#aka character who escaped their fandom and are know as sexy man outside of the fandom

[cutepastelstarsalior]

Sexyman Wally

Update; his class is Keter now

Update x2 he’s Archon now

[roguestarsailor]

You know what since we’re still in quarantine and i have nothing else better to do, i need to obsess over ACOTAR. I don't like a court of frost and starlight. For the longest time I couldn't figure out why I didn't like it. I aggressively read the book in maybe a day and I closed it feeling frustrated and annoyed. My version had A Court of Silver Flames preview so that definitely contributed to my annoyance greatly.

It's because it felt too perfect. Everything that had happened -- after the entire war was fought and won, they just go back to their normal lives? Yes there were hiccups and yes there were still aspects that made every IC character feel like their problems aren’t solved yet...but it didnt feel right. yes i enjoyed the snowball fight between the bat boys, feyre + rhys sexy time, and those little comfort moments too, the slice of life type things and seeing feyre accomplishing her goals and how hopeful the future seems BUT its too fast. the good parts of the book did not offset the bad parts of it.

Feyre literally accomplished pretty much every single goal she made back in ACOMAF just like that?? within a span of what a few months? a year?? She really came back from an entire war -- probably the first war of many since she's immortal and just like that, after her 21st birthday: she gets a whole entire estate, wants to start poppin babies, opens her art studio and starts teaching kids and then acting like she can rule an entire court?? the timeline is sooo short esp since its been brought up over and over again how everyone is literally 500 years old and have a super “messy” history and their changes seems to come super dupe slowly. but feyre, who has only lived 0.000000002% of her fae life, is out here thriving just fine???

the war devastated thousands of illyrian soldiers where its changing the politics of the illyrains and the faes, all of whom feyre has responsibilities over too as high lady. the mortal queens are still at large who left the humans on prythian to die which is why feyre was willing to go to war in the first place! what about the rest of hybern and their land and residents?? they wanted to enslave humans for social and economical reasons! then what about integrating humans w deep hatred and fear with deeply prejudice fae??? there’s also spring and summer court who are literally in ruins. thats literally so much. so idk how feyre is just chillin???? she gonna let rhys do all the hard work???

like feyre sit down. u should not be having a baby. esp since it took u literally a 700 pages to heal from those 3 months UTM. ur telling me shes gonna whole heartedly bring in a newborn in a war devastated world, with civil unrest (illyrains, other courts), with the messiness of human and fae integration, with trauma u and rhys will have to continue to overcome esp after THIS war??? even helping ur sisters w their traumas??

this is a personal opinion on this subject (and maybe my thoughts will change on this later on; opened to other thoughts) but when i read the part about how that weaver/seamstress artist who made that dark quilt that feyre loved talked about how her mate of 300 years didn’t come back from the war and her biggest regret was that she didnt have a kid to remember him by i just thought ur kid isn’t some sort of memorabilia. don’t have a kid to keep the memory of ur mate alive; have a kid cuz u want a kid purely for the sake of having a kid. ur memories and photos and shit will keep their memory alive but its not having a kid. some primitive need to keep the genes alive maybe?? but the way it was phrased and then in turn how feyre was like oh i need  a baby pronto cuz rhys might die in the next war and regret not having a kid with him didn’t sit right with me. also the other couple were together for +300 years and have a rich life together, while shes been with rhys for literally two years THATS NOTHING IN FAE YEARS. thats still the honeymoon phase and also ur problems arent even close to being over!!!

everyone was shitty to nesta. in ACOMAF, we saw how much the IC went through and still did all they could to help feyre. what made them not think nesta deserve the same welcome? nesta is mean as a defense but did no one try to figure out what would help (amren got close but shes so under developed)??? feyre knows nesta feels too much and yet she continued to be shitty. continued to flaunt her wealth, her status, her familiarity/borderline know-it-all attitude about fae/night court, her ~estate~. forcing nest to the solstice party when nesta was literally like i dont belong, im looking at everyone through a window type of thing; the fire cracking triggering her, etc. what kind of power play was that when she made nesta come to her estate, where nesta could SEE how ~homey~ and how suscessful feyre is and fully see all the lovely paintings of everyone feyre loves that explicitly exclude her to tell her to fuck off to a war camp?? bro???? cas was a dick too and elaine was rude. i think a lot of his actions were meant to make her angry since anger keeps u fighting (as was the method of rhys for feyre in ACOMAF) but what he said was stupidly shitty and i demand that he apologize properly. elaine could have done more to help her sister but whatever. mor was definitely an ass too (and im upset for how little her character growth is). 

