hi quark :3<3 i am in your inbox again to see if i could ask you about your writing process :0 i know you've said that you usually write your multi chapter fics completely, then edit each chapter before you post it. do you have a more detailed process or any tips for writing something multi chapter (orrr just writing in general)? :3 i struggle so much with the lack of instant gratification hjklhsajkfh
Oh, this is such a good question! There is zero chance I'll be able to answer it succinctly, but man, I'll do my best.
Yes, I do completely finish all of my fics before posting them, including my long projects. There have only been two exceptions to that in the 20+ years I've been writing fanfiction, and I'll talk about those below. There are four broad reasons for this:
I can't handle the pressure of knowing people are waiting for an update.
I receive enough dopamine from the act of writing that readers' comments are a bonus rather than the goal itself.
I struggle with broad narrative structure.
Relying on others' actions to motivate me is very unhealthy for me, and I've actively worked to avoid it in my adult life.
I'll also preface by saying (though I'm sure everyone's already realized) that this is what is true for me. The truest writing advice I've ever heard is that no advice works for everyone, so please understand this is descriptive, not prescriptive.
1. I can't handle the pressure of knowing people are waiting for an update.
There are only two fics I've ever posted as I've actively written them. The first is River Stone, which I first posted anonymously on the DA Kink Meme in 2012, and the second is Metamorphose, a Thanzag three-part character study from 2023.
River Stone was a prompt fill, which meant I knew where I was going with the plot, and as I was drafting out ideas, I felt secure enough in my chapter structures that I felt okay updating the kink meme as I went. I had originally intended the kidnap arc to take a lot longer than it did; I wanted the relief of Fenris's rescue to be visceral for the reader as well as Hawke.
However, around the second posted part of that section, I started getting comments saying that rescue was taking too long; you can see them in that link above. This made me panic that I'd lose readership if I stuck to my original plan, so I truncated the trip, had Fenris show up much sooner than I'd planned, and ended up posting writing that I was not happy with either structurally or technically.
I've long come to terms with that, and I polished up the parts that most bothered me in the transition to AO3 (and am very proud of that fic regardless), but that feeling of dissatisfaction at caving to pressure and writing something I felt was substandard stuck with me for many years.
Then, in January of 2022, I got really into Hades. I'd already started a different Thanzag fic & been pleased with it, so I thought I could easily tackle a three-part character study of their relationship as framed by the River Styx. This kind of writing was my metaphorical bread and butter, and it'd been ten years since I tried posting as I went; surely it was time to see how much I'd improved & recognize how much easier it was to post concurrently with the writing.
It took me over a year to finish the third chapter. Even worse, I could feel myself getting upset every time I thought about it; a comment would come through my email and I would find myself literally wincing as I opened it, afraid it would be on this story. I started avoiding AO3 notifications altogether—because of one fic! One fic, among the 80 or so I'd finished!—and when I finally sat down after fourteen months to knock the darn thing out once and for all, it was with a sense of immense pressure and guilt and a desperate need to just be done that again spurred writing that did not actually please me or relieve the stress.
They were both such singularly unpleasant experiences that I've never wanted to repeat them. Maybe in 2032 I'll try again, just in case—but maybe not.
2. I receive enough dopamine from the act of writing that readers' comments are a bonus rather than the goal itself.
I know this is probably the most subjective item on this list, but it really is true. It helps that I have a lot of hobbies at which I am very mediocre; I learned pretty early that sometimes the things I spent my time on would really just please me alone, and I had to be okay with that to continue the hobby.
Writing is definitely one of those things, even though I've certainly worked much harder on honing the actual craft there than others. I wrote a lot of schlock growing up, but man, I had such a good time doing it! That enjoyment was enough for me as a kid, and for whatever reason, I was able to carry that forward into my adult writing as well.
It truly brings me an immense joy to transfer the movies playing in my mind at bedtime down to the written page. I mean, the act itself—choosing the right words to convey the tone I want, shaping out the chapters, staring at a blinking cursor—even when it's miserable, I love it. (Even more, once it's finished, the satisfaction at being able to go back to that fic whenever I want—whenever I'm craving that one particular scene, that one particular kiss, that one particular storyline—is absolutely unmatched for me.)
