#solavellan fandom critical

[durgeapologist]

I'm confused, durge. Do you like Solrook or Solavellan? Your post bashing Solavellans contradicts your recent reblogs defending them. What are your actual thoughts on these ships? Because I cannot tell.

alright i feel like this needs to be said here and now. buckle up because this is long, and probably the only time i will be commenting on this ever again.

i do not hate the solavellan ship. i have stated many times across all my socials that i used to be a hardcore solavellan shipper. i am IN LOVE with my lavellan. i literally started playing the dragon age series because i heard about the betrayal in solas' dai romance, and i am a sucker for angst. i played through dao and da2 just to romance him with my lavellan in dai.

when dav came out, first day of release, i set my world state up to be solavellan. i redeemed him and sent her off to the fade with him. point blank.

however, even before i started shipping dreadrook, i was wary of solavellan FANS. not the ship, the FANS. i am a solas lover to the ends of the earth and back. i can get behind ANY ships that involve him. what i cannot, and will not ever, get behind is the absolute infantilization of both solas and lavellan that many solavellan shippers i have interacted with engage in.

i had to leave and the solasmancers subreddit because they bashed the fuck out of epler for having SANE and NORMAL takes on solas' villainous behavior. because: YES. solas is a VILLAIN. he is an ANTAGONIST. and for some reason, most of the solavellans i was friends/mutuals and most other VOCAL solavellans i saw refused to admit as much.

they baby solas, they baby their self-insert lavellans, and they romanticize the ship without acknowledging the (imo delicious) potentials for a tragic, toxic, and morally-grey partnership. they whiddle solas down to this abused, kicked, drowing puppy that must be saved- nay, can only be saved by their adoring, kind, never-angry-always-understanding lavellans.

i also dislike immensely the way rook gets dragged through the mud, killed off, belittled, bullied, etc. by some (not all) solavellans who cannot handle solas having insane chemistry with another character. because the chemistry between dreadrook is insane.

i could drone on for hours my issues with the solavellan fans that twist and bend the relationship dynamic between the two, but i won't. it's been regurgitated by so many people so many times, and i would be adding nothing new to the conversation.

my canon lavellan romanced solas and moved on to cullen after the events of trespasser. my canon lavellan would never leave her life behind in southern thedas to follow solas into the fade for eternity, especially not after he killed varric. if your lavellan would do that, then kudos to you! really! i am so thankful many solavellans have a way to get their happy endings! i did it the one time for the novelty, and never will again.

but i can't stand solavellans who can't admit to themselves that their pairing is just as toxic as (if not more than) the dreadrook pairing, and i doubly cannot stand solavellans that baby the fuck out of the pairing. these are two grown (pixelated) adults. they are not infants. their relationship is built on lies and deceit (again, delicious dynamic to me!) and it heavily annoys me when people cannot admit that.

THIS IS ALL TO SAY: i do not hate ALL solavellans. my bestest mutuals and online friends are major solavellan shippers. i am a solavellan shipper. i just so happen to enjoy dreadrook a thousand times more, and therefore have my lavellan married to cullen in my canon world state while my rook and solas frolick off into the sunrise together.

tldr; it's a CERTAIN TYPE of solavellan FAN that i do not enjoy interacting with. i do not think ALL solavellan fans are like this. i KNOW they are not. it's just the ones that ARE happen to be the loudest in a room at any given time. that is all.

