Category Archives: Writing

Fiction, non-fiction, fanfiction, poetry…

DA2: Please Stay Part 6

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Climax and then schmoopy epilogue stuff! If you like metal, I was listening to Unstoppable by Ad Infinitum when I wrote the final fight with Meredith. It doesn’t perfectly fit either Reid’s character or the situation, but it’s a badass, inspiring song, and I love it. : )

I actually at first did not kill Anders… and then halfway through Lowtown decided that was OoC for Reid. He is descended from my Sith Inquisitor character Murlesson, he does have a ruthless streak, even if virtually everything about his character has been softened and warmed by being in completely different circumstances. So I reloaded.

I actually still like Isabela, and next time I’ll get her approval up higher (with the console if I have to) so she’ll stick around for the ending. : ) Just giving Reid a little wish-fulfillment here.

 

Part 5

 

Kidnapped

“I suppose it was too much to hope that you wouldn’t have come here,” said a voice, and Reid looked around from Carver’s still body to see the friendly-ish Templar Thrask approaching him. “Though I can’t understand why you side with Meredith now. You showed me we can stand up to her. When I realized you had risked your life lying to protect these mages…” He gestured towards some vaguely familiar figures Reid dimly recalled from years ago. “Please, Champion. I have nothing but respect for you. It’s Meredith we must see gone.”

“Who the hell said I side with Meredith?” Reid demanded. “Isn’t it fairly common knowledge I’m an apostate? The only reason I’m here in any sort of hostile capacity is that you kidnapped my brother. Let him go, and we’ll talk.” Continue reading →

DA2: Please Stay Part 5

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Middle Ground has some ridiculously unrealistic dialogue, but this is my dumb fic so it says things that I want to hear. Also I had to keep toning down the fight, because Reid really could go off in dangerously intense ways.

When I played the game, I didn’t import a DAO save (for one thing I’m not sure where my Elizabeth save files are) and so I picked the Mahariel Warden pre-set to just jump in and get started, in which Alistair is king. And that was going to be useful, because as Reid gets into in this set of scenes, he’s starting to feel the pressure intensely enough to think about giving up. So Alistair was going to be very helpful in making Reid feel like he ought to stay to the end of the game. However, in Elizabeth’s game, Alistair is still a Warden. So I wrote two alternate scenes – one where Queen Anora asks Reid basically the same stuff as Alistair (which is my headcanon), but I also wrote one where Warden Alistair asks – and that one’s kind of more fun? So both of them are here for your entertainment.

I feel Merrill’s story arc really fumbles the landing. Hard to fix without going in a completely different direction.

Part 4

 

Anders

The sewer was as horrific as ever, and Reid was getting suspicious. “Anders, you’re really going to drink a shit potion? Really?”

“Would you balk at this if it were you?” Anders asked.

“I don’t know,” Reid said. “You sure owe me, though.”

“I do,” Anders said. “Though I think I’m going to ruin it: I know it isn’t my place to criticize, but… Are you sure about Fenris?” Continue reading →

DA2: Please Stay Part 4

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Meeting Carver in the Deep Roads with Nathaniel was really unsatisfying.

References Elizabeth Cousland, my DAO Warden.

Yes, I did do Alone with just Reid and Fenris. Since it was on Easy mode, I could do it for the RP.

The Smile part was inspired by a joke one of my friends told me once.

Part 3

 

Bullying

“Your master must have been a terrible man, to make you hate mages so,” Merrill said.

“He is a terrible man, and he’s not dead,” Fenris said shortly.

“We’re not all like him,” she said, coaxingly.

Fenris didn’t even look at her. “How often I hear that, and yet, how often I find it’s not true.

“The Keepers are different. They exist to preserve the old ways, and to protect our people.”

His glower deepened. “And none of them would ever fall prey to a demon. Or perform blood magic.” Continue reading →

DA2: Please Stay Part 3

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All That Remains is the saddest quest in the game, made me cry so much ;_; Even though I was looking at spoilers to see how to deal with various NPCs, I somehow managed not to spoil myself about the major character death, so it was incredibly effective.

Needed to call the Arishok out on his BS, he makes no sense. And yes, I didn’t have enough approval with Isabela for her to stay. For every sarcastic line she enjoyed, I’d do something nice that would annoy her.

Part 2

 

All That Remains

Reid came out of his room, where he’d been working on some history research, to hear Uncle Gamlen shouting. “No, Lee-an-drah! Where is she?”

“Enchantment?” Sandal said.

Reid frowned as he descended the stairs. “Shouting won’t make him understand you better, you know. What’s up?”

“Your mother never showed up for our weekly get-together,” Gamlen said. “She never misses it. What’s happened to her?” Continue reading →

DA2: Please Stay Part 2

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Part 1

 

A Bitter Pill

Reid bent down in front of the elf girl. “What was your name?”

“Orana…”

“Okay, Orana, I’m going to help you, so listen carefully. Once you make it out of this cave, can you get to Kirkwall on your own?”

“Y-yes…”

“All right. My name is Reid Hawke. Go to Hightown and find the Amell estate; my mother, Leandra, will let you in. Tell her you’ve come to work for me. Do you understand?”

“Go to Hightown in Kirkwall and find the Amell estate. Tell your mother that I’m going to work for you, Master Hawke. Right?” Continue reading →

DA2: Please Stay Part 1

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In the second half of Nanowrimo this year I realized I didn’t have the energy to hold down five gigs and finish writing my complicated final arc for Devil’s Due, but I still wanted to finish Nanowrimo so I could get that discount on Scrivener (I like it! I think it’s really useful). So I turned to fluff instead, and since I’d recently restarted playing DA2 with yet another rendition of Reid (now with an actual family!) I needed to write some FenReid friendmance. It’s interesting because Fenris and Murlesson share a character archetype – emo angry OP escaped slave bishounen – so in this story Reid is quite different from some of his other iterations in order to better contrast Fenris. Also because Sarcastic!Hawke is great fun to play with.

