darksyde08

[darksyde08]

I have absolutely nothing to add, this is beautifully written.

The story of Lavellan and Solas tickles my Tolkien-influenced love for fantasy. It falls into the category of Beren and Lúthien - a love story that, by all real-world logic, is absolutely batshit insane. And yet, placed within the mythic frame of fantasy, it fits perfectly. It belongs there. These are the kinds of stories that only make sense in a world comfortable with myths, legends, ancient beings, monsters, supernatural war and absurdity - where love doesn’t follow rules, it transcends them.

That’s what I love: the illogical. Because love isn’t logical. For every argument I’ve seen that says it “makes no sense” for Lavellan and Solas to fall in love over the course of Inquisition, or that waiting that many years to be together is unrealistic. I sit back and laugh. Really? Love needs a timeline? In a fantasy?

Beren took one look at Lúthien dancing and fell irrevocably in love - and Lúthien was all in too. They didn’t take three years to build a foundation of trust and talk about boundaries or what they saw in each other. Their version of courtship was joining forces to battle literal evil so they could earn the right to be together. It was reckless, wild, insane, illogical and absolutely delicious. 

Lavellan and Solas hit that same mythic nerve for me. Their story - two people drawn together across time, fate, and existential stakes - feels like something out of The Silmarillion.

I don’t need these stories of love and pain and tragedy and trauma and desire to be logical in the real-world sense. It was never meant to be. Like all mythological love stories, it speaks to something eternal, irrational, and luminous.

There are themes and tropes woven through Lavellan and Solas’ story that utterly captivate me. And it’s partly to do with the fact that their love story isn't a comfortable one. It asks something of you. It asks you to reconcile contradiction: love and betrayal, hope and despair, violence and tenderness, destiny and choice, love as performance vs love as presence.

I’ve uncovered themes and archetypes that fit perfectly in this world of fantasy and discovered new ones in conversations with fellow Solas and Lavellan lovers as well. Here’s my attempt to weave some of those tropes and themes together. 

Their story carries what I like to call the Tolkien Effect: elven culture where immortals and mortals fall in love and brave inconceivable odds just to be together. It’s the story of a man tormented by the choice between duty and love - Solas’ self-imposed responsibility to mend the world demands that he sacrifice his heart, while Lavellan’s bond with him is forged within that very conflict. He stands as the tragic anti-hero: prideful, guilt-ridden, withdrawing into self-destructive isolation because he’s convinced only he can set things right. She, meanwhile, plays Beauty to his Beast - seeing the fractured soul beneath the would-be destroyer and, by loving him, becoming the mirror that reflects his lost humanity. In classic fashion, they are star-crossed lovers - she's a mortal leader of the present, he's an immortal haunted by his past. Their timelines are misaligned, their love a sacrifice in the face of fate.

Their relationship goes from prejudice to passion. At first, Solas sees Lavellan as a biased curiosity - a product of a world he resents. But curiosity gives way to respect, respect deepens into desire, and desire transforms into a love so overwhelming it must be cloaked in restraint. He tries to resist her, but she becomes a gravitational force pulling him into an orbit he can't break.

Here, love becomes existential salvation or existential disruption. Lavellan offers Solas something terrifying: a path out of the endless cycle of destruction. It's a chance to choose life and yet instead he chooses to run from it, fleeing the love that might transform his path.

He tries to let her go, believing he must shield her from the darkness he carries. But he's the immortal who can't let go. He dreams of her. Writes to her. Remembers her. Because this is love across time - a mythic bond that survives years, silence, betrayal, and distance. A love that endures even after everything else has fallen.

He's the lonely immortal whose memories stretch back to betrayals no one else can comprehend. Lavellan is shaped in the mold of Tolkien’s quiet heroes - Frodo’s endurance, Aragorn’s purpose, Éowyn’s resolve - meeting unearthly stakes with a resilience that refuses to break, even when love itself feels like punishment.

In the end, wisdom and mercy override vengeance. Lavellan’s forgiveness doesn’t excuse but provides a path to healing. She has taken on the role of mortal muse of the divine. A single, fleeting human heart - fragile, finite - a key that might yet save an ancient, wounded soul. And so great is this ancient being’s pain, so immense the guilt and fear he carries, that it takes a fellowship to save Thedas, to save him - the mortal and immortal working together. And at the end, the star-crossed lovers are reunited, a bittersweet ending as they experienced so much pain to get there. They ascend together into another world, stepping outside the boundaries of Thedas, likely to inspire new legends in the years to come. 

Should I go on? There are more themes and tropes I’ve pulled from this story - more patterns of myth and meaning that keep drawing me back. And now, with the story of Lavellan and Solas together in the Fade, it begs for new narratives, new archetypes, new emotional terrain.

The story isn’t over. It’s only deepening.

[darksyde08]

finally sharing the cameo I requested of Solas saying this post!

