#gracebroken

[honeyglaze-archived]

I have a question but idk how to word it; please bear with me sdjgfh But like Merrill and being infantilized and patronized? Was this a problem even before coming to Kirkwall? The evolution of her awareness of it? The evolution of her feelings towards it? Has she ever tried to change herself to prevent it? Like, how does it affect her self-perception, and her perception of the people who do it? Does any of this change after DAII? I hope at least some of that makes sense.

this is a very specific question !! so i’m gonna keep it here instead of doing the new post thing! but anyways… it has definitely always been a problem for merrill, even more so in her clan. merrill is someone who often thinks outside the box, and thinks BIG, this – scared the keeper, and she would often talk merrill down from these idea by belittling her. the keeper believed merrill was extremely intelligent, and yet she was threatened by it – and much like with many other aspects of merrill, decided to keep them undeveloped; and, for the longest time went unnoticed. 

i don’t think merrill quite understood what was happening until she was a bit older, i’m thinking more in her teenage years where she starts to grow a bit more defiant and aware of her treatment; and specifically i think she’d notice it in an argument where merrill knows she’s right. either because it’s something she’s seen with her own eyes or just something she knows i’m not sure, but the keeper challenging her and trying to convince her otherwise would be that realization to what she’s been doing all along. and i would think this would be the birth of merrill’s bitterness towards the keeper. i think, once she’s out of the clan and in kirkwall, she was hoping to be free from that kind of behavior – especially when among the group hawke has managed to create. merrill was naive enough to think them all like hawke (i always go based on a purple hawke), but she finds quickly that just because hawke had chosen them for a team doesn’t mean she is immediately accepted. this is where i think you’d see her standing up to it and for herself more often. when merrill is away from the clan, and more importantly the keeper, she feels a lot better about fighting for herself. especially since these people do not have the same “fear factor” that the keeper has, at least not to her. 

as for doing anything to prevent it? i can definitely see merrill attempting to change her look or the way she talks in attempt to make herself seem a bit more… mature. but eventually she’d find it too silly and too difficult to maintain. she rather be herself, and try to hold her head high than be someone she’s not. 

self-perception is…a hard one to answer. because there’s times where it doesn’t affect merrill at all, but merrill is also extremely sensitive and you tell her something long enough she’ll start to believe it. i don’t see her self perception changing too much unless she spends a lot (and i mean a lot) of personal time with someone who treats her that way. so, the da:ii team, for example? doesn’t effect her too much as she does have some allies within it (hawke, varric, isabela) – but then it hurts even more when they do it. but she doesn’t spend like…every waking moment with them so its a lot harder to change it. now, if it was a red hawke – and like everyone was telling her these things? yea, she’d believe it. it really depends on her environment and who’s around her. i hope that answers that part??

as for her perception of the people who do it – she’ll think them silly and close-minded. unable to accept the different, and stubborn, in a bad way. but she’ll always think you can learn. 

as for post da-ii!! i think it does change in her adviser / keeper of a clan verse ! merrill really matures once she’s officially the leader of something, she gains so much confidence, and the trust people put in her really help heal those old wounds. merrill, by then, will always stand up for herself and would be quick to throw her accomplishments at someone when they begin to tell her she can’t. merrill grows a lot during that time! of course, she still often gets down on herself – and she takes decisions and losses very seriously – but merrill is a lot more confident than before. plus, being called keeper has earned her a lot of respect from and for people to look at her a lil different. now, they don’t see a silly grinning elf with her head in the clouds – they see a wise elf, with storms brewing in her mind….

[fractalmind]

(@ Anders) “Why’d you leave the Wardens?” As soon as the words leave his mouth, he wonders why he said them. He’ll never admit to curiosity about Anders, but it is there. It’s just that it’s often offset by annoyance. “I understand it’s not an easy life, but it’s gotta be better than Darktown.”

it was better when they had the helmet on. monstrosity hidden makes itself known in the crooked curve of lips and eyes cold. no need for spoken words, for there’s familiarity in it all, no need for the rough touch where metal digs and punctures against the thin fabric of robes. you’re a dead mage walking. 

you aren’t safe here.

