Where we sharpen our storytelling!
🎨 Favorite Mediums: Books, TTRPG, Movies & Shows
📚 Favorite Genres: Fantasy, Sci-Fi, Mystery, Horror
💖 Pronouns: He / They / She
I categorize my ramblings under three tag umbrellas. They'll help you find what's relevant to you, and they're not mutually exclusive!
#re:Write
These are thoughts about tropes, narrative structure, pitfalls for authors, weird storytelling trends I've picked up on, or my own philosophy about writing.
#re:Play
For musings on game running, design, ethics & safety, and general meta-analysis. Mostly my focus is on TTRPG and LARP, but sometimes I'll talk video games!
#re:Watch
Occasionally this will be tidbits from amateur filmmaking... but mostly it'll be me deep diving into shows or movies that impressed me one way or another, or waxing nostalgic.
If I could wish the term GM out of the tabletop lexicon I'd do it in a heartbeat. I get that it's an update from DM for people looking to expand the definition of what tabletop is beyond just "D&D et al." It's still... not... great?
Okay sure, Game Master in the way of Master of Ceremonies. I'm still not super chill using the word "master" and it still sets up a power dynamic between players and the game runner that's antithetical to the idea of collaborative play.
We already have a term for exactly what a game runner does for the story: they're the Narrator. They fill in details outside of the players' or their characters' narrower perspective, they convey the overplot and direct the NPCs, and when needs be they break the 4th wall.
I know GM is pretty standard terminology but... man I just do not like it, and don't wanna use it.
A while back I wrote about my favorite litmus test for stories:
“Could this entire plotline be resolved by one sufficiently trained sniper?”
Today I wanna talk about how it applies to game running as well! Specifically, designing and running encounters or plot arcs for tabletop and LARP.
Running a roleplaying game has dimensions to it that writing on its own just doesn’t. Though it doesn’t rely as heavily on prose, it still requires the Narrator to craft a story with and for their players. They have to manage engagement on two levels: both with that narrative overall, and with players’ moment to moment participation. The sniper problem addresses the former in the same ways it does for any work of creative writing, but even for the latter it’s a gift that keeps on giving.
What gets players to participate in a roleplaying game, and what makes sessions interesting for them? This is an incredibly broad two part question but very simply put, it’s having roleplay to do and scenarios to address. When designing sessions, events, or arcs it can be very tempting to think in basic game terms: we set up a big bad to oppose the players and let the players figure out how to deal with them. Only… that on its own isn’t actually all that interesting in a roleplaying sense. It’s a core gameplay loop, and one that primarily comes out of classic D&D thinking. It’s interesting in a board gaming or wargaming sense, for players that are there to play the mechanics and “win.” For collaborative storytelling, however? You need more.
If a situation is end-runnable, many players will try to end run it. Not from a place of malice, either! This is a whole topic of conversation in and of itself, and I could get into respecting Narrator prep and the player to Narrator social contract, but part of that social contract is crafting a scenario without a reasonable loophole solution. Having a session planned for a full evening and having players blaze through it in ten minutes feels bad, and so does being a player and seeing an obvious way your character would react to a challenge only to be asked to ignore it. Fleshing out the narrative path–especially in a way that doesn’t rely on dice rolls–gives players roleplaying prompts and overall more game content. It also lets them be more complete characters, more than just game avatars.
The other big thing to consider here is what playstyles are present in your group. In an average rpg party you’ll have characters who compliment each other, so asking yourself if the situation favors a specific combatant or even combat as a solution is critical to examining whether you are providing content to the rest of the party! I find that common playstyle tracks involve combat, stealth, puzzles, and social engagement. Designing a problem that necessitates as many of those elements as possible to solve is crucial to getting the whole party involved and not just spotlighting one person!
So keep the sniper in mind when you prep for games, too! Diversifying the narrative and the mechanical design of your game will help cater to as many players as possible and enrich the roleplay experience for them and for you!
Tabletop Narrators: If you’re going to be a certain amount of inflexible, you need to provide a proportionate amount of guidance. It's pretty much Barney Stinson's "Hot / Crazy Scale" but for gaming.