I also am divinely fortunate to be surrounded by dear friends who are also avid writers. @jadesabre301, @eponymous-rose, @perahn, @servantofclio, basically everyone in the movie night group—they are cheerleaders and soundboards and they love the craft as much as I do, and even if I know I'm about to post something that might get two comments if I'm lucky, running a draft by the group & having Perahn recognize and call out a vocative O or a diacritical é or some other silly flourish I'd never dreamed anyone would appreciate is like hoping for a single daisy and getting a bouquet of roses.
All of that is to say: I just love the darn work, and I have people close to me who also love the work, and that does enough of the emotional heavy lifting even on the long projects that I don't have to depend on comments to feel my efforts have been appreciated.
I'm not sure that's particularly useful, but it's true.
3. I struggle with broad narrative structure.
This has been a weakness of mine all the way back to baby's first longfic (Deathsong, Bleach, 2010). Despite the detailed outlines I always draft before beginning a long project, there's always some narrative throughline I fumble without meaning to, and the only way my beta can catch it is if she gets the whole thing at once.
Honestly, I don't think there's a single >30k word fic in my corpus that doesn't have a note from Jade somewhere alerting me to the bones I've forgotten to build.
I want my stories to be good. Not just fun to read, although I do want that too; I mean structurally, from the ground up, I have a vested interest in constructing something narratively sound and coherent and strong. I really want my fics to be well written, at least to my own limits, and I know overarching theme is not one of my strengths.
Therefore, if I want my final product to be the best thing I can make, I need a second set of eyes (Jade's eyes) on the body complete to identify those weak places so I can fix them. If I'm posting as I go, then there's no chance to fix my foundational issues from Chapter 2 when she's only just recognized them in Chapter 6.
(This is also why I so deeply appreciate her editing. When I know my work is flawed, I need that correction over uncritical praise; and it makes her praise more precious when I've earned it with the fixes. And yes, there have been occasions where I didn't make every change she suggested, but I knew thanks to her comments what imperfections I would be permitting to exist, and I decided I could live with them.)
I would rather sacrifice the reward of chapter-by-chapter comments than end up with a fundamentally flawed final fic.
4. Relying on others' actions to motivate me is very unhealthy for me, and I've actively worked to avoid it in my adult life.
I don't think this needs a lot of explanation (like that'll stop me), but I have found over the years that I crave praise. I like winning awards. I like getting good comments on my student evaluations. I like being recognized for my skills and told I did a good job and having all my colleagues go, "ooh, she's so good at what she does."
In fact, I like it enough that I have to avoid it. I haven't opened my student evaluations in over a year because I get addicted to the praise and unreasonably irritated by criticism (especially if I know whatever they're complaining about isn't accurate), and I know the curriculum committee will tell me about any issues anyway. I know my work is good, I really do. I know I'm good at my job, and I know I'm a reasonably proficient writer. I cannot—and must not—depend on others to tell me so to believe it.
@eponymous-rose and I have talked at length about writing now for Veilguard. We both know this is hardly the most popular game in the franchise, and we've had long conversations about why we're choosing to write in its world anyway, which basically boils down to: we want to. We both have stories we want to tell in its flawed, imperfect, compelling world, and we've both come to terms with that likely meaning a low (or even zero) comment count on AO3.
If that comment count is the only metric of success by which I measure, what does it mean when it measures low? If I get one comment on 30k words I bled to write, have I failed? Have I written something of poor quality? Have I wasted my time, done a bad job, hastened the heat death of the universe with my electronic and digital waste?
I can't believe that. I must believe the work itself was worth doing if I've done it to the best of my ability, even if it goes unnoticed in the broader scope of fandom. I have to derive my satisfaction from knowing I have made something out of nothing & polished it as best as I know how. If I become reliant on others' reactions to inspire me to write—if I'm suddenly depending on a comment count becoming n+1 for every chapter before I can begin the next one—then I've surrendered my creative happiness and motivation to the hands of total strangers.
