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stop-breaking-my-heart-dragonage · 5 months

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This week on "CJ needs to gush about DAO": Morrigan's dark ritual.

I adore Origins because depending on how serious you take roleplay, every decision you make is a thread that leads back to your origin, and in this case of the ritual, who you choose to romance can have a major impact on how you handle this choice.

For context, my canon run is with a female Tabris who romances Alistair and keeps him as a Grey Warden, and is close friends with Morrigan. It's more in character for my Tabris to reject Morrigan's ritual and not even bring it up to Alistair, which would result in her leaving him behind while she makes the ultimate sacrifice in killing the archdemon... however, agreeing to convince Alistair to do the ritual with Morrigan is the only choice in the entire game where I break roleplay because I'm selfish and weak and I want Tabris to live.

I have a lot of strong feelings about the ritual, like it hurts me. It makes me want to chew on furniture. I can talk about it until I can talk no more. I so badly want to be strong enough to remain in character and reject the ritual.

Let me explain: Tabris survives an origin that deals with sexual assault. She gets kidnapped on her wedding day, she watches the other kidnapped women and her husband get murdered, and then is too late to save Shianni from being assaulted... and Tabris carries that trauma with her throughout the entire game.

If the way to save her life is to ask the two most important people she cares about; one being her lover and the other being her best friend; who she knows hate each other, to have dubiously consensual sex in order to make a baby to absorb the old god soul... she's saying no. The last thing Tabris would ever do is put someone into a sexual situation where consent is at all dubious after what she saw happen to Shianni and nearly happened to herself. She'd rather die than force that upon Alistair and Morrigan.

That's what I mean when I say origin affects everything; I know some will side eye that with "Really? Your warden would rather die than let Alistair sleep with another woman? It's one time, and Alistair agrees to it, so no one needs to die?"

Let me be clear in saying this isn't a "Morrigan slept with my man" issue. Sure, that part's awkward and it sucks, but that's not even breaking water tension, let alone diving into the deep waters to the core of the issue.

For my Tabris, this is about betrayal, consent, and accepting fate.

The person offering Tabris this deal is someone she thought of as a trusted friend who has actually been lying to her the entire time. It doesn't matter what Morrigan's intentions are now or if she genuinely wants to save the wardens. She knew from the beginning why Flemeth sent her with them, she admits as much. She knew a warden would need to make the ultimate sacrifice and then leveraged that to get what she wants. Morrigan waited until the night before, when Alistair and the warden learn one of them has to die to defeat the archdemon, and took advantage of the high running emotions and possibly the fear of dying to make the warden agree to her ritual.

At least, that's how my Tabris interprets this confrontation. She feels betrayed by someone she came to love like a sister and went out of her way to help Morrigan with her mother upon learning what's in Flemeth's grimoire. And then that someone tells her no one needs to die, she just needs to convince Alistair to sleep with her... which is a huge fucking problem.

The Alistair and Tabris romance is slow; it took a long time for either of them to be comfortable with being emotionally vulnerable and trusting each other with basic intimacy, let alone sex. Tabris is mortified at the idea of putting Alistair in this situation. Not only would it feel like a betrayal on her part to ask that of him, but she knows the last thing Alistair ever wants to do is father a bastard who then goes on to grow up without him. How could she possibly ask him to do that?

Then you consider that ritual or no, there isn't a guarantee that they'll survive anyway. Say they do the ritual and Tabris dies anyway; she made Alistair sleep with Morrigan in order to save her and then she died anyway. Or if Alistair dies then Tabris gets to live with the fact that the last person Alistair was with was a woman he hates because she asked that of him… and either way, Morrigan gets to walk away with what she wanted.

Tabris led the group, and she's accepted that if Riordan dies [which he does] then she'll be the one to make the sacrifice, even if it means breaking both hers and Alistair's heart.... except she doesn't because I'm a coward who doesn't want to lose her because my worldstate isn't good without her in it but I also refuse to lose Alistair so I just pretend it plays out differently in my head it's fine-

But... that's how I play Tabris and view the situation. My friend @pi-creates and I have discussed the dark ritual at length. While I play a Tabris who romances Alistair, Pi plays a Mahariel who romances Morrigan, so we have vastly different interpretations of the ritual itself and Morrigan's intentions.