( ease comes with the bloom of mottled colours against skin. pain strikes and there’s a hunger that pierces. you’re bound. tied like an animal ready for the slaughterhouse - but you’re safe, you see it in the anger and irritation, you see it in the way they speak, the way they know that you’re merely being brought back home ). 

chill continues, sharp seep like needles that slip beneath your skin, it forms in mind: flaming sword and metal. shift of helm and there you see the demon’s eyes and there is a single word: consume.

wake with a start - if you can call it that. you can’t sleep well. not with the way their hands fall so naturally to their sword. not with the way they seem to stand, to walk, to pace. to circle you like a predator. watch and wait and there’s disgust that comes with healing hands.

justice helps, but he feels it too. 

quiet, spirit - don’t let them hear you nearly say where you sense the lick of anger that wells with questions asked of mage’s plight. this is the real world, spirit you tell him - though your smile does not hide the anger you have. he sees it in the way you tremble ever so slight, the way your fists curl and brows knit and a snarl is merely pulled back. 

i can help you, he offers. 

demon. monster. abomination. your heart near stops and familiarity comes in the ache of your head. stagger and stumble and three words flash hot: judge. jury. executioner. 

today you die, they tell you but strength wells within. because you are not a brother. you are not a warden. you are maleficar - always and forever. permission to live denied and the sword comes as follow through. 

no. 

stand because you must defy. fight, because you know nothing else. 

no.

“ — because they made me give away my bloody cat. ser pounce was braver than the lot of them, and a far better companion in the deep roads. ”

[theharellan]

The first question: what does Solas do about Wisdom if he doesn't ask for the Inquisitor's help or the Inquisitor refuses? I know you don't get that quest if his approval is Cold/Hostile, and even if you do get the convo the Inquisitor can still say "but you don't need anything. you're KNOWN for that". So does his course of action depend on whether he never asks for the help or asks but is rejected? does he seek help elsewhere or try to do it on his own? Just how does it all go down differently?

i should state before i start that all of this is headcanons. in-game, as far as we know, nothing happens. in the one file where i didn’t get his personal quest b/c i was trying to get low approval, there’s just nothing where wisdom is supposed to be.

since i’m not reliant on player choice, however, i’d say he goes himself.

i tend to think that the companions wouldn’t always be available, realistically. iron bull might go with the chargers, dorian may accompany agents when tevinter knowledge would be a plus, and i’ve written solas as having been present at some war table missions just b/c some of the scenarios are rly interesting to write about.

solas likely wouldn’t go alone, ian would accompany him, at least. there aren’t many people solas is willing to be open emotionally with, and the herald telling him no would honestly knock that number down at least one, so after that i doubt he would go seeking anyone else.

if he just straight-up hates the inquisitor, though, he would probably be more willing to ask others for help. specifically, cole. while he does have an amicable relationship with tal-vashoth iron bull, cassandra, they have no love of spirits and unlike when there’s an inquisitor there he couldn’t trust them not to act against any requests he makes. varric and blackwall would be a more likely choice, but again what happened to wisdom is a very emotional thing for him, so most likely what we’d be looking at here is a special field trip with solas, cole, and ian. who needs tanks anyway.

in this scenario i’d honestly have to write it to guess all the smaller ways it might unfold. the one thing i can say for sure is the mages would live, as by my canon ian stops solas even if the inquisitor doesn’t, and they’d break the seals. i also think he would still go AWOL after the business was settled, wisdom’s death triggers something of a breakdown that he isn’t comfortable expressing in front of others at that point. however, rather than returning to skyhold he’d most likely meet up with them before they returned together.

unlike a lot of other personal quests the inquisitor’s presence is kind of incidental. they can choose to break the seals vs kill wisdom/pride outright, and whether or not to stop solas from killing the mages in a fit of grief-induced rage, but wisdom always dies and solas always ends the quest heartbroken. so compared to, say, deciding dorian’s relationship with his family going forward or cole’s path, the lessons solas takes from his pq are somewhat static:

he’s slightly more alone in the world, but also less alone than he thought. this would hold true in cases where he pursues it without the inquisitor’s help b/c he hates them, but in cases where the inquisitor brushes him off it’d just teach him he can’t trust the inquisitor. it’d also reinforce his difficulty asking for help and tendency to repress his emotions. b/c like the one time he’s overly emotional in front of an inquisitor he has respect for and suddenly they’re not listening to him?? hm. sounds like he should just keep playing the even-toned wiseman if he wants to get anything.

[aglaecan]

@gracebroken asked for this....

“I don’t know whether to ask more about the eagles and his clan in general because they sound fascinating or cry over the fact that he lost them. I have so many additional questions, too dsfgjh Like — How did he survive the loss of his clan? Are there any other survivors? What’s his outlook after Ostagar? Like just how does that impact him and what direction is life taking?