When it comes to Narrator flexibility there are a lot of opinions and judgments out there, but there aren’t many hard and fast rules that apply universally. The best approach I have found is “flexible enough to be collaborative but still respectful of your prep and overall story direction.” I don’t particularly love it when players treat the Narrator like an infinite content generator improvising a sandbox for them to play in however they please, nor do I love it when a Narrator treats their story like a museum that players can visit and behold but not really participate in. But those are extremes on the bell curve, most tables fall between them, and most of that in between space is negotiable even if it’s a question of fit and preference. It’s pretty subjective.
However, the way flexibility interacts with the need for guidance is wholly objective. The more the players need to adhere to the Narrator’s plans in order to make things happen or push plot forward, the clearer the Narrator needs to be about their expectations and the more skillful they have to be in communicating them. Otherwise the Narrator will end up doing a lot of prep that doesn’t really get interacted with, the players will feel like their efforts and roleplay aren’t making a difference, and ultimately both sides will probably walk away from the table feeling ignored and unappreciated.
Think about it like playing Battleship. Narrator flexibility is essentially the scope of what actions they consider significant or that would move the plot forward, and that’s the number of ships on the board. The player trying to do significant things that have impact on the story is them guessing spaces. You want the players to hit! The more players hit the more the Narrator’s ship layout is getting engaged with, and the more the players feel like they’re having an impact and succeeding. So if the Narrator has a bunch of ships out there the players will hit naturally just by doing what they think is appropriate. If there are only a couple of ships, though… the Narrator needs to give a hint about where they are so the players know where to focus their guesses, or the players will just keep missing and get frustrated not knowing what they could be doing better.
Put commentary about “hand holding” aside. That’s a toxic (albeit very prevalent) mindset. Tabletop is all about adequate communication, at every level. So remember the scale! Unless your idea of a good time is everyone sitting around the game table going “...okay… well, now what…” then you need to be keeping in mind how specific your plans are and how much direction your players will need as a result.
In tabletop, obstacles in the way of solving questions don’t make mysteries fun. If anything, they’re the easiest way to lose your players.
Hear me out.
Drawing out a mystery by dangling a tantalizing question in front of your players and making the answers elusive doesn’t actually make for an interesting story or play experience. Having a lead give you nothing or running into a dead end feels like wasted time at best, and manufactured failure / railroading at worst. Frankly, it’s not even really a mystery at that point: it’s a fetch quest where the princess is constantly in another castle. It doesn't even tell your players what they should be doing or where to go next. It’s just saying “no” in improv with extra steps.
Instead, mysteries should be constant “yes and”-ing. Nothing should ever be “stopping” your players from investigating. Everything should be useful somehow, pushing players onto the right track even subtly. Avenues without new information should resolve fast and emphasize where they don’t need to be looking. When NPCs hold back information the ways or reasons why should be telling. Instead of building a labyrinth between players and answers, ensure that they don’t know the “big question” in the first place and scatter breadcrumbs. Then, moving from a small question to a bigger one becomes forward motion and a series of successes as they tumble down the rabbit hole and the stakes get higher.
TL,DR: Opacity and mystery aren’t friends, they are opposing forces. Opacity of information resists player engagement where a mystery should always be drawing them in deeper.
Too many writers are using generative 'AI' to make their book covers, so I've written a guide on how to make your own cover for free or cheap without turning to a machine.
If you can't afford to pay an artist, you CAN make your own!
I hope this is a helpful overview that covers the basics and points to some free resources.
Cheek: a round dull pain that clocks your entire head in a different direction. It’s painful and throbs but the main effect of a punch to the cheek is how jarring it is. You feel it in your mouth, your teeth. And no matter how you position that punch the knuckles will always hit the jaw and cheek bones adding a frame of sharp pain in which the redness will be painted.
Temple: getting hit on the temple pushes your head to the side rather than turning it. It’s disorienting because it leaves you very off balance. It essentially feels like a bad pressure headache, like when you have a sinus infection on a plane, but in one spot and on the outside. It’s sharp in the middle and radiates outward and even after the initial impact it pulses like an earthquake epicenter. It easily causes long lasting headaches and is the most likely of these examples to cause a concussion.
