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anyway stephen colbert can get fucked, and i hope mamdani thrives and wins the general election and delivers on his municipal platform, and receives no further questioning based purely on his ethnicity or religion ✊🙏✌️

i'm parasocially invested in zohran mamdani's success, bc it was Insane that fucking... stephen colbert was grilling him about israel. when mamdani is running for mayor of New York City. which is a city in north america! what a normal question to ask, surely one that every candidate for mayor gets, right? 🙂👍

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Cuomo fuckin conceded lmao Mamdani basically won.

he sure did!!!!!!!!!!!!!! and that's the historic electoral upset of a pro-palestine muslim socialist sounding the death knell of establishment democrats in a city that supposedly shifted right last november !!! but best believe they won't hear it and are about to double down on every kind of racism imaginable!!!! but its ok bc change is possible and its coming for them!!!!

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i'm parasocially invested in zohran mamdani's success, bc it was Insane that fucking... stephen colbert was grilling him about israel. when mamdani is running for mayor of New York City. which is a city in north america! what a normal question to ask, surely one that every candidate for mayor gets, right? 🙂👍

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It actually really frustrates me when Mythal says 'the many wrongs we did, we did together,' because while this is technically true in a silly tautological way, it also feels extremely dishonest and manipulative.

After all, a great many of the wrongs Mythal did had nothing to do with Solas. Keeping slaves. Elevating herself to a god. Supporting Elgar'nan in his crimes. Not to mention all the wrongs she did to Solas himself.

Putting it this way feels like a deliberate choice on her part to create the impression of a moral equivalence between them when in fact no such equivalence exists. Even in this moment she's still manipulating him, and it doesn't feel great that the success of her manipulation is celebrated as a good outcome.

(This is of course also part of Veilguard's general approach to treating all its villains as morally the same, which has the unfortunate effect that they end up taking the position that the person who led the slave rebellion is no better than the slavers)

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i say we give it 3 days just to be sure

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this makes it very silly if, for instance, you are writing a google doc, and if you cut out the somewhat bizarre stuff in veilguard.

because if we assume solas is not... a dumbass, who could've soothed the blight himself/made an evanuris prison without the veil involved, and therefore easily avoided killing his entire civilization and knocking himself out. then, even if his main motive WAS the elves and spirits... nothing is stopping him from fiddling around and doing Fade Math for like 50 years to figure out what his best plan should be? they've been in shambles for 5000 years, a few decades to guarantee their future success shouldn't be a huge problem. and it has the bonus of literally outliving anyone who'd remember him from the inquisition, so no one would suspect a thing. he's immortal, he has time. if he's willing to bloody his hands that much, then waiting a few years in the status quo to guarantee that it gets better, isn't morally any worse.

but if he's operating so fast and recklessly, while going "ough... i have no choice... this will save the world... wish i could be wrong 😔" but refusing to explain himself, then solas' most logically pressing motivation seems more like:

"oh shit, if there's two more blights, it's OVER. at least the first one took a couple centuries, but the last blight only took a year?? rip to the mortals, i feel bad about killing them now that i noticed that they have thoughts and feelings, but there's no time to waste!! no one else can do this. clearly the grey wardens are incompetent and have no idea what's going on, the dwarves don't know anything, the chantry is useless, and tevinter caused this whole problem to begin with. if i tell anyone there's Evil Elven Blighted Gods, then the modern elves are completely doomed when the humans retaliate. time for me, solas pride dreadwolf, to once more solve this problem. there's no point asking anyone else, they'll just emotionally compromise me too much and risk my plans. i killed felassan for getting too soft, so i can't lose my nerve now! i'm the sunk cost fallacy king. at least after all this bloodshed, the world will be whole and healthy the way i remember it 🥚👍"

which is. very different from veilguard. fdgsfgasfhd. but it's really wild that veilguard just turned the black city issue, which had been looming over the setting for 3 games, into an offscreen handwavey problem? so if you put it back... that logically becomes the most pressing factor... 😭

it is crazy that dragon age ended up on the most objectively necessary, sympathetic, and unavoidable reason for solas' schemes (the blight is going to pour out from the black city in a limited amount of time? and given that he only created it before the veil, he would likely need the veil down to fix it? the veil basically orbits the black city so the city is always at the "center" of the fade, so that seems logical that it's entire structure is built around the black city? way more logical than a "regret prison" for two evanuris who do not have any noticeable regrets?)

but then they just. handwaved the whole problem! after spending 3 games establishing it! the first opening monologue in dao is about the black city! and then it never gets addressed!! in the game where you deal with its inhabitants and have its creator psychically linked to your protagonist...! 😭

how is this one guy singlehandedly holding up the veil and soothing the blight? if he could soothe the blight, shouldn't he have done that to begin with, and not destroyed his whole civilization trying to contain it? if he could yoink the evanuris out of the black city without having to change the veil at all, then... what's the point of the veil, even?

like the question of "how much is solas' plan about Fixing The Elves And Spirits, vs Averting Looming Blight Apocalypse" is hugely relevant to his character. but they just kind of... sweep the entire thing under the rug fjdhdjdjsf.

