#anyway...there's this

[fenanera]

I want to talk about the big elephant in the room, starting with an F and ending in elassan. Which is difficult because from a subjective point of view, I hate Solas for what he did - remember, I critique him because I love him - and on an objective point of view holding a magnifying glass to the grooves in solas’ brain… I get why it happened. So I want to talk about both. Mostly the second one.

please note that this will involve conversation about ptsd, survivor’s guilt, etc. if those topics make you uncomfortable, that’s okay! you don't have to read.

Pretend for a second that the last thing you remember before closing your eyes for thousands of years is that everything you were fighting for was ripped away by your own miscalculation. You are at that end-stage goal. Victory is in sight and you have already sacrificed so much, you have already been changed so much and maligned from who you were before, that all you have now is this final moment that could potentially end tyranny as you know it. And you fumble that moment. There is success, but at a cost even you couldn’t foresee, and certainly didn’t gamble with as you had before.

When Solas wakes up, that’s all there is. It is the first thing on his mind. The world is foreign to him because it’s grown roots in this foundation that wasn’t supposed to be there. Elves no longer have immortality. The world can only sip magic through a straw instead of having it all around, free, at their fingertips. Mages and elves are oppressed or enslaved, sometimes both. A radical faith has supplanted what he knew to be the truth, and is used as a hammer against people he once advocated for. This isn’t a life, it’s survival, and people aren’t people because he knows what that full potential is, or could be. And then the one person that was always at his side…tells him ‘no.���

I’ve said it many times before, but fight or flight is a powerful thing and when it grips you, it has a hard time letting go. Solas was still in it - his entire being had been melted down and crucibled into a weapon, because he had been fighting since he took his first physical breath, and this was the height of its effect. Spirits have a path, and when they stray from that path, they overload. Solas picked a new path, and now that path was being impeded, again. How much more could he possibly change? How much more time could he waste in this new world? He was angry, he was dogmatic to his goal, he was, at this point, loyal only to what he thought his purpose was. He kills his best friend. He starts from scratch.

He pushes it down. He locks that memory away, just like he locked everything else away. And sometimes it pours out of hairline cracks in what Solas thinks is a good enough justification for what he did. It's worsened by the fact that he didn't let himself mourn. TME takes place right before Inquisition - the man that greets the Inquisitor isn't a man caught in the throes of everything he's ever done wrong, because in that moment, he doesn't think he did anything wrong. He miscalculated the effects of the Veil. Felassan was the one in the wrong for keeping him from reaching his goal, 'betraying' him - and so a spirit acted accordingly to what happens when its path is interrupted. The Solas that we meet at the beginning of Inquisition is shouldering the deaths of thousands - including his dearest friends - and instead of accepting the grieving process / the guilt, he rationalizes it all into a point that still has to be made. A thing he has to fix.

Now, subjectively, that was the worst thing he possibly could have done. I don't think it would have mattered much if Felassan survived - not even a romanced Lavellan could reach Solas' conscience by the end of Trespasser. It takes an agony of effort to finally make him stop, it takes digging up Mythal's remnants to get him to hesitate. He stopped listening to Felassan long before the Rebellion even ended, and he certainly wouldn't listen now. That being said...Solas you absolute idiot.

[just-french-me-up]

'ao3 needs a like and dislike button'

what you need, my algorithm-rotten minded friend, is a grip

[rythyme]

i was seeing all these little blue flowers everywhere and kept thinking "dang what are these bitches, i can't remember..." well guess what. they were fuckin forget-me-nots. can't believe i failed step fucking 1, the hot girls on iNaturalist are going to laugh at me and i'm gonna flunk out of hobby botany school.

[1-jar-of-stars]

On Friendship.

[kiwi]

anybody else feel that being human is like being a long-time syndicated cartoon character watching the world get more complex while your own design stays the same until youre incongruous with the reality around you??

[antlersish]

Mad about politics again

[pkaykim]

Valentines gift for my girlfriend

Please don’t repost on other platforms!

[zeezeepearl]

ok im going to #seriouspost for a second here. I don't think Harry Potter is a manifesto. I think it was a flawed passion project that millennials latched onto because of the fantasy of sticking it to their mean teachers and arbitrarily categorizing themselves (hogwarts houses; it's the thinking millennial's astrology). I think the fact that the series got popular when and how it did was very much a product of its time.

I don't think Harry Potter is the biggest symbol of JKR's bigotry. I think the most flagrant sign of that was how she responded to critics. I watched her become radicalized in real time. I watched how she doubled down on her racism when she was called out for the ways she promoted her tragically mid fantastic beasts movies. I watched her chase marginalized teenagers with a double digit follower count off of twitter for daring to criticize her thought process, and no one with any kind of power standing against her because she was the one who was paying them. This isn't to say Harry Potter is without flaws. This is to say she really didn't give a shit about that. Getting rich and powerful is a hell of a drug, and she had enough sycophants that she had no reason to care about what her critics were saying.

She was convinced that she was a martyr; a voice for the unheard; a leader for the ages, so of course her detractors were the bad guys. And I think we should take this to heart. We should see this as an example of how easy it is to get radicalized; if you think of yourself as a paragon of virtue, you are going to think that whatever you see as good and right is an objective fact. Most people don't know this, but the majority of terfs start out as trans allies. You are not immune to propaganda! You are not immune to falling into dangerous ideologies!!!

This is why the most important thing you can do as an activist is to listen. Do NOT think you're above being wrong; do NOT develop a god complex; do NOT form an identity out of being right all the time. Involve yourselves in the groups you claim to speak for. Listen to trans women; share resources that help trans women; familiarize yourself with the diversity of experiences that trans people have and the struggles they face.

No, none of you are as bad as JKR because you don't have her money or her power. You will likely never have the capacity for harm she does. But check yourselves. Do not affirm yourselves into thinking you always have the moral high ground. Watch yourselves; humble yourselves; check yourselves for signs of cult behavior and internalized prejudice. You are always learning. You will always be learning. Do not allow yourselves to get a power trip from brushing off marginalized voices.

[daftpatience]

slow down for your disabled friends. thats like a bare minimum kindness that we shouldnt have to ask for. i love that youre so quirky and walking fast is a cool personality trait to you and all that but i bet you can count your physically disabled friends on less than one hand

[ashes-in-a-jar]

Forget about torturing your blorbos, putting them through the wringer. I'm putting my blorbo in perfectly ordinary, pleasant situations. Their tortured personality will cause them anguish anyway, making an absolutely mundane scene into the most dramatic, agony filled affair as though the world is ending and it's all their fault

[bizarrebazaar13]

what if your doppelgänger wasn’t evil it was just a person. what if your doppelgänger wasn’t trying to replace you it was just trying to learn to be a person and you were the best model it had. what if your doppelgänger looked at you with your eyes and said with your voice that it just wanted to be loved. what then.

[guiiay]

jinx and isha visit a walmart

[crythartic]

* Won't you play again, Kris?

[lrndvs]

compliments from girls go hard

[alivingtypo]

you can pry starting sentences with 'and' or 'but' out of my cold, dead hands