Some preliminary notes before I forget: - How far he's come with not stretching himself thin among strangers but still has a hard time saying no to friends
- The Anders Problem: Having just the one significant relationship until Duplicity has influenced considerably how he thinks about relationships, in both good and bad ways. He's running into what we would call more realistic sorts of situations compared to how he and Anders handled themselves back home
OKAY so. Concerning stretching himself... Now that he's not doing it as much, Hawke is coming to realize that he has a problem being alone with his thoughts.
He's never liked to be idle; even when he was a nobleman in Kirkwall he was still running around doing everything from finding lost belongings to dealing with threats to the city and anything in between and the reason, he's starting to realize, is threefold.
1. He likes helping people. He derives satisfaction from solving problems (aware of this) 2. He finds self worth in how useful he can be, likely because of how he was raised with High Expectations that he doesn't really feel he's met entirely (mostly aware of this) 3. ...He hates hearing his own thoughts.
So all the activity, even running and the gym and going to bars and the Arena and anything that seems totally normal is also to keep his thoughts from encroaching on his ability to keep going.
Here's the thing, Hawke is absolutely not naturally the optimist that he actively puts effort into being. He has had entirely too much happen in his life that is unreasonably shitty for him not to expect that on some level low key all the time.
If someone else is like 'woe, everything is hopeless' then he can push against that. But if he tells himself everything is terrible forever then it becomes a self fulfilling prophecy
This has been a bigger struggle without Anders, not just because Anders was the only one he let see more of that than anyone, but he also could push against Anders' terrible thoughts pretty regularly and they reached a sort of equilibrium with it
Now he's like that one book on the shelf that can stand up on its own but if the bookcase rattles it might tip over. It's easier to stand up with other books around him.
But he's only vaguely aware he has this problem. To him, he just likes to keep busy and he's never really lived alone so of course he wants others around. It's only natural.
Hence why, now that he's not spreading himself incredibly thin running around for random people, he is so adamant about helping friends with... everything.
The Anders Dilemma as I'm going to call it is an enormous can of worms that Hawke can't even begin to untangle because he has so many feelings about this that he eventually just. Puts it away because it hurts.
Adalwolfe Hawke loves Anders. They've been together for more than a decade and Hawke's never shared nearly as much with anyone else as he has with him. Anders changed his entire life.
Adalwolfe was going through life just trying to keep his family together and Anders showed him that changing the world to do that was possible. It was like every new possibility opened up at a handful of words from Anders.
And he took it entirely to heart. Because of that influence, Adalwolfe found the strength to take on problems he likely wouldn't have acted on before. He's always been compassionate, but finding the systemic root of problems instead of just treating symptoms was new.
Anders also loves him as deeply and fiercely as he loves Anders. To the point of Adalwolfe ending up turning a blind eye to some things that he probably shouldn't.
Anders hurt him with the Chantry explosion, not because he did it at all but because he didn't bring Hawke in on it and then expected Hawke to kill him in front of the rubble and everyone.
And they worked through some of it, but not all. I don't think they ever worked through that in it's entirety, though it did come up in Duplicity in various shades.
Anders pointed out, rightly, that Wolfe didn't trust him. Wolfe insisted he did and they're both sort of right? Wolfe chooses to trust Anders, but there's always that involuntary waryness, that extra push of questioning that he has to actively stifle, whenever Anders tells him something that might be complicated or delicate.
Wolfe still denies this, but he's having a harder time when there's shades of it in his friendship with Amelia; not on betrayal, but on their having been tossed about by Duplicity into hurting each other, and Wolfe can tell dimly that he's more choosing to believe that because it's not their fault that there isn't a big problem there
But even if the circumstances and actions aren't their fault, they still have an effect. They still have weight and they take time and effort to work through, which Hawke doesn't. Really know how to do properly.
And while I think he can work through that with Amelia if they can just get at each other in the right way, he never did with Anders entirely and becoming aware of that makes Wolfe's heart ache
The other aspect of his relationship with Anders that's weighing on everything right now isn't even that he knows Anders would be jealous anymore; they talked about that in the dream and Anders basically gave him that blessing to be happy and love whomever he loves freely.
