lostacanthus

[lostacanthus]

Lucanis knits. He truly is perfect. I hope he knits something for Rook.

[lostacanthus]

Emmrich Volkarin 01/??

[lostacanthus]

we have fun here in Thedas

[lostacanthus]

where's your favorite cat cafe? ours is in Dock Town

[lostacanthus]

i gotta be honest. everybody pretty quickly coming around on spite/lucanis makes me :/ for anders who still to this day cannot just exist without varric making a smartass remark about not consorting with “abominations”. guys……guys? can you hear me?

[lostacanthus]

if you're still boiling a character as complex as alistair down to anything along the lines of: himbo, idiot, soft baby without an idea of his own, haha funny cheese man i'm straight up burning your house down with lasers and sending you directly to hell.

if you genuinely believe that man is stupid, all you're doing is admitting that you yourself cannot see beyond the incredibly transparent veil he wants to put over your eyes.

what he is is insecure, and he wants you to think he's stupid so that he doesn't have to live up to expectations he fears he won't meet. shortly after meeting him you can call him out on using humor to deflect and make himself smaller and he ADMITS IT.

he repeatedly shows you just how intelligent he is and how aware of the ways of the world he is. his history knowledge, his understanding of the chantry and its control of templars and mages that goes far beyond nearly anyone else we as the player speak with, his emotional intelligence when it comes to understanding others' intentions and needs... and this is just a thoughtless little post with quick examples i conjured up in five minutes! i'm not even doing a deep dive here! how do so many people miss all of this?

this is not advanced reading of subtext, it's incredibly simple and i'm completely unsure how people don't understand this about him.

he's such a great character for so many reasons - his flaws being some of those reasons - but a lack of intelligence is simply not one of those flaws no matter how you spin it.

[lostacanthus]

Day 7 of #Veiltober - Davrin Griffon Daddy.

[lostacanthus]

Big big idiot man

[lostacanthus]

Peter Cushing as Van Helsing | Fashion

[lostacanthus]

This emmrich and neve banter man… very good

[lostacanthus]

Do you think Mythal is patron of motherhood and goddess of love because of all the spirits she convinced to take physical form like she did Solas? Do you think she's loved so much because of Solas' devotion to her? After all, unlike all the Evanuris who ruled through fear, she's the only one who ruled partially through a subordinate, the only one who had a war fought in her name because Solas had so much love to give--so many regrets to live with. Do you think her titles were bestowed on her because the legacy of the Dread Wolf's regrets painted her in such benevolent, rose-coloured frescoes that everyone assumed she must have been saintly to be loved so much, and not that the one loving her loudly, mourning in a wolf's howl, was the one giving her that reputation. That same devotion that led to the tale of Andraste and the Maker and Maferath's betrayal. Do you think the inquisitor's refusal to give up on Solas will do the same for his legend in time? The Herald and the Wolf. Goddess of Devotion and God of Absolvement. What if Vhenan changes to Heart and then changes to Hart. And it becomes The Hart and the Wolf. Goddess of Compassion and the God of Justice. Hades and Persephone. Loki and Sigyn. Lavellan and Fen'Harel. Oh boyyyy. Trickster gods and their beautiful wives are my favourite genre.

[lostacanthus]

You got games on your phone?

[lostacanthus]

Ok. Here's my first attempt at writing Lucanis and Spite. This isn't my favorite piece of DA fic I've written, but I had to get it out of system.

Also, I am writing Lucanis as demisexual. That is my accepted headcanon, and I am writing it from personal experience.

Enjoy, I guess? 😂

(below the cut because spoilers?)

Lucanis leaned into his palm where it pressed against the stone just above Rook’s head. He felt drawn to her, pulled across the floor until there was just a feather’s width between them. It was such an infrequent feeling – this wanting – that he almost hadn’t recognized it the first time. Now, the thrum of desire through his body was unmistakable.

But did she feel it too?

“This isn’t a good idea,” he said, offering her a convenient escape route.

She smiled. “Sometimes the bad ideas are best.”

He couldn’t help smiling at that. It seemed she always knew just what to say. Like that night at the cafe. He’d felt a slight thrill at the table, a rush at how easily the conversation volleyed between them. It wasn’t until much later that night, replaying her voice in his head, that he’d ached with realization. She’d been talking about much more than how she liked her coffee.

“You like walking a little too close to the edge.” Again, a warning. He would push, gently, until she saw reason. Because, surely, once she looked close enough, she would turn away.

“So do you.”

She reached for him, and for a moment Lucanis thought she might hook her finger through his lapel chain and tug him toward her. His stomach flipped, his smile widened, and he couldn’t avoid glancing at her lips. Mierda, he wanted to taste her.

But she did not touch him, her hand hovered there at his sternum and a desperate flash of want pulsed through him.

This was dangerous territory. She had no idea just how close to the edge they were. How easy it would be for her to push him off this cliff, and Lucanis would fall helplessly in love.

He looked right at her, his gaze heavy. “At least I know when I’m doing it.”

At the edge of a cliff…

What if he chose to jump?

He closed his eyes, tilted his head and leaned toward her, felt her do the same –

– Crisp air, sunlight on water, smells like trees and magic. Arlathan.

Lucanis’s eyes snapped open and he pulled back so quickly that Rook gave him a startled look.

