#again this is my personal preference

[araybiaa]

personally, i would prefer that collins’ storyline averted away from pregnancy (at the moment!) with everything that happened with her in s1 and before with the abortion and the miscarriages, i feel like it’s taken a huge toll on her (which she confessed to robby in the ambulance bay.) and i think that exploring her character outside of wanting to be a mother in s2 is what’s best. i want to see how she adjusts to being an attending, the guilt she probably feels about not being there for pittfest and how she overworks herself to try to absolve for her absence, how her relationship with langdon changes bc i can see her being on his side / a little more empathetic than robby was and that possibly causing conflict between them bc it’s like “how do you see his side and not mine.” especially since their relationship is closer and she knows him.

(also because selfishly if/when she tries again i want it to be with robby and that can’t happen right now until he’s gotten help. and neither one of them are in a position to be in a relationship again at the moment. if she wanted to do it on her own again like maybe adoption this time since we’ve heard her exasperate about the hassle of ivf my sentiments would be exactly the same. but that’s a different conversation.)

so s2 is of collins adjusting to her new role, catching up with everything that she missed while she was getting her much needed and deserved rest at home, while robby goes to therapy and works on himself. at the end of season 2 they can reconcile and begin their relationship again THEN in s3 they can start trying for a kid together again. and we continue to see the progression of their relationship over the seasons and how their family builds.

and while i don’t want an immediate pregnancy storyline again, i do hope they explore a little more of collins’ and robby’s feelings about her abortion and miscarriages. because to me that’s not just a one conversation topic. and i hope that it’s brought up in his therapy sessions if we get to see them bc collins is such an important part of his character. i wanna hear him express his regret about not being emotionally available to her in their relationship like he should’ve been and how he wishes he could’ve done more to show her that he was all the way in like she was. i want to see both of them develop then come together.

[paintedcrows]

Introducing RoyalAuthor! ...I cannot stop thinking about these old man scientists...

[kingofattolia]

Usually finding out you have something in common with a new acquaintance is a positive thing, but sometimes it's extremely dangerous. If I meet someone who's also into writing, that's like an even 50/50 on whether we should be best friends OR whether every time they open their mouth I will be manfully restraining myself from fistfighting them on the sidewalk outside this bougie downtown brunch spot.

[st7arlight]

the people who are refusing to draw stan pines the way he is shaped in canon are COWARDS!!!!

ur old man yaoi has GOT to have that old man shaped how old men are shaped!!!

[vaguely-concerned]

This might be due to the fact that on my first playthrough I ended up creating a Rook more emotionally guarded than any of the companions except Minrathous-route Lucanis and perhaps Neve, so I was primed to look for it, but I never got the sense that the companions don’t care for Rook (the thought never even occurred to me until I saw other people post about it) — to me it seems much more like it’s Rook who keeps the last bit of distance, Rook who pulls away when the companions try to extend their care or worry too directly, who keeps themselves slightly apart. (Rook who is so full of grief they cannot know as grief and thus process that there’s no room inside them to let anything else all the way in, perhaps.) They deflect and flinch back when someone gets too close or approaches them too overtly about their feelings — especially when it brushes up against the theme of grief. They can offer care to all the companions who are grieving, come along to any number of funerals as emotional support, but the moment someone turns that towards them they shut that shit down Immediately, like when Taash almost gives the whole game away with ‘Like you’d know? You act like you haven’t lost anyone!’ and Rook just blandly responds ‘We’re talking about you’ and doesn’t engage. But they can also admit that they struggle with accepting compliments, or knowing what to say, or having confidence in themselves without Varric’s help.

Despite all their determination and even in their most stoic no-nonsense incarnation, Rook is awkward, with the struggles that entails. Someone who is eager and happy to be the helper wherever they can, and helplessly unequipped to know how to be the helpee, as it were. It’s not that the companions don’t return Rook’s attachment to them, there’s MUCH more of a ‘okay so what are the ways you will allow me to be good to you??’ desperation of care vibe behind all their invitations to conversations and hangouts together, to my mind. They bring Rook to their favourite places and share the things they love with them, they ask to spend time together (many times just to have their company, not because they have a problem they need help with! Sometimes the problem arises anyway b/c video game quest narrative of course), they bring them out for some direly needed grass touching, they introduce them to their families. Everyone is clearly getting the sense that Rook does Not want to talk about Varric especially (this is in fact what Harding says in banter, if she’s still alive after the reveal :’( ), but they are absolutely SCRAMBLING to find ways to show that they’re there for them even so. AND from the companions’ perspective, with the situation as they have the means to understand it, accepting that Rook isn’t ready to have that conversation and backing off is also a kind thing to do. (tl;dr: To Me Rook is that weirdly socialized friend who is a great hang once they’re actually there but you have to directly invite them or they don’t quite know how to initiate the contact themselves lol) 

