Fanfiction Confliction, Part 2

About six months ago, I gave in.

I'd been fighting it for months, trying hard not to be one of those people.  I gave it my best effort, I really did.

But I was powerless to resist.

I started writing fanfiction.

It started small -- I'm a writer by nature (I bet you couldn't tell! #sarcasm), and I spent most of early 2015 world-building in preparation for a bigger project.  When I started writing fiction for the first time soon after, I realized something: I needed practice.

I hadn't written fiction in probably 6 or 7 years, and while I had lots of nonfiction writing experience, the skills just aren't the same.

This was probably in July.

I started small: a short story, only about 2,000 words, that was a character study of my forever favorite DAI Commander.  That turned out well, if a little serious, so I took on some humor via Alistair in DAO.   And before long, I found that I was enjoying myself immensely in creating these new scenes, new moments, within my characters' lives.

I spent the first 10K words or so laboring under the illusion that I was just practicing styles for my bigger fiction writing projects, telling myself that as soon as I finished the next story, I was putting fanfiction away and moving on with my own work.

That didn't happen.  Instead suddenly I found myself so immersed in Bioware's Dragon Age sandbox that I couldn't get back out -- and I didn't want to.  I loved my Inquisitor, and I loved the story I was creating inside DAI:  the relationships I was growing, the conflicts I'd created, and exploring the themes of the game and its story in such depth and detail.

So now, when I'm writing this, I'm finally accepting that I'm a fanfiction writer.  It took a long time, and many thousands of words before I was willing to add that to my list of accomplishments on this particular blog -- about two weeks ago, I officially broke 100K words, and this is the first mention I've made of my fanfic hobby to anyone other than my husband.

But I'm ready.

(That's not totally true; I'm still a little hesitant.  But honestly, that's not because I'm ashamed of my work, but because my mom reads this blog sometimes and frankly, several of my stories are quite Not Safe for Work.  At all.  Like, explicitly NSFW.  Adult content ahead.  You've been warned.

Mom, if you're reading this, please skip all the ones rated "E" :-/

Anyway.)

Below, you'll find a link to my work, all of which is posted through Archive of Our Own.  I know there are other, bigger, fanfic sites out there, but AO3 is my favorite, and I'm proud to be part of their community.

Without further ado, and in the spirit of celebrating International Fanworks Day today, I give you: Once More to the Breach, my Shakespeare-allusion-titled series about Dragon Age: Inquisition.
Please enjoy, and thanks for reading!!

The Fangirl Freebie Five

My “freebie” list poses pretty much no danger to my husband and I’s relationship.  Lots of people have these lists -- those five people you can sleep with, guilt-free, should the opportunity arise -- and in my experience, most of them seem to be like mine: a fun conversation, but not real in terms of actual sex occurring.  I know I’d be pissed if Bishop slept with anyone else, Scarlett Johansson or otherwise, freebie list or otherwise, and I imagine he’d feel about the same.  

In theory, I supposed he could feel threatened, like I was out trolling for some celebrity, or like I’m trying to suggest he get in better shape or something via a girl trap.  

However, that risk is pretty low considering my list is populated entirely by fictional characters.  

So, thanks to extensive thought and research, I present my “freebie five,” in no particular order. 

1. Aragorn from The Lord of the Rings. 

Ah, Aragorn! I do love this man (and I don’t just mean the Viggo Mortensen version from the movies).  He’s such a great character! So independent and mysterious as Strider, the Ranger from the North, and so dark – his world is quietly adventure-filled, lived in the shadows but dripping with potential for greatness.  And when he starts to take control of his destiny… that hesitation he displays, like he knows what he’s meant for but he’s not sure he can handle it, being Isildur’s Heir, is wonderful.  He’s such a positive, empowering character – he learns to embrace his life, his fate, even as he battles the darkness settling in around (and within) him.

