#you can talk about the tragedy inherent in how young the crows are and how much they've suffered to become the people they are in the books

[firelxdykatara]

one of my biggest pet peeves in this fandom is when someone calls kaz (or, really, any of the crows, but especially kaz) ‘a child’, because like. no. he’s not lmfao. he’s very much not.

and like, ok, if you want to be ridiculously, overly literal and claim that anyone under the age of majority is A Child, then maybe (except there’s no real evidence that the AoM, if there even really is one, in Ketterdam is 18), but what’s really going on when people do this is they are either trying to make it seem like it’s morally OK for kaz to be a thief and a murderer and a gang leader/crime boss (bc he’s A Child and couldn’t be expected to know better uwu) which is completely ridiculous-

or they’re trying to make it seem like it’s weird for anyone who reads about these people acting like adults and doing adult things like murder and excessive violence to one another to find them attractive in whatever Mental Landscape they conjure while reading if they happen to be adults themselves, and that is it’s own brand of stupid (and also rooted in anti rhetoric, so these people must make it seem like these characters are Literal Children even though they really aren’t because they are fictional characters and any way you slice it all of them were robbed of their childhoods and forced to grow up too fast and a lot of people will have as their mental image the grown ass twenty-something actors portraying them in the show and a lot of us already had mental fancasts involving adult actors anyway so let it the fuck go my god)

and either way it’s just weird???? kaz isn’t a child. kaz does bad things, he knows they’re bad when he does them and he doesn’t care because they serve his goals. i wouldn’t even say that he believes the ends justify the means, he just never bothers to attempt any justification. he doesn’t care about right and wrong. that doesn’t mean he’s some sadistic monster who enjoys inflicting pain for the thrill of it--i think it’s very important that he carefully crafted a reputation around himself that ensures that because people believe he is a monster, he doesn’t have to do every monstrous thing in order for people to believe he will and act accordingly--but he’s still like. not interested in morals, and he probably never will be. he has lines he likely wouldn’t cross, he will respect people who respect him, he will (usually) keep his word unless there’s a good reason why he shouldn’t, but he’s not a good person. and that’s ok! that’s part of what i love about him!

but i think trying to excuse his behavior with ‘he’s a child’ (even if that isn’t necessarily the intention it’s absolutely how it comes across; ‘child’ implies a kind of innocence and naivety which simply doesn’t apply to kaz) is vastly missing the point of his character in the first place. 18 isn’t some magic number where you go from ‘child’ to ‘adult’ overnight. this is why we have terms like ‘teenager’ and ‘adolescence’, because there is a whole lot of development that happens between ‘child’ and ‘adult’ that is not implied by either term, and it’s why we also have ‘young adult’ for that late teens/early twenties transitory stage. and it really doesn’t matter how you conceptualize childhood development, kaz is no longer a child at the point where the books begin, and he hasn’t been for quite some time.

#kaz brekker #the crows #soc #six of crows #you can talk about the tragedy inherent in how young the crows are and how much they've suffered to become the people they are in the books #without implying or outright stating that any of them are still children #the only one who remotely acts close to his age is wylan and even then he's still clearly not a child #and like this is a common theme across the YA genre and it's why they broadly appeal to such wide audiences #it's fun to be a teenager and imagine a world where you don't need adults looking after you and telling you want to do #and it's fun to be an adult and imagine yourself as a teenager in that kind of world #there's no need to infantilize these characters who are essentially adults and do very adult things #just because they're young #this also applies to alina fyi

[our-happygirl500-fan]

You know the whole Baterang to the throat thing that causes a lot of discussion in the fandom? I think Bruce might not have been aiming for the throat

It ricochets

This point in comics Bruce has been through a ringer Steph's died, Barbara and Jim have left, Leslie betrayed him and he's had to send Cass and Tim away and now Jason is back but for revenge so Bruce isn’t at his best and I think Bruce threw the Baterang in a moment of panic and either over or undershot which ended up with well that.

This moment causes a lot of debate but I don't see it as “Bruce harming Jason to save the joker” the way a lot of fics paint it I see it more as he'd been aiming for Jason's arm or something to disarm him but overshot and it’s kind of like a symbolism of their relationship. 

 Which is basically Bruce takes an action to stop Jason from going down a path that he thinks will end up hurting Jason, but ends up hurting Jason in the long-run.

Like when he discussed taking away robin from Jason (because he thought Jason needed time to deal with issues that were becoming more prevalent) which only ended up making Jason feel insecure about his position in the Wayne household, contributing to why he so desperately pursued a stable parental relationship in his biological mother.

Bruce knows that if he gives in and kills the Joker he'll never stop killing we've seen timelines that prove that and I think Bruce also thinks the same of Jason that if Jason kills the Joker he won't stop at all so it’s not that he’s saving the Joker but that he’s trying to save Jason but Bruce ultimately misunderstands Jason’s needs and winds up hurting him.

Bruce is trying to save Jason from what he sees as a downwards spiral, but he ends up hurting him not just emotionally, but physically, and in the most extreme way possible. It's like an even darker echo of how trying to bench him as Robin led to his death.

