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fencesandfrogs · 4 years ago

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an abridged history/explanation of warrior cats if you didn’t read them as a kid and have questions (a primer)

welcome. i’m going to keep things to the point, this is not a plot summary, just, well, its a pandemic and people are seeking items of childhood comfort and its come to my attention that a lot of people didn’t read these books as kids and then they come up in conversation and they act shocked so! i felt compelled to write this.

[2.5k words, 10min read. section headers, no pictures. not a ton of helpful formatting. i don’t want to say don’t read this because obviously i wrote it and think it’s worth reading, but i’ll be honest, this is a lot.]

section one: about me

i was an avid reader as a child, most of which fits solidly into “stories for another time,” and some of which would necessitate me adding tags onto this post that are, well, not necessary. so i will skip over that backstory but for those aware of lexile scores, i had one that was too high for literally any book that was appropriate to give me. so reading in school was torture and reading for fun was excellent.

now because i was a first-ish grader and my mom was trying to keep the fifth harry potter out of my hands, she looked desperately for something else to pass to me. her friend, who had a daughter a year or two older than me, was into these cat books, and my mom was like “here honey you like cats” without thinking too much about it.

which is good, because as i’ll get into, it was a really good fit for me. but like a dozen books later she asked me about the plot and well. i think at that moment she realized that it might have been better to just let me read harry potter.

but yeah i continued to read them long past the recommended reading ages and still as a Young Adult will return to them for nostalgia, and also as i will get into, some really good books. (see a list of books for “morbidly curious but i don’t want to spend 56 to 168 hours reading this”)

i’m not fully caught up on the series but this is not a plot summary so that should not impact my ability to discuss this

section two: content warnings

these books (not this post) includes the following:

discussion of castration (1.1 series 1, book 1, i’m not including this on every item/discussion because this is a complicated series but i want to demo how up front some of this is)

teenage romance/sex/pregnancy (1.1ish-1.3 or 4, continues throughout the series quite a lot, comes up again in 3.4/5, 4.4-5, and a bit in 5)

death from childbirth (1.can’t remember which book, many others)

unwanted pregnancy (se super edition, or a longer one off novel, discussed in 4&5)

sex/implied, discussed, and very very very heavily hinted but never directly said/shown (1.1-3ish, se, other)

murder (constantly, 1.1, 1.4, literally every book, 3.5, i’m just listing the ones i remember off the top of my head that were particularly graphic)

disability/illness, esp. the debilitating and/or deadly nature of it (1.3-5ish, 3.1, but all of 3, 3.4ish)

dementia (1.3-5, i’ve heard in some of the later series?)

abuse (7/8 this is reported i haven’t read these books but based on what i know it’s def there)

child abandonment (1.4-5, 3.4/5, it’s also all over the place but i think those are the only major character incidents of it)

treason (1.3-5, all over the place)

the horror/tragedy of war (background, but pretty constant)

disagreeing with an integral religion/tradition (3, based on the series title, 8, and generally scattered)

the corrupting influence of power (1.4/5, possibly 7/8, others)

racism (1, 3-5, possibly others)

sexism (se, background)

patriarchal societies (se, seems to be somewhat softened based on what i’ve heard but i’m not entirely sure about this)

and more! but it starts to get stranger and this is enough to prove my point

basically everything that could go wrong does

oh yeah! child abuse also child abuse that’s a very major theme in the first series as well as during other points. and elder abuse in the first series.

okay i’ve made my point.

section three: the appeal

look. so. i think we’re kind of pastel-ify children’s literature based on movies. see, parents have to watch children’s movies with their kids, so they can’t be gritty and intense because a lot of parents will say “not for my nine year old! they can’t deal with treason!” and that seems to be bleeding into children’s literature.

but warriors is not that. it’s intense, it borders on “too gruesome for children,” and it’s from a time where kids books got to be serious and heavy and dark because they were about animals. which was great because i couldn’t find books at my reading level that weren’t too thematically difficult, so i got to read something below my reading level, but thematically too hard, so it kind of balanced out.

and then well. so. the series grows with the audience, but the books don’t grow in terms of like difficulty so new readers start deep into it and it’s a complicated thing, the fandom history is complex, but.

the appeal is that parents don’t usually read the books their kids read and so they see a book about cats and assume it’s fluff, and kids who are starved of complex content get to read hamlet-for-kids.

section four: worldbuilding/lore

oh yeah also there’s some really deep lore to explore. so there’s two bits of appeal.

i’m not doing a full world/plot summary, but i’ll explain some common elements here.

thunder/shadow/wind/riverclan: harry potter houses for cats (gryffindor, slytherin, hufflepuff, ravenclaw, except this doesn’t work for the last two but that’s fine because no one cares about them despite riverclan being pretty important in most of the books)

-kit/-paw/-star: naming conventions. everyone has a two part name. (we’ll use cinder as an example because i like the two cinders we know, even tho neither of them get to be cinderstar.) babies are -kit (cinderkit), then when they’re apprentices, which is like being a student, you know, elementary through high school, you’re paw, so cinderpaw. then you get an Official Name from ur clan leader (cinderheart). if you become clan leader, you get to be -star (cinderstar). i know i haven’t explained clan leaders bear with me. this is kind of important because i have the names burned into my memory so i cannot simply always call firestar firestar if he was firepaw at the time of the events i’m describing. it won’t be ambiguous, cinderheart/cinderpelt are a special case. if this is tricky for you it’s fine just only read the first part of the name.

