My name is Pris, and this is my gaming blog. Originally made this blog for the Sims but I've since branched out in playing many other games. Obsessed with Dragon Age, Warframe and I love Solavellan.
I commissioned this piece from the unbelievably talented Hotwe, who is one of the most intelligent, thoughtful, deliberate artists I've ever had the pleasure of working with. I cannot express how grateful I am for the kindness shown towards my imaginary dolls at every step of this process. Thank you! <3
This is a paired piece to this one, also by Hotwe, which I commissioned immediately after finishing Inquisition for the first time. Once I finished Veilguard and filled out how the story ends for these two, I knew I desperately wanted the other half of this diptych.
Close-ups and lengthy notes on the incorporated symbolism are below the cut.
Where the first piece was much more somber and determined, I really wanted this moment to feel triumphant (if not unreservedly happy). These are two people at the end of a long war with each other, and moving forward doesn't mean erasing the road before.
Some notes in no particular order:
Solas's hands are now open, releasing the hard and inflexible grip he had in the original piece
The constellation is Fervenial, the Oak, for its associated concept of Vir Tanadhal: "fly straight and don't waver, bend but never break, and the idea of balance. ...The imagery of the hunter (Adahla) metaphorically striking like a bolt on Solas' plans and forcing a reframing of the lightning/smite-y/fate concept of Fulmenos into a concept of balance and growth/organic/spring" - straight from the artist's massive brain
(I've written about why constellations & stars, especially Fulmenos, are important to them here)
Red embrium leaves for healing
Spring growth for seasonal change
Solas, being pushed forward by the strong wind behind him, is finally able to stop thanks to Adahla's pressure
Adahla's dress is inspired by this statue (San Joaquín, Santa Ana y la Virgen Niña by Juan Alonso Villabrille y Ron), but has been reworked with Dragon Age motifs and emblems
The gold vines are from my post-Veilguard fic for them, The Heart Where I Have Roots
I plan to do one more post with both of these pieces together as soon as I can; their journey's been messy to the max, but it honestly brings me so much joy to know they've landed somewhere like this, and I'm again so thankful to Hotwe for bringing that ended war to life.
There are several conversations before this where Lavellan and Solas grow closer, but I still think the conversation after she returns from the time-travel incident feels especially meaningful.
Lavellan does not simply say, “You’re special.” Instead, she tells him he is “not most people.” And somehow, I think that is exactly the kind of compliment that would reach Solas in this moment.
She even says she appreciates him not being most people.
Because after waking from uthenera, Solas must have known the loneliness of not being most people. He woke into a world that no longer remembered the truth he knew. When he tried to tell modern elves about the past, about the Veil, about being Fen’Harel, they did not believe him. He was even attacked for it.
So when Lavellan says she appreciates him not being most people, it feels like a quiet reversal of that loneliness.
The very thing that has isolated him — his difference, his distance from the world around him — is, for a moment, treated as something precious.
She is saying she is glad he is not like everyone else.
Glad that he is, in some quiet way, himself.
Maybe that’s a bit much, lol. But still.
And Solas, of course, answers by lightly deflecting with a joke about Orlesian fashion and magical surprises. But I think the softness still lands.
On the surface, it is such a quiet flirtation, carried through an intellectual exchange. But underneath, I feel like it touches something much older and lonelier in him.
"I'm lying to you but this sentence is technically the truth without context" is such a good trope. Like yes the way that I am spinning these words forms a lie but if you squint I'm actually not lying.
I am a first born daughter
Wolfchoker, aching to martyr
Moonshine-livered, scrimshawed, heartwormed
In or out, I'll wear your fur
I will bear this lupine curse
The pages of this book - memory? - describe a pair playing, colliding in the air, bodies formed for kissing, stroking, lines of heat as molten as the sun. The dance is fluid, roiling, never ending, lovers tangled in a laughing knot that rolls on for years, a promise never to be parted, whatever ages come.
An annoyed thought intrudes, from one who marked this memory after it was recorded: “By the gods, find a private chamber!”
Inspired by this text from Trespasser and the marble statue The Waltz, by Camille Claudel, c. 1895.
still boggles my mind that davrin isn’t Thee hottie of veilguard btw. i mean we All Know Why. but come on. what happened to the inherent charisma of warrior with big shield you guys loved warrior with big shield when it was alistair and cullen
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