#i love them a lot even when they hurt me

[greghatecrimes]

Okay. Buckle up babes, it's finally Foreteen time and I wrote an essay.

Foreman and Thirteen are so interesting to me in so many ways. You have Foreman, who thrives off of control, and Thirteen, who refuses to be controlled in almost every aspect of her life. In the sense of them as individual people, they both have a lot of their own issues going on. Hot messes, the two of them. But in the sense of them as a couple, I think Foreman specifically is the only one who has issues with the relationship. (Or rather, Thirteen's issues aren't being projected onto the relationship and causing difficulties at the end of s5/beginning of s6, while Foreman's are.)

Foreman's biggest thing, at least in the latter part of their relationship, is control in regards to emotions. After they found Kutner, he coped with everything by isolating himself. A huge part of me thinks that's because this terrible thing just happened, the floor just fell out from both of them in so many ways, and Foreman feels like he doesn't have a grip on anything anymore. The only thing he can control is himself, and how he reacts. So Thirteen? Even though she's his girlfriend and he's worked with her for two years, her emotions and reactions are fundamentally beyond the scope of his control; she's still a wild card. She's not safe. So instead of letting himself lean on Thirteen, letting them grieve together, letting them comfort each other, for his own stability, Foreman chooses to cope (and thus reject Thirteen when she reaches out for support) by retreating into an environment that he's intimately familiar with. He surrounds himself with only variables that he can confidently predict. It's his gut instinct. It's always worked before, so why wouldn't it work this time? Why would it have any reason to cause problems?

In season four and the first half of season five, Thirteen was very much the same way. When things became too overwhelming for her, she repeatedly dealt with them by running, by hiding; by trying to isolate herself from the people who care about her and want to help her. The same base principle drives them both at this point: "what's out of my control is dangerous in some way or another. The only one who's safe to be around is myself, because I am the only person that I can control." But by mid season five, Thirteen has come a long way from that. Slowly she's becoming much more of a "recovering control freak". She's starting to be okay with the fact that she's not always going to have the amount of control that she has right now. She knows that all of it is something she has to come to terms with, and slowly she's getting to a point where she's accepting her diagnosis and working on all the baggage that comes with it.

Thinking about that– the fact that, by mid season five, Thirteen is approaching a point in her life of letting go, of learning to 'go with the flow'; while Foreman is very much still on the side of "I thrive and keep myself safe by controlling every aspect of my life possible"– makes them fundamentally incompatible as a couple from the get-go, even with all of the chemistry they had. Because the moment they get together (the Christmas party in 5x10 "Joy to the World") is right after Thirteen's decided that she doesn't want to die; when she's just starting to process her diagnosis instead of running from it.

Do I think there was/is love there? Yes. They absolutely care about each other, both during and after the relationship.

Do I think they would have worked out long term? The simple answer is "no".

The more complicated answer is that if they had been able to avoid the fiasco of Foreman running the department and then firing Thirteen after House quit, I think they could have made it work. But it would have been rocky, and it would have been especially rough for Foreman. Extremely so if it were to reach a point where they've stayed together for years and years, and Foreman is with Thirteen when she really starts to decline with her Huntington's.

Foreman is Thirteen's friend; he's also seen people slowly wither away from degenerative disease (his mother, with Alzheimer's), and he's a neurologist (and so he knows exactly how she'll decline, down to every last detail). All of those things give him greater emotional stakes in her Huntington's diagnosis beyond what's typical. But specifically in the situation of them facing this as a couple, you have this level of involvement where Foreman– someone who needs a high amount of control to function on a fairly basic level– is in an incredibly intimate relationship with Thirteen, whose entire life is inevitably and actively slipping out of her control. And in that scenario... I think that when the decline does start happening, it would absolutely terrify Foreman. To be the one that's by her side as a partner– seeing all of it firsthand, the pain and grief and sickness? And as her significant other, being the one that would potentially become a medical proxy when she's too sick to advocate for herself, faced with the possibility of making life or death decisions (like whether or not to euthanize the woman he loves)? I think that would have the potential to utterly destroy him.

