#solas istg

[vir-bellanaris]

HE WAS GOING TO SAY "VARRIC IS DEAD" WASNT HE? WASNT HE??

[pinacoladamatata]

[dolores-slay]

Just saw some Notable Solavellan Poster complaning that the Veilguard team shittalks Solas so much. SAMANTHA HE WANTS TO DESTROY THEIR WORLD. Stacy they see his own memories of having participated in essentially genocide leading to the fall and now a struggling existence of an entire race he STILL shittalks and sees as lesser in Inquisition (u don't care for them because they're not tall skinny and pretty ig).

So annoyed by shipbrained people istg I know I was right to block that person on tumblr (I think)

[lost-karma-sushi]

“Kindly remove your blade from my neck”

I AM UNWELL

[splynter]

One of Wings Unflown’s supertowers. Just imagine the other two are there

[broodwolf221]

THE MERRY WHUMP OF MAY

13th — Restless; “tell me how it feels," needle, trail ao3: The Huntress Pursues the Wolf

cws: slightly graphic violence; war mentions

859 words

"Would they still call you Wolf, if they saw how you fled?"

"You are not here," he told the shade of Andruil, who smirked at him.

"I am not far, Wolf."

"So you've been saying."

This projection was vague, the edges of it blurred and unsettling. She was able to follow him, knew where he was, but that did not matter. All that mattered was that he stay ahead.

She was trying to distract him.

"You could have had everything," the shade mused, passing effortlessly through the thick growth he struggled with. "You could have been a god."

"I am no more a god than you," he snapped. He was tired, frustrated… and easily goaded, it seemed.

"Tell me, Wolf," she said, and there was something different to her voice, something he struggled to place, "how does it feel?"

"How does what—"

He jerked, her laughter a sharp peal that carried through the woods. As piercing as one of her arrows. Damn her. Damn them all. And damn his own foolishness, his fatigue, his distraction.

He bit his lip until it bled, focusing on the burst of iron in his mouth and trying to ignore the stinging misery that cloaked his body. The war had changed everything, even the land itself, and the scars remained. In her pursuit, she had driven him into one, like driving her quarry into a corner.

They had taken much from the earth. Veins of bright magic, used to forge their very flesh. In war, they had discovered what they'd done, the brutality they'd enacted upon beings unknown to them, and these scars were littered with traces of that same blood. But unlike what had given them form, these remnants lived still, and they recognized what he was.

Tiny shards of lyrium bored into his skin, and around the blue pins bloomed red blood, a crimson flower with a center of lightning. At least until the 'flower' broke and trailed down.

Any single shard would be unpleasant, but given the volume of lyrium scarring this land, it felt like he was being shredded alive. He summoned a barrier, but the mass pressing against it had him pouring more and more magic into maintaining it, and still the ones already within his flesh continued their work.

These shards did not seek only to harm him, but to kill him. They would force themselves through flesh, muscle, and bone, aiming for the complex organs that made up his internal structure. It was now a race: either he would pass through the scar, and the shards would lose their tether to the memory of life and power that enervated this place, becoming nothing more than a mineral thread through with magic...

Or they would kill him.

Assuming Andruil did not grow close enough to put an arrow through his heart.

"Tell me how it feels," she said again, her voice mocking as her shade swooped close to him. Of course this projection was unharmed by the lyrium, for whether it sensed her or not, sensed its blood as her flesh or not, it had no means of interacting with the hollow specter.

"It feels," he growled, "like you are desperate, huntress. Reliant on trickery rather than skill." He felt a rush of satisfaction, tainted by pain, as the shade flickered beside him. "Will you be satisfied if I die by this memory? No arrow through my heart, no victory to claim? 'I slew the Dread Wolf,' you shall say, and then have to admit, 'well, the blood of our enemy slew him.'"

Projections such as hers were incredibly useful. They moved through obstacles and could not be directly affected. But they were also risky, for one could not hide the storm of strong emotion, not within this hollow facsimile. "The heart of a traitorous pup does not deserve my efforts," she said, and he grinned through the pain at how miserably obvious the deceit was. For all of Andruil's skills, trickery was not ranked among them. And even if it was, he could witness within her the ripple of her discontent, her frustration, her humiliation.