With Anders - and Alaric too - he didn't have other lovers of his partners that he thought he might need to tiptoe around or schedule. They were with him, he was with them, and there weren't any other romances in their lives. People they slept with, certainly, but loved in the same way? No.
Now... Peter is the closest thing he has to a relationship and both Juno and Jon are people he spares thoughts for as far as how they might feel about it. Especially Juno because of two things
One, Jon basically told him not to because he's okay with it as long as he treats Peter right; Hawke also acknowledges that Jon has Martin as 'firsts'. And two, it is excrutiatingly obvious just how much Juno and Peter love each other. More obvious on Juno's part as far as Hawke can see, mostly because Peter is often inscrutable when he wants to be.
So Wolfe fights with himself because he has these feelings for Peter, wants to keep him safe and make him feel loved, but also doesn't want to be in the middle of him and Juno, doesn't want to feel like he's of lesser importance, and doesn't want Juno to feel that way either.
Especially when its so clear to Wolfe that if Juno said the word, Peter would accommodate. Maybe he's just assuming that, but it's based on his observations. And he feels kind of blindsided by that given that Juno wasn't there before when Wolfe developed that crush on Peter, but he's here now and it's complicated.
Chris he hasn't even said anything to for similar reasons! There's no one from home for Chris, but besides Wolfe assuming Chris doesn't feel the same way because it would have come up already if he did (no), he's not sure if he would be 'first' there either.
And he gets all tied up in knots because he knows if Anders showed up again he wouldn't be able to put anyone else first either, so isn't that unfair to want? But he can't just turn it off because that's not how feelings work
Amelia is a whole other weird soup of feelings for other reasons, some being that Wolfe is always attracted to people that want to take care of him, look out for his well being even when there's not a crisis, but she takes it too far.
She shoves it on him like she doesn't believe he can take care of himself and that really gets under his skin, but he also understands it because he's absolutely done that to other people (albeit in more subversive ways than literally grabbing them and dragging them to their rescue fff)
Compound all this with the time he does spend with any of them he can't help but compare and see how different it is. And those are wonderful differences, but still make him question if he's Doing This Right?
He doesn't have nearly enough experience, he knows that. He's had the one long relationship and he thought that was how it does but maybe not? Maybe they're all different? That would make sense but he only has the one point of personal comparison
𝑅𝒶𝓋𝑒𝓃 𝒦𝒾𝓃𝑔
: I know I was joking lol. He's just..!!! Hawke admires his ability to have so many and still make them feel like they're important? And he still makes Hawke feel important even though he's not even a boyfriend so wow
At least the Tumenalia stuff. The feelings bits... I think some of that will depend on conversations she's having with others around the very idea. lol
Hawke is.....definitely not wrong in thinking that if push comes to shove, Juno is who gets prioritized. (Though I think that's really only...well, like, on the level of "Juno does have veto power wrt Peter's other relationships")
Though they really SHOULD talk about that at some point because Peter had a super uncomfy time with that when he and Martin were on rockier terms. It sucked. He doesn't want Hawke to feel that way.
yeah no, and Hawke doesn't feel like he does, but that veto power and that if Hawke's plan is successful, he's pretty certain Juno and Peter will go home together.
He's....not wrong about that either, currently. But it's at least partially because of unfinished business!! (We'll see where eventual canon updates leave us....)
Hawke's canon is full of oppressive bullshit that he's lived under his entire life. Anyone who's got even a little CR with him usually finds this out pretty quick.
However, while Hawke's life has been characterized by having to fight and hide the whole time, he has never actually felt helpless in the way Duplicity has contrived to make him feel this time around.
In Duplicity, they can shut off his powers with a thought, they can make him speak what he doesn't want to tell, they can force him to have sex with anyone, or hurt anyone.
He's the very model of a video game protagonist; shit happens to him, he reacts, and he overcomes. That's how he's always moved through the world. But the overcoming part hasn't (can't) happen here.
