#daI

[avernusreject]

I'm bored so once again I'm legally required to create a dragon age poll. I don't make the rules.

[an-established-butt-dent]

Dragon Age The Veilguard: Solas

Watercolour and coloured pencils on paper.

Available as print here.

[stealingpotatoes]

inquisitor inq'isita part 9: @highladyofdusk and i learn teamwork makes the dreamwork

(commission info // tip jar!)

[sylvebea]

DAO; Zevran with a male warden

DA2; Fenris with male Hawke and Isabela with female Hawke

DAI; Dorian with a male elven rogue (my absolute favourite character to romance aside from Gale) and Sera with a female elven mage. So that went down well with her.

DAV; Lucanis with a male elven mage, his romance was fun but felt kinda empty. Then DAVRIN aaah, I romanced him with a male qunari warrior and his romance is by far my favourite in DAV but I would like to play again to romance Bellara.

BG3; so many... First Astarion with a NB rogue Drow, then Astarion with a male redeemed half-elf Durge bard, then Shadowheart with a female half-elf oathbreaker paladin, then Gale with a male half-elf monk, currently Astarion with a male unredeemed Durge. You wouldn't have guessed it but my favourite romance is actually Gale, I'm gonna romance him as origin Astarion in my next run!!

Also yes I will make my characters gay at any given opportunity

attention all bg3 players who have also played any dragon age game!! (which is probably everyone, let’s be real)

im conducting an experiment, so if everyone could please reblog with their romance choices for both games

regards

[lovestruckthedasbard]

Solas's hidden Lighthouse mural..

This the first time I've ever drawn something this stylized, but I liked it. Perhaps I should experiment a bit more..

[nokdunal]

The gentler spirits are far more rare

[companionquest]

couldnt sleep. made this monstrosity

[maabelasdaruth]

Look at this fucking thing! It's statistically improbable that Clan Lavellan survives Inquisition! I'll do the math later and post it but this shit is indicative of the danger elves face in game 1-3 and ESPECIALLY in the book Stolen Throne so far (I'm halfway through and Yikes but also I love how brutally REAL the world is like that's what gripped me with Origins) but it huge reminder of the TEETH these games used to have (Veilguard critical/ THOUGH I HATE that this wasn't expanded on more in Inquisition and just happened without a word to ANYONE of your friends, companions or advisors!

A chart outlining how to keep Clan Lavellan alive

[shaleenstark]

Each time I see a visual of Solas and Lavellan represented as a wolf and a halla, it doesn't sit well with me.

No matter your what your canon Lavellan is like, you can't deny that, in the game, a romanced Lavellan couldn't be farther from a halla. She's no prey! She's the hunter! She's the one who hunted down Solas and ensnared him in her traps. He's the one who tried to stay away, and she's the one who kept coming back when he expected it less like a sucker punch.

She's the slow arrow that broke the Dread Wolf's jaw. And the one that pierced his heart to take its place.

My Lavellan is not halla, she's no prey. She's the fox that pretends to be harmless until you're too close to back away once you realize she's every bit the predator. My Lavellan is no deer who flee at the sound of rustling grass. She's the fox that look the Dread Wolf in the eyes and made him bend.

She's the one who brought to his knees the one whose name means "to stand tall"

[starsandkyber]

any time i think of Solas with his own children i want to cry. imagine him cradling a little elven baby in his arms, wrapped in his cloak, while he and Lavellan wander through the woods holding hands. Or him bouncing his child on his knee while he retells fairy tales or holding them to his chest while they sleep ;____;

i've been reading too many fics

[rook-laidir]

Cole on the Veilguard Companions

I started replaying Inquisition and I had too many Thoughts about how Cole would talk about the VG companions so now I’m making it everyone else’s problem. Enjoy!

-

Bellara: Tired eyes, tired hands. Cracked skin by her nails. A history unknown, forgotten, distorted. She can fix it. She must fix it. The hummingbird must keep flying so she can fix it.

Davrin: A false sacrifice. A false promise. He was supposed to die. Why doesn’t he die? Pride of a father watching his son learn. Always learning. Too clever for him to keep up, but that’s the thrill of the chase.

Emmrich: A lone heart beats in the halls. It races at the thought of stopping. Will he join the ones he cares for? Will he be cared for? Yes. Curiosity will always care for him.

Harding: Ma’s soup brings her comfort, but the fire to keep it warm burns too hot, too bright. An anger burning. Should it burn brighter? Why doesn’t it burn brighter? Magic taken and taken back. The stone sings her name.

Lucanis: Two souls in one home, neither can fit. Too tight. Tight like the clothes grandmother put him in, they will never fit. Choking under the collar, choking on the blood spilt beneath the water. He is suffocating, but he survives, despite it all.

Neve: Always a mystery, always something missing. Helping helps. Helping distracts. A warm heart frozen over. It’s easier this way. Letting it thaw will bring Trouble.

Taash: A broken language sitting on a broken tongue. Fire burns the consonants away. Too much of one or the other, yet never enough of either. Never enough for her. Through struggle, they find who they are.

[vir-tanadahl]

Wait a second…

Dwarves descended from Titans.

Elves descended from Spirits.

Qunari descended from Dragons.

