#and how is that any different from what you've done? how can you be sanctimonious now?

[weirdo-from-bonesborough]

okay i think enough time has passed that i can joke about it

Jason: Your methods are ineffective. If you don't permanently stop criminals they will just continue to hurt people. Bruce: *finds a permanent way to stop people from being violent and uses it on Jason, a dangerous criminal* Jason:

[montpahrnah]

i know you've given your thoughts a few times re: sirius and remus, but i'd also love to hear what you think of female hawke and isabela. your characterisation of them is incredible, and generally quite a bit more mired in existential angst than other fics i've read. and since i'm in love w/ your music taste, are there any songs you feel would fit them? thank you v much!

thank you for asking because i definitely don’t talk about hawke/isabela enough lately… 

tbh it’s the sort of ship i’m almost invariably drawn to, i.e. two characters with a long, fraught history who are both massive fuckups in their own rights, and also one of them is dead. when i first started writing them it struck me how rare that is between female characters–women are rarely allowed that kind of narrative in anything, that connection/obsession/inevitability spanning years and conflict and chaos etc etc complete with personal odysseys that drag them back together again… that’s what i live and breathe for

as a character i think isabela’s writing can be a bit clunky and i’ve seen people say she’s such a trope in canon, which i can agree with in some ways (and certainly understand where people are coming from w/ that), but if i can be cheesy about this for a minute she’s always meant a lot to me and i’m grateful for a female character who is such a sloppy mess sometimes. she doesn’t always want to do the right thing and she’s selfish and loves to lie to everyone including herself and even after she’s done bad things she’s sometimes fairly unrepentant about it. she’s terrible at being nurturing or comforting or–at times–emotionally available. she’s manipulative and sometimes she’d love to get away from herself. like remus she’d rather run away than deal with anything, but unlike remus isabela at least has the courage to come back, put things as right as she can, and then take off again.

some of the things i find most interesting about her are suggested or only mentioned rather than explored outright in canon, and i guess i always found it frustrating that fandom was okay with fluff for these two but didn’t often dig into the richness there that i found so interesting (for the record, i don’t blame anyone for not wanting to engage with some of that, and i think a lot of it is symptomatic of fandom’s wider issues wrt writing female characters, but that’s an entirely different post). isabela was sold into marriage by her own mother; years later she killed her husband. she commanded a ship full of men and she is very painfully aware of what the world is like for women–her first instinct the moment she meets hawke is to be protective. tragedy sort of trails after hawke like a very weighty train and isabela gets dragged along for the ride, which would be exhausting. hawke can be sanctimonious and a bit insufferable and she doesn’t always understand/try hard enough to understand where isabela is coming from, but the same could be said of isabela with hawke. they don’t communicate well, especially before isabela runs off. isabela would much rather get out of dodge than stick around and see things to the end like hawke does.

and then there’s isabela’s whole Love Is Fake thing which turns out to not actually be true haha oops which balloons like a spectacular mushroom cloud into her prolonged freakout, as you do, when she realizes what she’s done, and that she’s fucked up someone else, too. i love that most of that–her best and her worst–doesn’t change after she hooks up with hawke, like there are a few lines i hate (“hawke is my purpose” or however it goes because yeah, no) but isabela doesn’t change. she doesn’t soften and settle down and magically become a perfect partner and communicator and fade into self-sacrificing contentment. and then of course they only get in a bit of good time before hawke takes her martyr complex and gets herself killed.

i like thinking about their relationship in the context of kirkwall’s worsening conflicts, because i don’t think there’s any way to get around how it affected both of them. isabela is an amazing character–she’s cunning and caring and sometimes cowardly, and her heart is (usually) in the right place even if it irritates her a little. the stupidest and bravest thing she ever does is fall in love with hawke even though it comes back to bite her in the ass, and she knows it’ll come back to bite her in the ass. basically it’s never going to be a hallmark original movie for them either, but i wouldn’t want it to be.

the fun thing about thinking of hawke/isabela otp songs is that i can choose from any era–not that it isn’t fun to stick to canonical hp eras, but there’s something deeply freeing about not having to restrict yourself… anyway, here u go bud (recs in this vein encouraged btw!!!):

shelter from the storm – bob dylan (lol)fall in love with me – iggy popi get nervous – lower densdo you need my love – weyes bloodactor out of work – st. vincentworth the tears – sheer magi started something i couldn’t finish – the smithssweet dreams – angel olsengame of pricks – guided by voicesthe whole of the law – yo la tengodirty hands – black lipsshut up kiss me – angel olsenhounds of love – kate bushpeep hole – guided by voicesgloomy sunday – billie holiday (i was only dreaming…)