i was tagged by @nightwardenminthara to do this picrew! this one was very cute, thank you <3
i am a firm supporter of the pointy ears alistair agenda. look at these two making out in the middle of the battlefield, you know alistair is giggling up a storm while Morigan makes barfing gestures in the background 🙄
When Liam created a grieving widower he went all in on being a grieving widower.
Orym misses his husband Will so much. He cares so much for him and because of it he is crushingly lonely at night, even when being spooned by his best friends.
But time doesn't sit still for the living. So years go by for the widower. And he meets someone who brushes upon some feelings that he had held for only his husband for years.
"I really miss Dorian and sometimes I think that's okay and sometimes I think it isn't"
The feelings exist, it's undeniable, and sometimes he feels indulgent. But because those feelings are so wrapped up with Will, wouldn't it, in Orym's eyes, feel like a betrayal?
So he feels those feelings and then guilt trips himself over it.
[C3E78, 3h 28m: Allura prepares Plane Shift. Everyone links hands. Ashton ties the doll to their chest before taking Imogen and Orym's hands. The circle is complete. Ashton and Bells Hells, Bells Hells and Ashton. No one left behind.]
I’ve mentioned this elsewhere but it feels relevant again in light of the most recent episode. Something that’s really fascinating to me about Orym’s grief in comparison to the rest of the hells’ grief is that his is the youngest/most fresh and because of that tends to be the most volatile when it is triggered (aside from FCG, who was two and obviously The Most volatile when triggered.)
As in: prior to the attack on Zephrah, Orym was leading a normal, happy, casual life! with family who loved him and still do! Grief was something that was inflicted upon him via Ludinus’ machinations, whereas with characters like Imogen or Ashton, grief has been the background tapestry of their entire lives. And I think that shows in how the rest of them are largely able to, if not see past completely (Imogen/Laudna/Chetney) then at least temper/direct their vitriol or grief (Ashton/Fearne/Chetney again) to where it is most effective. (There is a glaring reason, for example, that Imogen scolded Orym for the way he reacted to Liliana and not Ashton. Because Ashton’s anger was directed in a way that was ultimately protective of Imogen—most effective—and Orym’s was founded solely in his personal grief.)
He wants Imogen to have her mom and he wants Lilliana to be salvageable for Imogen because he loves Imogen. But his love for the people in his present actively and consistently tend to conflict with the love he has for the people in his past. They are in a constant battle and Orym—he cannot fathom losing either of them.
(Or, to that point, recognize that allowing empathy to take root in him for the enemy isn't losing one of them.)
It is deeply poignant, then, that Orym’s grief is symbolized by both a sword and shield. It is something he wields as a blade when he feels his philosophy being threatened by certain conversational threads (as he believes it is one of the only things he has left of Will and Derrig, and is therefore desperately clinging onto with both bloody hands even if it makes him, occasionally, a hypocrite), but also something he can use in defense of the people he presently loves—if that provocative, blade-grief side of him does not push them—or himself—away first.
(it won’t—he is as loved by the hells as he loves them. he just needs to—as laudna so beautifully said—say and hear it more often.)
tagged by @nightwardenminthara to make a character in this picrew and a sword they would use in this one
Only two of my ocs mainly use swords and I can’t make Cyra in this so Ashari it is :3 the grip of the sword is made from the scales of the Andraste dragon she defeated
team comparatively sane and reasonable, team ???, team mom friend, team casualties of the powerful and the devout, team the isolated self after a traumatic event, team “’the worst thing that ever happened to me’ already happened.”