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“The Slow Arrow”

Inspired by this post about Felassan’s slow arrow. I’ve been obsessing over Felassan’s actions and how he helped shape the fate of Thedas by refusing to give Solas the Eluvians. He’s rarely talked about and that is an injustice that must be remedied.

Painting done loosely in Solas’ art style.

Ft. The Inquisitor, Fen’Harel, and the Slow Arrow.

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I remember the post about making your custom Hawke into a character preset was going around recently, but Did You Guys Know you can also do the same for your Inquisitor and Hawke? :)

there is the Tutorial on how to make your Inquisitors into Character Creation Presets by Padme4000 and also the Python Script by hintenan to make the process faster (though the script only supports EF and HF Inquisitor and afaik doesn't work for Hawkes)

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Mythal: "You have so long observed the world. Why not consider joining it?"

Cole: “Solas, bright and sad, observes and accepts. Spirit self, seeing the soul, Solas, but somehow sorrows.”

I know Cole was revealing Solas’ spirit nature - but the wording hit me. The acceptance of Mythal's invite that became his greatest sorrow.

... and now I cry... again

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Speed drawing below for anyone who wants to see my chaotic drawing process 😂 this took me 6 hours. Just another lighting and value study with a little color put over it.

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they truly could not have had him sitting any lower in that chair if they tried and yes I've seen what Cullen and Dorian do to each other off screen during the chess scene

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Trespasser Dream Slides - Fade Dreaming and Continued Connection

The Trespasser dream slides for a romanced Lavellan mark a subtle but interesting divergence in the story of Lavellan and Solas, in that not every player who romanced these two gets these slides - depending on choices.

If Lavellan ends their relationship with anger or finality, vowing to stop Solas no matter the cost, even if it means killing him - these dreams never appear. And I think that detail is brilliant. The story is using the absence of these dreams as a narrative device, one that, to me, actually reflects how the Fade responds to emotions. So when Lavellan emotionally disconnects from Solas, when she severs the bond and chooses to carry nothing of him forward, the Fade has nothing to echo and Solas never appears, honouring her choice. The absence of these dreams in this path becomes the story’s way of saying this relationship is indeed over.

But for the Lavellan who holds hope, who vows to save him from himself and his own destruction, who has expressed her love clearly to Solas - the dreams do come. This narrative path reflects the choices of a player who's decided that their bond endures.

And through these dreams, the game shows how these two people continue to affect each other, be drawn to each other even across distance and years.

The Dreams 

What keeps drawing my attention to these slides is they never confirm whose dreams they are.

“Lavellan sometimes came awake from dreams in which her lover watched her sadly from across an endless distance”

It doesn’t say her dreams, or that she dreamed of Solas, nor does it deny they may be his. And I appreciate how that ambiguity again mirrors the nature of the Fade, leaving open the possibility that these dreams belong to either of them, or to both.

The dreams could originate with Lavellan, stirred by hope and belief, with Solas drawn into them by her emotional presence in the Fade. They could originate with Solas subconsciously pulling her into his dreams, revealing his own hidden ache for her. Or it could be a mutual convergence - neither initiating, but both arriving, called into the same dreamscape by the strength of their bond. These slides allow for all of these possibilities in it's refusal to define the source.

What's interesting is that Solas is always withdrawing from them. When Lavellan reaches for him he doesn’t speak, doesn’t approach - he vanishes. It suggests that he’s not drawn to her to control or watch her possessively in dreams, but allows himself to be near her, pulling back before any contact is made.

Remember, Solas himself confessed to Lavellan she draws him away from the Fade. It's logical to assume then that she draws him in the Fade as well. Because Inquisitor Lavellan is still Fade Walking.

Lavellan - Fade Walker

What we know for certain is that the Inquisitor has demonstrated the ability to find Solas in the Fade before. In the Haven dream sequence, the Inquisitor locates him while sleeping. After they wake, Solas expresses surprise that they were able to find him and that he changed the setting to Haven once they did. At the time, it’s assumed that the Anchor is what allows the Inquisitor to remain conscious and lucid within the Fade. But that may not be entirely true, the Trespasser dream slides complicate that assumption because at that point in the story, the Anchor is gone and yet:

“Still she searched, and dreamed, and waited, for a way to change the Dread Wolf’s heart.”

The way “dreamed” is used here - alongside verbs like searched and waited - positions it as an act in itself. It implies that Lavellan isn't just sleeping, but actively entering the Fade to dream and seek. Here, dreamed carries intention, movement and purpose.

