things you said with too many miles between us

Dwarf—

You are behind this.

Tell me where she is, that I might follow.

And if you see her

F.

H

Haw

Hawke—

I do not understand

Why

VENHEDIS

Hawke—

I cannot pretend to understand why you have gone without me. Doubtless you seek to protect me from some danger, though

Hawke—

I am yours.

Fenris,

It is with

I should be the one

She was heroic until the very

She loved

Fenris,

I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. She’s gone.

Varric

Hawke—

I refuse to believe

It cannot

I will not

Had you but

This is impossible.

Hawke—

I am yours. Even still.

Sure!

Um, okay. She sided with the mages, though ‘sided’ isn’t quite the right word. Basically she was so horrified at the thought of some Tevinter magister getting any kind of foothold outside Tevinter that she felt like she had to make ending that threat a priority. She was (is) more about change over rebellion, so I wouldn’t necessarily say she’s pro-Fiona (if that makes sense). She did accept the mages as allies (though with the caveat it was a trial period), because conscripting them and having them as essentially prisoners of the Inquisition sat ill with her.

Canonically, I chose to do Halamshiral before Adamant. I like the pacing better, and headcanon-wise, I decided that since everyone seemed to believe Celene’s death was the catalyst for the Bad Future, it was important to stop that first. She reconciled Celene and Briala. Mostly, if I’m honest, because Rose is a romantic, and--all the other potential ugliness aside--she could tell when she was talking to them that they still had feelings for each other, so she decided to play matchmaker. She was also a bit worried that Gaspard was a warmonger, and she didn’t want to make that easier for him by putting him on the throne. And leaving Celene there seemed more stable. That the elves might have more of a voice with Briala having some power was a bonus.

She left Stroud in the Fade, and allied with the Wardens. (It is, after all, their job to deal with Darkspawn.) Like the mages, though, I imagine there was a sense of it being a trial: I’m sure she had the advisors watching that situation carefully. And I think it hurt a bit; I imagine that, like so many others, she held the Wardens in some awe, drank up stories of them as a child, and felt wounded when they were not all she dreamed they would be.

She accepted Abelas’ alliance, and let Morrigan drink from the well. Mostly, it must be said, because her companions--Solas and Cassandra especially--seemed so traumatized at the notion of her drinking. And... really, Morrigan was expendable. This was a hard call though, since Rose is so enamored of knowledge. If not for the input of the others, I think she might’ve drunk.

As far as companions: she encouraged Cole to be more human, softened Leliana, encouraged Cassandra as Divine, romanced Cullen (obviously

Which brings us to the most controversial decisions, and their relation to one another: She left Blackwall in Orlais. She was immovable about this. The first time I played, I, the player, saved him and she, the character, was furious. So when I played my canon playthrough, she left him to face punishment for his crimes. Because of the vagaries of game mechanics, she got the mission with the Iron Bull and the Chargers very soon after that, and... she just wasn’t willing to let them die. Still feeling betrayed, she couldn’t allow such genuine friends to die. And she didn’t feel particularly warm to the qunari, so even though she knew saving the dreadnought was the politically savvy choice, she couldn’t sacrifice the Chargers to do it. It was almost entirely a gut, emotional reaction. She has real Problems with betrayal. Probably in large part due to that early formative experience where her parents were betrayed by her nanny, resulting in Rose’s kidnap and almost-death as a little girl. She’s loving and friendly and sweet and if you betray her, or betray people who looked up to you, or betray friends and family, you are dead to her. 

I think that about covers it? I’m probably forgetting things, but I think this is the big stuff.

Oh! They actually got on fairly well. Rose has a thirst for knowledge, so she was happy to ask him many, many questions. (Solas approves.) She also loves stories, so she was fascinated every time he’d talk about his journeys in the Fade. (Solas greatly approves.)

They butted heads occasionally. She’s extremely wary of blood magic, and doesn’t see it as just another kind of magic. She is much less... revolutionary than Solas; she doesn’t always agree with him, and he doesn’t always agree with her, since she trends a bit more diplomatic (Solas disapproves from a distance.) It also takes her awhile to warm to the idea of spirits as something potentially other than ALL SPIRITS = DEMONS, DEMONS = BAD. 

...but she budges on that belief, even though she doesn’t really budge on the blood magic. Partly because of Cole. Partly because she has such an affinity for adventure and discovery; she knows there’s so much she doesn’t know or understand. She values what she learned in the Circle, but she’s not naive or blind enough to think that’s all that’s worth knowing, and she’s not so zealous that she thinks the Chantry can’t make mistakes.