Understand: when I nobly claim that I refuse to write to an algorithm, what I mean is that like an addict, I have to choose over and over to remove myself from the thing that poisons me. I am too susceptible to praise. If I let the dopamine response of comment counts become integral to my writing process, then I risk becoming dependent on it. The only way I know how to prevent that for myself is to remove it from the method altogether.
That does not mean I don't value reader comments; I do, deeply. I have an entire folder of screenshots saved like golden treasures, hoarded up against the bad days. When this Big Bang fic finally comes out, I intend to advertise it to the point of annoyance. I love comments to a probably unhealthy degree. But knowing that about myself means I have to take steps to ensure those comments stay the gifts they are, rather than the payment itself.
I don't want to burn out. I don't want to stop telling stories. And for me, this is the only way I think of to do it. If I want to make something I'm really proud of, something I can go back and reread years later and still love, the writing itself must be the goal, and everything else has to come second to that. I need to know I can survive even if AO3 were to shut down forever tomorrow.
I'm at a place right now where I can believe my work matters even in an empty room. I don't want to lose that. So I write first, and I hope the comments come along after; but I can live with it if they don't.
About the difference in how the gods are depicted in BG3: Firstly, you're right and they SHOULD have put more into the good aligned gods. Secondly, there's A Thing in the Forgotten Realms lore about how interfering with mortals directly is Bad. They have... history of it going wrong, in horrible ways. So good aligned gods tend to be a LOT more hands off in general. Still pick their Favorites and mess with their lives immensely. But that's more of a 'have a backup god ready' thing these days.
Yes, that's very true! I know in FR especially, Ao tries to keep things reasonably balanced, and you can narratively lean on that as the reason for a lot of the good gods' distance. However, I do think there's still an imbalance in how the good gods are represented in games like these. Yes, there's supposed to be a veil between gods and mortals, absolutely.
But Shar literally manifests in a gigantic unique model and a huge centerpiece cutscene to talk about how evil she is and how much she's annoyed specifically by Shadowheart, and Ao doesn't step in to stop her—with the implication being that this level of appearance is okay with him. But Selune doesn't even get a whispered voice line? The god Shadowheart was stolen from as a child, the source of her power for the entirety of Act 3—we don't get anything from her, not even once, in the entire game?
In fact, it's even worse than that; throughout Act 3, we don't get a single hint that Shadowheart now worships Selune through any active choice of her own. A codex entry says "it's better not to discuss where Shadowheart's power now comes from." She never once says, "I've decided to worship Selune again, and here's why." All we get is a turn away from Shar (for good reason!) without any turn towards something else in her place. Her faith is broken and she never replaces it, but she still somehow keeps all her faith-based powers.
In fact, Shadowheart still talks more about Shar after her crisis of faith than she does about her supposed new god! Even in the Stormshore Tabernacle, where you can see all the statues of the gods, Shadowheart's ambient voice line is along the lines of, "In another world, I might be here worshipping Selune instead." What? What?? You're a cleric in Forgotten Realms! You've turned from your god and you still have holy magic! Obviously that means it's coming from somewhere divine; why don't we ever see Shadowheart grapple with what that means? Why don't we ever see her take even a baby step towards a new faith that can bring her comfort and peace to replace what Shar tore from her? Why don't we see her searching out what being a worshipper of Selune means—the tenets of their faith—to see if that's something she can get behind?
Why doesn't Selune speak directly to Shadowheart? Even if you want to say "well, she's just giving her space after a really bad breakup with an abusive ex," fine—but even in the epilogue, we don't see a darn lick of Selune's presence in Shadowheart's life. Even in my favorite cottagecore endstate for her, she doesn't talk about Selune at all. A powerful, present, visceral evil god vanishes out of the narrative, a vague impersonal background benevolence takes its place, and I as a player am supposed to buy that they're two evenly weighted sides of the same coin?
Even Mystra gets to show up to talk to Gale, though she has a stock model with a neat iridescent effect. In some ways, it's like a straight line on a graph. The more evil the god, the cooler & more visible & more impactful they get to be; and the more good, the fainter and broader and less vivid they become. Evil looms; good wafts.
