#solas rant

[therealdragonnerdagain]

Because I intend to eventually kick my tumblr addiction (taking it one day at a time here) I wanted to explain why I spent so much time back in 2015/16 ranting about how Solas doesn't love Lavellan.

People made the mistake of thinking I was this heartbroken fan in love with a fictional character. The hilarious reality is that my character would have totally killed Solas for his crimes if she was given the option. My character is in love with Solas. I'm not.

But anyway . . .

The reason why I was so upset, and the reason why I tried to so hard to convince other gamers that the Solas romance is not love, is because it is incredibly stupid and irresponsible that Bioware/Weekes would write an emotionally abusive relationship and then sit in an interview and state that it was “love.”

Weekes was just trying to comfort young fans who were upset, but in the end, he did something really wrong without meaning to. I recognize that.

I thought of this because the other day I stumbled across this heartbreaking article about a woman who discovered -- six years into her marriage -- that her husband was actually a terrible person who did terrible things while smiling in her face all the while. He was manipulative and emotionally abusive to push his own agenda while caring very little that he was harming her. He did not intentionally set out to hurt his wife, but he did. And in the end, when she found out the truth about him, he chose to leave her -- while she was pregnant -- in order to pursue his agenda of being a destructive asshole.

Even after her husband had emotionally abused her, manipulated her, and lied to her, the woman was still baffled. Because all along, he had seemed to really love her. He seemed so "kind and gentle" only for her to discover he really was not. She was in denial for a long time. Imagine what would have happened to her and her child had she attempted to "fix" such an abusive situation instead of doing what was best for her and her baby? This is the kind of guy who might have wound up beating his wife and maybe killing his child, even if just on accident, still killing it.

The story remained me SO MUCH of Solas and Lavellan.

I've already explained over and over why Solas and Lavellan were in a very unhealthy one-sided relationship and why it was most certainly *not* love. The point of my post is to explain why I was so insistent on convincing other Solasmancers of the truth.

It's because I am very concerned about media that teaches young girls that abuse is love. They learn at an early age that they should put up with belittling, manipulative, abusive behavior, and they see it as normal, and they wind up with shitty men who emotionally, physically abuse them and sometimes wind up murdering them.

Love is something that has to be learned. People who never learn what love is are the ones who wind up in these dangerous relationships where they are mistreated.

In other words, I was reaching out in frustration and trying to help people. And yes, I was VERY frustrated by the other Bioware fans who sneered at me and didn't understand what I was doing.

Everything about the Solas romance is emotionally abusive, though. 

Solas sneers on Lavellan's religion and culture and continues to belittle it long after his "apology" at Haven. He just doesn't do it to her face and instead sneers on her people in various banters with characters like Sera and Morrigan. This is emotionally abusive. Making your partner feel inferior because they share a different culture and religion? That is fucked.

And no. Don't quote that line at me about how you can choose to let people make you feel inferior. That does not excuse the person whose shitty behavior is making you feel small in the first place.

Solas is racist throughout the entire game. To him, Lavellan isn't like those other heathens, meaning other mortals -- especially Dalish -- are worthless and inferior. That's like . . . dating a racist who thinks you're the only worthwhile person in your entire race.

When Solas isn't sneering on Lavellan's culture and religion, he is lying to her about who he is and what his motivations are. In the end, he is responsible for a great deal of her physical, mental suffering and pain and doesn't have enough respect for her to tell her the truth.

And why does Solas have no respect for Lavellan? Because he does not see her as an equal. And he does not see her as a person. She can even SAY this to him in Trespasser, "We aren't even people to you, are we?"

Solas never loved Lavellan. He's a pride demon. He can not love. His romance was all about sexual tension and steamy kisses, as much as asexual people hate to hear that, it's the truth.

In the end, Solas chose to keep going with his shitty agenda over protecting the life of someone he supposedly loved. He will kill her and all her friends because "He is not a monster."