As a friend, though? ("Ex-partners who have gotten back to a shaky friendship after the breakup, and still care about each other deeply", but "friends" for short.) The entire situation completely changes. I firmly believe that post-canon, if Foreman knows House offered to kill Thirteen before he "died", he would offer to kill her in House's stead in a heartbeat (just like I think Chase does). THAT sort of involvement with Thirteen's decline and care is far less terrifying, because now this is not the decline of someone that he's based his entire future on. This is not someone he's given half of his heart to; this is not someone he's built an entire life with and entwined himself so thoroughly with.

With the way things work out in canon, they're still friends, and they still care about each other; but at the end of the day, they're two separate people with two separate lives, two separate futures. And so Foreman doesn't lose a single ounce of his control as Thirteen's is slowly taken from her, bit by bit. Witnessing that is still a pain that is unimaginable. But for him, it's survivable. And that's the key difference (and why I ship Foreteen during season five and season six, but not post canon).

[sysig]

So much experimenting to be done, where to even start (Patreon)

[seagull-scribbles]

I want you to tell ‘em that you love the way that they don’t stick out like sore middle fingers

[Continuation of this]

[yellowocaballero]

Been a fan of your fics for YEARS. I was just telling my friend how despite how much I read fics I never actually love them, with some of your fics (especially TMA) as the exception. Felt the need to reread some of them and saw you reblogged some ISAT fanart. So. Any thoughts on ISAT you'd like to share?

Hope you have a wonderful day!! So happy I found your fics again!!

I avoided answering this for a while because I was trying to think of a way to cohesively and coherently vocalize my thoughts on In Stars and Time. I have given up because I don't want to hold everybody here all day and I have accepted that my thoughts are just pterodactyl screeching.

I love it so much. I have so much to say on it. It drove me bonkers for like a week straight. I have AUs. It's absolute Megbait. They're just a little Snufkin and they're having the worst experience of anybody's life. Ludonarratives my fucking beloved.

I am going to talk about the prologue.

The prologue is such a fascinating experience. You crack open the game and immediately begin checking off all of the little genre boxes: mage, warrior, researcher, you're the rogue...some little kid who's there for some reason...alright, you know the score. You're in yet another indie Earthbound RPG, these are your generic characters, let's get the ball rolling.

Except then you realize that these characters are people. You feel instantly how you've entered the game at its last dungeon, at the end of the adventure. They have their own in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They get along well and they're obviously close, but not in a twee or unrealistic way. They have so much chemistry and spirit and life. I fell in love with them so quickly.

But Sif doesn't. Sif kind of hates them, because they will not stop saying the same damn thing. They walk the same paths, do the same things, make the same jokes, expect Sif to say the same lines. They keep referencing a Sif we do not see, with jokes we never see him make and heroic personality he never shows - they reference a Sif who is dead - and Sif can't handle that, so he kills them too.

They become only an exercise in tedious frustration. Sif button mashes through their dialogue, Sif mindlessly clicks the same dialogue options, Sif skips through the tutorial, Sif blows through the puzzles. Sif turns their world into a video game. Sif is playing a generic RPG. Sif forgets their names. They are no longer people with in-jokes, histories, backgrounds, adventures. They're the mage, the warrior, the researcher, and...some random kid.

I did not understand the Kid's presence at first. I had no idea what they contributed to the game. They didn't do anything. As a party member in a video game, they're a bit useless. Why is the Kid there?

Because Sif's life isn't a video game. Because the kid isn't 'the kid'. They're Bonnie. Bonnie, who the party loves. Why is Bonnie there? Because they love them. There is no room for Bonnie in the boring RPG that Sif is playing. And then you realize that Sif is wrong, and that they've lost something extremely important, and that they'll never escape without it.