Bruce has spent YEARS haunted by the memory of Jason’s death his death fundamentally changed Bruce's entire character Alfred said that Jason's death affected Bruce more than his own parents death.

In Underworld Unleashed it's revealed that his greatest desire is to have Jason back, in Hush he talks about how he wanted to put Jason in the Lazarus Pit and how he believes Jason knew he always loved him, and in As The Crow Flies we learn that his greatest fear is Jason coming back as an enemy and then in Under the Red Hood he gets Jason back (his greatest desire) but as an antagonist (his greatest fear) and moreover his belief that Jason 'knew' he loved him is WRONG.

Jason's insecurities from before his death combined with the perceived betrayal of Bruce not avenging him have led Jason to the point where he genuinely believes Bruce doesn't care, and in Jason's eyes, killing the joker is the only way Bruce can prove that he does but instead, in that moment, Bruce's attempt to diffuse the situation backfires.

Bruce misunderstands what Jason needs in that moment like he misunderstood what Jason needed at the start of Death in the Family it's just the ultimate representation of their constant emotional feedback loop. They trap themselves in a cycle of fighting because Jason can't read how Bruce really feels and Bruce can't read what Jason really needs and in that moment both those things are true, with Jason not seeing that Bruce truly cares anymore, and Bruce not knowing how to properly deescalate the situation and show Jason that he still cares.

It's extremely easy to read the batatrang throw as purposeful even though I wholly believe it was accidental but if that moment was explored more, I'm positive that Jason would believe it wasn't an accident, and would view it as proof of his already held view that Bruce doesn't love him anymore after all, that could have killed him, symbolically disowning him in the most extreme way possible.

Heck in Jason's appearance in Green Arrow (2001) Bruce had thought Jason might have died again! Before Jason turned up to mess with Mia.

The thing that's tragic about Jason that actually leads to a lot of his own suffering is that Jason doesn't really know what a healthy relationship looks like so I'm not sure when his actual 'last straw' would be.

Jason is the kind of person who sees love and acceptance as entirely circumstantial. He believes he must /earn/ love and acceptance, i.e. by being Robin, rather than it being inherently given.

A huge piece of understanding Robin Jason is understanding how much he lacked proper support systems back then. School was his only connection to his kids his age, and he didn't benefit much from that connection, his life was essentially: manor, school, Robin, repeat.

Jason loved school, but his school life was also pretty depressing. Jason kept to himself, he didn't have the time to participate in extracurriculars even when he wanted to and his peers didn't view him very positively. Jason was also really isolated from the rest of the hero community, there was his stint with the Titans, but it was pretty brief. He was also penpals with Kid Devil, but for the most part, he just had Batman.

The lack of support is actually one of the reasons I give for Jason and Steph dying in universe since they were the two Robins without support systems outside of Gotham. When Bruce was a jerk Dick and Tim could be like 'fine I'm going to go hang out with the Teen Titans or Young Justice' but Jason and Steph could only be like 'oh no' plus Bruce would deliberately try to take away Steph's support systems that she did have multiple times like when he ordered Cass to stop training with Steph.

But that's besides the point, I wouldn't be surprised if Jason confused being Robin with being accepted in the manor so when Bruce threatened to take away Robin from him, he might've seen it as his only proper support system being taken away from him, his world felt rocked back into instability once again.

When you look at it like that, it's very easy to understand why Jason sought out his biological mother. He had a hope that Sheila would offer him that stability once more, and that he'd get support and trust and unconditional love.

And that’s what make it all the more heartbreaking to me he came to this woman seeking love and gave her his greatest secret and she repaid him with a horrific death.  Jason’s death is one of the saddest to me because there’s no high stakes 'he died saving the world stuff' he’s just a kid who wanted a mom and got killed for it.

DC’s habit of taking away who he was is so detrimental to his backstory as the Red Hood because the transformation from someone who tried being kind and who did give it their all being killed for it and coming back like ‘no more’ is so much more interesting than ‘we always knew this would happen’.

Robin disobeying orders is nothing new. If that was the core of why Jason died, then any Robin disobeying orders should never be put in a positive light, but often it is. Jason (and Steph) were just the ones unlucky enough to emerge dead and judged for it instead of alive and praised for it.

Jason died because he was a child who just wanted to be safe and loved.

So many times Robin disobeying orders saved lives it’s nothing new and Jason had a pretty solid reason, the story of Jason Todd should be portrayed as the tragedy not make him some warning sign.

This is why I always hated the victim blaming after Jason & Steph's deaths because they died doing what if it had been Tim or Dick a Robin would be praised for, like take Steph for example we've seen constant stories of Bruce firing Robin, them going off on their own & Bruce realising he's wrong & taking them back but when Steph goes off on her own she dies the only reason Jason & Steph died is that the writers forced them to fail where they would have allowed the others to succeed.

But anyway back to my point the thing about Jason feeling like he had to earn love is why he was initially so hung up on the idea of Bruce 'replacing' him when he came back to life, he viewed Tim being robin as Bruce /transferring/ his love for Jason to another person, rather than seeing that Bruce could love Tim while still loving and missing him.