Eye: this is a weird one. The fist doesn’t fit within the eye socket so either the knuckles on the brow and cheeks bones protect the actual eye or they don’t. The former option gives a full spreading pain below the eye which results in the classic black eye look and a sharp pain on your brow similar to hitting your shin on the couch. The latter option, well bad things can happen when a hard fast object makes direct contact with your eye but for the sake of this it feels like a vacuum bc the concave shape is being covered and pressurized. The eye feels pushed back and pulled forward all at once. It doesn’t necessarily hurt that bad for that long unless the punch was meant to do damage. I’m fortunate to say I don’t know what it would feel like then.
Nose: remember that prank kids used to pull where they’d line up their hands with their nose, push them in one direction and crack a knuckle at the same time to pretend to break their nose? Yeah that’s what it looks like when someone punches you from the side in the nose, except it’s someone else’s hand and your nose makes the sound instead of their knuckle. It’s just like breaking any bone where you hear it and feel the action if it being done but that moment of shock blankets you for a split second until all the pain comes rushing back. It’s sharp and needlelike and can give you black eyes just to add insult to injury. If you get hit in the nose from the front it’s like the uncomfortableness of when you have to sneeze but can’t. Except that feeling took all the steroids and is now using your face as a punching bag to express its roid rage. It crackles outward like static electricity under your skin, your eyesight gets fuzzy and you can’t tell if it’s because you’re tearing up, it’s hard to open your eyes, or you’re momentarily stunned and blinded. Just know it’s all three. I find that this one knocks the wind out of you the most. Gotta remind yourself to breathe just don’t try to do it through your nose.
If you really want to know what this feels like I’d suggest joining a mixed martial arts because they’ll teach you correct form and power distribution and you can spar with pads and actually hit each other.
I’d also recommend learning what it feels like to punch someone in the face. It’s much more fun and pretty damn cathartic when they deserve it.
Sure, I’ll ante. I’ve been kicked in the head hard enough be knocked unconscious a couple of times.
The big thing is, in order for a kick to be moving fast enough to actually connect with your head and do anything significant? It is probably going to wail on you. Cause kicks come from a much greater distance than punches and mostly they are really easy to dodge. The ones that catch you really, really catch you and the way they move your head it either feels like all of you are in motion, or all of you legitimately is.
Side of Head: Gravity switches directions without warning and your head is too suddenly full of cotton to do anything about it. The impact doesn’t even fully register, you’re just suddenly in motion. It takes you a hot minute to even realize you’re in pain, it comes at you slow and dulled and it’s probably not even your first concern. Your hearing goes out at least a little you stuck your fingers in your ears.
Face, Dead On: Ever been in a car and someone stops short? You get the stopping and then the deceleration rocks you backwards and you just feel it in your everything? It’s like that. Suddenly you’re just flying backwards and you can feel the pressure of that motion behind your eyes. Again there’s that sense of delayed pain, the shock just erases the impact itself. It almost feels like an ungodly awful sneeze, and afterward it feels like you have the worst burning sensation in your nose.
Aftermath of Blunt Force Trauma Concussions: You wake up drunk. Things make sense to you in a way that horrifies everyone around you. There’s the ache, you feel like you’re standing on a rocking ship except you know it’s not actually moving just… something inside you seems to be. You know exactly what happened to you but it’s hard to focus enough to care. Worst of all, afterward you can remember what you can’t remember. It’s not that there are missing memories, you can literally remember the blanks.
The common refrain in blunt force trauma to the head is the sense of pressure just shoving you, instantly, and the feeling of your whole world jolting. It goes right to your core and emotionally the gut feeling that the stability of everything is in question really messes with you.
Because people confuse “critical as in critical thinking” with “critical as in criticizing something,” so they think that “look for something bad, no matter how far-fetched” is what “being critical” means.
They also don’t realize that “literary criticism” means…
Okay. What literary criticism IS, is like taking a mechanical clock apart to see all the gears and learn how it fits together and approach your next clock with more knowledge of what makes it tick.
What they THINK literary criticism means is, you take the clock apart and beat all the pieces with a hammer, then scream at it because it doesn’t tick for you the way it used to.