Watching the prologue before watching ISAT gave ISAT the most unique air of dread and horror, because you crack open ISAT and you see the person Sif used to be. You realize that Sif used to be a person. Sif used to be the person who made jokes, who gave real smiles, who interacted with the world as if they are a part of it. And you know you are sitting down to watch Sif lose everything that made them a person, to lose everything that made them a member of this world, and turn them into a character in a video game who doesn't understand the point of Bonnie at all.

At the climax of the game, when the others realize that something is deeply wrong and that Sif physically cannot tell them, they realize that there is nothing they can do. So Bonnie declares snacktime. And for the first time they have snacktime.

What is snacktime? Classic JRPGs don't have snacktime. There's literally no point to a snacktime - not in a video game, and not in Sif's terrible life. It's not fixing this, because nothing can fix this. But Bonnie gives Sif a cookie and Sif eats it.

It's meaningless. It's a cutscene. It didn't save Sif and it didn't change a thing. It will make no difference in the end.

But it did make the difference. It made all of the difference in the world. Bonnie is a character who you really don't understand the point of before you realize that Bonnie was the entire point.

ISAT is about comfort media. Why do we play the same video games over and over again? Why do we avoid watching the finale of our favorite shows? What is truly comforting: a story with no conflict, or a story where you always know what is about to happen? Do you want to live in a scary, uncontrollable world, or do you want to play Stardew Valley? Do you want a person or a character?

When I beat Earthbound for the first time (and if you don't know, the prologue/ISAT battle system is just Mother) and watched the ending cutscene where the characters part ways and say goodbye...I felt a little bit sad. I wanted them to be together forever. But that's something only characters could ever be.

[craycraybluejay]

yes i am an adult male who loves high school dramas this is because i literally never experienced normal coming of age drama like ever and am disconnected from the collective experience of having a relatable peer group forever hope that helps

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

This week on "CJ needs to gush about DAO": Morrigan's dark ritual.

I adore Origins because depending on how serious you take roleplay, every decision you make is a thread that leads back to your origin, and in this case of the ritual, who you choose to romance can have a major impact on how you handle this choice.

For context, my canon run is with a female Tabris who romances Alistair and keeps him as a Grey Warden, and is close friends with Morrigan. It's more in character for my Tabris to reject Morrigan's ritual and not even bring it up to Alistair, which would result in her leaving him behind while she makes the ultimate sacrifice in killing the archdemon... however, agreeing to convince Alistair to do the ritual with Morrigan is the only choice in the entire game where I break roleplay because I'm selfish and weak and I want Tabris to live.

I have a lot of strong feelings about the ritual, like it hurts me. It makes me want to chew on furniture. I can talk about it until I can talk no more. I so badly want to be strong enough to remain in character and reject the ritual.

Let me explain: Tabris survives an origin that deals with sexual assault. She gets kidnapped on her wedding day, she watches the other kidnapped women and her husband get murdered, and then is too late to save Shianni from being assaulted... and Tabris carries that trauma with her throughout the entire game.

If the way to save her life is to ask the two most important people she cares about; one being her lover and the other being her best friend; who she knows hate each other, to have dubiously consensual sex in order to make a baby to absorb the old god soul... she's saying no. The last thing Tabris would ever do is put someone into a sexual situation where consent is at all dubious after what she saw happen to Shianni and nearly happened to herself. She'd rather die than force that upon Alistair and Morrigan.

That's what I mean when I say origin affects everything; I know some will side eye that with "Really? Your warden would rather die than let Alistair sleep with another woman? It's one time, and Alistair agrees to it, so no one needs to die?"

Let me be clear in saying this isn't a "Morrigan slept with my man" issue. Sure, that part's awkward and it sucks, but that's not even breaking water tension, let alone diving into the deep waters to the core of the issue.

For my Tabris, this is about betrayal, consent, and accepting fate.

