rocky41_7

Happy February 2nd! For Femslash February, some fanfic recommendations! Asteriks by particular favs (. ❛ ᴗ ❛.)

Comfort by RipplesOfAqua - Josephine/Vivienne - In tired moments, they find comfort from one another.

Counting by klickitats - Josephine/Leliana - Leliana and Josephine meet for the first time, despite Leliana's best efforts to the contrary.

duet for two Hands in six baths by thereinafter - Cassandra/Leliana - Six different times Leliana and Cassandra ended up in a bathing-type situation together.

* To Feel, Still Seeing by hornkerling - Josephine/Vivienne - “Were you aware-? ...Oh, I don’t know if I should tell you.” Josephine taps her pen against the top of the desk a couple of thoughtful times and looks at Vivienne, eyes filled with giggly mirth. “At my finishing school in Val Royeaux, the girls had a habit of choosing prominent persons who figured in the societé as idols. To… dream about. Entertain girly fantasies. You, Madame, were one of them.”

A First Encounter by amarmeme - f!Hawke/Cassandra - Hawke knows little about the woman who's after her, beyond what Varric tells her. Cassandra knows a lot about the Champion, but is any of it real?

Late, Late Nights and Early Starts by hibernate - f!Cadash/Cassandra, Leliana/Vivienne - Sleep is for those with less to do.

A Most Edible Thistle by @chocochipbiscuit - Josephine/Vivienne - Artichokes, assassins, and the schoolgirl crush that Josephine never outgrew.

Nevarran Steel by bioticbootyshaker - Cassandra/Vivienne - Endangering her life needlessly, Cassandra realizes that the vow she made to Vivienne -- to be her Chevalier and to serve her -- is more than just some silly promise.

No Home For You Here by withpractice - f!Hawke/Merrill - Nothing could have possibly prepared her for what came next.

* The Other Side of Terror by superfluouskeys - f!Hawke/Cassandra - Hawke would just like everyone to know that she has shown remarkable restraint. Did she fall in love at first sight with the angry muscly templar lady? Maybe! But has she so much as gone near her, so much as glanced in her terrifyingly beautiful direction since her arrival at Skyhold?

A Piece of Sunset by madamebadger - Josephine/Leliana - "Flatterer." But there was a curl of enjoyment in Josie's voice, so Leliana persisted.

* pretend this isn’t bleeding by ghost_teeth - f!Trevelyan/Vivienne - For the first time in perhaps ten years, Vivienne considers withdrawing from a party for a breath of fresh air.

pride, and the hurt the followed it by Anonymous - f!Hawke/Merrill - While trying to save Feynriel from his own nightmares, Merrill falls victim to the persuasive words of a pride demon, and turns on Hawke in the Fade. When she wakes up and realises what she's done, she hides away, certain that Hawke will want nothing to do with her. But Hawke is nothing if not surprising.

* The Rain it Raineth Every Day by Glaukobiblion - f!Hawke/Merrill - The summer before Hawke goes to college, Leandra hires a new gardener. Pining, parties, and poor decisions ensue.

The Spice of Life by Anthologyofwhat - f!Hawke/Merrill - The tale of Merrill's illicit search for inappropriate uses of magic. No sex, just talking.

Small Comforts by thereinafter - Leliana knows when Cassandra has a frustrating day, and vice versa.

This Dangerous Game We Play by kaijuburgers - f!Aeducan/Anora - After Trian's death, Sereda knows it's only a matter of time before she too is returned to the Stone. When she's given an easy out, she takes it.

* Unconquered by ChocoChipBiscuit - Svarah Sun-hair/Vivienne - “Madame Vivienne, I thought—if you were Avvar, a respected warrior of another Hold who bested me in combat, it would have been simple. I would have asked if you wanted company in the bedroll and we would have had it out, one way or another. But by the Lady…” Svarah’s voice trailed, rueful. “You lowlanders distract and divert like fish in a stream.”

Crossposted from tumblr

Current Mood: determined

Having recently replayed Vivienne’s personal quest I find myself baffled by how short it is. If the point of her quest is to give us more insight into her backstory and her character, why was it so short? Why not give us more time to explore the Ghislain estate, hear some of Vivienne’s comments about it, or have her recount a couple stories about her life there? Why not let her have a longer conversation with Bastien before he passes? Even let us swing by the Circle in Montsimmard, maybe so she can check in with any of the mages still there (who are still looking to Vivienne as their leader)?

maybe I’m whiny because I love Vivienne and I would have loved a longer quest that gave us more information about her but it did feel much shorter than the other characters’ secondary personal quests. I mean you can count the hunt for the wyvern heart beforehand but that's over pretty quickly. Thinking immediately of Cassandra and Dorian's secondary personal quests which are much longer...Varric's even brings in Bianca for the first time in person...even Leliana's personal quests are meatier :( give me more time with Vivienne Bioware

Current Mood: sleepy

Another cross-post.

I love the use of symbolism and imagery and yadda yadda as themes in a character’s story, so I thought I’d address the use of fairy tale imagery in Vivienne’s character and story arcs, just briefly, because I think it’s cool.

FULL DISCLOSURE: I am no expert in fairy tales by any means and I've probably overlooked some stuff.

To begin, she falls very much in line with The Stepmother: a beautiful, powerful woman who is emotionally cold, disdains sentimentality, and is murky about her motives. She is strongly independent (The Stepmother is rarely submissive and does not fit the dutiful housewife archetype), unshakably self-assured, and her character is purposefully presented in a way that’s meant to make the player suspicious of her intentions. She openly admits in banter to choosing her dress to inspire fear or intimidation–it’s part of her character design: the tall heels, the horned hennin, the dramatic and luxurious dresses and robes. In general, her admiration for luxury and apparent fixation on appearances fit here too. The Heroine (ex. Cinderella, Beauty) will be guileless, but The Stepmother is cunning and political (She will hide her abuse of The Heroine or persuade the Father that The Heroine is wicked and needs to be punished for her own good.) –a good player of the Game, for example.

