#felassan/lavellan

[pikapeppa]

Felassan enjoyers!

Is anyone out there:

Thirsting for the handsome Slow Arrow with the world's highest cheekbones 🤚

Wishing they could have romanced him 🤚

Wishing he was still alive 🤚

Wishing for more lore about him 🤚

Might I offer you this nice egg fic in these trying times?

THE BASIC PREMISE:

It is canon that people who are killed in the Fade become Tranquil in the real world. What if Solas didn’t kill Felassan after all at the end of The Masked Empire? 

What if Felassan was made Tranquil instead, de-Tranquilized thanks to Cassandra Pentaghast, and sent to recover his emotions and his magic with a cranky ex-Inquisitor in post-Trespasser times?

If you want to read about Felassan and a very tired Lavellan sitting in a mansion talking and smoking and eventually fucking falling in love, then please feel free to have a peek!

WARNING: this was written in 2020 pre-Veilguard so a bunch of the theories don't match up with 2024 canon. So please don't look too closely at those parts HAHA.

[s0lavellan]

something something Felassan telling Solas they have to keep up the Dread Wolf act to give people a reason to believe someone is strong enough to fight for them and something something the Inquisition advisors telling Inky they need to believe they were sent by Andraste to give people hope. the Solavellan parallels continue to slay

[elfbotanist]

Lavellan and Felassan fights the Evunaris

[maatdraws]

THE DREADWOLF

[eiririnn]

Working on a solavellan thingie 🙂‍↕️

[ir-abelas-vhenan]

I've been thinking a lot today about how easily people condemn Solas for making the choices he did or for so regularly refusing the help and love his friends or a romanced Lavellan extended to him and how that's a very easy thing to do from behind a screen in a fictional game where you are able to (with very few exceptions) curate a world in which your allies are loyal and your decisions will go the way you'd like them to.

And yeah, it's a game and that's kind of the point, but if I were to look at it a little more deeply (and who am I kidding, I got back on this website exclusively to process the aftermath of Veilguard) I'd say that there's so much to be found in wondering if the protagonists in any of the other games would have fared better in similar conditions.

Apparently I can't stop making long posts, so buckle in.

What would Morrigan have become in a world where the Warden never stumbled upon her cottage with Flemeth, if she never got the chance to see more of the world and decide what she wanted out of it? With just her mother (who, coincidentally in this Solas-y discussion is also kind of Mythal) and no support, who is to say what she would have unleashed upon the Korcari Wilds one day when the confines of her cage became too much?

What about Leliana? She, too, suffered at the hands of a very controlling abuser who tried to convince her that one lifestyle was all that her future held. What do we think she would have become if not for a chance meeting in Lothering with someone who could help her face down the woman that molded her?

Fenris, a character MANY people are just fine with was incredibly ready to kill a mage on sight if need be, no questions asked. Where do we think his story goes if he doesn't have someone in his corner early on enough in the game? If he doesn't get caught by Danarius, he's almost certainly going to end up on a murder spree, and he doesn't even have Justice whispering in his head to do it.

Cullen. Just all of him. It's an absolute miracle he hasn't snapped by the time you encounter him in Inquistion, and even then you get the benefit of intervening at a critical point in his story several times over.

Almost every other character could face this analysis and I think we'd reach a result that suggests perhaps the only thing keeping them lovable is your playable character's investment in their well-being.

Enter Solas. We don't meet him when he's twenty to thirty something and on the precipice of falling down a dark path. He's been there for literal millennia already, and with the exception of one close friend he's been alone. And not even Felassan is enough because of the years Mythal had prior to that friendship to make Solas exactly who she needed him to be.

I've had shit friends before that aren't just good at isolating people, they're naturals. I barely made it through high school with my mental health in place (in fact, looking back, it almost certainly wasn't). When you think you've got a true friend and they need something of you, it's so easy to blindly follow them because you think your love is enough to mark someone's soul as trustworthy. Solas doesn't learn that lesson until it's too late, and even when he does he can't turn back: the spirit that was once Wisdom has been exposed to several of the worst ancient elves to ever exist and now he has to stand his ground rather than let it all fall, because that is what Pride would dictate. Admitting that the person you gave your love and labor and time to is a monster is hard. And he was alone.

Give me Morrigan after centuries with her mother. Show me Leliana after the years have become a blur and the only voice whispering in her ear is Marjolaine's. Show me the innocent mages that don't make it through if all Fenris has for years and years and years are the scars Danaris left him and the means to make more. Show me Cullen if he stays in a chain of command under a Knight Commander who knows exactly what he fears and holds it over his head for so long he forgets what it was like to be an excited kid begging the templars for training because he just wants to keep people safe.

We get companions in these games who are broken by the time they're twenty. Solas has spent thousands of years in servitude to a cause of a woman he believed to be his only friend. He doesn't know who he is without her influence, anymore, only exists physically in the first place because she asked it of him and then asked again and again and again. He doesn't have a witty band of merry fools to pull him out of that cycle. He has Felassan, but he has him during war after war after war in the hopes of freeing others from the very situation that torments him.

Trauma from war affects everyone touched by it, nevermind the fact that Solas is actively responsible for saving the lives of thousands and feels each life like a weight around his neck because maybe he can save them like he cannot save himself. We should always be worried about the people trying to do the most good. Who is looking out for them? Why are they so determined to help others? Could it be that it's something they wish others had done for them?