Which yeah, it makes total sense that someone who romanced Morrigan with a different origin, and has the option to do the ritual with her rather than asking someone else to do it, wouldn't see this the way I do.

To quote Pi: "Playing as a male warden in the Morrigan romance makes the whole situation feel different, and maybe it’s because she’s presenting it differently due to the emotional connection, but it feels more like she’s opening up about her initial instructions (that she had been given by Flemeth) and offering a solution to avoid the possibility of death. And for my Mahariel, the constant threat of sudden death has haunted him from the start – he caught the blight and was ripped away from his clan (something he did not want to do in the slightest), got forced into a Grey Warden ritual that could kill him, was forced into a battle that could kill him, going on this whole quest that he never wanted but has now become responsible for regardless of his thoughts on the matter… the dark ritual may be one of the few moments where he is presented with an option to decide if he wants to walk into certain death, or take actions of his own volition to stop it.

"The idea of the ritual still feels like a dodgy thing to do since the ultimate outcome is unknown at that point, he’s taking Morrigan at her word that it will save the warden and that this child would be unharmed, just with an old god soul that she isn’t exactly clear on why she wants that and is determined to runaway immediately after the battle to secure it properly. It could be interpreted that it’s purely a preservation thing, but I’m biased to wanting Morrigan's intentions to not be power based.

"But also, taking part in the ritual isn’t as outlandish for my warden since he and Morrigan have already been involved in an intimate relationship. It’s the future of the ritual that is scarier – the idea of this old-god baby, and the idea of Morrigan insisting that she’s leaving afterwards when Mahariel and her have a loving relationship. He’s hurting, but he doesn’t want to die, he doesn’t want Alistair to die, he doesn’t want Morrigan to leave, he definitely doesn’t want pregnant Morrigan to leave on her own… it’s complicated, but for completely different reasons."

And I find that fascinating. I want to know how other players approach this part of DAO, what origins they play, and who they romanced. Seriously, this is an invitation to anyone reading to share their thoughts.

What about a warden who doesn't even have Alistair in their party because they made Loghain a warden? Is there anyone out there who has Loghain do the ritual with Morrigan and why? What about male wardens who don't romance her? Do you choose to do it with her anyway, or do you ask Alistair or Loghain to do it? Do you tell Morrigan to fuck off with the ritual? Why? Who makes the ultimate sacrifice in that case? And what about Morrigan herself? How do you interpret her intentions/motivations? I want to know.

I'm telling you, this is a discussion that gets me excited, as most discussions about DAO do.

#dao #dragon age origins #alistair theirin #dao alistair #dao morrigan #da morrigan #tw: sa mention #long post #i love origins so much #every time i replay i end up on discord having this discussion with pi because it makes me *emotional*#and yes this is why i was looking up alistair's dialogue about a dead warden before #also want to clear up that while i am harsh on morrigan based on how my tabris feels i don't hate her or anything i love her #morrigan's one of my favorite characters and that's why the whole thing hurts like... tabris was happy for her to come along with them #since she still didn't know alistair well and felt more comfortable with another woman around even though she never felt threatened by him #and for them both to be her closest companions like.... it's a lot to take in #and its not like tabris is totally in the right here- she doesn't tell alistair it's an option when it could be argued that she should've #but like i said i've never actually turned down the ritual because i love my warden too much... i just close my eyes #and pretend there's an alternate solution where Alistair and Tabris do the ritual and they have the old god baby instead sksksks #that way no one has to sleep with someone they hate and alistair gets to be there to raise his child. it's fine everything's fine sksksk #i don't care if it doesn't work that way okay it's the only way this works out better for everyone... except maybe morrigan but still

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freddieslater · 18 days

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28. Feed for the fic-title thing :D good luck with your writing!!

Thank you so much, I really appreciate that! (So, I basically wrote this entire fic since it was a short one anyway, so thank for you requesting this one lmao)

"I've gotta admit, I used to think I'd enjoy this a lot more."

Matt gives a grim laugh, wincing at the sharp pain that shoots up through his wrist and into his shoulder. Here's hoping that's not a lasting effect or else he's going to have a rough practice tomorrow.

Elena immediately pulls back, making him regret saying anything at all when he sees the look on her face. He knows the look well; he saw that same guilty expression the weeks just before they broke up. He didn't know but he did. At least then, her guilt made sense, though.