Lucein. that man can’t catch a break tbh. im happy that hes w the band of exiles cuz he is whole heartedly accepted there. feyre was definitely an asshole to him even tho he helped as much as he could throughout the books. he tries so hard w elaine as well and it did hit my heart a bit when she was like gloves to work in my garden?? no ?? i use my bare hands see oNly aZiReL sEeS mE fOr WhO i Am. and at the same feyre is like flaunting her mate status to lucein which is mean as shit. its like this man can’t find love in prythain. then tamlin sending him his box of his things??? thats for sure brutral. tam was literally his partner through it all; savior of sorts even. no love from IC, no love from elaine, no love from feyre, no love from tamlin, no love from autumn court rejected everywhere! also HIS TRUE FATHER?? HEllo??? 

then on tamlin. i pity the guy! was i suppose to feel that way??? it felt like he is allowed to get a redemption arc and maybe i’ll even root for a redemption arc??? i was absolutely excited for freysand in ACOMAF but after ACOFAS, im like tamlin is....not completely bad??? his relationship w feyre was bad and the controlling parts were very much a no-no. i dont truly understand the dynamics of an abusive relationship but i can understand that it can be insidious and its the little things that hurt the victim. and i felt  feyre through ACOMAF and rooted for her to escape her abuser! but then it felt like i dont think he was doing any of those things out of malice. ill say tamlin is a bad leader and doesn’t know how to run a court outside of what he sees his father do. his understanding on everything is based on the traditions of the past which i think fueled most of the things he did i.e. not telling feyre she was in danger since maybe his mom didn’t do those war planning things. ACOTAR showed how he truly cared/loved and took good care of feyre and her family. he even talked about how he didn’t believe in the enslavement of humans! i think that tam wanted to preserve what he thought was the good (aka feyre + her love of painting) and get back a sense of control that he and his entire court lost while chained to amarantha. but at the same time, i think he truly thought feyre wasn’t safe. he knows rhys can crush minds and knows feyre can’t read/write so when he got that letter telling him shes safe of course hes gonna flip shit and made a deal w the devil (although those temper outbursts were DEFINITIVELY not ok!!!). he also didn’t listen and has sense of he knows best when feyre was not the type of person. but feyre destroyed his entire court. he lost all his sentries who literally went out to die for him during amarantha’s reign. he lost lucien too; his trusted right hand man. his people were cursed for 50 years and then continued to suffer UTM and was in the process of rebuilding too!  but just seeing spring court, WHO BORDERS THE HUMANS, be in ruins where his subjects left him, his people left him and hes all alone in the manson?? that was sooo sad. so im like why does what feyre did not feel satisfactory????? im mad that it didn’t feel right??? maybe there wasn’t a point where feyre talked to tamlin -- like really talked to him esp w her new found voice and power, etc. anyways, i dont hate tamlin and was like oh shit i think feyre fucked up a bit there.

rhys is a dick to nesta. which made me think, if feyre wasn’t his mate would he extend the same love and care to her???  i loved how he tried so hard to make sure feyre was ok. made sure she wasn’t breaking! all of it! but for nesta, he had the audacity to use his high lord voice and be an ass overall. even tho he can see how cas is fucken in love??? even just how he talks to cass feels off too. 

i’ll even go as far as to say because of how terrible ACOFAS was, it created this intense divide within the fandom. i remember reading the first three books and was absolutely��1) rooting for freysand  2) curious about the sister relationship and how it will be mended 3) i definitely didn’t hate nesta nor did i hate elaine either -- but i was adament about them talking it out with feyre for those tough times 4) saw a more realistic and charming healing arc 5) was rooting for feyre to be a stronger voice and grow into herself 6) love the dynamic of the inner circle + feyre

but after ACOFAS, I have this intense need to defend nesta and was super mad at how she was treated after the war and in turn a deep dislike for elaine for both her lack of agency, lack of grit that made all the other characters interesting, and lack of care for her sisters (who showed how much they would risk for her). i dont hate rhys but i was extremely not happy with him and his attitude and behavior. feyre became more arrogant and was acting like how asshole rhysand would act. like her life is perfect now and i was not rooting for her anymore. freysand didn’t feel like they have complimenting qualities that made them interesting in the first place but rather they are merging to become the same person but in a bad way. that mind reading thing was cute in the beginning but it became insufferable since all thoughts were shared so seamlessly it made reading feel weird. 