But this is a bigger problem than BG3 and Forgotten Realms. This is a consistent issue in any Western games (especially RPGs) that depict pantheons where the gods manifestly exist & have relationships with their followers. This is also spinning off a bit from that post I reblogged the other day, because I saw a lot of people in the tags saying, "oh yes, I'm writing a devout character, I need to make sure they engage more in religious rituals in their day to day."
And like, yes, that's true—that can help remind the reader that your character is religious—but it's not just about the act of doing the ritual, right? You need to understand that when a truly devout character engages in ritual, it's not just because "I'm a follower of the Maker or Andraste or the Dawnfather or the Everlight, and in order to be a Good Follower, I have to follow the rules & Pray While Facing the Sunrise Every Single Morning." That's performative pablum; that's saying the pledge every morning in high school.
A truly religious character performs these acts because they genuinely believe they matter. They deeply, honestly, truly, way on down in the heart of them, believe that even if every other priest on the planet dropped dead tomorrow, it would still be important to them and their god that they prayed.
You have to understand the difference here. The devout character prays because they genuinely believe that their god can hear them, and that their god will be moved by their prayers. They are speaking directly to someone they know is real and they know has the power to help them, and they're asking for manifest help.
The devout character participates in rituals to honor their god because they believe their god is worth honoring. They have chosen a commitment to the tenets of that god, whether it was formal or in the wild adrenaline of battle, and the daily rituals they engage in—burning incense, attending Chantry masses, serving in a soup kitchen, saying a devotion at the end of battle—have to reflect that commitment every single time. It cannot be performative, simply a thing to be done because that's what Good Followers Do. It must be out of real, heartfelt emotion every single time, or it doesn't count. (Which can be interesting on its own! Having a devout character realize they've only been lighting candles out of habit, rather than a true intention to honor, can be a fascinating flashpoint!)
This is where I see most modern Western depictions of religious characters fall apart. They go through the motions, they say the right things that Religious People say, but the player never gets the sense that this character actually internalizes any of the tenets of their god's faith. (Unless they follow Bhaal in BG3, in which case I absolutely believe every one of those guys would die for their convictions. But again, that goes back to the "good=bland" problem from above.) Sometimes the super-minor NPCs get it right—I'm thinking of the acolytes at the Open Hand Temple in BG3's Act 3 who run the soup kitchen and talk about Ilmater reaching out to the poor—but the main characters who follow good gods rarely seem to believe in way that I as a player watching...well, believe.
There are exceptions, of course. Cassandra & Leliana from DAI are faithful and act on that faith. Gale certainly has a real—if complicated—relationship with Mystra, even if I have major issues with her depiction in BG3. But these are isolated examples against a greater background of vague, impressionistic sketches of divinity, and the divine gets vaguer the more unquestioningly good they become.
I've also started to write about the importance of preserving the power dynamic between gods and followers several times, but this is already more than long enough, so I'll simply say: stop trying to bring the gods down to the level of the mortal follower. They don't need to be equal friends for the relationship to be worth having. The bond between a mentor & mentee—someone who truly wants to help & has the power to help, and someone who needs and wants that help & guidance—can be so beautiful and meaningful, and I'm tired of seeing it portrayed as something undesirable simply because the god by its nature is more powerful than the mortal who loves it.
I'm stopping here because I'll keep going for another 3k words if I don't, but thank you for giving me the opportunity to sit down and hash out these long-simmering thoughts! <3
hi, i heard you mention wanting to replay DAO at some point on your DAI stream, and i wondered if you already knew that tumblr user mumms-the-word has a guide on how she mods DAO to make it more playable on PC. there's a post she made on feb 13 2025 that's very handy.
sorry if you were already aware of this!!
Oh, that's perfect! Thank you so much! Yes, I still want to do a full playthrough of all the games in order now that I've got a complete narrative in my head, and this will be super helpful!
This is the post I'll be starting from, for others interested in tackling this game as well. <3
okay okay okay so the top comment on this reel is living rent free in my brain
they point out that astarion doesn't proposition you unless your approval is a certain level. hes like "oh im so manipulative, im seducing them for protection" but he literally will not sleep with you if he doesn't like you. he likes you but he is just really not getting it. he cannot differentiate liking someone and using someone. he thinks liking someone IS using them, because anyone he ever liked was also a target.
