solavelyan

[solavelyan]

ayo just a head's up, I'm collapsing all my blogs back into my main one and won't be putting anything new on this one anymore. I'll be reblogging a lot of posts to my main for easier future browsing and doing all of my ~Dragon Age posting~ on @bogunicorn now(/again).

[solavelyan]

also if you ever wonder why i keep anons turned off literally everywhere, surprise, this is why

(you're probably not wondering, it is obvious)

also also, i need y'all to know that i largely keep to myself and my dashboard. i don't go hunting people down, i don't spend much time in the tags, i block with impunity. there is no planet on which i'm ever going into someone else's space specifically to look for things that upset me because i can't mind my business

i'm seeing the harassment people get over veilguard because it's happening so fucking much that people i follow are talking about it openly. at most, i go to blogs that i know i don't agree with to make sure i'm not misrepresenting them when they get into conflict. i would have to literally leave fandom to avoid knowing how these people are behaving, and frankly, i don't think i have to do that if i'm not the one acting like a poorly socialized little creep

if they did the same as i did (leaving people who disagreed with them alone, blocking on sight if they know they won't get along with someone), we wouldn't be having this problem. they'd be living in their own communities, having their own discussions, and not harassing others or making fandom hostile. but they don't

[solavelyan]

When I say that the "VG critical" side of fandom is actually just in a feedback loop of their own feelings and that their behavior has nothing at all to do with Veilguard itself, this is why. Because people who are just expressing their own feelings about a game they didn't enjoy do not feel the need to do this kind of thing. They don't frame other people enjoying a fictional video game as "damage".

And don't come to me or anyone else and explain to me how you were harmed, actually, by Veilguard not being what you thought it would. Because if you don't think spending months framing yourselves as VICTIMS doesn't soften the ground for harassment and doxxing, then you're not responsible enough to be using the internet and you should delete your blog. Using the language of abuse to describe people enjoying a video game that you didn't is a way of framing the situation so that you, Aggrieved Fan Who is Just Expressing Concerns, are incapable of actually mistreating those who disagree with you, because now you're a VICTIM who's PUNCHING UP at the mean survey or whatever, and not a maladjusted little shit who won't even put their name on their anon hate and deal with the consequences of their own behaviors.

Delete YOUR shitty blog, anon. And make sure your shitty friends delete theirs, too. Go back to twitter, nobody wants you here.

🫡

[solavelyan]

Since it’s Pride I do want to say how much I appreciate Veilguard not just for representation for queer players but how it reshaped Thedas to be more explicitly queer. Having the Shadow Dragons have an understanding of trans and non-binary characters is amazing given how often it’s queer and BIPOC people enacting real change. Having Maevaris or Dorian become archon means so much. Having Taash be tied so closely to the narrative you can’t complete the main quest without them matters. Having multiple queer BIPOC characters and companions means a lot to me on a personal level. Letting those characters act like real people, the good and the bad rather than tokenizing them is so important. Letting Rook confirm their queerness out loud at multiple points is amazing. It’s not like other games where you can blink and miss it with the queerness, nor can you get rid of queer companions like in pervious games. They didn’t just add pronouns to check a box they made it part of the player character. It’s in your face and an intrinsic part of the story. You cannot ignore these characters and get the better endings like you can in previous games.

Queer stories written by queer people are so crucial and I cannot celebrate this aspect of Veilguard enough.

[solavelyan]

The purpose of this survey is to observe if there are any patterns in how previous engagement with the Dragon Age franchise may effect perspectives on Dragon Age: The Veilguard. This survey is NOT about shaming anyone for their perspectives, or about shaming anyone for their degree in which they have experience with the franchise. Whether you love, hate, both, or perhaps are just indifferent to DATV, your input is valued!

Please feel free to share this survey outside of Tumblr as well - the more people who respond to it, the better.

The only requirement to participate in this survey is if you have played DATV yourself, or have watched someone else do so.

Results will be published here on 20-June-2025!