anyways those are my thoughts on ACOFAS. it was a 1/5 stars for me and im mad those events transpired. reading the other books made me excited to know what was gonna happen and i was truly ready to accept the characters as flawed and nuanced as they are. im not mad about character not liking each other but i am mad that everything felt off. ACOFAS just felt regressive in some parts and forced in other parts. i know not everything ends in a nice tied up bow but this book single handily ruined what i thought about these characters in the worse way possible. this book wasn’t suppose to wrap up all the problems that exists in the other books but it didn’t feel hopeful like i thought it would. it didn’t feel wrapped up and didn’t feel like i should be excited about the next books. theres so many missing pieces i feel that i think need explaining and at the same time, i think it introduced too many problems at once which made it feel like its jumping around everywhere. although im still excited for ACOSF because i love nesta, and nesta deserves so much better and i want to have hope that this bad ending will either make sense later on or it was just a blimp.

[demyrie]

I'm curious but why did you delete JAM? It was one of my favorite JxD fics and I never got to finish reading it.

ahhhh oh dear, yeah, that happened.

So, for everyone arriving, I wrote a fic called Just Another Mission for the Jak and Daxter game series, and Jak/Daxter pairing. Yes, the green haired elf protag with the fuzzy orange thing, which btw used to be a human and was a human in fic. I think I started it when I was maybe 14 (yikes omg) and a few years ago, I deleted it, and I don’t delete fics.

Rant and personal history ahead, but tldr; i deleted this particular fic because:

1) I became more and more uncomfortable with the way I’d treated certain characters without giving them respect or resolution (throwing around things like domestic abuse while being too young to properly understand What I Was Doing or How to Answer Very Triggered Friends Who Had the Misfortune of Reading This I’m So Goddamn Sorry, as well as falling into that Not Like Other Girls slash fan ditch of treating female characters like shit/obstacles to the main pairing WHICH IS JUST ******) as well as personally uncomfortable portrayals of obsession and taking advantage of people that turn my stomach to this day (see reason 4)

2) i got way in over my head with my own writing/style which was so obtuse and self-indulgent that I felt a great amount of shame over it, including the attention it had gotten, and the way it went to my head and turned me into an egotistic little shit. I was an asshole peacock and I regret it. There was a break where I got waylaid before the final confrontation in the fic (see reason 4, also a very bad time to get held up in any narrative) and when I returned to the story, i nearly cried because it was such a mess and I didn’t know what I was saying anymore. Finishing it was a struggle and I even remember one JnD fan friend being like “hey this chapter seemed really curt??? short?? not like you” and I was like YEAH THATS NOT ME ANYMORE god i hope

3) there was a sort of ... anti-JxD surge in my little pool from people I really respected and it made me think i was doing something wrong even just remembering it, so I cut off that memory.

4) it coincided with two ugly relationships in my life that marred it, and I just wanted it gone for my own mental health.

So anon, I’m very sorry that you never got to finish it. I had good intentions in mind and gave them a happy ending where they realized they loved each other, even if the journey there was difficult. 

It both touched me and broke a piece of my heart when someone came to me years ago and asked me why I had deleted it, saying the story had given them the courage to come out as gay to their family. In that moment, overwhelmed with how ProblematicTM the whole story was, I was really struck with just ... how subjective our world experience is, and how so many things can mean so many different things to every single soul and how terrifyingly VALID peoples experiences are, no matter how they come by them. We’re all so unique and convoluted, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure -- and one man’s trigger is another man’s key to Becoming. But no matter how inspiring, I couldn’t bring myself to repost it. 

Hopefully this will be the only fic i ever delete with relish. Jak and Daxter will always be a good memory for me, regardless. Thanks for the ask, anon.

(even more) personal stuff below the cut. tw for stalking, harassment, manipulation and emotional abuse.

So.