Also, since she’s a mage and she and Dorian are friends, she doesn’t bring Solas (or Vivienne) along as much. Her relationship with Solas is less like friendship, and more like a student/mentor thing. It’s clear he knows so much she doesn’t, and she’s always happy to learn from those willing to teach. She doesn’t trust him absolutely, though. There’s something too... quiet about him. He reminds her of her parents’ intelligence officers; there’s more going on that he says. She just doesn’t know what it is, and she does believe he’s on her side. For now. She’s just not sure if he’s loyal to her, or to something else. 

She’s still more hurt than she admits when he vanishes.

(She doesn’t understand how he doesn’t like tea, though. That’s just madness.)

You know how some people feel about the Fade?

The Fade doesn’t bug me. I actually kind of like the Fade.

But the Deep Roads? *shudder*

That said, I think there could be cool lore. And the blue glowy lyrium looks lovely. I hope there’s more companion interaction, and it’s not just another excuse for a big fetch-quest-filled area.

The major problem, for me, is an ongoing struggle with relative pointlessness. These mid-game DLCs are fine and everything, but... okay, the Inquisitor’s like “WE MUST FIND OUT WHAT’S HAPPENING OR ALL THEDAS COULD BE DESTROYED” (paraphrase), and I’m like, “Or not. Because I already know how this story plays out and y’all barely get scratched.” It’s like reading the last page of a book. When you go back to the middle, you already know the characters aren’t going to die, the peril isn’t mortal, etc etc. The DLC I want is something that starts tying up any of the million loose ends the actual original story left. (Maybe what I actually want is an expansion, like Awakening? I don’t think a DLC is going to be enough, honestly.)

So, on the one hand, I’m kind of ambivalent. On the other, I’m probably still going to play it, because I’m that completionist sucker Bioware/EA counts on. ;)

ALAS, my gaming computer is in storage for another month, so I’m pretty sure I’m going to have to go on complete spoiler shutdown, Descent-DLC-style when it drops. 

(I am, I must say, enjoying all the VARRIC HATES THE DEEP ROADS (as much as I do) and HEY BLACKWALL HOW ABOUT THEM DARKSPAWN posts going around though. Trust fandom to immediately find the comedy

I did write a bit about my endgame and story arc feelings, but it was a few months ago now. Mostly I keep my negativity to myself, because it’s always really easy for it to be taken out of context, I think, and I never, ever want to be the person raining on another’s parade. I noted the same thing you did, though: everything about the Haven sequence, and about the Adamant/Fade sequence really worked for me. In fact, I liked most of the story beats, but I just don’t think there was enough, and I definitely think actual consequences were neglected.

This got long. And there is negativity under the cut.

Another hard question! And another question that, in my mind, has as many answers as there are people.

I personally prefer an ending that closes a story. It doesn’t need to answer everything. I don’t need an epilogue rounding everything up and tying neat bows everywhere. I like when there’s room enough to imagine the story going on, or there’s room for questions and pondering and discussion, but I do like some sense of closure. I like when something feels complete. However, I also enjoy a good series, where every book and every story ties into a broader arc. (Presuming, of course, that one day that ongoing story will come to an end.)

I guess the satisfaction would come down to whether or not I felt like the open ending was the right narrative choice for the story in question. If it felt like the author didn’t know how to end it, or was being deliberately obtuse, or was masquerading behind a mask of pretentiousness or something, I’d be annoyed. If the choice was, however, a deliberate one, made specifically to leave the reader asking questions, or feeling unmoored or lost, or something along those lines? I could probably be sold. (And it might be effective while also being unsatisfying, where that feeling of not being satisfied was intentional?) 

Take video games, for example. I have a really hard time with MMOs or very open world games because (generally) they don’t have endings. Individual storylines or missions might, but you can keep logging in every day and messing around in the world, and your character doesn’t necessarily tie in to the narrative at all times. My brain doesn’t really click with that. I need narratives to keep myself interested. (Or else I’ll get distracted by something with a narrative and never come back!) I tried to play Skyrim and failed. I couldn’t get into it. Why can I collect so many cabbages? No one could ever need this many buckets! Why am I encumbered with cheese? Can I really just stay in this town forever, stealing books and chickens? So much possibility just makes me freeze up. Yet Skyrim is a wildly, wildly popular game and so many people adore it for that very sense of openness and endless possibility. It just doesn’t work for me. 

Bioware won me back to gaming because they gave me fantastic characters and great stories, but, more than that, they gave me beginnings, middles, ends. Mass Effect 2 tells a closed story: Collectors attack, Collectors must be stopped, Collectors are stopped. It takes place as part of a still-open arc, though: Mass Effect 1 introduced the Reapers, Mass Effect 2 insinuates they’re still a problem, but the central conflict (and resolution) is not about stopping the Reapers. It’s still satisfying because you know there’ll be more story dealing with the Reapers later. They’re not just going to leave you hanging on the Reaper problem indefinitely.

