Some Idiot: Solas Deserves To Die.

“I cannot kill the blight, but I can help to soothe its anger. I will go and seek atonement”

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The Dread Wolf's Eyes

Senior Character Artist Lauren Kelly: "I created the face for Solas in Dragon Age: The Veilguard. Responsible for the highres sculpt, bakes, textures, and wrinkle/tension maps. Blendshapes created by the talented Jill Harrington and EA Create team." [source]

“DATV is about hope and is escapist” then why is the story retroactively trying to paint Solas, the only person of the Evanuris who used his power and privilege to help end slavery and liberate the elves, as a prideful arrogant self-centered bastard who secretly loved being worshipped as a god when every single thing he has ever said and done contradicts those assumptions made by the Veilguard companions.

Oh I’m sorry, do you think slave rebellions can be accomplished through peaceful means? Through purely decentralized anarchist uprisings? Are we trying to argue that Solas didn’t rebel the “correct way”? Are we trying to argue that Solas actually wanted to be worshipped as a god by those he freed. Solas, a man who wanted nothing more than to be a spirit of Wisdom and act as nothing more than an entity that would help people act and think mindfully?

The game’s dialogue for the companions tries to make it out like Solas enjoyed being a rebellion leader, rather than it being one of the most frustrating and agonizing and embittering experiences of his existence. The game is so clumsy that is seems to imply that Solas trying to do right by the elves with the rebellion was another mistake on his part, as if someone trying to fight for the rights of an oppressed people is something that is ever a mistake one could make.

Real liberal (derogatory) hours here. Even at your most uncharitable—Solas helped give the elves bodies and helped the Evanuris secure their power—he was trying to correct that mistake and was the only one of the Evanuris that was actively doing so. Mythal was dragging her ass the entire fucking time trying to be a fence-sitting centrist that thought you could actually parley and negotiate with slave owners. Oh but wait, Veilguard conveniently proves you can! Just look at Dorian! Apparently all you needed to dismantle centuries upon centuries of brutal inhumane slavery was a dandy saying “please let the slaves go” and everything is all but resolved in ten fucking years. Solas, why didn’t you try taaaalking to the blood magic warmongering slave sacrificing Evanuris? Maybe things would’ve gone better if you’d just asked nicely 🥺

Veilguard tries to go the “Solas is corrupting into Pride” and they botched it so terribly. Solas is prideful, but the writers made him out like his problem was a secret vanity or desire for power. No, his problem was that he thought he was correct. That is a 100000% entirely different issue and it shows that the writers have no concept of nuance for psychology or even what Wisdom and even Pride are. And for people to swallow “Wow Solas was just a power-hungry arrogant bastard all along” is like reading Go Set a Watchman by Harper Lee —the abandoned prototype of To Kill a Mockingbird that was meant to remain an unused manuscript—and thinking that is the real story and everything established in TKaM about Atticus Finch was just smoke and mirrors. Like come the fuck on.

Solas’s issue is that as a mortal he is inundated with mortal feelings that interfere with the purity of Wisdom. All mortals have levels of dignity and pride that are inextricably linked and mutually dependent to their recognition of their own personhood. Self-esteem, if you will. Wisdom is the act of deliberating and determining and enacting the best—most morally correct, most benign, most benign, most “good”—course of action in a scenario based on an aggregation of information and experiences. Solas’s “Pride” and biggest flaw is that he believes his judgments are the most objectively correct or best because this guy has spent tens of thousands of years watching and observing and experiencing people make the same mistakes over and over, behave in similar cyclical predictable ways in matters of love, power, violence, hatred, greed, tyranny, cruelty, ignorance, oppression, pride, grief, etc. Because Wisdom is derived from being able to apply knowledge and history and experience to solve a present problem, Solas naturally thinks he’s no spring chicken to all this and that he’s got a better grasp than most. Where Wisdom turns into Pride is the nature of the mortal mind, which for many likes to rely on rules of thumb and shortcuts and patterns to solve issues. While this is present in the dissemination of Wisdom, the flipside is that it can leave one vulnerable to stubbornness and partiality to one’s viewpoint regardless of new developments. Again, the mortal mind likes shortcuts because it saves time. Puzzling out whether this person or that scenario is truly uniquely unique every single time, wastes time. This is how presumptions and stereotypes arise. That Solas could only observe modern Thedas through what was reflected in the Fade gave him a half-understanding of people. That he chose to develop a resentment toward the Dalish after one bad encounter and remain detached from other races before joining the Inquisition meant he had fallen prey to these intellectual pitfalls, which is the result of his mortal nature interfering with his Wisdom nature.

Solas has never wanted to rule over people. He has never once wanted to be worshipped even at his most manipulative and Machiavellian. He wants to sit under a tree in the summer and discuss idly whether fire could be considered alive and if good requires evil to exist and the pros and cons of allowing collective memory to remain unchallenged.

Like of all things, the butchering of Solas’s character pisses me off to no end. Dislike him if you want, hate him if you want, but don’t for a second try to misconstrue that his problem is that he has secret aspirations for godhood. Does he think ancient elves are a superior race? There are definitely indications. But he doesn’t think of himself as someone to be worshipped by anyone, least of all other elves. Very huge distinction.

They didn't let Solas interact with Kieran in dai bc he'd smell the June on him and have a melt down thinking about their own parallels and also Kieran would doxx him on fantasy roblox by accident

I feel like something that’s obvious but nobody’s actually pointed out is that the Blight (which we now know to be corrupted Titan spirits/Titan nightmares) perpetually creates darkspawn to replace the dwarves. The dwarves used to be some kind of vast, populous hivemind before they were severed from their dreams/the Titans, and the Titan’s spirits were separated from the Stone, yeah? Dwarves practically WERE an extension of the Titans until that point. Point to Inquisition dialogue where Solas describes them as a “severed arm”. But once those two separations happened, the Blight had to create new bodies to maintain the structural integrity of isunatoll/the song, now that the two were separated. The darkspawn are a lesser hivemind because the Blight/the Titans no longer have access to the dwarves. And the darkspawn are typically mindless + hostile because the severed spirits/dreams that are attempting to pilot them have gone mad with rage from the sheer violence and isolation of the mutilation they’ve experienced. It’s astounding writing and worldbuilding. But in Veilguard all we got was “oh the darkspawn aren’t people” :) :) :)

UHM EXCUSE ME but did any of you know that the elven woman from that Gaatlok barrel scene in Trespasser who turns out to be one of Solas’ agents is present in that very last cutscene at the Winter Palace when the Inquisitor declares the future of the Inquisition, standing all by herself behind a pillar in the back corner of the room eavesdropping without anyone noticing….. or was I supposed to discover this with the flycam just now???

BioWare posted this dreadpuppy sticker in their Discord and I had to rush to draw the dreadpuppy