#and where this differs with Neve

[solasfenheral]

idk. imho I think the writing in lucanis’s romance lacks a lot of clarity on what it wants to be for this character relationship and as a result feels incredibly disjointed.

[flowersforthemachines]

|| Companion skill animations (+ bonus Rook)

[guacamolleee]

One thing I liked about Veilguard, and not something I see a lot of people talk about, is the fact Emmrich does think marriage and family was possible for him.

As a mage.

In Thedas.

He brings it up in banter not in an "if only it were allowed" sort of way, but in a "I thought it definitely would have happened by now" way

We're told in past games that marriage is greatly discouraged (not outright illegal, but you know how this goes...) in the circles, along with having children. And if children were born, they're taken away quickly from their parents. And if/when magical abilities show up, they aren't even allowed to be in the same circle as each other.

So Emmrich's remark about marriage and family tells me that either:

1) Nevarra (or northern Thedas in general) is different. That there's an open-mindedness about mages we simply do not see in the south, where the foothold of the Orlesian Chantry is much stronger. That's something supported by what we know about Nevarran traditions, the sway of the Mortalitasi in the country, and so on.

Or

2) Alternatively, we could also maybe say that somewhere in the last two decades since Origins that the idea of marriage and family for mages shifted somewhere in the *whole* of Thedas. That we, at least, are now in a world where it's possible for mages to love, marry, and have the families they want without the threat of the Chantry tearing them apart. I can especially see that in world states where the Warden, Hawke, and Inquisitor were pro-mage, and if Leliana is Divine.

The most likely reason is probably the first one. But isn't it so nice to think about the second? That Thedas has progressed enough in the last few decades that this is something possible for mages? And for an Emmrich-romancing Rook, that Emmrich *can* take them home, *can* marry them, and *can* have a family if they so wished? That the question of marriage/family was not an if but a when?

There's something reassuring about that to me.

[vaguely-concerned]

the scene where you talk to davrin in his room while he whittles tiny models of monsters (while assan watches with rapt attention <3 there is nothing about this whole setup, man or griffon, that isn't adorable) when your rook IS one of the dainty little academic mage types he so besmirches and you consistently pick the purple options through the conversation -- I am SCREECHING the covert jock/nerd war rages on between clenched teeth and forced jollity, they are doing this on purpose, bioware really have given me this gift all nicely wrapped and lovingly crafted! rook is so fucking bitchy and passive aggressive in these purple options (and once or twice davrin doesn't seem to realize it/takes what they say at face value); it's not very nice of them but it is hilarious. also I must say that hearing these two just relentlessly neg each other with palpable tension of. SOME kind thick in the air* for five minutes straight and then walking away and seeing the 'davrin approves' pop up at the end gets close to the otherwise unapproachable gaming high that is having a tense standoff with sten in origins and seeing +7 affection as you leave. davrin clearly is going 'good talk man nice to see you stand up for yourself more, I respect the roast game' while my rook walks away with a forced smile and clenched fists like 'okay so that wasn't very mature of me I'll admit it but god why is this guy such an asshole'

I cannot imagine how this conversation must play out with a character more on davrin's wavelength because for my setup here this was *chef's kiss* perfect. ideal. I'm so glad this dynamic exists it's one of the funniest and most characterization-enriching things that could have happened to me

*there's some insanity going on here where like... I don't think either of them like want to fuck, they're not actually attracted to each other, but they both would fuck each other in a 'go fuck yourself'/'fuck me yourself you coward'/'fine I will see if I don't!!!!'/'oh yeah??? do it then!!!!!' kind of way. the vibes are indescribable and unhinged on both of their parts.

[detectiveneve]

alright with 30+ hours. I'm gonna yap about my personal itching beef, since I'm having a ton of fun. but.

I think by far one of my biggest issues with the game is how much they flattened out thedas' social & political landscape. maybe for ease, maybe out of fear of tackling their topics "badly," but the way that they both want to address tevinter's slavery, but have also extremely downplayed elven subjugation & oppression as a longstanding lore, is sooo... frustrating.