Folks also don’t tend to understand literary criticism / analysis as an act of appreciation. Sometimes I just need to carefully open the clock up and pick the cogs out so I can marvel at them more thoroughly. It’s how I enjoy the art!
Heck, even if I find a spring that’s too tense or a gear whose teeth aren’t notched quite right, I’m still doing it for a love of the craft… not just to be a pill or put down a work or its fans. “Be curious, not judgmental.”
This! Also, asking yourself why you did or didn’t enjoy something and drilling down until you can form a cogent analysis of it is how you develop critical reading skills and the personal taste that makes your art better!
"That wouldn't be fatal!" It would."They couldn't survive that!" They could.
If my time as an EMT and instructor taught me anything it is that the body is both impossibly resilient and impossibly fragile, and almost any traumatic injury you can think of could either be fine or fatal depending on the whims of the universe.
So use that crap as liberally as you want to serve whatever narrative you're writing.
This is both undeniably true and also a great example of how readers don’t always know what’s bothering them about a story beat. Especially with things like what injuries are survivable, whether it’s “realistic” is mostly a red herring. The better questions are:
Is it internally consistent?
Is it narratively satisfying?
Does it break suspension of disbelief?
All sorts of factors can influence the answers to these, too: genre, tone, target audience… it’s not about reality or even accuracy really, it’s about how convincing the illusion is.
most important part of the writing process actually is when you loop a single song on max volume and stare at the word document and imagine the characters doing things for 14 hours. this is known as getting in the zone
Part 1 - Turnabout's Foul Play
Part 2 - Gilding a Thorny Rose
Part 3 - Blood Keeps Telling
Part 4 - An Unbreakable Broken Heart
There is one question, and one question only, that drives the central narrative of Dragon Age: Absolution.
“Will Miriam be okay?”
I’m not exaggerating when I say that literally everything else is either side plot or entirely not the point, and I can back that up fairly comprehensively...
One might say that the story is about the heist of the Circulum Infinitus. That would be incorrect. For one thing, we don’t start the story being at all aware of the heist or the Circulum, so it clearly isn’t the thesis statement. For another, we literally never learn what the Circulum is actually capable of. We learn a thing it can do, which makes it important to Rezaren and Miriam. The rest is vagaries. Cassandra Pentaghast—resident moral authority from the much lauded Inquisition—all but punches out the 4th wall to tell the audience the reason anyone outside of Miriam’s personal struggle should care about it in expositive flashback: “All you need to know is that it is an extremely dangerous artifact fueled by blood magic, and I—for one—cannot recall any good coming from something powered by murder.” Outside of that, a spirit of Wisdom tells Rezaren “you do not comprehend the full danger of this artifact” and tells us by way of a bite sized soliloquy to no one that “such power should never have been in mortal hands.” We also know that Hira wants it to give it to someone else in a plan that basically goes “Step 1: Get Circulum, Step 2: ???, Step 3: Tevinter burns.” So we know it’s… big and scary? Something something doomsday? But even from that angle… we don’t care about Tevinter! All we see of it is a series of reasons it stinks! So that big scariness isn’t the point of the story, it’s just establishing a MacGuffin to motivate the characters into action. Even the actual heist for the Circulum is effectively complete by the end of Episode 2, so… just objectively, not the point.
The story is also, critically, not about the ensemble cast. Looking at the main antagonists, Rezaren’s goals are legitimately entirely Miriam-centric and Tassia exists as a foil to him to show the extent of just how badly he’d throw any shred of decency away to Get her. I’ve already discussed how Hira’s role in the story is to mess with Miriam, her every motivation and action serving the foremost purpose of making Miriam do or feel something. Fairbanks existed (for all of two episodes) to set up the plot dominoes, shove Miriam into them so they’d start falling, and then promptly die because his ontological role in the story was complete. I conspicuously haven’t even really touched the rest of the named characters until now: Roland, Lacklon, and Qwydion. That’s on purpose, because individually they don’t actually matter. Outside of cursory nods to where they come from in the setting, they have no backstory. They exist to provide a little bit of interpersonal filler for pacing reasons, and to be a little cohort that we care just enough about to be invested in their collective relationship with Miriam. Specifically with Miriam, too, because they all share exactly the same character arc: going from being involved for petty personal reasons (mostly a paycheck) to being there for her, facing down a problem that in the short term revolves around her entirely and in the long term only matters to them because she inspires them to care. It’s an arc that echoes, and follows, Miriam’s own.