[inanshalla]

I'm going to be honest, I have a lot of discomfort over how Solavellan has been handled in this fandom because from the perspective of being Indigenous and having dated people who didn't see my people as "people" until they met me it's not the major win for Lavellan that the white girlies think it is. I already struggled a little with how much the Dalish sometimes feel like a white person's oppression fantasy while still being blatant colonizer apologia, but the fandom being unable to handle even the most minor criticism of their white fave is actually upsetting me. I hate that you can't call the egg out on his racism without his stans jumping down your throat and yelling "victim blaming." Meanwhile their ideal Lavellan has no rage for how he's treated her or her people, she is lapping up his praise like a newly turned 18 year old with daddy issues and people don't see how that's horrific for a character that's indigenous co

As a black person who's dated interracially I definitely get it. I've been around people, mostly in my younger years that didn't care about what happened to black people until they met me its really wild. A while ago I outright had someone I dated tell me when we were breaking up that all the social issues like racism, misogynoir, antiblackness etc that I care about are only on the internet and since he (a white person) never encountered or have seen it, it doesn't exist so that was fun.

As for the solavellan bit here there is an stank air in this fandom where you absolutely under no circumstances can be even mildly critical of solas because a toxic subset of his fans take everything as a personal attack. That branch of the solavellan fandom act as if they are oppressed because they just like solas/ship solavellan when really the fact of the matter is that they are pretty toxic and engage in very bigoted behavior constantly. They never hold each other accountable, they either ignore it, say that person isn't a part of the community or engage in weird whataboutism. This is a fandom wide issue though not just specific to the solavellan fandom but yeah.

It definitely has become a white people oppression fantasy for sure as far as fandom is concerned because I have seen people think that just because they play an elf in this fantasy game that they know the first thing about oppression. Imagine talking over black people, palestinians and other non white groups because you feel privileged bc solas grabbed your waify white elf's ass lmao

I also agree that solas is mad racist, I mean calling a qunari inquisitor of whom he considers a friend... a savage??? Calling a dwarf inquisitor who we know now is responsible for why they cannot connect to the fade as being ignorant and dumb??? And of course calling a dalish inquisitor even if he is dating them that they are a credit to their race and no matter how much a dalish inquisitor asserts their dalish identity he ultimately refuses to see them as a rule but an exception it's pretty gross. This does not change in veilguard. What he says to davrin and an elf rook shows his opinions haven't changed if romanced. I just find it funny how he's supposed to be a spirit of wisdom and yet doesn't know that saying things like this is problematic but all up in iron bull's ear about how bad the qun is lmao okay dawg

Overall I appreciate this ask and thank you I am sorry this ended up being a lot longer than I anticipated it being lol if you ever wanna talk about this stuff more my DMs are always open, love

[kobawlin]

ironic that the solavellan critical ship tag that is clearly labeled has fans of that ship upset over actual criticism about a character that doesn’t have a specific canon to their relationship with the pc. some of you need to learn how to detach yourself as a real life person from a character that in real life would find you appalling. maybe when people post valid criticisms of a ship involving a character who represents the ideology of supremacy and their flaws as a character we should all sit down and discuss rather than attack the poster directly? just a thought experiment for those that have no critical thinking skills.

if you feel like this is directed at you it probably is.

[fangharel]

we need to talk about The Silence and The Song

[PLEASE READ] edit to add: i realise that this post has been reblogged far and wide and that there is not a lot i can do about it now, but this is me trying anyway.

posting examples from the fic about my issues with its repetitive structure was careless of me, and i apologise to those of you who read it and became insecure about your own writing style. as someone who has worked with ai in academic settings, it's incredibly difficult for me to explain to you how the tone and structure of ai-generated fiction works and how, after reading enough of it, you can simply just tell. i do also realise that this is an incredibly weak argument, which is why i didn't include it when i originally wrote this post.

all that to say: there is an enormous difference between "beginner's writing" and ai writing. being repetitive as a new writer (or a seasoned one who just likes using repetition) is so normal. as is flowery/purple language. i've read hundreds of books and fics and the difference between these traits in ai-text and actual works is starkly clear. please don't feel anxious over the examples i've used in this post.

again, i apologise for any distress i have caused.

as per my last post, i have received a lot of encouragement to go public with this, and the more disappointed people i have in my dms, the angrier i get. so i will.

