#the convert spoilers

[fanfoolishness]

What's holding Din back?

I sat down to try and write some fic for the new season, but so far, I'm fresh out of ideas for Din... mainly because I'm unclear of what's going on in his head these days.

On the surface, he has everything he could possibly want.

Grogu is back with him! Din was clearly thrilled to have him back in their reunion in TBoBF, and his pride for Grogu shines through in all of their interactions.

He has the Darksaber! It's been liberated from a non-Mandalorian enemy, and is back safely in Mandalorian hands.

With the help of his ally Bo-Katan, he's bathed in the Living Waters of the Mines of Mandalore and been redeemed in the eyes of his people, who have accepted him back with open arms and no further questions on his transgressions. Even better, Bo-Katan has joined his covert as a skilled warrior he respects. The Armorer is treating Grogu as one of their people, and Din is even getting along with Paz Viszla.

So why do things feel off?

Paz Viszla, who has the emotional range of a brick, explains to Din (possibly his least favorite fellow Mandalorian) that the foundling they are seeking to rescue is his son. Bo-Katan calls Din Grogu's Dad in all of their conversations. Grogu is trying his best to learn to talk, and Dad is an extremely reasonable guess for one of his first words.

Din... calls himself Grogu's ward. Not his dad, his guardian, his father. Just ward, an archaic word for protection. Grogu is a foundling. Not his foundling.

Why?

And why does he struggle so badly with the Darksaber? We've only seen him use it a few times; the only time that barely approached competence was when he used it on Tatooine, but even on sacred Mandalore itself, his mind focused on redemption and the history of his people, it would not obey him. The Armorer told him the Darksaber responds to his mind and its distractions. Why would he be distracted then, on his path to achieve his goal to honor his Mandalorian culture? Will we see next week that he's suddenly super proficient with it? It's possible, but I doubt it -- otherwise, why make such a big deal of his incredible skill in other areas contrasted with his clumsiness with the Darksaber? I really hope they're going somewhere interesting with this.

...Just like I wish this meta was going somewhere. But I can't get it there because I genuinely don't know what's wrong with him. Why can't he claim Grogu as his own after everything? Is that why he struggles with the Darksaber, because he's not accepting fatherhood? Why wouldn't he? Fear, memories of trauma... what could it be?

Talk me through it, folks. Reblog with your theories or ideas and help me figure this out!

(Of course, bad or inconsistent writing could certainly be the explanation for all of this, it is Star Wars after all and we all know it ain't that deep. But for the sake of argument, let's pretend that's off the table, haha!)

[gmariam19]

Spoilers for The Mandalorian, S3E3...

Once again, spoilers for The Convert...

I spent this whole episode trying to make connections. I'm not sure if I should be, but I feel like the show is in a time period that is the right time period to start setting up certain aspects of events in the sequel trilogy. So my thoughts bounced between two things: one, that Dr Pershing is going to have something to do with the clones of Snoke and the Emperor. (and thus Rey's father - maybe he already did?!) And two, that the mind-flayer at the end could end up leading to the conditioning programs used on First Order troopers.

It seems fairly obvious that Kane was not as innocent as she seemed, even when she turned out to be 'working' with the New Republic. No, she's definitely a double agent, and what if whatever she is doing is precursor to the First Order? Whether she is working for Gideon or - even better, Thrawn - either way it all ends up with the Emperor puppeting the First Order.

It's out there, somewhere. Pretty soon, Finn will be born and taken into the First Order trooper program. In fact, Favreau said this season is now 11ABY - the year Finn is born. He was taken as a 3 year old. So the First Order must be organizing somewhere and developing the conditioning programs they use to brainwash their stolen children. Maybe this episode is part of that.

The fact that The March of the Resistance was playing in the background on Coruscant while Kane was ensnaring Pershing seems deliberate. It's like it's hinting at the First Order by using the theme of the Resistance. Plus her own music was sort of dark and broody like the dark side.

Personally, I had really hoped for a connection to Yavin 4 and the death of Poe Dameron's mother, but that seems unlikely now. The show started in 8ABY and Shara Bey died in 10ABY (when Poe was eight). Since Favreau said it's now 11ABY, that window has probably passed. But what I wouldn't give for a visit to Yavin and a meeting with a sad veteran and his 9 year old son.

