#elven wisdom

[ocktavo]

Who Is Ron? Why He So Sour? [MESoM15]

[jadeannbyrne]

The Last Embrace - Eternal Light of Redemption: The Ballad of Elowen & Seraphina

The Last Embrace – Eternal Light of Redemption: The Ballad of Elowen & Seraphina The Last Embrace – Eternal Light of Redemption: The Ballad of Elowen & Seraphina In the heart of the Jade Ann Byrne, a vast and ancient forest whispered the tales of countless souls who had traversed its winding paths. It was said that this forest, bathed in emerald light, was a bridge between worlds—a place where…

[arlathen]

it's a shame that dalish inquisitors can't remark on solas' name literally just. being pride. weird humble-looking homeless nerd appears after the terrorist attack that killed the fantasy pope and goes hey im 𝐀𝐑𝐑𝐎𝐆𝐀𝐍𝐂𝐄 and lavellan can't even go huh????????????

[tortoise-teapot]

my case for purpose!solas keeps growing and i've not seen a single shred of lore discounting it yet. i don't think i'll be able to make a full meta post with deconstruction but i'll definitely make sure to at least post my evidence before the 31st because... i think i'm cooking

[iniziare]

Slowly but surely, as I'm dying listening to ZL voice-overs in a playlist. Tag drop #1: OOC.

[svartalfhild]

Elf Lore in the Forgotten Realms for BG3 Players who are Unfamiliar

I've been seeing some...uninformed takes lately about certain elf characters from BG3, so let me just throw some stuff out there for y'all to consider.

Elves in FR live to be about 750.

They physically mature at roughly the same rate as humans i.e. 18-20.

Culturally, elves don't consider other elves emotionally mature i.e. adults until the age of 100, at which point they may choose an adult name to go by.

What does this mean, logically? Well, consider their very long lifespan. If you are going to live 750 years, your perspective on wisdom is going to be quite different from a human's. While 60 years might be plenty mature for a human, for an elf, that means you still haven't had enough time to watch all of your shorter lived friends pass, which I imagine is something of an emotional milestone for elves.

Halsin is 350. This means he's just hitting middle-age.

Astarion is 239 (Idle Champions claims he's 350, but I call bullshit because his birth and death dates are literally in BG3 and also IC frequently gives the characters bullshit ages, like they say Jaheira is 36, which couldn't have been true even during BG1). He died at 39, which is quite young, but he had the same emotional maturity as a human 39 year old at the time, so he's not Like That because he's undeveloped. He's Like That because he's a snapshot of a privileged young nobleman who then spent 200 years being used and abused by the worst sort of person imaginable. He wasn't a full adult by elven standards, though, and I'm sure there's lots of elven rites of passage he didn't get to experience because he was dead.

BG3 does not mechanically distinguish between sun elves and moon elves and simply puts them all under the high elf umbrella, but they are very much a thing in the lore and have distinct appearances, cultures, and histories.

Moon elves tend to have black, blue, or silver-white hair and have pale skin, sometimes with a bluish hue. Their eyes are usually blue or green, sometimes with gold flecks.

Sun elves tend to have blond, black, or red hair and brown skin tones. Their eyes are usually green, gold, black, copper, silver, or hazel.

Based on his appearance, Astarion is probably a moon elf, and it's likely his original eye colour was either blue or green.

There are many other types of elves than those that are playable in the BG3, such as sea elves, winged elves, star elves, wild elves, and lythari.

It's possible that Shadowheart's father is lythari, because lythari are lycanthropic elves.

[artbyleav]

“Then Aragorn was abashed, for he saw the elven-light in her eyes and the wisdom of many days; yet from that hour he loved Arwen Undomi daughter of Elrond.”

I saw all the valentine day posts and it made me want to draw my fave couple 🤍

Also if you were curious the elvish means “I love you”.

[senseandaccountability]

"I'm me again"

Yes well this is me getting a little sappy - again - about the spirits/demon thing as a metaphor for the human experience, must be Friday. 

