#from the get-go it was clear that the belief that mages are inherently dangerous is bullshit

[v-arbellanaris]

i dont think im done talking abt this, actually. i'm going to try and explain how stupid this whole thing is because there's always SOMEONE going on about how if it wasn't for the circles, and the parallels of the circles to real-life atrocities, "the mage-templar debate" would be a two-sided issue.

actually, it's not.

the "mage-templar debate" is not an issue of ethics even before addressing the conditions of the circle, because you have other options.

the basic premise of the argument is "mages are inherently a danger to themselves and everyone around them. is locking them up to reduce the harm they pose to the general population the correct ethical decision?" but the entire concept is already bullshit even before you address the conditions of the circle, which is where most people claim the civil rights movement comparisons come from.

because. CANONICALLY. you have other options. you have options within the context of the games to reduce the "threat" or "danger" of magic. there's no cases of mass abominations in rivain. there's no cases of mass abominations (as we know understand & abominations anyway) amongst the avvar. there's no cases of mass abominations in tevinter. from the get-go the idea that "mages have to be locked up for their and everyone's safety" is already bullshit, before you even touch the issue of the circles. even before you get to the conditions of the circle, the very existence of mages in rivain and nevarra and the avvar and tevinter already renders the argument null and void.

from it's very inception, the entire premise -- mages are inherently a danger to themselves and everyone around them -- is proven to be a belief, not a fact.

[mikkeneko]

the wind in my sails - Isabela/Bethany, Ladies of Thedas Appreciation Week

Bit of a canon adjustment here - Isabela has Castillon's ship, but he's dead. I never saw any convincing reason why we could not just murder Castillon *and* take his ship, other than that the game wanted to make us ~choose~ between Doing The Right Thing and Getting Good Stuff. Sometimes, you can have both. 

This is intended to be set in the One Elegant Solution ‘verse, but it can also completely stand on its own.

the wind in my sails isabela/bethany, post-Kirkwall

She feels the wind shift through the bones of her ship, the flapping of the canvas and lines, the creaking of the wood. The Siren's Fury is more lively in the water now that most of her passengers have disembarked; Isabela didn't regret taking them on, taking them all to safety out of Kirkwall, but their combined weight had made her ship wallow in the water like a drunken pig.

 Highever fell away on the horizon behind them, the last stop for most of her passengers. They'd let the mages off wherever along the route they wanted to go as long as it was along the way. Some of them still had family around Kirkwall, or elsewhere in the Free Marches, and they'd all trickled off the ship one by one -- but a solid dozen of them had had nowhere to go back to. Ferelden with its mage-friendly government was a safer place for a group of refugees than anywhere in the Free Marches, and Highever was a big enough place to have a solid continent of the Mage's Collective. They'd see to their own, Isabela was fairly sure; in the meantime she had her ship back, cleared of landlubber passengers.

 All but one.

 The wind shifted again as Bethany climbed up the ladder and mounted the deck, looking a little wide-eyed and unsure still as the shore slid back on the horizon and water filled the vista around. She stepped up to the rail and stared over it, gripping the railing, and drew in a breath as though to inhale the whole world.

Bethany was the only  Hawke to emerge from the hold, and that was still a bit of a surprise to Isabela. Garrett had disembarked at Highever at the same time as the gaggle of mages, though he disappeared into the crowd in the opposite direction. It still felt strange to Isabela to see him go off on some adventure without her -- without anyone  to watch his back -- but it wasn't her place to coddle or second-guess him. 

"I'm surprised you didn't go with Garrett," Isabela commented, leaning on the wheel to adjust the angle of the ship against the new wind. 

Bethany vented a short laugh, harsher than Isabela remembered her being. "Yes, he was surprised too," she said. 

Isabela didn't intend to pry but she left the silence open, inviting. After a minute of creaking sails and sighing wind, Bethany went on to say: "I've made up my mind. I don't want to follow him everywhere any more. I've spent too much of my life doing that. I need to stand on my own two feet now." Isabela nodded. "I'm sure you can, if you choose to. You've grown up a great deal." A silence fell over the deck of the ship, filled by the sounds of the sea -- scuffling of the deckhands as they went about their tasks towards the stern, the lap of the waves, the soughing of the wind. Bethany gazed at the horizon, and Isabela gazed at her. She was a treat to the eyes right now, gilded by the slanting sunlight and with the breeze lifting strands of her hair. 