[SURVEY LINK]

[solavelyan]

need everyone here to know that i'm struggling not to rename this blog "veilguarddeeznuts"

[solavelyan]

So, a while ago someone mentioned doing a Veilguard survey and then... just didn’t. And unfortunately for everyone, I actually do this kind of thing professionally. Sooo, guess what:

It’s Veilguard survey time

It’s short, it’s anonymous, it’s for fun, and it’s for science (but the fandom kind). I also personally blame @postcardsfromheapside for this. I’m planning to make a dashboard and write up the results in a big post later, so we can all argue about the data like God intended.

Please fill it out and reblog if you can — I’d love to get as many responses as possible so the graphs look sexy.

[solavelyan]

if you want to understand why i say veilguard is extremely tightly written and full of parallels, fractals, and foils which zero in on the themes of generational trauma, grief, and escaping cycles, look no further than the pre-title screen tutorial:

not only is it nearly beat for beat the inquisition pre-title tutorial (cutscene to establish the protag's personality, meet the "advisors", a giant hole in the sky spewing demons, gather your first companions, fight through a demon infested landscape to reach a temple where a ritual is/was being enacted that would destroy the world, first big boss is a pride demon)

but right there, in the first ~thirty minutes of the game, rook becomes solas the rebel wolf and solas becomes elgar'nan the cruel. solas stabs varric (like mythal was stabbed by elgar'nan) after varric only tried to talk to solas, to reason with him, as mythal tried to reason with elgar'nan.

not for nothing is rook varric's second as solas was once mythal's. and not for nothing does solas keep the full realization from rook.

[solavelyan]

[solavelyan]

Deleted my last post and replacing it with this: I am begging y'all to understand that you're not "punching up" when you take a fat shit on Epler's (or Weekes', or anyone else's) personal moral character or demonize him or harass him over a video game story you didn't like. He's not The Man. He's not The Rich Whomst We Eat. Video game devs are not wealthy elites by any means - kind of the exact opposite!

Like, I need you to picture your regular neighbor guy who makes a low-to-medium average income, and who also just got laid off from a job that treated him and his coworkers like absolute shit for over a decade. He's just a normal dude. Casting him as He Who Ruined Your Whole Life Out of Spite and/or Actual Malice is weird loser shit. Knowing how thin-skinned you all are at any amount of pushback, if you were dealing with a fraction of the shit thrown at him on social media over A VIDEO GAME STORY, you'd be laying down in traffic instead of being so gracious about it on fucking Bluesky.

What the fuck is wrong with you people.

[solavelyan]

john epler (bellara's writer) on the Parallels between a certain someone in politics and anaris

[solavelyan]

I think Emmrich should get to be a little bit of a creep btw. As a treat. I think he should walk past Rook after they've been getting sweaty in the Rivaini sun all day and audibly sniff them and then hum, close his eyes like the smell of their armor funk is mother's baked bread. I think this should make Rook visibly horny in a way that makes everyone else uncomfortable. I also think that Emmrich should point to a book on the shelf and tell Rook to get it down for him, and then come up behind them while they're reaching up on their tiptoes and cup a palm over some inappropriate part of them. I think Rook should occasionally feel Emmrich's eyes on them from across the room and know that he's thinking about them naked. I think Emmrich should be allowed to do these things because he's sexy.

[solavelyan]

DREADROOK WEEK @thelighthouse-server day 3 - mirrors

[solavelyan]

If you take Bellara and Lucanis out together enough to hear a good chunk of their banter together, they talk a LOT about food, cooking, and how they conspired to monopolize cooking duty in the Lighthouse so they can avoid being poisoned by Harding without hurting Harding's feelings. It's a huge part of their friendship and it's such a fun banter storyline, I definitely recommend listening to all of the banter on YouTube if you don't have the patience to go get it yourself (like me, I listened to it on YouTube).

I get so annoyed with posts that ignore that Bellara is also out there feeding these people. Like Lucanis shows up and discovers that BELLARA is the only one who understands what food is. Stop lumping her in with Fried Fish and Burned Coffee Gallus and Culinary Abominations Harding. Show this woman some respect! She was holding the line.

