eeblingtheshade

[eeblingtheshade]

Something Something Yeah It's Still Solavellan Hours (Mythal is kind of here, too)

I've seen a few very beautifully articulated posts talking about the conflicted responses players are finding themselves having in regards to the decision by writers* to have Solas' atonement route possible because of his conversation with one of the remaining fragments of Mythal.

(*honestly I hesitate to put the weight of bigger game events on their shoulders because of how much I know bigger players in the company were involved, so when you read 'writers' know I just mean whoever had final say on plot)

I love reading where people are at on this, and having now breathed, re-played the scene, cried, read some more theories, and then played the scene again enough times I think I'm now able to figure out where I'm at.

TLDR: in my humble opinion, the conversation Solas has with Mythal doesn't bring him any actual closure at all. It is only the version of the atonement ending that has Lavellan in which he is actually set upon a road to redemption.

This, like everything else where I lose my mind, will be long. I tried to restrain myself and here we are, unhinged as ever.

I was unhappy at first that Mythal's incredibly brief conversation with Solas where she releases him from her service seemed to be what finally allowed him to make a decision based on his wants and not hers. My concern stemmed mostly from the fact that a lot of us are trying to be active participants in a society that recognizes patterns of abuse and seeks to establish channels through which individuals can pursue healing without the approval, consent, or demise of their abuser.

But the more I look at the scene, the more I wonder what would have happened in a world where Veilguard got just a little more time in development. Could we have gotten a scene that more elegantly conveys the theme that we cannot heal every part of our loved ones, much as we might like to?

In an imperfect world it isn't always up to us how someone finds closure, which really sucks when you'd like to ensure a loved one finds it in a way that preserves their dignity and limits exposure to the individuals who have harmed them.

And while it could be left there, I'd like to actually push back on the idea that Mythal is in any way responsible for "healing" Solas in this moment.

I went on a different tirade a few days ago about how at the end of Inquisition, Mythal says words to Solas that on their surface seem well-intentioned or placating, but they actually just serve to further bind him in guilt and a position of servitude. In Veilguard's finale, she still does not take accountability for exactly how much of a role she played in the pain that Solas, a man others have revered and feared as a god, has gone through as he cowers, actually cowers before her.

Mythal's interaction with Solas conveys exactly two things to him as far as I am concerned (I'm going to botch these quotes but my laptop is dying so please accept some paraphrase as I rush to finish this before I go cry about this analysis to my uncaring dog):

"The terrible things we did, we did together." You are forever tied to me.

"I release you from my service." But what am I releasing you to?

Because up until Lavellan joins the fray here, all I take away from the physical and unwilling emotional cues Solas gives in this scene (he is a master in trickery, for goodness' sake, the thought of so many witnesses seeing him unable to hide behind a mask has to leave him feeling anguished on top of everything else) is that Mythal has once again reminded him of everything he did in her name and telling him that all that's left for him is to go back to the fade prison and, as he as always done, endure the crushing weight of his failures alone.

To me, in my interpretation, the Solas that hears this from Mythal with no Lavellan intervention may choose to willingly step down from his original plan (and yeah, that's gonna do some damage) but he is certainly not free of his past. He's going to be reminded of it every time he turns a corner and finds more blight to try and soothe, and even the moments that he rests will be filled with more manifestations of his regret. He says it himself: where he's going? It's terrible.

Enter Lavellan. Yeah, he couldn't bring himself to listen to her at her first plea (but like damn how many times are we going to have to watch her give a heartfelt speech only for him to be like 'something something beautiful elven rejection'). But I know that you know that our clever icon knows better than to take what Solas says at face value. She tells Rook plainly that he's absolute dogshit at lies of the heart, and she says it with her whole chest.

Lavellan sees the way his shoulders slump (in resignation yes, but you can't convince me there's not a little bit of relief there, too), she hears the agony in the "vhenan" that escapes his lips (which, don't even get me started on the fact that it's been like nine years and he has no hesitation at all calling her his heart, it just spills out of him). It is not the sound of a man delighting in the steps he's about to take. They're certainly not steps he does not dislike that lead to a destination he enjoys.

And then she watches Mythal (who I can't imagine she feels any sort of fondness or respect for) pull some weird nonsense on her love one final time, and she knows it's her moment to shine.

Mythal, I would argue, pushes Solas down one more time, shames him into seeking atonement, into once again being alone.

