The brief, but very genuine flash of panic on Emmrich's face if you tell him he's your first "anything"... 💀

the PRESSURE

Trans men from Tevinter are honestly on another level.

Ranking the Veilguard companions Hookup Potential based on the kind of bed situation they have going on in the Lighthouse

(im in early act 2 so have no idea what further romance scenes are actually like, this is just jokin time without any romance spoilers. just pics of how their respective rooms in the lighthouse look and some basic characterization we know about them)

Taash: 8/10

In another game or the real world I would only rate this a 5 because they have no pillows or addition blankets. however they do have a real bedframe AND it's big enough for 2 which means the they are doing better than 90% of the rest of the Veilguard so this score gets boosted. And while there's not many blankets, there are plenty of braziers around the room to keep you warm, and Taash is probably their own miniature furnace to cuddle up to. Crucially, they also have a whole wheel of cheese next to the bed, which means you don't even have to leave the covers to get a snack after.

Lucanis: 1/10

Oh no. I'm not even going to comment on the pantry angle because everyone else asks him about that to begin with, so this is just about the bed. Unfortunately the bed is a cot made of uneven wooden planks with some blankets on top of it, and is only wide enough for 1. This is because Lucanis hates sleeping and doesn't want to do it, so the less tempting his bed is, the better for him. Unfortunately this means sleepover potential is dreadful and you will have to find alternate solutions. He does at least have another blanket to go over him and one that's presumably being used as a pillow, so, he gets a 1 instead of a 0, but I am still planning on gifting him coupons for a back massage for Satinalia.

Bellara: 4/10

This setup is perfectly fine for sleeping. It's the lighthouse standard little bed couch thing, has a mattress/cushion, is elevated off the floor, has a pillow, and she's got her blankets folded below. Perfectly serviceable for getting a good night's rest which we know Bellara is not because she forgot to sleep again. However, it's very much a one person sized setup. You might be able to cuddle for a while but if one of you unconsciously tries to roll over you are going right to the floor. Ouch.

Lace Harding: 5/10

You might be wondring "why is sleeping on the floor rated higher than bellara's" and the answer is because this means you are not rolling off the bed onto the floor. it's not going to be comfy but we are not ranking comfort here we're ranking sleepover potential. Harding has managed to make this space look homey and the canopy gives the illusion of being in a tent or canopy bed to help with that illusion. There are rugs down on the floor plus the blankets and pillows--we know Harding is used to sleeping on the ground due to her career as a scout, and I'm sure she can scrounge up more blankets to make the cushioning big enough for the both of you. Your back WILL hurt in the morning but you'll get to have a fun night first.

Neve: 3/10

Girl I know you can do better than this. Which means you're not trying to on purpose, so, live your life I guess. I will say this cot IS bounds nicer than Lucanis's--you can see its a stretched canvas or hide on a frame rather than wooden planks, so it will have a little more give. However they are not THAT much comfier which I know having slept on this modern equivalent many times. Neve also apparently has 0 pillows or blankets so you're out of luck there, as well as the problem of it only being wide enough for 1 again. This woman has too many other things going on to think about romance so your Rook is going to be the one improvising on that matter I think.

Davrin: 10/10

Now here is a man who has his life together. Double or queen size mattress, rustic bed frame he probably lovingly carved and assembled himself by hand, and not only are there sheets AND blankets AND pillows, they are are full on matching set and this knight in shining armor dutifully makes the bed every morning. There's also enough pillows for two! While the remains of a giant corpse is hanging above you all night, the spacing of the ribs still gives you lots of room above to manouver, so just don't worry about that. As a bonus you'll probably even have a baby griffon come to cuddle in the night which is such a cute thought we're going to ignore how much worse getting stepped on by a griffon foot would be than even the biggest fattest housecat trying to stand on your stomach at 4:30am. My one criticism of the setup here is that due to the bed's positioning if the person on the inside needs to get up in the night they'll have to awkwardly crawl over the person on the outside, however everyone else's bed situation is so dismal I'm not even going to subtract a point for that. Great work Davrin.

Emmrich: ???/10

Where... does this man sleep. Peepaw I KNOW you can't be sitting in that armchair all night you need your beauty rest!!! There are 0 beds or cots or floor blankets in this man's room. HOW am I supposed to break his pelvis if he has nowhere for us to lie down??? We can't risk that old man's spine on the cobblestone.

Wait... unless. No, surly not. I mean--jk. Unless...? 😳😳😳

is daddy necromancer gonna fuck me on the sacrifice slab... 😳😳😳🥵🥵🥵

Bonus:

So when I drafted this I was actually still at the end of act 1 (was misinformed about the mission that starts act 2) and am now for real in act 2. so this version is now revised with the new pronouns for taash after i did their missions (old reblogs will still show 'she' and i cant do anything about that sorry)

Also i DID think about including Rook's room in this originally, but thought the post was funnier without it. but for the sake of completion:

Rook: 5/10

I mean we've got a nice chaise lounge, so at least we are off the floor and have some cushion. But that's not a bed. There's no pillows OR blankets even tucked away underneath (i checked)--we are trying to save the world here rook my girl we cannot be having a sore neck for months for sleeping without a pillow, you need to be able to turn that thing to see the swords and deadly projectiles flying at you!!! Now it IS at least slightly wider than the Lighthouse Standard couch with no back on it, and you do have the back support side there. In a pinch, this will suffice for most companions. However this is a 1/10 if you are trying to bang Lucanis because the wall directly opposite you is a whole aquarium view and i am NOT trying to bring up that man's PTSD from underwater prison. given that he has the worst "bed" in the game AND that i have decided to smooch him this certainly does present me a conundrum and we will have to look elsewhere in the lighthouse for inspiration i guess. solas can i borrow your piano its important.