I missed seeing Din and Grogu in this episode but as long as we don't get too many of these big diversions, and as long as it all comes together, I'm in. And if Thrawn shows up to throw us a bone for Ahsoka, I'm screaming.

[askfordoodles]

"Young man, you cut that tsundere bullshit, I know what you're doing, I wasn't born yesterday." - Secret Brat Tamer Volkarin

[ohmyglobwhatthefrickamievendoing]

The fact that izzy apparently just hangs out in stede's room doing his own thing is so funny because what's he gonna do when stede&ed start fucking?? they're gonna have to lock him out of the bedroom like the family dog that's yowling at the door

[egophiliac]

(almost) four years in, and I finally had time to draw something for the anniversary! woo! 🎉🎉🎉

[ansburg]

Now, perhaps we might try a more — intimate style.

[feelo-fick]

chilaios telepathy compilation. btw.

also these ones arent telepathy i just think its fun that they defend eachother + are on the same page about alchohol :

[poohbea]

TOJI FUSHIGURO | JJK S2 Trailer

[schizononagesimus]

yo can we actually talk about harrow's blood face paint and veil at the beginning of htn for a sec. i know a lot of people poke fun at it but for me as someone who grew up in a veiling religion with the constant threat of that veil being taken away it's like... not being able to wear that veil IN FRONT OF PEOPLE? that's like being naked before god. it is terrifying and traumatic to not be able to wear a veil or other religious garments. at the end of the day it's not even about god specifically, like i could meet god and even if he said to take off the veil i wouldn't, because it's for me. it's for her before it's for god. i felt for harrow so hard at that part of the book and i get that she's just a scrungle but i would love if we could portray occasionally the nauseating forced vulnerability and sense of injustice you would feel at your religion being stripped from you.

[boatswainscall]

In regards to the Technocyte Coda lore we got from the computer near Aoi, not only is it brilliant satire its also SO much worse than if the boys had been afflicted with the Techrot themselves.

Because the Techrot, like the Infestation back in the Origin system, is a fully sentient and sapient hive mind (as directly seen in the Hex quest with Eleanor's segment). So this music label essentially forced idealized identities and personalities onto different manifestations of Techrot, basically (attempting) to erase their true nature and presumably severing them from the collective in order to better shape each into a perfect copy of each of the members of On-lyne.

All so they could keep a tight leash on the boys in regards to their public presentation. All for profit.

It's SO fucked and I LOVE IT.

[ryssabrin]

i feel like people who don’t like solas or solavellan have such a warped perspective of what the romance is and how fans of it actually engage in it. like i’ve seen a lot of (most likely het dudes lol) on reddit say they tried it to see what the fuss was but felt it was “demeaning” and i’ve seen it described as literally a horror story where solas is manipulating and using and lying to a young impressionable lavellan who gives up her entire identity for him and becomes a complete doormat to all the awful shit he does. that’s never been my experience and i kinda just want to ramble about how i see it and what i find romantic about it?

so full disclosure, if veilguard had come out a few years ago with how they portrayed lavellan and solavellan i might have been pretty disappointed. i think there is a subset of the solavellan fanbase that likes the wolf/halla or student/professor thing and they play their lavellan younger and agreeing almost without question to everything solas says. i see the appeal but i never played my lavellan that way and i really like the dynamic of it when lavellan actually goes against his advice at times. solas is a character that needs to have his preconceived biases questioned. especially in inquisition when he’s still coming to terms with the fact that the modern people of thedas are in fact people lol. so i was concerned at the prospect of my lavellan being taken out of my hands and having to listen to her make excuses for him and submit to everything he says. (which tbf i don’t think is how she actually comes across in dav, but that was a worry.)