Her personal quest is called Bring Me the Heart of Snow White, again tying her to The Stepmother, and if you poke around her balcony before going out for the wyvern heart, you’ll find a recipe for what appears to be a youth potion. The Stepmother is a figure of power–and her weakness is often her envy of a younger, prettier rival (such as the Queen and Snow White–”the fairest in the land”). The game leads the player to believe Vivienne’s fear of losing her power and relevance has led her to the youth potion, which she is roping the player into without explaining.

( Read more... )

( Read more... )

Current Mood: hungry

Sometimes I think about how Bastien and Nicoline were Vivienne’s family. She literally has no memory of her parents, left the Circle where she was raised, and has cultivated her position by maintaining a crisp distance even from those she considers friends. But she allowed herself the weakness of loving Bastien, and speaks fondly of his wife and the parties they used to throw together (she’ll even admit to missing Nicoline, who passed several years before). They were the closest thing to family Vivienne ever had, and with Bastien’s death, that’s gone, and all the memories of their time together belong to Vivienne alone. And when you’re the only one who remembers…the events hardly seem like they really happened.

I have feelings about these three.

Current Mood: working

Somewhere amongst her things Sera has a pair of Vivienne’s lacy, frilly panties. Does she hang onto them after this out of spite? Does she grudgingly return them? Sell them to somebody in Val Royeaux? Wear them herself?

Another cross-posted Vivienne meta.

I love how differently this scene reads once you’ve heard the banter between Cole and Vivienne about how Marquis Alphonse insulted her at another party when he thought she couldn’t hear.

She manages to play it like she’s reprimanding the marquis for insulting and attempting to duel the Herald (thereby seeming like she’s protecting your honor and safety) when she’s really going after him for insulting her, and if he has any wherewithal at all, he knows this, and at this moment, he realizes she must have overheard what he said. And we learn that she set him up to attack the Herald so that she could do this.

If you say the word, she straight-up kills Alphonse in the duke’s parlor (in fact, this particular dialogue only comes up if you decide to kill him). Even if you spare him, she notes how his reputation has been so thoroughly destroyed that his family will disown him (this is not the first time he’s messed up socially) and he will likely go join Celene’s army to try to reclaim his honor in the civil war.

Vivienne knows how to play the Game.

Cross-posting from tumblr because I love Vivienne and I love analyzing her character.

Much has been said in fandom and in canon about Vivienne and power, starting with her description in DAI promotional materials as “The Ambition” of the team and carrying on through her many thematic call-outs to fairy tale villains. There are, of course, people who crave power for power’s sake: cruel, petty people who simply enjoy lording it over others.

But Vivienne isn’t one of those.

We see that under her cold exterior, she is compassionate: she’s the only companion besides Varric with whom you net approval points for rescuing everyone in Haven during In Your Heart Shall Burn. She’s deeply concerned with the violence mages suffer not infrequently at the hands of non-magic citizens of Thedas outside the Circle. Cole reveals how impacted she was by the violence at Montsimmard after the outbreak of the Mage-Templar War. And she very nearly invented a youth potion in her ardent efforts to save her lover from dying. That she joined the Inquisition at all is proof of it: she was willing to potentially die to solve the crisis of the Breach. Vivienne cares. So if her drive for power isn’t for its own sake, what is it?

Power is freedom.

Someone else wrote a meta which applauded Vivienne for obtaining power in a system constantly trying to deny it to her, and I wholeheartedly agree. She has defied the attempts to keep mages subservient again and again: in taking Bastien as a lover, in securing the position of Enchanter to the Imperial Court while also working as First Enchanter of Montsimmard, in turning the position of Court Enchanter to one of genuine power and political weight, in joining the Inquisition, and, depending on in-game events, in quite possibly becoming the first-ever mage divine. At every turn, Vivienne has smashed the barriers that would keep her helpless and weak.

Vivienne is very prideful, and not without cause: she is an exceptionally talented and powerful mage, an extremely intelligent person, and she has excelled in the system in which she lives. She is not someone to bend her will to others–there is a reason her nickname is Madame de Fer: The Iron Lady. Not someone to accept another dictating the terms of her life.

I think Vivienne understood very young that the only way she would ever have control over her life and her choices was to be more powerful than the people who would seek to deny her that agency. Every step she made in the Great Game was calculated to secure her position, and consolidate enough power that no one could question her right to be there. Vivienne turned her greatest political weakness–her magic–into a strength, turning herself from “some mage from Ostwick” into The Jewel of the High Court of Orlais, beloved and admired, a invaluable asset of the empress herself.

Therefore, for Vivienne, power is freedom from a system that wanted her swept to the side, out of the way, and willing to take orders. Anything that threatens that power naturally threatens Vivienne’s freedom, which she has fought tooth and nail to obtain and maintain. When the fear demon in Into the Abyss taunts Vivienne about not being able to regain her power “at her age,” it is really making her imagine a future where she loses the power she has struggled so long for, and loses control over her life, dying without having a say in how she lived.

Current Mood: relaxed

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Entries tagged with da: vivienne

FSF: Dragon Age Femslash Recs

Bring Me the Heart of Snow White

Fairy Tale Imagery in Vivienne's Story

Vivienne's Family

(no subject)

Madame de Fer Plays the Game

Vivienne's Ambition