2. Iron Man

Let’s face it, this one is all about Robert Downey Jr.’s Iron Man, not the comic books.  I just love him, and if he were real, I would gladly be one of those random women he hooks up with, provided he agreed to at least wear the Iron Man mask (the rest might be a little …restrictive).  I’m not normally that kind of person in my real life, but I do adore his self-centered quips and crazy antics. He’s not marriage material – sorry, Pepper Potts! – but just once, for fun? Done. 

3. Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock, love of my fictional life! While Sherlock Holmes in almost any form is on the list here, my top choice would have to be the Benedict Cumberbatch iteration.  Benedict Cumberbatch himself should very possibly be on this list too… hm….

Um... yum. That's all I've got to say. 

4.  Malcolm Reynolds, captain of the Firefly Serenity

I’ve thought about swapping out Mal for the man himself, Nathan Fillion, since I love him as Rick Castle too, but I don’t think there’s a lot of potential there.  I’d be willing to if I thought it was a legit possibility (in as much as any of this is ‘legit’), but I’ve met Nathan Fillion in a haze of glorious nerd-gasms, and sadly, the opportunity did not arise.  So I’m sticking with Mal, because the fictional possibilities are more fun to plunder than the sad reality that it’s not going to happen with Fillion. 

Can we talk about this smirk? Please tell me we can talk about this smirk. 

5. … I had trouble thinking of #5. 

The space was blank for a long time as I pondered the choices. 

My first thought is to put Garrus from Mass Effect on there, or Cullen from Dragon Age: Inquisition, but I absolutely cannot pick between those two, so they’re both out.  Bishop would understand and let me have both, if it came to that :)  

I think he’d understand about Alistair too, so he’s also out.  In fictional terms, I’ve already “done it” with these characters due to how Bioware writes their games, so I guess none of them belong on the list in the first place.  But if I start second-guessing the creation of a freebie list with fictional characters, this is all going to fall apart, so I’m not going to pick at that thread.  

I wondered too if Hellsing’s Alucard belongs on this list, given my desperate love for all his vampire glory. But deep down… Alucard scares the shit outta me.  He is straight-up terrifying, and as much as I love him, I don’t think that’s the way I’d want this “freebie” to go down. 

I’ve already written about how Edward Elric from Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood is now wildly inappropriate due to our age differences, so I won’t rehash that here. 

I also considered Chris Pine as Captain Kirk in the Star Trek reboot, and I have to say, I almost got stuck there.  He’s a great character, born from decades of backstory and canon to draw upon, and I think Chris Pine doesn’t get nearly the acting credit he deserves either.  His character has so much depth, despite his shield of immaturity and humor, that he is someone I could definitely get behind. Or under, as the case may be ;) 

However, after much deliberation, I have to say that my #5 is actually Thorin Oakenshield, as played exclusively by Richard Armitage.  Just…. Mm, just yum.  I’ve got little else driving this point other than pure lust, seeing as Oakenshield as a character can be rather despicable at times (despite his noble intentions).  But Armitage as him, with that deep thrumming voice, blue eyes, and long hair… that just does things for me. 

Look at the BURN in those eyes… and his hair, oh how I love his hair.

Upon reviewing this list, I’m not sure my husband legitimately has much to worry about.  Say, by some beautiful miracle, all these guys were real and actual possibilities… *long pause while I bask in the amazing of that universe* All these guys have something, some characteristic, in common with my wonderful husband, and so I still have trouble seeing anything really happening. 

Sherlock, Thorin, Mal, and Aragorn all have the dark hair and blue eyes that my husband has.  Mal, Iron Man, and Sherlock all have that touch of humor I love so much about him. Thorin, Mal, and Aragorn all have that insane loyalty that tells me my husband would go to the ends of the earth for me.  Iron Man has that playful edge that makes my husband a perfect fit for me, and Sherlock, though way too smart, has the same kind of crazy intelligence that means my husband and I can argue about pointless theoretical topics for hours at a time, bickering all the while. 

