Hawkesexual

In role-playing, you're supposed to put yourself in the shoes of a character. I'm not sure how it happens, but my RPs usually ends up being melodramatic.

(See my half-orc -- of course people wonder how he gets to be a half-orc. He was raised by his mother, who's in denial over what happened, and he didn't think about it too much. But out there in the human-dominated real world as an adventurer, not a menacing thug for hire, his background is being questioned left and right and it's driving him nuts.)

It wasn't too much of an issue with KOTOR and ME, surprisingly, because good and evil are pretty clear-cut. Even in DA:O, there're obvious moral choices. DA2 is a whole other ball game. The choices are morally ambiguous -- all leads to chaos. No matter how I try to uphold order, people suffer.

My first m!Hawke was a 2H warrior who generally tried to be sarcastic/witty, but it felt... off. Sticking to one particular alignment really doesn't work, so I quit halfway through the game.

On a second playthrough with mage m!Hawke, much better. He's kinda schizophrenic and hypocritical, speaking out against renegade mages when he's an apostate blood mage himself. Of course a lot of it is meta-gaming since I'm trying to max out friendship with Fenris and Carver, but I rationalise it in-game by angling Hawke as an ambitious, whatever-it-takes kind of guy. He respects mages who take to blood magic for more power, but hates those who succumb to it because they're weak. It's a fine line between actively seeking more power while knowing your limits and letting letting it take over you. And he hates Orsino, who's got the right ideas but way too pathetic and has this... strange relationship with the Knight-Commander. Speaking of the templars, who wouldn't support them with hot stuff like Cullen among their ranks?

While conceptualizing this Hawke as Champion of Kirkwall, I think must have had Machiavelli in mind: "Nevertheless a prince ought to inspire fear in such a way that, if he does not win love, he avoids hatred..." Hawke is aggressive, but he tries to be sensitive to people's opinions -- except for that terrorist-in-making, who's ruining everything Hawke has built up in Kirkwall.

Anders is getting on my nerves, seriously. Fandom makes him out to be sympathetic but he's so whiny and one-note in DA2, I miss Awakening!Anders. I miss my Awakening!crew in general, total BAMFs. I did find Nathaniel in DA2 but he's not quite what I remember...

Anyway, looking forward to fighting alongside him and Cullen ♥