clan (leader, deputy, medicine cat, elder): roles with in the clan. leaders literally have nine lives. deputies are next in line and chosen by the leader. leaders usually go through several deputies, because deputies don’t have nine lives. medicine cats are doctors. they also have an apprentice. those are all one per clan. elders are just retired cats. they’re not a special category per say, but i wanted to mention them.

warrior: adult.

warrior code: laws.

star clan: dead cats. this ties into the religion which is pretty important to the books but for the most part if you understand that dead cats get to give guidance and send their approval, you have the gist of it.

section five: so um, what the fuck

so we start with a cat named rusty who runs into the woods to join thunderclan and then his name is firepaw and we all forget that he’s named rusty except for like that one time it comes up again. bluestar is a great leader with some corrupt deputies but fireheart eventually takes care of it and becomes clan leader which is a big deal.

then a bunch of other shit happens and suddenly ashfur is possessing brackenstar and being (more) abusive to squirrelflight (who is on the outs with brackenstar anyway for lying about their kits jayfeather, hollyleaf, and lionheart because they’re actually the children of firestar’s other daughter leafpool who had them with crowfeather after she fell in love with him but he’s from windclan and she’s a medicine cat so that’s double illegal and apparently hollyleaf is alive even though she yeeted herself into a pit and died because she killed ashfur when he threatened to reveal this but couldn’t live with being the product of an illegal meeting and then it was all pointless because leafpool stopped being a medicine cat out of guilt anyway and jayfeather is just an ornery bitch about everything but especially all of this)

i’m not explaining any of that.

section six: i repeat: so um, what the fuck

so the thing about these books is they’re soap operas and dramas about cats and that means they get just as strange and chaotic as anything else in the genre. i think a lot of people like me, who read them as children, regard the series we knew as a child (usually either the first three or the first five, plus super editions) as something good and warm and comforting (despite being dark and gruesome) because they made us feel good.

they were also a breeding ground for young fandom because of all the the drama that exists and the nature of the books providing that.

section seven: super editions

the simple answer to what a super edition is has already been given (it’s a novel length one-off about a single character, and its usually either a side character - bluestar, crowfeather - or a event/perspective we don’t get to see - firestar, skyclan, greystripe - and they’re generally more mature)

my favorite super edition is bluestar’s prophecy. i read it at like 16, slinking into the children’s library with a stack of other ya fiction and a “children’s book” which dealt with unwanted pregnancy, grief, forbidden love, and more. still not sure why that’s in the children’s section.

section eight: about the drama

so there’s been a lot of fandom drama about these books. i can’t tell you about the nuances, because i am an old fan, so i watched but didn’t partake. the highlights reel that i can recall goes as follows (please note i will refer to characters by name without explanation. it’s fine. the point of this section is to convey the pettiness of this drama):

tigerstar: did he do anything wrong? (the answer is holy shit yes, this isn’t discourse, it’s okay to like a villain)

scourge: did he do anything wrong, also what color is his collar? (also yes, doesn’t matter)

was the new prophecy (2)/omen of the stars (3)/etc good? (yes, eh, no, yes, no comment, no comment)

should jaypaw or hollypaw be medicine cat apprentice (neither of them, but jaypaw’s employment opportunities are limited because he’s blind, so its gotta b him)

uhh a massive tangle around this parentage drama between squirrelflight, leafpool, brackenfur, and crowfeather, which i used as the crux of humor for how batshit the plots can get, so i’m not even going to pretend i can make it funny, but just know that it’s batshit and the correct opinion is as follows: no one is right, but squirrelflight has done the least wrong, brackenfur is an asshole to her where it’s unwarrented, and hollyleaf is an idiot

and the current drama centers around brackenstar and ashfur and is tied directly to the point above, which is why i’ve kind of given up trying to make jokes about this because this is the culmination of like 35 novels.

section nine: i feel like i need to have some conclusive point to justify writing all of this

but i don’t have one, because this was really an excuse to ramble about an old passion for like half an hour. i mean i guess i can say, like, i think younger fans are sort of embroiled in this drama they don’t really have context for, because i’m not kidding, the current drama centers around the grandchildren of our original cast.

it’s kind of hard to know why, say, mistystar matters if you don’t know that she’s the child of bluefur and oakheart and if you don’t remember the drama that surrounded that when bluestar was dying and tigerstar and leopardstar were ruling a combined shadow/riverclan.

(i really hope that’s intelligible i tried to lay the groundwork for it. basically, there’s a biracial kid in a very segregated society who becomes the leader of one of the clans. which is obviously drama, especially considering that that clan was part of a weird supremacy movement a while back.)

& you know? i really hope one of the new series gets to be like, a soft reboot. just. end the current drama and pick up again with the latest generation. a) we’re starting to run out of names, and b) i think that it’s kind of tipped over the edge of sane.

the series also used to be very low fantasy. the cat societies are reasonably close to feral cat colonies (the biggest detail is that toms don’t all have their own territory, but there’s honestly in-universe discussion of this and it’s basically a culture thing), and while star clan/religion is a real and legitimate thing, there’s also a discussion of its abuse and most of the early books don’t really use star clan/related ideas as a physical force so much as a plot device, barring, like, when a new leader gets their nine lives.

honestly, i’ll always adore these books for serving the role they did, and a lot of the series is fantastically well written. but the fandom surrounding it can be, uh, not great because 9-14 year olds don’t really have good brains to understand this.

