#listen what am I but a dancing court jester at this point I might as well self promote | Explore Tumblr Posts and Blogs

diamondcitydarlin · 5 years

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okay been thinking about how I would’ve written a more general Varric romance into DA:I, which was the original goal of my story here but it became more specific to him and my character so here’s how I would’ve set it up for anyone, had I been given the honor of doing so. Which never would’ve happened. But my husband now works in the video game industry SO YOU NEVER KNOW. HMU EA or Bioware or whoever handles that now. Anyway here’s my pitch, PART 1 (I haven’t planned the rest out yet, bear with me):

1. Flirt options, obviously, just after the first cutscene convo at Haven. To these Varric will generally humor the Inquisitor and flirt back because at the earliest point it’s harmless fun. Maybe some dialogue like,

Inquisitor: Do you always leave your chest exposed during battle? Seems dangerous.

Varric: Sure. You see it, kinda hard to contain, so I don’t bother.

Inquisitor: Oh, I’m not complaining, just making sure what’s eye candy for the rest of us isn’t a death sentence for you.

Varric: I’ve come this far, haven’t I? Gaze to your heart’s content, my ego feeds on it.

And/or maybe when he mentions he’s written a romance series;

Inquisitor: So...bodice-ripper, smut pieces, then?

Varric: Not all of it, but yeah, you could say things get a little heated in parts.

Inquisitor: Do you...write from experience?

Varric: Well, you know what they say, write what you know...which I rarely do, but when it comes to heaving bosoms and all of that it seems only appropriate.

Inquisitor: I’ll definitely have to give Swords and Shields a try then.

Varric: Try one of my better sellers before you do. Not saying the writing is much better, but I’d rather have Hard in Hightown be the first impression.

Maybe more, but you get the idea. The flirting is just kind of fun and easy at that point, but I’m thinking things should ramp up a bit at Skyhold if the player is keen to pursue. I think at this point there’d be a dialogue option during the first encounter at Skyhold, maybe something like;

Inquisitor: I’m glad we all made it out of there in one piece...you especially.

Varric: Why me especially? I’m probably the most useless addition to this rag-tag band of misfits.

Inquisitor: I enjoy your company./You make me laugh, that’s just as important as anything else./ (backing out) Yeah...now that I think about it, maybe you’re right.

Varric: -laughs- I’m glad to hear someone does./ -teasing- Why not try a court jester then?/ Whoa...didn’t need to own that so quickly. I’m an extra pair of hands with a good crossbow, let’s not forget.

Inquisitor: (continuing the laugh dialogue option) I can get you a jingly hat if it makes you feel more at home.

Varric: (continuing the laugh dialogue option) It might. I’m gonna hold you to that.

Varric continues to deflect with humor a bit at this point, but I think there’ll still be flirtation options in the meanwhile, like maybe at his greeting of, “Did you need something or did you just come to admire the Dwarf?” which might only be accessible if you had been flirting successfully with him to this point the Inquisitor could have the option to say, “Maybe a little bit of both.”

Things more or less stay as they are until the ‘Well, Shit’ quest pops up along with the infamous Bianca. An Inquisitor that has been pursuing to this point could get some extra dialogue options in the course of things. I’m thinking especially at the end where something could be said in the cut scene like,

Inquisitor: You deserve better, Varric.

Varric: Do I though?

Inquisitor: I think so. And I don’t speak just out of personal interest.

Varric:....shit. That makes things a lot more complicated. Maybe not a bad complicated, but...I don’t know. I guess I thought we were joking around, if I knew it was more than that for you-...

Inquisitor: Isn’t it for you? We’ve been through a lot together already.

Varric: I’m not saying it isn’t. There’s no bluff to call here, I like you...okay, I like you a lot, but shit’s complicated. You’ve got the end of the world to think about and I’m obviously a mess. Bianca and I have been going around in these circles forever, I wouldn’t really know how to put a stop to it. I’m still not sure I want to. But yes, since you’re asking, the feeling is probably mutual. I just don’t know what’s the right thing to do here.

Inquisitor: Maybe you’ll have to make a choice. A difficult one, but we’re all doing that, aren’t we? / If it really is the end of the world then we only have today. Maybe we should make the most of it instead of thinking so hard about a future that may or may not come. / (backing out) You’re probably right, there’s too much in the way.

Varric: (to the first two choices) Yeah...it’s tough to admit, but you’re right. / If it’s any consolation, I am sorry. If things were different...well, who knows? I’m glad you understand and, for what it’s worth, I really enjoy being your friend. Maybe, at least for now, that’s enough.