however when i replayed my canon dai run this year, i realized i was closer to the age i always saw my lavellan as (early 30s), and as my lavellan is probably the bioware pc i’ve always played closest to my own personality, i took the opportunity to tweak her a bit and make some different choices. i’ve (hopefully lol) matured and grown a lot since i was 24 and so rather than going for the snarky sarcastic cool girl vibes i opted to play her with more diplomatic and caring choices. it made me see the solas romance in a completely new light. rather than some sort of student/professor dynamic or a pride and prejudice-esque rivals-to-lovers vibe where lavellan is fighting for his respect the whole time, what stuck out to me was how much their connection builds simply because lavellan is kind to solas. she hears him out when he wants to give his opinions and advice, she respects his expertise on the fade and spirits, and she offers him comfort and friendship when she sees he needs it. she impresses him because he finds himself wanting to indulge in her closeness. he finds a connection to someone he never expected to and it makes him rethink everything about the broken state he put the world in.

it’s worth noting that lavellan is always making the first move. she kisses him first, she pursues him. he tries to brush off the kiss as a spontaneous lapse in judgement and she doesn't let him. he only ever gives in to her advances, he doesn't make them himself. he calls their relationship "selfish" on his end. he knows he shouldn't be encouraging her but he can't help but long for her companionship. that being said though if lavellan shuts it down he respects it. he probably feels a little relief because the temptation is now out of his hands lol.

i feel like there’s also this perception that he’s constantly shitting on the dalish while lavellan just has to put up with it and that alone is reason enough to find the relationship demeaning. he mentions the dalish in one optional conversation chain where you ask him for his opinion on the state of the elves and then in the balcony scene where he realizes he’s misjudged the inquisitor after his personal quest. in both instances, lavellan can stick up for the dalish. in the optional conversation, lavellan can say that if solas had a bad experience with a clan once (which we know from dav is exactly what happened lol), that she’d like to correct that misunderstanding about her people.

it's worth noting as well that lavellan doesn't know solas is the dread wolf when he's criticizing the dalish. from her perspective, he's essentially a city-born elf who had some dalish look down their nose at him for not being a "true elf" like they are, something that not only happens in canon throughout the games and lavellan would be aware of, but literally happens to solas specifically, right in front of you. he doesn't say a single word to mihris and she doesn't know a thing about him other than his face is bare and thus feels comfortable referring to him with what is essentially a slur. but rather than confront her directly about it he just passive aggressively speaks to her in elven almost exclusively for the rest of the quest lol.

far from the dynamic being that lavellan is just putting up with someone talking down to her about her culture, i think it's reasonable to see her view is more that they're both members of the same marginalized group, but from different cultures. his position in criticizing the dalish is not punching down it's lateral. she loves her culture, but is able to recognize it has flaws and not every member in it treats other cultures well, particularly even when they're from the same marginalized group. (and it's also just really meaningful that the first "flirt" option you get in the solas romance is lavellan recognizing that solas has put himself in a very vulnerable position as an elven apostate joining the chantry-led inquisition and with whatever power she has she will make sure that it's not held against him.)

i do think the writing conveys that he does have his mind changed about the dalish at least a little bit, but one of his pet peeves is when people are ignorant and refuse any information that challenges their worldview. as a manifested wisdom spirit, it is a particular sticking point to him to not be listened to when he is providing knowledge. i think criticism of how he is towards the dalish is lacking without taking into account his nature as a spirit. obvs we didn’t know that in dai but we do now. when wisdom isn't listened to it turns to pride. "i told you so," "i'll prove i'm right," "you should have listened to me," etc. etc. he got his feelings hurt when the dalish didn't believe him (and according to dav, literally tried to kill him) and his ego's held a grudge ever since.

when it comes to the vallaslin, to me it’s less about solas wanting to dismantle part of dalish culture (he offers no actual opinion on the dalish during that scene) and more that it clearly bothers him a lot that he fought so hard to free the elves from slavery and the one community of elves that’s closest to the descendants of the people he wanted to free still wears tattoos honoring the very tyrants he wanted to free them from. if lavellan says she wants to keep them and that the dalish reclaimed them and they mean something else to her, he doesn’t argue. i actually don’t like that solas’s post breakup banter with cole implies that lavellan thinks he might have broken up with her over the vallaslin. it’s putting thoughts in the head of my character that i personally don’t see her having. the way the breakup plays out, there’s not a single indication that it has anything to do with the vallaslin. i like to pick the “i believe in us” option because it shows lavellan having some idea that there’s something solas isn’t telling her and that’s the main reason he’s walking away. and the irony of course is that we learn in dav that that was the moment he came the closest to just giving up everything to just be with her.