Whether she communes with spirits, follows the traces he’s left behind, or navigates the remnants of memories, we aren’t told. But the phrasing highly suggests that Lavellan is looking for answers, information, ways to change the Dread Wolf's heart while in the Fade. (Which continues to support my theory that the Inquisitor has been forever altered by the Anchor.)

Do the Dreams Continue?

We’re never told that the dreams end - and the use of the plural dreams reinforces the sense that the tension between Lavellan and Solas remains unresolved. It suggests an ongoing, quiet pull that continues to draw them to one another. Perhaps unconsciously, they return to that shared space again and again, a connection that spills forward into Veilguard.

Maybe that ongoing pull is why Lavellan receives the wolf statuette, why she can tell Rook she still loves Solas, and why Solas, close to his goal of reshaping the world, stops to write her a letter. It even colours the way he speaks of her to Rook - “She is a good woman.” Not was, not someone I once knew: she exists for him in the present because their dreams keep finding their way to each other.

For the story, eight years separate Trespasser and Veilguard. For us as players, that’s a long time - but for them, if their dreams still connect them, still reach across the Fade? That distance may not be felt at all. Time moves differently in memory, and even more so in the Fade. Their last shared dream with each other could have come the night before the ritual, close enough to stir old feelings and sharpen Solas’ need to send those final words to his vhenan.

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The story of Lavellan and Solas tickles my Tolkien-influenced love for fantasy. It falls into the category of Beren and Lúthien - a love story that, by all real-world logic, is absolutely batshit insane. And yet, placed within the mythic frame of fantasy, it fits perfectly. It belongs there. These are the kinds of stories that only make sense in a world comfortable with myths, legends, ancient beings, monsters, supernatural war and absurdity - where love doesn’t follow rules, it transcends them.

That’s what I love: the illogical. Because love isn’t logical. For every argument I’ve seen that says it “makes no sense” for Lavellan and Solas to fall in love over the course of Inquisition, or that waiting that many years to be together is unrealistic. I sit back and laugh. Really? Love needs a timeline? In a fantasy?

Beren took one look at Lúthien dancing and fell irrevocably in love - and Lúthien was all in too. They didn’t take three years to build a foundation of trust and talk about boundaries or what they saw in each other. Their version of courtship was joining forces to battle literal evil so they could earn the right to be together. It was reckless, wild, insane, illogical and absolutely delicious. 

Lavellan and Solas hit that same mythic nerve for me. Their story - two people drawn together across time, fate, and existential stakes - feels like something out of The Silmarillion.

I don’t need these stories of love and pain and tragedy and trauma and desire to be logical in the real-world sense. It was never meant to be. Like all mythological love stories, it speaks to something eternal, irrational, and luminous.

There are themes and tropes woven through Lavellan and Solas’ story that utterly captivate me. And it’s partly to do with the fact that their love story isn't a comfortable one. It asks something of you. It asks you to reconcile contradiction: love and betrayal, hope and despair, violence and tenderness, destiny and choice, love as performance vs love as presence.

I’ve uncovered themes and archetypes that fit perfectly in this world of fantasy and discovered new ones in conversations with fellow Solas and Lavellan lovers as well. Here’s my attempt to weave some of those tropes and themes together. 

Their story carries what I like to call the Tolkien Effect: elven atmosphere where immortals and mortals fall in love and brave inconceivable odds just to be together. It’s the story of a man tormented by the choice between duty and love - Solas’ self-imposed responsibility to mend the world demands that he sacrifice his heart, while Lavellan’s bond with him is forged within that very conflict. He stands as the tragic anti-hero: prideful, guilt-ridden, withdrawing into self-destructive isolation because he’s convinced only he can set things right. She, meanwhile, plays Beauty to his Beast - seeing the fractured soul beneath the would-be destroyer and, by loving him, becoming the mirror that reflects his lost humanity. In classic fashion, they are star-crossed lovers - she's a mortal leader of the present, he's an immortal haunted by his past. Their timelines are misaligned, their love a sacrifice in the face of fate.

Their relationship goes from prejudice to passion. At first, Solas sees Lavellan as a biased curiosity - a product of a world he resents. But curiosity gives way to respect, respect deepens into desire, and desire transforms into love overwhelming it's held in restraint. He tries to resist her, but she becomes a gravitational force pulling him into her orbit.

Here, love becomes existential salvation or existential disruption. Lavellan offers Solas something terrifying: a path out of the endless cycle of destruction. It's a chance to choose life and yet instead he chooses to run from it, fleeing the love that might transform his path.

He tries to let her go, believing he must shield her from the darkness he carries. But he's the immortal who can't let go. He visits her dreams. Writes to her. Remembers her. Because this is love across time - a mythic bond that survives years, silence, betrayal, and distance. A love that endures even after everything else has fallen.

