#solas spirit

[wolfsong-the-bloody-beast]

I wonder how many heart-attacks Blackwall and Solas have per day when Cole is around.

[corseque]

(video) Trick Weekes describes another rule they follow when writing Solas (which explains why players have had completely opposite reactions to him)(x)

[densewentz]

mmm not to be a solasmancer on main but im thinking about those few days after the Cole debacle if a solavellan Inquisitor encourages him to remain a spirit. just. Solas, watching her fret so much in the aftermath, terrified that she may have taken someone's choice away, worried that she influenced what Cole wanted somehow, watching her sheer relief and unbridled joy after Cole's, free and light and brimming with happy incredulity, "but you didn’t change, didn’t make me change. Thank you". He watches her, and thinks of Mythal. Thinks of devotion, and abuse. Regret. Thinks of Cole, and spirits and Wisdom and Pride- Thinks, wistfully, achingly, "in her hands, I might have been safe".

[pupkinpumpkin]

- Endgame, after Solas and Rook join up-

Rook: Ok hold on wait a minute. So, you were seeing me through Varric anytime I came to talk to him right?

Solas: That is correct.

Rook: So were you there when-

Solas: When you burst into the infirmary and asked Varric if Anders ever shared any possessed abomination sex tips?

Rook: ....

Rook: ....

Rook: ....

Rook: Thank you for the advice all the same.

Solas: Of course.

[pinacoladamatata]

sketching solas over and over counts as being productive right?

[nokdunal]

The gentler spirits are far more rare

[salesart]

the ultimate salvation of felassan

[cheriboms]

everybody was very nice on my last post(s) so !!! more cole and manfred be upon you :D

[felassan]

David Gaider on Fenris, under a cut for length:

"Fenris. Now, DA2 is a story all on its own but I'm not going to go there other than to sum it up as "we had just over a year and a half to make this". It's why I only wrote one follower, Fenris, and although it'll make his fans mad: I probably shouldn't have. Let me explain. The way we'd approach making the followers is brainstorming a list of concepts covering first the array of gameplay classes (and sub-classes) and then making sure they each have some skin in the game when it came to the story's conflicts - ideally having characters on both sides of the major ones. Why? You can't make a player care about the world, but you can make them care about characters who care about the world. It's the easiest way to provide hooks into a conflict, outside of it knocking on the player's door. Heck, it's probably better than that. Players will burn the world for approval. After that, we'd decide things like romances/sexuality. Then the writers would pick who they'd write. I always let my writers pick first. I figured they do their best work when it's something they're inspired to write... and they got so few chances at ownership, I wanted to give it whenever I could It's why I (reluctantly) let Patrick wrest Cole from my grasp in DAI, a character I'd created in Asunder. It's also why I let Jennifer take Anders in DA2, who I'd started in Awakening. In this instance, it meant I was left with the angry elven warrior character who nobody else appeared to want."

"It should have been my first clue that something was up. The second was how the artists had zero clue what to do with him. The art concepts were all over the place - from mages to crows to... well, even weirder. No matter how hard I tried to explain the idea, the artists simply didn't seem to get it Does this mean he was a bad character? Not exactly. Just an idea that probably deserved some re-examining. You can tell when an idea has a certain spark, and part of that is being easy to communicate. Sadly, there wasn't time for any re-examining even if it'd occurred to me. And it didn't, not yet. If it had, if I had time, maybe I'd have re-booted him as a templar. Someone pro-templar rather than anti-mage, who could give a personal hook into Meredith and give the templars some badly-needed humanity. But this falls into the shoulda-woulda-coulda category. I had a follower to write. Quickly. I struggled, at first. It was hard to get away from "Fenris hates everything, all the time". It felt very one-note, and I didn't know where to take him. My third clue, I guess. I also wasn't sure if I was the right person to write a former slave. I did know that couldn't be the center of his story. I did know trauma, however. How it can eat you up. How the hate and resentment is like drinking poison and hoping the other person dies. How it can infect your relationships. Fenris's trauma isn't my trauma, obviously, but here I dipped into a more personal part of myself than I'd ever done before."

