From "Liar" the scene with the spirit trapped in the torture victim, starting from "That one… that one had spikes hammered through its eyes" and ending with "Instead, upon slitting its throat, it crumbled to dust, shackles clanking against the cage at the sudden loss."
Ah yes, this scene! This was the beginning of Dorian’s habit of talking to the dead when nobody was watching and helping them move on. Which is a thing that is not approved of at all if you are Qunari and especially if you are trying to remain on the down low in your Qunari equivalent of apostatehood, but since when has Dorian ever made sensible decisions??
Never I tell you.
I figured I needed something really horrifying for this to work because one of his internal excuses for not telling anyone he could do magic was ‘as long as I don’t talk to demons then I’m Fine’, and Dorian (or Isskari at the time) is in fact aware the corpses up and moving around do that because they are possessed by demons. (Or sometimes spirits, but the Qun doesn’t seem to make that distinction.) So finding some possessed dead in an old Tevinter torture chamber was a hard of a hit as I could think of to nudge him down that future path.
Also a readmore for people’s dash sanity.
That one… that one had spikes hammered through its eyes. Knife wounds littered its face, arms, and legs, and its ribs had been splayed open revealing the inner chest cavity. It reached for him desperately as best as it could with its hands shackled—not violently like one of them, but almost pleadingly in small jerking motions.
“You picked a bad body to be in, friend,” Isskari said, half sarcastically. But the thing paused for just a moment at ‘friend’, just a second, before it seemed to attempt to point to the knife at Isskari’s side. And then it gestured towards its throat.
And here we have a semi-graphic depiction of a body some poor soul is trapped in and likely has been trapped in for some time. Things haven’t gone great for this person, and they really would just like to leave this body but are very much trapped. And after countless time, someone has finally strolled into this dungeon once more. So yeah, maybe they do perk up at the slightest whiff of compassion.
Isskari frowned.
This was a really bad idea, but-
The corpse gestured again, more frantic this time before it started to writhe, wailing again.
I’m really not being subtle here with hitting him with the giant sympathy hammer, but sometimes you need a giant sympathy hammer to get people past some hang-ups about things like demons and such.
…did it count as talking to demons if the demons couldn’t talk back? Did they still count as demons if they were stuck inside tortured bodies and only wished for the release of death?
[To call a thing by its name is to know its reason in the world. To call a thing falsely is to put out one’s own eyes.]
I had some fun in the fic as a whole with him thinking about doing very un-Quari things with occasional juxtaposition of Qunari proverbs. It wasn’t that Dorian didn’t pay attention in Qunari school; it’s just that he’s not letting that stop him for the most part. His canonical self was a giant rebel in Tevinter after all.
But Isskari just looked at it, at the sheer pitiful condition. Did it hurt? Did it still feel all of the pain the person did before they died? This… this was a very old tower. How long had it been stuck here, unable to leave? Had it actually possessed the body in foolishness, or did evil mages summon it across and bind it to the corpse? If that was the case…
Sympathy!!! The sympathy hammer worked.
I also had some fun with the phrase ‘evil’ mages in a Qunari context. Mages who happened to be evil instead of the idea of mages being evil by default. A needed adjective to describe this particular kind of ‘mage’ instead of other, non-evil kinds.
…he’s a really terrible Qunari, but then he canonically was a terrible altus by Tevinter standards.
“I can kill you,” Isskari said shakily, “but you can’t fight back at all. And the moment- the moment the body you are inhabiting dies, you must leave the mortal world, never to return.”
The corpse just waited.
“Can… the knife kill you?” he asked.
It nodded.
“Even if you are in a corpse. Knives normally don’t do much against corpses.”
It nodded again before pointing to its throat.
Its hands were shackled. Its feet were shackled. In theory, there was no way for it to kill him, but you never knew with demons. How many stories had been ground into him about the wiles of demons? How it could be the friendliest ones that drew you astray?
But if he killed it, or put it to rest, or what have you, then there would be one less demon in the world. And by all of their known research, killing an inhabited corpse did kill the demon.
He has to get all his excuses for himself in a row in order to internally justify his actions. If it’s not out of sympathy, or rather if it isn’t purely out of sympathy and has helpful results on their side, then surely it should be okay?
It would rather have death than be stuck in a tortured body for an eternity. And that- Isskari hated himself, but he looked at the shackles and the cage and the spikes, and he hated himself some more. [But he was going to be a nasty, deceitful corrupter, then at the very least he shouldn’t be a hypocritical one.]
