#i am LOVING veilguard so much

[trebuchet151]

Tell me the waves won't rise

And monsters will fade with time

To temper the blaze with the twist of a knife

A sun killer lullaby

Sun killer sing me to sleep

Its finally done! Here's the Hanged Man tarot card for Ithelanas Aldwir, my Rook.

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

Viago, when playing as Rook De Riva: you IDIOT you were my favorite fledgling why did you have to make a mess of this now I have to jump through all these convoluted hoops to keep you safe. Teia stop telling Rook how much I missed them it's not funny they could have DIED. also your room is exactly the way you left it please come home

Strife, when playing as Rook Aldwir: Why hasn't this weird bug i kicked out of our camp ages ago died yet :|

[rookanisstuff]

The Dellamortes

[vaguely-concerned]

the more I play the more I think lucanis basically knows it's illario who betrayed him right from the beginning (he's had a year in the ossuary to think. not that many people knew where he was going. when you ask him 'did Illario know you'd be on that ship' his only answer is the hardest flattest 'yes' you ever heard). so it's not so much about figuring out who the traitor is (because that's ludicrous. we all know. immediately. they didn't really bother to hide it lmao) as about methodically closing off every single avenue of denial lucanis has clung to that whole time with as much or little gentleness as you might prefer until he has no choice but to admit it. because the moment he has to admit it, he'll have to do something -- feel something -- about it. and that's such a catastrophic event in lucanis' inner landscape (he has had TWO people in this whole entire world up until now and will do anything to hold on to them with a heartbreaking child-like desperation, even at and especially through the detriment of his own self) that he'd rather just. not. what if we quite simply. didn't. what if we just stayed here in the emptiness where we can both pretend you didn't hurt me in a way I should never forgive. I have so much practice in that with caterina already it's always worked out great for everyone so far. (press x to fucking doubt but that's trauma logic for you lol)

after everything illario did, so much of the storm of lucanis' emotions around it is 'what the FUCK did you get yourself tangled up in this time and how do I get you out of this mess safely'. what's worse: the fact that your brother murdered you, or that he put himself in horrible danger doing so and thus exposed you to the risk of losing him forever. lucanis' heart certainly has an opinion here and it's fucking unhinged (affectionate)

the themes of dissociation in lucanis' character in general makes me feel nuts. allllll these contradictory messy things he needs to cut off from each other because they can't coexist or be easily reconciled inside him. but all remain stubbornly true separately anyway and will have their due one day. love and resentment. tenderness and fear and rage. terror and longing. love and freedom don't coexist. the burned out golden child anthem is playing in the background. he was always caterina's favourite and he has to keep striving to deserve that dubious honour with every breath he takes and then, presumably, mercifully, some day he will die and be excused and can rest. and until now he's suppressed all the -- natural, healthy, protective! -- negative feelings that threaten the few attachment relationships he actually has, at the cost of ever actually having his needs for connection and safety met and leaving his core self imprisoned and compromised. and spite goes 'what. no. that's dumb fuck that' (*spite voice* I do not understand that and even if I did I would not respect it) and does not allow him to fall back into that, which I think is what saves his life, ultimately. it took being possessed by a demon for lucanis to even contemplate telling anyone he loves 'no' in any way, but hey. whatever gets you there right lol

lucanis is dealing with the freeze response allll the way down baby. and he was even before the ossuary, that just turbo powered it and brought it to a breaking point way before it could happen naturally. but something was going to break eventually no matter what, and I'm just glad that in the end, through the power of friendship and also pure spite, it doesn't have to be him

[cheriboms]

everybody was very nice on my last post(s) so !!! more cole and manfred be upon you :D

[nadas-dirthalen]

putting out into the ether for the zillionth time that i really love veilguard. i love to chew on its lore. i love thinking about the devouring storm, the executors, and all the clues we *haven't* found/discussed yet. i love the companions and how they act as put-together as professionals in their 30s often act (and that taash acts so believably how a nonbinary, maybe-autistic person discovering themselves in their early 20s acts. ask me how i know). i love the romances and how much life there is in each one, yet how much room exists for headcanoning as well. i love veilguard's portrayal of solas, and i love how rook mirrors him so well, so devastatingly.

wishing there was a way to shine a bat-signal at the folks at bioware without directly addressing/tagging them directly (and implying they should reply, like on bsky). wishing i could give them all head pats from afar.

i really like veilguard. i hope they know how loved it is.

because it's damned good art.