Im a firm believer in stories living beyond their authors (something that JK rowling doesnt seem to understand iykwim). I don’t normally delete past works, because while I wrote them, I also know that they’ve outgrown me as most narratives do: people are absolutely allowed to enjoy what they want to or need to, not just because I think said thing is reflective of my current work or jives with my current stage of life. 

However, JAM was a particular Thing that Had to Go.

The timeline is hella fuzzy to me because I’ve blocked a lot of it out, but I was coming out of middle school and struggling with my mental health. On the real life side, I was stuck in a situation with a close friend of mine who was very fixated on us being in a relationship and the pining was loud enough to hear from the other side of the country. Wounded people pleaser that I was, I flipped (exhaustingly) back and forth between “i dont like you like that” and “but I want you to be happy so what if I tried liking you like that?” and there was massive amounts of hidden hurt and resentment and tension and abandonment complex activation and just ... a strangling of anything that made our friendship good for either of us. 

Also she was a she. So. Yannoe, gay is difficult.

This definitely burnt me out on the “best friends pining” trope and is probably legit the ONLY reason I’m not equally in the erasermic and erasermight camp haha. That trope feels claustrophobic and draining to me, so I leave it for others to enjoy.

It also coincided with a married 45yo adult man luring me into a “platonic, ecstatic, boundary-breaking, you-are-my-beautiful-young-muse, words cannot express how much I love you” creative type relationship that inevitably turned possessive, domineering and manipulative. Within the bounds of the Renaissance Faire community, I thought he was a safe person and he was not, and his constant reassurance that I wasn’t like other women my age was absolutely hypnotizing to a undeveloped soul who really, really wanted to be special.

We traded poetry and tarot card readings over email. He bought me manga and shared stories about his time overseas and in the service. He made me props to go with my renaissance faire character and showed me where to find cheap leather so I could piece things together myself.

He also stalked me and owned me for the better part of a year and I only realized it once he started harassing a dear friend of mine overseas, whom I was visiting, about a package that he’d sent, which apparently he’d covered in original poetry to let me know how much he loved me But Not In a Hetero or Sexual Way Bro, so of course he didn’t want it to get lost in the postal system. So what is he going to do? Note my friend twice a day asking if its arrived until she inevitably, tearfully spills that this guy is stressing her out and who is he anyway?

My horrible secret was out, which only sounded horrible when I explained it to someone else. I realized this man was trying to follow me wherever i went and I got so fucking angry that he was messing with my friend that I had to stop it.

(He called me a cunt when I broke it off with him on the phone in the dark on the floor of my bedroom in the middle of the night so my parents wouldn’t hear, then sobbed and said he was sorry. I was so dissociated from the rush of anger and helplessness that it took for me to actually MAKE the call that all I could do was wiggle my foot and watch it in the reflection of the mirror on the back of my door, and think maybe I was a cunt but I wasn’t his cunt anymore. So there. 

Afterward I slammed my forehead into the mirror a few times to make sure I’d actually done it and it wasn’t a dream.)

During all of this, I was writing this stupid fic. I think. Honestly, I don’t fucking know, but I can’t think of it without thinking of him and how i was devoured.

The stress of hiding this “totally wonderful but NORMAL PEOPLE DONT UNDERSTAND WHAT WE HAVE!!!!” grooming shit from my parents was gutting me alive, and I was so far gone RE: worthiness/autonomy that I didn’t even consider why I BOTHERED diffusing his petulant accusations over notes on deviantArt again and again as he baited me into shit just to explode over how I didn’t love him and I figured out another way to soothe his engorged and tarry ego without explicitly lying that I loved him too. 

He made me regret my silver tongue and way with words as I used it to defend myself again and again, and crushed my love of writing. I would pace the neighborhood for almost an hour several times a week, claiming I was ‘exercising’ but really trying to understand why i felt so trapped, or where the lines between love and hate lay, or why I wanted to cry all the time, as i low key tried to get hit by a car just to force something to change in my life and jolt me out of his smothering, needy nightmare of constant texting and emails and notes. I couldn’t fucking flinch without him knowing about it, and asking me if I was okay. For this reason, I react very poorly to people fretting over me at length, and loudly. I get angry and feel violated, or just pinned to the floor by someone Performing their love on me with no real regard for my health.