the silence and the song is an ancient arlathan au DA fic on ao3 by luxannaslut, and it is partly, if not entirely, written by an ai. i have no wish to be involved in any kind of fandom drama or witch hunting or bullying, but as a writer myself there are few things that piss me off more than watching people steal the work of others because they can't be fucked to write. it's disrespectful to your fellow writers, it's disrespectful to your readers, and it's disrespectful to the authors of the works the ai is stealing from.

ai is a plague that has no business being in creative spaces and you must do better.

the writing pattern

there was something very odd and monotone about the sentence structure of tsats that i couldn't quite place, so i fed chatgpt a prompt along the lines of "two people in a fantasy novel hate each other, but they secretly desire one another, and they kiss", and the screenshots above are the results. the third one is an excerpt from chapter 40 of tsats. the writing pattern is identical and it doesn't seem like the "writer" has even bothered to pretend they wrote it. if you're going to use ai, at least be sneaky about it. you know, paraphrase a little.

nonsense descriptions

"her nimble fingers worked with quiet precision" (ct. 1), "his grip firm but tender" (ct. 33), "her gown pooling around her like embers" (ct. 1).

fingers don't make sound, so what does quiet precision mean? as opposed to what? her joints cracking with every movement? how is a grip firm but tender? what does that mean? since when do embers pool?

the entire fic is littered with these adjectives that contradict each other or just straight up do not make sense, because all an ai does is generate descriptive language with no understanding of what the words it's spitting out actually mean. i could spend hours picking out examples from the seven billion pages worth of text, but i quite frankly have better things to do and would simply challenge you to try getting through a chapter or two without noticing the pattern.

repetition at structure-level

all the scenes in this fic are described in pretty much the same way. they open with purple prose vomit of the surroundings; solas is standing somewhere looking "unreadable as ever"; ellana's fiery golden molten fire copper ember ginger red hair is flowing this and that way; there's some dialogue with whoever is present and it leaves ellana feeling different variations of "something she couldn't name". this is, once again, a blatantly obvious sign of ai. below is the result of me feeding chatgpt the line "write me a scene from a fantasy novel where a woman with red hair is sitting on the ground in a magical garden at night", and side by side with that is the opening scene of the fic. make your own judgement.

repetition at word-level

this one speaks for itself. we fucking get it. her dress is orange, her hair is red, mythal's presence is heavy in the room, solas looks unreadable, compassion is sitting on her head like a crown, solas' ears are betraying him and ellana's move with every thought she thinks. we get it. the issue here is that an ai remembers the info you feed it, but not necessarily the info it shits out. if it's being told to write scene after scene of an elven woman with a gown that looks like fire doing xyz, it's going to do so with no regard for how many times the reader has already been informed of these details.

lastly: the breakneck speed

359,6k words in four weeks by a person who allegedly is employed and married and hasn't pre-written anything? no. any writer will tell you that this simply isn't possible. it absolutely infuriates me to see how much praise this "writer" gets for posting up to three full chapters in a day without anyone calling bullshit. i am pulling out my hair, you guys.

why i'm not going to live and let live this one

perhaps i would be less angry if the fic was some silly bullshit court intrigue Y/A stuff, but this is a text that handles very heavy and triggering topics such as SA, coercion, domestic abuse, and other things of the same vein. to sit back and put your feet up while having a robot write these extremely sensitive and very real human experiences with words it has stolen from texts written by actual persons is fucking heinous. the "writer" should be deeply ashamed of themselves and i'm sick and tired of watching people eat up their bs.

and on that note: the amount of people in my dm's telling me that they feel stupid and naive for not clocking this has infuriated me more than anything else. you're not foolish for this. being fed ai-generated bullshit is not what is supposed to happen on any creative platform and much less a fandom-centred one, so of course no one approaches a fic through that lens. fandom and fic writing is supposed to be about passion and the only person in this situation who needs to do better and change their behaviour is luxannaslut. polluting our creative spaces, wasting the time of your readers, and minimising the effort of actual writers who are working hard to provide content for us all to share and enjoy is vile and so, so lazy. i beg of you: do better.