so when i played through dav with my solasmance lavellan and she talks about what drew her to him it all just felt so right. he was kind and wise and sad but he made her feel like she was the only thing that mattered to him. (and that was very almost true!) there was a passion and intensity to their relationship that made her think he was the person she wanted to be with forever. when she says "i thought i would have followed anywhere he asked me to" you could read it as her saying she would have joined him in tearing down the veil if he asked and depending on your lavellan that might be true (though in the next bit she talks about how she would have been trying to change his mind anyways). but you could also read it as what her mindset was while she was with him during dai. before joining the inquisition, she knew him to be someone that traveled the world looking for lost secrets and history. why would she not have wanted to join him in that? is that not something you do when you're in love with someone?

something else that i find really compelling about solavellan is how solas relates to the inquisitor (not just lavellan) as a figurehead stripped of their personal identity. he knows from personal experience exactly what that's like. in the romances (not just solas's), the inquisitor is able to find someone that knows and cares for them for who they are, not what they represent. this aspect of the inquisitor's arc is honestly why i like keeping the vallaslin. my lavellan wants people to be able to look at her as the inquisitor and see a dalish elf. it's one small act of defiance and in reclaiming her own narrative. so thinking about what she might want to do after her responsibilities to the inquisition are over, it's reasonable to think she might want to just go wherever solas goes? because she loves him and feels like herself around him. even her asking him to let her come with him in trespasser feels more motivated by the fact that lavellan sees solas isolating himself and closing himself off and she's sad about it because she cares about him. that was why she wanted to grow close to him in the first place.

and i genuinely don't think it's all that wild that lavellan still holds a torch for solas 10 years later. i personally was friends with this guy in high school i always had a crush on, and towards the end of senior year it looked like it could actually end up turning into something. but then he immediately left for a summer abroad after graduation and eventually moved out of the country full time for school. we kept in touch off and on and caught up when he was in town, but nothing romantic ever happened. for years after i would catch myself thinking every so often what could have been and what he was up to. for solavellan, they were actually together. they had mutually expressed feelings and though their time together was maybe a few months at most, it was intense and passionate. they split up not because anyone's feelings changed, but because of solas's baggage. it's really not unrealistic for lavellan to continue wondering to herself what would have happened if he had been honest with her sooner. if she could have convinced him to change course. and it's not like she has the luxury of retiring and just not thinking about him anymore. that's not a conscious manipulation on solas's part to string her along, that's just the reality of their situation.

and even with all that in mind, in dav lavellan is still able to have the self-awareness to understand that the good in him that she believes exists and all that they had together and what she meant to him could all just be wishful thinking on her part. that she's giving him the benefit of the doubt "imagining his broken heart" when he doesn't deserve it because it makes her feel less foolish. she's not blindly faithful to him. i just loved everything about that scene and every word out of my lavellan's mouth felt spot on and perfect for how i saw their relationship. i could not have been more relieved lol.

as for the ending, i really really dislike the bad faith read that the only thing that matters is mythal and that he somehow loves mythal more and if that weren't true then lavellan alone would be able to convince him to stop. varric says about solas that he wants to be a hero, but it's easier for him to play the villain because it means he didn't fail, everything bad he's done is a choice. once you've done one bad thing, betrayed one friend, manipulated and sacrificed some pawns, committed one lil genocide, etc. lmao, it becomes easier to do it again. you've already crossed your moral event horizon and now you just have to find an end that justifies the means of all your misdeeds. what i've said about solas before is that what's frustrating is that he does genuinely feel remorse about the shit he does, but he needs to believe it's necessary and he will keep doing it. he needs to believe it will all be worth it in the end. it's not that he thinks feeling sorry makes up for it necessarily, but that he had to do it. he had to be the one taking on all of the bad things to hopefully one day do a good thing and it will all work out.