Instead of her arrow through his heart, he had lanced a barb of words through hers. And as he kept going, as he kept forcing himself to take trembling step after step, he began to feel the lyrium weaken.

Caught between the edge of the scar, the loss of their memorialized life, and his own power trying to protect his skin and his core, little progress was being made by the thin pieces, even countless as they were. And Andruil's projection hissed when he finally stepped free of the range, gasping with relief—but refusing to fall, to linger, to pause even for a moment.

Instead he laughed as the lyrium, once an assault, now settled into his flesh. It healed where it had harmed, energized where it had sought to destroy, and he knew now that Andruil would not catch up with him.

She would not wade through the risk of that scar. And he would not wait for her pursuit to go around it.

The Wolf ran free, for now.

[theoldgaylion]

Why does the graphic look like old Assassin's Creed omfg did they really waited all those years to just show that????

[superthirstparty]

omg the new DA4 information has me speculating

[niofo]

idris would feel so validated after trespasser that he never trusted solas. i mean, he doesn't trust anyone, so it's like you throw a thousand knives and one will finally hit something, but we're not talking about those 999 others, right. he was right about solas from the very beginning! he's not mad at him tho, it's not like they had any particular no destroying the world after work agreement.

[dragonagetrashurgh]

I need you to know that your tag "what 2000 years of no pussy does to a motherfucker" has forcibly entered my brain almost everyday since I first saw this post. I will never be free. 🥚

lavellan: “so the fade huh. thats cool”

solas: “are you attempting to…….,,.know me”

lavellan: “yeah kinda is there something wrong with that”

solas: “…”

solas: “i see you are a mage”

lavellan: “uh huh”

solas: “have you ever been dominated in the bedroom”

[porcelainface]

growth is going to the movies by yourself after a bpd episode and turning your notifs off

[pastamaster]

yknow i was fully like "yes veilguard let's go new companions new story woo" then the gameplay reveal drops and i see solas in his new elvhen glory eyebrows threaded and im right back in solavellan hell istg

[simpforsolas]

DATV SPOILERS FEATURING SOLAS MOSTLY!!! Taken from this article. Quotes are from John Epler.

Quotes: "Solas always feels that he is a tragic hero but a hero nonetheless, so he's coming into this believing firmly that what he did, that which you stopped him from doing, was the right thing – that you made a mistake. But now he's trapped and can't reach out and actively affect [Thedas], so he needs to work with you. That allows us to provide a lot of nuance to that relationship..." "Players will see early on (and as the narrative develops across Veilguard) that Solas sees much of himself in you, the player-controlled Rook, especially "the parts that maybe he doesn't like to face." As a result, there's an interesting push and pull between Solas and Rook... Players can define the relationship between these two characters with their choices in dialogue." "You can continue to be suspicious and hostile towards him, or you can start to see him and find that common ground, that connection between the two of you, and really develop a different relationship over the course of the story."

OKAY LIKE. What am I supposed to do with this information??? Why does this sound like an INCREDIBLE setup for romance?? Solas is in our head? He sees himself in us? We have a connection with him? We can find common ground and DEVELOP A DIFFERENT RELATIONSHIP aside from hostility?

Istg if they let us romance solas as rook, IF WE GET SOLROOK, I don't know what I'll do 😂 I love solavellan so much but I'd be lying if I said I wasn't into this setup. And how iconic would it be for solas to be so powerful that he gets a romance route not just for the inquisitor, but for rook too??? we really are down bad for him...

inquisitor x solas: you fall in love with him only to be betrayed and learn that he's someone completely different from what you thought

rook x solas: you fall in love with him despite knowing exactly who he is and that he's your enemy, you fall in love with him while working together, knowing that once your goal is accomplished he will return to his goal of destroying the world and you will be forced to stop him but that time isn't here yet so for the time being you work together and fall in love despite your best attempts not to

ignore my ramblings please I am just overwhelmed, OVERWHELMED I SAY.