         I’d love to hear more!”

ok so! his clan was called the Talat clan; they were matriarchal and matrilineal. Temir’s grandmother was the clan matriarch when he was a child; his mother, as eldest daughter, had inherited by the time he came to adulthood. he had no sisters -- the clan would have passed to his mother’s sister’s daughter instead of to him.  women, as the bringers of life into the world, were the holders of all clan property (other than personal property; I’m talking about things like the buildings and the livestock, the Big Stuff, all owned by the women.) they were also the keepers of clan lore, and generally the shamans and healers as well.

men were mostly the hunters and herders; unusually, the clan’s shaman at this point happened to be a man. clan Talat, like some other Wilder clans, hunted using conventional weapons but also a kind of falconry using basically this kind of eagle; it was this path that Temir had chosen for himself.

when the darkspawn horde rolled through the part of the Wilds where clan Talat made its home, Temir was out by himself in another part of the Korcari with a juvenile eagle he was training. he returned to find the darkspawn gone and his clan decimated. his mother was still alive, but suffering from the taint already; she requested that he kill her for mercy. he then went through the rest of the area and gave the mercy-strike to anyone else still alive he found; of those, all of them were Blight-tainted already.

so he released the juvenile eagle and he took his flatblade (one of the famous Chasind grey iron flatblades, from which he takes his sobriquet among the ‘drylanders,’ Temir Greyblade) and headed after the darkspawn, winding up joining with Cailan’s armies at Ostagar. he figured he’d be likely to die in the assault too, and when he didn’t, he wasn’t sure what to do with himself at first. there might have been other survivors of his clan; maybe some of them were able to flee and hide in the Wild and survive. but after what he’d had to do, and after having not been there when it happened in the first place, he felt as though he’d already killed the heart of his clan and would never again be part of it, even if he was able to find survivors and rebuild.

instead, he understood that the drylanders would look at a man of his size and only see a warrior, so he started hiring himself out as a mercenary and bodyguard to various nobles, etc. never the chattiest to begin with, he was at first taciturn from a lack of facility with the common tongue, and then later just by habit and by nature, his losses making him reluctant to let himself close to anyone again.

in the verse shared with @inkapacitated, he eventually pairs up with another mercenary, a nevarran mage named Iskender, and things between them are.... well, uh.... 

[secretsandhushedwhispers]

@gracebroken has provided me with a ship I never thought I wanted until now

[dalathin]

What’s a thread you’d like to do in the near future?

@gracebroken | munday questions

Oh, easy answer. I’ve mentioned this before, but I’d actually really love to do a thread that has to do with Séaghdha’s Dreamer-ness and the Fade. Whether that’s that he finds himself in someone else’s dream or is trying to help someone manage their nightmares, or if he’s just going on a friendly stroll through the Fade with a friend - gimme Fade/Dreamer stuff.

[dalathin-archived-blog]

3 and 12?

@gracebroken | shipping mun meme | accepting

3. Which canon muse(s) do you currently ship with? I don’t think I actually have too many canon romantic ships for Séaghdha? I have two very lovely slow burn ships, one with @fadewalking (Solas), and one with @mortemmagicae (Dorian Pavus). I also am hardcore shipping Séaghdha with @embracedestiny (Garrett Hawke) but I’m not sure if I ever actually told Min that. >_>

12. Do you believe rp’ing a ship adds to character development? Absolutely! And this is for all kinds of ships, not just romantic. I think exploring any type of interpersonal relationship is bound to lead to character discoveries and growth. It’s actually one of my favorite parts of shipping - how the characters grow, learn, and change as individuals, and not just as a unit. I think it can be very eye-opening for a writer at times, and I always look forward to the new things I learn every time Séaghdha develops a relationship with someone.

[couldntbcloved]

gracebroken replied to your post: gracebroken replied to your post: ...

various rights of passage involving horns pls and thank you ��perhaps even some halla horn equivalent of Dalish vallaslin?

OOC. or maybe like, the specific shape/curvature in which your horns are carved depends on your role in the clan? like hunters, warriors, craftsmen, mages, etc. all have specific horn styles. Also, the role as Halla Keeper (since it doesnt rly make sense for hallataur to raise actual halla i think) is replaced with Horn Carver, bc u know that job takes a lot of precision and skill and probably years of training.