The wind picked up, swirling around Bethany, the edges of her robes flapping and floating as her hair picked up behind her. Her cheeks were bright with color, and her eyes gazed hungrily at the horizon while her hands gripped the rail as though she could will herself to fly across the distance. 

Another sharp freshet swirled around Bethany, picking up a stray line and some scraps of canvas to circle around her, and Isabela cleared her throat. Bethany looked over at her, blinking, and the wind died down somewhat. 

Isabela nodded at the breezes flitting about the deck, still flirting with the canvas and carrying bright sprinkles of salt water through the air. "Is this you?" she asked. 

"Oh --" Bethany's face flushed with deeper color; she grimaced and gripped the edges of her sleeves in her hands, concentrating on something. The winds died out in moments. "Sorry about that. I just -- I don't normally let it get away from me like that." 

"No need for sorry," Isabela disagreed. A part of her instantly leapt to the calculation of how much it could be worth to an ambitious pirate captain to have a wind-summoner on board her crew, but she pushed the avaricious part of her back in her mind. Bethany wasn’t something she could just have. "I didn't know you could control winds." 

Bethany gave a self-deprecating laugh. "Control, well, control is something I'm still working on. The breezes always came, since I came into my magic in Lothering. But in Kirkwall you're always surrounded by stone walls, so there wasn't much room for the air to circulate. And in the Circle…" 

She trailed off, and Isabela nodded in sympathy. Enclosed in stone corridors, never the fresh sea breeze on her face -- she could understand. "It's not part of the approved curriculum," Bethany went on, the self-deprecating note getting stronger. "But magic is idiosyncratic. Every mage has their own little quirks, magic manifesting in unusual ways. We train to try to straighten out those quirks, stick to a standardized regimen that's well understood and controllable." "Mm," Isabela said. "Maybe not the Circles in the South. But I've heard of such things before in Rivain. You might could go there if you wanted to learn more about wind-weaving." "Rivain..." Her eyes went distant, focused again on the horizon. Not in the direction Rivain was in, but Isabela didn't correct her. Bethany shook her head. "I've never been there before. I'd stick out like a sore thumb." "That's true," Isabela allowed. 

"I'm tired of being different," Bethany said. "Alone among strangers who aren't like me." 

There was not really much to say to that. Another silence fell, Bethany gazing wistfully out on the horizon. At length she seemed to come back to herself and sighed. "Well, I can't go back to Kirkwall," she said. "And Lothering is long gone." "Maybe, but that leaves a whole wide world out there to choose from," Isabela suggested. "There's more to Ferelden than Lothering you know, and at least it would be a familiar culture. So would the Free Marches - the Amell family had connections in half a dozen cities. Then there's Orlais, big enough that anyone can get lost in." 

She hesitated, biting her tongue, before she blurted out, "Or you could always take up piracy! Sailing the seas, free of country or connections, making a name for yourself… a new horizon every day. I could always use another person on my crew, especially  a mage. And no walls, ever." "It does sound like a dream," Bethany agreed wistfully. Her face turned solemn. "But... I don't want to hurt people. Isabela chuckled. "Sweetness, a day where we don't hurt anyone is a good day for us pirates," she said. "We don't want to hurt the merchants we rob -- a good show of force and they'll realize they can't fight us, and hand over their goods without much trouble. If you kill the sheep you'll have nothing to shear next season, you know?" "That doesn't sound so bad. And yet..." She hesitated. "Fighting does still happen, doesn't it? When they don't give in smoothly. Or when the authorities come after you." "Sometimes, yes." Isabela shrugged, saw the way Bethany's eyes followed her when she did. "It's part of the life." "I'd hoped to have a life where I don't have to hurt anyone ever again," Bethany said softly, eyes dropping to stare at her feet. "Where I'm not a danger to people around me, and I don't have to be constantly -- guarded." "Is that Bethany talking, or the Circle?" Isabela said sharply. Bethany looked up at her, eyes widening, and Isabela softened her tone. "Look. You're kind, and I can't fault that. But life is hard. Pain will come, whether you seek it out or not; you have to be ready and able to defend yourself." "I guess it is the Circle talking, at least in part," Bethany admitted. "That was always... the only part of the Circle I understood. The part that promised safety."