I'm freaking out over this just wanted to share ✌️
Yes, absolutely! I fully believe he's mad with freedom through Act 1; if he doesn't like the PC, I think there's an almost crazed novelty to him turning them down because for the first time in his memory, he doesn't have to do anything else.
And it's not even prompted by the player, he just brings it up on his own! (It's not you, it's me. I have standards.) He doesn't like you, he doesn't want to sleep with you, he doesn't have to sleep with you, and he really, really, really wants you to know it.
I wonder if he's more giddy or more afraid when he says that.
And then on the flip side, if he likes you, he does want to sleep with you. Want, of course, being as loaded a word as possible--but regardless, he likes you, he wants to have sex with you, and his romance literally stalls out and ends if you don't agree.
I don't think it's possible in his mind to separate the one from the other. To be safe requires obedience; his obedience is sex. Landing a target is the only way to stay alive; landing the target is getting the target into his bed.
He likes Tav. He thinks Tav can keep him safe. He must snare Tav in the only way he knows.
(This is also why I personally don't vibe with Tavs that refuse to sleep with him in Act One; I find his arc of growth so much more meaningful when it runs the full course of reverse intimacy. To force him to a more "normal" courtship where the emotions come before the sex seems the fastest way to make him feel completely off-balance and unsafe, especially in those early weeks. Even in Karlach's version of the scene, where the only reason they don't sleep together is that she will literally fry him, is fraught with his sarcasm and disdain.
So Tav, rejecting him not because he'll die but just because they don't want to? I just can't see him taking it well, no matter how excellent or personal their reasons might be. He's too afraid, he's too wounded from two hundred years' compelled torture, and he's far too tied to the idea of sex equaling safety to believe anything else is worth his time.
To undermine that is to contort his character, in my opinion, and while I'm super glad other people enjoy writing it and I hope they continue to have a great time, it's not the version of the character for me.)
no worries if you arent really talking about bg3 anymore, but if you feel up to it, i would love to hear your thoughts on a scenario i’ve been turning over in my head lately :3 what do you think would have happened if tav had been a significant other or friend of astarion before he died?
these are my thoughts: on the beach, before astarion can introduce himself, tav instantly becomes suspicious and angry, assuming him to be an imposter or mindflayer trick of some kind. perhaps upon realizing that tav truly did know him and he can’t convince them otherwise, he would simply reveal his vampirism and cazador. and then, he might be able to skip forward several steps in his plan to secure an emotional attachment from the leader of the group. i imagine that he might be anxious to get information about his past life and self from tav, especially if they still had any of his belongings, but i can also see him being cruel to them or angry. maybe he would feel a little bitter that someone existed this whole time who supposedly cared about him, yet made no difference to his time with cazador. or maybe he would feel that he is so different now that whatever old life he had is dead, and anyone from that time is similarly useless to him.
i think he would not believe tav capable of truly seeing him for the person he is now, as opposed to the one they knew. maybe he would even feel worse about himself getting a reminder of how drastically he’s changed during his time with cazador. i can’t really see a genuine romance being able to sprout from that situation but… i like to bend my disbelief a little bit and imagine one anyway, LOL. unfortunately i think tav not being a stranger to him would alter their dynamics fundamentally… and i can’t see a tav who knows him falling for his seduction routine, either.
i’d love to hear your take on it, if you have one :D i love your interpretations of his character.
p.s. i know i have sent asks and messages before and also requests and you have responded but i have not after that. im sorry. im shy T_T i hope u know that i love u and ur writing and thank you for always responding to me ahsjjdjdjdjd
♥♥♥ Ahhh, thank you so much! Even if DA's reasserted its hold on me fic-wise, I promise, I'm still daydreaming about Tav and Astarion on the regular. This is a super interesting premise, so let me dig into it!
(I should also caveat that since my Tav is human and Astarion hasn't yet struck his deal with Withers to extend her lifespan at the cost of his own immortality, she'd have been very dead a very long time ago if she'd met Astarion before his turning, so this will be a more generic Tav-of-all-trades.)