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it is crazy that dragon age ended up on the most objectively necessary, sympathetic, and unavoidable reason for solas' schemes (the blight is going to pour out from the black city in a limited amount of time? and given that he only created it before the veil, he would likely need the veil down to fix it? the veil basically orbits the black city so the city is always at the "center" of the fade, so that seems logical that it's entire structure is built around the black city? way more logical than a "regret prison" for two evanuris who do not have any noticeable regrets?)

but then they just. handwaved the whole problem! after spending 3 games establishing it! the first opening monologue in dao is about the black city! and then it never gets addressed!! in the game where you deal with its inhabitants and have its creator psychically linked to your protagonist...! 😭

how is this one guy singlehandedly holding up the veil and soothing the blight? if he could soothe the blight, shouldn't he have done that to begin with, and not destroyed his whole civilization trying to contain it? if he could yoink the evanuris out of the black city without having to change the veil at all, then... what's the point of the veil, even?

like the question of "how much is solas' plan about Fixing The Elves And Spirits, vs Averting Looming Blight Apocalypse" is hugely relevant to his character. but they just kind of... sweep the entire thing under the rug fjdhdjdjsf.

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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.

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me flying in circles around their office lamp: "why does june have a beard? is he a dwarf? is he half-dwarven? what does that mean about their society? was there a dwarven civil war about the titans and one side allied with the elves? what were surface dwarves like, did they exist outside of the titan hivemind? is he just a really cursed Dwarf Cultural Appropriation evanuris, and the beard was fake?"

bioware, shooing me away with a broom: "it doesn't matter. solas was actually better at making eluvians than june, the god of crafts. he's also better at defeating titans that elgar'nan, and invented the blight more than andruil. so you don't need to worry about the evil elven gods. we put all those previous codex entries and temples just to waste everyone's time👍"

me breaking into the bioware offices: "hey. why do the evanuris have such a specific idea of gender and even family units, when they literally made themselves out of Intangible Abstract Concepts? what does motherhood or fatherhood even mean for mythal and elgar'nan? were they having biological kids? were they just copying the dwarves? did the hivemind dwarves have gender and family structures like that? how did that happen? humans didn't exist on thedas then, so it couldn't have been from copying humans?"

bioware, capturing me in a comically large butterfly net and then releasing me into the wilderness: "it's, uhhh, because of anaris' ancient arlathan manosphere podcasts 👍"

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i feel like there is really something to the idea of varric "centrism dwarf" tethras kind of... indirectly touching the fade in a way that dwarves otherwise can't? bc solas comments on how even spirits like his books. and solas might be yapping about how the dwarves are a severed arm that can't dream or whatever, but is that actually true? bc technically varric IS interacting with the fade and creating "dreams" right? arguably he's had a huge impact on the fade, tons of people would be dreaming about Blorbo From Hightown because of him, and spirits even forming themselves to copy those ideas.

anyway, in this essay i unironically think varric could connect to a titan by being sheherzade, and therefore get it to calm down by telling it the entire plot of swords and shields-

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this is what solas has to say after the fight with the pride demon in the center of solasan temple.

the way he sounds so wistful when he says "i wonder if others like it exist or if this is the only one of its kind." like ok buddy are you talking about the temple or yourself?

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Felassan looked over, and behind the lines of the vallaslin, the expression on his face was one of very old sadness. “You think of elves as the shemlen do. Blood or no blood. Knife-ears or flat-ears. You say that they are better off under Celene’s rule. Who are they? The alienage elves? The Dalish?” He smiled. “And why must the Dalish care for the fate of the elves who live in the cities?”

yeah i. i heard about this line.

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the brass ring of unimaginable swag, 2025

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what a strange and unnecessary post. i would not usually reblog anything like this, but: free blocklist addition 👍

Solas is a man. I don't know why some within this fandom insist on denying this. Or would twist themselves into knots in order to pretend he's anything other than what he is.

"But Solas is a spirit!" The typical argument goes.

Correction: He was a genderless spirit.

Yes, Solas was once a spirit.

A spirit of wisdom and pride who chose to create for himself a male body, who has lived for thousands of years as a man, identifies as a man, and is, like it or not, exclusively attracted to women.

Solas is (now get ready to clutch your pearls, ladies and gentlemen) a straight, white, male. 😱

All other versions of what or who Solas could've been as a character was left on the cutting-room floor during the creative process.

This is, of course, standard. As anyone who has ever created an original character can tell you. Ideas are tried on, and if they don't feel right, for any reason, they're dropped.

End of story.

It doesn't matter who your Lavellan is either, since Solas' identity cannot be altered in canon by Lavellan or any other inquisitor. Solas will always be what and who he is.

"I am not a god! I am as I have always been: a man, all too aware of his failings..." - Solas, Dragon Age: The Veilguard

Headcanon all you want, all I'm saying is that I've never understood why someone would choose to lust after a fictional character who's immutable characteristics they claim to find offensive.

Especially when there are other characters present that are clearly more accommodating to your tastes.

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just a last minute reminder that Clip Studio Paint Pro v.4 (perpetual license) is 60% off...so for 23.4 of the US Dollars

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