also, i’m very sad that i can’t find the flash game that was for the great prophecy. it was not very fun, but i enjoyed playing it, so if anyone knows the url so i can search the internet archive for it, please let me know.

section ten: i’m morbidly curious but there are 56 hours of books to read, assuming a very fast reading pace, so is there something i can start with to experience this without dedicating 4 days to it?

yes, there is.

it’s called bluestar’s prophecy. it’s standalone, and i should have given you enough of a background on the lore that you don’t need to know anything else. i’ve already given away the twist in series 1 that it would spoil, so you’re all good on that front.

if you want more, or want the original experience, the first series is self contained and quite good. i’ve given the broad outlines of the plot, but trust me, there’s a lot of surprises and all sorts of things i skipped over because while i like it, it’s not exactly fandom primer material

i also enjoy firestar’s quest and skyclan’s destiny for super editions, but you’ll need to read the first series to understand FQ and FQ to understand SD, so it’s not exactly a starting point. also, SD especially deals with a very different set of themes as the other books.

also, if you were to, say, search “readwarriorcats” (no spaces) on duckduckgo, and then click on one of the first links, you know, not the official site, the one hosted on one of those free website things, you know, not wix, not wordpress, the other one, you would only find lists of the books with hyperlinks.

#warrior cats #fandom #txt #mine #1st #February #2021 #February 1st 2021 #essay #personal #long #q

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legionofpotatoes · 5 years ago

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Okay then, since both of y’all are just delving in I’ll try to keep things (relatively) spoiler-free and stick to story sense and semiotics! Few caveats:

Have not had prior experience with Kojima’s body of work and if that’s a prerequisite in how I “should feel” about it then yike on a bike (just getting this out of the way based on what I’ve had talked at me)

My read excludes the entire context of moment-to-moment gameplay; I basically watched chronological story cutscenes stitched together with NPC interaction vignettes sprinkled in-between. 9 or so hours in total.

I did this because the gameplay does not interest me at all - and not in protest of chill social games (I adore both No Man’s Sky and thatgamecompany stuff, for example, and try to champion anything without Gun in it), but because the setting and length did not align with my expectations for something to invest so much time into. Still, I was super intrigued by the story, and, to a lesser extent, the plot.

also I have a hard time writing in condensed English, so this may run quite long. I’ll put the rest under a break. Second language, sorry!

I’m trying to think of a good way to start this. Like I said, the story, or what the thing was ABOUT, was infinitely more interesting to me than whatever wacko packaging Kojima thought up for the narrative. Which was a complicated, thought-out piece of fiction shattered into many disparate pieces and fed to us in a mystery-box-filmmaker kind of way, making us reverse-engineer what essentially was a rather simple interpersonal uhh. family tragedy, I guess.

But to its credit the lore is visibly built solely to support whatever thematic messaging Kojima would want to weave in there - something I can respect. Meaning it gets as wacky and as nonsensical as it needs to be in order to reflect the high-concept allegories at play, aaand then it does so to a fault. I adore works of fiction that don’t give a shit about “tone” - I hate that word more than anything in modern media - but effective symbolism in storytelling, IN MY OPINION, requires a deft hand, nuance, strong authorial position, and a good grasp of social context.

I want to like, go through these four points individually and nitpick my problems with the game in their lens, because I think they cover pretty much everything I feel like saying:

1. A deft hand - to me means to selectively dramatize correct themes and plot points as you go so that shit makes sense in the end. I felt this was incredibly lacking here. It was like a symphony going for hours without a crescendo. The absolute wrong bits of soulless exposition would be reiterated THRICE within a single cutscene while necessary context of, hell, character motives or even plot geography would be left vague. Intentionally vague, some would argue, but their later function would never arrive. Other times, what would visibly be conceived as wink-and-you’ll-miss-it foreshadowing could overstay its welcome to the point of inadvertently spoiling a later plot point. My girlfriend sniped the (arguably) most important reveal of the game, which is left for the tail end of the final epilogue (!), in the first hours of watching. The symbolics and allusions were just too plentiful where they should have been more subdued. I am DYING to provide examples here but I’m keeping it spoiler-free. Again, if this is a Kojima-ism, too bad; but it’s not a catastrophic failure of storytelling by any means. There are very few masters of this thing working today. But what can be easier to navigate, I think, is...

2. Nuance - this kinda goes hand-in-hand with the upper point but is a bit more important to me and applies to what SPECIFICALLY you decide to heighten in order to slap us across the face with your deeper meanings. Certain characters - not all of them - feel like caricatures. The silly names and overt metaphors (wearing a mask means hiding something! connected cities all have ‘knot’ in their name!) are honestly, genuinely FINE as long as their function isn’t betrayed, but the lean into metaphor worship can sometimes wade into SERIOUSLY shitty territory as contemporary implications are ignored altogether, and that ties into my fourth point, which I’ll address before looping back to the third; needless to say, approaching sensitive subjects with broad strokes is not exactly the way to go. But broad strokes is almost exclusively what this game does, forgetting to incorporate...

