The hostility between Hawke’s companions in Dragon Age 2 makes a bit more sense when you remember that the whole game is told from Varric’s perspective and he has to keep audiences engaged with juicy drama. 

Like @uchidachi says in this post (x), “You can’t go 7 years fighting beside someone and hate their guts 100% of the time. That’s exhausting.”

This one I actually only finished up recently. It was a rendered commission of detective-AU!Cass and Varric.

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Varric Tethras meeting each and every member of the Kirkwall gang (Hawke included):

When I first started playing the Dragon Age games I played the games in the following order: DAI - DAO - DA2. So when in Inquisition the Varric vs Cassandra fighting scene played I thought Hawke was Cassadra’s long lost lover and she was convinced of the fact that Varric was hiding Hawke from her

I would read that fic

Whenever I’m playing DA2 and I come across NPCs voiced by the same person as Cassandra, I have to imagine that’s just Varric forcing her to do the voices with him.

“C’mon, Seeker, you said you wanted accuracy. I can’t go that high. Just say, ‘the Hanged Man ees feeeeelthy…’“

“Ugh.”

hawke, seeing the red lyrium idol and looking at varric: i thought you said that shit was in a tupperware

Varric is “gives you a sip of his beer when you’re 14, includes too many embarrassing anecdotes in the ‘Birds and the Bees’ talk, helps you get into R-Rated movies” Dad.

Solas is, “Unwanted impromptu hikes and camping trips, lets you paint your own room but won’t help paint over it when you decide you hate it two weeks later, ’Let’s talk this out in the yurt’” Dad.

Dorian is “up at 3 AM passive aggressively reading in the living room with a glass of wine when you arrive four hours past your curfew, watches cheesy terrible tv shows with you, gets WAY INTO your science fair project” Dad. 

Blackwall is “really bad at gift giving but you know he’s trying very hard, carved your baby cradle by hand himself, tried to teach you to fish but stopped when ‘cleaning’ the fish made you cry and throw up” Dad.

Iron Bull is “Yells REALLY LOUDLY at the TV during both football and cooking shows, scares the shit out of your date while being perfectly friendly, won’t let you out the door in the morning without breakfast ‘At least take this protein bar!’” Dad. 

the inquisition.

You ever remember Varric saying “you people have done enough to [Hawke] already” and just wanna sob?

You ever imagine Hawke waking up screaming in the middle of the night from another nightmare that’s mostly memory, and Varric being there to calm them down and bring them back to reality?

Hawke going off the grid and Varric is the only one that manages to keep in touch and know what’s going on

Hawke being so quiet and more responsible than usual and it killing Varric because this is HAWKE they dance drunk on the tables of The Hanged Man, they punch stone golems with no gauntlets on, they sneak a mabari into their fancy hightown manor and get dirty pawprints everywhere, they form big cuddle piles with the whole gang, they certainly DO NOT spend all their time alone and pensive wondering about the fate of the world and their role in it

Hawke volunteers to die in the fade so quickly and for a second Varric sees the possibility of losing his dearest friend not just to some fade monster but…to their own self-loathing and guilt

You ever imagine platonic soul mates Varric and Hawke camping out in the middle of nowhere, Varric telling wild tall tales to make Hawke laugh again for the first time in years?

“Mages and templars, and innocent people caught in the middle. Some things never change”. - Dragon Age Inquisition 

Cassandra should have been Inquisitor, tbh

Inkquisitober Day 3: Calling the Inquisition

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(please don’t tag/comment with your inquisitor, thanks)

omg but imagine if da:i was just the kirkwall crew playing dnd

- Varric is DM; also exports his main campaign character from a previous game for exposition purposes. He has a grand plot lined up with ancient elven gods, breaches into the fade, demons everywhere and the fate of all the world in danger. After a six pack of beer he ends up resurrecting an enemy from the previous game & letting the characters wail on him instead because none of them are taking the plot seriously enough to deserve it

- Hawke rolls a MASSIVE QUNARI WARRIOR who is as subtle as a charging bull, bashes in skulls, loves dragons and doesn’t afraid of anything. They proceed to interrupt game play for the next four hours demanding more dragons. Varric ends up scrapping perfectly good encounters he spent hours planning and substituting them with dragons just to pacify Hawke, and it fucking works.

- Aveline comes with a Grey Warden recruiter with a mysterious past, working to redeem himself for crimes in his youth. She is very proud of this noble soul and put a lot of hours into his backstory. Nobody once asks her character about it, even with Varric trying to throw her a plot-related bone every now and then. Maker, her friends are scrubs.

- Merrill rolls an elven apostate following extensive discussion with varric about the setting and spends the entire campaign giggling to herself every time the word ‘wolf’ comes up. literally nobody cottons onto her plot until the end of the game, where she triumphantly reveals her Hidden Past and the entire table collectively flip their bowls of nachos and start yelling. Merrill is the DnD master.

- It’s Bethany’s first game, and she nervously presents her character: a sweet Fade spirit out of place with a history of murder-shanking. She has a lot of fun playing with meta-game commentary and although she occasionally breaks the 4th wall she does it in a neat enough way that nobody comments on her rookie mistakes.

- Anders… isn’t great at original character creation, and everybody internally rolls their eyes when he announces his character is a bookish vain mage. Anders hotly defends himself by pointing out this one has no feathers. His plotline however reveals that what he lacks in OC-making skills, he makes up for in raw emotional manipulation. Hawke repeatedly rolls to have their Qunari seduce the mage.

- As soon as Anders announces his character creation, Fenris announces that he’ll be playing a pro-circle mage just to piss Anders off. He actually ends up having a lot of fun, mostly watching Anders turn interesting shades of red every time his character says ‘… dear.’

- Carver got dragged into the game by both his siblings and tells everyone who will listen that it’s for a bunch of fucking nerds. He rolls a mighty warrior, all rippling muscle and steel honour code, and when Varric gently reminds him that he’s not supposed to roll himself reluctantly makes the warrior female. By the end of the game he’s writing fanfiction about his battered warrior and after a six-pack of beer, will do her accent. Hawke quietly records this for posterity, because Hawke’s an older sibling and this is what older siblings do.

- Isabela wasn’t gonna play until Varric showed her the DnD guide to rp-ing sex. She found a preset sheet for an elven archer, made her a lesbian, gave her a a truly amazing vocabulary and a robin hood background, and spends most of the game trying to roll for seduction on her friends’ female characters. She provides the beer and her suggestions for the Orlesian masquerade ball both utterly derail Varric’s careful plot, and end up providing the best game night the group have ever had. She’s a fuckin’ treasure. She’s also the first person to roll a natural 20 attempting to shove a bed off a roof.

#also consider: cullen plays himself #he doesn’t realize he’s playing #he’s varric’s flatmate #and every time he stops by to scold varric #for letting the cats roam freely around the house #they all react as though he’s a player talking in-character (by @mikkeneko)