[sh00kspeared]

Genuine question for the DAI fandom — is there a decent community surrounding mlm solavellan? I just got into DAI and am using the equal opportunity mod to romance solas, but some of the things I’ve seen people online just made my heart sink— that they’re ‘so, so glad solas is straight’, the way that people pelt mlm solavellan shippers with downvotes and dislikes, the way I saw someone say that hetero people might feel ridiculed by Solas being bisexual. I’d love to find my people, and I’m just wondering if things are any different here on tumblr or if the fandom is in general agreement that bi solas = bad.

[loredrinker]

Is it weird that I take a kind of perverse delight in discourse that can’t stop criticizing Solas and, in particular, the Solas/Lavellan romance world state?

There are plenty of players who reject 'Solavellan' for their own reasons, many of which I understand completely - and most just go on their merry way, playing the game their way and not giving a second thought to it. But others... can’t seem to let it go. Despite claiming to have no interest in the story or proclaim a deep dislike for it, they remain preoccupied by it. And honestly? I love that.

Solas and Lavellan living rent-free in people’s minds is proof to me the writers have hit some kind of nerve. And isn’t that what we want from stories? To feel? Whether it’s good or bad or disgusted or elated?

One of my absolute favorite fandom phenomena is the emphatic declaration: “Not my world state.” A sacred incantation. A verbal sage-smudge meant to ward off emotional investment in a narrative one claims to disdain.  In the case of Dragon Age - it’s often a Solas and a romanced Lavellan.

And yet…still the critical posts come. Still reblogging. Still writing 3,000-word critiques about a character some allegedly don’t think about or a pairing that people find...problematic. Fascinating. Because if it truly wasn’t their world state, why not just ignore it?  I can so easily ignore any world state that I don’t resonate with.  I also can easily read great meta, enthusiasm and critiques on various world states that I don’t subscribe to but can appreciate and learn something new all the time.  

I genuinely believe in everyone finding joy in the game they play. Sincerely. There’s more than enough pain in the real world - we all deserve our escapes. So play your way. Love what you love. Let the rest fall into the Fade. (I appreciate those who do post very respectful discourse and criticisms without resorting to insults.)

But yet

…yet

... some linger. Some rage. Some cry “cringey romance trope” and some cry “horrible misrepresentation” with the same intensity Solas cries “vhenan” during post-Veilguard sex with Lavellan. And that’s okay. Because, to me, it means they felt something.

If people are still talking about it - still critical of it, still dissecting - the story got under the skin. It touched something raw. It stirred something.  Maybe it unsettled a sense of what a “good” fictional romance looks like or what forgiveness looks like. Maybe it made someone feel uncomfortable. Maybe some resent how powerfully others have connected to it. Who knows!?

But stories - especially emotionally and controversially charged ones like Solas and Lavellan - rarely seem to leave people untouched. They provoke. They unsettle. They inspire.

The writers should feel flattered. It means the story had teeth. It left a mark. Some connect with it and lean in. Others don’t and abhor it. But either way, they still let themselves be tethered to it. The effort poured into disliking Solas and Lavellan I see at times only confirms how potent the story really is. Why spend so much time dissecting something that didn’t affect you?

One of the biggest misconceptions about the Solas and Lavellan story is that it excuses Solas (ok, maybe some fans do). But what makes the story so compelling to me is what’s found in the contradictions. It doesn’t ignore Solas’s flaws - it stares them down. Because stories of love can exist in tension with truth. And they can be messy as hell. 

I like the tension. I like that Solas is morally grey, sometimes cruel, sometimes tender. I like reconciling that contradiction - not to absolve him, but to explore what love looks like when it exists alongside pain, grief and betrayal. I don’t need him to be perfect to find his story compelling. And I don’t need Lavellan’s love to be easy or pure to see its value or symbolism. 