[ishaslife]

The story sounds so fucking good omgmgmg I'm so excited this is everything I was hoping for sjfhwbab

Dragon Age: The Veilguard - Game Informer pages from issue 367 (the cover story from June 18th) [source, two]

[hellslayersomething]

I feel like I should write out some proper thoughts about my opinions on Veilguard, or at least an outline for the much longer essay that is currently calcifying in my heart. It's a mixed bag of a reaction, and I'm not going to compliment sandwiching any of it--this is all just stream of consciousness, so I'm probably going to snag on the negative and spiral down that pretty quickly. Spoilers, obviously:

I liked the battle system. For the first time in a DA game, it actually felt satisfying to play and had its own identity. I do wish the Pokemon element aspect was a little better balanced among the companions, but overall it was great.

That said, considering the length of the game, they needed way more enemy diversity, especially with the bosses. Eventually I was just fighting dragons, and every dragon had essentially the same moveset, one of those moves being "the dragon trips over her own dick and face-plants on top of Rook", which sure doesn't make the fights feel epic. Even very unique characters, like the Gloom Howler, were just reskinned basic demons when it came time to fight them.

The decision to tie companion approval to companion levels was a mistake. A massive and extremely obvious mistake. No wonder there are no disagreements or tension among the group--the game can't let you lose affinity with your team members, because then it would have to account for you leveling them down. The gameplay design here strangled the narrative design in its crib.

Speaking of narrative design: while I appreciate that the modular approach to companion arcs was experimental, it was extremely weird of them to take that approach in the only DA game where all companions are required. The story doesn't have to be written to account for the fact that you might not recruit some of them or they might die early--so why didn't they write one story about Rook and their seven friends instead of one story about Rook and also there are seven smaller, unrelated stories of extremely varying quality shoved in next to it?

The hyperfixation on the companion quests paired with their complete compartmentalization from each other means that each companion basically has nothing going on outside of their own quest and very few opportunities to engage with other characters' quests.

I was so starved for conflict in this game that I went from Solas-neutral to Solas-positive because he was the only character who the game allowed to be a bitch to me, and I respect him for that.

I do like all the horrid little sons the game gives me. I think I would appreciate them more if there was anything bad or tense happening in the story on a personal level that required some comic relief, but I am a sucker for a funky little guy none the less, and Manfred, Assan, and Spite are the perfect trifecta of funky little guys, as far as I'm concerned.

"We're only going to do character cameos if it's important to the plot." *does what they did with Isabela* Okay, devs.

"We aren't importing player choices but we won't override your decisions either." *several codex entries overriding player decisions later* Okay, devs.

I like the companions, generally. I see their potential. Fanfic will do right by them. Harding, in my mind, is the weakest of the bunch, just truly having no personality to speak of and talking like she was written by a Boomer who thinks that Millennials are still teenagers. (Everyone responsible for her uttering the phrase "Awkward..." like she's a character in 2011 quirky girl sitcom should be tried at the fucking Hague, istg.) And while I like Bellara, it was extremely frustrating to have a character that's just "Merrill, again, but with the edges sanded off". Taash and Emmerich are also glaringly the last additions in the writing process, each belonging to one of the two most underbaked factions and neither of them being tied to any of the game's few "big choices". There's promise in this cast, but I don't think any of them came close to realizing their potential.

Davrin and Emmerich's companion quests felt appropriately scoped to the size of the questlines, had good emotionality, good antagonists, and expanded on the lore of Thedas in ways we hadn't seen yet.

Lucanis's companion quest had potential, but it was too unfocused with three antagonists, too much attention to the boring Venatori shit, and not enough examination on Illario's motives or Lucanis's relationships with either Spite or Illario.

Harding's companion quest was fine, I guess (the people are starving for dwarf lore), but Harding could have been swapped out with literally any other dwarven character who wasn't Sandal and nothing would have been different. (Also weird that the whole quest was basically about Sandal while simultaneously fully removing Sandal from the narrative.)

Bellara and Neve's companion quests were just nothing. Just a whole lot of nothing. And Neve's also suffered from what I like to call "machete editing", where it is glaring obviously where things were cut, changed, moved around, and added at the last minute.

I say, from the bottom of my non-binary heart: Taash's companion quest is total ass. Real nice of Mae to come out of hiding and risk being found and executed by the Venatori to give Taash a Queer Theory 101 class, though, I fucking guess.

Is Lucanis's romance bugged? Apparently I'm not the only one who had that thought while I was playing it, so now I'm wondering. Like, there's no way they made it Like That on purpose, right?