The reason Jason sought out his mother after Bruce benched him as Robin was that he viewed Bruce benching him as Bruce rejecting him and latched onto the idea of finding someone, i.e. a birth mother, who is supposed to give /unconditional love/.

The fact that his birth mother REJECTED HIM and then played a hand in his murder undoubtedly affected his attitude when he came back, if even his mother didn't want him, and then Bruce let the joker live and replaced him, then, in Jason's eyes, OF COURSE Bruce doesn't care and as mentioned previously Jason didn't really have any friends in school or the hero community, believing that the only real close personal connection in your live, someone you spent all your time with, had forgotten about you and rejected you is bound to mess a person up.

#DC comics #jason todd #bruce wayne #stephanie brown #dc

[pacifymebby]

What is your favourite novel/story of all time?

Like what’s your favourite book story?

Like give me a list of ur top five books

or like ur must reads.

And then like most heartbreaking reads?

Most exciting reads?

Most liberating read?

Couldn’t put it down read?

Idk just fucking tell me what u like to read just fucking fuck me already

Even better- what’s ur favourite lyrical story like a poem that’s a song ygm.

It's taken me so long to answer these but!!! My favourite ask omg!!!

My favourite novel? Oh god so hard!!

I think one of my favourite books ever is Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

There's going to be more than 5! Sorry!!

1. The Birds - Daphne Du Maurier its a short story and the collection of stories is ace but this is just haunting and uncanny and I really really want you to go and read it outside somewhere you can hear birds because Holy Shit does that really make it!!

2. Greif is the Thing With Feathers - Max Porter, it's his debut, its inspired by Ted Hughes Crow and its divine. Poetic and moving and just ugh. Its a sit down and read all in an hour book too it's just ugh ❤️

3. Communion - Bell Hooks, it's non fiction, every woman should read this, it will SPEAK to your soul and like the inner 17 year old who is lost and obsessed with needing to find someone who loves you/will look after you. It's just wonderful. It talked me out of a really subtly abusive relationship too it's great.

4. Self Help - Lorrie Moore. Again these short stories will just speak to you. They're clever they're sarcastic and they're just wonderful. It's feminism but subtle and not like, the point of the stories isn't inherently feminist, it's stories that you can tell we're written by a woman. They could only have been written by a woman.

5. The Waves - Virginia Woolf is just so melodically written. The rhythm is hypnotic I love it.

6. Despair - Nabakov IT'S SO CLEVER AND UNCANNY AND subtly horrifying? Love it!

7. Anna Karenina - Tolstoy, tbh I love Tolstoy and this and War and Peace are two of my absolute favourite books ever!!! They're incredible, he genuinely was a huge genius.

8. Idk whether u know this but I'm a massive trot and everything trotsky wrote about the October Revolution is a big rec from me.

9. My Brilliant Friend - Elena Ferante

I really love how she captures girlhood and the pains of growing up. The class themes too, the whole thing is great and I've seen a lot of hate for this book but it's totally undeserved!!

💔💔Most heartbreaking reads 💔💔

Grief is the Thing With Feathers - I kmow I've mentioned this but I cried and cried and cried.

I also found Jack Kerouacs On the Road to be heartbreaking in many ways, sorrow is the main theme which really runs through the work of the beats. Bohemia was a heartbreaking world to be a part of. The reality of the lives of the beats were bleak and aching and full of yearning. Women were carted off to asylums for expressing themselves! The men were drug and alcohol dependent. They were hopeless and the hope in their writing flows directly from this defeated, down an out, beat attitude.

Anyway it's very sad actually, on the road is a tragedy and a celebration of tragic lives, a weak attempt at preserving doomed young men.

It made me cry anyway, I'll shut up now.

White Nights - Fyodor Dostoevsky

It's just sad ya know, I'm a big simp for loneliness. Anything with a lonely feeling to it is good, those heartache sorrow pains you know. Love it.

Little Women killed me!! I love this book but oh man the pain the pain in my fragile heart

Les Miserables - Victor Hugo + the phantom of the opera - Gaston Leroux

Both of these are melancholic and dark in a very French way and I adore them both but God are they sad. Phantom is darker and more tense than the musical but i also find it more sad? It broke my heart anyway.

Les mis is obviously heartbreaking, no one is picking that up and expecting happy.

Most exciting Reads

Dark Materials!! Philip pullman. Read these as a kid when other kids were into Harry Potter and like, I think it's the reason am how I am. It's more violent and the symbolism is great but also enchanting. The idea of having your own daemon and an alithiometer to ask whatever question u like. Be amazing!! Also the shitting on the church, I enjoyed the massive conspiracy about the Catholic Church. Love it.

The Hobbit /Lord of the Rings

I guess I don't really need to sell these because everyone knows these books but they're just such wonderful stories. Again I read them as a child and I just adore them! I used to spend all my days as a child thinking these books over and over and just ugh <3

Good Omens - Terry Pratchet/Neil Gaimen.