Now as backwards as I've taken this, relating everything else that isn't Miriam back to her, let's talk about the woman herself.
It's Episode 1: "A Woman Unseen." The show starts, and it opens on… Miriam, being witty and callous and bucking authority while she does so. Roland is there mainly to react to her as she sets a bunch of unnamed mooks up to fail to serve her own ends, then tells her boss where he can stick it about her methods. Roland… waves pom poms, more or less. Hira and Fairbanks show up and we see the first time this cool mysterious rogue is thrown off her balance. We also immediately see her practical compassion. When it comes to real consequences--a real threat of getting caught by the law with a harsh sentence or getting murdered by her for threatening the ex she hasn't gotten over--she tells her fellow thieves to simply walk away. "Your children need their father." Even the boss she's been butting heads with so fervently gets off relatively light for attempting to kill her while her back is turned. We're shown that she's tough, smart, quick, caring, and potentially much deadlier than she's willing to be. The group gets their exposition and travel montage and she's thorny through all of it. We see what a sacrifice it is for her to even go back to Tevinter, never mind to do the job they are asking of her, and at the end of the episode her budding allies stupidly endanger everything she's done sticking up for her… but in doing so, they also show what is probably some of the only genuine care she's ever received. As she says, "that means something." We discover that she more or less knew a way in all along and was clearly hesitating to use it, searching for another option. What is it that motivates her and subsequently enables the plot to happen at all? A show of ill conceived friendship, and the first spark of real relationships. It's Miriam choosing to let these well meaning idiots in, just a little. The plot moves at the pace of her growth.
We come to the heist itself, and the rest of the crew takes off to do their various and sundry tasks, leaving Miriam alone so that she doesn't have to go any further into danger. Immediately, she is tested in a way that is a nearly comical level of moral hypothetical: tattle on a child to the person looking to beat them, or endanger her mission to protect them. Again Miriam chooses to let someone else take the fall to serve her agenda, except this time with immediate regret. As she attempts to rectify her mistake we get our first belly of the whale moment, with the heist going completely haywire without her. The rest of the story from that moment on is all involved--protagonists and antagonists alike--attempting to recover from the fallout, and it's telling that the moment of greatest chaos and failure stems from the crew's greatest disunity and Miriam's least involvement.
Except from a certain standpoint… the heist was a success, right? They did get the Circulum, serendipitously the unknown traitor was even trapped and unable to betray them further, and they were right at their exit. There was nothing actually stopping what was left of the crew from leaving with the goods, completing the job, and getting paid. Nothing except for Miriam and her better nature, because from then on it's her priorities that guide the protagonists' collective actions.
Miriam does not care about the Circulum. Not even a little. If there was any doubt about that she spells it out in Episode 5 with absolutely zero uncertainty, going on to state what is important to her and what she's looking for in the people around her who could be friends:
"I don't care about the damn Circulum! Look, whatever happened, we all risked our lives for each other, so I have to believe that we're at least trying to be decent people. Hira is out there right now, suffering, and I know how to save her but I can't do it alone. I need some decent people. Anyone who wants to help me has earned my trust, and forgiveness, and gratitude, and whatever else they're looking for. Anyone who wants the Circulum can take it and go."
This is the make-or-break moment for the protagonists as a cohesive unit, and to my mind one of two candidate scenes for the climax of the show. Miriam is showing exactly who she is, laying her cards out, and letting herself be vulnerable in asking for help from people who have earned just the smallest degree of her trust. When she asks for "decent people" she's appealing to the rest of the cast to put profit aside, but crucially she's not asking them to do that for a lofty ideal or the fate of the world or something either. She's asking them to be good to her. To help her not because it would benefit them, but because she's going into danger and needs support.
What is important to Miriam? What does she value? Friendship and love, all the way down.
