#( headcanon).

[111dwell]

important and very detailed list of nate's favorite companions (in no particular order):

nick v.alentine. that's his home boy right there , his sweet cheese , his robo bestie. there's rarely anyone he'd enjoy traveling the wastelands with more than nick , goodbye , the end.

john h.ancock. k , so here's the thing. nate has big fat feelings for this ghoul , and he does a bad job of hiding them. would i consider their connection more than platonic ? yes. would i consider them fwbs ? yes. would i consider them best friends ? also yes.

paladin d.anse. this one is complicated , considering my version of nate was manipulating his way through the brotherhood to gain intel for the railroad , so their bond was kickstarted under false pretenses , however. danse grew on nate in a big way , not all of it platonic , and at the end of the day he considers him someone he cares for deeply and will defend forever.

piper wr.ight. listen , i'm very passionate and loud about how much i think nate falls in love with piper. she reminds him of nora way too much initially , which is hard and painful , but she has so much strength and drive to better the commonwealth and help the little people , it really grounds him when he needs it.

d.ogmeat. bestest boy , enough said.

c.ogsworth. he's a slice of what nate's life used to be , and while that realization is a hard pill to swallow , it's refreshing to be around someone who knew him before everything ended. he trusts that robot with his life.

[gravelena]

i just think that the whole sire bond could’ve been handled way better and more interestingly.

[oracultist]

thinking about how far amos has fallen from his faith. how he was once a pastor , how he dedicated his whole life to god prior to finding out who/what he really was. being confronted with someone actually biblical & holy might genuinely cause him to have a breakdown.

[agedrot]

a mini breakdown of aro’s ability:

i like to use the term soul reading. if he touches someone’s skin with his hands , if he focuses , he has the ability to see every single thing that person experienced up until that point. whether that be dreams , thoughts , or actual events , aro will know about it ; from their birth to the second before their skin made contact.

that being said , this is a power he has to actively focus on to utilize. while it can work passively , it’s less intense & all aro would see is that person’s surface level thoughts. physical touch is his love language , so this particular experience is very intimate to him.

ex. if being gently touched by a lover , that person’s skin to skin contact would feel like a series of faded polaroids flipping past the front of aro’s consciousness.

[proph5t]

i mean it when i say pre - crash lottie was That girl. she was hot , tall , rich , good at sports , fun at parties , charismatic .. genuinely the only reason she wasn’t popular like jackie was because she didn’t want to be. she didn’t want prying eyes looking a little too long at her to find her many medicated flaws.

[staffdestroyed]

𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐂𝐋𝐎𝐓𝐇𝐄𝐒 𝐌𝐀𝐊𝐄 𝐓𝐇𝐄 𝐌𝐀𝐍

an observation of nathaniel's self - presentation throughout the years , how it reflects his rise to power , and then freedom from obligation .

𝚋𝚘𝚘𝚔 𝚝𝚠𝚘

in the second book , nathaniel is still a teenager — but he finally experiences a sense of freedom by now being apprenticed to a magician who appreciates his power , and also being given a degree of responsibility that allows him to feel appreciated . with this comes a desire to experiment with his fashion choices . while nathaniel doesn’t experience a traditional childhood , the desire of self - discovery still remains . he chooses garish , expensive outfits , with cravats and lace sleeves , but with a sombre colour palette to still impart a sense of seriousness . he’s highly influenced by his love for his childhood hero gladstone and magicians of centuries past , and you can see it in the styles that he chooses . he also grows out his hair to his shoulders ; he is no longer constricted by strict expectations of presentation , and not yet having all eyes of the country turned on him , he can afford to do something he likes .

𝚋𝚘𝚘𝚔 𝚝𝚑𝚛𝚎𝚎

nathaniel is made the information minister at just seventeen years old . he is THE it - boy of britain — he is stupidly powerful , stupidly rich , and everyone wants to be him . but with this public of a position , he must carefully craft his presentation . gone are the garish neckties and pocket squares , and he no longer wears lace sleeves or collars . he is either in an austere , dark suit , or in a more simple outfit that screams casual power . his shirts are carefully pressed and collars starched ; his trousers have perfect lines running down . naturally none of this is done by him , but by all the servants he is now able to employ . SIGNIFICANTLY ; he cuts off all his hair . the british are leading a magical war in america — and as a public figure , nathaniel must show his support and dedication to the regime he is part of . as such , his hair remains buzzed in a military - crop , and the fabrics and brands he wears are no longer as ostentatious .

this singular dedication to suiting and lack of creativity from a young man who had been known to be , at times , vain and too self - concerned with his appearance becomes a reflection of nathaniel's determination to dedicate himself to the magicians' cause ; to erase his doubts about the position of commoners and the treatment of spirits . his presentation leaves nothing to question ; not his power , not his support for the war , not whatever his own desires or preferences might be , which would mean weakness .