Within the context of the story, in a world where people can time travel and the elven religion has been deemed demon worship by racist anti-indigenous writers, it doesn't look like Solas is being emotionally abusive, but he is. You could almost make excuses for his behavior because he's an ancient elf who lost his entire world, but you shouldn't.

Solas is, in fact, a monster. He is a pitiful figure who should not be saved. And everything he did to Lavellan was text book abuse.

It's really upsetting that Bioware would write a romance like this without calling it out for what it is. And Weekes knows the romance is abusive, otherwise he wouldn't have ridiculed and mocked "diehard" Solasmancers who shouted that they wanted to help Solas *before* their character knew the entire truth.

This is also what angers me the most about Twilight and books like it. I hate stories that teach young girls that abuse is love. These stories are targeted at teenagers who don't know any better and don't yet possess critical thinking skills.

In the same way teen paranormal romance novels are irresponsible, video games are irresponsible with the things they teach young boys -- such as how women aren't people but slot machines that give sex when you have the right number of charisma points.

I'm not saying media causes people to be shitty. I'm saying it reinforces those negative aspects already existent in our culture and helps them to thrive.

So long as stories keep teaching boys to abuse women and young girls to lay down and take the abuse, this shit will just go on.

And if you're about to reblog this and tell me that media has zero effect on people and their behavior, head over to Google and type in "szechuan sauce, Rick and Morty."

[therealdragonnerdagain]

To the people who wanna talk shit about this blog in the forums . . .

Couple years ago, I said that Mass Effect 3 would have been perfect if not for that shitty ending.

I said that because I would have been willing to overlook the garbage that was in the rest of the game if the ending hadn't been such shit.

But anyone who actually read most of my Mass Effect 3 posts here would know that I complained A LOT about the whole of Mass Effect 3 -- specifically Shep's auto-dialogue, the botched Mass Effect 2 romances, and Kai Fucking Leng.

Mass Effect 3 also had some really gross stuff in it, like FemShep taking advantage of her rank to basically rape Vega (because I guess the writers thought male rape was funny) and all this other shit.

Yeah. Mass Effect 3 had its fair share of problems. The Ending was just the icing on an already sour cake.

Also, I understand what a "protagonist" is, asswipes who love talking shit about this blog.

I didn't mean that Solas was actually the protagonist. I meant that he stole so much of the story, he might as well have been the protagonist.

This was done to the point that Corypheus wasn't our enemy, he was Solas' enemy -- we and Corypheus just didn't fucking know it.

This was done to the point that it was never our Inquisition -- it was Solas' Inquisition. This is something the Inquisitor can even SAY during Tresspasser "Was it ever MY Inquisition?" Of course, Solas denies that he was ever really in charge, but he was in the background pulling a lot of strings, even if he didn't have the final say.

Also, people are saying Solas won't even be important in DA4, so we Solasmancers should stop bitching.

Well, if Solas isn't important, then why weren't we given the option to deal with him in Trespasser and end his story there?

We are given the option to murder knife, join, or spare Morrigan and Anders (the other "evil" apostates) but we are not given the option to deal with Solas in a similar fashion? That's bullshit.

And if Solas isn't that important, it will just be a symptom of yet more sloppiness on Bioware's part.

See, all this happened because

1) Bioware did not have a plan from the beginning. They didn't plan for this series to be more than one game, then couldn't decide whether or not to bring the Warden back -- because some people had a dead Warden (myself included).

They got around this by inventing Hawke, who was then supposed to pick up the rest of the series as the main protagonist, leading the Inquisition and so forth.

But things changed AGAIN. Probably because lots of fans didn't like being forced to play a predefined, human character. Dragon Age 2 was nothing like the first game we all loved. Dragon Age 2 was basically Pseudo Final Fantasy, with it's own Cloud (Fenris) and everything.

So Bioware tried to go back to its roots with Inquisition, scrapping Hawke as the protagonist and inventing the Inquisitor, yet ANOTHER human noble character.