And it doesn’t threaten me that he’s flawed or that their love story is flawed. I’m comfortable holding both truths at once: that he’s done harm, and that he’s capable of love. That’s where the story lives for me. Lavellan’s response to him is also complicated and her own imperfection doesn’t diminish the story (and it is just a story after all).

This is not fandom criticism believe it or not (well, maybe? But like, with affection). Like I said, I delight in it. If anything, it just deepens my love for Solas’s story and for Inquisitor Lavellan’s - and their journey together.  It challenges me to dig deeper into understanding what resonates with me.

There is a little secret voice in my head that thinks, if people who dislike it so much are still talking about it, still trying to tear it down - then maybe they are living in the same world state as me after all. 

And I do so enjoy the company. 

[venatorisms]

Very interesting that the same people who go on and on about fandom misogyny (and the misogyny in question is just someone simply not liking an evil or gray female character) are the same ones who refuse to examine their own misogyny in regards to constantly demonizing shippers who ship ships that are popular mostly among women…..

[ghilllly]

Why do (some) Solas fans constantly proclaim that we need to view him with nuance, and then turn around and make Mythal the fucking Devil?

This is especially prevalent in Solavellan fans, too. They literally treat Mythal like she’s the whole antichrist, and that Lavellan is Solas’ queen that showed him “real” love after he spent a quadrillion years being abused by that “witch”.

As if we literally don’t fucking know what Solas’ and Mythal’s dynamic was like because his murals are inherently biased.

[aquamarinemarie]

Fickle Hearts

"How could Lavellan still be in love with Solas - it's been ten whole years!? Why doesn't she move on already? It's so unrealistic, so embarrassing. Lavellan is weak and pathetic. She has no self respect. Her love confession fills me with disgust. It's misogynistic to portray her this way. Blah, blah, blah."

I'm still seeing these kinds of criticisms floating around, and y'all, I'm so tired.

Love doesn't just go away because you want it to. Nor, does loving another make you weak.

It is very realistic for a person to truly love only once in their lifetime. Maybe twice, if they're extraordinarily lucky.

Not all hearts are fickle.

[0alix0]

you hate solas x mythal because you think solas shouldn't have had any previous relationships in thousands of years of his life

i hate solas x mythal because it's yet another exhausting love triangle where the slaver and abuser gets a funky reincarnation and the victim gets blamed for absolutely everything and put into magical prison forever..........

we are not the same

[blightbright]

Solas fandom and "genAI"

I recently came back to Tumblr 99.9% because life is stressful and I'm autistic and special interesting about Solas, but I never could keep my mouth shut so... re: so-called "genAI" in fandom spaces:

I say so-called because it is neither truly generative nor intelligent, and it is not really artificial: it is created with the real stolen efforts of living people and real environmental exploitation

I have little interest in blaming everyday individuals (except CEOs, political leaders, billionaires, etc) for the harms of the most popular "genAI" tech, because it's a systemic problem

"genAI" is intentionally confusing and it's ok if people are genuinely ignorant, at first, of how it works or the harm

I also have loved ones who disagree with me

THAT SAID, I urge people to learn more about and consider the harms to society, other people, and one's own process of self-expression, learning, and creativity from the use of "genAI"

I can't control your behavior but I can tell you that your messiest, most "OOC," error-ridden rough draft, or your most wonky-proportioned stick figure fan art is infinitely more precious, valuable, and emotionally, culturally, and spiritually significant than an unintelligent plagiarism algorithm doing it for you, even if it gets less hits/kudos at first. don't give up hope: your own art means something. I encourage you to make fandom a heartfelt space of resistance!

