sunamue

[sunamue]

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.

[sunamue]

my personal dragon age canon goes like

Origins: guy with a supernatural amount of rizz accidently becomes important at work and sigmas their way through gathering enough insane people to support them while they cure the super plague by beating the fuck out of it

2: worlds saddest wettest refugee has so much parentified older sibling energy that a bunch of freak outcasts imprint on them because they all live in Facism City where Everything is Fucked and Everybody Sucks

Inquisition: guy gets kidnapped by the pope's personal assistant to serve as Jesus 2 but it's fine because as it turns out if christians think you're Jesus 2 they'll do whatever you ask them to. which is really helpful if you happen to be the only competent person trying to prevent reality from unraveling

Veilguard: local intern accidentally becomes boss by being just so goddamn full of love that they can just bat their eyelashes and people keep pledging fealty to them and following them home. Their love for the world itself burns so bright and true that they not only kill 2 gods (with the power of friendship and this knife they found) but guilt trip the worlds #1 sunken cost fallacy truther into giving up his genocidal thousand year plan to go sit in time out

[sunamue]

DA tarot-style commission of a lovely Rook for @dancing--lights <3 thank you so much again!

[sunamue]

Cullen (Female version) from Dragon Age: Inquisition

Cosplayer: Enayla Cosplay [DA | TM | TW | FB] Photographer: Eurobeat Kasumi Photography

[sunamue]

Emmrich: woe… I shall never find the eduring devotion and love that I so yearn for… I am resigned to live out the rest of my days in solitude…

This strange gremlin who is constantly giving themself concussions by smashing their head directly into crates and pottery: I would literally both kill and die for you old man

Emmrich: *surprised pikachu face* exquisite.

[sunamue]

I truly hate the word "unalive." There are so many other euphemisms that fictional Italian mobsters worked so hard to provide you with and you just ignore them.

[sunamue]

good god.

[sunamue]

party rockers in their bed tonight. every body just have a good night

[sunamue]

So. Let me sell you on my crack ship before canon destroys it lol

We have textual evidence suggesting that Andruil and Ghilain’nain were lovers. The more I think about it the more I love them.

One makes monsters and the other hunts monsters- but if we extrapolate on this dynamic?

Imagine Ghilain’nain- white hair and black eyes, skin almost translucent from how much time she spends in the lab, something almost insect like about her posture and movements. She forgets to eat she’s so obsessed with the next creation, the next gift to her lover.

Andruil is the opposite, muscular and tan from hunting, obsessed with not the creation, but the k**l. She hunts for the joy, for the thrill, and to feed her wisp of a lover who so often forgets to eat. She coaxes Ghilain’nain with promises to tell her how the latest experiment fought, the challenges and areas this particular creature can be improved for next time.

They’re both cruel, and monstrous. But not to each other. They only care for each other- and their love language is gifts of monsters.

[sunamue]

my commissions are open!! 🍈🪻

i have 3 slots available for fairy and regular comms and 5 slots open for sketch comms! please dm me if u want one or if u have any questions 💕

(paypal only!! in USD <3)

[sunamue]

Azizah Stellazio

[sunamue]

Veiltober - day 12, Varric

Bioware really made Varric come back all sexy for the 3rd time around just to NOT let me romance him AGAIN!! This is unfair and I seek legal compensation.

Going forward, I'll be trying to make compositions a little simpler for the sake of time and to not expend myself too much. It's still a long way to DATV and I wanna have some energy to actually play the game XD

Ty to @lynnerdo for the prompts !!

[sunamue]

In Memoriam of the 3 party member system😔, a curated selection of some of my favorite three-way dialogues.

---

100% support the devs on doing what they need to to balance gameplay, and i'm excited to try the new combat system, but I'll miss the surprise additions to chatter.

[sunamue]

- Dog star, burning through a vast black sky -

In memory of Laika: a greater friend to mankind than mankind was to her.

[sunamue]

・・・。▼

[sunamue]

I just reada really good fic but halfway through I realized "oh shit this is really familiar.... didn't I write something like this once?" And as I kept reading I kept predicting what happened next and the further I went the more convinced I was that they'd ripped off my story-

like, copied the ENTIRE plot and re-written it, just better than I had? The characters were more fleshed-out than mine were, and the POV was more interesting, and the pace made more sense- but it was MY STORY?

So close to the end I was like "holy shit.. do I message them? Ask if my story inspired theirs? Should I be angry? Flattered?" Cause their tags and description didn't mention me AT ALL, which, sure, it's fanfiction to begin with, but if you're using my work than at least credit me as inspo, right? Just to be courteous?

But I get to the end of the final chapter, and it's not finished, and I'm kind of disappointed cause I never finished my story and I was really immersed in their version now and had been looking forwards to seeing how they tied up my loose ends- so I scroll to the bottom to leave a comment, and.

It's MY URL.

IT WAS MY STORY THE WHOLE TIME.

THE ONE *I WROTE*.

In *2013*.

And FORGOT ABOUT

BECAUSE I WAS SO INSECURE ABOUT MY SLOPPY, SHALLOW, AMETEUR WRITING

And I'm just sitting here now staring into space thinking about every shitty story I've ever written now like

IT WAS ALL GOOD?

IT WAS GOOD THIS WHOLE DAMN TIME??

I'M A GOOD WRITER?????

[sunamue]

Watch Their Love Stories to Make Your Heart Ache For Better or Worst ⋆｡ ﾟ☾ ﾟ｡⋆

A Room with a View (1985) dir. James Ivory

Quote: “Women like looking at a view. Men don't.”

Wuthering Heights (1992) dir. Peter Kosminsky

Quote: “I cannot live without my life. I cannot live without my soul.”

First Knight (1995) dir. Jerry Zucker

Quote: “Your will chooses me. Your heart chooses him.”

Tristan & Isolde (2006) dir. Kevin Reynolds

Quote: “I don't know if life is greater than death. But love was more than either.”

Ondine (2009) dir. Neil Jordan

Quote: “I know something's going to happen, something wonderful. Or terrible. It's just the kind of girl she is. It's just the kind of person she is.”

Bright Star (2009) dir. Jane Campion

Quote: “I never knew before, what such a love as you have made me feel was. I did not believe in it.”

Belle (2013) dir. Anna Asante

Quote: “I pray he would marry you without a penny to your name, for that is a man who would truly treasure you.”

Dracula Untold (2014) dir. Gary Shore

Quote: “Why think separately of this life than the next, when one is born from the last? Time is always too short for those who need it, but for those who love, it lasts forever.”

Mary Shelley (2017) dir. Haifaa al-Mansour

Quote: “My choices made me who I am and I regret nothing.”

Ophelia (2018) dir. Claire McCarthy

Quote: “I have seen more of heaven and hell than most people dream of. But I was always a willful girl, and followed my heart, and spoke my mind. And it is high time I should tell you my story myself.”