"Matt," she starts to say, shaking her head, "I'm so sorr-"

"Hey, hey, it was a joke," he tries to assure her. Instinct has him reaching out to rest a hand on the side of her neck because he knows...

He has to stop himself short, leaving his hand awkwardly between them for a second before he ultimately decides not to cross that line and drops it back to his side. He swallows the lump in his throat but it hasn't budged in about four years, why would it now?

Elena's face drops along with his hand and he feels he might as well have just ripped her heart out with his bare hands. Funny that, how it would be unforgivable if he hurt her like that. But not for them.

She rubs at her face as she turns away from him, dragging her fingers through her hair with a pained expression. "It wasn't supposed to be like this. None of this..."

Matt knows that. Elena knows that. Everyone in the universe knows that their lives were not supposed to end up like this. It has been the only thing he has thought every single morning when he wakes up and every night when he tries to sleep. Except he's not mad about it anymore. What's the point?

Heaving a deep sigh, he gives in this time to his instincts and wraps his arms around her. She leans into him without any hesitation, and so he holds her close to him.

"It's gonna be okay," he quietly promises her even though he doesn't know how that could ever possibly be true when any of the people in his life could kill him on a whim tomorrow and he'd be forgotten about in a week.

That thought stirs something bitter in him and it tries to climb his throat but he forces it back down as Elena turns her body in his arms and presses herself against him, hugging him tightly. She doesn't even fight his unreliable word because she wants it to be true just as much as he does.

He lands a kiss on the top of her head, allowing himself just this one thing. Just this one second where it's just them. No vampires, no werewolves, nothing. Just two people who know each other better than they know themselves at time and don't quite know how to untangle the mess they have made of each other and themselves in the process.

"Come on," he murmurs. "You need to finish feeding. You barely took any, you've gotta be starving."

"But it's hurting you."

"Then just... try a different way or something. Maybe it's because you're new to it. There's gotta be some kind of learning curve, right? Like swimming or football."

Elena lets out the smallest laugh at that. She raises her head to look up at him with a slight smile, then she sighs, glancing uncertainly at his neck. It still sends a cold shiver down his spine to be looked at like that. A bit like how he imagines lions look at deer.

But he knows, deep down, that he would allow himself to be caught if it meant ensuring Elena got to live another day. That's not new. He spent weeks after the first crash wishing he had driven her home instead, or that he hadn't convinced her to go to the party at all. He can't think about the other crash at all.

She gets him to tilt his head a few centimetres back, resting against the wall behind him. Her fingers brush the sensitive skin of his neck, resting at the base of his throat. Then she leans in and slowly sinks her teeth into the soft flesh.

It doesn't hurt. Well, there is a prickle of pain, but then it erupts into something warm and he's not sure it's pain at all anymore. He gasps softly when they get all the way beneath the surface. They're definitely there, he can feel them, but it's not obtrusive like it was before. They're just... there. In his neck.

Elena's hand slides up the other side of his neck to keep him still and stop herself from accidentally slipping either. His eyes flutter closed at the touch.

"That's... yeah, that's a lot better," he breathes out shakily.

A wave of disappointment actually washes over him when she pulls back. There's a trickle of his blood on her lip. His stomach turns inside out. Unfurling. He can't figure out if he's disturbed or...

"Was that enough?" he asks tightly, pressing a hand to the small wound on his neck.

She nods and quickly wipes her mouth, ducking her head as if to stop him from seeing like this. He tries again to swallow but it causes stars to pop up in front of his eyes. Elena gets him to sit down on the bench nearby. She keeps hold of his hand. If she can hear his racing heart (which she probably can), she doesn't say a thing about it.

Send me the title/number of a wip and make me write it!

#smells-like-trouble #ask away earthlings!#make me write #tvd #the vampire diaries #matlena #elena gilbert #matt donovan #elena x matt #matt x elena #god I just have so many feelings about them okay #and I realized while writing this that I very much like the idea of their post-turning dynamic being sort of damon/katherine-esque?#their human dynamic I mean #because the way I wrote matt being slightly fascinated by elena while she was feeding on him definitely reminds me of the scene #when damon is watching katherine feeding and he's slightly disgusted and slightly turned on at the same time lmao #because while the whole drinking blood thing freaks them both out there is something to be said about seeing the woman you love like that

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