it is important for communities to define boundaries of unacceptable behavior (i.e. use of non-gen AI spellcheck, Google Translate, "genAI" rewrite functions, character "chats," plot/outline "generation," full-blown "generated" pieces... IMO, I'm fine with the first, uneasy but ok with the second, and the rest I actively oppose)

in the absence of clear boundaries, transparency is key! please publicly and clearly disclose ANY use of "genAI" at ANY stage of the process for fan works, because concealment of this is disrespectful and hurtful. if you didn't know before, such is life. now you know.

avoid all bad faith arguments about shipping wars and witch hunts. you have nothing to fear from posts uncovering AI if you do not use undisclosed "genAI": the two works in question did. you have many things to fear from unchecked "genAI" use if you are a writer, artist, or someone who needs our planet to stay alive

the work @durgeapologist, @fangbanger3000, and others have done to raise awareness about "genAI" use in popular fan works is extremely valuable, difficult work, and does not need to be perfectly worded to be earnest, meaningful, and ultimately beneficial for fan communities

bonus point, sponsored by autism: Solas as a character draws on figures from Norse lore including Loki, god of many things including callouts and criticism of powerful systems; Odin, god of words, wisdom, poets, and uncontrollable creative inspiration; and Fenrir, wolfpup god of surviving trauma, seeking praise and social approval from the powerful only for it to result in pain, raging against the system, and freedom. IMO, if I want any character to rally people together for the sake of resisting billionaire tech companies when possible and celebrating old-fashioned creativity, it's Solas. it's in his story's DNA. whoever we want him to smooch.

[fangharel]

a last note on the ai-fic bullshit

a couple days ago, a person i had never spoken to before shared my call-out post on x with the earnest intention of spreading awareness of the issue. she was attacked and harrassed so harshly by the same group of people who have been dragging my friends and i through the mud that she ended up having to deactivate.

this group of perpetrators then did their very best to turn this whole conversation on its head by accusing the poster of being anti-solavellan, of sharing the post with malicious intentions of dividing the fandom and tearing down amateur writers, and grouping her and i/my friends as antis and what not.

my thoughts on that development aren't any that i can express with any diplomacy or maturity whatsoever, but @drakonmo herself did a wonderful job at gracefully carving out the very important conversation we, as fans, need to have within our communities. whether you observed or participated in the conversation surrounding the silence and the song and the following shitstorm, i strongly urge you to read her post (here) (on x).

tldr/to those who might be in a rush, let me pull out some highlights:

by deleting the evidence and refusing to acknowledge the public claims were ever made, these people who despise me and wanted to foment discourse could succeed, armed with the trust and respect of loyal followers.

suddenly, the entire wall of text of explanations, of signs, of concerns were reduced to nothing but one portion of the whole. people began to attack OP and me and write threads, posts, etc, saying we were insulting all creators everywhere and we were - singlehandedly - the reason people didn't share their artwork.

clearly, these people argued, this insult and injury to all writers everywhere was a sign of these posts being a hate campaign. suddenly people could completely ignore the fact that the OP is a HUGE shipper, and i have been the world's most vocal proponent of shipping the particular character with anyone and/ or everyone.

i saw some people ask questions - what's happening, what's the drama, what's the situation? and they believed blindly the first things said to them without even trying to seek the truth or sources for themselves - and i truly mean this was an issue on both sides, for both people who ultimately agreed with me and people who did not.

the people that deliberately misrepresented what was being said, who nitpicked so that they could justify choosing "us versus them" - i ask that you consider, if you can and you would like to, to internalize and reflect how you may be susceptible to situations like this happening OFFLINE.

if ONLINE FANDOM misinformation can rouse such a level of discourse, hatred, fear, and anger over a fanfiction or ship ...what are the implications for REAL LIFE?

are you possibly reading a headline and believing it without reading the full article?

are your political and personal opinions swayed heavily by your peers, rather than being shaped by information and political education?

are you well informed and checking for bias from your chosen news sources?

do you exist in an echo chamber that has actively harmed your ability to understand other perspectives and worsened your capacity for allyship?

we best fight FASCISM when we recognize how we approach the people and issues around us, no matter how small. supporting artistic integrity in your fandom is a low rung on the ladder, but your approach to a sense of community and how news, conflict, and opinions form and spread IS vital.

thank you for reading, and thank you to those who have stuck by me (and by mo) despite the backlash it might have caused you. this has been insane and i look forward to never discussing that fucking fic again, but that doesn't mean we get to turn our heads on how this all turned to shit in the first place.

as a self-proclaimed safe space often characterised by escapism, we owe it to one another to make sure this community is as safe as can be and remains one where we care for one another despite which fictional characters we think should kiss.