Just as a crushing sense of responsibility for their family is a trait that is built into Hawke no matter how you play them or how you make them respond to that, I feel like Rook — however helpful and earnest, warm, charming, jocular, stoic or straightforward they seem at a surface glance — is always someone who struggles deeply with connecting to themselves and other people. (Emotional Intimacy, the Final Frontier.) As, indeed, is the case with all of the Veilguard companions too! It’s clearly a deliberate theme. These are all lonely people struggling with their sense of identity and belonging in some sort of way. AND having, working on and eventually starting to overcome these difficulties also makes Rook a direct foil for Solas, who doesn’t learn that lesson unless you corner him at the end of the world to force feed him his medicine lmao. They don’t manage to break out of the regret prison under their own steam, it’s because even struggling and grieving they have managed to create mutual bonds with other people who show up for them in turn now — and with all the protective walls of denial around what happened to Varric crumbling and making them less of a stranger to themselves, Rook is finally able to let them. An outcome Solas seemingly didn’t even consider to guard against, because he’s become that deeply entrenched in his loneliness, the utter isolation of the self — he can no longer truly imagine an alternative. (It’s not that he can’t form these bonds, obviously, it’s that he resolutely refuses to value them. Whether it’s because he feels like he doesn’t deserve it or out of a need for control or the martyr complex where he must sacrifice everything he loves on the sacrificial pyre of fixing his mistakes, all of the above and more, the result is the same. Mind!Varric, who I think is mostly Solas speaking, even calls this out directly. So yet again a situation where he has some self awareness about it and it doesn’t help At All haha. Solas falls to the temptation of making people into tools again and again and again, no matter how many times it comes back to bite him in the ass and the eternal solitude it traps him in.) 

And that deep deep loneliness… There but for the grace of… well the theological state of thedas being what it is right now, let’s just go with the grace of Something, Presumably go you as well, Rook. The same capacity/tendency to pull away from connection clearly lives in them as well in some form (again, for whatever reason and with whatever motivations and instincts behind it for any individual Rook). Solas and Rook coming together to create a blood magic paper doll of the mind Varric in response to acute loss and loneliness is one of the most deep , deeply fucked up and invasive acts of intimacy I’ve ever contemplated. I don’t think that’s accidental, there’s something There’s Something Wrong With You (there’s something wrong with you that’s also wrong with me (derogatory)) here that resonates no matter how both parties would hate to hear it. (A fitting legacy for Varric and his wild ‘I made my best friend into a story because it’s the only way I know how to love with this desperation of sincerity’ brain to leave in the narrative, methinks. I feel he’d appreciate it on a craft level, if nothing else.)

If you read through all of Rook’s potential backstories, one of the common threads through all of them, along with a certain maverick ‘I’ll do whatever it takes’ streak, is a sense of profound alienation. They did something or have some sort of quality that made it hard for them to fit in with the group they’re from, causing a conflict that cuts them off from parts of their identity as it’s been up until now. All of which also adds to how important Varric is to them — he was clearly able to break/see through some of that and be closer with them, even in the relatively short time they spent together. No matter what else goes to shit, they can trust that a) Varric sees them, b) he genuinely likes them and believes in them not despite who they are, but for it, and c) he’s got their back, we’re in this together kid. And then he is gone, and it takes them the whole game to be able to bring themselves to accept that and know themselves again, be able to let new relationships in fully. The very understandable ‘the last time I let someone in, they got stabbed before my eyes and the world ended’ flinch away, even if they’re not consciously aware that’s what it is. Anyway I love Rook. So much space to play around in here as to WHY they might feel or react like this, even when the framework is more defined.

[jessmalia]

Cassandra and But Daddy I Love Him being two sides of the same coin

[myuniverseinabox]

Let's Go to Heaven

[ninjasmudge]

feeds your narilamb yuri juice

dude i have great news about my regular narilamb

[wasabikitcat]

I love how all the spamtenna art I see on this website is evenly split between being half dead serious melodramatic doomed yaoi and half Tom & Jerry style antics where they're like, beating each other to death with cartoonishly large mallets.

[corpusdiem-seizethedead]

*camera filming like a documentary. Vaggie is narrating. The camera focuses on Husk reading on the couch*

Vaggie: This is Husk. He enjoys his personal space-

*camera pans out to reveal Angel laying across Husk’s lap*

Vaggie: This is Angel. He also enjoys Husk’s personal space.

[sometimesanequine]

bonus horse brought to you by myself reading buddhist literature once again

[fisheito]

... peace on planet bottom, then there's whatever this is

[dollypopup]

i think we as a fandom should embrace thicc colin more. thicc colin is my beloved. he loves to eat, he loves to lounge, he's a strong boi. as much as i love luke newton as colin, season 2 colin hits so different for me because baby boy was BIG. those thighs? kill me. his arms? enormous. the little bit of softness on his season 3 sharp ass jaw? phenomenal.

give me a modern day colin who ends up sitting with pen to the side when the family goes to a water park and pen being upset like 'you can just go to ride the slides without me, it's fine' because she's over the weight limit and colin being so confused because 'but i'm over the weight limit?' because he's six foot and some change and just ate his way through europe before coming home

give me a regency colin who spent so long traveling that his body was in a semi-state of starvation all the time, because food isn't super plentiful on long boat rides in the 1800s, and when he's on land, he's exploring and walking and climbing and hiking, so when he settles down, he gets chubby again and his mum is so relieved because he used to come home all skin and bones and she gushes about how well Pen takes care of her son

hell, give me a POLIN who both get fatter after they get married because 1: Penelope gets to actually EAT again (it's like they forgot the whole 'nothing but boiled potatoes' bit for the featheringtons), 2: Colin is a hungry boy and always has been, and 3: food being used as a metaphor for love and healing is important to me

it works in every universe and every situation.

embrace thicc colin into your heart

[calamarispiderart]

heeeheheheeeeheehee

[equalperson]

unfortunately I'm very deep into a rewrite hyperfixation so. antisocial + narcissistic rewrite icons! free to use with or without credit.

[hexxter]

What if Luxu and Player encounter each other with each of the player’s reincarnation

Luxu who is stealing bodies vs the kid that keeps coming back to life