The person offering Tabris this deal is someone she thought of as a trusted friend who has actually been lying to her the entire time. It doesn't matter what Morrigan's intentions are now or if she genuinely wants to save the wardens. She knew from the beginning why Flemeth sent her with them, she admits as much. She knew a warden would need to make the ultimate sacrifice and then leveraged that to get what she wants. Morrigan waited until the night before, when Alistair and the warden learn one of them has to die to defeat the archdemon, and took advantage of the high running emotions and possibly the fear of dying to make the warden agree to her ritual.

At least, that's how my Tabris interprets this confrontation. She feels betrayed by someone she came to love like a sister and went out of her way to help Morrigan with her mother upon learning what's in Flemeth's grimoire. And then that someone tells her no one needs to die, she just needs to convince Alistair to sleep with her... which is a huge fucking problem.

The Alistair and Tabris romance is slow; it took a long time for either of them to be comfortable with being emotionally vulnerable and trusting each other with basic intimacy, let alone sex. Tabris is mortified at the idea of putting Alistair in this situation. Not only would it feel like a betrayal on her part to ask that of him, but she knows the last thing Alistair ever wants to do is father a bastard who then goes on to grow up without him. How could she possibly ask him to do that?

Then you consider that ritual or no, there isn't a guarantee that they'll survive anyway. Say they do the ritual and Tabris dies anyway; she made Alistair sleep with Morrigan in order to save her and then she died anyway. Or if Alistair dies then Tabris gets to live with the fact that the last person Alistair was with was a woman he hates because she asked that of him… and either way, Morrigan gets to walk away with what she wanted.

Tabris led the group, and she's accepted that if Riordan dies [which he does] then she'll be the one to make the sacrifice, even if it means breaking both hers and Alistair's heart.... except she doesn't because I'm a coward who doesn't want to lose her because my worldstate isn't good without her in it but I also refuse to lose Alistair so I just pretend it plays out differently in my head it's fine-

But... that's how I play Tabris and view the situation. My friend @pi-creates and I have discussed the dark ritual at length. While I play a Tabris who romances Alistair, Pi plays a Mahariel who romances Morrigan, so we have vastly different interpretations of the ritual itself and Morrigan's intentions.

Which yeah, it makes total sense that someone who romanced Morrigan with a different origin, and has the option to do the ritual with her rather than asking someone else to do it, wouldn't see this the way I do.

To quote Pi: "Playing as a male warden in the Morrigan romance makes the whole situation feel different, and maybe it’s because she’s presenting it differently due to the emotional connection, but it feels more like she’s opening up about her initial instructions (that she had been given by Flemeth) and offering a solution to avoid the possibility of death. And for my Mahariel, the constant threat of sudden death has haunted him from the start – he caught the blight and was ripped away from his clan (something he did not want to do in the slightest), got forced into a Grey Warden ritual that could kill him, was forced into a battle that could kill him, going on this whole quest that he never wanted but has now become responsible for regardless of his thoughts on the matter… the dark ritual may be one of the few moments where he is presented with an option to decide if he wants to walk into certain death, or take actions of his own volition to stop it.

"The idea of the ritual still feels like a dodgy thing to do since the ultimate outcome is unknown at that point, he’s taking Morrigan at her word that it will save the warden and that this child would be unharmed, just with an old god soul that she isn’t exactly clear on why she wants that and is determined to runaway immediately after the battle to secure it properly. It could be interpreted that it’s purely a preservation thing, but I’m biased to wanting Morrigan's intentions to not be power based.

"But also, taking part in the ritual isn’t as outlandish for my warden since he and Morrigan have already been involved in an intimate relationship. It’s the future of the ritual that is scarier – the idea of this old-god baby, and the idea of Morrigan insisting that she’s leaving afterwards when Mahariel and her have a loving relationship. He’s hurting, but he doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want Alistair to die, he doesn’t want Morrigan to leave, he definitely doesn’t want pregnant Morrigan to leave on her own… it’s complicated, but for completely different reasons."