“I… need to clear my head,” he said. As if he could do such a thing with Spite taking up so much space.

Space, he needed space. Between him and Spite, but also between him and Rook. He needed to breathe. Why did his chest feel so tight?

He stepped away from her, his palm now pressed to his waistcoat as he gave her the tiniest bow. “Excuse me.”

Then he turned and hurried out of the room, ignoring the weight of her gaze on his back. He brushed a hand through his hair, tugged at his waistcoat. Lucanis was not a tall man, but it took surprisingly few strides to cross the dining room and step out into the courtyard. He took a deep, shaky breath and quelled the urge to rub at the constant itch behind his eyes.

This wasn’t like him. He felt jittery, out of control. Perhaps all the coffee mixed with the sleep deprivation had finally gotten to him?

She makes you nervous, Spite sneered.

Lucanis said nothing. There was no point lying to Spite, it would only encourage the demon to keep talking. Instead he headed toward the library balconies – they were the closest thing the Lighthouse had to a rooftop. He needed height. Needed perspective.

Surprisingly, Spite was quiet until Lucanis stood staring out at the blank expanse of the Fade and his heart rate had settled some in his chest.

Finally, the demon asked, why?

Lucanis sighed. “Why what?”

Spite growled, irritated at having to explain himself. Rook. Makes. You. Nervous. WHY?

Lucanis winced as the word rebounded inside his skull. “You don’t have to shout.”

Spite made an unconvinced noise.

“And besides,” Lucanis said. “You know why.”

Make it make sense. We. Like. Rook.

Lucanis pinched the bridge of his nose. “A little too much.”

Ahhhhh. Spite sniffed, as if savoring something delicious in the air. Scared.

Another truth he’d have to let lie between himself and the demon.

Let her in and get cut deep. See inside then turn away. Won’t want you. Oooh, or worse, she does want and then she di–

“Enough!” The word echoed out into the Fade, silencing the demon. “Enough,” Lucanis whispered. He didn’t need Spite to help him overthink all the ways kissing Rook could go wrong.

Want more than that.

The most surprising truth of them all. Lucanis could count the number of people he’d felt genuine attraction for on one hand. The only one he’d ever tried to pursue had misread him so completely he’d just given up.

As much as he longed for romance, he just wasn’t good at it. Love was something meant for characters in novels, or people like Teia and Viago. Not him.

Not love. What?

Before the Ossuary, Lucanis would have had an answer to a question like that. The Crows. House Dellamorte. Mediating peace between Illario’s ambitions and Caterina’s wishes. He liked being a Crow. He was good at it, and had never wanted more, a fact that had vexed Illario and pleased their grandmother.

And it was all gone.

Caterina was dead. In his current state, Lucanis was not fit to take her place as she’d desired. Illario would become First Talon, like he’d always wanted. If Lucanis somehow survived this contract, perhaps House Dellamorte would allow him back. Perhaps the future he and Illario had fantasized as boys might actually come to pass. Perhaps he and Rook…

Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps! Bah!

Lucanis sighed and shook his head. Then he and the demon walked back to the dining hall in silence. And in that silence was another, terrifying truth.

For the first time in his life, Lucanis Dellamorte didn't know what his future held.

[lostacanthus]

The DA2 crew deserved these team meetings. They would have had even worse arguments. Made fantastic use of all being in the same room to argue each other's ears off at the same time.

[lostacanthus]

Listen.

I love y'all, but some of you need to understand: the writers are not being shitty. The writing is not bad. The lore is not being ignored.

You're upset because your headcanons are not being followed.

Something Tolkien fans are constantly encouraged to do is "go back to the source material." This sounds basic, but Lord of the Rings alone is a massive book - if someone broke into my apartment, I stand a more than reasonable chance of beating them down with either of my illustrated hardcover copies. By the time you get through reading it, it's easy to forget small details in the main body of the work, much less the introductions and the appendices, and that's BEFORE you try absorbing everything in Lost Tales, or The Silmarillion, etc, etc.

Now imagine you come to Veilguard, and maybe you've been playing Inquistion because it feeds directly into the game. Maybe you played Origins, 2 and Inquisition in a white heat. Great! But those games include a lot of choices, and SO MUCH CODEX material. It's almost impossible to retain all of that knowledge all at once in your head, especially in games where you can miss shades of meaning due to the dialogue choices you make - and I often see people who claim they tend to make the same choices every time.

The reason we Tolkien fans are told to go back to the source material is that it's so easy to slip into assumptions. A great example is: do you actually know what Rangers are? Or do you think of them in D&D terms?

Dragon Age is a story that mimics the unreliability of History, where one characters's perspective and story may not be the same as another's, and neither are necessarily wrong or right - they're simply parts of a whole. And it's wild to watch y'all bend over backwards to defend your headcanons instead of accepting that maybe a character was wrong, or misinformed, or unreliable, or has a limited perspective.

[lostacanthus]

Dorian was about to risk it all to punch Magister Bataris

[lostacanthus]

Why I want Dragon Age 4 to have a new protag:

- To start a new experience on a new character - To make a new OC - To try out races I haven’t tried before - To make different choices based on their entirely different moral standing - To have my previous heroes stare at them like they’re about to get into a sh!tstorm these three have caused: