DA2 Fic: Tyrants (and the Tyranny of Appearances)

[sarasa_cat]

Tyrants (and the Tyranny of Appearances)

Dragon Age (DA2), Marian Hawke/Cullen, Carver
Rated R, 5200 words, one-shot stand alone short story

Expatriates, secret relationship, awkwardness, control, power, clothing

For no_true_pair  2012 Eight Character Challenge (prompt: f!Hawke & Cullen, Tyrant)

Story links:

• Tyrants on AO3
• Tyrants on fanfiction.net
  
• Tyrants on DW's no-true-pair community

 

Comments

Crit time! Thoughts? (long crit is long)

[sarasa_cat]

This story makes me want to crit it at a variety of different levels… It was a 3K word mess 48 hours before posting and … crit time. (long comment is long).


I came away thinking "Cullen's been given this very convenient opportunity by Carver and now he's taking it up in such an opportunistic way, making sure that Marian has no real reason to tell him no,"

Which was the point I was going after in the space of this story … even if his larger off-screen motivations are *slightly* more redeeming, his actions in these 5200 words are decidedly not.

Cullen, subtly of motivation, & cues: That "faster you cooperate" line is the reason I didn't scrap this one-shot. It is such a horrid, mood-killing, shitful thing to say and it makes Marian+Readers suspect that Cullen is mixing work with pleasure. IMO, it feels true to who Cullen is during Act II if he was in a relationship. (Although I imagine him in Act III being able to draw clearer lines between work and social life).

I suppose being in Marian's headspace makes it easy to assume her motivation is honestly that mix of adolescent … and adult fear …

Yes. As a short story, that's the space I was playing with.

My goal for this to be a "realist" literary-focused short story that explores the emotional experience of being stuck selecting between one of two decidedly bad choices.

I feared that if the text started dwelling on (showing) the good in offDuty!Cullen/Marian, it would detract from the thematic reason for the story: the danger, the horror of being in Marian's shoes, and an echo of DA2's treatment of Hawke as someone who is repeatedly suck choosing between shit vs. shit (something the realist in me loves about DA2).

My attempt at making Cullen's motivations more than mere cypher ended up being reduced to Marian repeatedly telling us that, in the past, the relationship works when Cullen is out of uniform (the tyranny of appearances/clothing). Eventually there's the show when Cullen briefly ditches the uniform after saying “I don’t care about that.” when Marian comments about getting dirt on his clothing. With the posting deadline looming, I'm not sure I had enough time to get those few key paragraphs right. While there are hints of decency/care, at this point, even without the uniform, the fantasy-space they once had has been shattered. So, as a writer, I have the problem of showing two people trying to recapture their lost sense of offDuty!Cullen/Marian at a moment when the two of them are problematically redefining themselves onDuty!KnightCaptain/Marian which, of course, was not something either of them had previously allowed, especially not Marian.

I wanted the end of that scene to leave Marian+Reader feeling uncomfortable, betrayed, but unwilling to break off the relationship. Soooooooo… again, from a writerly standpoint I worried that if I spend too many words redeeming Cullen, the story looses emotional punch.

At the beginning of "Eight Days Earlier," I toyed with having a paragraph before Marian's "Andraste's tits!" that sets Cullen up as a normal boyfriend giving a normal goodbye kiss with his GF before heading back to his adversarial role but I ditched it and left it implied at the beginning and implied again later in Carver's dialogue. Again, it was a focus issue. :/

As for Carver, for better or worse, he's used as a catalyst rather than a motivated character. I want to limit word count to a short story so exploring Carver's motivation felt like cluttering the stage, methinks (???). I *tried* leaving his motivations as surface read plus any canon characterization info that the reader brings in.

The piece in itself definitely feels like a segment of something larger.

That's the crux of the matter -- something I *really* struggle with in the fanfic world.

Had this been an original fic short story (probably with a couple more rounds of editing), I think (??) it would become clear that the plot focus is Marian trying to decide between bad and worse, and the theme is about loss of fantasies (plus an exploration of the weird situations that privileged expats ends up in…).

As fanfic… well, fanfic. First, people come in with emotional investment in characters and Cullen-readers want to know if he is really a flaming jerk who is abusing his position of power or is there something more motivating him. The added motivations feel like they clutter the stage even though I suspect/know the fanfic reader wants them as explanation. I wonder if this piece becomes better fanfic if it is followed by another piece structured like this:

1. Establish frame story occurring a few weeks later where Marian and onDuty!Cullen interact more freely/honestly than previous allowed (but boundaries still exist).
2. Have flashback that occurs before Carver learned about their secret, showing offDuty!Cullen/Marian as the two people they fantasized/pretended to be.
3. Return to frame story and show them as two people trying to make a bad situation work.


