i started typing this in the tags but i realized this would get long as fuck and also not fit sooooo #myyap ahead. if given the opportunity i will go on and on forever i'm so serious
cosmas is in fact involved with inquisition boy but ☝️ also solomorne. polyamorously. unethically because there is no communication or negotiation, he just does whatever he wants and doesn't consider how it might affect the feelings of those he becomes involved with ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ my beautiful problematic gay aroallo...
this is all gonna be very much from cos' pov but i'll probably get a more rounded sense of things on the next playthrough when dlc3 drops. ALSO going to talk about my cassiamancer here too
the funny thing about cos/sol is that sol is incredibly his type but cosmas is so specific and emotionally (and. sexually.) impenetrable that the romance just does not work on him. and sol is like literally doing a good job he's doing the romance very well ok (i was giggling and kicking my feet man) he's just up against a mistrustful paranoid freak who is incapable of romantic feelings (and also the whole crime lord/arbitrator thing, but that actually works in his favour).
cosmas likes them when he doesn't like them. cosmas likes them autistic and with a sense of self that hinges on how far they can be of use for the imperium. cosmas likes them when he can reduce them down to symbols that represent the systems that have oppressed and opposed him, but simultaneously he wants to push them to be individual and human and imperfect and touchable. he likes that sol's kind of a killjoy and a stickler for the rules because he can push and prod and see where he cracks and peek at all the bits of personality underneath. also he's trying to benefit from police corruption over here #myarbies under MY control #mycontrol (#dramaticirony)
sol's really distressed about the whole honeypot scheme ontop of the Everything Else but cosmas straight up does not care. this is not information that can hurt him (and also probably not the first time such a thing's been tried on him), especially not when there's bigger problems. namely, the tortureland vacation. but he also got his voice ripped out and hasn't gotten it back yet, so he's probably like miming at sol to stop trying to kill himself while pasqal actually does the talking lol. cosmas is someone who has an incredibly aggressive will to live so i don't think he like. understands the passive suicidality instilled into dogmatics at all.
they don't talk about it. key component of cosmas' relationships is that he will ask you for your backstory, he will not give his own, he will not clarify your standing with him, he will not give away his intent. but there is an understanding that passes between them for the first time really, sitting down in the pit injured as fuck. just a coupla guys who insist that they're fine, really, let me attend to YOU when they're clearly suffering from every status effect at once. there is a quiet, unspoken moment where it becomes very clear that the two of them have both gone through intensely traumatic pain. and maybe here they can also have the ptsd nightmare scene, because that sure as hell wasn't happening in act 2, and guarding over someone's bed is a Very intimate thing for cosmas.
cosmas wants you to be an individual and to push against him, he hates sycophantic pandering yes men, but he also cannot conceive of a relationship that is not hierarchical. any relationship to be had with him, however fulfilling, is ultimately unequal. he goes so heavily after these guys who he is fundamentally ideologically opposed to because he likes the friction, but in order for them to stay he needs to exert his control over them until he is secure in their positions relative to each other. basically: quit your job i've abolished your job you work solely for me now :3333cccc
i don't think i really made any conviction choices for solomorne? cosmas' hardline iconoclasm isn't really idealistic, yknow, his selfish and selective empathy as i like to say, most of all he is self-serving and remorseless. i think he really could and does rock sol's whole worldview, but in a less direct way. it just rubs off on you when you're around him, and he's doing all this icono shit that he keeps reasoning out with logic and insisting that you "enjoy yourself" and "are a person" or whatever.
it's kinda weird cause yknow, cosmas, incredibly unromantic. solomorne, does in fact fall in love with you romanticstyle, and there isn't another scene after that that maybe just talks about it a little more and goes through what it means for the two of you. cosmas does not take confessions of love well, he is on the romance apathetic-repulsed side of things and so i think i need to invent another scene to follow up. because never talking about it ever is cosmas' style, but it does, in fact, need resolving. maybe infinite museion can help me out here...