People didn't like being forced to play another human noble. Most of us (myself included) got into this series because we loved choosing who we were. I have always identified with oppressed outsiders (because I am an oppressed outsider) so I always play elves. I did not wnat to play a human again.

Bioware listened and added multiple races, but by then it was too late: the series had become a butchered clusterfuck, a thin shadow of what it had been.

2) The second reason all this happened? EA thought it would be great to take an rpg with depth and maturity and water it down into some streamlined mess. Somehow, they equated butchering a story with appealing to a wider audience and gaining more money.

So we have this MESS before us today that is Dragon Age (god, I fucking HATE EA), where every protagonist after the Warden has a clusterfuck story where they never defeat their own arch-nemesis and instead pass them off to some other hero.

I'm sorry, but Solas DOES belong to the Inquisitor as a villian. Just as Corypheus *really* belonged to Hawke (because Inquisition was originally a continuation of Hawke's story).

Just as we would have been pissed had Hawke stepped in at the last minute to kill the archdemon, thus stealing the Warden's enemy (who we worked so HARD to defeat) from them.

The Inquisitor is *not* coming back as a protagonist. Bioware has denied the arm has anything to do with it (they don't want to look ableist but being anti-indigenous is fine and dandy!) but no matter the reason, the Inquisitor's story is over and they are not going to be the protagonist anymore.

This means I don't get to end Solas' story as the Inquisitor.

That SUCKS.

That's like . . . ending Morrigan's story as Hawke, even though I romanced Morrigan in the game before and had history with her (and I did on two playthroughs romance Morrigan, so I waited for Witch Hunt just like everyone else).

That's like . . . ending Anders' story as the Inquisitor, even though Hawke had personal history (including betrayal) with him.

Remember what it was like after DA2 dropped? Remember all the gamers who HATED Anders and were foaming at the mouth about his betrayal? Imagine for one SECOND if they were not given the option to deal with Anders as Hawke and he instead carried over to Inquisition? As will Nerd Rage, the outrage would have been perpetual and unending.

And yet, I, a Solasmancer, am expected to just accept the way the story was handled, without criticizing it or even lamenting it. I, a Solasmacer, am expected to just . . . quietly accept something I don't like.

I suppose Nerd Rage is purely reserved for straight white homophobic dudes who want to kill Anders because he hit on them once.

Why are Solasmancers ridiculed and mocked for wanting to end Solas' story AS Lavellan? Why in FUCK is that such a god-awful thing?

It pisses me off because I already decided -- long before Trespasser was released -- that I would no longer be buying anymore Dragon Age games. Their anti-indigenous hate-screed (on top of the over-all sad dumbing down of the game into an MMORPG) had already convinced me to quit the series. So learning that my character would not get a proper ending to her story until the next game was beyond annoying.

But whatever. Go on mocking me on fextralife and bsn and whatever forum you like.

What I can't understand is why people even pay attention to my blog. I am just one fan ranting bitterly to myself about how a video game disappointed me.

I'm just one fan. I'm not hurting anyone.

And I'm allowed to have whatever fucking reaction I want to these games.

I'm allowed to have an opinion.

Hard to wrap your head around, I know.

EDIT: And to Steel Can.

I have watched for years as you behaved on the forums like a racist asshat about people of color, hiding behind your hatred of the Dalish to justify it. I wish you’d just shut the living fuck UP.

NO. The Dalish don't expect nor force city elves to worship their gods when they join them. Play a Dalish in Origins sometime. You might actually learn something -- not that you care to learn that you’re wrong. 

You're trying so DESPERATELY to justify the religious oppression of the elves. You're trying so DESPERATELY to justify the shitty way Lavellan was treated for her beliefs by everyone in the game -- even her friends -- by building false equivalences (the white man’s favorite passtime) and pretending the elves are just as bad as the humans.

