#how does Solas

[mooreaux]

Love Undying

[fishpuppyofficial]

seems fine!

[corseque]

More info on the deleted Solas sex scene

[carabas]

"He used blood magic against you. He betrayed us. He pulled you into that prison."

...Illario. That's Illario. They might as well be talking about Illario instead of Solas here, except Illario is all Lucanis has left, so he can forgive Illario for anything. But now all those things that were done to him have also been done to Rook.

[shovelin]

where are my big lavellan girlies at

[vaguely-concerned]

My two cents on how much of Mind!Varric is Rook’s mind trying to fill the blank space and how much is Solas actively talking through a convenient blood magic paper doll of the mind: I think it's a mix of both, a truly collaborative psychosocial horrorshow if you would, but waaaay more towards the second. It feels too directed and tactical at times to be anything else. Rook's mind is willing to go along with the denial phase as far as it can fucking carry them to not have to face the grief and regret and does its part in papering over details that don’t make any sense, the way brains will strive to create coherent meaning even out of deeply confusing input, but to my understanding it's a collaborateur in how that plays out, not the instigator or control center. Solas is using it as a path to agency and to gather insight into Rook as a person unguarded as he can't count on in his own guise. (That stoic option that leads to him being like 'oh I see you're cautiously denying me access to your inner life. well. at least you still have Varric to talk to. y'know as an outlet :)'. You absolute BITCH Solas! That alone convinced me that he HAS to have an active hand in it on some level.)

My guess is that it takes considerable effort on Solas’ part to make Mind!Varric do anything more involved or complicated than seeming to sit up in bed and give casual commentary, and that’s why he keeps having eerie five minute shallow pep talks with you before he announces he conveniently needs a nap aaanyway good luck kid you got this haha. When he’s just spouting NPC lines from his bedrest, I’m ready to believe that could be Rook’s mind being allowed to improv lines for him more freely because it’s less about Solas trying to get something out of them or working an angle and more ‘Still here! Still totally alive and fine and the mentor figure you know and love and trust :) don’t even worry about it! Thankfully there is no war in Ba Sing Sei, as we all know’ upkeep work lol. Rook’s mind is allowed to set the tone of Varric, the outlines, but not always the content. 

AND, on a (beautifully fucked up) character psychology level, I feel like Solas is indulging in actually getting to be the good supportive mentor figure to Rook with one hand to assuage the guilt he feels about what he's done -- and what he's going to do -- to them with the other. Same internal logic as he uses in Trespasser about the Qun. ‘Almost everyone is going to die from the course of action I’m doggedly pursuing eventually. But at least I can make their last years happier and freer and kinder than they would have been otherwise. and that kind of makes up for it right. a little bit. doesn't it. doesn't that make it better at least. I need that to make it better)'. Did I really take your beloved mentor and friend from you if you don’t know yet that I did? Some philosophers would argue not really! So it’s probably almost ok actually. Isn’t it even a little noble that I’m taking all this grief and guilt on myself and shielding you for now. With undertones that I’m not sure he would realize himself (and might be mortified by if he did) that he is so incredibly lonely, and even a dishonest and indirect emotional connection is more than nothing when you’re that desperate. In this setup he gets idk. Both the control he craves so incredibly badly in relationships and over himself, and the scraps, the fading afterimages, of intimacy and warmth and companionship, even second hand. The one thing Solas and Rook agree on deep deep down is that they really wish Varric weren't gone. They're handshake memeing this in the saddest and most creepy way possible.

I think an important element too is that Solas needs Rook and their team to *succeed* —  up to a certain point. He needs someone to hold the two other elven mean girls off until he can get out of here. Ideally, in a perfect world, even do all the hard work of killing them so he can swoop in at the end and do his thing when both sides are exhausted and out of resources to stop him, and then Bob’s your uncle! Same logic as he was using with Corypheus, and after that worked out so well, too! King of choosing to never learn from a single solitary mistake he’s ever made even though i fully believe he could have the capacity to Fen’Harel <3 The underlying idea isn’t flawed, you see, it was just unforeseen circumstances getting in the way. This time for sure it’ll all work out the way I cleverly imagined it in my head beforehand. Cue By Talos this can’t be happening etc. in the form of a statue almost crushing him like a bug. 

So he's providing guidance and forging Rook into a leader from two angles: one Rook might not trust, and one they probably will. Shaping them into what he needs slowly and carefully. He’s helping you hone your team into their most effective state, as he might have done with his own agents back in the day, setting up his chess pieces even if he has to squint through two glimpsed realities to do it haha. Pincer maneuver of an insidious stealth mentor you never asked for. Also… at one point mind Varric gives you a whole little monologue about how Solas' problem is that he’s always seen his interpersonal connections as flaws and see where it’s landed him, all alone and the worst part? it hasn’t even worked. it’s all been for nothing he’s back where he began with nothing to show for it but his mistakes. Like...that has such strong 'uh okay happy to play your therapist from two rooms away here what the fuck kind of traumadump is this' energy to me, I’m not sure Rook like. Thinks that much about Solas as a private person. So much of Solas' self-loathing and futile insights into his own flaws seem to shine through in Mind!Varric's dialogue all the time — I just can't believe that there's no guiding hand behind it as it were. 