I read this in two days its so so gripping and good and funny and entertaining has to be one of my favourite books ever!!! It's about an angel and a demon who have been on earth since the end of time and they are best friends (gay for eachother) and they have to save the world from the antichrist who is born in a little English village. It is wonderful.

Lysistrata

So this is a Greek comedy, it's great. I read it for college and just loved it!! It's about a woman denying all the men sex in order to end a war. What more can you want.

The Secret History - Donna tart

This isnt so much exciting like a thriller but u do really get sucked in, I couldn't put it down once I got into it. Starts slow but the characters are brilliant wee antiheroes. You can't stand anyone but u really are invested and you need to know what happens. You get to the end of the book and they're still a little bit of a mystery. You wanna know them in depth but u can't possibly and I love that.

Most Liberating Reads

Communion Bell Hooks - this was liberating and beautiful it taught me so much about myself and about womanhood and the challenge of love in a modern world. Wanting love in a feminist world which teaches you love is about submission when it! Isn't! It was freeing to read.

Little Birds Anais Nin

It's a collection of erotic short stories, I just love that at the time if men like Henry Miller Anais nin was earning her money writing erotica and like, that's just cool ya know?

How to be an Other Woman - Lorrie Moore

Idk man there's just something about this short story it's just, men are trash but you will be fine. I think the way she describes how a man can ruin you but you can come out superior in a way, is just. There was something about it that was nice and freeing. I find freedom in knowing I'm not the only one going through heartache. Communion in ur suffering its a religious experience and its freeing as fuck.

Tropic of Cancer/Capricorn Henry Miller

The man was a cunt but, the thrill of bohemian Paris is just divine and I love how spirited a writer he is. I felt on top of the world and like I could go off and escape my misery after reading these!

The Second Sex - simone de beauvoir

I had read so many people who referenced this before I read it but God they were right, it's incredible. It's striking too.

Culture of Narcissism - Christopher Lasch

This is sick, and I know I sound like a Red Scare hoe reccing this book but it says so much about modern society considering how it was written at the end of the 60s. It just spoke to me and it did feel freeing, I felt freed from the constrictive kind of culture we now live in. I love it. Some of it isn't great, some of it is dated and u think "shit Christopher be quiet!!" but the bits he gets right are incredible.

Confederacy of Dunces - Liberating because its just funny, spent the whole time reading it giggling.just daft 💖💖

Couldn't put it down read

I very recently read In the Miso Soup by Ryu Murakami and it was really really intriguing and horrifying and just wow. Could not put it down, dreamt about it. Was nuts.

The Shining - Stephen King again just gripping and haunting ya know. Couldn't stop reading it for even a second.

I actually also read Lolita in like two days because it was gripping and I was horrified but also captivated by the whole thing!

The Turn of the Screw - Henry James haunting, gripping. Anything haunting I tend to have to read all in one go tbh.

So poems and lyrics and stuff, this is gonna be tricky but, Pushkins poetry is very lyrical and song like and I am a sucker for that.

My favourite poets are Dylan Thomas and Seamus Heaney and Sylvia Plath though. I find Seamus Heaneys imagery and story telling is gorgeous and it really conjures an image and like communicates it beautifully.

Sylvia is emotive poetry hers are like chaotic little lyrics.

And a lot of Dylan Thomas poetry is lyrical and beautiful. Some of the lines in his are gorgeous.

Thank you for this ask I would love to talk to anyone and everyone about books this is my favourite subject!! ❤️❤️❤️

#Readingismyradar

[orodrethsgeek]

So as you may have noticed, I’ve fallen a bit in love with my latest Hawke, Kellan, and the relationship he has with Orsino. As usual, @robotslenderman came up with a great idea to solve a problem I wasn’t even fully aware I had: namely, that in both my canon DA:2 playthrough and our Solas Stays! Sableverse AU, Kellan Hawke does not exist. (My DA:2 canon is Aidan Hawke; Sableverse DA:2 canon is robotslenderman’s Marian Hawke.)

Says Dusty: would it be possible for him to exist as another character?

And thus, DA:2 Companion!Kellan was born. Backstory, recruitment mission, companion quests, and fate following endgame below the cut.

Backstory:

Kellan was born in 9:06 Dragon, not long after his mother, Lady Ambrei Venturi, scandalized the nobility of Kirkwall by marrying a penniless artist from Markham named Anthony Whalen. The nobles received a second shock when Lady Ambrei’s father, Lord Venturi, upheld his daughter’s unconventional marriage and confirmed her and her future children as heirs to the Venturi name, title, and fortune (none more so than the other Venturis themselves, who expected Ambrei to be disinherited for the disgrace). A plethora of wild rumors soon filled Kirkwall, likely started by jealous relatives–Lady Ambrei and her commoner husband had never been legally married; Anthony Whalen was the bastard, half-human son of an elven prostitute; one or both of them were apostates hiding in plain sight. None of these rumors were ever substantiated, and for a while the young family was blissfully happy, even while lesser branches of the Venturis continued to scheme.