It is the romanced Lavellan that kneels so that he cannot fail to meet her eyes. It is she who invokes their connection, not to remind him of his failures but to reaffirm his greatest strength: their love and their love alone is inevitable. Not the consequences of his past, not the regret he thinks will consume him as he seeks to mend what has been broken. It has only ever been them.

"There is no fate but the love we share". We are forever tied together.

"There is no fate but the love we share." *I* am releasing you from everything else save for this love.

Put colloquially: get absolutely fucking wrecked, Mythal.

Body language comparison to chase up the dialogue one, anyone? The way Solas shrinks before Mythal as opposed to him walking off into the fade with Lavellan at his side and standing tall, and he does not flinch when she lifts a hand to his shoulder?

Ultimately, Mythal is a part of the atonement endings no matter what. But it is only Lavellan that refuses to let him walk alone. It is only Lavellan that guarantees that his dinan'shiral ends not in a prison of regret, but a place of promise.

Mythal bends Solas until he breaks one last time. Lavellan takes each piece, claims it as hers, and uses them to build the beginnings of a future.

[eeblingtheshade]

There's just a specific kind of emotion you feel when you relate to the stigmatized communities within the world of Dragon Age across some axis only for the devs to go like. You should kill yourself or get institutionalized. Now.

[eeblingtheshade]

No because you don't understand. Flemeth stole the golden MIRROR. she stole a symbol of Morrigans individuality and personhood, something that would allow Morrigan to look at herself and say 'thats me'. She smashed it on the ground and it fractured into a thousand tiny pieces, and her daughter wept over it.

The lesson was not about the futility and lack of use of shiny objects, the lesson was about control. It was about stripping Morrigan not only of possessions but of ways to identify herself. Because Morrigan wasn't being raised to be herself. She was being raised to act as a host, a body, a sack of meat, something that personhood could reside within, not a person with agency herself.

I'm INSANE

[eeblingtheshade]

him🖤

[eeblingtheshade]

Hey. Look at me. Please leave yourself a note somewhere you'll see it later that says "it is going to take years if not decades to get the United States government to the level of functionality it had in November of 2024." If we elect a democrat in 2028, we are not going to be up and running by 2032.

Please make sure you have a reminder in your phone reminding you to not look at 2028/32/36 Democratic candidates and say "why are they not promising/delivering Cool Shit?" because you are going to understand that to get Cool Shit we must have competent people running a decently funded government, and we are not going to have that.

We are not getting UBI. We are not getting single payer healthcare. We are not getting free college or free preschool. We are not redistributing wealth on a large scale. We are not getting free internet. We are not getting ranked choice voting.

If we are lucky, we are going to get an IRS that can collect taxes, qualified schoolteachers, research grants, Social Security, and a government that thinks maybe it should be a priority for people around the worlds to not have AIDS, malaria or TB.

[eeblingtheshade]

I forgot I drew these ages ago! Reposting them because I can: The Three Divines.

[eeblingtheshade]

Get off c.ai and find a tumblr blog who rps as a fictional character or read fanfic like a sane person

[eeblingtheshade]

at least the colour green exists

[eeblingtheshade]

What I dont understand is how people can claim that any of the writing or characterizations in DAV weren’t polluted by a pretty extreme bias when:

1–Epler openly admitted to hating Solas as character.

2–Epler also openly admitted he didn’t like that people found Solas sympathetic in DAI and Trespasser (which was the point???)

3–Epler ALSO openly admitted to killing off Varric for the express purpose of turning the audience against Solas, hence why both were acting wildly out of character in that scene (and for the rest of the game, honestly)

5–They put several scenes in the game that serve no other purpose than to have the protagonists talk shit at length about Solas.

6–They retconned pretty much all of Solas’ actual motivations (helping the Elves, helping the Spirits, restoring the natural world, preventing an uncontrolled collapse of the Veil, the inevitable escape of the Evanuris, etc etc) and replaced them with man-pain, the limpest of all motives.

6–They changed fundamental aspects of the lore to better accommodate this bias by not bringing up any of the shit that brought grey areas and nuance into the conversation.

7–They deadass retconned one of the most critical scenes from the end of DAI to—again—erase all nuance and make Solas out to be ‘The Bad Guy’ and I guess also so Bellara could bitch at him later despite her thorough lack of understanding on the subject.

8–Made it nearly impossible for the Player Character to interpret things for themselves or form their own opinions, despite it being both promised in the marketing and an overall staple of both the DA franchise and the RPG genre.