This whole time, I was escaping into fandom. It probably saved my life, in one way or another, because I found friends who supported me and made me laugh in the JnD sphere. Especially the friend whose distress caused me to snap and realize This Couldn’t Continue.

This terrible man was the first one outside of my friend group that I showed my writing to, the first adult as well. It was on the dark side even then, but he said it was wonderful and amazing. He teased me for being stuck up in my authors notes on JAM (one of the reasons I’m just getting over ... talking ...) but said it inspired him to start writing as well. He used that writing to imagine hokey sprawling stories of him being a hot rod racer and me being his sexy girlfriend, Very Totally in Love. Why Couldn’t We have Just Met in a Different Lifetime??? not that its a relevant question for my young 16yo friend lol just something dreamers wonder lol lol here why don’t you take this traditional irish engagement ring aka claddagh i bought for you, lie to your parents and say I bought one for everyone in our renfaire group, and turn it toward your heart, to imply that you’re in love, so that I can keep your heart safe for you until you find a boyfriend?

FUCKER YOU ABSOLUTE FUCKER ok I’m done. Fuck.

JAM was a project of mine that spanned a year or two and is intrinsically tangled in those very bad relationships and very bad lessons. I deleted it because I needed to, for purely personal reasons beyond the fact that it was generally bombastic, over-long, tone-deaf and dealt with very serious issues poorly. Due to these experiences, you won’t catch me in a hot minute writing either best-friends-pining or heavy jealousy/possessiveness fic, but everyone else? Go crazy just tag your shit.

so. anyway. isn’t subjectivity actually terrifying? You never know what something can mean to someone else. So just ask, maybe.

Damn, son. Some fics you just can’t repost.

[amusewithaview]

I don't even know what dragon age is but now I'm curious...

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!

OKAY, SO, PREPARE FOR “MORE THAN YOU EVER WANTED TO KNOW ABOUT AMUSE’S FAVORITE THING IN THE WORLD.”

The Dragon Age franchise is a series of video games set in a dark fantasy world called “Thedas.”  Thedas is shorthand for “THE Dragon Age Setting,” because sometimes creators get tired while naming things.  You play a different character in each of the three games currently available (there’s talk of a fourth but I’m not getting my hopes up).  The trilogy spans over roughly fifteen years of in-game time and trust me, they are interesting times.

Dragon Age: Origins

The original idea behind this game was “lets try and make a classic tabletop RPG (a la Dungeons & Dragons) but, you know, in cinematic video game form.” It was way more popular than anyone expected and basically set the tone (and the bar) for all Bioware games to follow.

In Origins you play The Warden, an unvoiced protagonist of the race, gender, and class combo of your choosing.  You are conscripted by a once-prominent military order called the Grey Wardens and sent off to fight Darkspawn (think like a combo between fantasy orc and revenant) and end the Blight (think plague of locusts, only Darkspawn instead of locusts).  Then politics get involved and what starts as a bad situation snowballs till it could quite literally be the end of the world… unless you fix it!

Your companions on this quest include:

Alistair - (human, male, warrior) very sweet, occasionally sarcastic fellow member of the Grey Wardens.  He has seniority over you in the order and is, by all accounts, a more experienced fighter than you, but he still chooses to follow you instead of lead.  If you play a female character, you can romance him.

Morrigan - (human, female, mage) very sarcastic, rarely sweet swamp witch who spent more of her childhood as an animal than a human (it shows).  The most introverted person ever to be dragged on an epic quest.  If you play a male character, you can romance her.

Dog - (Mabari war hound) depending on your choices in the game, you can have a dog.  Your dog is roughly the equivalent of a pit bull crossed with a tiger.  The dogs in the Dragon Age franchise are much beloved, and for good reason.

Leliana - (human, female, rogue) very sweet, occasionally self-righteous member of the local religious order (aka “The Chantry”).  She left behind a dark and somewhat twisted backstory to devote herself to good deeds and serving her fellow man.  Regardless of your chosen gender, you can romance her.

Sten - (kossith, male, warrior) very blunt, occasionally sweet front line troop for the Thedosian equivalent of the bastard child of Communism with a particularly restrictive caste system.  If possible, take him and Morrigan with you at the same time for some particularly hilarious banter.

