#i follow a lot of people who main solas and whose interpretations of his narrative i think Fuck and are excellently constructed

[cumbiazevran]

I know I’m batting at the hornet nest, and please know that if you like this character, it’s nothing personal bc we interpret things as they make more sense to us that being said, I cannot stand the Solas gang who paint him as nothing BUT someone who has the interest of elves at heart and was their liberator, who is just kind and thoughtful and does his best to help people. I do not have a problem with people who like Solas bc this isn’t a morality competition about who has the most correct opinions, nor I care about people who do that, but did we play the same game?

Destroying the world is not the revolutionary move of liberation you think it is. I think we have seen enough movies that deal with that ecofascist narrative (bc even if the character isn’t, the narrative is). People still live in the world, and anyone who would genuinely suggest this would be destroyed in an argument by people who do actual mutual aid and left-based activism. What is or isn’t revolutionary doesn’t exist in a vacuum, and the devs being terminally Canadian/USAmerican don’t get to redefine things that exist beyond and over them

Solas isn’t a particularly helpful person. Not even to elves. Thinking pitifully of city elves and as the Dalish as savages, without any will to recognise the culture that flourished among them is also not the solidarity move you think it is

Solas isn’t particularly kind. Being soft spoken isn’t the same as being kind

For a fandom that usually has a lot of issues with other characters being used as BioWare mouth pieces (which is honestly understandable and I’m not jabbing at bc me too bestie), a lot of people in this fandom seem to be okay with Solas being one of the most blatant mouth-pieces there is

A person who laments hurting you, and saying he doesn’t want to hurt you, and how he wish he wasn’t hurting you, and who has the space to STOP and DOESN’T is you know. not someone who’s particularly interested in listening to other people

This is the guy who killed his best friend because he had the audacity to believe that a city elf could actually better the conditions of elves who are currently alive. Which is the revolutionary thing to do

The Elvhenan being destroyed is literally Solas’ doing. Organise unions and commit regicide like a normal person if it bothers you so much

“But they were enslavers” gee listen, I’m not saying the ancient elvhen empire should be pristine and perfect and a happy utopia, but you’ve never stopped to think how it’s at least a little racist that they modelled a people after several indigenous cultures and cultures of colour and then decided that the guy who wanted to fix them was a white looking king and fallen god who thinks people who are lesser than him are underdeveloped and savage? Not only that but that BioWare decided that that very culture was going to be based on slavery like a wildly inaccurate, racist, methodologically questionable global north high school text talking about Mesoamerican cultures? That they took the ancient practice of face tattoos and decided they were slave markings? How white are you???

Once again he constantly distances himself from modern elves, and the only one he speaks kindly of is a high approval Dalish Inquisitor.

He is one of the biggest “all faith in anything at all is subjugation if you disagree with me you are committing an attack on the very concept of freedom" characters in the franchise. I fully see going that route when you’re playing with Andrastianism, because of the narrative around it in the game and the influences it has. But with other minority religions and Otherised cultures in the game? It is straight up racist to me, and sounds too close to white atheism for my comfort. This isn’t just a Solas thing, but a Bioware thing in general. Even if Andrastianism is criticised or portrayed as genuinely damaging, every single person who isn’t a human andrastian is portrayed as being Oppressed Without Knowing It. every single dialogue and investigation option is framed like this.

Also foreign liberators don’t really tend to be liberators. People who seek to free other people because they know better should be met with resistance. It is with the people or not at all, and Solas actually fits in this category. He sees himself as the granter of Freedom. Where I come from, we call these people gringos or conquistadores, so you choose.

I’m not saying you can’t find entertainment, enjoyment, pathos or whatever else in this particular character. On the contrary, as different narratives and different narrative devices satisfy different things. That, however, doesn’t mean the narrative they use is extremely skewed and can be interpreted as extremely infective in terms of what people pretend it is aka a story about Liberation.

In my personal opinion, Bioware doesn’t have stories about liberation because it does not have the range for it in Dragon Age, which leaves us with a lot of half assed attempts, but I digress. My point is I’m not claiming to know what you see in this character just because I don’t enjoy him, or that you can’t at all. I’m not the boss of you. I am, however, proposing that perhaps people should stop ignoring Solas’ negative traits and the actual text material to pretend he’s some benevolent, lost, elvhen King Arthur come to fix things while being willing to kill everyone else in the process. Again.