Varric: (to the first two choices) Listen, I have a lot to think about right now, but...I’ll try not to keep you waiting too long for an answer.

So, some time goes by. Things would be set up so that ‘Well, Shit’ would happen before the Winter Palace quest, so if the first two dialogue options were chosen and the romance not shut down, in true love-interest fashion Varric would join you on the balcony after everything, after Morrigan sashays away. Dialogue could go something like this;

Varric: Some party, huh? I was almost glad for the venatori, that shit I can handle.

There would be options here to deflect with other subjects, like about the Inquisitor’s choices, etc, but I’ll just follow through with the positive romance stuff here

Inquisitor: Are we...going to have the talk?

Varric: -sighs- Yeah. I said I wouldn’t keep you waiting, hopefully it wasn’t too long. I...wrote Bianca. Not so much because I’m convinced I deserve better, but after the shit at Valammar...I don’t know. I can’t risk Inquisition secrets and Thedas’ security and your time for her. Not if I’m going to be here for the foreseeable future.

Inquisitor: I appreciate that. Any...other reason?

Varric: -coughs out a nervous laugh- I’m not...really good at this sort of thing. Maybe that’s why my romance serials bombed so hard. You know how I feel, I just...don’t know about jumping from one thing into another so fast.

Inquisitor: So, you’re asking for space and time to figure it out?

Varric: We only have so much of that...but yeah, if I can be so selfish. Maybe we can just take things slow and see where it goes?

You’ll have the option here of course to be like ‘that doesn’t work for me’ and put an end to it, but as I’m writing the positive stuff,

Inquisitor: Slow and steady...works for me./ Whatever you need, I’ll go at your pace.

Varric: Glad to hear it. I do really want to see where this goes.

He’ll then look back at the ballroom and get an idea, to which he’ll offer,

Varric: A dance seems as good a start as any, and since we’re here...

Inquisitor: I’d like that. / I’m not much of a dancer, but since you’re the one offering...

Varric: Let’s uh...let’s keep it out here though. I’ve been trying to make myself scarce from the Merchants Guild.

(Player and Varric come together for a dance)

Inquisitor: I think you’re afraid you’ll make a fool of yourself in front of the Orlesians.

Varric:...there is that.

Some more time will pass, The Wicked Grace game will be slated to come after the Winter Palace quest (tho not much farther in the future since the main plot accelerates pretty quickly). Maybe just to be cute in the meantime your traveling group might occasionally tease you about what’s going on with you and Varric, idk something like that. Anyway, he invites you to a game of Wicked Grace and the whole cut scene there is basically the same until the end, after everyone leaves and you get some extra dialogue options;

Varric: The night’s still young, we could try to play another round, or...

Inquisitor: Or...?

Varric: I...don’t know how to suggest it tactfully, but I figure since we’re exploring this whole thing, and if you’re keen...maybe we could spend some time together, just you and me?

The Inquisitor can then suggest they go ahead with another game OR they can get DOWN TO BUSINESS. The latter of which is what I will write;

Inquisitor: Are you sure...? It’s a big step.

Varric: Yeah. We trust each other, don’t we? Some big steps will have to be taken eventually if we’re going to feel our way through this.

Inquisitor: (seductively) Then what are we waiting for? I’ll meet you in my quarters. / LAST ONE TO MY QUARTERS IS A ROTTEN EGG. (zooms off)

(cue scene of drunk Sera under the table before cutting to sexy tiems, etc)

Scene will open on Varric and Inquisitor having a heated make out in front of the fire in their room. THEDAS LOVE THEME PLAYS BECAUSE OF COURSE.

Varric: (breaking away for a second) If I’d known it’d be this good I would’ve been kissing you first thing at the Temple. I kinda wanted to, after you pointed out Bianca. I always hope my bow will be the first thing people notice about me.

Inquisitor: Is that what you think I noticed first? Not, y’know...this chest?

Varric: I give, it’s hard to miss.

(MORE KISSING EEE...before he breaks away again)

Varric: I have to be honest for a second though...after this, I don’t know if I can go back to how things were. I understand that now. I’m in too deep with you. This can’t just be a one-off.

Again, the player will have a chance to back out at this point, but if they go ahead this will be the definitive relationship moment.

Inquisitor: I don’t intend for it to be.

Varric: Good...then we’re on the same page.

