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arlathvhenan · 1 day

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I think it’s weird that people try and point the finger at Solas for being racist and bigoted when I don’t think I could name a single character in DAI who isn’t?

Except maybe Cole and he’s the exception as he’s a spirit who’s newly crossed over and therefore can’t possibly have been shaped by the world’s prejudice.

But as for the rest, has no one listened to their dialogue? Even at their most well meaning, each character has had their actions and world view shaped by a certain form of prejudice. Casual racism is kind of everywhere in Dragon Age.

Just look at Dorian. He says some genuinely racist things to Solas over the course of their banter. And remember that Dorian is an incredibly privileged man who was born to and benefited from the culture that built itself on the ashes of another civilization and enslaved/abused/dismantled the personhood of the survivors for generations. Tevinter is actively a slave state, and at no point does Dorian really give the impression that he’s all too bothered by it. He outright denies the personhood of Spirits, an assessment we definitively know to be not just inaccurate but deeply immoral.

Then there’s Bull. His banter with Solas reveals so much about them both. In particular, it reveals that Bull looks down on pretty every other culture. He holds up the Qun, an ultra authoritarian nightmare state, as the pinnacle of civil order and admits that he thinks the world would be better if they simply conquered and subjugated everyone.

Even Cassandra, Blackwall, and Varric, as much as I love them all and consider them genuinely good people, have their prejudices.

As for Solas, I’m honestly not sure you can call him a racist? It’s just a gross misreading and oversimplification of his character. People point to his plans for the Veil as being genocidal. But they aren’t. Solas hasn’t set out to wipe all Non-Elves from the face of Thedas. He’s not trying to purge the world of all other races. He’s trying to fix a mistake that he made long ago, one which has left the world in a state he can only perceive as nightmarish and doomed.

I feel like people forget that Solas was only back in the world for about a year prior to Inquisition, and in that year he likely experienced nothing but violence and cruelty. The few redeeming things the world had left before he put up the Veil are all but gone. His people have been scattered, subjugated, and enslaved. They’ve had everything taken from them by this new world he helped create, and that clearly horrifies him.

Solas is absolutely misguided, and he’s absolutely stubborn. But racist? I don’t really think you can call him any more prejudiced than the rest of the characters, except in his case we’re talking about someone who is quite literally from another world. He is as alien to the world and its people as they are to him. And still he shows care and respect to others, despite how awful they’ve been to him.

He respects Cassandra and comes to enjoy her company despite how hostile she was towards him at first. He genuinely befriends Varric, reads his books, jokes with him. He never attempts to fight with Sera, despite her being an outright bully towards him. He shows compassion for Blackwall. He even comes to show respect for Bull and Dorian, despite their various ideological differences.

So, bigoted? No I wouldn’t say he is. Bigoted implies that Solas is incapable of tolerating a worldview outside his own, which is demonstrably not the case. Solas can and does accept the arguments and opinions of others. More than once he concedes to Varric. If you’ve played a Dalish Inquisitior who either befriends or romanced him, he changes his opinion about the Dalish, too.

The only subjects he won’t budge on are the ones that a person really shouldn’t?? He sure won’t entertain the idea of slavery being anything but a horrible atrocity, and that’s a bad thing? He’s a hardliner when it comes to Spirits being recognized as people, because they are and it’s the morally correct stance to have. Again, why is that a bad thing?

What is it with people taking characters who have been made victims by either society or circumstance and are vehemently anti-slavery and trying to cast them as monsters who go too far? I keep seeing it in different franchises cough gameofthrones and it’s starting to make me genuinely uncomfortable.

#solas dragon age #solas dread wolf #dragon age #dragon age inquisition #dragon age dreadwolf #reposting an old meta for organizational purposes

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b-e-e-h-o-p · 9 months

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DID YALL KNOW THAT SOMEONE MADE SPEEDRUNS DEDICATED TO HOW FAST THEY CAN GET TO THE PUNCH SOLAS SCENE 💀💀💀