3. Social context - and I feel like avoiding examples here will be difficult lest I end up sounding like a dogmatic asshole; but there is a right thing and a wrong thing to do when co-opting IRL concepts to fit fictional messaging/storytelling. I feel that a character “curing” themselves of a phobia by experiencing emotional growth that vaguely corresponds to what the disorder could have symbolized is a wrong thing. And I don’t even want to get into all the wacky revisionism the lore ended up twisting into, which was mostly honestly entertaining (the ammonite will be a good hint to those who’ve played it), until it decided to, again, lean a bit too hard into painting today’s reality as a crisis of human connection and imply some questionable things about why, uh, asexual people exist, for example. Yes it makes some sense within the context of the lore and what’s happening in the plot, but it’s completely lacking in social know-how of the here and now. In other words: a Bad Look. To me, this type of wayward ignorance is a much more serious issue that can historically snowball any piece of writing into a witless disaster. I don’t know if it quite does it here, but it’s not really my place to say. Still, you can have wacky worldbuilding that has no sense of dramatic tension, nuance, or awareness towards the audience, and yet containing one last vital glue holding it all together, and that would be...

4. Strong authorial position - or intent I guess, to speak in literary terms - and I still have trouble pinpointing how and where this exists in this game. A bullshit stance you say, and I hear ya; cause this here is a video game very pronounced in its pro-human-connection messaging, painting the opposite outcome as an apocalyptic end to our species. And as I understand the gameplay is all about connections too - leaning into that theme so hard it even renders itself unapproachable to most capital-g Gamers. I honestly respect the balls of that. But really, as an author who headlined the creation of this thing, what was it really about? What were you trying to say?

And beyond “human connection is real important to beat apathy” I got nothing, and I think that’s because of points 1 and 2 failing in succession, and then point 3 souring the taste. It just had to be apparent the moment the curtain fell, is what I find. You just have to “get” it immediately, get what it was trying to say, but that will happen only if it’s been articulated incredibly well up to that point. Maybe the entire punch of that message REALLY depends on you spending dozens of hours ruminating on the crushing cost of loneliness as you haul cargo across countries on foot and connect people to your weird not-internet? If so, I’ve missed a vital piece of context, and with this being a videogame and all, it’s honestly a fair assumption. But otherwise.. it felt like a hell of a lot of twisting and turning and plot affectations that only led to more plot affectations and sometimes character growth (which had its own bag of issues from point 3) and not a hell of a lot to say about human connection beyond the fact that it is. good and useful. It felt like a repeated statement instead of being an argument. Does that make sense? I understand the story optics here are zoomed waay out and set on targeting the human condition as a whole, but like.. if you’re committing to a message, you have to stand by it.

Why is connection good? it’s a dumb question without a DOUBT but since the game has set out to answer it then it.. should? Did I miss the answer? I may have, I honestly can’t exclude the possibility. My lens was warped and my framework of consuming storytelling is a bit rigid in its requirements (the four points I mentioned), so maybe I’m just too grouchy and old to understand.

I just think Pacific Rim did it better and took about 7 hours less to do it! And yet, it, too, involved Guillermo Del Toro. Curious.

If you made it this far and are interested in my thoughts on the technical execution of it all as well, uhm, it’s pretty much spotless? Decima is utilized beautifully, the Hideo vanity squad of celebrities all do their very best with the often clunky dialogue, the music is great, the aesthetic and visual design is immediately arresting, and it certainly does an all-around great job at standing out from the rest of the flock. I fell in love with the BB a little bit. It is also a game that is incredibly horny for Mads Mikkelsen, which almost fully supplants the expected real estate for run-of-the-mill male gaze bullshit. It is. A change.

That’s all I got folks

#death stranding spoilers #reference

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mrfancyfoot · 8 years ago

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Some Assembly Required: It Didn’t Come With Instructions So I Googled and Found the Swedish Version, pt.1

Since I’ve been asked to clarify/explain/spoil “the spirit” companion of Bevin more than a couple times now, I figured that I would make a one stop post for this and other stuff since bits are kind of scattered throughout several chapters now and I can’t blame anyone for needing a refresher. I’ll make two sections: one for where we currently are in SAR and one for where I’ve currently developed (i.e. spoilers and in-depth explanations). To explain the spirit will also need me to explain some of Bevin’s powers and a little more background, so that will also be included in both sections, though primarily the latter. Also added are other fun bits. Spoilers are included, as I’ve mentioned, but they will be in the bottom section for if you don’t want to read them.

I’ll try to update this as the story progresses, but if I fall behind, just let me know.

The Spirit so far:

Bevin officially meets the spirit in Chapter 12. She starts off as the soothing presence that Bevin feels after having one of her “nightmare visions” of the torture she went through in the Red Future.

After her talk with Dorian, who is fleetingly concerned about potential spiritual possession after witnessing it in the Red Future, the spirit makes herself known so that Bevin can throw Dorian off of this line of inquiry. A “that must have only happened in the alternate timeline” kind of excuse.

The spirit explains that she is the one responsible for protecting Bevin from the eruption at the Conclave. She saw Bevin pulled through and decided that an outsider was what Thedas really needed. Specifically, she says: “I was but an ever-weakening spirit, watching our worlds for over two thousand years from inside the Fade. I saw you pulled through that very first rift between the worlds. I believed that an outsider was the exact thing this tumultuous land needed, and used what power I had to protect you.”

So, two thousand year-old (at least!) spirit who was able to watch both worlds from some corner of the Fade.

She goes on to mention that she knows nothing of how Nikki came to be involved or anything about the Conclave.

During talks, the spirit frequently uses terms that Bevin knows to be elven.

She specifically calls her “‘Ma da’isenatha” which translates to “my little dragon.”

The spirit refers to Solas as Bevin’s “hahren” or “mentor” frequently.

Bevin’s Powers:

From the very first chapter, we learn that Bevin has weird powers and brand new facial markings.