"It gave me the center of his story I was missing, but wow was it uncomfortable. In a good way, maybe. I likely wouldn't have, if I hadn't been so desperate. In a way, I think DA2 had some of our best writing *because* of the timeline. It was raw, with little time to sand down the interesting parts. I wouldn't have done the "Fenris doesn't talk to you for three years" thing if I'd known we were going to cut all the reactivity initially planned for the time jumps. When that call was made, I campaigned to cut the jumps to a year, but there was no time for the revisions it'd need. So, um. Awkward. I used to get asked where the name came from, and I... don't remember? Obviously it's derived from Fenrir, but I don't recall why we picked that. Someone pointed at Fenris the Feared from Joe Abercrombie's books... and I did read them, so maybe the name lodged in my head? Wouldn't be the first time. Casting Fenris turned out to be easy. He was the first time I requested a specific VA and got him. (The other times were Merrill and then Solas, my two "I want these specific Welsh actors, please".) Why? OK, if you must know, I'd played a bit of Final Fantasy XII. I heard Balthier. "Yes, that." 😅 And Gideon Emery was a delight, as it turned out. Consummate professional, and that lovely gravel in his voice... good god. Bite the knuckles. There was a struggle to find the voice at the outset where I did my best not to say "just pls do Balthier" but he found Fenris on his own and it was amazing. Overall, Fenris turned out better than he had any right to, considering the rocky start. He had a lot of soul, a vulnerability forged by pain that struck a chord with a lot of players, and I'm glad. Do I regret anything? Probably having him live in a corpse-filled mansion that would never update. That's a hindsight thing, though, as again the cut to reactivity over the time jumps came late. Outside of that, maybe letting the player give him back to Danarius? Poor shock value and a waste of resources because almost nobody took the option. Good evil options are ones that are tempting to take. And the lyrium tattoos. Interesting concept, but they're probably why you'll never see Fenris in a future DA. He requires a custom body, and the tattoos make that expensive. It's why I put Fenris in my 4th DA novel - the cancelled one. Don't fret, though. He died in it, so this way he lives on. 😉"

[source thread]

User: "Wait wait how does he die in [the cancelled novel]??" David Gaider: "Gloriously, after taking up a cause he didn't believe in at first but then made his own, one that allowed him to rediscover what it meant to be elven." [source] David Gaider: "I’m not sorry about the novel cancellation. I’m the one who cancelled it. I am kinda sad we couldn’t make it work, though. Considering it was after I left the DA team, it would have been my final DA hurrah." [source] David Gaider: "From my perspective, it was kind of "well if you're never going to use him again, let me at least give him a proper send off" and the story required a glorious death... but I get that's not the story his biggest fans would want (which is Hawke + Fenris 4ever), so it's just as well." [source]

User: "You all did some incredible work with such a tight deadline" David Gaider: "I'm of the opinion that even if we'd had only another six months to bake, DA2 would be remembered as a classic and not either a flawed gem or underbaked sequel, depending on who you ask." [source]

David Gaider: "Just to clarify the "they're probably why you'll never see Fenris" thing, as it's spawned commentary: 1. It's the reasoning as was explained to me back then. 2. Obviously, if Bio *really* wanted to, they'd find a way around it. But it was a complication that meant he couldn't be included casually." [source]

[evanhereonearth]

So many of you liked my chaotic history of Thedas shitpost that I made a little art based on it 💕

I was thinking it would make a nice wee T-shirt. What do you all reckon?

Ps: if you want to follow my shop whilst they’re verifying it (assuming the link works), please do. Might be a few days but there WILL be T-shirts. I literally went through all this cos I wanted one for myself 😂

Some other designs I had to add to meet the requirements:

[thebookworm0001]

I think solas’s body language in his atonement ending is just. good lord that man is tired of making world-altering decisions that hurt people.

you hand him the dagger after telling him that what he’s doing won’t do what he wants it to and the way he’s only barely holding it

It’s balanced on the tips of his fingers and once he holds it more firmly, it’s still such a loose grip and he’s tapping the blade in a way where you can see him considering what rook is saying

And then after he’s freed of mythal’s bonds - he looks back at the tears in the world and his eyes clear and there is no hesitation in how he draws that blade across his palm. He sees a way forward that doesn’t require him to doom thousands more to death and wastes no time choosing that other, better way.

He’s never wanted to do this. He’s never wanted the blood of yet another world on his hands. And the moment he’s free to find a better way, the only blood he spills is his own

[dragonagegallery]

History of the Ancient Elves and Titans

[mrs-gauche]

"It can be argued that an immortal would have to be distant, or eventually all it would know is loss. What would our world look like to such a creature? What actions would they be capable of when everything except themselves is fleeting and therefore of little relevance to eternity? If we as elvhen discover a path back to what we were, we must be sure that the path is wide enough for all. For the individual who stumbles into that journey, who endures when all else is dust, can only be alone." - Keeper Ilan'ta

[willeminaaa]

I am READY for SUMMER you guys

[queenaeducan]

tbh bioware was cooking when they made cad'halash thaig harbour ancient elven refugees and be destroyed by their own people for it. and then 1000s of years later have a scattered remnant of that thaig pick up an anchor forged by elven hands and made of a titan heart, and then befriend the person who tranquilised the titans, and then have them change his heart and realise they were people and they deserved better, and then have them advocate for his redemption even as the world seems set on destroying him. solas and cadash your friendship is connected by strings of fate like no other.

[citrusai]

taash said "they were doing it" and people ran with the interpretation of an npc that doesn't know solas or the history of the elvhenan even when bellara interjected and said, no, that's not right. that's not how it was for the elvhenan. they formed bonds before they had physical bodies. and people ran to doompost or create weird anti-solavellan shit even though mythal & solas refer to each other as old friends and when she releases him there is no tenderness or love in it. it is the act of unchaining a dog from his post, the stepping down of a general. but to each their own ig.