30 Days of DA: OTP

Day Twelve: One True Pairing

The answer, of course, is Alistair/Warden, which I can't imagine comes as much of a surprise if you know me, or if you've been following along with this meme. This pairing hits all my buttons for so many reasons, whether it ends well or tragically -- maybe especially if it ends tragically. There is something very appealing to me about a "two of us against the world" romance, a Lovers in a Dangerous Time romance, a finding love among the ruins romance. As well, one of my favorite relationship tropes -- in either romance or friendship, and Alistair/Warden is both in my mind -- is separation and reunion, and depending on how their story plays out, this pairing can have either or both of those, in spades. It should not be any kind of surprise that The Prodigal was one of my first DA stories, or that Duty pretty much wrote itself not long after.

In a way, the most interesting thing to me about this question isn't how I answered it, but the fact that I have an answer at all. I very often have a favorite pairing in a story; I can get just as invested in 'ships as I do in individual characters. But rarely does my love for that pairing bring it to the level of an OTP. When I find a relationship that I become so invested in that I will describe it as an OTP, the chances of my writing fic about that pairing go up a hundredfold: Paine/Nooj, Ashe/Balthier, Marcus/Ivanova. When I wrote my big meta about what sources I become fannish about and why last year, I speculated that discovering an OTP is a big part of the reason, and that has certainly been the case with Dragon Age.

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30 Days of DA: Mages or Templars?

Day Thirteen: Mages or Templars?

So far, in both Origins and DA2, whenever forced to make a choice between mages and templars, my three Wardens and two Hawkes have ultimately supported the mages: both in the Circle Tower and in Kirkwall. I've mostly played characters who were either mages themselves or otherwise sympathetic to mages, and/or were opposed to what they saw as unnecessary killing. In general, the portrayal of the mages as an oppressed minority resonates with me more than the idea that they are dangerous and need to be contained, so that's the way my characters tend to lean as well.

My first Hawke, rogue Marian, was a little more moderate in her opinions than the others -- she believed in working with the templars she saw as reasonable, and wasn't always gung-ho about freedom for all mages. ( DA2 spoilers )

I do want to play a templar-supporting Hawke at some point, because I'm curious to see the story play out through that lens. But having successfully saved Ferelden's Circle three times, and knowing how simple it is to do so, it would be hard to bring myself to justify annulling it just for the sake of one quest outcome. Maybe someday, if I roll up a hell-on-wheels Warden, a character whose entire plan is to bulldoze their way through Ferelden, not much caring whom she or he hurts along the way. Part of me thinks that would be fun -- I had a blast playing an aggressive Hawke -- but given some of the choices an anti-hero Warden would have to make, I don't know that I could follow through.

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