🤔

[lovestruckthedasbard]

I walk the din'anshiral. I will not have you see what I become..

[wyllapproves]

Yeah I can take all three of them at once (not in a fight)

[inthefoxholes]

So sorry if I’m hijacking the post, I think your points are incredibly valid and well made, I’d just like to add:

This whole nerfing of Solas and consequently of Thedas also rubs me the wrong way politically, at this moment in time. I know, not everyone sees it that way, but for me, dragon age was always (also) about revolution; about the slow and painful realisation that some shit is not reformable, entrenched as it is (slavery, the discrimination of the elves, the plight of the mages, and the ways these are all interconnected).

(This is why DA 2 is my favorite game of the bunch, because while it does a lot of things wrong, it is a great depiction of how fascistic structures just grind you down; how it’s not enough that there are Cullen, and Thrask, who may be called moderate. All the complaining about abuses is just screaming into the Void, so much so that even though the Chantry kind of recognizes that Meredith is out of bounds, they still threaten an Exalted March if the city does not show compliance with her methods. You - and Anders - come to realize that there is no way out. They - the chantry, the nobility, etc. - will always protect their own, and the way out is through. Do I think Anders executes this well? Nope, but it’s a compelling story, and it warms my marxist heart.)

It is so insulting that the writers/devs/whoever is responsible for this go into the OPPOSITE direction with veilguard, and at this moment. Suddenly, we need to protect the status quo, no questions asked. Suddenly, we get told, again and again in almost every companion quest, that institutions (from assassins to pirates to the shadow Organisation that controls the nevarran politics) are inherently good, unproblematic, beneficial. There’s a few bad apples, sure, Illario, Johanna, but they are mad anyway, and if you root them out all’s well again.

Suddenly, Solas is NOT the leader of a popular movement (the elves leaving the cities?) of people who presumably have some issue with the status quo, and who he can give compelling reasons to follow him (otherwise they would not, at least not en masse). Suddenly, he is alone, and drenched in regret and the past, no vision of the future, no revolutionary impetus - even he, we learn, just wants to right past wrongs, his wrongs, so again, a rather private, individual problem, and consequently it gets solved by this weird (and frankly uncomfortable) (psycho-)analyzing of his memories. Suddenly, there’s nothing wrong with the world anymore, just with Solas. The status quo has to be protected at all costs, you guys.

The thing about Solas in DAtV is that because they were fundamentally unwilling to engage with the question of whether or not the Veil should actually come down (which is a symptom of them refusing to engage with anything remotely 'problematic' in the franchise to date: slavery, elven oppression, treatment of both city elves and Dalish etc.) he goes from a character who is supposed to be the embodiment of wisdom to a character who is kinda stupid. And further, it affects our questions surrounding his motives and relationships, his actions in inquisition and how compelling he is.

Like, there's a lot of people arguing ATM about whether or not a romanced Lavellans relationship with Solas was meaningful/if she knew him compared to how Rook knows him/if he loved her more than Mythal. And I think the answer is very tied up in this particular issue with the writing.

Because if Solas is a revolutionary who believes that the veil must come down, not just to fix a perceived wrong he did, but for the good of elvenkind...if we take a Solas who says 'people are always dying, it's what they do' and realise that he's saying that because PEOPLE DIDNT USED TO DIE and the way their lives are now so short is terrifying to him, if we take a Solas who says that the world today is full of those who seem tranquil to him and take that SERIOUSLY, if we get a Solas who is sickened by the way spirits are yearning for the world the way it was but are stuck in the fade without any contact and that's twisting them into demons and those willing to possess others to taste a glimpse of what was denied to them by HIS actions...

Then we get a Solas whose actions don't just make sense but we can see WHY they make sense. We get a Solas who is, yes, committing an act of horrendous violence by tearing down the veil but is doing so to literally save the world rather than just fix a regret or because he's bound up in Mythal somehow and what she would have wanted for the world.

THAT Solas who leaves Lavellan because of his revolution he must lead, who leaves Lavellan after seeing what this world does to those who are left of the people, that Solas...I think that we could then argue more than the relationships he formed in inquisition were real and he was tragically forced away from them by his own goals. That in some way he is doing this FOR Lavellan.

There should be a sort of semi-horror tint to this world for us through Solas's eyes because we can see a world of tranquil walking around like he does, a world where life is too short, a world of injustice and pain and reasons to go ahead with his plan

But Solas....kinda lacks agency in DAtV. I don't hate the Solas Mythal plot stuff I think it's quite interesting, but mix it with us never considering the merits of what Solas wants to do, of EVERYONE unilaterally deciding it's evil with no real debate or queries, with ZERO elves in the narrative siding with Solas or taking what he has to say seriously...THATS where adding the Solas and Mythal plot rubs me the wrong way. I don't want Solas to need to be released by Mythal before he can let go of his evil plan...I want a Solas who doesn't have an evil plan but instead a complex one. I want the conviction of Anders in Solas; that what he's doing is RIGHT and the ONLY WAY to fix a great injustice. I don't want to redeem Solas or even understand him I want him to CONVINCE me and me BELIEVE him. Otherwise the Solas we see in inquisition is more shallow and the Solas we see in Veilguard through Rook...maybe Rook does know him better than the inquisition did.