#solas spoilers

[madrosie]

I'm gonna need a roll call of people who don't think Solas and Mythal were fucking. I think they loved each other deeply, but I don't think it was romantic or sexual in nature. The way Solas acts towards her strikes me more as devotion as in she is a deity he follows than a woman he is in love with but maybe I just fell into the the Salty Solasmacer side of Tumblr because I'm not seeing any other takes but they were in romantic love.

[kestrelmando]

So...I understand the logistics would be wonky. But I would've loved another option for a Solas romanced Lavellan.

Give me a Lavellan who swore to stop Solas at all costs, who is horrified about his plans to tear down the Veil uncaring of any collateral damage. She works with Rook to parse his lying, betraying tongue and is angry and bitter.

She doesn't forgive him for murdering Varric, she doesn't forgive him for his part is getting so many people killed in the south and north of Thedas.

So at the end, when Rook and team are seemingly down for the count?

Lavellan gets him with the dagger. He's going to fix it and maintain the Veil whether he wants to or not.

Maybe she slices her palm too, because she'll be his personal ghost in the Fade prison and will pull him by the ear to make sure he's not doing dumb shit™️ again. Will she soften to him, begin to build something real after half a century? Perhaps.

[whiskingskin]

Reasonable reaction tbh

[jams-sims]

So I just finished Dragon Age Veilgaurd and I'm convinced some very loud Gamers just don't want to play a game that just feels nice to play. Its like a nice bag of chips, I ate the whole fucking thing.

Anyway spoilers- spoilers for my ending and romance and general yappin.

I shoved Solas ass into veil- I have no history with him from the other games. Back when (the other da games) they were first released. I understood that Solas was one of the fan favorites, so I kind of went into this thinking I was going to become a fan- nah. At every turn this game chanted change is better. Letting go of the past, just means creating something new. Solas refused to change and at every turn betrayed Rook. I faught Mythal for no fucking reason that hard ass fight. Because I just tricked him, it felt way better for my scrappy Mourn Watcher.

There were moments where I could see the vision of Solas fuckers. He had some of the best witty dialogue. Also just the aguring between them was tasty at times. An then the ending happened and I was so fucking stunned. I kept saying "imma kill him," an even as I said that i was STILL feeling sorry for him. I stood firm though, locked his ass right up.

Hes the prefrect manipulator, he played on my emotions to the very end, very good job game.

My romance was Lucanis- I love him and idk how im gonna do other playthrough to romance anyone else. When he is so devoted and i love that so much. I talked about being emmrich girl and he turned out to be more of a best friend character for my Mourn Watcher.

All in all i liked this game- everyone giving it shit is just allergic to story thats not just fucking bleak all the gotdamn time. Sad shit still happened in this game. But damn- its like you can't enjoy some shit thats corny with out someone in your ear telling you how you shouldnt like it. Nah- we ball it was good i enjoyed it. This has been the first game i've completed this year.

[krems-chair]

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.

[umno-yeah]

Inquisitor: *sees solas turn into a massive ass wolf*

Inquisitor: 😦

Inquisitor: where was this when I got a mountain dropped on me!?

[bg3daydream]

He looks so young in his memories of the rebellion 😢❤️

[inkedfictionista]

I must confess, it’s growing on me. I love him as the sad little egg he is, but that ginger hair is just 👌

[ferniliciousness]

Describe your Inquisitor with one clip

[thomascomics]

Me: well it’s time to get attached to a fictional character because they would NEVER leave me.

Solas: *leaves me*

Me: FUCK

[bitchfettuccine]

IM SO MAD SYLENS IS SOLAS ALL OVER AGAIN EXCEPT I ACTUALLY LIKED HIM GODAMMIT

[herooffereldencousland]

Lavellan Angst

She would have thought that the pain would have gone by now, or maybe she had simply hoped it would. So whole heartedly did she believe in her own delusion that she had told herself that she would get over him. That she wouldn’t wake up in the middle of the night with a smile on her face with the rapidly fading image of his grin hovering before her. It wasn’t the dreams that would wake her, it was the sound of her own voice calling his name that did it. “Solas.” She surmised that was the reason Cullen stopped sleeping in her chambers. Well, among other things. 

“Mamae?” A small voice groggily called out from the lump of warmth nestled against her side. Lavellan quickly wiped the tears from her eyes and plastered a happy smile across her lips. 

“Everything is alright, dalen. Go back to sleep.” With her remaining hand Lavellan tucked the blankets closer around her daughter as she closed her eyes once more. Eyes that were the exact copy of her father’s. Curse him. So long now since she had seen him and she yet felt love in her breast, regardless of the pain he had caused. 

Assured her child was once more dreaming, Lavellan deftly rose from the bed and padded silently to the window. Gods she was tired, she thought to herself, though in truth her body felt completely alter. It was her soul, the very essence of her spirit that ached for rest. Though she no longer bore the anchor, she was still Inquisitor, to an inquisition long settled. But the people needed her. Ferelden and Orlais still treated each other with feigned distrust if not disdain, they needed the buffer she provided to ensure their continued peace. Pressing her fingers against her forehead she fought to leave her duties aside, at least for the moment. But without those worries to occupy her mind others quickly rose to take their place. 

Ysera’s twin brother had not survived the birth that would have brought him into this world. In his place a broken vessel that could no longer give life remained. One more strike that Cullen could not bare; the small gravestone embossed with the many tendril’d sun of andraste in the corner of the graveyard beside Ysera’s brother. “Additional children are not possible. Your body cannot carry another baby.” The words of the healers haunted her even now, her hands moving to cover the flat evidence of her empty womb. 

Briefly came the thought of flinging herself from the battlements, if only to make the pain stop but she shook the thought away with a backwards glance towards Ysera. She loved her daughter too much to do such a thing. And though it might bring her a release from the agony she felt, it would bring so much more to her child that the idea was never truly considered. 

Sighing heavily, the Inquistor moved once more to her bed, and snuggled beside the small yet growing Ysera, pressed a kiss into her red curls, and let her eyes drift closed. The dawn would bring more worries, for now she would rest. 

[bg3daydream]

I am crying over a fictional man (again), like, I feel my heart broken, fuck you Solas, what the hell.

I just took this screenshot because I thought that it, they, were adorable, and you do this to me, seriously...

[delfiend423]

Shit...

[ramblinganthropologist]

Something I realized

Dread wolf take you could totally be something sexual, as is Fenhendis.

Guys...

Are Dalish elves just wing men for Solas? Literally all of these insults could be trying to get the dread wolf laid. 

(Is he that bad at sex he needs a whole race of people trying to wing man for him?)