And I find that fascinating. I want to know how other players approach this part of DAO, what origins they play, and who they romanced. Seriously, this is an invitation to anyone reading to share their thoughts.

What about a warden who doesn't even have Alistair in their party because they made Loghain a warden? Is there anyone out there who has Loghain do the ritual with Morrigan and why? What about male wardens who don't romance her? Do you choose to do it with her anyway, or do you ask Alistair or Loghain to do it? Do you tell Morrigan to fuck off with the ritual? Why? Who makes the ultimate sacrifice in that case? And what about Morrigan herself? How do you interpret her intentions/motivations? I want to know.

I'm telling you, this is a discussion that gets me excited, as most discussions about DAO do.

[tcfactory]

Okay smartass how would you fix Bingqiu if you had your way?

If you actually want to know you could do to be less of a rude little shit about it, anon, but all right.

This is not about 'fixing' anything. Bingqiu is a wildly popular ship and a lot of people enjoy the exact kind of delusional insanity these two have about each other and that's honestly great. Love it for them. Not my cup of tea though.

I think the easiest and fastest way to make them sort their shit out and maybe put them in a position where I might actually be interested in what's going on with them is to take the protagonist halo away. Maybe the System short circuits, maybe it just gets automatically turned off after the extras, don't know don't care.

A lot of Shen Qingqiu's self delusions are fueled by his unshakeable belief that Luo Binghe, being The Protagonist, is Perfectly Fine the way he is. Binghe is the Protagonist, so when there are no character development or obligatory angst events going on he is happy and healthy and a slightly charred good boy and Shen Qingqiu is The Happy Wife who dotes on his hubby and Everything Is Right In The World. Endless honeymoon with their responsibilities only coming to bother them every once in a while. And it makes it way too easy for Binghe to cover up that he's still hurt, still unstable and still insecure by what went down because Shen Qingqiu is willing to take him at face value when he presents his insecurities as just being shameless neediness for his husband. Of course he happily indulges Binghe! But that isn't really helping with the core of the problem now, does it?

Like, Binghe takes steps towards ensuring Shen Qingqiu's mental wellbeing even at the cost of his own as soon as Maigu Ridge is over when he takes him back to the sect. Shen Qingqiu tries too, in his own way (the entire segment in the tombs is all about him putting himself in very real danger for Binghe's sake) but at the same time, this is a guy who completely missed the writing on the wall that Bingge was deeply unhappy in PIDW. As long as he can hold onto his internal picture that The Protagonist Suffered A Lot But He Is Fine Now I don't think he can really offer the right kind of emotional support for Binghe to actually heal from what happened to him and move on to a healthier frame of mind.

If you take the protagonist halo away, then first of all Binghe can, you know, suck a little. Or a lot, actually. The world not making excuses for him and him being a little defanged would be good for him. He gets really nothing he actually wants from being the protagonist - Shen Qingqiu will love him anyway. Mobei-jun will still stick around to back him up and help him out, because he's still Shang Qinghua's favorite fictional son and Qinghua is happy to see Binghe happy, just, you know, somewhere way over there where he can't get jealous tsundere over Cucumber bro and maybe murder him about it. Sha Hualing is still going to be his buddy because he's her best source of human trivia and the writing inspiration for her girlfriend. Not having to be demon emperor and getting more time to spend with his husband would be a relief.

But he would have to be more aware of other people because he's not above them anymore. Maybe even forced to make a few new friends to get by. And his mask will fail and Shen Qingqiu will have to see him for what he is: just Luo Binghe, still hurt and still confused half demon, who loves him very much, but can't make sense of him and is afraid that he will be left behind or pushed away without explanation again and that's kinda Shen Qingqiu's own damn fault.