"Damn, I wish I could wolf out right now." "This fight would be so much easier if I wolfed out." "Fuck this guy, imagine if I wolfed out on them."

[darksyde08]

Every relationship adds something to Solas, but the romance really does shine a light on it all. It really opens that door into him, especially after VG and things you find out about him.

The other thing I love about the romance route for Solas is that it's the one which shows you most clearly that he's really not in control and is just desperately playing it by ear.

On either the friendship or low approval route, he ultimately stays in his comfort zone: he gets in, uses the Inquisition in accordance with his plan, and gets out. A lot of his relationship-building can be thought of as him just testing people or concealing who he is. He does still undergo significant changes in his worldview in response to his connection with the Inquisitor, but this version is largely consistent with the picture of him as an elite, prideful trickster figure.

But on the romance route it's very different. Falling in love with the Inquisitor is a monumental fuck up and it is also a very deeply human one. You get a much clearer sense of him just trying to figure everything out and stumbling and losing control of his plans. At Crestwood you can see him realise in real time that there's no graceful way out of the situation he's created and he handles it very poorly and it's all just extremely realistic and sympathetic to me.

It also makes for a delicious contrast in Trespasser because there he's trying to present himself once again as detached and completely in control, but if you romanced him you know perfectly well that this is an act and sure enough he quickly crumbles and goes back to 'vhenan' and 'my love' and the fragility of his whole facade is so achingly clear.

[darksyde08]

People who try to put a reality spin on a romance between an Elven GOD and a religious icon on par with Mary , are just weird.

Every time I see a take on the solavellan relationship in Veilguard that boils down to “he’s just an ex she dated for a year about a decade why does she even still care” I die a little inside.

This so fundamentally misses the point of their relationship in Inquisition. It’s not an everyday type of experience. This isn’t your ex from uni you’re still hung up on well after graduation.

The Inquisitor was thrust into becoming an icon for a religion she doesn’t even follow. She became the leader of a religious military organization. With every day that passes, she is increasingly removed from being a regular person. Even if she doesn’t like nor want that, it’s now her reality.

But throughout this experience, she has someone who’s by her side. Who can advise her. Whom she can confide in. He shares dreams with her.

They fall in love. He breaks her heart. He abandons her. He was a god and responsible for everything that happened to her in the first place.

This is an epic and mythical romance. It’s not supposed to be grounded nor healthy and placing constraints on it as if it were doesn’t make sense.

[darksyde08]

Me: I don't like Solas

Also me: *do this crap because I love audios with his voice*

Anyway, thank you @fangharel for amazing audios 😭❤️ programm ate quality, but I hope it'll make you happy anyway

[darksyde08]

I mean, Solas’s voice in Trespasser. It was something else! So different! I was so curious I reached out to Gareth David Lloyd himself to ask about it.

PS - he was wearing a Dread Wolf t-shirt, because of course!!

I highly recommend reaching out to him on Cameo, he’s always super kind ��

[darksyde08]

this was mostly an excuse to play with some watercolor brushes i got ages ago and then never did anything with. but it was also a warmup that went too far.

[darksyde08]

The Inquisition has defeated Corypheus, and Solas’ orb is destroyed. He knows he is about to leave Inquisitor Lavellan behind.

But before he disappears, he needs Lavellan to know: what they had was real. 

For me, this is his way of positioning both of them in a shared truth. He loved her. Their connection was real. It's a pre-emptive reassurance, knowing what he’s about to do.

He knows Lavallan will learn horrifying things about him, that she will feel betrayed and for all his layers, all the lies he tells himself, Solas needs her to believe that their love wasn’t manipulation.

He tells her it was real because he needs to protect one sacred thing from everything he’s about to become. For a man already breaking under the burden of regret, who is fractured, who has redefined himself time and again, it's like this is a piece of himself he wants to preserve - the man who was loved, and loved in return.

He tells her it was real not just for her sake, but for his own.

And perhaps, unconsciously, it’s the first clue he leaves behind. The beginning of a pattern. Because while he walks away, part of him still hopes to be stopped. He cannot ask for it outright - his pride, guilt and sense of purpose won’t allow it. But his love for her remains, and in that love, he begins to scatter pieces of himself.

[darksyde08]

Ten years in the Lighthouse

The idea of Solas living all alone in the Lighthouse for ten years is really viscerally upsetting for me.

Ten years is a long time. (We know, because that's how long we had to wait for this story to be resolved!). He ate alone at that long table every night for ten years. He went to bed alone in a little corner of his office every night for ten years. He spent ten years worth of unhappy evenings in his music room, playing virtuosic sonatas and drinking alone.

In that time, apart from the events of Trespasser, he never had a conversation with a single (embodied) person who liked him or cared about him.