In 9:18 Dragon, Lady Ambrei gave birth to a second son, this one named Ethan. Two years later, tragedy struck. Lady Venturi disappeared under suspicious circumstances. Her body was later found, though her killer never was–but many looked to her uncle Alester, who began at once to petition the Viscount for the deed to the Venturi estate, along with various other holdings. He argued that his niece’s commoner paramour had neither a title nor any true claim to the Venturi name, and that her eldest child, a boy of fourteen, was too young to take up the role and privileges of Lord Venturi. He might well have won his suit, save for two apparent strokes of luck. The first was that Alester was himself found dead in his home late that year, assassinated by an Antivan Crow. (His children accused young Kellan Venturi of taking out the contract on his life, but few put any weight in the charge. Kellan was, as their father had himself argued, little more than a boy at the time.)

The second stroke of luck was that in 9:21 Dragon, Viscount Perrin Threnhold contended with the templar order for control of Kirkwall, and lost. The old Viscount was deposed and arrested, and the new Knight-Commander anointed a new ruler of the city: Marlowe Dumar, a previously minor nobleman who had himself married a commoner, and to whom Kellan could claim a distant relationship through his maternal grandmother. Though a naturally cautious and conciliatory man, Viscount Dumar put very little store by the inherent superiority of the nobility, or by rumors of the illegitimacy of Lady Ambrei’s marriage. Kellan petitioned for his rights to the estate, the family fortune, and the title of Lord Venturi to be upheld, and Viscount Dumar ruled in his favor. The one stipulation he made concerned the Venturi fortune. In deference of Kellan’s age, control of the family’s finances would be held in trust by his father, until Kellan reached his majority.

Despite this victory, things were not all well within the Venturi estate. Thrown into a deep depression by his wife’s death, Anthony showed no signs of recovering a year later. For the most part he kept himself locked in his bedroom, clinging to the last of Ambrei’s possessions and only occasionally remembering to take an interest in his sons or duties. Not long after Kellan won his case with the Viscount, he came home to find his father chatting animatedly to a portrait of his mother, apparently convinced it was truly her. Unsure of how to help his father but certain the slightest sign of weakness would set his relatives back on the warpath, the young Lord Venturi kept Anthony’s condition a closely guarded secret. Nor did he make any attempt to end the trusteeship of Venturi finances early, even when his father began making increasingly reckless monetary decisions. Instead, he turned to dabbling in various crimes to keep Venturi coffers full (smuggling, blackmail, and poison-making were just a few of Kellan’s favored exploits–always under various aliases, to avoid being traced back to him).

The one bright spot in the storm of tragedy and intrigue was Ethan. Kellan loved his brother fiercely, and was determined to raise him as normally as possible. He did his best to keep Ethan ignorant of his shadier enterprises and inclinations, though as Ethan grew older he did pick up on more than a few things Kellan would have preferred to keep him in the dark about. Ethan also proved to be a comfort to his father; something about the boy’s presence seemed to wake him from his fantasy world into something closer than reality.

In 9:24 Dragon, Kellan turned eighteen and finally assumed full control of the family fortune–which had, despite his best efforts, dwindled under his father’s dubious care. He told himself that was reason enough why he couldn’t give up his criminal pursuits, and it wasn’t entirely a lie. But it was also true that he enjoyed the thrill of a scheme well-done. So Lord Kellen Venturi kept his hand in the criminal game, and an eye out for any other advantage that came his way. He’d learned from a young age that it took power and guile and a certain amount of ruthlessness to survive, and he intended to do much more than that.

Recruitment:

In 9:31 Dragon, the Hawke siblings are hired to steal from a Venturi-owned warehouse and deliver the goods to someone named Cesario in a Lowtown safe-house. They’re promised a substantial reward if they prove successful, and the chance for future partnership opportunities. When they arrive at the warehouse itself, they find it not conventionally guarded at all–though there are a number of magical traps that either Hawke (if a mage) or Bethany must deactivate to proceed.

At the Lowtown safe-house, the Hawke siblings are eventually greeted by Kellan, who congratulates them on a job well-done and reveals that he’s the one who hired them to steal from one of his legitimate warehouses. He’s heard rumors about a Ferelden apostate with a solid reputation in Kirkwall’s criminal underworld, but he wanted to get the measure of them himself.

Regardless of whether Hawke or their sibling is the mage, Kellan then reveals this quest was essentially their audition, and they’ve passed. He’s looking for an apostate to tutor his brother Ethan, whose magic has recently manifested. If mage!Hawke/Bethany agrees, Kellan will become a recurring companion. He’ll also have a follow-up cutscene where he mentions that he’s heard Hawke is trying to get in on Bartrand’s Deep Roads expedition and that he’d be willing to help fund Hawke’s contribution for a share of the profits. He expresses some hesitation about going himself, but he’ll agree if pressed.

Rough Outline of Companion Quests:

Between Act I and Act II:

Regardless of whether or not Kellan is brought on the Deep Roads expedition, when Hawke returns at the end of Act I, it will be to find that Ethan’s magic was discovered and he’s been taken to the Circle. Kellan handles this badly, and there’s a brief cutscene in which Hawke will have the chance to talk with him about it. Depending on the level of friendship/rivalry he and Hawke have developed, he may confide that this isn’t over and that he won’t leave his brother in the Gallows forever. (In general, friendly Hawkes will be given more of a window into Kellan’s state of mind/plans; a rival Hawke will be kept in the dark.)