Solas certainly feels comradery with Felassan from working together to free slaves from the very people he helped put in power because Mythal told him it would be okay only to leave him with the pieces, but even the Solas that Felassan knows has been turned into an attack dog shying away from the touch of the very person it desires to be near above all others by the time their relationship forms.

The fact that Solas is able to try and show the Inquisitor who he is at all is a miracle as far as I'm concerned, a sign of a peaceful spirit of Wisdom who loves knowledge for the sake of it finally sensing that there might be a chance to embrace its nature again.

Yeah, if you give him what he has come to expect from people with power, if you let near-absolute power over the masses corrupt you, he's going to bristle and try to shut your inquisitor down.

But if you show him even the smallest bit of kindness? If you treat him like the starving wolf he talks about and feed him instead of fighting him? God, it shatters his entire existence.

It's called a cycle of abuse for a reason. Finding friendship, finding the love of your long-ass life can be the first step in realizing there's better out there. But the time it takes to learn that? When you're too weary to even reach out for help in the first place and afraid of every kind word or gesture because you've never known such tenderness (on a platonic OR romantic level, both matter so so much) before?

Part of the compelling tragedy of Solas is that it's almost Orpheus-like how he knows what he has been made into and still cannot stop himself from yearning for more, from turning around to see if just this once something has changed. You can't convince me that he hasn't spent years hoping that someone will hear the legend of the Dread Wolf and see it for what it is, a leash the Evanuris created for Mythal's whipping boy to ensure that even if he ever escapes them, the people he fought to save will hate him. And I cannot blame him for the shock and terror that consumes him when he realizes someone finally has.

You give me any of dragon age companions after the amount of time Solas spent under Mythal's thumb without your character's intervention and you tell me how that looks.

You tell me if they're able to change at the first sign of something that feels too good to be true.

And then, I want you to tell me they're any less worthy of trying to save, especially when you know how good their best can be.

Solas might be hard for some fans to love, but it's only because he serves as the perfect representation of the beast we are all capable of becoming when the love that sustains us, assuming we receive any at all, is laced with poison.

The journey out of that place, out of a literal prison of regret, is brutal, and I'm thrilled that even with the many things about Veilguard I'm still struggling with, we have the chance to let Solas try again with the help of those who love him not because he never fell down, but because they believe in the beauty of a future where he gets back up again.

[sammakesart]

I did not enjoy Veilguard… and that has spiraled into me thinking too much about how I would have written a continuation to the story set after Trespasser. So I made a fake poster I guess 💀

[skyholdscribe]

you ever think about. how solas is willing to kill anyone for his plans, even friends that were at his side for thousands of years, and most probably a friended inquisitor if it came down to it. and he does this by shutting off his brain and viewing everyone as a pawn on a chessboard (with great regret)

yet i wonder if lavellan was the one standing in front of him and his goal, if he could hurt her. if she’s the only one he loves more than his guilt could hurt him, the only one he could never view as a pawn, the one who throws his plans onto chaos each time and changes everything, id wonder how he’d short circuit.

id wonder if he’d yell at her to leave, try to physically move or restrain her with magic but never ever hurt her. if it’s not a choice he can make. if it all came down to her or his world, i wonder how he’d crumple, resorting to begging, “vhenan, please”

if she had gone to talk to him instead of varric, i wonder if it would’ve gone very differently

[pennabeast]

ok bear with me but au where felassan survives solas's murder attempt and shows up at skyhold months later and proceeds to spend inquisition psychologically tormenting him while posing as a fellow apostate

i cannot take credit for felassan's outfit, it was taken from a masked empire design by christina kraus

[wepepe-draws]

Lania (my inky), Solas, and Felassan are trio Power Rangers!!! I end up recolor the armours and the weapons so it matched! I'm happy how it turns out! wohoo!!

[kissingagrumpygiant]

haunted by your past fumbles all by yourself handsome?

"U want to take our vallaslin off so bad it makes u look stupid"

[pikapeppa]

I don’t really like f/m but I’m so starved for Felassan content that I read your fics and I loved them so much! Please keep writing more of him, your writing style is so lovely! Thank you SO much for blessing us with your fics! <3

Ahhh thank you so much, I'm glad you took a chance and enjoyed the outcome! 🥰

As it happens, I just posted a new fic with our Slow Arrow!

In a nutshell: Felassan is alive, he and Tamaris Lavellan are happily partnered, and despite all the shit, they decide to give their Dread Ex-BFF/Ex-Boyfriend another chance at love.

If anyone decides to take a chance and try 'er out, I hope you'll enjoy!

-- love from your friendly neighbourhood Pika xoxo

[binabees]

-Why are you looking at me like that?

-You remind me of another elf I once Knew.

Felassan may you haunt the narrative forevermore.

[lisalinsee]

[vir-bellanaris]

Solas left Lavellan because he was terrified of her becoming another Felassan. Another Mythal.

I don't think there's any doubt, if she had come between him and his plans, he would have had no choice but to neutralize her as well.

[strawberry-halla]

screaming sobbing at the very idea that felassan was right and the realization solas must have felt as he’s falling in love with the very mortals he didn’t view as people.

solas thought he could run away from this, taking the most drastic of measures by killing one of his most trusted friends so there would be no doubts.

but then, the universe finds a way. the red string attaches itself to him and pulls.

you want to disregard humanity, solas? try doing so when it fights back in the form of someone who accepts you as you are. can you truly end everything when she unravels the knots that hide away your spirit?