Ya know, I feel like I could look at the problem of Solas a different way than I usually do.
Instead of fighting with the pro-genocide ppl, I could ask myself why Bioware set up a guy who supposedly fundamentally believes in the inherent right of all free willed people to exist, who is against hierarchies and spent his early life trying to liberate slaves....and then undermine literally all of that and then some through his actions and words.
Are they trying to make him hypocritical by making him dehumanize literally everyone that isn’t “his people” unless the Inquisitor changes his mind - and having him still harbor cultural supremacist views against his own race? Or are they trying to make him sympathetic by revealing his good intentions as in showing that his actions in the past were framed as betrayal when you could call it liberation?
I mean, what are they trying to say about his political positions through his character? Were they trying to say anything at all? Am I thinking about his character harder than Bioware was?
Why would you TELL ME that this guy, again, supposedly supports the marginalized and fundamentally believes in the inherently dignity of everyone, and make him such a contradictory mess if you didn’t want to point out that his fundamental philosophy is flawed or wrong?
Or maybe I’m just not particularly fond of the idea that a guy who they keep saying cares about the marginalized and is willing to take radical action and then make that radical action be.....genocide.
I mean, I already know Bioware is very much attached to a liberal philosophy of looking at political systems, oppression and marginalization (you must work through the system, radical change is bad and leads to more harm than good, forgiveness and empathy towards your oppressors is the ideal) and other type of “love wins” “both sides” “ask nicely” bullshit but I’m figuring out that maybe I don’t hate the character as much as I hate the wasted potential.
Maybe my problem isn’t that Bioware doesn’t know what they are doing so much as I fundamentally disagree with what they are telling me.
Maybe I’m not confused as much as angry.
Maybe I am just tired of (stealing from Sarah Z) “a person who holds a fairly reasonable ideology that makes sense in context, but then a bunch of bafflingly evil stuff is added onto it in an obvious attempt to demonize that ideology”