I often think I am a terrible/disappointing fanfic writer because I either write modernist-realism (this piece) or dabble in postmodernist post-realism (fabulation, historiographic metafiction, etc.). The pomo-poreal can work extremely well as fanfic when it reads as meta mixed with story. The realism, on the other hand, is sort of mismatched with the fanfic community, methinks, because fanfic is often idealizing/re-imagining/fixing the real (e.g., Cullen tries to ruin Marian/offDuty!Cullen but Marian finds a third option, proves to be far more powerful than the Knight-Captain, or Cullen clearly states that his intensions are not harmful), OR fanfic is about fantasy (e.g., okay, so, Marian/offDuty!Cullen is all fouled up now but, damn it, they have 4000 words of hot, pounding sex while that dull party continues outside the door. Whoot!).

(btw, I love DA2 because it is far more a realist story than a fantasy story, but gamers wanted fantasy so many of them dislike DA2).

Re: Crit time! Thoughts? (long crit is long)

[ex_pendency799]

Yikes, I didn’t pick up the uniform/clothing thematic connection on first or second reread. D: Although, not sure if that is actually a problem – sometimes overt symbolism is really irritating. I think of Brideshead, which was likely loaded with meaning which is only really felt subconsciously or with a very heavy critical analysis reading, mostly the symbolism is just integral to the text and feel, and the reader feels it without even needing the conscious thought. In Tyrants, the whole clothing ref, comparisons to Orlesian style, etc – it all felt very connected to Marian and her emotions as opposed to a camera ‘focusing’ on the symbol almost out of context, if that makes sense? I think it's a good thing.

I wanted the end of that scene to leave Marian+Reader feeling uncomfortable, betrayed, but unwilling to break off the relationship.

Ah, now this is unusual – I read the length of the text really feeling Marian’s discomfort and her anxiety, but by the time I hit the end of the text, she felt, hm, resigned? Accepting? I went away with less anxiety about Cullen than all the uncertainty set up before. His ending line in particular:

“You know what is true and what is not. Let them say what they will.”

It feels like this suggests Hawke has agency to control her response to the situation, even if she can’t control the situation or the performance she has to give, which is a level of empowerment not suggested elsewhere in the text. (Even if it is Cullen “giving” her or prompting her into acting with agency.)

And, following up that with Carver’s little prequel is even more interesting, because his ending line is suggestive that the whole set-up with Cullen is being “done for mother.” That could bring the slight uplift at the end of Cullen's sequence down again, but the suggestion of agency at the end of Cullen's piece lingers, leading me to be inclined to believe the idea of Cullen/Marian is not so ‘uh-oh’ as the bulk of the text represents.

More shortly, after I actually do some work at work. ;)

Re: Crit time! Thoughts? (long crit is long)

[sarasa_cat]

sometimes overt symbolism is really irritating

THIS.

IMHO, symbolism works best when it tickles the subconscious or the emotional/feeling/pictorial parts of the brain into generating a feel that is completely on the mark but only after a Very Careful 2nd (or 3rd or 4th) read through does the reader consciously/linguistically see how the symbolism is telling the story.

resigned? Accepting?

Sure, that is definitely a fair interpretation. For a story like this I don't want to force the reader into one box. Uncomfortably accepting, betrayed and resigned, anxious but legitimately unwilling to break off the relationship -- it's all in the same larger space, imho. I don't want it to read positively or negatively, but as a weighing of compromises which puts Hawke+Reader in an uncomfortable place. Not horrific, spine tingling uncomfortable. Just uncomfortable in the sense that the situation not resolved. I don't think I'm explaining myself well because anything I analytic I say isn't going to be the exact same experience the reader has (which, by the way, is why I often prefer writing fiction to writing meta!) -- so, yeah, your read feels like the story directly hits the mark even if you see mismatches with the non-story words I'm saying in these comments.

When a story has more of an in-your-face emotional feeling--when it does things on purpose to force the reader to gasp or cry or cheer--a part of me feels manipulated as a reader. That doesn't mean I do not enjoy reading those stories. But... I guess it is a matter of taste in reading vs writing. Reading takes less time so I'll read a wide range of things. Writing is effortful so it needs to be something I want to write. I prefer putting my effort into stories that are more ambient, unresolved, and that create a space for experiencing a set of related emotional responses that aren't going to be the same for everyone. (Related to my other post today: *this* is why the storyworld in DA2 speaks to me far more than DAO).

It feels like this suggests Hawke has agency to control her response to the situation

Yes! This is something that I liked a lot about the game (despite many gamers hating it) and I wanted that in this story. Shit happens to Hawke. Hawke chooses how to respond, even if it doesn't change the situation all that much.

“You know what is true and what is not. Let them say what they will.”

I almost didn't put that first statement in. It was originally something like "Let them say what they will. I never refer to you as a 'mistress.'" which does little to give Hawke any agency--more of a reassuring pat on the head from Ser Templar. :/ ... and then it was merely "Let them say what they will," which leaves it completely open for the reader to decide how they feel. At the last minute I added resolve to the story with that "You know what is true and what is not" and I still cannot decide if I regret adding that bit of agency that resolves the text.

Carver: Heh. Carver plays the role of ally/helper in this story. He was originally there purely because I *like* writing dorky idiot brother Carver, and because I needed to show the moment when everything changed. The story would have been more ominous had Carver not played the ally role.