Sympathy!!!
Not that he corrupted people.
I mean, mages don’t emit an aura that corrupts everything they touch, but the Qun thinks otherwise, and Dorian has to do a lot of mental juggling over ‘things I was taught to believe’ and ‘hey yeah no I’m not going to do this’.
It gave him no fight, and he was disconcerted at his lack of shock. Instead, upon slitting its throat, it crumbled to dust, shackles clanking against the cage at the sudden loss.
And thus the poor spirit was freed to flee back into the Fade where they could engage in some hardcore therapy.
Period fic for a story canonically set in modern times or modern au for a story canonically set in the distant past/fantasy equivalent of a past historical period
I’ve actually never read a non-fantasy distant past set in modern times, but for the fantasy equivalent, depends on how much fantasy they still keep. Like for Dragon Age, if there’s no magic, and everyone is now human, that’s not for me. If they do, I’m happy to read it, and that trumps the first.
As for the first, if it’s set in Victorian London, and it’s almost always set in Victorian London, that is not for me, thanks. I’d pick a vanilla modern au where no one has magic and everyone’s human and it’s also a college au. But if it’s in an interesting time period and place, I’d love that and pick that over the second no matter which version they go with.
I guess it depends on the kind of each. Like if we are going with a group amnesia, or at least two people possibly more, I am down for that and would definitely trump soulmate. Especially if it’s for a humorous bent. Check out those tags. Overly sad amnesia fics aren’t usually for me, though there are always exceptions.
Also depends on whose got the amnesia. That changes many things.
Meanwhile with soulmate fic, it also depends on how much of a soulmate we are talking about. Are they going the full soulmate where there’s weird magic shit and emotional bleed over, possibly life bleed over. Or is it changed up a bit with different cultures having different conceptions of the implications behind soulmates, or how rare they are, or if platonic soulmates are a thing, etc. Because I could really get behind any of that. Or all of that!
Though if it comes down to ‘funny group amnesia’ vs ‘exploratory soulmate au’, I’d pick funny group amnesia.
If none of that shows up in the tags or just vanilla each… Interesting character amnesia still trumps soulmate, but if not, then I guess soulmate au.
9, 5, and 15Were there any alternate versions of this fic?
Whoo boy are there. The sheer number of alternative versions that don't end up with a happy ending. I had to really go through a lot of lore so this fic has a happy ending, and I am constantly grumbling about this, hoping people appreciate my efforts even if it is a very obvious dues ex machina.
There's also one where Trevelyan is Inquisitor. That, uh, that's also got some sad moments. But then there’s another Trevelyan as Inquisitor fic that isn’t nearly as sad and is far more awkward for everyone involved.
And then there's one based upon my playthroughs of the other Dragon Age games with Adaar to try to figure him out better where Adaar was also the Hero of Ferelden who accidentally got summoned by Jowan who couldn't figure out how to send him back (Jowan wasn’t even trying to summon anything. He was attempting to practice dispel magic). So he made up a disguise of 'Surana', ends up getting recruited, ends up in charge of a Warden outpost somehow, ends up fleeing so the Wardens don't figure out how he didn't die via archdemon, ends up in Kirkwall and makes up as an identity as 'Hawke', all before eventually ending up as Inquisitor.
...that's even more of a crackfic than the one I am writing now with even crazier ships.
What part was hardest to write? Uh, so far, this upcoming chapter clump, hence why it's taking a while. It's one of those moments where you've got these cool ideas in your head and feel very excited about but then have anxiety because what if you write it badly? What if people think it's boring? What if it's this that inevitably drive people away from my fic???
For things so far, Iron Bull's POV chapter because I wanted to get his narrative voice right and so really stressed out over that chapter.
What did you learn from writing this fic? I'd say stop putting in too many subplots, but I haven't learned that yet, and I'm still trying to learn how to write a romance. It's a fantastic idea, writing a fic centered around romance, when I myself have no idea how to write a romance.It's going Great, and if Dorian could please turn down his paranoia for five seconds, that would be just grand.
I started the fic I think a year and a half ago, so I like to think my writing's improved a lot by trying to figure this writing thing out. Pesky things like 'how to do basic scene transitions' and 'how to write dialogue' and 'basic grammar that makes sense to people' and 'how to actually sit down and describe things without just summarizing it all in a paragraph'.
