#solasposting

[amoaliquis]

Solas : "My magic cannot stop your mark from growing further. For your sake I suggest we hurry."

[rosieofcorona]

crying over how harding’s sash is embroidered with “symbols…to represent fellow heroes of the inquisition” and how solas is included among them, even after everything………help me

[heliomanteia]

Anyone acting like Solas is somehow a better person than the newest protagonist needs to immediately point me where and when Rook sundered a sentient race to a sleep so full of rage it caused the blight.

Anyone and their mom is in the right to blame and judge baldie the second he wants to cause mass murder (reason doesn’t matter). Dwarves deserve to personally kill him with stones if they so wish. It’s also okay to like a character who is a fictional war criminal and has done one (1) objectively good thing in his life. Shaking the bars

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

i know we joke about Solas as Mr. Sunk Cost Fallacy The Man (including myself), but i do think while that's how he appears to everyone else in Thedas, a better metaphor for the situation he sees himself as waking up in instead is Omelas. he has emerged into a world where everyone lives at the expense of incredible suffering that only he remembers. except instead of 1 child being in that closet it's every single spirit left in the Fade, and all the people left on this side are walking around blind & with the lifespan of flies. And he's the one who unknowingly built the closet. and so much of the point of the story of The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas is that after reading it you ask--is walking away enough? Should they have tried to take the child with, or somehow free them? what about in a world where everyone has decided that the ones suffering don't actually count as "people", and don't mind that they themselves only live a month compared to a century? what about in the context of this all having followed an even older tragedy, where he did go along with what "everyone else" on his side wanted (in the war against the Titans) and now lives with the burden of not standing against the injustice then? and the Dragon Age franchise was willing to engage with this whole messy fascinating concept until suddenly it wasn't

[certainly-sydney]

Excuse me - he said no pickles

[amoaliquis]

I love every single one of you and all of your fuckin' sexy ass obsessions in any form and kink. May we all find happiness in our fiction.

i hope i am not only a mutual to you but also someone you can point at a fictional character and go "oh shit that guy on tumblr is super fucking mentally unwell about that one" about

[amoaliquis]

Solas : "You are Dalish, but clearly away from the rest of your clan."

Look, shou shou.... don't try me already. <3 I will tie you down with your jawbone necklace.

[rosieofcorona]

I was cursed earlier today thinking of Solas being Pride/Wisdom and made the dumb joke of "There are two wolves inside you" but then my brain turned that into a very different statement involving Fen'Hairel (young Solas) and The Egg (modern bald Solas)

OH 🥵🥵 and what a statement that is, my darling. i support it 100%

[heliomanteia]

While I agree that the Inquisitor is a relatively isolated (purposefully) person, I can’t agree that they are stuck in that isolation or that no one but Solas understands them.

Not to constantly push forth my favorite but Vivienne understands them very well. She makes it clear in her quests that she understands the weight of their responsibilities and what they have to deal with, and she’s willing to help her friend out. Cassandra understands them. Dorian understands them; Dorian’s entire personal growth is tied to the Inquisitor, whatever their personal relationship is.

It’s pretty explicit in Varric’s and Sera’s (and others, these two just outright say it) personal quests that the Inquisitor is intimidating at first glance— but there are ways to battle that weight of the name. In Trespasser, the Inquisitor can further those connections by joining the Jennies and agreeing to help Varric with the whole viscount business.

I feel like there’s an element missing from the discussion which is, the Inquisitor (and by proxy Solas) is shown the way out: connect with your friends. I’m omitting romance in this conversation because it’s irrelevant to this theme.

Solas doesn’t connect to people, that’s his flaw. He does understand the Inquisitor at first but that personal similarity quickly vanishes if the Inquisitor pursues friendships with their other companions, thus doing something Solas explicitly refuses to: connect with the society they’re in.

Isolation is a part of the Inquisitor’s narrative but it’s explicitly a personal choice to stay in that state.

[amoaliquis]

Case in point: Asena Lavellan and Solas.

Fade Out! Bitches.

shoutout to devotion so deep it borders on heresy/treason, has to be one of my favorite types of relationship

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

man i just dont get when people in the dragon age fandom critique people for liking major characters who the game told us were important. like. of course i do. the franchise asked me to be invested in them, and because i like to play games with my whole heart, i went "ok you got it 🫡" and found the ways those characters were most interesting to me so i could be properly shocked or agonized or triumphant for whatever the series did with them next. you know? because i am here to invest myself in the story they promise to tell.

like DAO does it with Morrigan. you spend a whole game with her, she's one of the first companions who joins you, you build a relationship/learn her backstory over time, you find out more about her complicated family situation (and Flemmeth then turns up anyway in the SECOND game saying cryptic things and preparing you for even more future payoff), and then there's an entire expansion to the game where you go after her and ask for an explanation. in many versions she's got some mysterious ancient power as well with the Old God baby. the game said "this character is important and going to be relevant later" and so i went YAY!! and ate it all up. And so the shock of seeing Flemmeth again and even more grand/mysterious in DA2, and then meeting her again in DAI where she had SO much depth to her character and history based on my past choices (with or without Kieran)--the payoff was great. I was rewarded for my emotional investment (even if i disagreed with some of the things she said/does!). Getting to hear her confront Flemmeth and stand up for herself without needing the player character to stand between them as a shield this time was incredible. the growth! the satisfaction! beautiful. and so basically I see no one going "people who enjoy Morrigan are soooo annoying" or "i'm so tired of all this emphasis on Morrigan as a character!" or "why did the game have to focus so much on Morrigan and her trajectory" because like. she's one of the major NPCs. it's a throughline. just like the games told us it would be.

but then if you do the same thing in DAI. and say "okay game! I will listen to you and invest my heart in who you tell me to this time also", when the game points you at Solas. then ohhhh boy get ready for the fun new names and insults people in the fandom are coming up with to hurl at you now, after you waited 10 years for the story payoff you were promised

[tortoise-teapot]

[amoaliquis]

So, Solas has the Inquisition's book on his piano bench in the music room. Just noticed.

And his broken orb is in there as well.

[amoaliquis]

The fuckin' shade. I love this.

I adore the letters between these two.

[heliomanteia]

Solas is not alone by definition, he chooses isolation. It’s an important distinction. Let’s maybe not uwu sad baby him even more. Entire Thedosian cultures respect spirits, he’s GENUINELY not alone in that belief. You don’t have to buy into his misconception of the world.

[maythedreadwolftakeyou]

man... like...... cant stop thinking about how the time period when Solas sundered the Titans is when he would have been wearing Mythal's vallaslin still. acting for and at the behest of others, not himself. wearing it marking him as in Mythal's service and therefore also therefore absolving him of the terrible action itself, because it wasn't him it was at the behest of another, the classic dilemma of the soldier distancing themself from the general's orders they nevertheless carry out themselves. so of course when he leads his own rebellion, he doesn't replace it with a vallaslin design of his own for all the new followers, but instead removes it entirely, putting everyone at an equal footing and making everyone responsible for their own actions. and he removes his own except he left a scar as a reminder--couldn't forget her, couldn't forget the things he did in her name, couldn't forget who he let himself become... is it any wonder he sees inaction and just doing what other people want from you as the greatest possible sin