmth from the two of them. Magic used to terrify him, but he still feels it humming in her and it isn’t a threat, and he still doesn’t know how to feel about what he doesn’t understand, but he knows how to feel about her. The sound of her magic is so unlike the song of the lyrium, and he finds himself wishing desperately for her safety, wishing he could put invisible shields all around her, wishing he could protect her even though she doesn’t need him for that.

She can feel the fear in him, the cold sweat that breaks at the thought of losing her, of how she could be ripped from him at any time, and she holds him well into the night, her fingers gentle as they tangle in his hair. She is safe here, in this moment, on the shore of the lake that used to be Cullen’s favourite place in the world before he knew how it felt like to be by her side, and in this moment it is enough.

Before putting the coin away, she also kisses it, and then laughs at the look on Cullen’s face. She says ‘for luck’, and then leads him away, his hand in hers.

#my writing #cullen x trevelyan #cullen rutherford #dragon age fic #patreon

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mattbrothersscriptwriter · 6 years

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Once Upon A Time

I’d like to have a little ramble and shout into the void about a truly unique, life affirming and heartfelt movie. Not because any of this hasn’t been covered before - I’d bet my guitar case full of coins it has. Not as a review or a hot take or a think piece, though perhaps it’s a little of all of those things. But because I recently rewatched the 2007 musical drama Once (dir: John Carney) and it reminded me how much this movie makes me fucking feel… which is also the hardest thing for me to eloquently put down into words but hey, I’ll try.

Once tells the simple story of Guy (Glen Hansard), a busker in Dublin who lives with his Dad and works in his hoover repair shop. He’s a talented musician but is still living in the shadow of a long since broken relationship, something that evidently both haunts and drives him. This inner conflict has inevitably kept him stranded in the same place – possessing the skills and the ambition to transform his passion into a career but lacking the courage and the heart to truly see it through. That is until he meets Girl (Markéta Irglová), a Czech immigrant who gets by selling flowers and the Big Issue. She’s a keen pianist and the unlikely pair quickly form a unique friendship, bonding over songwriting, heartbreak and Dublin itself.

Shot for next to nothing in three weeks, it’s a film so raw (and perfectly suited to that style) that just a single step in either direction would shatter the illusion. Too glossy and the magic is somehow lost. Any more ramshackle and there probably wouldn’t be a finished film to even worry about. Cillian Murphy was supposed to play Guy but dropped out, making way for director John Carney to convince Hansard, who was already set to write the music, to take the natural next step and just play the role himself.

It’s a story that manages to exist in the moment like nothing else I’ve really seen, thanks in part to the guerrilla style production but also thanks to its immense, bittersweet heart and commitment to bottling the ‘life as it happens’ feeling. It’s how we all experience life after all and it’s only afterwards that we may look back on certain memories as feeling like scenes from a movie: those perfectly captured instances where decisions have huge consequences and it feels like some higher power is writing you into a cruel plot twist or inevitable turning point. Its one thing to physically make a movie feel so grounded but to write and perform it that way too shows a real understanding of the tone they were aiming for – and absolutely nailing in the process.

It’s a joyful movie but an effortlessly melancholy one too. Like I said, it’s bittersweet. Anyone who has ever had a dream, ever been in love or ever wished for something more, you can understand and feel all of that through one look at Hansard’s exhausted face. Avoiding saccharine movie tropes and clichés, he’s simply a bloke who rides the bus with his guitar. Who chases thieves stealing his busking money. Who exists in our world. We probably see him every day, out on the streets or hunkered away in a corner of the tube. His or her music echoing through crowds, ignored by most but probably connecting to more people than we might think.

Guy never seems more vulnerable than when he’s hiding behind a forced smile or his sad, puppy dog eyes and watching this mask of happiness slowly blossom into something genuine is where the film really hits me. It reminds us that we have to seek change – or allow change to happen to us – to move from where we are to where we want to be.

I love how Guy is a thirty something pessimist whilst Girl, despite living with just as much of an uncertain, unstable future as Guy, is a ray of sunshine in comparison. She’s a stubbornly joyful extrovert, happily striking up conversations with strangers - a comically recurring trait that rewards her with casual piano practice in the music shop, helps to secure a bank loan for the recording session AND score a reduced charge for the studio hire later on. It’s the ‘if you don’t ask, you won’t get’ mentality, utilised by someone with no ulterior motives; a real pure soul who finds happiness in what she has, not what she’s lacking.

She speaks her mind, unconcerned with any risk of social awkwardness. Her abrupt “I have to go now” way of announcing she’s leaving becomes something of a catchphrase and it works wonderfully in establishing not just the generational difference between the two characters but the cultural one as well. I really love how we first meet her in the film – when she is drawn to Guy performing his most emotionally raw song (the amazing ‘Say it to Me Now’) all alone, in the middle of the night. This exorcism of his repressed feelings, expressed only through his music, is in fierce contrast to Girl’s happy go lucky outlook and she wastes no time in probing him for the truth.