So we know that Astarion remembers almost nothing before his turning. His parents' names, his eye color, even where he was born and grew up—it's all been stripped away. I can't believe a friend or significant other would have been spared that treatment, which means any recognition on the beach would have to be Tav recognizing Astarion, and Astarion not having the faintest idea who this person is supposed to be.
Not to mention the Astarion of BG3 is very different than the Astarion this person would have known! Not just in terms of eye color (which most people don't really pay that much attention to, actually), but Astarion-the-magistrate was self-indulgent, well fed, coasting on his laurels and engaging in petty bribery and manipulation. Small crimes, small sins, a small & petty man.
Astarion the vampire spawn is small & petty on the surface, sure—but under that is a slavering, voracious, vengeful hunger that can never, ever be sated. There is an incomprehensible enormity to that pit inside him that the magistrate could never have understood, and I really think that any Tav looking for the magistrate would have a terrible time recognizing him in the red-eyed, rail-thin, starving spawn.
One of the things that Astarion is angriest about is that when he called for help, no one came. No adventurers, no gods, no politicians scheming against Cazador and looking for ammunition—no one came to help him. He has spent two hundred years being hammered over and over with the fact that not a single person in the world loved him enough to care that he'd disappeared, so to have a Tav suddenly show up in this new worst moment of his life (especially when he thought he was done having worst moments), and express any sort of grief or horror at his new state—I think he would find that utterly intolerable. How dare they not have saved him? How dare they not have rescued him from two centuries of torture? How dare they come to him now, when he has become this monster, instead of earlier, before he was twisted beyond salvation?
Astarion in Act 1 is such a seething ball of hate and euphoria. He's drunk out of his mind on this impossible freedom, and I think he revels in meeting a Tav who knows nothing about him or his past, what he's done, what he's been forced to do. He can shape the interaction however he wants without Cazador's demands and compulsions looming over him; he can start from a true and real blank slate for the first time in his memory. Meeting a Tav who'd known him before—who will recognize too quickly all the differences in what he's now become, who will remind him by force of everything he's lost literally every time they speak—I honestly think that'd push him incredibly hard into his own rage and selfishness and worst impulses, and pulling a romance out of that would be darned tough.
Actually, as I've been pondering this, I actually wonder if a romance might be more interesting (or at least more possible) if Tav was previously an enemy of Astarion's before his turning. Maybe some rival magistrate who was frustrated at Astarion's backroom dealings, or a spurned page, or even someone who Astarion sent away to prison for some petty crime. Even if a Tav who loved him tried to save him and failed—he would never forgive that failure. But if a Tav who hated him never looked; well, that's just business, right?
I honestly think Astarion would be much more likely to forgive that Tav for not coming to save him—who would, after all, after a wound like that?—and I think the early relationship, especially his emotional manipulations, would be on far more solid ground for him, like deliberately pressing that bruise over and over. He would feel much more comfortable with that sort of test, after all; given his relationships with the other spawn, he'd be very familiar with discerning exactly how much injury the other person can tolerate before they snap. It would probably still have to be a petty sort of Tav to match Astarion (I do think he would be repulsed by any genuine do-gooder type who knew him before), but I can see two incredibly damaged selfish people accidentally realizing they make each other better, much to their own dismay.
Ahh, this was a treat to think about this morning! Thank you so much for the brainworms, always! ♥♥♥
you have been my #1 favorite fanfic author of all time for like 7-8 years now for your fenhawke and ive always thought "god i would give anything for quark to write solavellan" but i respected that it wasnt your thing. so imagine the pure unbridled euphoria of checking in on your blog this week to see that he finally got to you. i actually screamed. whatever you come up with i know it is going to absolutely change my life and i am so excited <3
i’m so. sad. i'm SO sad. i was so happy for a decade just being mildly annoyed every time he crossed my dash and now i am having feelings and opinions and i don’t WANT THEM and the only way to get rid of them is to write them out of me, this is why i don’t love fenris or astarion at all anymore obviously
and like, I still don’t love Solas! I still think some things he does and some goals he has are really, really stupid! but this character I created to love him really loves him, and I really love her and want her to be happy even though she lives only inside my head, and that means I need to lay down some structure around her romance to get the shape of it, to build something I can make sense of. I may not love him, but I like him much more than I did, and I certainly understand him better than I did the first time around.