It means he can always protect his people, no matter how hard he tries. He couldn't in Kirkwall either tbf, but it's important to him and he redoubled his efforts after that, and in the Fleet he did manage
Which is why he's created that bright spot for himself, that twinkle of hope that's changing Duplicity for the better and bringing their loved ones to them.
And that's good. He's frustrated and struggling, but he mitigates that as he always has - with people he loves. And it works as it always has, so it's a sort of strangely comfortable position for him unless he's quite literally pulled out of his right mind into doing things he wouldn't normally under any circumstances.
So anything that happens in Duplicity that pokes at this issue he has I have to be really careful with. I don't intend for him to fall apart but there's the greatest possibility for unforeseen developments there
Weirdly enough Grayson had that same realization about consent. He had some very poor boundaries for himself there. I love that Dup allows for that kind of development.
So Dragon Age occupies an interesting place as a canon because as it exists currently, it is a generally oppressive, dark fantasy setting with slavery, systematic oppressive widespread religious organizations, racism, brutal fighting, and heavily implied sexual violence but is still a socially progressive setting.
Characters are LGBT+ without it being a big deal in the narrative, though some mention and talk of it is had with some of those specific characters (Dorian, Krem). How successful Bioware is at that in narrative is definitely a debate, but not one I'm having here. This is just for the sake of me setting up background.
The treatment of sex is canon, however, is pretty much like the real world. There's sex workers, brothels, some people are super dismissive of them and what they do but you have others that frequent or even have worked at them. There's puritanical attitudes alongside more liberated ones, cultural differences, etc.
So kink obviously happens. The Iron Bull is a great example here, as is the subplot in Sebastian's questline in 2 where you come across nobles who were definitely doing some BDSM stuff
I don't think there's a lot of the vocabulary we have today for thinking and talking about these things, and consent is such an undiscussed concept in a world where slavery is still the norm in some countries that some of what we take for granted today in talking about these things Hawke never even thought of until being out of his canon
Duplicity's extreme of sexuality and kink being at the forefront of society has been eye opening in a lot of ways. It's meant he's started thinking about power in relationships and that there's no default there, about how he's made some assumptions about what top/bottom or Dom/sub means and are that are patently untrue, and the varying degrees of kink.
It's all something he's still trying to figure out where he's concerned himself too, because he knows he has very little experience in the grand scheme where back home it didn't matter at all that that was the case.
He had Anders, they were happy with themselves in that regard, so it only really came up at the beginning when discovering these things about each other, as you do when in a new physical relationship, and that was still very specific to them
Now, after a bit more experience and learning, he's alone with his bisexual panic feelings, but his thought patterns have been changed so that now when he encounters some new concept sexually, he doesn't just pass it by unless it's super intriguing at first blush
He takes the time to find out a little more, examine if it's something his partners might want to try, and thinks over if it's something he would want to try for himself
He was very happy with his sex life with Anders! This is by no means a slight on that experience at all, Wolfe has just always taken his pleasure in facilitating the pleasure of others at that point
Because if they enjoy it, then he still enjoys their enjoyment even if he's not into it. And that's okay sometimes! Except where he actively dislikes something and tries to do it anyway for the sake of a partner.
This journey has been really fun to take with him too because he's usually overly sure of himself but in this arena he's acutely aware of how much he doesn't know and hasn't experienced so he's very awkward about it.
Its only happened a little and it's mostly with exhibitionist stuff. He's not sure if he's into it wholesale or not but he's sure as heck skirted the question for awhile.
- How far he's come with not stretching himself thin among strangers but still has a hard time saying no to friends
2. He finds self worth in how useful he can be, likely because of how he was raised with High Expectations that he doesn't really feel he's met entirely (mostly aware of this)
3. ...He hates hearing his own thoughts.
Have a partner for every day of the week.And he still makes Hawke feel important even though he's not even a boyfriend so wow/gestures to Duplicity
bisexual panicfeelings, but his thought patterns have been changed so that now when he encounters some new concept sexually, he doesn't just pass it by unless it's super intriguing at first blushoverlysure of himself but in this arena he's acutely aware of how much he doesn't know and hasn't experienced so he's very awkward about it.