(Yes, this is about Solas.)

Last night my Ingellvar was tending to the graves with Emmrich and she said “demons” and immediately corrected herself, because of course she meant spirits but people outside Nevarra so easily call them demons and Emmrich, one of the kindest and most insightful people in the entire DA verse, would of course never do that. Because he sees them all as spirits. Some of them may be twisted, embittered, furious and cruel but to him they are still, at heart, the same being as their more positive virtues. You are always you, as Solas tells Cole. 

Which is also what Solas argues for all of DAI.

Which is also what Solas personal quest actively shows us in DAI.

His friend, broken and twisted by the mages' bindings, dies a spirit of Wisdom, thanking him and telling him not to be sad. “I’m me again.”

Which is also a very strong theme in Solas entire arc. 

But it’s really not just Solas, or the elves. The eternal struggle of spirits is a reflection of the human soul and what it means to be human. What parts of you does the world let you cultivate, what parts are hidden and twisted in the dark, what virtues would you be remembered for if you died tomorrow? What sort of person have you become? What person could you be? DA is crammed with these themes.

Since the spirit reveal/confirmation, I’ve seen a lot of very detailed and very cool discussions about the specifics of spirit virtues and demon characteristics and that’s some good shit right there, but you can also be lazy like me and very much just read it as various aspects of human nature interacting with each other. We’re all so many things over our lifetime, to different people, in different contexts. We all carry such endless capacity for goodness and gentleness and we’re all so very capable of hurting each other.

In the codex entries we see Solas try over and over and over again to appeal to the better nature of the Evanuris. He is described as brilliant and wise, he is pulled out of the Fade specifically for his wisdom and he tries to get them to reflect that, to listen to his concerns, to use their powers differently. Why don’t you make creatures that can protect the People, he asks Ghilan’nain. Why do you need to push your power further, he asks Elgar’nan, the people are already submitting to your rule, why must you shackle them? War may have twisted him up already but there’s nothing he says that isn’t extremely valid and wise about the Evanuris’ approach to ruling.

But as we learn from the Spirit of Command in Crestwood in DAI, wisdom is considered a soft virtue in a world of war and hierarchy and his reasoning falls flat or gets interpreted as fear or insubordination. Unheard and undervalued, his wisdom grows sour and prideful. He isn’t wrong, he knows he isn't, and he will show them. You are not gods, I will make you see that you are not gods. I will humble you until you understand that I am right. 

This is a profoundly human experience.

The ancient elven empire ultimately falls to its own greed and hierarchies and lack of boundaries - all of which Solas pointed out, all of which he and his rebels opposed. But the Evanuris didn’t listen, they were caught in a power scheme where only individual power matters and everyone else becomes pawns. How ironic then that their empire falls to its own foolish pride and boundless cruelty against the Titans, the first children of the earth. They hurt themselves by hurting them. They wound the fabric that binds them all together. 

Solas as a character is an open, ongoing conflict between "spirit" and "demon" aspects, between light and dark, between identifying as a solitary creature or part of the whole. It’s never more visible than during the final act of DAV where he is at once Solas, standing with the Shadow Dragons against the blight. And also Fen’Harel, scheming to get there in the first place, treating people in his way like dehumanized pawns to reach his final destination, a goal that can be argued to be entirely tainted with pride at this point, a way to soothe his conscience and need to be right more than it’s a way to save the world. And he’s the Dread Wolf, physically embodying the struggle against the corrupt powers since he, unlike the Evanuris, doesn’t believe in binding creatures to fight his battles. It’s significant that while he fights alone, he cannot do it without help from Rook. Elgar’nan directs all of the blight at the Dread Wolf and it takes a sacrifice from the team to free him from its grasp. It’s a battle orchestrated by a god. 

And Solas, powerful as he may be, is not a god. 

