crabs and lobsters

what’s with the fic trope where varric handles hawke’s fortune

varric openly mopes about his brother having had all the business sense, actively doesn’t answer letters in regards to his own property and interests, can’t reliably answer questions about what the merchants’ guild even does, and spends cash wildly on his friends. hawke is a zero-to-hero mercenary who spent years counting every penny, who is trusted by their friends (many with serious need to be careful about cash!) to manage all the money spent on adventuring gear, and who on their own steam became one of the richest people in kirkwall. you think varric is handling the hawke fortune? be serious

there’s a much funnier and more realistic switch on this where hawke in the background of the plot has been running house tethras like the navy since the deep roads expedition and varric just doesn’t mention this because “tale of the champion” sells better than “story about my accountant”

i dont think i will ever be over dragon age 2. like. bioware made an epic fantasy story about a chosen one having to save a country and stop the apocalypse and then they made the second installment of the series be about the sociopolitical climate in ONE city through the lens of a family of refugees fleeing from the war of the first game and just. made it about political tensions and class dynamics and the influences of living in a church-mandated state and the growing tension over an occupied piece of the city and political killings and interpersonal conflict and power and its story is ENTIRELY character-driven. it has easily the most iconic set of companion characters. the premise of living through a story told over the course of ten years and knowing from the start that something really bad will happen in the end was so fresh and exciting. the fact that the acts really built on top of each other andhow much the city changed over time. and the game was so mature in terms of the topic of fighting against oppression in so many ways (im usually generous and say that the short development time left some things a bit wanting), and as much as some people say that the game treats mages and templars as being equally bad, i don't think that that is actually true about the game and it very earnestly tries to grapple with some pretty complex political dynamics.

and then the game completely flopped financially and was almost universally hated for its queer themes and its "sympathy for terrorism" and a lot of the things that stemmed from basically having no production time at all and then the studio just made another epic fantasy story about a chosen one that has to save the world from the apocalypse

Love how many fights just happen inside the Kirkwall chantry. At this point there aren’t even services there’s just WWE matches - like Sebastian are you sure this is where you come to pray because I’ve gotten jumped every time I’ve been here