This is a woman who has been dealt grievous familial trauma, and who lives in a world that is not kind to her. On the one hand, of course it then follows that some part of her is eternally yearning for connection. On the other, it's so beautiful to me the way she's still willing to actively seek it. Despite how her emotions go through the wringer with people, how brutally she's abused by Rezaren or betrayed by Hira, that core caring still comes through in ways that feel authentic and grounded. Miriam isn't some innocent woobie made infinitely sweeter and gentler by her pain, as I too often see in depictions of traumatized people. She's developed the skills to protect herself, be that her sharp tongue, her suspicion, her callous, or the ability to literally fight well that so often serves as an overt measure of the force of a person in the fantasy genre. It all makes her difficult and at times mean and makes her trust slowly. But she isn't broken, or past hope of recovery. Deep down inside, something in her still wants to trust. Still wants to connect. It's a little light inside her that refuses to go out, despite everything. It makes her eternally gullible, eternally vulnerable, and yet paradoxically the fact that she can still be hurt that way is also the sign that she still has yet to give up. To borrow a phrase: despite everything, it's still her.
I always want to cry thinking about Miriam, because I recognize myself in that struggle. I think that among the more vitriolic reactions I've seen to her character (the ones that aren't racism or homophobia, anyway) they come from a reaction to that same thing, because it's a painful place to be in. Nobody who's hurting wants to be able to be hurt again. An often revisited theme with my therapist is how much I hate "being a sucker forever" and it can be extremely hard to hear that being open to more suffering can be "good" for any reason. It would be easier, simpler, to hear that actually it's okay to just turn off the switch and match the world's energy. Return the hostility, and not be judged for it. To be given license by a story (as all stories are, to some extent, statements on how things "should" be) to be as bulletproof and shameless as the people who cause the hurt are to us. To me, however, that is all running circles around a fundamental truth of being human: that having a heart is painful, and seeing someone be brave enough to keep theirs open anyway is beautiful.
In the end, of course, Miriam is okay. I get to melt as the story rewards her for being true to herself even while presenting to real consequences of that. She gives Hira yet another chance, tells her that if they can just move on from the Circulum and Hira's hate of Tevinter "we can try again, free from everything." Tells her "I just need you to say that I'm more important than this." Of course, inevitably, Hira betrays her again. When Miriam wakes she opens and closes her hand in a way that both draws the audience's attention to the fact that the Circulum is gone from it… and also conspicuously mimics the gesture people tend to make when they're looking for another hand to hold. But she doesn't crumple or hide, that's her growth. Empowered by the new friends she's made, who vow to stick with her without promise of reward, she takes on the task of stopping Hira for the sake of the people whose lives she might destroy. Not for honor, or revenge, or for kingdoms, but for people who might suffer as she suffered at the hands of yet another Tevinter noble's agenda.
Miriam is cool as hell, with her backflips and her sneaky speedy style and her zillion knives. More than that, though, she's a bleeding heart. A cycle breaker. Someone who just can't stop caring, no matter what happens to them. I will never stop appreciating her for that, and if in writing this I've shared even the tiniest iota of that appreciation with you then so much the better.
Part 1 - Turnabout's Foul Play
Part 2 - Gilding a Thorny Rose
Part 3 - Blood Keeps Telling
One of the most common criticisms I see of DA:A is with its big bad: Rezaren Ammosine. He's a Tevinter Magister, a white slave owner, a man at the top of an awful and oppressive power structure, who indulges in that privilege and directly, intentionally perpetuates its horrors even while doing the mental backflips to convince himself that he's a Good Person...™️
That last part is always where the issues I hear come in. Rezaren, like most awful people, is the hero of his own story and he portrays himself that way. He's a consummate sadboy with a conventionally attractive waify face and every single thing he does he has a rationale for. Some conflate this with authorial intent, or what the tone of the narrative has to say about him. I've heard claims that he's too charismatic, too sympathetic, all sorts of versions of "not awful enough" as if he's being portrayed as any sort of a good person. Except that's an incredibly surface level read. The way he acts and portrays himself is a greater condemnation of how awful he is, and amongst that being signaled again and again through his actions and others' commentary on him, there's one line from the man himself that is the lynchpin of his entire character:
"Only if she doesn't cooperate."