That is why it’s so lovely to me that the ending isn’t just a matter between Solas and his conscience or between Solas and Rook or Solas and Lavellan. Because we are not single entities. We are not islands. That’s why we need each other, because we respond to each other, we affect each other, we abuse and love each other and we cannot really understand in which ways until we connect. We use each other to remind us of who we are, or who we could be. Every Benevolence needs a Wisdom, every Command needs a Compassion, every one of us needs someone else in some way, shape or form. We are not meant to be solitary. We all share Solas' deepest fear of dying alone. We all share Solas’ ongoing conflict with the better and worse parts of our nature. We all reflect each other. The ending brings in the past, the present and the person that knows Solas not as a god but as a person.

We are shattered fragments of a greater whole and it was, as Morrigan points out, Solas’s love for and loyalty to his people that set him on this course long ago. And he broke the world. He broke his people. He couldn’t save them, all the horrible things that he has done and he still couldn’t save them. Ultimately and emotionally to him, this isn’t about wisdom or pride or good or evil or any such dichotomy, this is about grief and regret and broken humanity.

That is why it’s so powerful to me that a romanced or friendly Lavellan is so kind to him in DAV. They approach him carefully, they kneel down beside him to make a connection, they are understanding and compassionate and it may not be what he deserves on some grand justice scale of things, but it is without question what he needs. Pride and regret and grief need compassion, hope and benevolence much more than it needs to be proven wrong or challenged, kindness breaks the cycle.

They reach out to him not the way one would reach out to a god, but to a person. Because that’s what Solas needs to be reminded of - his humanity. That’s what their love and friendship has always reminded him of, that's what the Inquisition taught him - that the world is worth caring about because broken as it may be, it is also full of people. 

And people matter. They might not matter to the Dread Wolf, but they have always mattered to Solas.

That's what the good ending represents.

"I'm me again." 

[swordince]

rotates da!adam,, giving in to grayskull's possession to borrow his strength in disguise,,,, sorta-incorrectly being identified as the spirit of an eternian legendary figure, he-man, come to fight for the kingdom in its time of civil-war-caused turmoil,,

[dragon--sage]

something something this shot, to me, symbolizes the struggles of a figure who plays an important political and/or spiritual role in their time, only to lose their sense of identity and self in the process of becoming this figure. only to have that identity swallowed by this position. walk with me...

see how tiny solas looks, down there in the bottom left corner. so small in this framing, even wielding tons of magic at the center of this epic ritual. and compared to the enormous and towering wolf statue beside him, he's almost difficult to spot.

it reminds me of ameridan, who saved the world only to be forgotten, to be erased from history. only to learn, ages later, that his efforts to save his people failed in the most terrible and final of ways.

it reminds me of the parting wisdom ameridan has for the inquisitor: "take moments of happiness where you can find them. the world will take the rest."

it reminds me of an elven inquisitor whose identity and beliefs are totally overshadowed by the humans' perception of them as 'the herald of andraste'.

the devs were cooking with fire here, pointing out (intentionally or not) how solas is just a tired old elf trying to get (1) plan to turn out as planned, once in his long, long life. a tired old elf long overshadowed by the title of fen'harel.

solas (the lover of wisdom, the clever tongue, the playful flirt) almost entirely swallowed by a figure of myth and legend and divine duty: the 'dread wolf'..............................

hahahah i'm gonna be sick.

[veinereastath]

a year without drawing a pathetic 9000 years old elven god slash wisdom spirit slash pride demon covered in blood is a year wasted

[ocktavo]

Bored of the Rings? [MESoM13]

[notebooks-and-laptops]

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.

[arlathen]

anyway MY stupidest dragon age theory that means nothing. is that harel has a passing verbal similarity to hahren. something something lavellan always sees him as a protective/friendly white wolf as opposed to the scary "dread wolf" persona. something something he wants to give wisdom not orders. something something the primary way you befriend him is by allowing him to share what he knows with you. something something.