And most of my back-ups have something too – Alucard may be too intense and Elric may be too young, but Kirk is adventurous and just a little bit nuts, Garrus is devoted and sexy to a fault, Alistair is sarcastic and hilarious and snuggle-able, and Cullen is careful and serious and faithful to the cause. 

What it boils down to is that I love my husband for being human, which means that, even though I’d love to mentally play with the possibilities, none of my freebie five could quite measure up.

Alistair does have some serious abs though…. Maybe Bishop can work on that ;)

Not Great, Not Terrible: Dragon Age 2

Ok, I get it.  Dragon Age 2 isn't a great game.

The first time I tried to play it, I was so disenchanted with the map set-up that I bailed after like 3-5 hours.  I hated the menus: too dark, too hard to see my character or her abilities, too many things to click.  I didn't like that I couldn't customize my companions' armor.  I felt confined by the city and the re-used dungeons surrounding it.

And I was definitely not on board with my romance options.  I mean: a slutty pirate, a super creepy abomination, the overly-innocent elf, the former and definitely traumatized slave, and ... oh wait, that's it.  And not ONE of them has a sexy voice.  That's a fail, in my book.

Plus it kept doing this:

I mean really.  My computer can run Inquisition --which is brand new still-- on its highest graphics with no issues, and it can't texturize a game from 2011??

So I turned it off.  I'd loved Origins, but felt let down by DA2.

Then, almost a year later, I played Inquisition.

Anyone reading this knows I love Inquisition -- I won't get back up on my soapbox about it.
One of the biggest things I love about Inquisition (aside from Cullen, brief swoon before I refocus) is the world of Thedas: it's not huge, like the Mass Effect universe, but it is so richly imagined that I get sucked in almost instantaneously.

And as I played Inquisition, I started to realize: I was missing something.  Sure, I could figure out the mages vs. the templars war, and Varric and Cassandra's tension combined with Cullen's backstory was enough to piece together what happened in Kirkwall, but I was missing the details -- the details of Dragon Age 2.

I picked it up again.  It was still incredibly hard to play -- none of my former issues with it had vanished, plus now I'd played like 100+ hours of Inquisition, which has a really easy combat system and a combination keyboard/mouse control style that I found very intuitive.  Yeah, that doesn't happen with Dragon Age 2.  

It is difficult to express how much I hate this menu. 

But the more I played/forced myself to play it, the more I started to appreciate DA2.  It's not a great game -- too much weird stuff that I've already bitched about for that.  But it did attempt something new, which was to keep the story running over measurable years, and to keep the main character stable in a city.

In this way, DA2 is more realistic in terms of real life, and I think that's why a lot of people didn't like it.

Think about it: this game covers roughly 7-10 years of time.  It breaks up the storyline with big events, much like a real life.  I can, for example, break up my life according to big events, and most of them aren't within a year of each other -- they're spread out.  So that's realistic of the game.
The other part, the city, is also pretty realistic.  If you live in the same area for almost ten years, you are bound to re-visit some spots.  You'll hit the same bars, explore the same areas, and while you might not be killing dragons or fighting Arishoks, you'll see the same places multiple times.  Again, that's realistic.  Hawke lives in Kirkwall for a long time; it makes sense for her to visit the same market place, the same church, her friends' homes, over and over.

But that level of realism reminds people too much of their actual lives, and thus the reviews for the game suffer.  I understand that, and at times, I agree.  Walking to the top of Sundermount for what feels like the thousandth time gets tiring.  I'm not playing a video game in order to experience that kind of mundane daily event -- I'm playing it to escape that, to explore a different world, to try on a different life! So I get it.

I don't think that inherently makes DA2 a bad game though.  It's a pretty unique concept, and it's executed reasonably well.
What I think actually hurts DA2 is that it is not a plot-driven game.  In that way, again, it's realistic -- few people are set up as the one person who can stand against evil, and I know almost no one who has an actual villain as an active part of their lives.  Instead, events trundle along and occasionally shitty people pop up and must be dealt with.