In many ways–much as I love aspects of it–Dragon Age: Inquisition is the least satisfying of all the Bioware games I’ve played because of the openness of the ending (and because, in order to keep that ending so open, death and danger are manufactured threats instead of real ones). Part of me fears Bioware is leaving behind the things I love best–(mostly) cohesive stories and characters and consequences (I want my character to be in genuine might-die peril. I want her friends to be in genuine might-die, might-leave peril)–in order to try their hand at something more like an MMO, or something indefinitely open world, more like Skyrim. I won’t be surprised if the next Dragon Age or Mass Effect title is even more MMO-like, if not an MMO outright. I’m hoping it’s not, because I very much prefer single-player, stories-with-endings narrative, but we’ll see.

(Miss Tarysande

It hasn’t been asked! And I’m sorry I didn’t answer right away–I’ve been thinking about it. And I’ve had this reply open in a tab for days! Yikes! 

I think Cullen’s reaction may get written up from his point of view later on in Unshaken by the Darkness (there are a lot of little moments for that already living in my head), so I won’t linger too long on it. I think it raises a lot of questions and regrets with him; I think he worries; I think he wonders if he could have done more.

As for her, she volunteers. She volunteers without hesitation. (I wrote a little thing a few days ago about that.) Also, she’s so… well, she doesn’t always think things through before she acts. She’s spontaneous, and can be quite fearless. Everything was going wrong so quickly, I don’t think she had time to worry until she was already running to face Corypheus.

She doesn’t want to die, but I’m pretty sure she thinks she’s going to. But her one life in exchange for all the others she might–she will–save is worth it. Of course it is. 

Someday I very much hope to fic this, actually. 

So, the short(ish) version is once Rose starts sending letters to her family (as in Letters Home), a very steady correspondence is established. Rose doesn’t hold back much. (Leliana–and Josephine, for that matter–live in a constant state of terror that Rose’s letters will fall into the wrong hands, since she rambles on in detail and at length about whatever’s on her mind, sensitive information or not.) So, Grace is privy to a lot of information about Cullen, and is very much predisposed to like him. 

Which doesn’t mean it’s going to be greeting him with open arms when she finally gets to meet him. Oh no. Grace doesn’t trust easily. She trusts her daughter, but prefers to take Cullen’s measure on her own, in person, just to make certain Rose hasn’t been taken in… via very polite and very pointed interrogation, the likes of which Cullen has never experienced. Grace is exceedingly good at polite interrogation.

Rose is mortified, but Cullen passes with flying (if occasionally stammering) colors. (Grace is, truth be told, so very amused by flustering him that she may drag things out a little longer than strictly necessary. Besides, she has to find out what kind of sense of humor he has. And whether he’ll fit into a family that teases each other mercilessly.)

The thing with the letters, though, is that Gareth never writes. Rose gets letters by the score from her mother and her sister, but her father is silent. She’s confused, and a little hurt. Her mother passes along messages–”Your father says hello, my dear one, and apologizes for leaving all the conversation to me. You know how he is,” or “Your father’s been training a bevy of new archers. Do you remember how awful your aim always was? Maker, we’d never seen anyone so incapable of hitting a target. Astonishing. I’m glad you have no such problem directing lightning bolts. He sends his love.”–but Gareth doesn’t write himself.

After the battle with Corypheus she finds out why. As soon as Rose’s first letter reached them in Ostwick–the letter where she asked them not to ‘careen all across Thedas to help’–Gareth… careens all across Thedas. And anonymously joins her army. They need people. He’s beyond skilled with a bow. And though he may have inherited some nobility through marriage, he’s still a common man at heart, and fits in effortlessly. He never interferes with Rose’s life, but he does watch over her. Not, he finds, that she needs it. In the course of things, it stops being about watching over Rose. He starts believing in her cause, in her. He gets to be a part of it all. (Grace, it should be noted, is wildly envious, but as she is the one with all the responsibilities of the Bannorn, she cannot simply up and leave and join Inquisitions and such. More’s the pity.)

Rose has no idea her father’s been essentially right under her nose the whole time. Consider the outing with the Iron Bull, when the Inquisitor meets some of the soldiers who have no idea who she is. The army is big; she doesn’t know everyone; and talented or not, her father’s just another archer in a sea of archers. And Rose is a terrible archer, so it’s not like she ever wanders down to the practice butts herself. 

What this all means, though, is that Gareth knows Cullen in the context of Commander–his Commander–while also being privy to all the Skyhold gossip. So, Gareth does everything within his power to ensure he never pulls guard-duty near either Cullen’s quarters or Rose’s (some things a father does not want to be privy to, and the gossip is bad enough), but, because of his unique perspective, essentially never in all of history has a (potential) father-in-law so approved of a daughter’s choice.