[thesummerestsolstice]

Only the elves really see Elrond as "half-elven." They focus, of course, on who he is in relation to them. He's sort-of an elf– enough that they can accept him into their society, but not enough to erase his differences. They understand the different parts of him– his propensity to get sick, his elvish-sharp hearing, his need for sleep, his immortality– as "elvish" or "not-elvish." And while they can be rather condescending about anything they see as "not-elvish," they aren't usually very curious.

Most men regard Elrond vaguely as a fae being. This isn't unique to him– much of Middle-Earth's changling and fairy stories were built on the strange human-and-not-human nature of half-elves. Of course, different humans regard them very differently– sometimes with respect, even reverence, believing that "fairies" are beings of great wisdom and knowledge. Others see them with suspicion and fear, viewing them as sources of danger and deception.

To the Numenorians, Elrond is just one of them– a kind of "immortal man." He is like them in several key ways– he gets ill, he needs sleep, he regards the passage of time in a very "human" way. More importantly, he is their kin, a living remnant and reminder of both their mythical founder and non-human blood they share. He acts as a healer and counselor when they need him. This is all well and good until some of them start thinking that if Elrond could make the choice to be immortal, surely they should be able to as well.

The dwarves see Elrond as an elf. They absolutely do not care enough to tell the difference between him and the others. He's immortal, he's always with a bunch of elves. He's an elf.

The Maiar do not really understand what Elrond is, and have kind of defaulting to seeing him as one of them but like, small. Look, they're all uncounted thousands of years old, he's a child to them. They dote on him and think he's adorable, but sometimes forget that he's also part-elf and part-human, and can't just drop his physical form whenever he likes to go be a disembodied spirit in the clouds. Gandalf encourages all their antics. Elrond is working on it.

(Contrary to popular belief, the average hobbit does not have any kind of opinion on Elrond Peredhel. Bilbo Baggins, who lives in his house and has written several long, extremely personal ballads about his family history, is a statistical outlier and should not have been counted.)

[perseidlion]

Now that I've finished watching Rings of Power Season 2, I have to say they were right to cast Celebrimbor as an actor who looked older than most of the other elves. People will point out that in canon, he was younger than Galadriel. At first, I didn't really get why they changed that for the show. Was it just for variety? Some other reason?

Well, after finishing the season, I think it's safe to say the reason was thematic.

The tragedy of Celebrimbor is so much greater when he visually reads older to the audience. Here is a man at the absolute pinnacle of his craft. His name is legend. He built an entire city around his forge. He has a talent so rare that Sauron needed him for conquest. If he had been cast as a younger actor, even if he was 1500+ in Elven years or something, his story would read as a naive youth seduced by power. It's so much more poignant and tragic to see the legacy of a master of his craft destroyed along with the man.

Watching fantasy is a different experience to reading fantasy, especially with wacky elf ages. The LoTR movies knew this, which is why Hugo Weaving (39) was old enough to convincingly play Liv Tyler's (22) father even though Elrond probably still looked similar to his daughter's age in the books. It's so it doesn't feel weird for the audience and they don't lose suspension of disbelief.

Episode 8 of S2 (and the episodes that precede it) really hammer home that Celebrimbor's undoing isn't just a win for Sauron - this is a loss for elvenkind. Elrond's utter horror at watching Celebrimbor's written legacy being burned to ash was a brilliant storytelling choice. More was lost at the Fall of Eregion than Elvish lives or a weapon in their enemy's hand. They lost the work of a master - the kind of person who comes around once in an age, if that.

What's more, they didn't just lose Celebrimbor. Sauron destroyed him from the inside, eating away at him until he was a pathetic shell of himself. He tried very hard to turn Celebrimbor from celebrated master to a man corrupted by darkness - both in reality and in reputation. But he resisted with what strength he had left. And his kin saw the truth before he died.

All of this was heightened by Celebrimbor being played by a man older than most of the other elf actors. It was a visual signal of his position of respect and wisdom, regardless of his actual age. That was his position in Elvish society that was efficiently shown by aging him up.

You might not always agree with what the minds behind Rings of Power are doing with their story. But after this season, I trust they do have their reasons and will be eagerly awaiting season 3.