#lucanis: of course

[fiannans]

Get you a man who sees you hanging around the kitchen and offers to make you hot chocolate unprompted.

[arcane-gold]

hello rookanis nation. can i present rel and lucanis’s dynamic. sun and moon trope, one with boundless energy and one who gets 2 hours of sleep a night, guy i pulled by being an idiot, etc. they’re special to me

[psin314]

after the fade prison.

wanted to draw lucanis' big sad wet eyes love em so much.

hcing that after losing rook lucanis just focused on the job, like in caterina's case. he was barely holding on yeah but he thought if he lets himself be hmm idk vulnerable and shed at least one very stressful tear, it would mean that he's mourning rook, and that would also mean that he's dead. and he didn't want rook to be dead. (but he couldn't stop thinking about it which only made everything even worse.) so. when he finally saw him - he couldn't keep it all inside anymore.

[demi-pixellated]

✨⚔ The Veilguard 🛡✨

[rookanisstuff]

The Dellamortes

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

in The Wigmaker Job and to a lesser extent Veilguard we get a great deal of exposition/clues into how painfully observant Lucanis is. part of him being a top tier assassin is his ability to be hyperaware of everything going on around him and interpreting what that information means correctly, because if he gets it wrong he can die. so i don’t personally really think he was ever truly unaware that Rook was flirting or interested in him. i think instead his denial/avoidance about it stems from the fact that he feels like he is tricking Rook into thinking he’s someone deserving of love. he knows that they are interested in him, he just thinks they shouldn’t be, and wouldn’t want to be if they knew the “real him”

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

He gets it.

[vaguely-concerned]

do you think that when rook stumbles out of the fade prison and through the eluvian to safety, there's a moment of everyone standing around in joyous (and probably exhausted) disbelief, where lucanis meets their gaze and recognizes the look of tremulous, hesitant uncertainty in their eyes -- that tentativeness of someone who feels they stand on the threshold of madness and one wrong move can send them over, the terror of something finally breaking apart in your head in a way that can never come back together and be whole again; the helpless is this truly happening? is this real? are you really here? confusion that verges on pleading. (the last time they saw him, he was dead. the last time they lost someone, their mind fractured around it for weeks, months, to spare them the knowledge, and they couldn't tell. until they could, and by then it was all too late. how could you know it's not all happening again? how could you not fear that it might be?)

yeah, lucanis recognizes that look immediately and with an instinctive visceral wave of empathy. because it's how he's felt so many times looking at them. anyway. anyone ever think about isabela's comment that lucanis looks at rook like he's afraid they're a fever dream. me neither

[ozziyo]

dove's turn to take her love interest to the memorial gardens

(it's not that peaceful)

[floralhellscapedatv]

There is so much content in fandom regarding how Spite used to be Determination but I have a hot take here that I have been burning to share, here it is:

Spite is referred to/addressed multiple times as a spirit of determination, and crucially he does not correct this in the game. When Rowan addresses him as "Spirit of Determination" he's PUMPED, when Isabela introduces him in the Hall of Valor it's as "legendary Spirit of Determination, Spite!"

What I'm saying here is that Spite has always been Spite, and 'spite' is a type of determination. A subcategory, if you will. He is still a spirit of determination, just specifically determination as it manifests in the form of spite.

Taking this further, "demon" is a term that people in Thedas came up with to classify spirits they viewed negatively or as threats. So functionally, "demons" are just spirits that aren't benevolent or benign towards mortals, for whatever reason, whether they started out that way or were "corrupted" by circumstance/outside influence.

None of this is to say that Spite hasn't been traumatized or changed by his experiences, I think it's fairly obvious that he has, and not just in the Ossuary - I imagine living in an assassin's brain is going to have some impact on a being that is "susceptible to influence" (as Emmrich puts it) and could definitely explain Spite's being more inclined to solve problems with violence. But in spite of all this (see what I did there) from the very beginning Spite is remarkably cooperative for a so-called "demon." He makes an effort to understand and learn more about the world, he only ever takes control or lashes out in moments of intense frustration, he makes deals with Lucanis and adheres to them even when it would probably be easier to forcibly take him over, he actively bonds with other members of the team (Rook, Emmrich, Taash, Manfred) who bother to interact with him, he actively helps and shows concern for Lucanis and Rook even in situations that don't have anything to do with his own supposed goals. Spite didn't choose to be stuck in Lucanis, but he's determined to make things work (see what I did there again.)

Lucanis thinks he's making deals to appease Spite, Spite is actually making deals to appease Lucanis. And he's doing it because he feels whatever a spirit's equivalent of attachment is for him! The same thing that drew Manfred (Curiosity) to Emmrich, that drew the Spirit of Faith to Wynne all the way back in Origins, that draws the Wisps to Neve, etc. Lucanis is himself a human embodiment of determination, in at least the first half of the game that man is persevering on spite alone, and Spite loves that even if it means Lucanis is difficult as hell to reason with. Spite is frustrated that Lucanis keeps spiting him, but he also has to respect it. Game recognizes game.

[apple-pretzelchan]

Happy belated Birthday to my dear @rin-hanarin, please take this art with your beautiful crow husbands <3

[mohntilyet]

my initial knee jerk reaction to lucanis/spite saying "family, enemies, contracts" was bad because it felt like an oversimplification but actually thinking on it i really love that lucanis forces himself into this box to make things make sense in his life. family is unconditional, enemies are to be killed, but contracts is so. interesting... man who promises mila that he will find her father because he does not fail contracts. the same man who tells effe that he will kill her slaver because he needs to turn her from a poor young woman that he sympathises with, into someone he can make a deal with. it's not kindness, it's not weakness, he's just fulfilling a contract, and crows don't break contracts. if he kills a bunch of racist blood mages during that process, then he's not breaking the rules, just bending them. a very convenient excuse to be a good man while still being a crow and assassin. and of course when spite is forced into him, he gets out of it with something familiar! by making another deal! something he could work with, something he HAS to work with, because being just an abomination is unthinkable. if he can work himself out of this problem like he's done with every other contract in his life, in his mind maybe there's some tiny chance that this becomes another job that he can claw his life back from.

[flowersforthemachines]

the "Lucanis approves" after the pantry scene is so hilarious.

thank you for insisting that I deserve your affection, it means a lot to me. for personal reasons, I'll be walking away without explaining anything. I'd appreciate if we never talked about this again until we absolutely had to.

[lavendarr00]

[thimblings]

*Viago will remember that*

(random scene from the fic i'm writing in my head lmao. takes place after leaving the cafe in "Coffee with Crows", hence the bag for groceries. first image is Lucanis putting a Gladiolus [Sword-Lily] in her hair that he bought while in the market. not intentionally flirting, he's just ~like that lmao)

(i will continue to find excuses to not draw Lucanis's complicated casual wear and also put everyone else in casual wear so i don't have to draw armor uwu)

[cute-ellyna]

Breakfast time / 02

Follow-up to this. I'm a Nevecanis fan, okay? :)

PS: the song is a suuuuuuper classical italian song from early 80s, very old style, it's the kind of music I imagine would be played around in Treviso. I randomly listened to it on the radio some time ago and this whole scene just played in my head. I just had to share <3

And now the best part: