This blog is mostly for Solas simping but I reblog a bunch of DA content. Seriously, I'm way too obsesed with Solas. Halp. I write fanfiction and occasionally do a piece of art or two. |Lillith|She/Her|21
FUCK IT. Today is the day. Let's get this OUT of our systems.
I have THOUGHTS about Veilguard. @lunadys will be weighing in with me. This may end up being a long post/posts depending on how ranty I get and if I remember anything else later.
Warning!! For as much as I love the games and I will be talking about things I adored in Veilguard, there is a lot I'm disappointed about too. This doesn't mean that I hate the game. Far from it. I just want to scream into the void for a minute if anyone is willing to listen.
Obviously, this is all our opinions. You can feel free to tell us to go fuck ourselves.
Links to all the rant parts below the cut
So. I'm going to save the good points for the end as a little palate cleanser.
Lets start by breaking this down by;
Expectations going into the game
Areas we never got to see
Characters that are missing completely
Lore/continuity breaks
Blind ‘heroes’ and character foils
Endgame isn’t what you think
The upheaval of the past three games
Sanitizing slavery, child soldiers, assassins and pirates
Then the pros;
Gender addressed in Thedas
Gorgeous world
Horror elements
Hitting us right in the feels
Final notes:
Gameplay
Frog time, quizquisition and worms
Wrap-up
I’m not obsessed. You’re obsessed. Who even wrote this fucking SIX THOUSAND WORD LONG ESSAY!!!????!!!
This is way more of our opinions than either of us have ever put on the internet before. Oh boy.
i'm traveling with work this weekend and will most likely have an insane amount of downtime since what i do is 70% hurry up and wait. can u guys recommend some fics for me to read while i do fuckall plssssss
Just hoppinng online to inform that we have just mass posted a bunch of our Dragon Age WIPs onto Ao3.
Obviously, they are all unfinished and rough and nowhere near as long as The Path Not Taken. But we wanted to get them out into the light of day in case they never get finished.
If nothing else, we hope they explain what's taking us so long on Book 3 of tPnT. All the works in the WIP Dump series have been written in the background over the years.
90% of these are Solasmancer. We can't help ourselves.
But I've rambled on enough.
An Archive of Our Own, a project of the Organization for Transformative Works
Here's the link. We'd love it if anyone would like to take a look. It will be interesting to see which fics in this series people enjoy. Maybe it will even influence which ones we work on more in the future.
something about solas being a painter just...destroys me.
he paints everywhere. his study in skyhold. his hideout in minrathous. so many of the walls in the lighthouse. he paints the past, the present. his hopes and his dreams and the truth he cannot bear to share with anyone.
he paints two great black wolves beneath the sword-eye of the inquisition. he cannot tell them what he is, not yet. but he cannot keep it inside, either.
he paints the pain of regret after regret in the lighthouse's library. his creation, his destruction. every sin and folly and failure. he did not expect anyone to see, was painting for no one but himself, but he could not hold it within himself any longer.
solas longs to be seen, and yet he thinks he can never be.
Epler's attitude about Solas is actually kind of concerning if you're a lead for a game like Dragon Age. And to be honest, makes me wonder if it didn't contribute to some of the lacking components in this installment.
Solas as a character has nuance and layers that you have to engage with get the most out of Inquisition's narrative. This should have been true of Veilgaurd as well. If you piss him off and see his worst side, okay sure. He's an asshole. But this is a team lead for the series. Im assuming he's seen the best Solas runs as well. He's spoken with the author. He can have the depth of his character smacking him in the face and his response is still a childlike "but what if I punched God and won?" Power fantasy. (That one scene with Vlaakith comes to mind here for me iykyk.)
So thinking of what this means for the game as a whole, if he can't even appreciate the nuance of one of the titular characters- how are they going to handle elements like the politics, religion, racism with any level of competency? Or did it just not suit the cool action packed Marvel-esque narrative they wanted to see?
The interview and AMA were really difficult to read for me because they kept leaning hard on the fact that Dragon Age reinvents itself. And to me, that is becoming a massive cop out. Stylistically, yes it does. Protagonist wise? Also true. Game play? Of course. The core of the series has never changed, though. The lore. The structure of the setting. DA2 and Origins for all they have massive differences in protagonists and gameplay- have so many overlapping NPC'S and concepts. DAI never added new perspectives on lore without disclaiming it was new and giving you the opportunity to roleplay that your character abided by DAO conventions.
To just slap "dragon age always does new stuff and also the Blight" as the answer to every valid critique is such a paper thin defense that it kind of feels insulting they even went there.
the revelations about solas and mythal’s relationship in veilguard explain so much about solas’s behavior toward lavellan
mythal wanted him to become corporal, to inhabit a physical body. and he clearly tells her
i do not want this
but she pushed him, and out of love, devotion, or fear of losing her, he conceded. he took the first step on a path that would pervert his very nature
and he is so terrified of repeating this history with lavellan that he denies her agency. across weeks, months, years, she tells him
i want this
i want this
i want this
but he doesn’t believe her. he tells himself that if she knew the truth, she would feel differently, that he has to protect her from that ignorance
and then, at the end of veilguard, all of his truth, all of what and who he is, is laid bare. and she very clearly tells him
i want this
he has no more excuses. she knows everything. she knows him, and she wants him. to deny her would be to force her to take the first step on a path she did not choose
what is the pride in wisdom? believing that you know what is best
in that moment, solas relinquishes that pride. he lets lavellan decide her path for herself. and she chooses to walk with him, not in front, not behind, but at his side
