lost myself and I am nowhere to be found

[fightingale]

WHO: catch-all for Leliana, Ruby & Herc
WHAT: all sorts! some open prompts for each, as well as closed starters.
WHEN: throughout Bloomingtide
WHERE: various
NOTES: Depression, discussion of death, alcohol, potential violence, others to be added as necessary. If we're threading and something comes up in a tag, feel free to add a warning to the subject line.

Starters in the comments! If you'd like a personalised thing then just prod me via pp (@karmacharging) or pm and I will whip something up C:

Comments

[elegiaque]

The subject of elves being mercifully set aside - what is she going to say about them? look at all the good they're doing, all these elves that weren't burned in the fires of Halamshiral like so much carrion waste, gosh isn't it good that Celene bothered to let some of them live, what a fucking pinnacle of noblesse oblige, no, that would be clumsy and telling and she doesn't care, anyway - Gwenaëlle sits.

This is all fine.

"I've approached Knight-Commander Norrington to use his diagrams in an edition," she says, spreading some of her notes on the table for Leliana to look at as they speak, taking the thin gold spectacles from their chain at her hip (where they hang always, necessity given the appearance of ornamental affectation) and settling them on her nose so she can follow from them if she needs the reminder. "He has pictures of demons, and their..." Her nose wrinkles, "Parts. I think it would be interesting and...confronting? A reminder."

Of what they're fighting. Of what the cost is. The scars that snake up from within her gown, marring her decolletage, say Gwenaëlle has learned that lesson the hard way.

"And it isn't bad for people to learn things. About the things that threaten them." Maybe it would help someone, somewhere. "He says he will give me notes, as well. Well, I asked him to," with the sort of casual bluntness that tends to lead people to think she is even less deft in the Game than is the truth.

(She isn't very good at the pretense; she is much sharper an observer, and the neatly, concisely written notes on Leliana's desk tell that story clearly.)

"I would like to build a proper narrative around it. The work being done, the threats that your people go out and face-- I thought you might know best where I should look, and what perhaps does not need to be too closely examined."

After all - anyone could pick up a copy of her work. Maybe Corypheus will start reading it over his morning whatever horrible ancient Tevinter monsters have to break their fast. Does he eat? He must, right? It's probably disgusting.

[fightingale]

"Very wise," Leliana agrees. And caution aside, as a bard she has some appreciation for the time and energy that goes into constructing a narrative, into any creative work, and how galling it would be to have to tear something apart due to something unforseen as problematic.

"I think there are opportunities that your work presents, as someone not putting forth official Inquisition statements." They were studied and edited as necessary, but they weren't officially from the Inquisition, and that made all the difference - particularly amongst Orlesians. "I think that in time there could be opportunities to sow seeds of... thought, shall we say, if not doubt. Distinctions must be made between rifters and demons, for one, given the rumours that circulate. If the Inquisition is seen as a home to demons that will damage our cause. Either the narrative needs to demonstrate what they are not, or it should not mention them at all."

People rarely enjoyed having what something is dictated to them, after all. Better to let them fill in blanks, to form their own pictures. The trick was in carefully sculpting what it was they crafted, as if by your own hand.

"Do you think diagrams will scadalise Orlesian sensibilities?"

It is not an entirely serious question - Leliana thinks they would love it, abhor it, and in either case it would make people talk, but Gwenaëlle's opinion interests her.

[elegiaque]

"I think they'll say that they do," she says, with a roll of her eyes that is as girlish as it is cynically jaded to the dramatics of her peers. (And the dramatics of her social superiors, too.) "But they'll eat it up, of course, and speak of it. If they like it then they'll read the next one, and if they're scandalised they'll still read the next one to find something else to gossip about."

And if she has to start writing about elves and rifters, they certainly won't lack for fodder. It feels pointed, though she suspects it isn't - doubts that Leliana's busy schedule allows time for noting the stupid things someone as irrelevant as she's been thus far says across the crystals. Rifters aren't demons. Fine. She only said they might be, and not in print--!

Thranduil's going to be irritatingly smug, she thinks, when he reads the next edition.

"It was my thought that it would be best to focus on those rifters as have officially made themselves of the Inquisition," she says, after a moment. Those were the ones she'd touched on, however lightly, in the first edition; that's where she thinks she can best build on drawing the distinction Leliana wants.