This film is one of the most genius, underplayed and natural musicals ever – essentially doing the ‘bursting into song’ thing whilst remaining firmly in reality, never quite breaking that thinly veiled fourth wall that all other musicals do. Here, it’s in a beautifully captured song-writing-on-the-fly sequence (‘Falling Slowly’) or a late night jam session between family and acquaintances (‘Gold’) or in a great sequence where Girl sings lyrics to an instrumental track given to her by Guy whilst on a walk back from the corner store to buy batteries (’If You Want Me’). It’s so relatable; from the street kids watching her go past to her fluffy slippers to the clunky portable CD player in her hand. Who hasn’t done something like that? A more traditional musical might have been tempted to convert the pedestrians to background singers, cooing harmonies over her shoulder or snapping their fingers in a dance routine through the street but this film shows that life can be full of ‘movie-adjacent’ moments and not feel cheaply earnt whilst portraying them.

This movie is something of an Irish, folksy Before Sunrise – except Guy is probably in the period of his life where he’s actually living in Before Sunset (jaded, wondering what could have been) whilst Girl is firmly in Sunrise (open to new connections, optimistic about the present). They’re on different paths and perhaps even swap roles throughout, with Guy becoming more enlightened and eager for new experiences whilst we learn that Girl is caring for a small child who is product of her past. These two never really come to any real conflict themselves. The closest they maybe get is when Guy makes an awkward, kinda sad pass at her one night – but it’s practically all forgiven and forgotten by the next day. That’s real life too and I’m glad a moment like that is addressed in the story but promptly resolved. It doesn’t need to be this instance of overly contrived setup/payoff, it’s just a misunderstanding that the characters are aware enough to acknowledge and put aside. In fact, so much of this narrative goes against the grain. Guy never gets ‘the Girl’. He chooses to chase down a woman who is probably bad for him. And Girl ends up giving her husband another shot – a character we’ve never met and have barely heard about. Again, just because we aren’t aware of a person’s backstory doesn’t mean it doesn’t exist or that we’re responsible for making any grand change to the way things pan out. Here, a kind gesture of purchasing a piano for a kindred spirit is more than enough… if a little unpractical.

So much of this movie acts as a mirror to the lives of the people making it. The struggling artist narrative is straight out of Hansard’s life, even recording the demo tape in the same studio as he once did. The ex-girlfriend who moved to London is right out of Carney’s own past. All of this helps blur the line between fact and fiction, The scene where Girl tells Guy that she loves him, unprompted and ingeniously unsubtitled, is perhaps the most quietly powerful moment in the film – because the line between performance and truth is shattered as we, like Guy AND Hansard, perhaps can’t tell who’s saying what anymore – the character or the actor. In reality, it may have been both. And it’s captured right there on screen. Lightning in a bottle.

Arguably, this film is set in the last era of when a story like this could be romantic – or at least romanticised. If it was made today, in 2018, Guy would be recording in his bedroom, uploading to Soundcloud, plugging his Patreon page and filling a Youtube account with cover songs sang directly to his webcam. There’s no doubt that the advancements in technology has added an artifice to the whole struggling artist thing and it means something very different in this day and age. Here, in the far flung days of the mid 00s, there’s no real social media presence (Myspace was sort of at its peak but was more of a Facebook precursor than the platform for music it slowly morphed into) and Guy ends the movie with a handful of CDs to show for his time in the studio. Ah physical media, how I miss thee… sometimes…

This is definitely one of those movies that is firmly lodged in my brain. Despite only having watched it twice, three times at most, I’ve had the soundtrack on rotation for ten years and the time I caught Glen Hansard himself in concert (at the Shepherd’s Bush Empire in 2015, natch) was legitimately one of the most memorable gig experiences I’ve ever been to. Everything from the setlist to the showmanship to the intimacy to the grandeur, it was just incredible. An unplugged encore starting with Say It To Me Now up on a balcony in the crowd through to Falling Slowly on piano? Woop woop!

But I digress… this is a film that is firmly time-stamped in my memory. I watched it on the very same night that I first properly met someone who ended up becoming a huge part of my life. Nearly ten years ago to the day, me and some friends - energised by both the movie and the hazy summer evening - trekked across town to a housewarming party. This was a decision which would inevitably change the very direction of my life, which is insane when you really sit down and think about it… and being able to pinpoint the origin of such a huge personal crossroads is kinda what Once is all about so it really does resonate.

And I think this rewatch really did resonate, because I now saw myself more as the cynical, pessimistic person Guy is at the start of the film – just trying to keep on keeping on and push himself out of his comfort zone. To achieve something special or worthwhile. Without getting too personal, I can be my own worst enemy and while 2008 mostly feels more like a lifetime ago, there are times when it feels like it was just yesterday and I blinked and went from then to now in a flash. And we all have these moments. Be it meeting someone influential, deciding to move house, to travel to a new country, to quit that job and take that risk; they can be scary or freeing or even traumatic but they’re an element of life that movies strive to replicate… and this one just does so by downplaying the weight of these moments rather than draw attention to them in an artificial manner.

John Carney has said that the title of the film is in reference to other talented musicians and artists that he knew, who always said ‘once I do this and once I do that, then I’ll pursue my passion’ etc, referring to the realities (and the safety nets) of life that can sometimes stop people from taking the plunge and chasing their dreams. I’ve definitely felt the same way and have constantly had that conversation inside my own head: that once I get these things sorted then these things lined up then I’ll do such and such and how in the end, time just keeps on moving regardless… so you have to act.

This film is about making that choice to act.

#once #glenhansard #marketa irglova #john carney #ireland #dublin #indie film #musical #falling slowly

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