I think the story so far is pretty solid, I'm having a GREAT time, I enjoy all the cast, but it does feel like it could've been a lot deeper if they'd fully accounted for the breadth of these longstanding lore realities that come with magic & class & whether one is human or elven or dwarven. I've gotten NONE of that, AS an elf shadow dragon. davrin going "that'll endear us to the world..." about the gods being elven is insane -- elves are already oppressed under the structures of thedas! tevinter is where all of this STARTED. similarly, the lack of interaction between magic & class is like... craaazy to me.

these structures are present throughout the entirety of each game, it should feel different in each location. it just feels clumsy to both want to address the social issues of slavery, etc. present in thedas, and ALSO flatten out the differences between city elves & dalish, not emphasize it more especially with an elven origin... like wdym. wdym. that one of the biggest mentions of it with an elven rook is the scroll lore where rook goes "it's about time someone acknowledged what my people did..." about some guy who praised the elves. a shadow dragon elf rook will have been living with a very specific systemic structure of oppression for their entire life. WHY isn't that here. the story structure I'm having a good time with, the characters I'm having a good time with, but goddd it could have been so much deeper if it had actually incorporated some of the complexity & nuance of these social structures in thedas. you look silly trying to both include these themes of shadow dragons breaking slavery and ALSO pussyfooting around The Origins Of How We Got Here. that's not even getting into MAGIC, and how being a MAGE should mean something different in different places. like. whahrhrrhrhrhrr.

[bhaalble]

I need to run Neve's personal quest again with different outcomes but I sort of feel like I don't totally understand what the Stakes of that are like what is materially different about her journey. It feels like there's this binary being set up of is Neve going to become colder and more calculated in pursuit of a safer city or is she going to keep trying to be this inspiring figure even if it means she's a little less effective. But like what does she Do differently to reflect that. What's the threat that Rava is so worried about if Neve loses herself because it doesn't really feel like there's consequence.

Granted. Neve had a Terrible Bad No Good Time in my playthrough (Treviso saved, Threads allied, abducted by Elgarnan, Possibly died??? trying to control the blight? that part was inexplicably unclear to me) so its genuinely just possible i drove her into a weird corner

[cloudruler]

like i have my many many criticisms for astarion and how hes favored by fans and larian over other characters in BG3 but at least astarion has a complete personality that doesnt begin and end with “likes coffee “ if you didnt bother to read a novel beforehand

[lliquidllyrium]

I just don’t see the point of having a character struggle with possession (especially unwilling on both sides) if the passenger can leave across long distances at will

[magebastard]

love/hate being so invested in my da canon. this shit is so dumb I have to cry

[ayrennaranaaldmeri]

I can't believe Emmrich is scoring higher than other characters in polls, l didn't realise so many people with good taste existed.

[infamousbeans]

Minrathous is just the decision that makes the most sense, and I'm seeing conflicting info on whether or not it hard locks me out of lucanis' romance

I wish they gave us more of a reason to save trevisio

[solavelyan]

davrin is so fucking hot, and for what

[invinciblerodent]

woke up pacing up and down mentally about contrasting my Josie-mancer mLavellan Harwen, and my planned fAldwir Syl, and the ways they are going to experience their elvishness

because I think I'm going to wind up making her struggle eerily similar as the one I gave him back in the day.

(rambling under the cut)

i mean for Harwen (who initially never really had any doubts and hangups about being Dalish, he was just straight up an elfy elf raised in a forest and a useful member of his clan), becoming Inquisitor in his timeline was primarily a story about a profound loss being replaced with a subsequent gain of a new, far more personal identity than the previous.

Losing his role as huntmaster and gaining a new one as "the herald of Andraste" had allowed him to break out of his predetermined role within the clan (one that he had originally accepted without question), while more or less letting him maintain his Dalish identity. But eventually, him loving Josephine ended up working as something of a symbol of him choosing to be the individual man he became during the story, rather than returning to either identity imposed upon him by outside expectation.

(it really crystallized for me that he wants to be neither Herald nor Huntmaster when, while playing him, I decided that he chose to desecrate holy grounds of his people during What Pride Had Wrought out of fear for her -a shemlen's- life specifically.) (Simply put, he elected not to honor the rituals and run through the temple instead, because the longer he dallied, the longer would she also be in danger.)

