#<- sure. why not. they're decently involved here and have some analysis just for them

[broodwoof]

Inquisition's "Bad Future" and its Relationship to Solas' POV

please do not add hate to this post, bring up the art book, or bring up the books/comics. thank you!

if you decide to recruit the mages to help seal the breach, then the inquisitor and dorian will be plunged into a "bad future", going forward a year

there is no way to proceed without "resetting" the timeline, without putting it back to the moment that they were flung into the future. but during the bad future, leliana says - accurately - that while dorian and the inquisitor see this almost as a bad dream, a thing to be undone, that it was real. their hurt was real. their joy was real. they existed in that year

and we as players are made complicit in erasing the entirety of that existence

this puts us in solas' position! this shows us his fundamental perspective!

he woke a year before the events of inquisiton, to a world that he, too, felt needed to be "reset". like the inquisitor and dorian, he saw the current state of the world as an intolerable deviation from what should be, and was willing to sacrifice people - as the inquisitor and dorian did - in order to put it back on the right path

granted, the world was in great peril in this bad future. the inquisition itself was destroyed. maybe many of those in southern ferelden would have welcomed the chance to have this all "undone"...

but what of those beyond? somewhere, a child was born in that year, and then erased. not killed, to be remembered, but fully erased from the course of history, made into something that never existed. somewhere in the world, someone did something that meant a great deal to them or to others in that year: again, that action was erased. they cannot be remembered, it cannot be remembered, it is gone

so, did the world need to be reset? i mean... that was probably the safest bet, if you want the world itself/the cultures as a whole/the people as a whole to have the best chance of survival

which, again, is kinda solas' thing. he's not out here just mercilessly killing for its own sake. he openly resents having to kill anybody, even enemies, although resenting it has certainly not stayed his hand

solas thought it would be necessary, which is something i've talked about before:

Solas and Veilfall: Why it Was Necessary... Until it Wasn't

Solas and Veilfall; Not a Hero, Not a Selfish Monster

"People are always dying. It is what they do." (contains an analysis of this bad future timeline as well!)

and what he was doing was necessary - perhaps not all of it (was tearing down the veil necessary or desired? it's unclear!) - but certainly dealing with the evanuris was necessary. even flemythal, who discouraged him from tearing down the veil, admitted that dealing with the "gods" was a necessary action. even the veilguard believe that what solas did in the time of arlathan was just and right

in the bad magic future, we are solas. we are waking to a world rendered horrible, a miserable experience compared to that which we knew. but, really, what all do we see? redcliffe castle. we hear about more, but it's just hearsay. in-game, it clearly doesn't take more than a day to erase that year in its entirety

what if the corruption was contained? what if there was an effort being mounted against it, one which might have been successful? what if all that remained of ferelden and orlais had joined forces? what if the dwarves had regained their ancestral magic somehow? what if spirits freely interacted with the world outside of this area of prime corruption?

hell, put all that aside: what if the corruption was false? what if everything we experience in that bad future was the work of a demon, or of alexius himself? what if having the inquisitor and dorian "undo" what he had done was his final effort to save felix? what if he created a horrific showpiece that presented a nightmare as reality and forced them to change it back?

is any of that likely? probably not! but the thing is: the inquisitor and dorian do not and cannot know

just as solas did not and could not know... in the beginning!

had his initial plan succeeded, he would have been as willing as the inquisitor and dorian to take that step. as confident that, even with the costs, it was right, it was just, it was necessary

i'm pretty sure more people do the mage route than the templar route. but whatever the analytics may say, certainly many people have done the mage route and have played through this entire narrative, up to and including erasing it and then continuing on with the game

and, narratively, it prepares us for solas' announcement. and it draws a comparison between the inquisitor and dorian and solas himself

and the thing is... the inquisitor and dorian remember that. as two individuals opposed to solas in some manner in canon, they also have to carry forward the knowledge that, in somewhat similar circumstances, they made the choice that solas tried to make. it is entirely likely that they bury this awareness, that they cover it, that they try to forget... but their actions remain, and the unknown cost remains, even though it has been erased

[hell-heron]

I posted 1.641 times in 2021

296 posts created (18%)

1345 posts reblogged (82%)

For every post I created, I reblogged 4.5 posts.

I added 733 tags in 2021

#asoiaf - 354 posts

#ironborn - 119 posts

#romeo and juliet - 74 posts

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#six of crows - 47 posts

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#coriolanus - 11 posts

#reference - 11 posts

#les miserables - 10 posts

Longest Tag: 140 characters

#i will die by the headcanon that while juliet is obviously sheltered for cultural reasons she also has no friends bc none of her cousins can

My Top Posts in 2021

#5

I've really got to respect Leigh Bardugo, if for nothing else, for thinking "What if Rasputin was a Young Adult heroine?" was a sustainable book premise and then going through with it

46 notes • Posted 2021-03-30 20:50:03 GMT

#4

It's interesting how the Inheritance Cycle had a kind of reverse-Harry Potter reception, having been written with the tone and scope of a real adult fantasy but still ending up being seen as a kids' book due to other reasons. Due to this I go absolutely insane every time I see some post rebuking a discourse about it that I've never heard of and that I'm not sure OP didn't just do the make-up-a-guy-and-get-mad-about thing with, because it's like seeing a glimpse of an AU where Paolini took 5 more years to start writing and it actually became the decently popular SF/F fannish phenomenon on the line of The Witcher and there's morality discourse and ship wars about it instead of, like, ten nostalgic people on tumblr clinging to it aggressively.

68 notes • Posted 2021-08-22 20:36:21 GMT

#3

So many people who post those "women are socialized to do this, why men can't?" things are talking about things that absolutely aren't mainstream female socialization where they live, and really make you want to sit them down and tell them "this is something abusive your own mom and her alone did to you specifically, and not an an universal experience of relatable girlhood, I'm very sorry and I hope you recover from this!"

81 notes • Posted 2021-02-09 09:21:44 GMT

#2

Saying that Sansa suffered so much more than Arya is of course very sexist first of all but also, God what a fucking failure of analysis! There's so much about trauma and hardship in this book, and which of it is valid and which of it isn't recognized as valid and which is invisible, what is normal and istitutionalized in universe but still reads as traumatic to the audience, what singles people out and what is a shared experience but the horror only shines through here and there - and people just don't engage with it.

Both Arya and Sansa have super deconstruction-heavy narratives, Sansa because fantasy stories are full of damsel in distress maiden in a tower characters but we never hear their voices, Arya because the story of a little girl escaping suffocating social expectations living in Nature with Simple Happy Farmers and making friends is the stuff of middle grade novels with happy endings, and the reality of it is made invisible by the narrative. It's painful and heartwrenching because we have to see them struggle at every step of the way and hope for them to survive and be achingly aware that they're children, without the protection of being ourselves children who can see their adventures as escapism or comforted by the idea someone like us could overcome this.

But somehow people just... delete Arya's actual storyline from their minds and find-and-replace it with a perfectly straightforward's children's adventure romp and it just makes you wonder how the fuck are they reading the rest of this book if they can't grasp deconstruction to this level

128 notes • Posted 2021-04-08 15:08:50 GMT

#1

The fact Theon was taken from the very worst birth family ever into what was probably the best possible family available is interesting, because it very clearly showcases how much this hostage scenario would have been abusive, alienating and unbearable no matter the people involved. But instead people use it as a gotcha to prove how much he should have shut up and been grateful.

181 notes • Posted 2021-03-20 02:26:42 GMT

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