087 | In which I show off my Press_Start gift, & ramble on a bit about the Trespasser DLC & pairings

[straightforwardly]

► Oh, wow— despite my constantly thinking, hey, I should update my DW soon, it’s somehow been over a month since I last updated. A whole other exchange has finished up, author’s reveal and all, without my talking about my gift in it— hell, I haven’t even talked about my thoughts on the fic I wrote for White Dwarf Rabbit Hole, despite saying in my last entry that I would do that soon!

So, that’s going to have to wait a bit longer, because I need to share the fic I got for Press_Start, and, again, for whatever reason, I feel weird talking about my own fic in the same entry where I brag about my gifts.

ANYWAYS. Gift-bragging time! Here’s what I got:



Sleep(less) (2616 words) by Rose Argent
Fandom: Final Fantasy IV
Characters: Cecil Harvey, Rydia (Final Fantasy IV), Gilbart Chris von Muir | Edward Chris von Muir
Summary: One night in the desert when no one could sleep and said nothing, and one night when they said much.



It’s SO GOOD, and so perfectly tailored to my interests! A Cecil & Edward & Rydia fic that touches on the implications of Cecil being a Dark Knight? DO WANT. I loved so much about this fic, but the dark knight stuff and Cecil’s consideration of Rydia is the stuff that’s making me melt right now, when thinking back on it. Seriously, if you have any fondness for Final Fantasy IV, you should go read this. ♥

► Speaking about things I meant to post about, and then never did... there’s the Trespasser DLC for Dragon Age Inquisition, which I played two days after it came out, and had intended to make a game-blogging post about. I’m not sure if I’m ever going to get around to doing a fleshed-out version about that now, actually, unless I play through it again— I mean, I might, as I do have notes for at least the beginning of my playthrough, before I got so absorbed that I couldn’t pull away— but I can’t guarantee it. So, as a quick summary: I started out the DLC being INCREDIBLY GLEEFUL and flail-y, and slowly transitioned to a sobbing wreck. In short, I adored it, and while my heart aches for my Inquisitor, I could not have asked for a better ending to Inquisition.

IN MORE RECENT NEWS, I think I have become addicted to heartbreaking romances in this game. (Stupid Solas. >_>) Why do I say that? Because I’m starting to notice a pattern. A pattern where I suddenly become 100% more invested in a ship when something makes it really sad, really complicated, or both.


The first one happened when I came across the Qun!Bull spoilers for Trespasser— and, specifically, what Dorian says if he & Bull ended up together. I never had them get together in-game, nor have I sought out any videos of it, so I’ve always been fairly neutral to the idea Dorian/Iron Bull outside of being annoyed at the people who’re nasty to the fans. But then that video happened, and now all I want is super angsty fic (including bitter!Dorian!) about it. Especially if it involves necromancy.

The next one came about when I was doing research into Sera’s romance in order to start a (unfortunately still incomplete) Josephine/Sera fic for 21_days, and came across a video showing a scenario post-What Pride Has Wrought where a romanced!Sera and f!Lavellan break-up because of their differing positions on “elfy” things.

I know this confrontation made me really upset when I played it as f!Lavellan & a befriended Sera, but wow. I'd be damned if Sera didn’t make me wibble hard in this video, and now I want nothing more than to do my Sera romance with a non-Atheris f!Lavellan (maybe even an f!mage!Lavellan, because I am cruel), and have it be a messy, complicated thing where they care deeply for one another, but don’t know if they can make it work out because of those strong differences between them and their worldviews. Just, waaant.

AND THEN. Today, I ran across a video about how the Inquisitor reacts to the Qun!Bull betrayal if they’d romanced them, and. Just. The Iron Bull is really low on my list of companions I want to romance (to the extent that I still have no idea who I want to romance him with), but watching that video suddenly made me think, DO WANT.

Which was about the same time I recalled the above instances, and the pieces clicked into place. I don’t know why I’m apparently enjoying tragedy/unhappiness/complications in my Inquisition romances, but I am.

(Side-note: Josephine/Sera is apparently the exception to this— I’d never thought about it before I came across that prompt at 21_days, but now I’m shipping it so hard.)

► My bookmarks are getting really, really cluttered, so I’d intended to make a link-dump in this post, but… this entry’s gotten long enough as it is, I think. Next time, perhaps. I might talk about Yuletide then as well, since the nomination period’s going on, and I’m working choosing my final requests so I can get started on my letter. And I’m going to stop myself here, before I start rambling on for another thousand words, thus utterly defeating the purpose of my deciding to not do a link-dump in this post.