And at the end of the game's plot, I basically had him choose to forsake his heritage in favor of staying in human society, and move to Antiva to stay with Josie- primarily for love, but on a deeper level, for the singular kind of personal acceptance he never did find with his very own people.

It wasn't an easy choice, abandoning all that he had known before and sacrifice so much, and it continues to be a sore spot for him (possibly for life- I once gave him a line that went something like "no gilded saddlery will make a wild donkey into a thoroughbred, and wrapping your elf in silks and velvet won't make him a noble suitor either"), but... well, he had always been a man who lived with a layer of glass hanging between him and the community. What's being an outsider in a different culture, if it means having honest, devoted, kind love that extends beyond his performing of a function. (which yeah, that may have been me channeling my own feelings of inadequacy and separation from my own culture through him, but yknow, what the hell, having him silently struggle with loss and the guilt of not feeling more guilty despite being actually happy continues to be cathartic to me lol.) (it's pretty autobiographical for the place I was in back then, lol.)

--

For Syl on the other hand, I've been rotating in my head some plans about a potential love triangle between her, Neve, and Bellara, and kind of using that romantic conflict as a representation of the diverging paths ahead of Syl, with either woman being sort of a representative of the two "warring" sides of her.

I'm thinking of her so far as an Orlesian-born city elf (her backstory is a bit foggy still, but I kind of want her to have met and become utterly infatuated with Neve in some context before the start of the game, partly because sapphic yearning, and partly because it'd represent her upbringing to a degree) who later elected to join the Veil Jumpers as a desperate attempt to try and connect with the culture she was always told was supposed to be hers (the Dalish). As one such person, she would have experienced a lot of rejection from both sides: always too Orlesian for the Dalish, and too elvish to be more than "just an elf" in the eyes of the Orlesians. She is, in all respects, a woman in-between.

I think I'd like either outcome a lot, and it would either play on the same theme as Harwen's story, or be pretty much its opposite. And I know nobody but me cares about this, but fuck, I'm just vibrating with excitement over getting to play with new dolls in Thedas again, lol

And now I'm toying with which way I want her to go. Which means that choosing between the human- and the Dalish woman will probably represent which part of her own self she is going to choose to embrace: Is she going to end up as a city elf in Tevinter (potentially a bad time) by Neve's side, or will she remain a Veil Jumper and embrace Dalish tradition (which skin will never truly fit as it should) by Bellara's?

I think this is going to be a situation where change and complacency are kind of all mixed together in this odd soup where the two options are somehow both representative of both those things at the same time, and it'll ultimately come down to how resistant Syl is going to be to everything, and which person she is with either woman she likes better.

[collegeoflore]

okay so i realized there’s honestly no way in hell magpie would let illario walk free. because what i’ve realized about magpie is she gets angry when she recognizes herself in someone else and doesn’t like what she sees. and she is in soooo many ways such a mirror of illario that there’s no way she doesn’t see it. and in her mind she MUST prove she isn’t like illario. that she could never do what he’s done. that she’s loyal to her family and that whatever power or influence she now has (for better or for worse) she has earned without hurting the people she loves. and the best way to do that is to kill that man dead. she’s honestly surprised when lucanis *doesn’t* kill him despite it being obvious from the jump that he was never going to LMAO. she’s so fixated on proving she’s different from him and that she can NEVER be him that the idea that lucanis will show mercy is beyond her. because once again Crow Business is like a black hole where much of her higher reasoning goes to die in favor of lessons taught to her through torture and bloodshed in her youth <3 yay <3

[impossible-rat-babies]

if I had a nickel for every time I’ve had a da protag after I romance someone be like “hmm not really my sexuality vibe” I would have two nickels. but bc it’s happened years apart it’s kinda wild*

*I don’t know anymore what is eshka’s sexuality

[crows-of-buckets]

Dav spoilers (hardened lucanis ending choices)

Is it low-key bad that I really liked that hardened Lucanis made the choice to separate from Spite without Rook's input. It felt like half the endings of the quest were the companions going "hey you pick this for me I'm nervous" even though that makes zero sense for half of them so Lucanis telling rook "this is what I'm going to do" was soooo refreshing