"Rivain does have a Circle, you know, if that's what you want. It's nothing like the Gallows. Mages are respected there, they have much more freedom, they learn the wise ways and see their families as often as they like." "But it's still a Circle." Her soft brown eyes went flinty, her voice hard. "How could I ever set foot in one of those places again? Seeing what I've seen, knowing what I know? Every Circle is living under a death sentence, and it only takes one evil woman to bring the sword crashing down. It's intolerable."

For a moment, in her cadences -- the sharp anger, the conviction -- she sounded to Isabela like another mage they knew. One whom Hawke had banished from them entirely, the night that Kirkwall burned.

"So are you a revolutionary now?" Isabela asked, keeping her voice neutral. "Picking up where Anders left off?" Bethany grimaced. "Maybe. No. I can't believe that Garrett..." She huffed. "I'm not Anders. You saw him, he was more spirit than man by the end. That spirit gave him the strength to go farther than I would ever have dreamed. I don't have that strength, I can't give my whole life away like he did. But I also can't just sit back and do nothing. I want to help people, if I can. Help other people like me."

In the setting rays of the sun she seemed to glow, iron resolution turned to gold by her inherent goodness, her kindness and her belief in the best of people. The wind danced around her, delighted and captivated by her presence, each gust reaching to tug a thread from her robes, a strand of her hair, and Isabela wished that she could be one of those breezes. 

Bethany was so, so beautiful and Isabela wanted to catch her and keep her, steal her and wear her like she would any other shiny and beautiful and valuable thing. But she can't, she won't, because she'd been kept  before, like a jewel in someone else's setting, and she vowed she would never inflict that on another woman.

So she opened her mouth with all the courage it took to turn back from Ostwick with the book in hand and said: "Well, when you figure out where you want to go, just say the word, and I'll take you there."

Bethany was quiet for a moment, stealing little peeks at her, before she finally turned away from the rail and crossed her arms with a huff. "Aren't you going to flirt with me again?" she asked.

Isabela blinked. "Say what?"

"You always used to," Bethany said, a faintly disgruntled expression on her face that looked ridiculously cute on her. "I learned a lot in the Circle, about... flirting. I was waiting for you to start doing it again so that I could flirt back, but now I don't know what to think." Her voice went small. "Have a few years in the Circle made me so ugly to you?"

Isabela couldn't help it. She snorted a laugh, because in that moment Bethany sounded so melodramatic, so full of angst that she could have been auditioning as Fenris. "All right, that's ridiculous," she said. "Sorry, sorry. But how in the Maker's name could being in the Circle make a beautiful woman ugly?"

Bethany wasn't laughing. Actually, she looked more wounded by Isabela's response than Isabela could have guessed, and a stab of guilt like a blade to the chest stopped her from chuckling. Not a joke, not this, not to Bethany. "Or did the Circle make you feel  like you were ugly?"

 She looked away. But Isabela thought she could fill it in, if she tried to put herself in Bethany's shoes: six years surrounded by Templars who hated you, being constantly told how wretched you were, told that you were one of those responsible for the fault of all mankind. Six years of being told you were a monster.

 It filled her with a simmering rage from her boots up her spine to the crown of her head; and in that moment she only wished that Anders had blown up the Templar hall, instead.

 She stepped forward across the deck to put her hands on Bethany's arms, drawing the younger woman's attention to her with a shocked gasp. "They told you that so they could control you," Isabela said, low and fierce. "They tried to make you feel like no one would ever love you so that you'd have nowhere to go, no one to turn to. Don't you ever believe that, Bethany. Don't you ever believe that no one could love you. Because you are so, so beautiful, and so  full of things to love."