Act II:

Though he’s been able to establish a written correspondence with his brother during the three year time skip, he hasn’t yet been able to see him face-to-face. He’s finally gotten the Grand Cleric’s word that if he performs a laundry list of tasks for her/the Chantry, she’ll arrange for Kellan and Ethan to be able to meet. He asks Hawke for help with completing the tasks. (One of them possibly involves retrieving a shipment of stolen lyrium from a Darktown gang.) If Hawke agrees and the tasks are successfully completed, Kellan gets to visit his brother. Depending on how close he and Hawke are, he might invite Hawke to come meet Ethan with him, as well.

Following the completion of his personal quest, Kellan will offer to give Hawke what help he can in navigating the politics of the ruling class in Kirkwall.

If Kellan is brought into the Fade during Feynriel’s Act II quest, he might betray Hawke for the desire demon, who promises to heal his father’s broken mind and return Ethan to him. Afterwards, high friendship Hawkes will learn about Anthony’s breakdown following his wife’s death. Kellan will admit he’s worried about his father, who has been getting worse since Ethan was taken away. Hawkes with a high enough friendship have the opportunity to learn about this in a later cutscene if Kellan is not brought to the Fade/doesn’t betray Hawke.

Through ambient dialogue throughout Act II, it’s revealed that Kellan has also struck up a correspondence with the First Enchanter, who took a particular interest in Ethan’s progress as an apprentice because of how often Kellan attempted to get in touch with him when he was first taken to the Circle. As Act II progresses Kellan makes references to sending Ethan care packages, and also to covertly figuring out the First Enchanter’s favorite wine/treats/etc to send him gifts as well.

Between Act II and Act III:

Following the deaths of the Dumars, Kirkwall entered a period of de facto martial law, with Meredith all but seizing control of the city and refusing to allow a new Viscount to be appointed. Kellan, who had been reasonably close to his distant cousins, considered the position his by rights–Viscount is a hereditary title, and Kellan can trace his genealogy back to a Dumar great-grandmother. He will eventually ask Hawke to support his bid for the position, inviting them to attend a small gathering of nobles and show that he has the new Champion of Kirkwall’s support to shore up less certain nobles.

Orsino is also attending this party; high friendship Hawkes will have a chance to comment on how it seems Kellan has feelings for him. Kellan will initially deny it, but later admit that they’re right. Privately, he’ll confess to feeling conflicted about the whole situation; it’s not a politically smart move to get entangled with such a high profile mage when he’s aiming to become Viscount. As the conversation progresses, though, Kellan will resolve to keep pressing forward regardless, and to use his political power to make things better for Kirkwall mages. He won’t agree to confess his feelings to Orsino, however, even if Hawke presses him on it; he’ll say he wouldn’t want Orsino to think his support of the mage cause is contingent on Orsino sleeping with him. He’s seen too many templars take advantages of a mage’s limited ability to say no in recent years and he won’t join their number.

This prompts an optional subquest, where Hawke can choose to let Orsino know about Kellan’s feelings, so that it’s at least up to Orsino whether to pursue any sort of relationship or not. Orsino will be surprised, but admit that he’s occasionally thought Kellan’s feelings went a bit deeper than mere professional partnership. He won’t divulge to Hawke whether he shares Kellan’s feelings, but he will choose to seek Kellan out at the end of the cutscene. Kellan will later accuse Hawke of meddling, but admit that things turned out for the best.

Act III:

Kellan asks Hawke to help him compile evidence of the Chantry’s many misdeeds in Kirkwall over the last several years. He plans to use the evidence to appeal to the Divine to relieve the Gallows mages and restore Kirkwall’s civil governance. He will also mention contingency plans for getting Ethan out of the Gallows, though he doesn’t get into specifics even with high friendship Hawkes. Ambient dialogue will reveal how stressed he is over Ethan and Orsino in particular being in danger, but also his concern for the other mages in the Gallows as well. It’s clear that he’s adopted Orsino’s people as his own.

Anthony’s mental health finally takes its final plunge in Act III, and he ends up taking his life. Kellan is absolutely beside himself, blaming everyone from his long-dead great-uncle (for killing his mother and causing his father’s initial depression), to the templars who took Ethan away, and, privately, himself, for not being able to do more, for not watching him more closely. He swears that someone will pay for this and asks for Hawke’s help; regardless of Hawke’s response, he plans to go through with something ill-thought-out and drastic. Whatever Hawke’s response, Sebastian will approach them for help restraining Kellan and appealing to his better nature. If Hawke agrees, Sebastian lets them in on his plan; if not, he carries it out himself. Again, regardless, Kellan’s plans of revenge stop short when either Hawke and Sebastian or just Sebastian bring Orsino or Ethan to talk him out of it. (A Hawke who has agreed to help Sebastian will get to choose whether they should bring Orsino or Ethan; Sebastian acting alone will choose Orsino because he doesn’t think Ethan should have to see his brother this close to losing it.) Whichever one is chosen, Kellan will finally let himself be talked out of his plan.