This is what DA2 has done -- Hawke scrounges up money for a year or so and then heads off into the Deep Roads.  Politics with the qunari in the city gradually bubble over in the course of about three years and then Hawke has to fight the Arishok.  Things are quiet for a few years, and then Anders blows up the Chantry.  There is no one bad guy, no one driving force for the plot that carries throughout the game.

Yes, realistic, but it doesn't not make for great game-play, and that's my biggest argument against Dragon Age 2.

I liked this game.  It's been my experience that I won't play a game for more than a few hours if I'm not enjoying myself, and I played this one for close to 30 hours.  It was entertaining, and it definitely filled in the lore about the world of Thedas that I'd been missing before.

The big question is this: Would I play it again?  Thus far, I've played every Bioware game I've touched at least twice all the way through.  Some, like Mass Effect 2 and 3 and Inquisition, I've even started a third time.  But I don't think I'd play Dragon Age 2 again.

I've enjoyed my time in Kirkwall, but much like Hawke, Varric, and even Cullen by the end, I think I'm done. Once is more than enough.

Choices, Indeed

I am loving Dragon Age: Inquisition.  The story, the enemies, the characters, all of it.  I restarted a few times to get my Herald looking perfect, and now the plot is in full-swing.  I can do what I want, travel where I want, run down as many or as few fetch-quests as I want... the world is so wide and welcoming, there are so many people to get to know, and so many convoluted plot lines to tease apart! I anticipate something like 50-60 hours of gameplay, I really do.

But so far, I am a little disappointed in my romance options.

In Dragon Age: Origins, I can't say the romance options were overly plentiful.  If you played as a human female Hero of Ferelden, which I did, you could get involved with Alistair, Zevran, or Leliana; that was it.  I didn't want to play as a lesbian (I identify as straight in real life, so I tend to play my characters straight as well), and Zevran really rubbed me the wrong way (no pun intended, haha).  That left Alistair, who became my default romance option.  I didn't have a problem with this, because let's face it, Alistair is SEXY.

He might spend most of the game with a confused look on his face...

... but he's still delicious.  That adorable face + his accent = my heart swoons, every time.

I've written about him before, so I won't bore you.  But suffice it to say that even with basically just the one option in my play-through of Origins, I never once felt cheated.

But now that I've booted up Inquisition (I didn't get more than 5 hours into DA2, so I'm ignoring it)... I'm a little disappointed.  I know there are lots of options, LOTS in fact, but right now... they all kind of suck.

There's Solas, the snooty bald-headed elf mage:

He's interesting, to be sure, and yet I can't muster up a lot of empathy for him yet.  He seems too cold, too removed from my Herald to be a good romance option.

And Varric, the dwarf who never buttons up his shirt, leaving his chest hair spilling out, is the funniest character thus far, and he's not an option according to Bishop, who loved DA2 and said that no one could ever romance Varric.  Not that I would -- the chest hair is a little too much for me.

So my starter companions were out.  How about some of the ones I was picking up as I played?

Oh, you mean Iron Bull, the gigantic qunari with the horns?

Not only would he crush my Herald like a bug (she comes up to about his ever-present nipples), he has horns.  Yes, I'm judging, but come on?? Alistair to him??? No thank you.

If I was still looking for a connection to Alistair, I could go with my Grey Warden companion, Blackwall.  There's just a minor issue with Blackwall: He's old.

I mean, yeah, fine, he's not old like Wynne from Origins, who was in her 80s, but he's certainly not young either.  I dress my heroes down; they're young and fairly attractive, nothing insane but certainly pretty, probably around 30ish.  Blackwall comes across as at least 45-50, which for a Grey Warden is *really* old.  So there's that strike against him.  On top of that, Blackwall is really a downer of a character.  He hasn't cracked a smile or told a joke all game, and I recruited him fairly early.  Every time I go talk to him, he's got some new doom and gloom issue to discuss with the Herald.  Oddly enough, the option to hit on him pops up instantly, so I guess he's who the game wants me to hook up with? So not interested...