Powers = foresight

Markings = blood red sideways tear drop shape angled across either cheek near the outer corners of her eyes that she describes as being about as big as her thumb(nail).

In Chapter Three, Solas deduces that Bevin is passively syphoning in mana from the environment somehow. Her storage limitations and general output are still very low, so any sudden increase in intake (such as magic applied directly to her) creates a surge that bounces right back out (which makes her face itch and sneeze).

To a much slighter degree, all Mages recover mana from the Veil this way, and some can learn in intake excess mana from around them as a very temporary, active skill. Solas and Dorian discuss this briefly during their general party banter in the game.

Dorian shares (also in Chapter 12) that the markings on her face are from syphoning magic. It’s an old Art, the effects of which were known to “make one’s palms itchy.” He has never heard of anyone being able to sustain the magic passively before.

“Passively” here meaning “without trying.” The magic automatically draws in mana from the environment around Bevin.

Bevin eventually deduces that she is also taking in what she calls life energy. This is something that everything living has (people, animals, plants, etc).

She thinks this is driving her innate healing ability and has fears that it might leave her with a form of at least temporary immortality based on her knowledge of fictional lore and mythus.

Bevin’s (Awful) Background:

Chapters Four and Five are where most specifics of Bevin’s past begin appearing.

In ch.01, Bevin mentions that she’s from Michigan.

In ch.04, Bevin visits the Fade for the first time.

She starts off in a memory of her childhood that she recognizes as the precursor to a particularly bad event. When Solas joins her dream, she immediately asks how to stop it and he dispels it, drawing her deeper into the Fade.

Soon, they are attacked by Fearlings that have taken on the forms of various church elders and her father. Her magic, fueled by her anger is able to get rid of them but draws the attention of a Rage demon. Solas kills the demon for her, stating that she is not quite to the strength to be able to take on and defeat such a demon.

In ch.05, Bevin and Nikki are prompted into sharing details of their lives prior to being dropped in Thedas.

Bevin tells the group that she had just finished her university studies for Linguistics and Criminology and was working as an intern for the local Coroner (also known as the Office of Medial Examiner). Fairly certain somewhere she mentions that she’s going on to graduate studies.

Following more prodding, Bevin shares that she grew up in a religious cult.

Said cult was made up of fanatics, many of whom were eventually found guilty of murder, namely her parents, due to her efforts.

She grew up homeschooled, so would attempt to sneak out to the forest around her house any chance she got when her dad was gone.

Remained homeschooled up until highschool (when it becomes state mandated that children join a public/private school at least part time - no idea if this actually applies to her state, but it did apply to mine :P).

Here she gains access to the internet and eventually talks to someone who wants to get her out of her situation. Through the help of “kind internet strangers” she is eventually able to escape her family by the opening of a successful murder investigation against them/the cult.

As is made clear from ch.04, memories of her father in particular still haunt her.

General (not entirely so awful) details:

Has a number of “adventurous” piercings and hints of a tattoo on her back

Underwent surgery to remove her uterus following health complications.

To be continued via edits as the story progresses. :]

The Spirit (and everything else) as a whole:

Spoilers galore from here on out for almost everything in SAR (for the past and future). This part will touch on the spirit, Bevin’s powers, Bevin’s background, Solas’ thoughts/actions/inactions, background plotlines, future plotlines, and my own personal headcanon/lore-bending. Basically, I explain all the nuances and shit here. It’s very hodge-podge and I try to keep relevant stuff together if not in chronological order. If I’ve missed anything or you want more for some part, let me know.

Open secret that the spirit possessing Bevin is actually Mythal.

The first time the spirit makes her debut is actually in Chapter 10 during Nikki’s venture into the Red Future. The is the entity that takes over when Bevin is too frail to help with the fight (to note, Mythal is still very weak here).

In this alternate future, Solas is captured along with Leliana when they mount a rescue attempt that ultimately fails. Solas originally leaves the Inquisition following the Herald going missing/presumed dead, but becomes overcome with guilt and agrees to join with the Nightingale once seeing that his plans have little to stand on with the Elder One gaining so much power in the first place. They see getting the others back as an all or nothing effort.

Well, they’re captured. Solas spends the days/nights listening to them torture Bevin and Leliana while he’s very slowly dying of lyrium poisoning. He attempts to entertain and soothe Bevin with stories of the Fade and his past. He doesn’t really bother hiding anything at this point. Future-Leliana is far more concerned about getting Nikki back to the past to defeat the Elder One than she is with sharing Solas’ identity.

Later in present day, when Bevin is getting flashbacks of these days, she hears bits of these stories, but doesn’t have much context for them. She sees them as the bits of sunshine that peak through her nightmares. She’ll start to wonder about certain details later as some will conflict with what she otherwise knows.

When Bevin officially meets her present day, Mythal explains why she saved her. But she’s leaving out a lot of details and not at all telling the whole truth. Let’s break down her lieslines:

“I am the reason that you survived that eruption those months ago.”

Yes, well, she’s also the reason that Bevin was pulled through in the first place. Bevin’s entire involvement is due to Mythal.

“I was but an ever-weakening spirit, watching our worlds for over two thousand years from inside the Fade. I saw you pulled through that very first rift between the worlds. I believed that an outsider was the exact thing this tumultuous land needed, and used what power I had to protect you.”

