so I sort of implied (if not outright promised) a Blackwall meta post today
but I’m not entirely sure what I want to say anymore
I just wish, honestly, I’d managed to write more of the fic I had planned for him and Erana, because then I’d have something to build off of here. (The bits I keep working on are even more out of order than things I usually do, tho, and it’s hard to figure out how to finish them up, because do they work without the stuff I haven’t written yet that’s supposed to happen before them? Or don’t they? I can’t tell, because I have some idea of what the missing bits /are/ after all.)
Erana is never angry regarding Revelations. (She is so angry at the entire rest of the world she doesn’t have anything left for Blackwall?) Because, as she tells him by quoting the Vir Bor-Assan at him (bend, but do not break) everyone has stumbled beneath a weight that was too much to bear (except maybe Cassandra, Erana is entirely unsure that Cassandra has any idea how to bend) has done things they regret in order to withstand the pressure. And I feel like it’s an important story to have, for Blackwall, to contrast with all the people who /do/ feel personally betrayed by what he does and did. (And I totally get why most people would, it’s just ... not what Erana did. And really, he’s a terrible liar, so it’s not like he was good at betraying the people he cared about. Which is oddly endearing, right? That’s not just me?)
Clearly the way I figure out characters is relational, just like the way I discuss and meta is reactionary. (honestly that’s how I fic too, it’s something I need to work on.)
SORT OF unrelated, but all in a piece in regards the not writing, gosh I wish I could manage to write more Loghain and Blackwall because Loghain is one of the few other people with a reputation and history as heavy, or heavy enough to know what it feels like, anyways.
(Have I mentioned he’s in the DAI epilogue in my head? Maybe I should just give up on the long-fic in my head and write a bunch of ficlets and see if they eventually tie together? That’s kind of what happened with Adelaide/Sebastian after all.)
Anyways. Blackwall is the person who least thinks Thom deserves a second chance, but he’s stubborn enough he keeps working for it anyways, can’t bear the thought that it could all end now, (for every possible instance of now) when he still needs time to keep trying to help someone, anyone, everyone, needs to keep turning other people’s lives around before they end up anything like he was. (And I am basically a sucker, apparently, for anyone whose interpersonal conflicts are actually all internal conflicts other people happen to get in the way of. If that makes sense.)
Also, it’s gratifying to see someone who does keep going, even when he isn’t entirely sure why. He keeps showing up, hoping to find an answer. That’s a good end line to have, a good goal for a type of person to be.