[himluv]

I agree with you on the Solavellan ending. I love the angst and tragedy and I'm eating the idea of Solas and Lavellan having a lot to unpack once in the fade. Dramatic confrontations, tears, breakdowns and a slow road to forgiveness,. Delicious food. But I'm really annoyed with a portion of the fandom that seems to just gloss over the fact that Solas killed Varric, someone who was always kind to Lavellan and was even her friend. And even if you don't like Varric personally he is in canon a relatively decent person who tried to reach out to Solas on a compassionate level. Then he used a blood magic puppet of him to manipulate Rook... IDK the way that seems to mean little to nothing to a lot of Solavellans kind of bothers me. I'm not here to tell anyone how they can or can't play but the takes have been so bad. The infantilization, excuses and woobification of our boy are so egregious. Solas is complex and morally gray. Why would we be going through the effort of redeeming him if he wasn't doing things that would require redemption in the first place? I've felt really disconnected from the rest of the fandom because of all of the softening of his character people have been doing and it's refreshing to hear a take from someone who loves Solas but doesn't want to defang him.

Thanks for this thoughtful reply to this post! Sorry this took awhile, but I've been thinking of what I wanted to say. Long and spoiler-riddled reply below, and I don't even know how relevant it is to your reply, Nonny. Sorry!

I think A Lot of folks have spent the last 10 years rotating him in their heads like one throws a clay pot, molding him into something he could be based on what we knew about him. But, we didn't necessarily account for the other forms he could take. And some folks are very resistant to who he's canonically become by Veilguard. Because it's not a good form, he got Worse™ in his decade away from friends and love (shocker!), and it's hard to reconcile this version of him with the ones we may have made.

I get all of that. But I also LOVE that. It means he could still surprise me, and I got to experience this weird duality of love/hate I didn't expect to feel toward him. I got to see his lies in real time, know he was lying because I KNOW HIM, and go, "oh, you little shit (affectionate)". Like, that's just FUN! Which, last time I checked was in fact the point of video games.

I love that he is unpredictable and dangerous in this game. That we finally see him go all out, and use every skill and trick he has. That is THRILLING, especially because he's more dangerous and lethal and ruthless than I personally expected. Which... Is my fault. I should have expected it, because look what he did to Felassan. Look how he so easily killed all those Qunari in Trespasser. Look what he did with those spirits of chaos and disruption. Look what he did to the Titans! I should have known better, the games and books showed me time and again what he was capable of. I just didn't want to believe it.

I've seen some posts talking about how Lavellan approaches Solas at the very last confrontation. How carefully she goes up the stairs towards him. I've seen several interpretations of it, but there's one I haven't seen (which could be because I'm not hanging out in the Solavellan tag much these days).

She takes those stairs slowly, as if approaching a spooked horse, because the last time someone climbed a set of stairs to talk him down from his ritual, he killed them. And I don't think for one second Lavellan believes, if she handles this poorly, he won't do the same to her.

And I think she is 100% right. He would, perhaps on "accident" as he claims to Neve was the case with Varric (debatable - seemed pretty intentional if maybe a bit impulsive from here). But I firmly believe there is a world where Solas would stab his vhenan if he had to and certain conditions hadn't been met (and yes that would utterly destroy him).