She’s conveniently skipping over the part where she used Flemeth as a host for a long time. Mythal/Flemeth have been aware of the other universe for a long time. A habit of theirs has been watching select occupants as they live their lives unknowing. Mythal takes a shine to Bevin and her plentiful childhood struggles growing up in a crazy cult of psychopathic murderers. She reminds her of a much younger Fen’Harel. Upon seeing the fleeting opportunity, she decides that Bevin would make a perfect companion for her old friend given her unique insights and experiences.

Bevin is brought through the Breach and confronted by Flemeth, in an exchange that she has been made to fully forget for her own good. Mythal is transferred to Bevin who becomes the new host. In exchange, Mythal states the she will help Flemeth with her desires in the future (namely the events following the Well of Sorrows saga with Morrigan). Mythal ultimately sees this as getting what she wants. Solas succeeding with his plans and being happy is vengeance against the other gods for killing her. Bunch of long con-ers.

She’s not above poking and prodding, but, for the most part, she stays out of Bevin’s relationship with Solas simply so she can prove a point later when Bevin inevitably figures everything out. She made the opportunity but never forced or groomed her into anything.

When asked if she knows anything about Nikki’s involvement: “I am afraid not. Her circumstances are a mystery to me, just as those surrounding the events that took place here.”

This is actually true. She has no fucking idea about Nikki or the Conclave. She merely saw an opportunity and took it.

During talks, Mythal frequently uses terms that Bevin knows to be elven.

She specifically calls her “‘Ma da’isenatha” which translates to “my little dragon.”

Bevin garners the nickname from Mythal’s affinity for dragons and because of the large, ornate dragonfly tattoo across her back.

The spirit refers to Solas as Bevin’s “hahren” or “mentor” frequently.

There’s some lore bit somewhere that I read - absolutely no idea if it’s actually canon or not anymore since I have a horrible habit of not taking note of precisely where I read things (definitely my headcanon, hehe) - that mentioned that student/mentor romantic relationships were almost expected in some elvhen clans/alienages.

Within SAR, I’ve made reference to this through Solas. He uses his mentorship of her to keep her close and help enforce a sort of private authority over her even while she gains influence within the Inquisition and Thedas. He does, ultimately, want to include her in his plans, and that means ensuring that she listens to him above anyone else. He gets a bit underhanded.

Leliana’s doing something similar with taking Bevin under her wing (minus the romantic angle). Solas recognizes this and it creates a sort of rivalry between the two that escalates over time.

Bevin’s Powers:

Okay, you read all the general stuff on her powers above, so this is the nitty-gritty of it.

Solas really doesn’t have a clue about this particular magic beyond how he has used a form of it to intake excess mana from around him in a kind of “one fell swoop” gathering of it. He can sustain himself via the Fade for prolonged amounts of time, but this isn’t quite the same thing.

So he keeps an ear out for any new information regarding it, both in the Fade and out. It irks him to no end that Dorian has more knowledge of this area than he does while still not knowing enough about it.

Bevin’s syphoning magic is knowledge passed from Flemeth and Mythal.

She’s essentially been “branded” with it by them.

It’s involved in most of Bevin’s “peculiar” gifts.

Her vast, perpetual stores of mana from syphoning is part of what is powering her Foresight abilities.

The other part is spiritual energy, as is conveniently provided by Mythal.

This is why Mythal becomes dormant to recover after visions, especially more “involved” ones or after times where there are multiples.

As Bevin’s mana stores are depleted, Mythal grows weaker. As they become larger/stronger, Mythal grows stronger.

Foresight wasn’t actually a purposeful endowment by Mythal or Flemeth but an odd happenstance that came about from combining the powerful magics just right within one particular person (Bevin). To a much lessor extent, spiritual/Fade magic is used in minor divining and fortunes.

Cole, as a spirit, is also able to influence her visions. When he happens upon one, he can help make her “lucid” during them so that she has free range to move.

The life energy that she’s intaking is what is driving her healing ability.

To a more extreme end it is also part of what is changing her into an immortal being.

The other part being her gradual merger with Mythal/spiritual energy.

Her healing still has its limits: she cannot regenerate lost limbs or organs.

Cutting off her head would still probably kill her if it’s not reattached quickly. Smashing her head in would definitely still kill her. If a blade were to be shoved into her heart and twisted a few times, there’s a chance that she’d recover from it as that would still leave it mostly intact. Just removing her heart from her chest would kill her, though.

Her healing will revert her back to the body that she gained the ability with. So her prior scars will remain. She’s not getting her uterus back spontaneously.

So, Bevin is well on her way towards immortality.

A kind of “gift” from Flemeth/Mythal.

Flemeth has used spirit energy to remain effectively immortal for many, many years. Mythal helps deliver the spirit of the old god Urthemiel to her to fulfill their exchange so that Flemeth retains her immortality as well.

Yes, this is my hack for fixing this issue with her being human with Solas. >.>

After she fully merges with Mythal, she’d still be human, but she’d have an Elvhen mana system...thing.

Bevin’s other powers:

She’s primarily Storm natured, with a secondary nature for Fire (thanks to Mythal)

She can’t use Ice magic for shit (not the whole of the Winter School, but this is where most of her struggles lie).

Water’s not fun, either, but not seemingly impossible for her.

She eventually will learn that she can manipulate plants/nature magic.

And thus thinks that the entirety of Circle magic teachings are a load of bullshit.

She’s, like, half right.

Lotta bullshit, but she’s practically using Elvhen magic herself since she hosts Mythal, so she’s also not entirely right.

I am, of course, referring to the bit of game lore that says only Elves can use Nature magic/certain other aspects of Creation magic.

Mythal teaches her to shapeshift.

