Carling finds out what happened to her uncle.
So we’ve finally hit the resolution of the Carling subplot. I vacillated a lot on how to handle this one, with varying degrees of angst and rage. In the end, well… I’m soft-hearted. I can’t help it.
This is also the chapter that probably needs a slight rape culture warning; I wanted to stay true to Hawke’s reaction to the scene without making it too, well… you know. I’ve edited it over several times but I’m still not particularly comfortable with it. Hrm.
There’s another thing going on in here as well, which has to do with the whole possession-as-obvious-analogy-to-mental-illness thing. It’s probably not hugely revealing or surprising to say that I did a bit of reading about dissociative identity disorder when trying to figure out how to handle Justice!Anders, though obviously it’s not intended to be a direct parallel (what with there being all the magic and whatnot involved). Nonetheless, I’ve kept the DID symptoms of dissociation, depersonalization and derealization present in DA canon and have tried to show how these are slowly changing over the course of the story (which is also why the dissociative amnesia has been quietly dropped… for now). I’ve frequently stated that the “point” of Rabbit Heart is basically to give Anders a narrative where he gets to deal with his possession in a way that doesn’t use convenient handwaving or retconning to “fix” him; there are a lot of fics like this that are very good, but I find the notion in and of itself a bit… squicky. Like the parallels between magic and possession in Thedas and Really Real World mental illness or not — and I don’t, really — they’re nonetheless still there. Erasing them or pretending they don’t exist doesn’t help, IMO. (Also, shallow confession: I like Justice as a character way more than Awakening!Anders.)
With all that in mind, there’s a second Issue in this chapter that touches on the whole mentally-ill-people-are-violent-and-scary-and-dangerous-because-they’re-mentally-ill-and-everyone-knows-mentally-ill-people-are-violent-and-scary-and-dangerous question begging bullshit. (You all know this is bullshit, right? And, in fact, people with mental illnesses are more likely to be victims of violence than perpetrators of it? Okay, good. Just clearing that up.) Yes, it’s veiled under the context of mages and abominations but… it’s there and I know it’s there and I’ve tried not to, yanno. Totally fuck it up.
Maybe?
IDK.
Anyway. That’s all very morose and heavy, arguably fittingly. As of this chapter, RH has officially broken 100,000 words (… OMG). About half of what I’d originally intended to include here didn’t make it, mostly because I decided to be nice to Carling, so I guess that’ll be coming next time.
We’re definitely on the home straight now, however; maybe three or four more chapters to go.
… holy shit. TL;DR.