Endgame:

During The Last Straw/Chantry boom cutscene, Kellan will protest if Hawke chooses to kill Anders. If Hawke persists regardless, Anders will tell Kellan it’s alright and ask him to focus on helping the Circle mages from this point on. Kellan will stand down, but will tell Hawke they made a mistake.

If Hawke chooses to side with the mages, Kellan will either suggest that they use Isabela’s knowledge of ships to quickly evacuate the Circle mages from the Gallows (if Isabela returned during the Act II Qunari crisis), or that they utilize the secret passage into the Gallows from Darktown to beat the templars back, bar the tower from within, and evacuate as many mages as possible through the tunnels. He, Orsino, and Ethan will all survive in a pro-mage scenario.

Kellan cannot be convinced to side with the templars, regardless of his friendship/rivalry status to Hawke. He will always choose to make a last stand with Orsino and the mages, giving Ethan and the other apprentices a chance to escape. He and Orsino will perish together in a pro-templar scenario.

DA:I:

If Kellan and Orsino survive the events of Dragon Age:2, they will appear in Skyhold once the next Divine has been chosen, present her with evidence of the Chantry’s and templars’ myriad crimes in Kirkwall, and demand reparations. They later settle in Wycome with their 30+ adopted mage babies, including Ethan.

And that’s pretty much a wrap! Feel free to also ask questions about Companion!Kellan if you have any :) also if you’ve read this whole thing, congrats and thank you XD

#c: kellan hawke #companion!kellan #Hawke #Hawke-as-companion #my ocs #my dragon age ocs #anybody catch my Shakespeare reference? #c: kellan

[thecelestialjukebox]

Best of 2017: 10-1

10. Paramore - Hard Times: 

“Hard Times,” first and foremost, is an expertly crafted retro pop song just on virtue of sonics— those marimbas! Those guitar stabs! That awkward vocoder bit! Yet it also captures something deep about the new wave material it’s cribbing from, something that many artists who’ve decided to do Talking Heads cosplay miss. On “Hard Times,” Hayley Williams, who has long been one of the best songwriters in the Alt-rock world, nails the profound sadness and fear of the best New Wave. But “Hard Times” is not just notable for how it imitates the past but in how it boldly stabs towards new sonic ground, in how it shows a Paramore that’s willing to evolve into something unrecognizable from the band that put out “Misery Business.”

9. Mount Eerie - Soria Moria:

 A Crow Looked At Me is a tragedy not just because of the real life calamity that it documents but because of the thing it realizes about the nature of sorrow. A Crow Looked At Me is about the death and mourning of Geneveive Castree, yes, but it’s also about how memory betrays us, gives us nothing but shards of what once was. “Soria Moria” is where Phil Elverum explores this theme most fully, weaving together his entire life and love into a meditation on the impossible places that grief and memory drive us towards, all held together by the twin images of a mythic Norwegian castle and “Slow pulsing red tower lights/Across a distance, refuge in the dust.”

8. Marika Hackman - Time’s Been Reckless:

 There are more genius hooks crammed into the four minutes of “Time’s Been Reckless” than most albums have in their entire running times. What more do you want from a power pop song? What greater joy is there than a pop song as expertly crafted as this?

7. The World Is A Beautiful Place & I Am No Longer Afraid To Die - Marine Tigers: 

“Marine Tigers” is a heavy song— not just in its 4th-wave emo aesthetics and massive guitar riffs or its seven minute length, but in the density of its lyrics, which weave together fragments of the immigrant experience both political and personal into a meditation on what it means to be foreign. Yet any song this heavy needs something deeply vulnerable and open in it to survive— otherwise, it’s just dull— and “Marine Tigers” finds that moment in its midsection, as the eerie sustained guitar and synth lines fall away for riffs more delicate and the snare drops out entirely and the thing we’re left with it is just the simple declaration of defiant existence, repeated over and over again: “We’re here/I told you so.”  

6. Vince Staples - Big Fish:

 Vince Staples’ Big Fish Theory is one of those obvious masterpieces of an album, an album that commits so deeply to its aesthetic, equal parts submerged and metallic, that it can use its specificity to make universally powerful moments. “Big Fish,” the album’s pseudo-title track, is the most compelling moment on an album that’s full of them— it’s the easiest demonstration of Vince Staples’ appeal as a rapper who can move between intensity and levity. Just take the opening of the second verse:

“It's funny I was going crazy not too long ago

Women problems every morning like the Maury show

Swimming upstream while I'm tryna keep my bread

From the sharks make me wanna put the hammer to my head

At the park politickin' with the kids

Tryna get em on a straight path, got the lames mad

Know they hate to see me make cash, got the space dash

In the foreign with the GPS addressed to your mama house”

Vince delivers these lines with his characteristic flow, an almost mechanical method that lends his punchlines, like the literal “your mom” joke that ends this passage, a certain ambiguity. His best material is unnerving in that respect, in how you can’t ever tell fully how serious he is about any proposition, but it’s also thrilling.