She walks up those stairs to him, her vhenan, knowing this is it. Their final stand. She will save him from himself, whatever it takes, and she is prepared to die at his hands if it comes to that. And it so easily COULD HAVE.

I don't know. I just think that Veilguard gave us SO MUCH more insight into Solas and there's so much there to chew on. I think we're going to be able to go back through all the games and codices and so many little details are going to fit together and complete a puzzle we didn't even know we were making.

After all of this, I still have so much to think on 😂. I'm going to be living in Thedas for another decade at this rate!

Good. I don't ever want to leave.

[shoutydwarf]

and i KNOW that this discussion is eventually going to evolve into solavellans/solas lovers coping by making theories on how the titans were the villains somehow. i've already seen it starting - here and there, little throwaway vent posts. shit like "the titans attacked them first" (no they didnt). and they're going to latch onto these hallucinations so fiercely they'll have the audacity to come into other people's spaces and wave it around like it's canon, like how they've done the past 10 years re: solas tearing down the veil where they somehow got the idea that his plan was a good thing. or that one person hallucinating justifications for his racism towards qunari and dwarves.

i gain nothing by predicting this, i also cant stop it, we already got doofuses on twitter with 8k followers romanticizing the genocide for the angle of "solas crafted a body just so he could touch lavellan". i just hope DA is like well and truly dead to me before it begins in earnest

[venatorisms]

If you're someone who is critical of solavellan or of its shippers, there's something that I am going to say that will probably upset some of you.

I genuinely think that a lot (not all) of the negativity surrounding Solavellan shippers is due to a bunch of things: Misogyny, bias, over-surveillance, and outright jealousy.

The tendency to blame every negative aspect of this fandom on solavellans instead of thinking critically about WHY a lot of issues happen in the first place and WHY these issues within the fandom are only largely focused on when a solavellan shipper is involved is something that needs to be talked about. Especially when there have been many, MANY instances of non-solavellans that have conducted much worse behaviors within fandom spaces, but none of it is spoken about or broadcasted on a larger scale. Even then, a lot of these instances (again, not all), are sometimes blown out of proportion, are extremely exaggerated in order to fit the narrative of the "crazy solavellan shipper" narrative, or are ignoring crucial context that exposes what led up to certain things being done and said.

Do I deny that there are some crazy shippers out there? Absolutely not. Do I deny that there are some shippers that have done bad things in the name of solavellan? Absolutely not. Do I think that the treatment of solavellan shippers is a bit ridiculous? Absolutely yes. The misogyny and bigotry that I mentioned stems a lot from how people talk about Inquisitors that are shipped with solas, the "Mary Sue" complaints, the harassment against queer POC who love the ship, the erasure of queer POC, the push of the stereotypical "crazy fangirl" stigma, and the tendency of fandoms in general to attack anything that involves a ship that is popular among women in a fandom (Cullenquisitor is a prime example of this; Anyone who was on tumblr during the inquisition era knows how poorly cullen lovers and cullenmancers were treated).

Let me be very clear that no one is saying that you HAVE to like the ship, no one is saying that you're misogynistic for not liking the ship, and no one is saying that solavellans haven't done anything wrong in the name of Solas or the ship. I am only pointing out that the problem isn't just among the shippers.

[inanshalla]

I wish some s0lavellans would admit they hate mythal and make her out to be this evil master manipulator without remorse because they are really jealous that solas actually legitimately loved her. Regardless of what you feel for the relationship solas and mythal have a very very strong, unbreakable bond that lavellan could and can never break.

Whether yall think it’s platonic or romantic is immaterial as it’s obvious yall see it as romantic because the vitriolic misogyny against mythal is proof of that.

I’m supposed to believe that a year spent with lavellan where he was pretending to be someone else supersedes the centuries he spent with mythal where he was “solas” first because she used his wisdom for war, “turning him against his purpose” when solas manipulates the inquisitor (including a romanced lavellan) from the very beginning to achieve his goal of avenging another woman?

okay