Beginning with forcing her into the body of a fennec and making her figure out how to turn back.

This first comes up in the Schematics side bit, “A Foxy Look for You.”

Bevin really likes her Barriers.

A lot.

Defensive magic is her A-game.

As a recap:

Mana

Life energy (I’m toying with just calling this “chi”)

Spirit energy

How Other Lore Ties In:

My pet theory for SAR.

Certain people from our world, typically of more creative minds, have been able to see dreams and memories from the Fade while asleep/dreaming.

Popular works of fiction have elements based on things that actually happened in the DA world.

Religions here have influences from events and religions there.

So when Bevin’s noticing an awful lot of similarities in the cultures and histories of the two worlds, it’s not just a coincidence.

Spells and magic theories that she’s read/heard/watched frequently have real world counterparts in the DA world.

And this is why some of her seemingly bizarre magic works.

Bevin’s Really Awful Background

Bevin’s background is based on bits of actual events/cases that I’ve read about/studied and my own experiences with growing up in a highly religious area and finally being able to “escape” it. This will move fairly chronologically through her life.

In ch.01 she mentions that she’s from Michigan, but she means this as in “I was living in Michigan at the time.”

She actually grew up in Louisiana, born Bébhionne Chael Ní Hallmhuráin (which is read “Bevin, daughter of Chael, (female) descendant of Hallmhuráin” in traditional Irish).

Daddy wanted a boy and took out his resentment on Bevin after they were unable to have any more children.

As a clan/cult elder, he dictated her life. She’s forced to participate in his extreme tutelage to follow their religion (which she describes as “quote-unquote Catholic.” Anything viewed as a mistake or slight to his demanded perfectionism of her resulted in mental/physical torture.

Her mother basically enabled him through her passivity, as is what is expected of women in the cult. She did nothing to physically abuse or detain Bevin (beyond neglect), but would inform on her to her husband. So there was some mental abuse, there.

Bevin has a couple friends from the cult that she would sneak off to play with (not all families were as strict as hers).

The first time her father catches her, he shaves her head to humiliate her.

Bevin tells herself from then on that she doesn’t care about her hair, but she still can’t stand to have it short. Once in Thedas, she really only wants it shorter to make it easier to manage.

Past that, though, it was more beatings/locking her in the closet/etc.

Also results in Bevin’s fear of small, dark places/claustrophobia.

Becomes best friends with a female cousin named Delanay, who has epilepsy.

Her clan had essentially overrun a small, isolated bayou town, which lead to her physical struggle to leave it.

Bevin tried numerous times to run away from home, each time spending a number of weeks/months surviving off the land as she tried to work her way further from the town. The first time she ran away to seek local authorities was when she learned that they would only delivery her right back home.

The last try, she’s hunted down by dogs until they’re attacked/scared off by the local, highly territorial pack of red wolves. She proved herself to the pack, gaining a new set of scars across her ribs, but voluntarily goes back home after one is found shot dead and threats are made on the rest of the pack.

She’s given up on life a lot by the time she’s in highschool.

She’s the small, quiet, awkward homeschooled kid that no-one really pays any attention to. This was her first exposure to computers and the internet. She uses the time waiting for her bus departure to explore online and eventually finds people that she talks to.

Someone points her in the direction of a group that helps minors leave abusive households.

She initially reached out to the group and even agrees to meet with an investigative lawyer named Jeremy after months of talking, but got cold feet, stood him up, and quit all contact.

When she was fifteen, she witnessed Delanay die of a seizure during an exorcism ritual performed by her father and other elders/clan members.

Following this, she’s plagued by guilt and reaches out to Jeremy again thinking that if she had followed through in the first place, this could have been avoided.

Through her talks with Jeremy, she learned that there was a case being built against the cult following several suspicious deaths and missing persons. She knew of evidence to support this and agreed to help him out, even though she has the physical evidence (in the form of scars) that could more easily get her removed from the family.

She then learned that her family was planning on marrying her off to a much older man. With this new development, she worried that she would no longer have access to where she knows that evidence is hidden since upon that marriage, she would be moved out of the home.

Bevin sneaks off to the forest in search of a certain plant warned to be avoided for its high degree of toxicity. She doesn’t want to kill the man outright, but knowing of her family’s superstitious nature, she takes advantage of the extreme hallucinogenic nature of datura (also known regionally as ‘devil’s snare’ or ‘moon flowers’).

The man was brought over to see her and she managed to poison him via his frequent drinks of alcohol.

His following extreme behavior that lasted for several days was enough to put off her parents before he managed to drown himself.

Bevin later greatly distrusts alcohol (and other “mind altering substances”) and the general culture of drinking due to this incident. She doesn’t like how easy it is to take advantage of someone under the influence, so will not partake herself.

Bevin used this time while they were distracted to gather the evidence needed and take it to Jeremy. After a time of further investigation, they had all that was needed to turn it over to the proper federal authorities, who ran with the case.

Aside from murder, most of the cult/clan was involved with money laundering among other crimes. The cult was disbanded.

Once free of her clan, Bevin changed her name by anglicizing it and taking on the name of her best friend (Delanay) in order to cut ties with and formally disown the clan name.

She was transferred to a group home in Michigan before being adopted by the man she had come to see as a father figure over the past year. She stayed with him for a quick two years until she was accepted to a university on scholarship and funds brought in from interviews and donations.

With life finally settling down following the initial trial verdicts, Jeremy took on another case through a boy trapped within another cult. This one gets a target painted on him and eventually killed for his efforts.