He's the lonely immortal whose memories stretch back to betrayals no one else can comprehend. Lavellan is shaped in the mold of Tolkien’s quiet heroes - Frodo’s endurance, Aragorn’s purpose, Éowyn’s resolve - meeting unearthly stakes with a resilience that refuses to break, even when love itself feels like punishment.

In the end, wisdom and mercy override vengeance. Lavellan’s forgiveness doesn’t excuse but provides a path to healing. She has taken on the role of mortal muse of the divine. A single, fleeting human heart - fragile, finite - a key that might yet save an ancient, wounded soul. And so great is this ancient being’s pain, so immense the guilt and fear he carries, that it takes a fellowship to save Thedas, to save him - the mortal and immortal working together. And at the end, the star-crossed lovers are reunited, a bittersweet ending as they experienced so much pain to get there. They ascend together into another world, stepping outside the boundaries of Thedas, likely to inspire new legends in the years to come. 

Should I go on? There are more themes and tropes I’ve pulled from this story - more patterns of myth and meaning that keep drawing me back. And now, with the story of Lavellan and Solas together in the Fade, it begs for new narratives, new archetypes, new emotional terrain.

The story isn’t over. It’s only deepening.

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"i didnt need to try very hard to do a bad french accent" - GDL

anyways this definitely direct quote from tevinter nights features in the latest chapter of the joplin-inspired fic i'm co-writing with @cursedhaglette: nothing beside remains so. go read it hehe :)

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I'm chewing so hard on the 'guilt is a distraction' comment Solas makes when asking Blackwall about his romance with the Inquisitor

It gives some potential insight into how he was feeling when he finally made his decision to abandon his plans and commit to a relationship with Lavellan. When did he switch from viewing it as an entanglement which could lead to trouble, to viewing his original plans as a distraction to their love and happiness together?

I think it would've been around the time he realised that, not only was he in love, but what falling in love actually meant. This is a man who has never experienced romantic love before. Who has never felt love be elevated to such a level, who has never felt so elevated himself. Who has never felt so encompassed by love in this way, who has felt, ever since he manifested as an elf, that he was not good enough, that he was an outsider among even the People he loved and gave everything he had trying to save and protect. Who, for the first time, is being loved for exactly who he is, with no expectations of leading a rebellion, or demands to twist himself from his purpose, as payment. All the relationships he has had with people up this point are essentially transactional.

Based on the in-game scenes, I think it's after his personal quest, when his spirit friend died. He tries to walk away from Lavellan on the balcony, but he can't. In his own words, he can't bear the thought of losing them. It's then that he knows he's too far gone, and what that means. It means that this world he hated was worth something. It means that he's in love, totally gone for this person, and that means he has to consider them as equally, if not more, important than his plans. That being with this person is closer to his heart than restoring Elvhenan is, than restoring immortality to the elves is, than avenging Mythal is. (I think the acceptance that they were more important than his plans came later, but this scene was the beginning of that.)

Then he drops 'ar lath ma, vhanan' on them and walks away. He says it in his own tongue, so they know he means it from the heart. He calls no one else vhenan, because this person is his heart, they are sharing the core of him. It's at this point that he knows he is being deeply selfish, that he has chosen his own heart over his duty, which is why he is so angst-ridden as he walks away. It's painfully bittersweet, like everything in this romance.

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honestly one of the greatest crimes Dragon Age: Inquisition committed in keeping bi Solas from us is that you KNOW Gareth David-Lloyd would have put his whole pussy into voice acting for the M/M lines as much as they did the M/F. my man was NOT out here making out with John Barrowman on BBC1 primetime to get cast as straight characters in the 20teens... he was winning awards for best kiss with another man... they were sobbing into each others arms!!!!! utterly devastating loss

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🥚

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Solas and Aneya Lavellan

(Text - quote from the song "Fade Into You" by Mazzy Star)

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I always make sure solas has his wolf pelt armour on for the endgame so he's warm when he's by himself

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psa for those who haven't noticed yet (and those who have but didn't know how to fix it), default Inquisition Solas has a bit of an eyebrow problem, especially if you're playing at a higher res:

However! ☝️ there is a very simple fix that should work across all platforms/consoles thanks to serlurkalot and @nightscrawl

if for whatever reason it still shows up for you or you can't/won't use MSAA, the mod link is right here

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see you space cowboy

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I realised I never posted the other shots I took from this moment with him looking so pretty in the level up lighting

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WE’RE WE HERE FUCK WE’RE SHIT QUEER UP