"Prototype", Dragon Age fanfic

Still not my favorite game, but I pulled out Dragon Age the other day and it has grown on me. Replaying the Deep Roads gave me an idea for a story...



Title: Prototype
Fandom: Dragon Age
Categories: G, Branka/Hespith
Disclaimer: Dragon Age and all characters, locations, ect. remain the property of BioWare. No copyright infringement is intended.
Summary: Branka finds Hespith after claiming the Anvil of the Void.



( Branka had thought she must have died long ago or transformed... )



Fic Warning Meme

( via fialleril )

Spoilers: I generally don’t bother. I would if I were writing fic for a TV show that’s still on the air, but since I mainly write fics for movies, games, or TV shows that ended years ago… well, I kinda assume anyone reading the fic is already familiar with the story.


Character death: The only fic I’ve written with a main character death was in response to a challenge for, well, a fic where that character had died. I felt kinda stupid putting a ‘character death’ warning in the description, but I did it anyway out of a vague sense of obligation.

I’m never actually sure about the protocol for death warnings – are you meant to say which character has died? Because that often spoils the story, but just saying ‘Character death’ makes it sound like a lazy TV promo: IN THIS FIC… SOMEONE DIES! WHO WILL IT BE?!

Slash or Het: This is just so pointless if you’re including character codes. If it’s a Kirk/Spock fic… yeah, you should realise it’s slash. And, yes, it’s kinda dodgy to list that as a ‘warning’. (Though I do love that the way fannish culture has developed, in most fandoms it’s hetrosexual content people expect to be warned about…)

Of course, I kinda feel ‘warning’ is a bit of a misnomer, since a lot of them are as much to attract attention as to warn people away. That’s why I just put down any codes as ‘categories’.

(Heh – just occurred to me. Since Mass Effect’s main character can be male or female depending on the player’s choice, one could write a story with an undefined Commander Shepard that you’d then actually tag as "Slash or Het"… *grin*)


Violence and traumatic non-sexual events: I don’t think I would. Never really written a particularly violent story, at least none more violent than the source material. And… I don’t know, it feels a very subjective category. If I was going to mention it, I’d probably put it in the story summary, not in a separate warnings or categories section.


Rape: I’ve actually got three fics with rape as a plot point, archived under a different name elsewhere. And yes, of course I warn for it.

And I do agree with what fialleril said, that other forms of sexual violence should also be warned for. I guess the ‘dub-con’ warning is meant to cover ‘not legally rape buuut…’ scenarios – except it tends not to be used that way and instead is used to cover ‘outright rape but with less violence’ scenarios.

And people need to start warning for mind-control, memory erasure/alteration and other sci-fi/fantasy exclusive consent issues too. I rarely see those mentioned at all in fic descriptions, and they’re my biggest squick issue of all.


Underage sex: Never written this, no real desire to do so. Would warn for it – though this does seem like something that would normally be covered by character codes, yes?

Incest: Never written this either. Guess I should really get on with it if I want to hit all of Australia’s Refused Classification categories.

Anyway, character codes should cover this too, and I wouldn’t warn for it. I guess you might need to do specifically warn for incest if your pairing has an OC in it – though that’d be a pretty big Mary-Sue warning, wouldn’t it? ‘My new character is (main character)’s sister… and she’s sleeping with him too!” I guess if you were writing Song of Ice and Fire fic it might be justifiable… and then she could be a princess too!