I'm playing through Dragon Age 2 again and I just can't get over how... idk how to say it exactly, but the way you feel, in every moment of this game, how much Varric loves Hawke. It feels entwined with everything, it breathes through every part of the narrative, it blooms diegetigally through the integration of story and gameplay, makes you a co-conspirator in that love in a way maybe only a video game could.
It's in the way I don't think this story is a defense of Hawke only -- or even primarily -- directed at Cassandra, but at Hawke themselves. Beneath everything else going on there's the quiet, utterly unshakable refutation of Hawke's worst fears: Did you think you mattered, Hawke? Did you think anything you ever did mattered? . . . You're a failure, and your family died knowing it. Rising through the story as Varric tells it there's a fiercely tender voice saying: Yes, you did matter. In tragedy or in triumph, for better or for worse, in love or in hate, you always mattered. The ultimate tragedy of Hawke is always right there in the open before the story even starts letting you in on telling it; they couldn't fix anything. They couldn't stop the downward spiral Kirkwall was set on -- the real truth is that no one person ever could. And yet the point of DA2 is that it matters that they tried, and it matters that there were people who loved and were loved along the way, however badly it all failed in the end. Hawke is the Bioware protagonist who succeeds the least, and they're the character who matters the most, to me. (This is also why the Absolution reveal did not shake me in the least haha, my love for Hawke has nothing at all to do with whether they succeeded or failed at anything.)
What Varric is saying, in the only way he seems to be able to say the really real things -- through stories -- is so simple and so fundamental. You were here, and I loved you. There's the emotional heart of it, at the end of it all, that love and grief and recognition. It's so dizzyingly intimate. There's so much distancing, layers upon layers of obfuscation, to be able to say it. It drives me insane!!!! It makes me feel the same way that 'Poem' by Langston Hughes does:
I loved my friend.
He went away from me.
There's nothing more to say.
The poem ends,
Soft as it began,—
I loved my friend.
He loved his friend. They went away from him. What more is there to say. (Many, many, many things, when you're a compulsive liar and storyteller, but hey sometimes you have to deploy a whole armada of lies to tell one simple truth, I understand, I'm a writer too lol)
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I'm looking at the Zora May prompts and wanna write stuff, and now my brain's just giggling with ideas LOL like--
Imagine, after Age of Calamity, that Link and Mipha get together. That has its whole set of fun and drama - a Hylian/Zora marriage would mean a lot anyway, but particularly when it's the Zora princess and the Hero of Hyrule. Link and Mipha start to have a family, Zelda is settling into being queen, and they all have their own set of stressors and joys and the three are still besties and it would be just so funny to see y'all. Like... Link takes his oath as a knight seriously, so he still assists Hyrule often, and just this scenario in my head came and--
Zelda, sighing: I hardly slept last night. I was up late researching the latest Zonai discoveries and almost forgot I had a meeting with the Rito delegation this morning. I'm so tired.
Link, hair a mess, on his third cup of coffee after dealing with one of his kids having a meltdown while the other kept everyone up crying all night, dealing with Mipha also trying to do royal duties, having just teleported over here via Sheikah towers: .....That sounds rough.
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Hi Hello apparently I didn't empty my tank yet.
So fun general headcanon: Emmet likes to cook. He makes most of the meals in the house and often brings homemade food to special events as a way to show his appreciation of whoever he has over. It's how he relieves stress, shows affection, tries new things, it's one of his key interests beyond battling.
This has slightly different connotations in Battle Addict. See Emmet studies the physical properties of pokemon, how they tick and how to make them stop ticking. A key part of his studies is sketching pokemon and outlining their internal structures, but there's no teacher like experience. His favourite way to improve his knowledge is dealing with the subject hands on, and cooking is a very good way to do that. He specifically practices butchery, breaking pokemon down section by section, noting the musculature, skeletal structure, and organs inside. This information helps him to find weakness in an opponent's pokemon while knowing how to cover his own.
This also serves as bonding time for him and Ingo because Ingo gets to be sous chef while Emmet turns a monster into mincemeat. He hands him the different tools he needs and they converse while Emmet slices and picks apart the carcass. Emmet also gets to explain the inner workings of the pokemon, which both of them enjoy analyzing and discussing.
The book Emmet is holding is his "butchery book", which is really just a collection of different biology textbooks he uses as guides to best break down carcasses. They always end up getting messy and after a certain point, he just stops caring and uses it, dirty as it may be. They have to be stored in a sealed container away from their other study materials, and are only ever brought out for processing. Emmet is probably the only person who can stand to be next to the stench of the concentrated dried blood throughout the pages, Ingo usually wears some kind of face cover when Emmet is working.
And for those who want to see the real mess of the work:
Washing up is half the labour of studying through butchery.
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small update
ok so um I got my number theory paper today, and the TA had cut marks for me because i left the answer at 66^2 and not 4356 (fermat's little theorem) 😔 I even wrote the full proof
my friend told me I should mail the TA about this, I got 14/20 and should be getting 17or18/20 😔
scores aside, number theory is so much fun, so much fun. the only good thing here is that I know the concepts well, and I fully knew the paper (still fucked it up, because I'm so frickin slow while writing and time). and it hurts worse because there's not enough proof that validates my knowledge. which in turn makes me question if i actually do have any.
I am, in general, a person who does well in concepts but screws up the exams (70% of the time) and I'm trying, I'm trying to get myself out of this "exam paniK" that I often spiral into, just minutes before the exam. I hope I change and grow; I hope, I hope.
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beau: dairon isn't my roommate and i didn't sleep with her. she's my teacher.
jester: ...so you just cared about your teacher?
beau: yeah.
jester: (genuine) good for you.
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