ok just finished the final quest for Lucanis and like... this is what I mean about the Lucanis/Neve thing and how it should have been Neve/Bellara

Bioware makes no effort of convincing us of this relationship being legit beyond very easily missable cutscenes (i.e. the cutscene where Lucanis out of nowhere is making a dessert for Neve which you can easily miss if you have a flirtation with Lucanis active). They don't seem to have any interactions as friends. And in my playthrough, literally the first I'm hearing that Lucanis has any remote interest in a relationship with Neve is just now, after 100+ hours of gameplay, he is listing the people he cares about, and mentions Neve's name.

Before this, the literal only interaction beyond party banter is a scene where he confronts her about brewing coffee wrong where he's overreacting and she's dismissive. It doesn't read as flirtation unless you squint. And then you're confronted with the choice between Minrathous and Treviso and there's a tense understanding between them. And I'm someone who would go to the Lighthouse after every side quest to see what banter was happening, and maybe it's unlucky coincidence, but even then, I never found the two of them specifically having idle banter around the Lighthouse.

And this isn't a critique on either Neve or Lucanis bc I adore them both, but this really is the most heteronormative "because they were both there" ship I have seen. It's like if Mass Effect decided that, if you romance Liara, they're gonna put Ashley and Kaidan together.

And idk if someone actually enjoys their dynamic I won't take that away from you, but it's really just not a convincing relationship in my opinion.

(and before u say "oh you like Lucanis ofc you don't want him with Neve" like, there's actually other relationships for Lucanis which feel like they have a more natural build-up like Davrin or Harding, and ones with Neve which also have a more natural build-up like Bellara or also Harding--who I just ship with everyone actually)

It bugs me that Rana Savas exists to be a "good templar". Neve defends her as being "clean"... While at the same time we hear from Tarquin that the templars in Tevinter exist to put down slave rebellions!

#oh for sure but like. Tarquin is /also/ still a templar. he says it 'pays the bills'. present tense.

@zoneofsmites WHAT. I DID NOT GET THIS DIALOGUE. WTF. My man what are you doinggggg

choked on my own spit reading this banter

The Lighthouse murals, under a cut due to DA:TV spoilers.

This little exchange between Emmrich and Davrin during a conversation about how far Assan and Manfred have come....oh they are everything to me

I got a party banter between Bellara and Taash about how the Lords of Fortune steal elven artifacts. And then Taash clarifies later that they have a Dalish expert on the team so they can check to make sure the Lords don't sell something culturally important and instead return it to the elves.

Like. I get it. You want the Lords to be fun swashbuckler Disney pirates and Robin Hoods instead of actual pirates who steal and plunder. Because we're only now in Western society realizing that stealing from indigenous groups is, uh, bad. But like. Writing really uninteresting factions for your "dark" fantasy (tho lbr Dragon Age hasn't been dark fantasy since DA2) isn't gonna solve real-world neo-colonialism, ya know? The Lords not stealing priceless elven artifacts and returning them to the elves doesn't signal to me that the Lords are total rascally good guys, it signals to me that BioWare itself is trying really hard to seem morally conscious. "See? We know stealing from other cultures is bad!!!"

And man. Not to be a "political correctness has poisoned media" grifter on main (tbh it's less political correctness itself and more the commodification of real-world activism) but I couldn't help but imagine how this convo would've played out in earlier games, potentially even Inquisition.

You could've so EASILY made this interesting while giving the Lords and Taash and Bellara a lot more depth, while also making it clear that stealing from indigenous groups is wrong.

Just have the Lords, yeah, actually sell those artifacts. But also establish that the Lords take in and help elves from all walks of life. That they free slaves, or collaborate with alienages. Then you could have Taash defend the practice by saying to Bellara that little orphaned elf kids being sold as slaves probably don't give a flying fuck about some artifacts they're never gonna see, but the money from selling those artifacts goes to buying them food. And have Bellara fire back that preserving elven culture is also part of its survival, and that there are Dalish clans that would be willing to pay for them or offer something in return. Or have her say that the Lords are doing charity for the sake of recruitment rather than actual altruism. And then Taash responds that those high and mighty Dalish elves don't do shit to help abandoned city elves, just because those aren't part of their correct elven subculture, and they care more about reclaiming old glory than helping the people that exist here and now.

Then you could have side missions or at least codex entries that describe maybe some Lord recruit being conflicted about what they're doing. Maybe a few of them are collaborating to hijack a deal or steal back an artifact. Have implications that some high-ranking Lords are, in fact, using those artifacts for their own gain, despite claiming otherwise. Have some Lords genuinely trying to help, and believing that gold and trinkets don't matter as much as people's lives, so they sell them in exchange for safety for refugees or slaves or some other helpless group.

But no. Instead it's "hey do you steal from my people?" "nah lmao we have a cultural advisor don't even worry about it" "oh wow so cool and woke of you!" And then that's it. No need for any further discussion. No conflict and no complexity. No bad actors and moral quandaries.

Weh.

I am obsessed with the fact that the Veilguard all gathers round to watch Solas's saddest memories and then dissects them like it's an episode of Desperate Housewives. 10/10 no notes, exactly what he deserves.

DRAGON AGE: THE VEILGUARD

Emmrich Volkarin in Lich's Vestige