(as a side note when solas says "i would not have you see what i become" in trespasser i always thought that meant he was going to resort to some awful corruptive magic or something but it turns out what he actually meant was "i'm about to be a real asshole and do some incredibly awful things and i don't want you to see that side of me" which is much sadder.)

so when rook says "you don't have to do this" solas counters with "i've betrayed and fucked over and killed so many people who trusted me and if i stop i will have done that for nothing." so then the inquisitor jumps in with "as one of those people, i'm telling you that you can stop." but then we get to the heart of it. he thinks he failed mythal when she died the first time and was unwilling to listen to her as flemeth. he needs to make that mean something. he needs to justify to himself what mythal made him into. so he needs to hear from his mythal, not morrigan's mythal who has the benefit of the wisdom and hindsight centuries of living among mortals gave her, but his mythal, the one closest to who she was when she died that what he is is broken. that she's the one that broke him and he alone doesn't have to bear the weight of everything he did because of her. it's not about loving her, it's about the specific relationship he had with her. with that baggage unpacked, he's not only able to let go of his prideful need to prove himself right by tearing down the veil, he's also free to choose what he always really wanted: lavellan.

and still! yet again! he does not ask or assume anything on her part. she offers! of her own free will. something that really rustles my jimmies about a lot of solavellan criticism is that people act like lavellan has no agency. that she couldn't possibly make the choices she does of her own accord and it has to be solas manipulating her. that has never rang true to me at all. she always made the first move. i think this more uncharitable read might unfortunately be encouraged by how many actual solavellan shippers play into the wolf/halla thing but i personally don't think that's the dynamic that weekes actually wrote. it is lavellan that pursues solas, not the other way around. and weekes was honestly so careful in how they wrote the romance so that when solas's identity and plans are revealed, it doesn't feel like he intentionally tricked you or took advantage. i actually really like the ambiguity of whether or not they slept together because to me it does feel like that's a line solas wouldn't cross, but i get why that doesn't matter as much to other solasmancers.

i also think there's this perception that solavellan is a ship with an unhealthy power dynamic that needs to be "fixed" in some way or at the very least apologized for before you're allowed to like it. for me it's honestly kind of the appeal? not that there's some goofy dom/sub thing going on lol but that in spite of how "superior" solas may or may not feel to lavellan and the modern elves, he still falls hook line and fucking sinker for her. lavellan has so much more power in the relationship than she realizes. she changes his entire perspective on modern elves and his ultimate goals so bad he had a complete crisis of faith and had to run as far away from her as he could. how could he have broken the world so badly he needs to catastrophically break it again to fix it if it could create someone like her? someone he wants and cares for so desperately? it's the push and pull of him trying to stay away but selfishly indulging as long as he can that's so juicy to me! it's so good and i just wish other people could see that, even if they don't care for the character.

anyways. i don't have a conclusion. i don't want anyone to think i'm vaguing about them. this is honestly the result of some thoughts that have been brewing for a while and a lot of common criticisms i've seen over the years. i didn't want to respond directly to anyone in particular bc i learned my lesson about not doing that waaay back in the shenko fandom iykyk lol. i just really like the ship! i think it's tragic and romantic and lovely and poetic and mythological and all that good stuff. it humanizes solas as a character and makes me think about empathy and compassion and how much faith you can have in someone if you love them. or how it might feel to sacrifice love for something you think you need to do, only to ultimately realize you never did and find that love patiently waiting for you to get your shit together. or to love someone and know they love you back and that they love you so much they had to leave or they would have given up everything they thought they needed for you and then to be able to actually get through to them and get them back. "she could save him if he'd only just let her"! it's a very niche wish fulfillment fantasy and it's me! i'm the fan being serviced!

[auuwmk]

Elixir Maker

[thejubileeline]

Eco-pacifist

[arlathen]

every other party member: im cursed. im going to die. im owned by someone much more powerful than me. my days are numbered for one reason or another -- the tadpole is only the latest life threatening circumstance.

halsin: i like whittling ducks :)

[emoanemo]

sunday cutscene highlights → ver 2.2: then wake to weep

[qquell]

buddy comes back to life. met helio and realizes what a douche he is. worships cassandra