And Shen Qingqiu can't hold onto his delusions about The Protagonist. He can't willfully ignore that things are not fine with Binghe because he's not the Protagonist anymore and the world only allows that special privilege for the Protagonist. Binghe is just a guy now and he has so many heart demons he needs help with. His trauma from the abyss or Xin Mo can't be brushed off with 'oh that's just part of his blackening he's fine now' anymore. And it might need a little bit of adjusting to internalize that these problems have always been here just below the surface, but Shen Qingqiu genuinely loves Binghe and would want to help him become happier and more stable in any way he can.

Binghe becoming part of the world in a way that's one person among many - building a support network! maybe befriending new demons or actually getting to know and making up with the QJ disciples or finding common ground with LQG and becoming sparring buddies - rather than a protagonist in a sea of NPCs is a lot more interesting to me than whatever he has going on at the end of canon. And Shen Qingqiu can be there with him on that journey, because he already started unlearning the sense of unreality the System conditioned into him, but he still has a long way to go.

[sysig]

How much of me is me? (Patreon)

[crossbackpoke-check]

Substance, Shadow, and Spirit [remixed, abridged] by Tao Yuanming

[angorwhosebabyisthis]

i think one of the things that upsets me the most about velma and shaggy's relationship in sdmi--and boy there is a lot--is that not only is her constantly ''correcting'' him for minor, harmless, and usually completely reasonable things with physical and emotional abuse, well. abusive by itself. but so many of the things he does that she treats him that way over are very autistic things, and what she subjects him to is textbook abuse aimed at autistics in particular. (including the part where she gets more and more pissed whenever attempts at said emotional abuse fly over his head, because he's too bad at picking up cues for them to land fully.)

[cws: anti-autistic ableism, ABA, self-harm, physical and emotional IPV, victim-blaming, and abuse apologism. it's a lot and it's really fucking bad lmao]

-

like. there's a lot of examples there; shaggy's behavior coming across as autistic is worth a whole post of its own, and a lot of media depicts abuse targeted at autistic traits because ✨️hooray ableism.✨️but she straight up tries to Fix Him (read: force him to perform a Presentable Personality) by forcing him to wear clothes that are sensory hell, and trying to condition him to self-harm every time he does some small harmless, reflexive thing she thinks is Poor Socialization until he stops. and to catch himself doing it, and punish himself, without being prompted. i cannot fucking overstate how fucked up that is.

they even got down the fun little aspect of ABA where the methods of conditioning-through-pain are presented as toys and kiddish things: she gives him a rubber band to wear on his wrist, and tells him to snap it as hard as he can every time he says 'like.' 🙃🙃🙃🙃

like. this does not begin to scratch the surface of the abuse she puts him through in general. and again, characters being abused for autistic traits with the approval of the narrative is a common thing in media, which sucks. but holy fucking shit! they really took the 'violent ableism that is done to autistics irl' to the next fucking level here!

.......and it's portrayed as kind of cringey, immature teen drama on both sides. the self-harm, his dread over how much he knows it'll hurt, and the extreme pain it causes him to the point of screaming are all supposed to be funny. and her arc is all about learning to accept that she deserves better, because she was repressed and had low self-esteem and therefore putting him through fucking DIY ABA didn't make her happy.

🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃🙃

anyway if you couldn't tell i can't fucking stand sdmi velma and i have a lot of words in me about it. when one of your main heroes would have made a way more compelling villain as they are, on a more mundane level compared to all the wild fantastical shit they go up against, holy shit go back to the drawing board you have fucked up. she could have been genuinely good representation of a marginalized person dealing with the trauma of her experiences in some shitty ways she has to grow past, and an interesting flawed character, without being absolutely despicable--hell, she'd have made a great foil to pericles if they'd handled him decently too. they have a lot of parallels, which only gain more depth when you add their respective parallels with cassidy into the mix. and it really fucking sucks that we got this instead.