Every single time he's challenged, Rezaren's veneer of civility lasts only until the moment he's told "no." It happens over, and over, and over again the whole story long. It starts with little things. He doesn't want to stop researching his obsession, so he reasons and complains until the Templar who loves him caves in. He doesn't want to stay in his room, so he mind controls his corpse puppet "brother" out of his way. He wants to contact Miriam, so clearly blood magic is justified. It's only a few drops. Miriam refuses him, so he switches to "a language she'll understand" and tortures her. In the end, when he decides to "take back what's mine," he turns to murder, blood magic, enslavement... there is no depravity too low for him if it stands between him and what he wants. For all his talk of family, of purpose, of a greater future, the nice guy act is a carefully crafted persona. When the chips are down he will commit any atrocity because to him it is a restoration of the natural order.
This is what makes him so... upsettingly real and visceral. I've got conservative family, I grew up with them, this is exactly how they act. Oppressors don't wake up in the morning twirling their mustaches scheming about how they're going to hurt people. To exist as one you need a justification, you lean on your own persona to keep yourself going. Civility, manners, "niceness," how things should be: those are the things oppressors need to believe to perpetuate their social order. But in the end it always comes back to a threat. Defiance is met with violence in equal measure, to keep the oppressed in check. That truth is what Rezaren's whole character revolves around.
It doesn't feel like much of an analysis to say any of this, to be honest, so much as pointing out the obvious and textual... but it gets overlooked enough that it feels worth highlighting. More importantly though, it also informs Miriam's particular brand of trauma. Ripped away from any family except her brother, growing up under abusers who told her in one breath that she was surrogate family to her "owner" and in the next that she was property, it's no wonder she struggles so much with community and finding a place of belonging. It's no wonder she's such a mark for Hira, another Tevinter noble who lured her with the promise of love and care. It's no wonder that even a stupid showing of unequivocal care from the team touched her the way it did, and no wonder she sticks with them after the adventure is over. Belonging and personhood was ripped away from her, and dealing with that pain was the basis of her story.
-------------
But I'll save that can of worms for my last post, where I finally get to Miriam herself in...
While Fairbanks' past is left somewhat up in the air--like most of the characters who aren't Miriam--we do pick up a few things about him, especially if we're familiar with the setting of Dragon Age. We know that he financed a robbery so that he could finance a bigger heist. We know that even for the team's cover in Tevinter he poses as a wealthy master of servants and seems to come by that persona honestly. We watch him post a bond to get Miriam into the city, buy an estate to give them a base of operations, and don a magic ring to get into a bar fight. We know from his accent alone that he's Orlesian and the picture becomes clear: this is a man of means born into incredible privilege and almost disgusting levels of wealth, who is leveraging those resources to make the world a better place as he sees it. (Investigating his origins in Dragon Age: Inquisition confirms this, with a little more nuance, and I'll leave that to you to research if you're interested...)
In one very specific way, Fairbanks falls almost neatly into the same niche as Batman, Robin Hood, or Zorro: he is the tantalizing myth of the rich (often white, even in Zorro's case, go look at most of who's actually played him) man who gets his hands dirty for the sake of the downtrodden. It's a fantasy that endures for so many reasons. Noblesse oblige has been drilled into at least Westerners' skulls for hundreds if not thousands of years, capitalistic culture teaches us to idolize the wealthy, wealth and power fantasy go hand in hand, and insidiously--I say this as a white AMAB person--those of us in positions of privilege all want to believe we are that guy. I'd even argue that--and this one comes from being a bisexual transfemme--for some living outside of privilege this is a comforting fantasy as well, I've been living for years under the enduring feeling like the only ways to end the patriarchy and oligarchy are to convince those benefitting from it to hand their power and privilege away or dethrone them by force. I could go on and on but the bottom line is those two words and I'll emphasize them again: comforting fantasy. Because I've never met a Batman, or a Robin Hood, or a Zorro, and you haven't either. The influence of the rich doesn't work like that, the richer a person gets the less so. Even with the best intentions, the ways in which privileged people attempt to make themselves allies is more often than not short sighted, superficial, or counterproductive because when the stakes aren't personal it's hard to fight the fight right.