Bethany gave a grin -- shaky, but real, and said with a gasp: "See, that's more what I expected!" The smile faded, not disappearing but turning into something shyer, sweeter. "Do you -- really think so?"

Isabela cocked her head to the side. "Do you think I would lie to someone just to seduce them?" she said softly.

Slowly, Bethany shook her head. "No..." she said, almost inaudible over the wash of wind and waves. "No that doesn't sound like you."

She stood there with her face turned up towards Isabela and it was so, so easy to cross the last few inches, to bring her mouth down to Bethany's in a kiss. Bethany tasted like the sea salt, like sweet water, and an elusive taste that Isabela couldn't quite pin down -- if she had to describe it, she thought she would say she was tasting the wind.

Bethany kissed back, shyly, but sure of what she wanted. They leaned together, letting the rocking of the boat on the waves guide their motion. 

At last they broke the kiss and Isabela tipped her head back, grinned down at Bethany. "So," she purred. "You learned a lot about flirting in the circle, hmm?"

"They had a lot of books," Bethany said. "Like, a lot of books."

Isabela laughed. "Well, I've never been one for books," she said, and let her smile slide towards something more like a leer. "I've always found that the best way to learn is by doing." 

She gave the word a lecherous spin and was delighted that Bethany didn't recoil; if anything her eyes just went darker, she leaned back up against Isabela with her mouth half-open as if seeking to drink her in.

"Then let's learn," Bethany murmured. 

There wasn't a lot of space on a ship for two women to find some privacy, let alone enough space in a cosy room with a real bed to discover one another. But a captain's rank had its privileges.

 ~the end.

[v-arbellanaris]

PLEASE share about the Cullen Cult Arc

sighs. this is my second time writing this post ;~; literally why does the autosave option exist if tumblr doesnt actually bother to autosave anything, i dont fucking get it.

this is going to be much briefer than the original post i wrote because im still REELING over how tumblr just ate the entire fucking post. its fucking gone. and idk if i have the energy or mental capacity rn to rewrite the whole thing. basically, this arc - which is the arc i developed for him in vee verse - is the arc i think cullen should've had in dai.

firstly, i'm not retconning anything he said or did in dao or da2. this is because those things serve a narrative purpose. cullen is a good templar - that's the entire crux of the problem. he exists in these two games as a narrative tool; he represents the views of the chantry. as such, anything you do with his character arc cannot be divorced from the reality of the mage/templar conflicts, and the glaring issues of the chantry and must, actually, address and involve those things, because cullen is a product of his surroundings. i'm not saying this to minimise or give him excuses for anything he's said or done, but that is made true for him by his very positioning in the narrative as being the chantry's voice. for most of my playthroughs, which lean pro-mage, cullen is an antagonistic force - he has to say and do horrific things, and it would be stupid for me to retcon the horrible things he did.

secondly, my main issue comes from his writing in dai - probably to no one's surprise. i am not unopposed to having a redemption arc for him in dai - this is villain-fucking the blog, sorry not sorry - but the problem is that he does not have one. to have a redemption arc, the following two things needs to happen:

the realisation/acknowledgement/knowledge/whatever that he caused harm to people with his actions/inactions

addressing the False Belief that he has embraced that has previously justified his harmful actions/inactions in order to accept the Truth (this is just basic character narrative construction).

and dai fails to do both of these because the writing team in inquisition is physically incapable of admitting the chantry is wrong and has done wrong and will continue to do wrong. they are physically incapable of looking at fucked up power dynamics and clear cases of oppression and not going "but what if the oppressed people. wanted to be oppressed. NEEDED to be oppressed, even."

which leaves his character arc - whether you want to consider it redemptive or not - confusing. he's trying to shake a lyrium addiction? sure, okay. but why is he addicted to lyrium? why is being addicted to regular ol' lyrium bad? it's not blue lyrium that killed meredith, it's not blue lyrium that corypheus and samson are using.