Most of all. I feel like people underestimate the degree to which Solas is incredibly funny. As in, he has a very consistent and recognizable sense of humour. It’s one of my very favourite things about him. We must remember — it is crucial that we always keep in mind — Orlesian accent and wig Solas from May The Dread Wolf Take You (my beloved, the explanation for why I love this dude even with the. All of the everything else. No one does it quite like him). He is not at all above doing things or adding little flourishes for his own obscure amusement, in fact that seems to me to be one of his most consistent traits. The Randy Dowager Quarterly comment Varric has? The ‘Maybe this is the Dread Wolf’s revenge. Forcing us to house sit for him’ thing? To Me this is 100% Solas amusing himself in his boring Fade jail surrounded by the screaming hellscape of all his regrets. Source: it came to me as divine revelation through pure vibes trust me bro 

If nothing else I find it much more narratively interesting personally if the connection between Rook and Solas really is that defenselessly intimate and entwined (and so unbalanced!), and the sense of violation and invasion and betrayal afterwards consequently all the more nauseatingly intense. Even if you kept him at arm’s length in the open, he’s been under your skin the whole time, looking around, gathering what he needs to destroy you, wearing the face of a friend. Regretfully, probably, but choosing to do it every step of the way anyway. (Sound familiar, Inquisitor? Solas doesn’t have that many tricks when you actually look at it, he keeps returning to old tried and true ones like a dog with a bone haha.) Maybe he even genuinely meant some of it as mercy, which only makes it so much worse. It makes his sin against his own core principles of autonomy and the freedom of all beings in mind, spirit and body so much more juicily grave if it’s something he pursues actively and consistently, rather than it half-falling into his lap as a happy accident mainly orchestrated by Rook’s own subconscious. Solas, too, is at his very lowest point, the closest to giving in and becoming his own antithesis fully that he’s ever been, and it makes the choice of whether you still reach out your hand to him one last time or not all the more impactful and difficult.

[mythalism]

genuinely curious how the writers and larger dragon age audience would treat thom rainier if instead of being appropriately* repentant and putting himself in prison he blew up a major orlesian government building to instigate a chevalier rebellion or tried to have someone do some necromantic blood magic ritual involving uncertain danger and possible sacrifices to bring the innocent children he ordered killed back to life

[loredrinker]

How many of his names do you know? God of Lies, Dread Wolf, Fen'Harel. They're titles he earned from enemies, followers, and fractured history.

He and I shared another name.

She knows the names they speak. She hears them spoken now, with the ease of those who were never touched by him, never kissed by him.

But there is another name. One not written in books or whispered in dread. A name never meant for war or worship, spoken only between them, in firelight and quiet, in the space between their bodies.

Vhenan.

They speak of him in absolutes. A betrayer. A monster. A god who tore through history and left ruin in his wake. And they are not wrong.

But she names him as something else. As something far more dangerous: Love.

It belongs to her alone and she bears the solitude of it. To have touched something true and tender, only to see it swallowed by suspicion. To listen as they call him liar, deceiver but to have been witness to something no one else believes was ever real.

To have loved him - and to have been loved by him - is to feel the divide between truth and perception like a knife against the ribs. It is a mourning that must never be spoken. Because what does it matter, in the end, that he was capable of love, when the world will only ever know suffering at his hands?

She will stand against him if she must. She will bear the weight of that choice. But she cannot erase him. Not the man who gave her his heart, who framed her face in gentle hands. Not the quiet tenderness that she knows still lingers beneath the wreckage of what he has become.

And so she will hope - for another way, another answer. Because the grief waiting on the other side is too unbearable. That she will be the only one left to mourn what the world never saw.

[solavellan--hell]

Since Solas doesn’t really have a birthday (at least not in the traditional sense), do we collectively agree that Lavellan makes one up for him as an additional excuse to make him feel loved and appreciated? Do we agree that initially he doesn’t really get the appeal, but when he sees her genuinely excited to celebrate his existence each year it makes his heart fill up with love for her? Because it’s the first time someone is so grateful for him being alive that they made up an entire holiday just to appreciate that fact? Yeah?