Varric rolls on top of the Inquisitor as make out increases and the sound of clothes shuffling can be heard, but close up fade-out on the fire unfortunately because this isn’t a PR0N GAME OK.

Player wakes up the next morning to find Varric writing letters or doing some kind of work at the nearby desk.

Inquisitor: I’m not that boring, am I? / I have something more exciting than ink and quill over here, if you’re interested. / What, no breakfast?

Varric: (looking up from his work) -teasing- When you’re asleep? Yeah, maybe a little, unless you want me to just stare creepily at you and wait for you to stir. / You know I am. / Joke’s on you, I already sent down for it. Just wasn’t sure when you were going to get your ass up.

He comes over to join the Inquisitor on the makeshift bed/pile of blankets in front of the fire. Inquisitor sits up and they share a lingering kiss.

Inquisitor: Did you mean what you said last night?

Varric: I wouldn’t say something like that for shits and giggles. I know it puts everything in fast motion, maybe faster than we planned, but...with you, it’s different. I’m willing to dive into this head first.

Inquisitor: I’ll try to make it worth the risk then.

(They kiss some more until a foreign cough interrupts them. The advisors are there because I find that trope way too funny. Cullen has his eyes covered lmao)

Leiliana: (hiding her amusement from the stairwell) Apologies, we should have knocked.

Inquisitor: Ideally.

Josephine: (uncomfortable) Perhaps we should come back later...?

Varric: Well, you can go or you can stay, but I don’t think we were planning to stop, so-

(Josephine ushers the other two quickly back towards the staircase)

Josephine: Yes, yes, later then! Knocking in future, will make a note of that.

(Amused, Varric and Inquisitor continue to kiss and maybe suggestion of something MORE before fade-out)

TO BE CONTINUED ONCE I FIGURE OUT THE REST

#varric tethras #varric x inquisitor #i'm not gonna put romance exceptions bc i think all options should be accessible #regardless of race or gender #SO THERE #varric romance

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gibsongirlselections · 4 years

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Cancelled to Death: The Mike Adams I Knew

“Our cultural institutions are facing a moment of trial,” write the signatories of the now infamous Harper’s Letter. Despite the hysterical reactions it drew, the letter itself could not be more minimal or measured in its call for a check on “public shaming and ostracism, and the tendency to dissolve complex policy issues in a blinding moral certainty.” Last week, this warning was made tragically tangible, as friends and family grieved the loss of Mike Adams—conservative columnist, free speech activist, and gadfly professor of criminology at University of North Carolina Wilmington. A lifelong firearms enthusiast, Adams died by a gunshot wound, now confirmed to be self-inflicted.

Adams had recently stepped down as full tenured professor at the university, under pressure in the wake of his social media comments on COVID and the George Floyd protests. He was vocally anti-lockdown and encouraged people to “defy” North Carolina governor Roy Cooper’s strictures. After pizza and drinks with friends, he made a tweet referring to North Carolina as a “slave state,” concluding “Massa Cooper, let my people go!” He also referred to BLM rioters as “thugs.” UNCW officially condemned the remarks, while several Change.org petitions called for his resignation. Rather than take the school to court again (in a repeat of the grueling seven-year-long battle he finally won in 2014), Adams chose to retire with a half-million dollar settlement.

The reactions to his death could not be more polarized. While friends like David French have eulogized him as a dedicated teacher and a fierce advocate for constitutional liberty, haters have danced on his grave. Mainstream media headlines from NBC News to Buzzfeed played woke bingo with the news, repeatedly attaching modifiers like “racist,” “misogynist,” “vile”—sometimes with the fig leaf of quote marks, sometimes without.

Journalists also engaged in artfully curtailed summations of Adams’s controversies. The NBC News report referred ominously to his “targeting” of a Muslim UNCW student with no further details given. A little more digging would reveal the context: a Facebook post where the student was making plans to attend a Trump rally, joking, “Y’all are not prepared for what I’m about to do,” and requesting prayer that she “make it out alive.” Adams did not report the student as a serious threat. He simply laughed at her.

Meanwhile, UNCW colleagues tweeted out lip-curling reactions. “Please do mourn,” murmured Dr. L. J. Randolph Jr., “but don’t sugarcoat his rhetoric.” The sum of Adams’s legacy is still, “racist, homophobic and sexist.” Professor Tim Gill opined that he found Adams “repulsive” and “just tried to avoid him,” recalling his few “very awkward” attempts to make friendly small talk. Gill’s point in sharing all this was unclear, but if the intended effect was to paint Adams as a sad object of pity, the actual effect was rather the opposite.