[virginiathegray]

Watching creators across the internet yap themselves into hating this game for no reason is actually so sad

[duchell]

Random Rook and Neve sketch dump

[biowho]

If I can be honest for a second, the ending of the Dragon Age series in such a disrespectful and rushed way does not make me excited whatsoever for ME5

[rosieofcorona]

okay my darlings, i've seen a lot of takes on the AMA and this answer in particular:

and after mulling it over for a few days, i have decided to offer a scalding hot take for which i need you not to execute me marie-antoinette style, please 🙏🏻 (under the cut for length).

when epler said solas realized he doesn't have any "real regard" about the lives and goals of the elves, i didn't take it to mean that he is apathetic. i took it to mean the exact opposite, really. here's why. solas loves his people. incontrovertibly. he cares very deeply about their freedoms, about their existence, about what he's done to hurt them, intentionally or not. truth be told, it's kind of his whole thing. but their motivations are, as epler said, likely to be very different. solas always has very big picture goals. he wanted to free an entire people in arlathan. he wants to restore an entire people in thedas. and his followers, for their part, might agree with those larger goals. but their personal goals are likely not so large-scale. an elf or a spirit in arlathan might wish for simpler things for themselves. the freedom to choose their own path, their own fate, their own purpose. to keep themselves safe, to live in peace. to not serve all their lives under tyrants. an elf in modern thedas might want the same. to live without circles, or alienages, or clans. to not be derided or scorned or punished in societies that were built up around them, sometimes by their own labor. and solas wants to get them there, because he loves them. he does. but he cannot love them all as individuals (or as epler said, via "formal connections,") because it would be impossible. to save The People™ requires sacrifice, and solas knows this. all revolutions have martyrs, and solas knows this. individual goals, always, are dwarfed by the good of the cause, and solas knows this. and this, i think, is where he realizes that he would be doing them a disservice by using them as tools, even willing tools. that he would be robbing them of their lives and their own motivations by allowing them to continue in his service. when epler said that solas' rebellion turned him from being a leader, I took that to mean that solas learned from what happened in arlathan, with the spirits that he and felassan brought into battle. he loved them, too, and they died for him, and for his greater good. it was never malice or apathy against the individuals. it was what had to be done to accomplish his goals on a much grander scale. i think solas realized, near the end of his plans, that he could not continue to consider the elves as The People™, but as people- as full and separate lives, each with goals and needs and loves and purposes of their own. and yes, they chose to follow him, and yes, they may be sympathetic to said greater good. but he knows how many individuals have died in his name, even if they believed in what they were doing. solas has been through all this before. he knows the costs firsthand, where these people likely do not, not truly. he's seen the loss and the grief that comes after revolution, and he doesn't want that for them. because he loves them, both as his People and as his people. he doesn't want their lives reduced to his purpose, which will override their own unless he gives up his power. it's an act of love, to me, that he realizes this. an act of love to let them go, which the evanuris could never do.

[strawberry-halla]

can we appreciate for a second how varric treats all three dragon age protagonists?

hawke was his best friend. varric was the constant supportive rock throughout their many years in kirkwall together. they shared grief over lost family, overcame bullshit dealt to them over their shared mistakes, and reveled in the few good things thrown their way. and in the end varric repaid that in full by protecting hawke from the inquisition. he didn’t want them to get hurt again after both of them lost everything.

the inquisitor was varric’s guiding light. he had been through some of the worst shit anyone had ever seen, blaming himself for everything that happened that led up to this point. but the inquisitor took him by the hand and showed him that it’s never too late and that not everything was his fault. shit happens. you can either lie down and give up or do something. the inquisition gave varric a new purpose. so he stuck around for the inquisitor (as his friend) and for the cause.

rook was his pupil. he saw their potential when everyone else saw their ignorance. it was varric’s turn to be the guiding light and shoulder to lean on. he took both of his relationships with hawke and the inquisitor and became the man his two friends were to him. even when varric wasn’t even there. rook was listening to him. becoming the next one to step up when nobody else would.

[lucaanis]

blorbos from my veilguard....

[plisuu]

Breaking news: Tired husbands accidentally adopt a group of 8 disaster pansexuals while they try to fix the mess their stupid ex made of Thedas, more at 11

[vaguely-concerned]

lucanis' last question when interrogating zara's corpse -- whether illario also asked her to kill caterina -- is so telling. because if illario had done that, I actually do think lucanis would have killed him. (his standards are predictably wild and hilarious in a dark sort of way. listen I can forgive you for killing me that's fine understandable even but there's a limit to everything illario.) which is why he saves that question for last: it's the one thing he really does not want to know the answer to. because if the answer is yes, it's going to need action from him that would be so psychologically catastrophic that nothing the ossuary could do to him would compare, that would have been the end of him too, I feel, even with rook and the team there to try to catch him or pick up the pieces. I love how if you pay attention you can trace out the underlying hurt/logic already here, before it gets spelled out in inner demons. the logic lucanis' brain operates on is very sad and very consistent the whole way throughout the game.

[sotc]

I can't stop thinking about how much Spite would've loved Zevran. Take Spite's "Want to? Fly like a dragon?" commentary at Taash to Zevran's "Knives can kill. Even small children, when launched at very fast speeds, can kill." and Spite would've been like:

[snowveiled]

I am here, walking the dinan'shiral with you!

Solas' path and Ran's (former) vallaslin.