Why and how are the Venatori still a force in Thedas, never mind a force with numbers so great (in spite of lacking a central leader) that they were able to simultaneously occupy the two largest cities in Thedas?

They literally didn't even try with the Antaam. The Venatori are at least theoretically still working to try to restore Tevinter to its former imperial might. The Antaam are just invading countries for literally no reason except ill-defined power grabs. Given the racial coding of Qunari, this writing choice sure is...something. (And that something is racist.)

That said, the revelation that the Butcher did a military tour in Europe and fell in love with the culture and just wants to drink wine and visit art museums now is fucking hilarious.

What the absolute FUCK did they do the Crows. I like the Crow characters from Tevinter Nights/the comics, and Zevran is my favorite character in the whole damn franchise, but they completely whitewashed both TN's mafia take on them and their original portrayal in DA:O. But it also doesn't really retcon anything, making it instead seem like the human trafficking and torture and sexual abuse that Zevran suffered at the Crows' hands A) only happened to him individually, and B) are fine, actually??? Even the very few times that characters express reservations about working with Lucanis because he's an assassin, if you play as a Crow, those concerns get immediately backpedaled, so the Crows end up being so ironed out that the game doesn't even let characters say of the Crows, "Murder is bad," lest it hurt a Crow Rook's feelings. That is how conflict-averse the writing is.

So I guess everyone in southern Thedas is...dead now? Several characters survived long enough to get a mention from the Inquisitor, but by the end, it sounds like Orlais, Ferelden, and most of the Free Marches are pretty much donezo. When Epler said the events in southern Thedas didn't matter, I didn't expect that to mean they were going to nuke the damn place. Even having generally enjoyed VG (in spite of all my criticisms here) that, uh...doesn't leave me enthused about the future of the franchise, ngl.

The layoffs of several writers (and other Bioware employees) before the game's release was obviously heinous. But after that secret ending, I'm now of the mind that of the writers that remain, at least a few of them need to be demoted. Like literally what the fuck was that. That was the dumbest plot point to ever appear in a Dragon Age game, and that is a high bar to clear. If you're not going to acknowledge our past choices, then keep Loghain's name out of your fucking mouths.

[crescent--moons]

Sooo I finished Veilguard a week ago already but have been replaying and stewing on all the feels. I'm at the point where I need to dump some of my personal thoughts and feelings in no particular order and in a list format because that's just how my brain works lol

(Putting them under the cut for spoilers)

- I will protect Bellara at all costs (her personal quest is so important to me)

- Crows and Shadow Dragons factions are peak

- Seeing my Inky again gave me so much nostalgia I almost cried

- The chemistry between Lucanis x Shadow Dragon Rook x Neve is immaculate (bonding over "our day job is killing Venatori" is hilarious and everything I wanted)

- The dynamic between Lucanis x Crow Rook x Viago x Teia has my whole entire heart

- "Illario you idiot" is an understatement

- Taash and Lucanis banter made me laugh so hard I busted a lung I fear

- Emmrich and Manfred are absolutely delightful

- The gasps I gasped when Zara called Illario Amatus and Manfred spoke his first word

- Spite. Is. My favourite.

- The realization that Varric was dead all along shattered my heart

- The character creator is great (wishing for more hair options though)

- Rivain's combat music slaps

- Solas needs both a good scramble and a big hug

- Crow Rook 🤝 Viago "The Crows rule Antiva and Treviso will be free" (I love them)

- All the lore reveals gave both my Rook and I an existential crisis

- The game could have used a bit more faction recognition in certain scenes/dialogs but alas

- The level design is so good and the environments are gorgeous

- Spellblade and Evoker are so much fun

- The animations in certain cutscenes are so well done I was in awe

- I ugly cried for 1 whole hour after I finished the game (worth it)

- Davrin and Lucanis bickering half the time is the dynamic I didn't know I needed

- Harding and Taash are so cute together

- Seeing Dorian (again) and Maevaris (for the first time) in game was awesome

- Evka and Antoine are adorable

- Spending time petting cats and dogs in Minrathous and Treviso instead of getting on with quests is the DA experience I was looking for

- Lucanis Dellamorte has bewitched me body and soul (his story arc and romance was tailored made for me istg)

- I'm just so incredibly happy to finally have a new Dragon Age game after 10 years of painful waiting