[luvs-hound]

i’m reaching the end of dndads s2 and i have So Many Thoughts and Feelings but i can’t articulate them well enough so im just gonna cry tbh

[hyp3rfixation-h3ll]

Seeing your post about toxic doomed Yuri burgertron/spudmuffin changed my brainwaves. I read it and was like woahhh they ARE toxic doomed Yuri

there is a top 10 messiest breakups botvid and spud / burgertron are in the #1 spot and i will not be considering otherwise. they could have been THE power v-shaped polycule with ulf but fate aligned their destinies and it was not written in the stars . pouring one out for the combo meal of all time 😔✊

[lesbianfakir]

I’ll literally never understand the other side in a breakup. I can’t imagine not carrying a piece of every person you’ve ever loved with you always, and the idea that some people can hate you even though they used to care about you absolutely breaks my brain. What do you MEAN you don’t wish the best for me, what do you MEAN you won’t even say goodbye. How am I supposed to move on when someone I cared about so much doesn’t even care enough to check in on me every once in a while?

[stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage]

Are there any companions you can't stand?

I wouldn't say I have any that I can't stand. Something that's so engaging to me about DA is that the companions have good, bad, and a lot in between. Honestly, I don't hate any of them. There are companions that I have more issues with than others, but I like them all; even, and sometimes especially, the ones that tend to be heavily hated on by the fandom.

The only companion that might fall into this category for me is Sebastian, but I totally acknowledge that I've yet to make an effort to use him when I play DA2. I legit just forget about him. How am I supposed to have a good grasp of his character when I don't engage with him outside of his companion quests? Plus I usually romance Anders so Sebastian always leaves my party in the end with threats of bringing an army down on Kirkwall for not killing Anders, soooo... yeah. Not the greatest impression he's left me with.

I would like to have a more well-rounded opinion of Sebastian because the concept of him is interesting; he's this chantry brother who is also a prince, but his family was murdered so he puts up a bounty on the chantry board [which admittedly is SO funny] and his companion quests are about avenging his family and helping him decide if he should take back his lands or remain a chantry brother. But then I talk to him, I listen to him talk to the other companions, and it's like... oh, the chantry has become his entire personality because the dude was brainwashed and now he's saying shit like the maker was actually the one who freed Fenris from slavery, and when Fenris tells him a story about how Denarius killed a child in a ritual for more power, Sebastian just doubles down that the maker has his reasons, like....babe, c'mon now.

I feel like I've read pieces about him written by fans who love him that are more compellingly written than he is, if that makes sense. Really, I would love to be educated by those who love him, especially Sebastian romancers because of all the love interests in all of DA, he's the one I look at and go, "....okay but why?" I have a lot of fun with character discussions and other perspectives so I mean that sincerely.

Also I think it's worth noting that when I play, I tend to get super into the roleplay of my warden/hawke/inquisitor, but while they have party members they can't stand, I have opinions that are separate from them, y'know?

For example, since I've talked about it a lot recently, my mage Hawke and Aveline butt heads constantly. By the end of Act 3, they're rivalry is heated and Ed's surprised Aveline even sided with him in the end because THAT is how much their relationship deteriorated over the course of the game... but then there's my warrior Hawke who adored Aveline. The two of them were best friends and Aris always gave her the benefit of the doubt, like she had Aveline's back through and through.

I've complained about Aveline a lot in my posts so it probably does sound like I can't stand her, but that's not true. Aveline's actually a companion that fascinates me, like she makes me go, "God, you're such an asshole, tell me more right now." and it drives me crazy how she and Carver are foils, like I love it so much, I could go on and on about how foiled they are, it makes me want to bite something.

It's very easy to look at Aveline and think she's just a bitch, she's a cop, she's a bad character, #Aveline-critical, bad companion, etc. I see it all the time, and not just with her, but with every companion in dragon age, y'know? I'm not saying that's wrong or anything; some characters just don't vibe with you or you have legit reasons for hating them and that's fine. I'm just saying some of it's very surface level unless you make the effort to elaborate.

