#lucanis how to you survive like this im dying

[telafel]

Some more Lucanis rambling:

Thinking about how Lucanis made a deal with Spite. How he is the only 'success' of Zara's.

We only ever hear about this deal from Spite, when he is in full control in the pantry. I think this is another point of resentment for Lucanis towards Spite.

Because in my headcanon of events during their imprisonment, this deal became a way to cope. They are both unwilling, but they aren't like water and oil. I think the reason these two were able to endure is because Lucanis would likely naturally draw a spirit of determination from his personality, and that fact meant their natures were not so disparate as others undergoing these experiments.

A deal meant they were able to align even more, which made it easier to handle whatever torture was thrown at them.

Escaping and living was the only hope Lucanis had. Even if it was near-impossible.

And when he is able to do that thanks to Rook and co. the deal with Spite becomes something shameful.

Now he has to deal with existing as an abomination and what it might mean, but also that he opened himself up to Spite, willingly.

Of course, he doesn't want anyone to know that and admitting that would be admitting that he's actually not so different from Spite, or at least has some of those qualities.

So, he tries to bury Spite as deep as he can. Not give up control. And Spite is trapped in the mental prison of the Ossuary, and their deal isn't fulfilled. Overtime this causes more problems leading to Spite sleepwalking more and eventually Spite finally talk to Rook and Inner Demons. (See: my other post about Spite actually wanting to help Lucanis)

If you save Treviso he is willing to open himself up again, to Rook and to Spite and have more harmony. If you don't save Treviso he instead tries to distance himself further and tries to remove Spite whatever that might mean.

I also don't know if the dialogue is unique to romanced Lucanis or not but I think it's telling that at the very moments before the final mission, Lucanis has a conversation with Rook where Rook points out he sounds like Spite and Lucanis accepts that with no qualms.

Anyways I'm sleep deprived and I think they're neat.

[tactician]

datv spoilers abt how they handled one of the older games' companions under the cut

(also it's negative if you'd rather avoid that sort of thing)

man im not a datv hater by any means, in fact i Love It and i want to write up my general #thoughts about it sometime - both the positive and the negative, yay nuance - but i rly do need to take a moment to rant about how it lowkey did zevran so dirty and that's one aspect of it that i will never forgive!!!

LIKEEEE OK YES. i'll admit that im being dramatic / sensitive bc i love zev so fucking much and i have been steeled by years upon years of listening to the fandom treat one of my fav dragon age characters (literally the reason why i got into dragon age) like some kind of joke but. that experience is a lot different from seeing bioware do it. ik there's some cute shallow references to him sprinkled here-and-there (iirc 'the invitation' gearset is a reference to him which is pretty nice), but there's ALSO a banter that lucanis has w harding which implies that members of house arainai 'died from embarrassment' over a failed assassination contract in ferelden, which is obviously a reference to zevran - and ohhhh when i tell you it grinded my gears.... it really, really got to me...

i definitely understand wanting to keep immersion intact for people who killed off zevran in origins as well as people who got him through it and let him go off and hunt down crows - so making a reference to the actual contract and keeping the fallout of that contract vague makes sense. but being coy about it (a la harding assuming that leaders of house arainai literally just died from The Cringe Of It All and weren't, like, systematically hunted down by a former crow / survivor who went thru years of literal torture from them) is really like... i dunno! i don't like it! it left a bad taste in my mouth + seeing tons of people giggling over it ANNOYS MEEEE!!!! it legit ruins my own immersion bc wdym the crows have no opinion whatsoever on a character who was slaughtering them left and right in my worldstate lkfdgldkfh

and like even if you view it as a clumsy euphemism for zev hunting the leaders down later on, i still rly firmly maintain that it's a poor one. if he survives post-origins, zevran becomes a total thorn in the crows' side. he killed off influential leaders within the org... he even got a title for it (THE BLACK SHADOW. YES I REMEMBER)... and bioware is reducing that legacy to a joke about people dying from embarrassment -_- like please be serious.

furthermore i don't think it's immersion breaking to just... replace those lines with a sentence or two referencing an assassin within house arainai who defected and started taking down talons given how abhorrent house arainai was/is(?), either. a vague foreboding reference would literally do the job just fine. house arainai was not the fandom's ~*~Found Family Vibes~*~ lmao they were taking in child slaves and grooming them into ruthless assassins - but that lore is totally ignored in veilguard, too!!! even with all the fledglings around the crows' base in veilguard... it's just not elaborated on in a way that aligns with previously established lore.

DON'T GET ME WRONG THOUGH. i'm absolutely not part of the section of the fandom who hate on the crows being a "good-aligned" faction that rook can ally with, because obviously all of the houses aren't house arainai - some are scummier than others and some do, in fact, have the ~*~Found Family Vibes~*~. it just sucks so much that datv provides banter and dialogue setups where the #lore is like... talked about and explained to some degree... but those lines are wasted on empty shit like "the crows hire recruits from the military or the trades! :)" or weird trope-based jokes at the expense of previous companions rather than even vaguely implying that different houses do different things, and that some houses are shitty to a truly reprehensible level.

tl;dr imo if bioware doesn't want previous choices to matter or for stuff to be hyper-tailored to specific worldstate choices, that's cool and fine and deeply understandable, but characters should just be quiet about those choices ;LKGFHL;KFDG BUT HEY!!!!! if i missed a banter where zevran IS referenced in a manner which isn't a joke or linked to his sex appeal, i would rly love to hear about it... because as this sudden unplanned Essay that i spawned proves, im Quite salty about this L;FDGKGFHKLGHF