#my wip is partially about lucanis and rye talking about her b/c it's so sad to me that lucanis doesn't really talk about her dying

[vaguely-concerned]

listen I just... this path of harding's loyalty mission with this specific party. the disrupted self squad. the trauma has made me a stranger to myself Have You Seen Me I can't find my way back union. team fractured reality and I'm piecing it and myself back together as best I can (will you keep me company in the meantime?). the echoes and the implications. as above so below, as in you so in me, large cosmic scale to painfully small personal psychological scale. pain from the distant past still alive and snarling to be known in the now, and pain right now and ongoing but forgotten and unseen, supressed by means natural and unnatural (what's a little blood magic to help denial and dissociation along between frenemies huh solas). the extra meaning 'spite' takes on as a phrasing here (because it's all IN THERE this is all in the big text of the game!!! the themes echo back on themselves everywhere you listen for them!!!!). rook who once more doesn't even know that they don't KNOW they're also speaking to themselves as well as harding in this scene, to their own broken self and mind partially mirrored in someone they love (broken by the same perpetrator, even, in this case!!!!!!!!! hello solas once more), harding who doesn't quite know she's also speaking to them as well as to herself, to the dwarves, the titans, the world; everything and everyone that has ever been hurt, but whose stubborn kindness still has room for it all. (even for solas. hello again. we cannot escape you it seems mr dread wolf it's almost like you and your plethora of fuckery are thematically central or something (grudgingly affectionate).) even without perfect understanding of the full picture, the simple intention to be kind matters.

(forgive me for my sentimental nature and everpresent rookanis bias for a moment but ALSO lucanis looking over at rook Like That in this context, while those words are being spoken!!! spite's role in urging him towards escaping, living, thriving, instead of merely numbly surviving, and how it ties in with harding's revelation and decision here. and rook who opens doors and stays to walk through them with you, at the end being found and helped through a door of their own, and lucanis himself being one of the people to do that. do you. do you get me. I feel strange and wild.)

most of all harding just. saying the whole thing. summing the whole game up. 'we're different, but we're not gone. we will thrive -- in spite of you'. I was RIGHT about it all the way back in november actually and I should say it!!!!! the game is saying this on purpose. 'and then... everyone was there. and that's when I knew we'd be okay. that I'd... that I'd be okay'. my friend lace harding might be the only person who really gets it huh. and what a legacy for varric to leave behind in the narrative (and what a common da2 W, the little team that couldn't does it again better than anyone's ever done it by doing it the worst anyone's ever done it, hawke can't stop winning by always losing). no salvation but each other but my god that is plenty. my god. that is enough. once more

my head is in my hands I love this game desperately, it rewards really sitting with and taking in the themes so much. i'm so sorry for dropping a bunch of my own metas in there like that but I'm finding it so hard to say what I need to say all in one go, it's just -- it's so big! it's so much! I have so many thoughts to express about my unified theory of veilguard and only my poor battered neurons to do it with, please look upon me with clemency and, perhaps, forbearance. and it's so interesting that you can bring another companion along with rook and harding in this scene and have it mean just as much with slightly different nuances, have it resonate just as much with the overall meaning the game is trying to get across, because they're truly all tied in with each other that way; they're all part of a larger truth. you think it's one theme after another but the damn things overlap etc.