#and Lucanis is used to being highly skilled at things so he would want to do well with this

[fanfoolishness]

Just thought of how the Lighthouse seems to pull things that are needed and wanted into being…

Rook or Neve walk into the pantry to visit Lucanis and find him furiously blushing and shoving a book behind his back. “Spite must have… found it somewhere,” he sputters. “I don’t know how it got here!”

It’s the Antivan version of a Joy of Sex book, half straight titillation, half earnestly detailed instruction manual, and all of it, according to the Lighthouse, needed and wanted.

Lucanis is mortified. But I can see Neve or Rook just sitting down beside him with a matter-of-fact grin and asking if there’s any good chapters. 😂

[andragoras-in-vanity]

im sure ive alrwady said this but veilgaurd called me a bottom in evedy language, most strongly elvhen tho. i cannot stop thinking about elgar'nans lil spiel to the venatori saying 'all you must do is love me, and kneel' like bruh......if rook wasnt so spiteful they probably would have...just to see where he was going with that....

[romesinruins]

op I'm sorry for word vomiting all over your post but I have a hill to die on.

I think Rook's "therapyspeak" is a feature, not a bug.

I've also seen complaints that there's no reason Rook should be leading the Veilguard. That people don't understand why Varric made them his second in command and the group keeps following them.

I think their ability to "therapyspeak" aka their empathy, compassion and people skills is exactly the reason why.

The team is a group of highly-skilled specialists. They're also all of them traumatised in some way and have egos that need to be navigated.

Getting this team to work together and stay motivated against the odds they're facing requires Rook to put their own emotional baggage second and treat them all with the gentleness, empathy and compassion they use to do so.

We have Harding meeting Lucanis and going "an assassin I could deal with but I draw the line at abominations" except that Rook makes it clear they want him on the team. They don't chide Harding for those remarks, they just model the appropriate behaviour for the situation and don't leave room to question his presence in the Lighthouse.

We have Taash coming for Emmerich. And there's a significant chance that Rook sees that go down and is thinking that this is a level of kindergarten they're not paid enough to deal with. But they do deal with Taash's wild lack of tact and the fact that Emmerich is old enough and has enough teaching experience that he should be decent enough at drawing boundaries. And they do so in a way that keeps the team functional.

We have Davrin and Lucanis getting into pissing contests after Weisshaupt. It's entirely possible for a third person in that situation to make things worse. But Rook cannot afford them fighting it out and getting injured enough to be out of commission for a bit. So that's not what happens.

We have Lucanis or Neve leaving temporarily and I would love to have an actual fight about this, yes. The companions deserve to be angry. Rook deserves to be angry for being forced into that choice. Rook deserves to react irrationally because they're stressed and exhaused and things went wrong but they had no way of making them go right. But it's also vital that Rook doesn't judge either of them for temporarily abandoning the mission or calls their loyalty to the cause into question down the line.

I would love to see Rook's moments of being completely done with the situation as much as I would love to have more of Rook being in over their head or not knowing what to do or being genuinely lost or scared or paralysed with decision-making. We get shades of this but I do wish we got more.

I know that sometimes, all the companions would look more human if they actually acted on their emotions in more prominent and permanent ways. I know the writing can sound clumsy and clunky. I get it, I'm there with you. But Rook's personality might actually be vital to the game being winnable.

I'd also love to be able to choose if Rook is genuinely that empathetic and compassionate or if this is them doing whatever it takes and manipulating everyone around them. I think the latter could be really a really fun interpretation actually.

I have stopped trusting people who say Rook uses "therapyspeak" and uses the phrase "goody-two-shoes" as an insult, because if you can't say, "I hate the same archetype that Superman used to be. It bores me," and instead have to use compassion, empathy, and a sense of good morality as an insult, something ain't right.