And to be honest, there’s a part of me glad I’m coming to it as late as I have. I don’t think I’ve ever read a single Solavellan fic in my life (I actually had to pause here to check the spelling). I have NO idea what tropes are popular with him or what interpretations are the biggest. I have a lot of opinions on how his personality and identity work in a romance with this particular character I’ve created, but because I’ve been so siloed I have no idea if I’m bucking the grain or not, which is fine by me.
Plus, it helps I’m not going to have ten years to build up a lot of personal headcanons and jossable thoughts before playing the new game. I’m not someone who easily ignores canon when it clashes with my imagination for the major things, so I think this will (hopefully) keep me from major disappointments.
It's kinda funny; earlier today I was going back through my DAI tag and reminding myself of all my impressions from the first time I played the game. Some of them I definitely still stand by; others have completely changed. I even said twice that a Lavellan/Solas romance would be my next playthrough, which was true if ten years late.
But it's things like: apparently the first time through I loved Solas and Sera, both of which certainly were not true going into this replay. (I barely even have a memory of Solas and Priory ever being in the party together, though the historical records say I took him to Adamant.) I apparently had a lot of hopes Gideon Emery would be voicing Fenris. I originally thought Priory was going to romance Bull, which is very ?????? after all this time. (I did still, even then, know Here Lies the Abyss completely broke her as a character, and ten years on I never could fix her for good.)
I really did not expect to change my mind on Solas going into this replay, I guess is the point. I replayed because knowing the story of DAI and Solas, I felt it was a story most personalized to elves and specifically a Solas-romancing Lavellan, and that was the worldstate I wanted to take into the new game. I played it out because that's the kind of person I am (I can't just invent characters wholesale in my head) but I really thought it was going to be a perfunctory playthrough as a stepping stone to a different game and a different PC and (presumably) a different romance. I didn't expect to love this character as much as I do, and even if I don't have ten years to write her out the way I did Hawke, I feel like I still owe it to her & her doomed romance to give her a little time in the spotlight. Lucky girl!
surely it speaks well of Astarion if he's like if someone took a Solas and kicked all the Wulbren out of him...?
I've been waffling over how well anyone can really speak about Astarion. Sure, he might be petty, vindictive, and possessed of a streak of cruelty broad enough to make a jailer quail, but oh, how he makes me laugh.
Imagine with me Cazador and Danarius meeting for monthly afternoon tea to bitch about their peers and the difficulty of cultivating white-haired elf slaves who are just so ungrateful. Cazador claiming he's put together a blood ritual that requires seven thousand souls and he's almost finished collecting; Danarius demanding proof and finally wangling an invitation to the Szarr Palace; the bloodbath that ensues when Danarius tries to take over the ritual.
I have long since decided that Fenris & Astarion would not like each other at all; this necessitates, of course, that Cazador & Danarius would get on like a house on fire.
I like the idea that they both recognize the other as a mirror & are both immediately aware the other will attempt to kill them/steal their ritual/consume their souls eventually, but still often have tea together anyway. A bit of "keeping your enemies closer," a bit of respect for an opponent, a bit of just wanting to experience the luxuries the other's world provides. I don't doubt the stories they swap would be horrifying, but I can't pretend I wouldn't laugh writing the banal little insults they'd pick at each other with, each thinking they were so sly and smart and subtle.
I did also have a flash of the final battle (all of them there in Cazador's basement, of course: Fenris & Hawke, Tav & Astarion, Danarius & Cazador) and both of them accidentally killing the other's master and getting absolutely furious about it. I don't think I could actually write it out, considering I am too weak for slaves confronting the internal agony of acquiring freedom through violence to play it strictly comedic the way the scene would need, but the movie in my head is definitely making me laugh.
Man, I was toying with the livid conversation that would come after & trying to decide if it would devolve into Fenris & Astarion angrily comparing cruelties to see who had it worse. I initially thought, "no way would Fenris ever share such a thing with a stranger, not a chance," but then I thought about Astarion's...everything, and I'm forced to reluctantly conclude that given enough time, Astarion can drag anyone down to his level.