𝚙𝚘𝚜𝚝 𝚌𝚊𝚗𝚘𝚗

when he is lifted from the rubble of the glasshouse and stitched back together in the hospital , nathaniel must learn what it is like to be recognised as a WOUNDED WAR HERO by all who see him . the carefully constructed armour of suits and ties becomes forcefully stripped away , and one look at his scarred hands , cane and blemished skin immediately paints him as someone who fought in the spirit uprising . on one hand , the renown is all nathaniel wanted , on the other -- it is an image one cannot curate , it becomes innate and unchangeable . so , as he seeks to reconstruct the government with the involvement of the commoners and the spirits , he consciously forgets about the formal suits that had so easily identified him as a magician in his teenage years , and instead attempts to recall the times when magicians lived amongst the common people as part of their government instead .

soft velvets , embroidered with elements of magical incantations , of patterns from czech folk dress ( a show of support and friendliness to a country of earlier opposition ) , and colours that range into the purples and blues . when he wears a suit to his new government post it is not comprised of harsh lines and padded shoulders but fits him , paired with his much - beloved silk sleeves and bright cravats . he grows his hair long , as another homage to the magicians of old , and to soften the sharp lines of his face and hide the scars from the burns at his neck .

finally , he takes to an assortment of gloves -- an accessory that becomes a necessary attribute , both for his comfort and magic . his hands were practically blown apart during the destruction of the staff at the battle , so the gloves ( usually fine , calf - skin leather , in a warm brown colour ) comfort his own sense of vanity . they also serve to protect his skin from the harsh materials involved in summoning , and from the chalk dust involved with drawing summoning circles .

[moved-to-thanatologie]

yeah okay, but i wanna talk a minute about how lichdom is actually the bad ending for emmrich a second, because i just played through the last part of his personal quest agaiin, and i've been chewing on it for the last, like, week.

so, you can romanticize it all you want, but emmrich changes after lichdom, which...you know, can be expected, but it's not in a good way. in a shallow sense he has more of a temper, he's more...i'm sorry, i don't think the overprotectiveness of rook is exactly ~so romantic~, i think it's...not great, to put it lightly. it's a little guilt-trippy about how he'll have to mourn them forever if they die, which...newsflash, he's gonna be doing that anyway. and on that shallow level there's just a layer of ickiness to it that i think some people just are...overlooking.

the fact that it's his life's work notwithstanding, like...this isn't the same healing and head on confrontation other companions get for what's eating at them, it's enabling emmrich's aversion to looking the facts dead (no pun intended) in the face: people die. he'll die one day, too, and literally nothing is forever, no matter what promise lichdom makes. like there's some banter with lucanis that i don't have exact quotes for at the moment, but it basically boils down to the fact that if you spend all your time reaching for undeath and hoping to return one day, you're ignoring and wasting the life you can have in the here and now and it's passing you by, which is...i mean, is that not it? is that not exactly what emmrich's doing? and i mean, if there's anyone to point that out, it's probably lucanis.

then there's hezenkoss, who has absolutely fed his fears, and if you search your heart you'll know it to be true. like @ofeluvians and i were talking about, i don't think it was ever a real, true friendship, i think it was almost entirely one-sded (boy, is that ever a character quirk i'm familiar with, i say, looking pointedly at 616 tony stark - ask me how!), and his insecurities were exacerbated to at least some degree. emmrich says himself that johanna never had an easy time of making friends, and if you read the flame eternal you can see she was acerbic even then, and not exactly what i would call compassionate to either emmrich or the spirits they were dealing with.

there's the fact that he was taken into a place that terrified him after his parents died, and i don't think it's necessarily some lofty, grand, scholarly thing that makes the memorial gardens his favorite place in the grand necropolis, i think it's because - out of all of it that we at least get to see - it's actually the most peaceful and least scary. just like i don't think it's hugely a shocker that his favorite spirits are definitely the wisps, which, by and large are manifestations of curiosity and by and large harmless.

i think, instead of a paralyzing fear of death, it's anxiety. like...big anxiety resulting from trauma that's never been addressed (his parents' deaths) and loneliness to a degree (manfred). he's so eager to share things with people, there's a recipe from his mother he passes on to lucanis (which i'm sure was a what's your favorite food conversation), or his books with taash and bellara. his skills to help neve solve a murder. going camping with harding. even the dad talks with davrin have shades of this, funny as it is. he...speaks to people on their level, i think, to a degree, once he knows what their level and their comfort level is (taash). he can empathize with situations he'll never actually experience himself. and it's like he says, a good instructor never makes a student feel inferior.

it's the loneliness thing i wanna circle back to a second, though, because it's my ultimate point: for all of this, for all of his flaws and his fears and his kindness, what the heart of his actual issue that needs addressing is is that loneliness. if you bring manfred back, he'll tell rook, you know, that he has pangs for what might have been, but seeing manfred grow and his excitement for his new magic and getting to be an apprentice mage is something he wouldn't change for the world. if unromanced he stumbles into one, anyway, full of adventure that wouldn't necessarily be the kind he'd find himself in, in his daily, normal life. his genuine distress toward the beginning, after he's recruited, when he feels like he's being judged and shut out (his commentary on other people's commentary on his skulls and manfred, his and taash's issues finally coming to a head).

like this man is lonely, y'all, and looking for human connection, and i don't think he entirely realizes it as the core of that overwhelming sense of dread. thinking about all his little notes in the codices, like...outside of lecture notes there's always some mention of someone from the veilguard in them, davrin and silly questions, or harding and burning the dead, or how davrin showed him flowers he's only seen in herbalism books and how excited he is for that. and if he turns to lichdom, he loses all of that. he loses manfred, and he does not get over it. instead he gets, like, five minutes of euphoria and then it's people finding him crying over manfred in his room and the deep regret when even spite confronts him about how manfred should be there.

so...yeah. that's a lot of words to say i don't think lichdom solves anything, and in fact actually probably makes things worse, because sure, he gets to live forever. with everyone around him that he loves dying, no manfred, and in the end he'll still end up alone, which is the core of the issue, i think.