I could honestly keep going for a good while but I feel I’ve made my point….Epler had an axe to grind and it poisoned the whole project.

[eeblingtheshade]

i still can't believe they completely omitted 3 important elf characters (fenris, charter, and miriam) from the overall plot and then decided racism + slavery were over now.

[eeblingtheshade]

He’s genuinely so beautiful, I can't cope

[eeblingtheshade]

solas lumbering beast walk saturday

[eeblingtheshade]

I still can't believe Dragon Age Absolution, an incredible piece of storytelling with a nuanced and interesting antagonist who has a clear motivation and goal, developed characters with fun and well grounded dialogue, and a lore friendly story, setting and dialogue, came out just a couple years before the least thought out piece of dragon age media to have ever existed

[eeblingtheshade]

The Devs deffinetely didn’t intend this, let alone understand what it would mean, but I find it a bit poetic that the name and symbols of the DAV protagonist is, essentially, a tower. In Tarot, the tower symbolizes destruction, upheaval, chaos, and disaster. Which is essentially what Rook brought to Thedas.

[eeblingtheshade]

It's starting to drive me nuts how often I'm seeing the claim that the "southern" Chantry and its relationship with magic have zero influence in the north.

The Chantry schism created the Imperial Chantry vs. the Orlesian Chantry. Imperial because it’s only a thing in the Tevinter Imperium. That’s one country in the north.

Yes, we only get to see the Mournwatch in Veilguard, but have we forgotten the College of Magi in Cumberland? The philosophical heart of the Circle of Magi? Where they used to elect the Grand Enchanters? How about the Circle of Perendale? There’s an actual wartable mission about Perendale's mages who barricaded themselves in for fear of what the general populace will do to them!

Remember Zevran mentioning the Circle in Antiva and how the templars there were watching the mages like "a jealous husband guarding the chastity of a wanton bride"? Remember Josephine's line "little but the Chantry ties Orlais, Nevarra, Ferelden, Antiva, and even Rivain to a common cause"?

You think Brother Genitivi - a Fereldan Chantry brother - would call the Anderfels a nation that produces the most devout priests if they didn’t give af about the Orlesian Chantry? The place where they carved a giant statue of Andraste into a mountain?

Rivain, sure, the Chantry’s influence there has always been minimal (though ironically, the aftermath of the Dairsmuid Circle's annulment is the only time we actually see the Chantry’s influence up north in this game). But Nevarra, Antiva and the Anderfels?!

Sorry, no, there's an entire list of known Circles of Magi readily available online. Don’t freaking try to tell me that people everywhere were letting their mages cuddle wisps and shit, and it was only Orlais, Ferelden and the Free Marches that didn’t get the memo! Of course there have always been cultural differences, but "we're in the north now" is a piss-poor excuse for Veilguard's absence of any palpable faith.

It damn well should have mattered who we put on the Sunburst Throne.

[eeblingtheshade]

(x)

[eeblingtheshade]

I do think one of the things that made me saddest about Veilguard was the sheer lack of continuity. And I'm not even talking about worldstates.

Where are the Varterral? Why is Arlathan forest guarded by magical robots instead?

Where are the merchant princes of Antiva? You know, the people who really run Antiva? Not the king, not the Crows?

Why does the Lighthouse exist? Wasn't it implied in the last game that Skyhold was Solas’s fortress? The place where the sky is held back?

Why was Emmrich never a member of a Circle? Why have we forgotten that Nevarra had Circles (although presumably those who managed to become Mortalitasi had much greater freedom than mages elsewhere, they would presumably also all be Harrowed mages from the Circles in Nevarra originally)? Why have we forgotten that Cumberland was home to the College of Enchanters?

Where is the Felicisima Armada? That Isabela was part of? Why does the timeline of Taash's storyline and their mother's work with the Lords clash completely with the Kirkwall timeline?

What do you mean, the Titans are done? Then what was going on with the Titan in the Descent? The one that woke up and started moving around and got soothed by reconnecting itself with Valta? It seems like that Titan was very much alive and well, where are the others? Given that lyrium is alive and the Titan's blood, I can only assume that anyplace where you have actively growing lyrium, you have a living Titan? Why can't the dwarves reconnect with them?

A lot of these are little things...but they all add up. This, combined with the fact that quite a lot of the characters don't seem particularly integrated into the world of Thedas either...