He repainted his Inquisition murals because he missed his friends. He went personally to that meeting in the Tevinter Nights short story because he just wanted to see someone who knew him; someone who would call him Solas. And when it really became too unbearable, he visited Lavellan's dreams. He knew he shouldn't, he knew it was wrong, but the loneliness was dragging him under and he was afraid to lose himself in that vast darkness.

His greatest fear is dying alone, and yet that's exactly what he was doing. Inch by painful inch, he was killing what remained of Solas, replacing him with the Dread Wolf.

No wonder he sobs when Lavellan kneels to tell him she loves him. It's a decade since anyone has been kind to him; he's not just touch-starved, he's starved of connection of any kind. He clutches at his heart because she is his heart, and after ten years of existing without really living he finally has a chance to be whole again.

[darksyde08]

This shouldn't have obscured this under all that sound, this is so good!!

Varric and Solas argue. The sound echoes.

Varric: Me, take down the Dread Wolf? I'm flattered. Varric: No, I just came to ask you a question. So, you rebelled against the other gods, and it was a disaster. Varric: Then you imprisoned them and created the Veil, and that was a disaster. Varric: So how is this time gonna work out any better? Can you tell me that? Solas: I understand your hesitance, but what I do now must be done, despite it being past your comprehension. Varric: I'm not saying you're evil. But if you really believed in what you were doing, you'd be able to give me a straight answer. Solas: You would rather cast aspersions than admit that this is mine to solve. Varric: No mistake is worth killing innocent people over. Solas: The question is what lives, and how. My ritual will heal the world, and restore what was driven out of balance. Varric: C'mon, Chuckles. Who are you trying to convince here? Me, or yourself? Solas: Varric… Varric: You're not the first good man I've seen talk himself into a bad decision. The question is whether you can admit it.

[darksyde08]

IDK what solavellan fic writers are smoking, because I legit cannot stop reading all new fanfics.

I assume in big part it's fueled by how much of a flop Veilguard turned out to be and their desire to process this disappointment.

Some fics are better than a canon and genuinely written so well that I can hardly believe I can access freely. Novels I bought in store this summer pale in comparison

I love being in this fandom. Baldy really attracted thousands of talented people, huh

if anything, thanks for making so many talented people mad, bioware. I'm in fucking heavens. I'm being fed so good. A great solavellan renaissance if happening in aoe right now.

[darksyde08]

This man could read the ingredients on a box of oatmeal and I would swoon.

I had Gareth read my favorite poem (To One in Paradise by Edgar Allan Poe) on cameo and as usual they were delightful. <3

Thou wast that all to me, love, For which my soul did pine— A green isle in the sea, love, A fountain and a shrine, All wreathed with fairy fruits and flowers, And all the flowers were mine.

Ah, dream too bright to last! Ah, starry Hope! that didst arise But to be overcast! A voice from out the Future cries, “On! on!”—but o’er the Past (Dim gulf!) my spirit hovering lies Mute, motionless, aghast!

For, alas! alas! with me The light of Life is o’er! No more—no more—no more— (Such language holds the solemn sea To the sands upon the shore) Shall bloom the thunder-blasted tree, Or the stricken eagle soar!

And all my days are trances, And all my nightly dreams Are where thy grey eye glances, And where thy footstep gleams— In what ethereal dances, By what eternal streams.

[darksyde08]

I love when people have adult money and use it for wonderfully whimsical things that bring joy like this! And i love it when actors have such a lovely sense of humor,love for the character, and their fan base to indulge them! Thank you, @garethdavid-lloyd , for these lovely, silly, wonderful clips that make us all smile a little bit more!

I wondered if anyone had requested this yet on Cameo and then remembered that I have money to exchange for goods and services

[darksyde08]

Here it is my lovelies 💜 my own "Memories of a duet" animation. Solas playing his harpsichord on those lonely nights at the Lighthouse…

watch YT version for better 2k quality :)

[darksyde08]

Dragon Age is OURS. It will only ever be over if WE stop creating. Never let them take your Joy in the things you love. This franchise and Fandom got me through some really tough times in my life, so I am going to be here for it through this and lift it up and make it better.

yknow what? having had a night to contemplate.

yeah i'm still gonna fic-ify my entire dragon age run during inquisition, veilguard, and all the time between (including my inquisitor's perspective as she saves the south with HoF and hawke while rook is fighting the evanuris in the north. <3)

they can take away a lot of things. my joy is not one of them.

[darksyde08]

Solas and Felassan??? This is what life gives me instead of winning the lottery, I'm 💯 sure of it, lmao! We are definitely having sex and possibly all three of us dying from having too much alll the time.... or at least I am 🥵😍

Though it is entirely possible I could be a third wheel.... but I don't mind watching! 👀

You get trapped with two Dragon Age characters (spin the wheel) in one room for a day.

[darksyde08]

These are the Solas kisses for Solavellan's. Every time you pass the rotunda.

Solas calling you vhenan <3