Wynne - (human, female, mage) very pragmatic, occasionally nosy member of the local mage’s guild - where membership is nowhere near optional and you can be put to death and/or lobotomized if someone in charge thinks they’re justified… I can’t be unbiased in my description of the conflict, so suffice to say that Wynne is a cool old lady, think Minerva McGonagall with sprinkles of Molly Weasley.

Zevran - (elvhen, male, rogue) very flirty, occasionally blunt assassin sent to kill you.  He will join you if given half a chance.  He’s basically Puss in Boots from Shrek 2, with a deeper backstory and it’s exactly as amazing as it sounds.  Regardless of your chosen gender, you can romance him.

Oghren - (dwarf, male, warrior) very drunk, occasionally coherent sad bastard.  One of your main quests involves his wife and, well, he’s got reason to be sad.

Shale - (golem, genderless [debatable], warrior) very snarky, occasionally vulnerable giant rock monster available via DLC.  Shale is easily one of the funniest companions, what with all of their comments on ‘the squishies.’

Spoiler Companion - well, that would be telling, wouldn’t it?

Dragon Age 2

This game was conceived and hastily put together in the wake of DA:O’s huge success and the speed shows.  There are set pieces and fights that get reused, but ultimately I don’t think that matters.  Yes, this story is set between two epic adventures, and it tells a smaller, arguably more intimate, story.  Also, take everything you see and hear with a grain of salt because the framing device for the game is that it’s a story being told by one of your DA2 companions to a cross between a holy templar and a Homeland Security Director.

In DA2 you play as Hawke, a fully voiced protagonist of the gender and class of your choosing.  There’s a slight overlap in timelines here as you play a member of a family fleeing the Blight (the disaster of the first game) and escaping to a neighboring city-state as a refugee.  The game follows Hawke across the span of a decade, during which they rise to prominence within the city of Kirkwall.  You have three main personalities you can choose from that, after a certain point, ‘lock in’ what kind of spontaneous side comments you can make.  Your options are: aggressive, sarcastic, and diplomatic.  Three guesses which one I always choose and the first two don’t count.

Your companions in these adventures are:

Aveline - (human, female, warrior) very honorable, somewhat sarcastic local police equivalent.  She sees that you are doing good, even if it’s outside the system, and fights with you.  She’s steadfast, loyal, and abominably bad at flirting.

Varric - (dwarf, male, rogue) very snarky, very loyal local businessman who has a finger in literally every pie.  He is the inspiration behind half of tumblr’s THAT FEEL WHEN YOU FALL IN LOVE WITH AN UNROMANCEABLE SIDE CHARACTER.  He’s Thedas’s most famous novelist and writes the equivalent of fanfiction about his friends because the shit they get into is weird.

Anders - (human, male, mage) very bleeding heart, slightly possessed local mage freedom fighter and ex-member of the Grey Wardens (though you’re never really an ex-member).  One of the more divisive figures in the DA fandom. Regardless of your chosen gender, you can romance him. 

Isabella - (human, female, rogue) very flirty, somewhat aggressive pirate captain in need of a new boat.  Would steal your bra out from under your shirt for kicks. Is not wearing pants and may not be wearing panties.  Regardless of your chosen gender, you can romance her.

Fenris - (elvhen, male, warrior) very blunt, occasionally sarcastic escaped slave with a truly mountainous serving of PTSD regarding mages.  One of the more divisive figures in the DA fandom. Regardless of your chosen gender, you can romance him. 

Merrill - (elvhen, female, mage) very sweet, very sheltered ex-second in command of the local tribe of non-city (aka “Dalish”) elves.  She is the living embodiment of “looks like a cinnamon roll, is actually a cinnamon roll, but could still totally kill you.”  Regardless of your chosen gender, you can romance her. 

Sebastian - (human, male, rogue) very honorable, very… okay, I’ll be honest, I never bought the DLC he’s in.  He’s got a vaguely Scottish brogue and is a local prince-equivalent who needs help getting back on his throne.  One of the more divisive figures in the DA fandom. If you play a female, you can romance him. 

Then depending on if you’re a mage or a rogue/warrior, you will get a little sibling!  If you choose to be a mage, your mage sibling dies.  If you choose to be a non-mage, your non-mage sibling dies.  Tragic backstories for everyone!