Or there's Cullen, my templar advisor:

He seems polite enough, fine, but the fur coat coupled with his arrogant attitude? Look at that smug face!  Again, no thank you.  I find nothing relate-able about Cullen, other than he and Alistair, who appears in a brief mage-related cameo, now have the same haircut. That is not enough of a reason to start a romance with the guy, come on.

If those aren't enough 'options,' there's Dorian, or as I fondly call him, Snidely Whiplash:

I just can't.  I can not.  I laugh every time I see his face! and on top of that, he's unbelievably cocky with really no reason to be.  I leveled him up so he's a pretty bad-ass electricity mage, but before that? He sucked the big one, and then was all bragging like "hey, don't kill anyone without me!" Every time, my Herald is rolling her eyes, going "We aren't killing anyone WITH you either there, Snidely!"  (Update: turns out, Dorian is gay.  You can flirt with him if you're a girl, and he'll flirt right back, but he's definitely gay.  As in, he and Iron Bull are together.  Horny, indeed.)

I'm not sure what I'm going to do.  I thought about trying the lesbian route and flirting with Sera, the rogue elf, but she's so DUMB that I can't make myself do it.  I could learn to deal with the boobs, it's just a game after all, but if I don't want to go talk to her character, nothing's going to happen.

I am now toying with the idea of just flirting with every single character that gives me an option, guy or girl, gay or straight.  Maybe some of these options will get better, or maybe someone will show up who hasn't yet! I'm not giving up hope that my perfect Inquisition love is out there still, waiting for me.

Dragon Age Love

I've been absorbed with Bioware's Dragon Age: Origins for the last few weeks, and like any new hobby, I just can't get enough.

The plot may not be the most unique ever -- it's a pretty standard good vs. evil, gather the army to defeat the bad guys type of story -- but the characters elevate its simpler plot to grand heights that I absolutely adore.

No doubt about it: Alistair is my favorite character.

His whole personality hits all my "fall in love with a fictional character" requirements: he's sweet, funny in a dorky, adorable way, and awkward in an endearing, non-Michael-Cera kind of way.  I played as a female human noble Warden, so of course I romanced him (which is perhaps my favorite Bioware feature), and his romance is cute as hell.  He likes to talk to you, and plenty of the conversations feel semi-realistic so it stays fun. I could even come on to him early on, which is hilarious.

Eventually, when I romanced him, Alistair admitted he was a virgin, a character quirk I'm not sure I've seen admitted in a game before.  Sure, there are assumptions one can make -- Morrigan is probably a virgin too, considering her isolated life, and I'm willing to bet that maybe Tali from Mass Effect could be, but I've never heard one of them admit it.  Hell, when I went to romance Garrus in Mass Effect 2, the "come on" line happens right after he tells Shepard about banging some turian chick! Not exactly virgin territory there.  So the Alistair is a virgin element was a unique addition, and one that I found even more endearing.  He's so awkward and cute when he asks to sleep with you! Plus, the speaking options don't write the Warden into a corner -- I could be a virgin or not, and it didn't seem to affect much for him.  There's a hilarious conversations about licking lamposts, wink wink, to walk you through that revelation.

And then of course, there's the ending. Spoiler Alert! You can marry Alistair if you are indeed a female human noble, which I was and so of course I elected to do this.  Eventually, if I can make it all the way through Dragon Age II, some dialogue crops up where Alistair refers to my PC (player character) as 'the old ball and chain' :). I may not be loving II, but I can't wait to get there.

Alistair looking all suspicious near the end of the game -- I can just hear him saying, "Swooping is... bad." :)

I can't talk about Alistair without talking about Wynne, the 'grandmotherly' mage full of wisdom, an admittedly cliche character type who thankfully breaks the mold.