Bevin very much retreats into herself following his death, and throws herself into her coursework.

Running into a friend named Greyson from the group home finally brought her back out of her shell and she started actual therapy. She began volunteering in projects, including the study and tagging of wolves. This took her back to her roots where a group was looking to relocate her pack of red wolves to a protected reservation.

Throughout these years in uni is when she amasses her collection of piercings and select friends “civilize” her to the modern world.

A friend recommends a tattoo artist who ends up doing her dragonfly back piece.

Which Bevin gets to cover up the physical scars of her childhood.

Also saw a doctor about frequent abdominal pains that often completely incapacitated her. One thing lead to another, and she ended up with a hysterectomy to remove her uterus.

She had already intended for her family line to die with her, and was more than okay with this outcome.

In my headcanon, Solas is perfectly fine with this. He’s not looking to personally revive his people through the fruit of his loins.

I will never write about babies.

Puppies. Everyone gets puppies.

This mostly takes us to the present day.

Other details:

English is not a native language for Bevin (despite growing up in the US, her family spoke Irish almost exclusively), and she forgets words all the time. Sometimes the entire language. She had to learn it for high school and pushed herself really hard in order to make the most of her little online time and to not flunk out of school and be more permanently stuck with her family.

She grew up speaking Irish and Latin at a native level thanks to her clan roots and religious influence.

To a slightly lessor extent, she speaks fluent Bayou French (which is kind of more of a creole language).

She purposefully lost her Irish accent and adopts the General Midwest Dialect.

She occasionally lapses.

Solas and Leliana

As pointed out a bit above, there’s a growing rivalry between the two.

They both take on different mentoring roles for Bevin quite early. While Nichole learns more about the troops and warrior-ing, Leliana takes Bevin under her wing and teaches her more about the scouts/spy network.

Starts off as minor things at first: basic cyphers for messages, handling the ravens, general workings of the network and The Game.

Leliana increasingly sees Bevin almost as a younger version of herself.

Leliana doesn’t fully trust Solas from the beginning but not for the typical reasoning of him being an apostate.

She’s very aware that he doesn’t have a known background, and she’s worked to verify the little he has shared.

When she’s unable to, she becomes suspicious of him.

And worried about Bevin since the others rather lobbed her under his care exclusively.

Her agents’ inability to track him for very long also rings alarm bells.

So she knows that he’s likely more knowledgeable/ skilled than he lets on.

He is constantly under surveillance.

She sends Scout Kalen Highridge, who’s been in charge of watching out for Bevin, along with them when they head out after the lead on the Grey Warden.

He’s been kinda flirty with her before, and takes advantage of her reciprocation (she sees him as fling material) to try and wheedle his way into answers about Solas.

Her being not forthcoming at all really irks him as he’s begun catching actual feelings from their growing “relationship” and internalizes this as a kind of betrayal.

He “doesn’t see what she sees in him.”

He ends up botching his mission by pissing off both Bevin and Solas in such a way that makes it obvious what he’d been trying to do.

Solas specifically warns him away from Bevin for his duplicitous intentions.

Bevin has every intention of confronting Leliana, who she knows put Kalen up to it, but isn’t able to get the woman alone prior to the attack on Haven.

Had the attack on Haven not occurred, Leliana would have lobbied for the removal of Bevin from their shared hut.

Given that, she’s quite pleased that Bevin is given her own quarters at Skyhold.

Not so pleased that Bevin continues to spend quite a bit of time with the elf.

Bevin’s increasing duties take away most of her free time, so Solas begins seeking her out instead.

Leliana is the source of a lot of this work, and she takes the time to pull Bevin aside to have a “heart to heart” about their resident apostate.

Pretty much warns her but also says that she won’t come between them (just make it really difficult).

Also around the time that Bevin realises she has feelings for him, but this reaffirms to her that Solas may have ulterior motives or a sketchy past.

Game Solas vs Concept Art Solas

This is something I’ve been toying with for awhile that I finally decided to make into SAR canon.

They’re the same person. Solas uses a complex glamour spell, rooted to the halla jawbone he keeps on him. Removal of the jawbone wouldn’t result in an immediate change, but a gradual one as the weaving of spells wore off, so temporarily removing it would not be cause for alarm.

He created himself as-is out of the mildest parts of himself. He purposefully tries to make himself look bland to blend in with the first elven populations he comes into contact with upon waking up from uthenera. Older looking, no hair, lighter skinned, slightly softened bone structure.

Keeping it tied to the bone makes it so that he expends the least amount of mana/energy on it and so that it’s harder to detect.

Bevin can tell there’s magic attached to it, but doesn’t really question it, yet.

Bevin (and we) first sees a glimpse of him in Ch.21 when she finds herself in one of Mythal’s memories. He looks different enough that she isn’t struck by any kind of familiarity (and such a thing would not occur to her at this time, anyway).

The Minor Bits and Details:

““Never thought I would meet another sky watcher in these parts,” he heard the Avvar Mage mumble as he stepped to follow after Bevin. Turning, the Mage faced away to the flames, head once more upturned to the sky.”

Found in Chapter 23. Totally headcanon, but Amund is also able to see mana and life energy the way Bevin can. He recognizes the way she “watches the sky” as he does, leading to an offhand comment that Solas picks up, but has no context for, so pays it no mind.

To be continued via edits as the story progresses. :]

#Some Assembly Required #MrFancyfoot #The Details #SAR #dragon age fanfiction

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