Fundamentally Lovable

*this is specifically if a non warden Rook romanced him, as my thoughts center around this specifically. Feel free to add thoughts from a platonic/warden4warden romance perspective!

(CW: talk of suicide, suicidal thoughts and ideation)

~~

When you ask Davrin if he misses his clan, he says he does, but he believes in some form that he doesn't deserve to feel sad about it because he made his choice to leave.

What if I say I think that a lot of his motivations is largely driven from guilt and regret?

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Dreamer Isioma (they/he; if you've heard the song Sunset Drive that's them! he's made some really good Afrofuturist-inspired stuff like Dumb In Love With You, & they've literally just posted a new visualizer at time of writing this)

Glenn Copeland (he/him; beloved Black trans man elder! he's also going to be starring in a children's TV show, a la Mr. Rogers! if you like more spiritual-influenced music his stuff is REALLY beautiful and gorgeous)

Anjimile (they/them and he/him; EVERYONE SHOULD LISTEN TO ANJIMILE! Like You Really Mean It is a delightful song from his new stuff, Animal is a really really good dark song about the dehumanization of Black people & the whole album its from is amazing).

Malaika Mfalme (they/them; Good Man is from an album dedicated to their deceased partner Yasmin, & if you have Feelings about grief, the song Imagine will hit you like a fucking freight train)

To me, he is both confident in areas he has experience with and shy and a little awkward in areas he doesn’t. He doesn’t believe himself to be as socially agile as someone like Illario and, while we see him navigate social situations competently, he is never really shown to be intentionally artificially charming. His lines during the coffee date, for instance, are as earnest as they are flirtatious. He’s revealing something of himself there and it’s being received well. Rook’s into it, Rook’s interested in him, despite silver-tongued Illario being right there. His flirting with them in the pantry before the almost kiss is specific to Rook, specific to the circumstances they’re in, as well as the conversation they’re having in that moment. It isn’t a line to drop on just anyone, for all it is flirtatious, and you can easily see how similar qualities in Neve would draw him to her, too. That isn’t the mark of a smooth operator, but someone who’s expressing interest and telling them he’s been paying attention to them by calling back to these things.

But when it comes to speaking on his actual feelings, he loses the swagger with which he initially approached, he doesn’t (by his own estimation) really know what he’s doing and can only offer up a very genuine and earnest attempt at expressing them the only way he knows how to openly care for people while also expressing his doubt about meeting expectations at the same time. Any suaveness he has is present only when the confidence is which is sweet to watch build, but not at all a factory default built in for all situations. It’s fine to let him fumble romantically, actually, to be out of his depth—because he is when it comes to Rook or Neve—and to end up with his foot in his mouth. Which is present in banters, especially with Neve, if you would listen. He’s not navigating all of those conversations adeptly and it’s as fun to listen to him be put on the back foot as it is to hear some of the wilder things that come out of his mouth.

It goes beyond just the romances and companion relationships too, of course. He does do a degree of preparation and planning for his contracts. He’s clearly someone who takes a lot of pride in his work, the way he operates outside of his job (the lists, the logging of his activities, even meal planning), the degree with which he is concerned about his performance, all feed into that belief for me. It raises the stakes for the circumstances that push him to throw all of it out in the moment, when he cares about something more than just finishing the job, and it's what those things are that speak to his character. He never expresses an intention to free Effe and the other slaves from the system as a whole, for instance, but he frees them from Forfex only after realizing the degree of cruelty to which they're being treated. He didn’t help the servant escape their abusive employer, but he let them go because he believed it was justified. He refused to kill the fourteen year old because he thought it too young to receive permanent consequences, but he was almost certainly robbed of that kind of choice himself. He’s very concerned with making sure his targets are the right ones.

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