But the creative team behind Dragon Age: Absolution gets this, and makes a very oblique nod to it.
While the team is still gelling in the first episode, there is a scene where Miriam is sitting at a bar when a trio of stereotypical Tevinter jerks start to harass her. It has all the trappings of Hollywood racism, starting on "you're in my seat, elf" and segueing into a demand that Miriam respect their authority, an unwanted touch, and a claim that she's a runaway slave. Fairbanks and company react in the exact way we'd expect from an easy, uncomplicated adventuring party who just watched a friend go through a hate crime: they saunter over all bluster and bravado, make a halfhearted attempt to defuse the situation, and then after the threat of rape comes up they beat the bad guys up really bad. Immature and simplistic phrasing for immature and simplistic writing, right? Racists be racist, good guys say "hey, racism and sexual violence are bad though and also we like her" and then throw hands.
Except, crucially, that's not all that happens. Miriam's reactions to all of this show that the writers get it more than it might appear at first glance. When Fairbanks starts to bluster his way over she doesn't look hopeful or desperate: there is a very deliberate cut where she sees him coming and winces. When the fight erupts she doesn't throw a single punch. If anything, the entire time she looks something between annoyed, resigned, and concerned. Afterward, when the fight is over and they're back in relative safety and Fairbanks has shelled out more money to gloss over the incident, she even lets the team have it for doing what they did. As they guffaw about their apparent victory and sling back ale she--the one they were allegedly defending--challenges them, saying in plain text "You think that did anything except risk our mission?" and later telling Fairbanks personally that they stood up for her "in the stupidest way possible."
The gesture that the team made was over a moral outrage about how Miriam was being treated, but it wasn't really about her. Even their defense of her disrespected her agency. It took the victim of a hate crime pointing out in no uncertain terms that her only supporters put her efforts, risks, and personal sacrifice in jeopardy of being made fruitless while accomplishing nothing, to snap them out of their circle jerking. It's not clear that they actually do understand all of that afterward, but from their tone it seems like they at least respect what she's putting on the line that much more going forward. Or at minimum understand that they only upset her by doing what they did and that they way they can best respect her is by ensuring the mission succeeds.
It is a succinct, unsubtle statement of privileged allyship that resonates very strongly for me. I've seen people argue the point that the incident ultimately wining Miriam over anyway and spurring her to greater self sacrifice rubs them the wrong way, and I can respect that. Personally, I think it works very well for Miriam's story in a way that also works for me. It sells the enduring theme that when people show Miriam they care, however untrue that turns out to be or however clumsily they show it, she takes the bait. In Fairbanks, and in the team he brought together through his influence and resources, Miriam is offered a tiny well meaning community who don't fully understand her but do legitimately care. However imperfect they are about it, however thorny she is about it, Miriam puts herself on the line because being a part of that community and rising to meet the communal need is better to her than being alone in a hateful world. I definitely feel that, and I think there's a good chance other folks out there might too.
Criticizing Fairbanks is important, both what he does and what he is. It's easy to fall into the trap of feeling an unearned catharsis in his story, especially for the comorbid venn diagram bubble of those both most privileged and those already least inclined to apply critical reading skills. I can feel my mental autopilot wanting to glide across Fairbanks' story like "Ah yes, the heroic rich white boy who stands up for the little guy, who's altruistic at heart and pays the ultimate sacrifice for the good of the world." Those who criticize the show and its narrative for making that message so easy to take away have a legitimate point. On the other hand, I would argue that when you actually read into it there's so much more there and that you can't judge the value of art solely on its ability to propagandize the willfully media illiterate.
Fairbanks will appeal to some people in problematic ways, plays on some tropes that underpin the culture in which he was written in problematic ways, will rub some people entirely the wrong way, and it is ultimately very important that he show up in the story exactly as he did. All of these things are true. He is a takedown of what he seems to be, and that is what I love about him.
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Next up, we get to Rezaren Ammosine: the very powerful man who's "nice" and "reasonable" right up to the precise moment he hears the word "no" in...
origamiaround
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stormborns
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germansingergirl
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