5. St. Vincent - Hang On Me / Slow Disco:

 “Hang On Me” and “Slow Disco” are two equal and opposite forces, beginning and ending MASSEDUCTION with a desperate, pleading cry for companionship and an equally desperate act of abandonment. Both songs are bare, at least by St. Vincent’s typically maximalist standards, pairing Annie Clark’s vocal performances with just simple strings-and-synth arrangements that stick to slow, elegiac riffs. And in the open space left on these tracks, she delivers the two greatest vocal performances of her career, aching and raw in ways she never has been before.

4. Lil Uzi Vert - XO TOUR Llif3: 

On paper, it’s easy to dismiss “XO TOUR LLif3” as just another pop-trap novelty song, a faux-edgy earworm of a hook about dead friends with no song supporting it. After all, Lil Uzi Vert dropped it on SoundCloud unceremoniously last February on the short stopgap mixtape “Luv is Rage 1.5”, and only gave it a commercial release after the song became inescapably popular on that platform. Yet as soon Uzi’s voice starts to croak over TM88’s cyber-goth beat, it’s clear why “XO TOUR LLif3” is special. Cloaked in layers of autotune that nevertheless serve to accentuate the raw human emotion of his performance, the Philadelphia rapper slurs his lines together, starting and stopping and fragmenting himself towards incomprehensibility. It’s strange to see “XO TOUR LLif3” as some anthem, a song of the summer, when in itself it is not just personal but an invocation of the sheer loneliness and untranslatability of feeling. The line that everyone focuses on here is “all my friends are dead, push me to the edge,” which admittedly is one hell of a unique hook, but it’s in the song’s second verse (roughly speaking) that the song reveals its heart, a swirling mess of megalomania and fear: “I cannot die because this my universe.”

3. Lorde - The Louvre: 

The first part of “The Louvre” is already among the best work on Lorde’s messy, wonderful Melodrama. Lorde expertly captures the uncertainty and passion of a young romance in the song’s lyrics, which shift constantly from long, languid bits of poetry like “Well, summer slipped us underneath her tongue/Our days and nights are perfumed with obsession” to casual, conversational lines like “They’ll hang us in the Louvre/Down the back, but who cares—still the Louvre.” The beat, produced by Flume and Malay (who also contributed to many of the best bits of Frank Ocean’s Blonde) also contributes to this feeling of ambiguity, rising and falling and rising again from simple guitar strums to the burbling mass of synths that Lorde sings the song’s final chorus over, all wistful passion. Yet the best part of “The Louvre” is in the back half, after all that is over. The song’s extended, wordless outro, anchored by a repeated guitar and synth figure, is some of the most evocative sonic storytelling of the year, an open question of a piece that hints of sun-drenched memories.

2. Japanese Breakfast - The Body Is A Blade:

 “The Body Is A Blade” is a song about grief but it is not quite a sad song— instead, it feels like every other emotion but sadness is here, from a kind of wistful joy to defeat to anger finally all the way to acceptance. These feelings flow through every part of the song, from the guitars that hold the track down, slowly moving across its landscape with a deliberate sort of beauty, to the synth arpeggios that float in, unbound to the material world, in the song’s second half. In between these interlinked, kaleidoscopic parts a whole world of trauma and memory lies, brought out by Michelle Zauner’s vocal performance. Even as all these things move around her, she is steady, a force of clarity in an ambiguous and beautiful sonic world. Her lyrics, focused around the idea of survival in grief, do the same, returning again and again to the image of the body cutting through the days for the sake of staying alive.

1. Carly Rae Jepsen - Cut To The Feeling:

 Pop music is both very easy and very hard to explain. The easy part is identifying all the little moving parts that work— the surf guitar in “Toxic,” for example, or the rolling drum beat on “Maps.” The hard part is in explaining how each of those functional elements, the load-bearers of a song, come together into something more. It’s easier in other genres— you can point to the virtuosity of a metal guitarist or an uber-technical rapper as the point where a song achieves greatness, or see the deeper meaning in an expertly crafted folk song or thoughtful piece of R&B— but pop is supposed to be disposable, which isn’t a bad thing, really, but makes finding its critical value more difficult.

“Cut To The Feeling” makes the hard part easy. “Cut To The Feeling” is not quite the best pop song of all time but is certainly the most pop pop song of all time, a throwaway (it’s a B-side to Emotion’s B-sides, consigned to a fourth-rate French animated movie) that takes its status as a throwaway as not a write-off but a mission statement. It’s supposedly a love song, just as all of CRJ’s output has been, but it’s really a song about what pop music does to you, how these little confections of synths and vocal lines develop emergent properties and actually make you feel things. “Cut To The Feeling” knows that it isn’t real, that pop music is inherently an exercise in abstractions and constructed images, but it doesn’t really care. Somewhere in the song’s build, as chugging rhythm guitar gives way to those massive synth chords, the point of the difference between the feeling itself and the shortcut the music provides is lost. “Cut To The Feeling” sounds like what it is: an ode to the power of pop music to become something ineffably more even within its limitations.

#best of 2017 #music