Wynne fills the necessary magic role in the game better than Morrigan ever could (in my opinion).  She's funny without being bitchy, and she's a fantastic, strong NPC that adds a lot to the party I've been playing.  Seriously, even though she's old, Wynne is a total bad-ass: I even have her take on Loghain at the end of the game, and she always kills him.

She should be the kind of character I can predict, right? She's got lots to say on how to be a strong Grey Warden, and she always wants to help me or Alistair or anyone else in the party. Wynne comes across as grandmotherly, and Alistair's request for her to mend his socks at one point certainly boosts that point.  But somewhere along the line, some programmer/writer with a sense of humor decided that, underneath it all, Wynne was going to be a dirty old woman. And it works, and it's awesome.  Oghren, the dwarf, and Zevran, the elf assassin, hit on Wynne constantly; Zevran, in particular, is fascinated with her 'bosom,' as he puts it.  And while Wynne might turn them down consistently, her banter with them is full of hints at her former less-than-grandmotherly adventures.

Those boobies have seen some things, apparently.  

Plus, since I was in a romance with Alistair, Wynne continuously teases Alistair about being into the Warden. She calls him on watching my character's ass while we're out on a mission, and eventually, when I brought the two of them on enough quests, she 'lectured' him on where babies come from, an exchange that cracks me up every time I hear it. Listen here and be amused! Their mother-son relationship, even when it goes off the rails, adds even more depth, like they really are friends inside the world of the game.

 Wynne's magic leads me to Morrigan, one of the earliest added NPCs and one that I'm not totally sure I love.  She's an out-there character, a Witch of the Wilds who technically should be chased/threatened by the templars (which include Alistair, to a certain degree).

And Sten.  A qunari, a giant race of warriors, stranded in Ferelden and absorbed into the Warden's party as penance for a crime of rage and loss: his character bleeds darkness, mystery, and a cold detachment that takes lots and lots of work to overcome.  For a long time, Sten is silent, standing off to the side of camp in near-silence. Few conversation options exist, and new ones are few and far between as the game goes on.

This is Sten, when the Warden finds him.  He's gigantic and intimidating, all white hair and purple eyes, and only slightly less so once you get him into some armor and a giant sword

Eventually though, the Warden can get Sten to talk, and even more eventually, I got his personal quest.  By the last push of the game (just barely pre-Landsmeet), I had Sten's approval close to 100 points, although the label of his approval is still "neutral" in a funny twist.  (For comparison, Alistair's at 100 points is "love" and Wynne's at about 80 is "friendly.") I really liked Sten and his warrior mentality, dark as his outlook is.

Other than Alistair though, I think I love Shale the best.  He's a golem, which is basically a huge rock-man brought to life with magic, and he is absolutely hilarious.  I only got him by chance -- the copy of DA:O I bought has all the DLC included and he's part of a quest called The Stone Prisoner.  I am so glad I did.  Shale is somewhat effeminate both in voice inflection and word choice, which creates a fun contrast between his intimidating appearance and his personality, and he really enjoys pushing the buttons on the other characters, who never seem to quite know what to do with him.  There's on exchange where Alistair asks Shale about his sleeping patterns, and Shale expresses that he doesn't sleep, he just watches the rest of the party while they sleep, counting breaths because "it helps to overcome the overwhelming urge to crush their faces."  Yet the way he says it doesn't seem that intimidating, more like a casual, almost joking comment.

Ah, Shale. Intimidating to look at, yet terrified of birds.

He's also got this quirk where he just hates birds, obviously from years spent frozen in place and having pigeons crap on him.  Hilarious.

Also: SPOILER, but apparently on Shale's personal quest, the player discovers that, prior to being a golem, Shale was actually a girl. I didn't know this, and since Shale refers to himself as a "him," that's what I'm going with. It doesn't change how much I love the character, regardless.

I love this game so much, and the characters make it. I may just re-start it again the second I finish it.