[sunlight-shunlight]

it is underrated how straight up murderous felassan is in the masked empire. cannot stress enough - this guy threatens a random shopkeeper with torture and maiming in a way that implies he's done it before, then helps kill off an entire dalish clan in cold blood, all without even a hint of remorse or hesitation. and then in veilguard he's on the "but... solas... how could you let soldiers die in a war... aren't you going too far? 🥺😭" mindset. smh. let this guy be a menace to society.

[burningblake]

Cassandra when she disapproves: I don't disapprove, you were exactly what we needed when we needed it, how are you so decisive, I admire you

Solas when he disapproves: *loud sigh* thank you for proving your lesser status post-veil creature

[yousharknotpass]

"if someone asked me at the end i'd tell them put me back in it darling, i would do it again if i could hold you for a minute"

[no spoilers] this man better be going through all stages of grief/longing/yearning for what he did to lavellan

[ghilankisser]

Solas haters stop telling Solasmancers about how much you hate him and want to kill him challenge

[corseque]

(video) Every time Fen'Harel/the Dread Wolf is mentioned in DA:O

I learned how to search the talktable in DA:O, and immediately found out (by searching for "Fen'Harel" and "Dread Wolf") that there are a few lines that have to do with Fen'Harel that I had not heard before. I searched the internet and some of the lines don't even appear on google. Many of them are soundset lines, meaning (I think) they don't fire unless the character is in your party or unless you're fighting them.

"May Fen'Harel chase your spirit across the Beyond forever!" "Fen'Harel's teeth!" (+1 line unrecorded) "Fen'Harel take you!" "By Fen'Harel!" "Don't let the Dread Wolf catch you!" "May you avoid the eye of the Dread Wolf."

[blightbright]

mythal nuance

look, i love some yikes women characters!!! have i mentioned how much i fucking adore knight-commander meredith? yeah, that genocidal zealot? sympathetic lawful evil ftw. one of my ALL-TIME FAVE CHARACTERS is mariah dillard from the luke cage TV show. she is ABUSIVE, including to her daughter, she is devastating and so well-portrayed, and she is such a terrible person AND i just adore her in her harmful flawed tragic selfhood!

flemythal? fucking love her, she's awful, she's hilarious, she's compelling, i think it's a travesty that devs didn't get kate mulgrew's voice and the flemeth appearance back in some timey-wimey fade magic way. i love how she feels at odds with herself, sometimes vengeful, sometimes regretful. i love her sweetness toward merrill and her funny interactions with purple!hawke, i love her confusion that morrigan is upset with her, i even love the YIKES ambiguous, semi-motherly, semi-loverly, intimate owner-pet vibes head stroking and nuzzling between her and solas in the DA:I end credits. OUCH.

veilguard!mythal IMO feels more like a mediocre narcissist who wants to maintain the status quo, and of course is faux "loving" AKA guilt-tripping and strings-attaching her "care." that's not badly written since it's a real thing, but she's not for me. the fact that elgar'nan presumably abused her is not super compelling to me because IMO it gives the flavor of a confederate slave-owning white woman whose husband is a piece of shit AND ALSO she still thinks slavery is fine and actively upholds and abuses her power over other people. this is not an analogy: mythal literally owns people as slaves. in my fic i try to give her some fairy queen style, wouldn't-it-feel-so-good-to-die-for-me vibes where she's liberal with her magically-hypnotic praise if you please her, to make her more inhuman and therefore interesting to me, but anyway.

i'm seeing accusations of misogyny if people love solas and hate mythal, and while we can and should critique how women characters are written and discussed, given the canon content, it's NOT an inherently misogynistic reaction to hate the character who abused a character you love. i saw a thing insisting "solas is always defined by mythal" and to respect mythal and... really? critique the writers as much as you want for setting this up, but do people really want to say we should always identify a person by their abuser's influence, or offer respect to that abuser??

are you also gonna say "morrigan is always defined by flemythal, acknowledge and respect her when talking about morri" after we know for a fact that flemythal repeatedly exposed morrigan as a child to sexual situations that resulted in violent death, encouraged her to push down her own sensitivity and feelings and focus only on power and manipulation, and morrigan tells the spirit in DA:O that she's still acting too gentle to be the real flemeth, even after smacking morrigan hard across the face and demanding morrigan show some respect? she had an influence on morrigan's life, but holy fuck does morri deserve to define her life by her own desires and her own choices and accomplishments now

if people are aware that solas was given mythal's slave markings, since she was a slaver like the other evanuris, then he burned them magically off his face when he led a slave rebellion against slavers, and hear all the clips in veilguard where she is clearly in a position of power over him, and still claim there was no abuse, idk what to tell you. you are incorrect. please consider if you have some cognitive dissonance about how much you love to hate solas (tho you can still do that even if a character has experienced abuse) and/or how much you want to enjoy mythal (tho you can still appreciate an abusive character).

[kissingagrumpygiant]

I'm of the belief solas wouldn't fuck with emmrich actually