If you don't like a character, you're less likely to make an effort to understand or see anything positive about them. You're more likely to have confirmation bias, so whenever they do or say anything, you go looking for the worst interpretation. I try not to do this just because for me, that's the "boring" approach to games like this but as we've seen, I'm not immune either... y'know, Sebastian.

But Carver gets this a lot, too, and I think I've made myself clear that Carver is my favorite, I love him, the Hawke twins are S-tier companions and I would throw everyone in Kirkwall into the ocean if it meant Bethany and Carver's happiness.

Now that I'm thinking about it, the characters a lot of fans can't stand are some of my favorites?

Like a lot of people shit on Sera, and I'm like "Nah, that's my girl! Listen, she's got a LOT of internalized issues, but we're working through them okay! She's getting better!"

And Vivienne? Oh, don't get me started on Vivienne, I have a whole deal about her. She's also an asshole and I love her.

My canon inquisitor is Surana who escaped the circle and joined the dalish, becoming Lavellan. Vivienne is a reflection of what Ash could've been if she hadn't run away with Jowan. She played the game of the circle, she stepped wherever she needed to step because Ash knew she was at a disadvantage by being an elf, for one, and for two, not coming from a family with wealth that would give her special privileges. Her downfall was buying into her own hype and believing she couldn't be wrong about Jowan, believing that she could either prevent them from making him tranquil or help him and Lily run away, and believing she was above punishment because she worked her way into being Irving's favorite. Yet it all bit her in the ass and she had to run… so then years later after living outside of the circle and realizing just what the chantry is, how it conditions and abuses mages and shit, she meets Vivienne who also played the game well and came out on top, who now spouts the same shit Ash used to spout and it's makes their dynamic sooo chewable.

Then there's Cullen who's not a companion but I lump him and Josephine in with the companions anyway. They're advisors, they're in the inner circle, they count.

He's such a spineless ass in DA2 like believe me, I get all the criticisms he gets... but he's also fairly polite to Hawke even if they're openly anti-templar, he's softer spoken, and he's unwell after what happened to him in DAO and Meredith's clearly taking advantage of his state... but then he becomes an advisor in DAI who is so done with people's bullshit and blatantly honest about it, like he looks at Chancellor Roderick like "this fucking guy again" and he's so ready to just go for it, y'know? Well... unless you're a pretty lady who bats her eyes at him, then suddenly he doesn't know how words work. Like sometimes I feel crazy because I find him to be so funny in DAI, and overall a compelling character that I enjoy interacting with even when he's being a total asshole. Yeah, there's issues in his writing but I appreciate the vision the writers were going for, even if they stumbled... except for Sheryl Chee, I don't appreciate her contribution of those few posts on the DA forums that everyone uses as a smoking gun to "prove" awful things about him. Nothing gets under my skin more in character discussions than bad faith arguments and there's so much of that when it comes to Cullen.

Actually, while we're on that, can I just add a note that when I first got into this fandom, I saw someone's post about Chee doing an interview where she said all those bad things about Cullen wanting to assault the mage warden and I was like, "What? An interview? What interview?? Where??" and I couldn't find shit until much later when I read another anti-Cullen post that cited a DA forum as the source for her saying those things... so not an interview. I went digging for the forum, went into the way back machine to find it.... only to discover that this smoking gun comes from a fanfiction forum where Mary Kirby was also talking about Sten and catgirls and y'all expect me to take that seriously?

We can have discussions about whether or not Cullen's a bad person or a bad character, but the moment you bring Sheryl Chee into it, I know you're here in bad faith and your argument is void.

Sorry for the tangent and the long answer but this is the stuff I enjoy. I could talk about the characters of DA for ages unprompted that when someone does throw me a bone, I will discuss and gush about them all.

[meredithbeckham]

(hanna really went all out.) when she loves somebody, she doesn't hold back. when you're hanna's friend, she forgives a lot.

pll + guts

[melit0n]

"The more that I grow, the more that I've come to know; it's hard to be someone and it hurts to be nobody."