LJ Prompt Fill: Proposals

[prisoner_24601]

Title: An Unexpected Proposal
Characters: Teagan, Cauthrien, Loghain
Rating: AO
Word Count: 7,673 of a complete oneshot.
Warnings: A bit of light bondage, but really this is pretty vanilla.
Summary: A spur of the moment marriage proposal has two men, one who shares her life and the other who shares her bed, awaiting Ser Cauthrien's answer.

I've been writing fanfiction for quite a while, for Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic, Mass Effect, and Dragon Age (as you can see, I love Bioware games). This is a one shot I wrote a while ago for the Dragon Age kmeme, for a prompt that asked for marriage proposals, and features one of my favorite things to do in fanfiction: hooking NPC's up with each other. I figured since I just got around tossing it up on ff.net, I'd post a link. I'd post it directly here, but it's long, getting it formatted right is a bitch, and I'm sort of a lazy bastard.

Feedback is greatly appreciated. Constructive criticism is always welcome. What you liked, didn’t like, thought worked or didn’t work is especially helpful.

An Unexpected Proposal

Comments

[zute]

I really liked it. The characters were all complex and layered and yet hot! I read part of it on the kmeme but never read the ending.

My only criticism is: Maybe I read too quickly but it seemed like at one moment she was bound to the candelabra and the next she was burying her hands in his hair, but I thought they were bound? I might have missed the transition.

I find a lot of times I have a hard time trying to figure out just what the heck is going on in p0rn writing, I end up with a mental image that just doesn't fit with what the writer is writing... "wait, I thought he was behind her?" Then I have to go back and reread to try to figure it out. It breaks the moment.

However, I didn't have that feeling at all with this except for wondering when/how her hands got untied.

And, sometimes I just miss things, so it might not be you at all, might be me.

[scarylady]

I've put my concrit up on FF (just because it adds to your reviews there and might get you more readers).

If I've overstepped the mark in any way, please do let me know. If you want to discuss my comments, then there or here is fine.

Regarding the bound to candelabra/hands in hair moment Zute mentioned above. It relates to the time of the PoV change I've put in my concrit. Loghain's arrival is earlier, before she is bound, so he sees her free to move - this causes confusion to the reader.

[elysium_fic]

I remember reading the beginning of this over at the kmeme and then lost track of it. Glad to see it was finished.

As far as concrit goes, one thing I would point out is that knights ARE nobility. Cauthrien is not a commoner. Knights are basically entry-level nobility in Ferelden, the typical first step of a commoner moving up (sorry, I can't find the exact wikia page right now that explains Ferelden's "bottom up" system of politics, where political power actually derives from the will of the commoners, but that's basically the way the system works. Nobles get their power from the freeholders who CHOOSE to whom to give their allegiance, and who can withdraw it as well.)

Loghain is unusual only in that he got jumped up so far, but it's actually not unusual for commoners to be granted the title of knight.

While I can see why Cauthrien wouldn't want to marry for reasons of her career and her loyalty to Loghain, in terms of political reality, marrying the bann of a minor bannorn like Rainesfere would be a good move for her, moving her up in the ranks of the nobility without aiming so high that she'd be considered "jumped up" like Loghain.

And it wouldn't be a catastrophic move for Teagan at all (though it wouldn't advance his rank, which would probably be expected of him; Eamon probably expects Teagan to "marry up.")

Like I said, I totally see why Cauthrien doesn't want to marry, and it makes perfect sense. But some exploration of the fact that it IS actually a suitable match, politically, might add a bit more oomph to her choice for refusing it.