[solavelyan]

Some Solas photos I took in Veilguard recently.

[solavelyan]

I think I approve of the creative decision not to give us the old Elven word for "wisdom" or ever use the name that Solas had before Solas. Solas obviously internally calls himself "Solas", even in private mural memories he never intended anyone else to see -- but if you have (I believe) lich!Emmrich in your party during the final run where Solas is a guest companion, he says he "prefers to be known as Wisdom".

I'm fascinated by the implication that... I think Solas doesn't see himself as a spirit of Pride inherently, but as a corrupted Wisdom spirit. He can't go backward, he can't return to spirit form and be fully Wisdom again, the way his friend did in Inquisition, but that starting point is immensely important to him. And the act of simultaneously being both Pride and Wisdom is, I think, something only possible if you have a physical form as he does. Spirits and demons get the benefit of simplicity; becoming more complicated expanded both what he could be and what he is.

But I do also wish they'd told us what his old name was because I like knowing things

[solavelyan]

They could've really ramped up the weirdness with Solas and I am going to be forever bummed that they didn't. Think about it, he's an eldritch being made demi-human flesh and he thinks immortality is the natural state of being. Maybe just for Elves, but what if he thought it was natural for everyone? What if when he stabbed Varric, he actually connected him to a titan which took in his consciousness so he wasn't actually 'dead' and was instead 'eternal' and the lyrium dagger was the link to that titan.

So when you saw him around, it was the him connected to the Titan. What if you knew Solas killed Varric and confronted him and he was like 'He is not dead, he is Eternal, as he should be.' and was just utterly convinced he'd done him a favor?

Like 'this is natural, this is what you should've been. You'll never die, isn't that great?' and meanwhile Varric thinks he's still alive and really walking around, even has a lyrium ghost form because the Lighthouse is in the Fade. You have to inform him, uh, you're dead and you're being kept 'alive' by a Titan indefinitely and he'd have to just. Deal with that. What if these things showed in Inquisition where he reacted very badly every time someone died. Not just his friend Wisdom, but anyone. Like it was an unnatural thing that really bothered him. Every time our troops died in great number in the field he's just sitting at his desk, looking sad and mopey and his voice lines are tired and sorrowful. And I dunno if humans are eternal originally, but Solas being convinced that it's the natural state of all things and they must've been, would've been cool to show. What if when you romance him he becomes panicked every time you fall in battle. Not just 'oh no! Hold on!' shit but like literally his AI will stop what he's doing and rush over to help you even if you're not controlling him to. Which would've been a cool thing to happen with all love interests, honestly, but what if the whole time he's just quietly freaking out under his breath. (of course in this version he can romance anyone of any race or gender because the point of his romance is realizing that people are people which applies to all of them.) What if we got reports after Wisdom died and he walked off, that half the countryside was destroyed with random bursts of magic and when he comes back we're like 'hey, was that you?' and he's just very quietly like 'I had a lot to work out'. And what if what galvanizes him isn't necessarily that he loves you, but because he loves you as a friend or lover, he cannot bear thinking of you or his other friends in the Inquisition dying? What if he tries to find a way to make Humans immortal because now he loves them too and wants to keep them? Just the ones not being dickheads, because he kills tyrants and honestly the ones owning slaves can just die, no loss there. But his human friends who are complex but good like Blackwall and possibly you and Vivienne even though they fight like cats and dogs because she IS doing her best in her own way, even if he doesn't understand it? What if the entirety of Veilguard/Dreadwolf had been about Solas desperately trying to stop death? Trying to save his people yes, but because their suffering would only end in death. They couldn't just outlast their masters and go on living endlessly afterwards. They would have a short life filled with pain and that's JUST too horrible to think about.

And he's perfectly reasonable, logical and understands compassion and empathy, which is what makes it so creepy when he starts talking about death and how it's unnatural and how he'll save everyone.

Not in the 'man I can't understand that' way, but in the way of 'damn, I can totally understand that but also his understanding if it is so alien it makes my brain tired trying to figure it out'.