#talking about solavellan deranges me… this is not who i am! (it is)

[kissingwookiees]

i am firmly in the camp of solas and lavellan never boinking 🫡 which makes 9 years of that singular hang up funny to me

[seeker-ophelia]

But wait there's more.

Forewarned,

#Long Post, and also a (bad) Literary Analysis by an Electrician.

Okay, I've been in angst for so long I re-watched a much of older Jane Austin moves on Netflix and... you guys... they're all solavellan.

Solas & Predjudice

A slew of miscommunications and “prejudices” cause a kerfuffle for the Bennet family. The main couple, Elizabeth and Mr. Darcy, eventually find love after throwing away their pride, and the prejudices they heard about the other from untrustworthy sources. All of the attraction between the two is conveyed without them touching, halted broken voices, the infamous “hand,” etc.

Austen is thought to have taken her title from a passage in Fanny Burney's Cecilia (1782), a novel she is known to have admired: "The whole of this unfortunate business," said Dr Lyster, "has been the result of PRIDE and PREJUDICE. ... if to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you owe your miseries, so wonderfully is good and evil balanced, that to PRIDE and PREJUDICE you will also owe their termination."

The American novelist Anna Quindlen observed in an introduction to an edition of Austen's novel in 1995: Pride and Prejudice is also about that thing that all great novels consider, the search for self. And it is the first great novel that teaches us this search is as surely undertaken in the drawing room making small talk  (hello, DragonAge Dialogue) as in the pursuit of a great white whale...

Next is Jane Eyre, in which the male Protag, Edward, might be the best comparison to Solas I can imagine.

Jane (well spoken, soft, witty, good, kind) falls in love with a loner but rich landowner (Edward). There is something fishy about him tho, we are led to believe there's something dangerous/off about him, if he is housing a demon/animal, or is in fact a demon himself. They attempt to marry, but the ceremony is stopped. Its discovered "the demon" is his wife, a mentally unstable woman who Edward married to save. He literally calls her “My own demon.” He wants to protect this deranged woman (out of duty? misplaced duty?) but loves Jane deeply. Jane runs away, makes a life for herself, feel guilt, then goes back to him to find his house burned, the woman dead, and Edward blind. They kiss, you assume happy ending.

Edward thought to protect Jane by NOT FUCKING TALKING TO HER Bro like come on what are you even... like you should have fucking told her. Gods damn it Solas Edward just use your outdoor voice and talk to the pretty lady.

They do end up together, but only after Edward has gone through great physical and emotional strife, pretty much of his own doing, I think we can all agree.

And I'd be remis to not talk about Persuasion, because the scene is set so perfectly for Veilguard.

In Persuasion, the book starts up several years after protag Anne breaks off her Engagement with Love Interest (TM) Captain Frederick Wentworth.

Once AGAIN, through NOT FUCKING TALKING TO EACH OTHER, they think the other has moved on, and they try not to intrude on the others life. But (in the movie), Wentworth writes her a beautiful confession letter, which I will put here with some *minor* modifications:

Dearest Inquisitor Levellan, I can listen no longer in silence. Vhenan, you pierce my soul. Dare not say that man forgets sooner than woman, that his love has an earlier death. I am half agony, half hope. I know too much time has passed, and you have moved on, but I will never forgive myself if I do not tell you this. You alone have brought me to heel. For you alone, I think and plan. But of course, you have not seen this, how could you? Because your love has not lasted as long as mine. Vhenan, I have loved no one but you and I don’t think I ever will. I have thought many times about how to tell you this. But the pain of a love unrequited (except for Soals it’s the pain of perceived duty/guilt) rendered me silent.  Tell me not that I am too late. My love for you has never faltered. Yours, eternal, Solas Fen’Harel What is even your real name just tell me cuz its NOT FUCKING WISDOM YOU DUMB EGG

Solas is so ANCIENT, and GDL voices him SO WELL, with that welsh-tinge, its so hard NOT to put this love story in with the romance classics. Especially with the main theme being JUST TALK TO EACH OTHER YOU FUCKING IDIOTS.

I am just hoping and praying and huffing that copium that we get a happy ending, and not a sad one.

Or even better, through our interactions with Solas' memories, that we get to choose.

remember recent posts about that scene?

it was mostly about a solavellan reunion

it suddenly hit me and unblocked a bonus fear: solavellan ending just like in the movie/book. like a bit melancholic yet happy ending in which love wins and future seems much brighter than before and... then you found out it isn't real, it's just a story told by someone else as a try to make things right for them and bring a happiness because they deserved it even if the reality was never kind to them.

Varric, a storyteller, if you will try to make this Atonement thing to me, I will find you and I will kill you.

Movie: "Atonement", 2007

Book: "Atonement", Ian McEwan, 2001