Going to take a second here to complain about how rushed DA2 is. I love the characters, but they’re shallow as puddles; I like the visual design, but that’s the most egregiously recycled part (especially the maps, obviously); I like the story, but I don’t like how all the time I spent in it feels like an appetizer for another game. (I did acquire Inquisition, but Frostbite makes it look like garbage so I need to mod it up before playing. MEA looks better than DAI. : P ) It seemed every five minutes I would notice something that wasn’t quite polished about this game. The only thing that is absolutely top-notch is the voice acting: the characters may only have one note each, but their voices play that note beautifully.

So this is all pretty messy writing by my standards, and I don’t care, it’s for the fluffy fluff and the feels. Some headcanons and character build: Reid’s autoattack spells in this story aren’t determined by his staff, but by what he learned to control personally (so he only ever uses lightning as an auto, not fire or force or whatever); he has some of the Primal tree, all of the Entropy tree, and a little Blood Mage and Force Mage specializations; I played on Easy so there’s no friendly fire. I downloaded a hair mod and a freckle mod, and the Vow of Pride robes mod (though I didn’t give those to him until Act 2; in Act 1 I wore the default gear for the RP). A screenshot and another screenshot.

The second little bit is inspired by a mod that removes the dead bodies out of Fenris’s mansion after you recruit him.

Spoilers: Isabela leaves (I didn’t have her approval high enough), Anders dies (sorry, Anders fans).

The dog is named Bo after Sorne’s dog in our DnD game.

This story is rated M for incessant swearing and mild sexiness. Continue reading →

Devil’s Due: Part 32: Battle of Wits

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This one took a while… not only was the actual writing complicated and challenging (and I went for a round of beta-reading just to be sure it makes sense, which was the best idea), I had been working on my Halloween cosplay and playing the other four SWTOR routes that I didn’t play when I first tried the game five years ago. I’m pleasantly surprised, they were all pretty enjoyable. Warrior is still my favourite overall, but Bounty Hunter is up there with Smuggler for entertainment value. Meanwhile, I had to restart Agent three times in Act 1 though until I found a set of decisions that I was happy with. It’s just really not comfortable playing a hardcore KGB officer, you know? And it’s much more fun if you put on the Ghost in the Shell OST. Anyway, my personal tier list is probably: Consular < Trooper/Knight < Agent/Inquisitor < Bounty Hunter/Smuggler < Warrior.

That being said, I need a break from the game and its terrible awful no-fun gameplay. I do want to ask if it would be worth getting into… the entire rest of SWTOR, as I vaguely remember playing Ilum once four years ago and that’s as far as I’ve gone. And if it’s possible while still maintaining my stance of boycotting EA financially. But it’s going to be a while before I feel like slogging through more terrible boring pointless mob-infested maps, so don’t expect any sequels in the near future even if I do decide to play more. XD Continue reading →

Devil’s Due: Part 31: How to Start a War

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AHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH It’s been a literal year and a half since I last wrote this, so terrifying has this last story arc been. I will admit to being distracted by other things – work, GW2, DnD – but also just… how to follow up on Kel Reu Giri?? How to follow up on literally punching ghosts in the face?? So I put it off.

Then I started feeling last month like “hey, you should pick that up again” and I was like “maybe in September, after I finish my Rinala cosplay” and my feelings were like “no you should do it now” so I re-read the fic twice (once to read it, once to correct a whole bunch of embarrassing typos and adjust small scenes that I thought weak) and played the Corellia arc of the game. (And I’m working on the other four storylines that I didn’t play before. Man, Consular is boring.) Continue reading →

Where the Heart Is

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The other fic that’s been flopping around my skull since Carmen Sandiego Season 4 came out on Netflix. I liked the ending, but my shipper heart couldn’t decide if I liked Carmen/Gray or Carmen/Julia more. So, in the spirit of ProZD solving anime, here is a bisexual Carmen polyamory fic. And I fully acknowledge that should they come out with more show or spin-offs, this will almost 100% be non-canon, but eh, it’s just for fun.

I did the bare minimum of research for this fic; all my research juice is going towards Reid’s stories (currently agonizing over whether he wears shoes on a regular basis or not, and even more about socks). Also literally nothing happens except talking, because this is entirely self-indulgent low-effort fluff. Huzzah!

 

Where the Heart Is

Chapter 1: Gray

The bells on the door of the convenience store jangled as the slightly stocky young man pushed in casually, hands in pockets. He strolled over to the pop, then to the ice cream, then turned around and nearly bumped into the young woman with the red hoodie absent-mindedly browsing behind him. “Whoops, sorry- Carmen!?” Continue reading →

Reason to Live

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My old Shakarian fic was feeling a bit outdated, a bit juvenile, especially considering I never actually bothered to title it… So after playing the trilogy again earlier this year, I felt the urge to write a new one. I don’t feel it quite gets across how fascinating turians are, how the whole idea of ‘alien’ is alluring (Mass Effect does not really do a great job of expressing alien cultures in a culturally alien way, though I will grant that’s not the point of a swashbuckling space adventure), but it certainly feels a bit more in-character than the old one to me.

It doesn’t have every bit of detail in, as it’s only really supposed to replace the whole “reach and flexibility” conversation and still leave space for the “interspecies awkwardness thing” conversations that come after.

 

Reason to Live

Shepard took a moment to sigh to herself before she reached out and tapped on the Normandy’s main battery door. It had been an intense day, and she still wasn’t sure if she’d given him enough time to sort through it all. Continue reading →