cracks knuckles it's time to earn that shoutout (i'm very glad they make you happy)
FIRSTLY i really appreciate the amount of time spent on the trip through the mountains before skyhold and i think it pays off a lot, everything feels much more natural and flows better in terms of tone than the game did. the atmosphere really stands out in the opening scene; with the viciousness of the advisors' argument dialed up just a little, there's a real sense of tension & misery that then lends itself to how much lavellan is affected by everything going on. and boy is he ever!!! it reads as so unnatural to see him so emotionally brittle and he's just all over the place, and the fact that it's as unsettling for me as it is for dorian is a credit to how well lavellan's character has been established already.
i liked having the conversation w/ varric & dorian about corypheus moved up and handled the way it is, it's much more sensible and it was nice to see their initial reactions to the information about his identity since that is kind of a Big Deal and they all discuss it like sensible people for a moment before it all goes back to being a disaster. and in the midst of that -- “If I was the Queen of Antiva, I wouldn’t have to put up with this bullshit,” Lavellan muttered. god i am... so fond of lavellan. i love this. he's adorable. him and dorian bonding over being snarky dipshits who use humour to cope, but there's this very present note of stress in it this whole time, all of it reads as that kind of humour that balances just on the edge of hysteria. which means the atmosphere doesn't lose any of its tension or pace and it's just really well strung together.
side note: VERY on board with the mark's progression starting this early, i love double-edged swords so i'm. thrilled.
Dorian tightened his grip as Lavellan’s voice went high and thin. For one moment, he hated the Inquisition so deeply he could almost taste it in the back of his throat. Because Lavellan was right. They’d send him out again and again to face Corypheus because he’d managed to survive it once. They’d do it again and again until Lavellan died.
i usually try to pick a favourite paragraph & i think this is it for this chapter, which is maybe predictable of me since i fawned so much over dorian's helpless anger about lavellan's martyrdom last time. i REALLY like it tho, and it's especially gratifying to consistently get this despair from dorian where lavellan can't or won't complain despite what it's doing to him. speaking of which: this whole scene is lovely. awful, but lovely. i love that lavellan finally buckles because of the loss of his knives, even tho it seems like such a minor thing by comparison; it suits him really well for that to be his breaking point and it's miserable to see. that helpless feeling persists because even if dorian was good at handling something like this, there's honestly nothing he can do, and it's GREAT for setting up this sense of scale that the game really failed to convey. this is a small emotional confrontation, but it's the two of them trying to deal with these impossibly large things and it's very much in line with the reality of lavellan's main problems which are all almost divine in nature & scale. this is some literary analysis bullshit i'm doing here but i just. love this conflict.
varric and dorian making comparisons between hawke & lavellan caught me by surprise but it was a VERY good conversation and probably my favourite scene in this chapter, i really loved the back-and-forth and that ending note of "if it was lavellan, wouldn't you keep him away from this shit" / "if it was hawke, wouldn't you do anything if it helped him" i need words that aren't 'good' and 'love' but it's GOOD and i LOVE it. it's a very poignant discussion of like, the woes of being someone who loves a selfless hero, and it's just... a really well written dialogue. also i'm enjoying the dynamic of varric giving dorian advice, from someone who's been through this exact shit before with hawke to someone who has never had to deal with this in his life, it's fun.
lavellan being cagey about his past!!! i'm going WILD i want so badly to know what is up with this boy. he shares such small insignificant details about himself and his life w/ the lavellan clan but the broad strokes are so mysterious and i'm losing my mind. i didn't even CONSIDER that he had a dark & mysterious past of any kind bc he keeps his clan life so separate from the inquisition that dorian really hasn't gotten any indication of it and now i'm desperately invested, even tho i was already extremely invested in lavellan before.
another side note: lavellan and cole... i knew it i knew it i knew it. he's so protective already and it's so cute. i love how friendly & casually physical he is with him -- Lavellan mucked with Cole’s hat. ugh that's ADORABLE. i'm curious about his dynamic with the other companions now too, after that sharp little aside to vivienne.
(also him jumping off the wall made me laugh)
when it came to the conversation just before the inquisitor crowning my heart fucking stopped. oh my god. i've always found the appointment of inquisitor to be a cruel move no matter who they are, springing it on them without warning in front of a crowd where they can't say no, but having them do it specifically because they know lavellan plans to leave was such a gut-punch. i was legitimately angry & heartbroken over that revelation and so vindicated by dorian tearing into the advisors w/ this fervent desperation to protect lavellan, which is... a huge testament to the fact that you're a wonderful writer who is doing their job well.
i'm so sad abt lavellan and i want so badly for him to be able to go home, like. he's such a sympathetic & compelling character that i want him to be able to just leave no matter the consequences. but the dilemma of selfless/selfish is genuinely compelling and awful; even tho i'm on lavellan's side 100%, the urgency of the situation & the sincere NEED for lavellan's leadership comes across so clearly through dorian's perspective that it really is just a tragic fucking mess. you've done a really good job of chaining lavellan to the inquisition in the same way that hawke was bound to kirkwall by the simple fact that they cared, which is a kind of tragedy da2 communicated really well that dai was lacking.
and i'm just in.... absolute despair knowing how much more will get heaped on him and how much more shit he'll have to deal with as the actual inquisitor as opposed to a figurehead. i'm so invested in seeing whether this exhaustion festers, if his bitterness is going to grow and come back to bite the advisors one day, since they're the ones that force him into the role of inquisitor. on one hand i want him to find his footing & recover and figure out how to balance his obligations and his own needs just so that he's not as miserable all the time, but on the other hand his despair is so justified that i just want him to be able to yell at everyone who has stolen his life from him.
He’d been certain for every step of the way when he followed Lavellan, but now that it was just the two of them, he was more unsure. He felt like he could never say the right thing to Lavellan. But he remembered the farce in the courtyard and straightened. Lavellan deserved someone in his corner and Dorian was that, if nothing else.
god i really appreciate dorian's position here in this whole situation. that he knows this is making lavellan miserable and he hates that, but that he knows the inquisition and by extension literally the entire world needs him at the helm -- and that it doesn't even matter because either way lavellan is stuck here and the best dorian can do for him is talk him around so that it's at least bearable. i'm hoping dorian realises that lavellan isn't used to the politics of being a leader and steps in to help him more insistently; lavellan is too used to the dynamics of being in his clan, where everyone helps each other because they have to in order to keep themselves afloat and so you never say no to a request. he's never delegated things! a dalish clan does everything themselves because if you want something done there's no other way it's going to happen!!! but dorian has spent his whole life in an environment where the things he's talking about just go without saying and it doesn't occur to him that lavellan wouldn't be able to just..... do that. it's a great dynamic and i'm both glad & relieved that dorian knows lavellan does at least need people in his corner and is willing to be one of those people.
i'mmmm very much excited for more lavellan & hawke as well as dorian pining and trying to cope with the fact that he's fallen for a selfless idiot who will probably spiral into self-destruction if nobody stops him, and i'm really curious to see how you're going to handle the warden plot. thank you for such long lovely chapters as always, they are well worth the wait every time!!
Comment on keep to the stars
astrabysm on Chapter 4 Sat 10 Feb 2018 02:08AM UTC
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astrabysm on Chapter 4 Sat 10 Feb 2018 02:09AM UTC
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astrabysm on Chapter 4 Sat 10 Feb 2018 02:09AM UTC
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