you get confusing things like cullen's entire character arc being centered around lyrium addiction... but no one seems to give a shit if the inquisitor takes lyrium and becomes a templar, except cullen. you get confusing things like cullen's entire character arc being centered around recovering from lyrium addiction and the templar route in dai and you get to the scene where all the templars get their lyrium draughts. the ceremony and chanting and celebration around getting the lyrium, when barris takes his draught, which is frankly revolting. but it highlights the inconsistency - lyrium, this scene tells us, is good. because the templars are good, and they use it for good. yet cullen's entire arc is about overcoming his lyrium addiction, but don't worry!!!! templars are still good and lyrium is still good. its fucking INCOHERENT!!!!!!

he is addicted to lyrium because that is how the chantry maintains absolute control over its templars. it is a mind-altering substance that causes paranoia, which the chantry specifically takes advantage of and feeds with their all mages are inherently dangerous rhetoric, which is a false rhetoric, as i've pointed out before. but instead of acknowledging any of that, dai's writing goes "lyrium is Bad because [mumble mumble] and its So Important that he doesn't take it so that [mumble mumble]".

because the story is physically incapable of uttering anything even vaguely critical of the chantry.

so, this covers my main issue with his writing in dai. i would ideally try to fix it - without retconning anything he did in dao or in da2. this is what the cullen cult recovery arc is referring to.

i'm not going to go into it in too much detail but the templar order - inclusive of the seekers - fits a lot of the parameters of a cult. specifically, the BITE model, but also this checklist, and a whole bunch of other parameters i found when researching into cults for this specific reason. (which. makes sense. seeing how the orlesian chantry is was also technically a religious cult that becomes the main religion of the lands by actively slaughtering all the other sects)

but what's particularly interesting about it specifically is that, in-world, no one else seems to think it's a cult. for all of cullen's views, he is not the extreme end in da2 - alrik is. meredith is. what's particularly disturbing to me about cullen's point of view is that because he's a product of his environment, because he's a narrative tool representing the chantry's views, cullen's opinions and actions are actually a normality test. people in thedas don't find cullen's views repulsive because most average joes in thedas agree with him. i think it's easy to forget cullen isn't the outlier in-universe - we are.

but, canonically speaking, this is what happens: cullen, like most good antagonists getting a redemption set up, misses his chance to Embrace Change at the end of da2. he sides with meredith too late for it to matter or make a difference - mages (who you learn on the templar route, he's not exactly eager to kill) who he's supposed to protect are already dead. but what happens in kirkwall shakes him to his core and he looks to leave the order entirely - a good step.

the problem is that he leaves the order to join the inquisition. the inquisition, which is headed by the left and right hands of the divine. the right hand of the divine is a seeker herself. the inquisition is spearheaded and justified by the divine, who he has been trained for most his adult life to be subservient to. the divine who formed the inquisition to replace the templar order and hired him to essentially train and recreate the order.

worse, still. no one thinks he did anything wrong. kinloch was not his fault, it was the fault of greagoir and the older templars who were simply not vigilant enough, meredith told him. how he acted to keep order in the circle and the city after the viscount was executed is admirable, cassandra tells him. he was only following orders, leliana admits grudgingly, he stood up for what was right when meredith went too far. no one thinks he did anything wrong, because he is a good templar. because all the atrocities he committed were not committed against people - they were committed against mages, who are not people, not like you and me.

cullen hops from one cult to the next. the inquisition is the exact same thing he's always done and known, just repackaged - quite literally, considering the inquisition's symbol. but canonically, he thinks it's something different. he wants it to be different.

it's not, though.

so, the thought process behind my thoughts for him boils down to this: how does he get the language to describe exactly why this is wrong? how does he get the language to describe why it matters, why it's important, that he hurt real people? how does he get past the Lie that he believes - that he has to be a good templar, to stop anything like kinloch from happening again, since kinloch happened because they weren't vigilant enough, because they were too sympathetic to mages?

his arc shouldn't have just been about overcoming lyrium addiction. his arc should have been a story about recovering from being part of a hate group, a story about recovering from part of a cult.

there's several ways to go about it, i think. and if you want to specifically know how i'm going to do it, you guys should encourage me to write vee verse 😌