Bethany Hawke - (human, female, mage) very sweet, occasionally sarcastic little sister of the PC.  I’ll be honest, I always play as a mage in DA2, so I’m not terribly familiar with her.  She’s both kind and honorable.

OR

Carver Hawke - (human, male, warrior) very snarky, very blunt little brother of the PC.  He’s the rudest asshole.  I adore him.

Dragon Age: Inquisition

This was a major project for the Bioware team.  They put a shitload of time and energy and effort into making it awesome.  It shows.  But still, fans felt that the end of the game didn’t give enough closure.  The team listened, and thus the DLC was born - the DLC for this game is amazeballs.

In Inquisition you play The Inquisitor, a voiced protagonist of the race, gender, and class combo of your choosing.  You are the only survivor of a cataclysmic event that tore the barrier between reality and The Fade (the dream world which is also arguably the wellspring for magic).  On top of that, the event originated right where some Really Terribly Important peace talks were happening and now all the leaders of a bunch of factions are dead and you need to step up and lead the charge to Fix the Sky and Also a Bunch of Other Things.

Your companions in this epic quest are:

Cassandra - (human, female, warrior) very pragmatic, somewhat dogmatic member of an elite warrior order and also the literal right hand of the recently deceased equivalent of the pope.  If you play as a male, you can romance her.

Varric - same dude from DA2.  He’s still not romanceable.

Solas - (elvhen, male, mage) very serious, very determined ‘apostate’ (ie: not tied to the local mage’s guild) who wants to fix what the cataclysm broke.  Think ‘sexy professor.’  One of the more divisive figures in the DA fandom.  If you play as a female elf, you can romance him.

Sera - (elvhen, female, rogue) very blunt, very stubborn result of what would happen if you crossed Robin Hood with the Weasley twins.  One of the more divisive figures in the DA fandom. If you play a female, you can romance her. 

Vivienne - (human, female, mage) very sophisticated, somewhat sarcastic former advisor to the equivalent of the queen of France/Rome.  The epitome of the steel hand in the velvet glove.  Her aesthetic is #goals.  One of the more divisive figures in the DA fandom.

The Iron Bull - (kossith, male, warrior) very observant, very bombastic spy sent by the Qun (the aforementioned Communism/caste system culture) to figure out what the hell is going on and can it be fixed.  Regardless of gender or species, you can romance him.

Blackwall - (human, male, warrior) very beardy, pragmatic member of the Grey Wardens who usually does recruitment but whoa that catastrophe looks like it needs fixin’.  Somewhat divisive in the fandom.  If you play as a female, you can romance him.

Dorian - (human, male, mage) very snarky, very classy nobleman from the rough equivalent of the Roman empire.  He wants to reform his country into something better but doesn’t quite know how yet, in the meantime he wants to do good.  Somewhat divisive in the fandom.  If you play as a male, you can romance him.

Cole - (spirit, male, rogue) very helpful, very naive spirit of Compassion that wandered out of the Fade and OMG so many people need help.  He wants to experience humanity and also save it.

Your advisors as you try and clean up the political sphere are:

Leliana - same chick from Origins.  She’s not romanceable this time around.

Cullen - (human, male, warrior) very sweet, very hard working general of the Inquisition.  He’s actually popped up in all three games and his character arc is fascinating.  As you can imagine, he’s a very divisive character in the fandom.  If you play a female human or elf, you can romance him.

Josephine - (human, female, rogue[?]) very sweet, very smart diplomat of the Inquisition.  If you met her at a bar, she’d be wearing a fantastically coordinated ensemble and then she’d hustle you at pool, but you would leave utterly charmed.  Regardless of gender or species, you can romance her.

Aaaaaaand… that’s a brief (no, really, I promise) overview of Dragon Age.  It doesn’t come anywhere close to encompassing all of the things I love about the franchise.  The Lore of the world is richly detailed and omnipresent.  The characters are fantastically voiced and so real you feel like you know them.  The first and third games are some of the best RP experiences you can have without actually going and playing D&D.  The second game is less immersive, but I also think it’s the funniest (especially if you play a sarcastic Hawke).

If you have any questions, I’m more than happy to elaborate on the romance system (and my personal romance ratings), the Lore, or any aspect of the games.  I seriously cannot understate my love of the franchise.