anyways here's the glaito section. cause i don't want to make it about the dog because frankly, i dont care about the dog, all characters are tools but the dog especially is a tool used to explore how solomorne sees himself and the abuse he's gone through as someone who was put into the Orphan Grinder 40000.
cosmas hates that fucking dog. he has a serious trauma-based phobia of dogs, he does not want to be near that thing!! so he keeps his distance from sol where he would otherwise be all up in his space, because he is scawed... (he would never admit it tho..) he thinks of glaito as an "it" because he does not think of him as alive. glaito is a weird freaky undead thing, a glorified combat servitor, an animal that was born for the sole purpose of having all of its autonomy stripped from it. his existence is horrifying!!!
servitorization was a very real threat for most of cosmas' life as a criminal, he spent a not insignificant amount of time when he was younger with a guy who clung onto the servitorized husk of his brother and it was WEIRD!!!! he both disdains glaito and sympathizes with him, calls him an it while also hating that his name comes from a serial number rather than, yknow, being an actual name. it's so.. dehumanizing. which is kind of a silly word to use for a dog. he's unable to understand solomorne because he cannot synthesize his hatred-sympathy for glaito with his hatred-sympathy for sol. everything that sol finds at fault with himself is what humanizes him, and everything that sol wishes to be is what dehumanizes him into a tool, a machine.
so like, symbolically, cosmas tolerating glaito enough to get his help finding sol in commorragh leads up to and represents that first branch of understanding.
also cosmas has a section of the lex from his homeworld tattooed on his ribs i think that would be really erotic to sol.
my second rt, who has not existed for nearly as long but came to me with a very strong concept after seeing a post about how compelling cassia's romance with an f!rt could be, is erys. another crime lord because i'm just that kinda guy ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ what can i say, i love making roguish types. i haven't done a full playthru with her so i haven't experienced cass' whole romance yet, but here are my ideas so far.
the core concept here is that similarity with Weird Identity Stuff while also coming from very different backgrounds that put them into Weird Homoerotic Disdain. because it's not gay if it's not antagonistic at least on one side 💪💪
erys used to be a servant for a noble hive spire family, and she was put under the knife several times as she grew up to appear identical to the young heiress. she was made her companion, but never equal, and there was like something weird and homoerotic and pseudo-incestuous going on there too you know how it is with nobles. she has someone else's face, she was groomed into a very specific role, never meant to be her own person. much like cassia, as a clone-vessel for tisiphone.
but like, they don't know that right now. right now, cassia acts just like the girl who shared her face yet treated her like a toy. her noble-isms are incredibly grating, but erys needs a navigator. and maybe she made a point to save her because she was a young woman around her age being pulled around by men much older than her. erys is uncomfortable and aloof around cassia, but never condescending nor servile, because she's been elevated to a position where they can be peers.
cassia thinks erys is incredibly interesting. she's worldly, she's done all this daring stuff, she's famous in the way bank robbers from the 30s are famous. cassia was trapped in her voidstation princess tower yet the news of erys' exploits still made it all the way to eurac v. she's turned her into something of a symbol, a figure to aspire to, even if only in her dreams. but then her life and everything she's ever known upends itself and erys comes and whisks her away.
anyways you can see some recurring ideas i enjoy. this hate-sympathy and inability to understand each other due to some seemingly irreconcilable misalignment of who they are and how they were raised (and the social and class dynamics of it all). and ☝️ the attraction.
because erys is like this cool butch girl who's actually kind of really cringe in how earnest she is about her shadow the hedgehog ass aesthetic in a way that loops back around to being cool (i mean, she lives in warhammer.. literally can't outdo the setting itself). and she was told enough folktales as a kid about guys marrying women who turned out to be huge giant bugs that it awakened something in her. she would like a big monster wife it is true...
so i can like, see them coming into their own with each other, cassia gaining confidence and independence and erys refiguring herself out, tackling responsibility and guilt with her snitch darkest hour, and the two of them working through what it means to be you when you were created to be someone else. they will find mutual understanding... it will happens.... and uve will be there also with a cool new vox augmetic.