From the outside looking in, Adams may not seem like a typical cancel culture victim. He had successfully won his old lawsuit, secured tenure, and negotiated an early golden handshake. But for friends like myself who actually knew Mike, who knew his passion for teaching and mentoring students, the timing does not seem so odd. To some professors, early retirement equals wish-fulfillment. To Mike, it was undoubtedly a personal and professional blow. Ever the happy warrior, he always projected a fearless optimism that one could fight back, one could hold out hope of beating the machine. But his was the optimism of an era that is going away. When 2020 hit, Mike didn’t know what had hit him.

It was easy for peers who privately agreed with Mike to support him from the sidelines, in whispers. Mike soaked up the heat, after all. This was the guy who turned “I Hate Mike Adams” into his own bumper sticker. This was the guy who would sneak into his own hate rallies and protest himself just for kicks (a joke, but a reflection of Mike’s true dedication to free speech for all, not just for his admirers). So let him do that, people thought. Let him be loud and brash and edgy and hated. We’ll just be over here, golf-clapping.

Mike had no time for golf-clappers. “Boy, some people think I appreciate them. I don’t,” he says in a 2014 interview, recalling a particular instance of hallway-whispered “support.” But he wonders, what if it were different? “What if all of them got up and said no, he’s right, it’s systematic? And even if it were just half a dozen or a dozen at every university that just said ‘Oh no, this stuff goes on all the time,’ then they couldn’t just target one person. So that’s the lesson I hope will be learned. Sometimes we’re our own worst enemy.”

Mike’s words sting now more than ever. Tragically, towards the end of his life, he privately confided to some that he’d come to feel distanced even from fellow conservatives like David French, who served on his defense team in the Wilmington case. While French’s star rose as he developed his brand of Never Trump commentary, Mike’s brand no longer quite fit anywhere. He was no Trump supporter, as I can attest based on our own correspondence. At the same time, he was disinclined to expend energy chiding those who were. And when his social media posts stirred up the hornets’ nest, like Benjamin Disraeli he never explained, never apologized.

As I write, a couple of friends are taking out their bitterness on French. I have not done so, despite my own frustrations at some of his recent rhetoric. Hanging Mike’s death around his neck is not fair, and it’s not the answer. To me, the whole thing seems all too tragic, all too human. His eulogy might be dismissed by some as too little, too late, but from where I sit, it reads as the genuine offering of a grieving friend.

French writes poignantly about how for Mike, as for so many jesters, the outward brashness concealed deep private pain. He recalls an especially dark moment from the Wilmington trials when Mike sat for cross-examination and listened to a string of decontextualized column quotes, carefully arranged to frame him as a vicious bigot. For a moment, French saw the light go out of Mike’s eyes, his shoulders drooping under the weight. “Mike was not racist,” French writes. “I knew him. I knew his heart.” This is no mere blind loyalty. French speaks as an adoptive father who knows better than many what it’s like to be on the receiving end of actual racist abuse.

Mike had many friends who knew the truth. But one more falling domino in the COVID effect was the cancellation of the Summit worldview workshops where he taught in Colorado Springs every summer. Zoom was a poor replacement. As a teacher and a friend, Mike thrived on live connection, embodied give-and-take. I spent extended time with him during one of these summers and can still recall how his table was always the “it” table come meal times. In all this, I am moved to reflect that there has not been nearly enough acknowledgement of the COVID lockdowns’ intangible losses—losses of human fellowship, human connection, human touch. Perhaps Mike’s death can inspire deeper reflection on that front as well. As cancel culture has claimed more than one kind of victim, so too has COVID.

Still, there is no softening the cruel fact that in the end, Mike was his own perpetrator and victim together. There never can be with a death like this, not without peddling platitudes at the expense of truth. Nevertheless, in a man’s final act of despair, all who drove him to that end are implicated, whether by their speech or their failure to speak.

Let Mike’s death be a warning. Let his life be an inspiration for those who knew him as he was: a flawed but good man, a generous friend, a gentlemanly foe, and a quintessential American conservative. He is mourned. He is missed. He will not be forgotten.

Esther O’Reilly is an American writer and conservative cultural critic. She has written for Patheos, Quillette, The Critic, and Arc Digital. In print, she has contributed to the anthology Myth and Meaning in Jordan Peterson (Lexham Press).

The post Cancelled to Death: The Mike Adams I Knew appeared first on The American Conservative.

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