But they're not. This is something Manifest Destiny, racist white men, would have you believe. They need you to believe it in order to justify history’s crimes. They need you to believe that indigenous people were violent savages who warred upon each other, so this made it “okay” and even “good for them” to be invaded, enslaved, and oppressed. 

I mean, it’s not like white people didn’t treat the Irish and the Scottish like garbage or anything. White people were always good to each other. They never tortured each other in dungeons and beheaded each other over loaves of bread . . .

Dalish elves were not forcing anyone to their religion when they joined their camps. Pol never gets vallalsin in the ten years he’s with the Dalish. Because he doesn’t have to. When you meet him in Origins. he is being taught to hunt and survive. The Dalish Warden tells him to just make himself useful, and he is welcome. No religious conversion required. He is not forced into elven religion.

And even if Pol was forced:

Nothing can justify what was done to the elves. 

Nothing can justify imperialism, invasion, genocide, cultural genocide, and slavery.

Just as nothing can justify what was done to real indigenous people. 

I bet you hated the Thalmor in Skyrim and sided with the Stormcloaks to protect their religion even while hating the Dalish -- a people facing religious oppression -- in Dragon Age. Because only white men are allowed to have cultural, religious freedom, and any culture that’s not white isn’t worthy of respect, right?

But why am I wasting my time, Steel Can? Your sorry racist ass will never understand. You enjoy shitting on real indigenous people and using Dragon Age to justify it. Because Bioware's racism gave you the tools to do so.

That does not make you or Bioware right.

Also, Red Crossing started when two HUMANS killed an elven woman while trespassing on Dalish land.

[therealdragonnerdagain]

First off . . . fuck you, DreamM, for talking down to Solasmancers like we're a bunch of morons just for wanting some closure. Fuck you.

My first Inquisitor was a Lavellan who romanced Solas, and I did not go into that romance expecting a happy ending.

But I did expect AN ENDING.

Silly me. I'm so stupid for expecting that my character would get some fucking closure.

Instead, my character is defeated by Solas, utterly, in every conceivable way -- sort of in the same way she defeated Corypheus, ironically enough -- and there's nothing she can do.

That sucks.

People play video games because they want a power fantasty. This includes the power to WIN in the end, not lose horribly and be sidelined for a new protagonist.

The Inquisitor is the only DA protagonist who loses their final fight. They are also the only DA protagonist whose ending we don't get to play out. Trespasser made it painfully obvious that she/Quizzy will be hiring the DA4 protagonist to fight Solas in her place, while probably showing up as a crappy NPC every now and then.

Imagine for a second if people who romanced Morrigan never got that Witch Hunt dlc?

Or imagine for a second if Hawke was never allowed to confront Anders for his betrayal?

People would be just as mad. But Solasmancers have the gall to want closure, power over our situtation, and some kind of actual ending for our character, so we're just silly morons, right?

Fuck you. Fuck you and every Dragon Age fan who thinks like you.

As someone whose canon warden was a Dalish who sacrificed herself to the Archdemon (after romancing Alistair) I am not afraid of sad endings. I also didn't go into the Solas romance foolishly thinking the ending would be happy.

I can handle tragic endings just fine. What I CAN'T handle is having no ending at all.

My Warden got her ending. My Hawke got her ending. My Inquisitor gets no ending. Instead, she sits on the sidelines while someone else finishes her story.

Granted, I could be reacting prematurely. For all we know, the Inquisitor might get closure with Solas in DA4, and instead of her being some poorly done NPC, maybe we'll actually be able to control her.

This is how I imagine (and hope) DA4 will play out.

Solas succeeds in taking down the Veil. Story opens with New Protagnoist seeing this happen and it probably kills thier family or something, so a personal motive for the NP is established in regards to Solas.

I mean, who in their right mind would go up against an elven god who can turn people to stone otherwise? This is why I've often said in the past the new protagonist will need a motive as personal as the Inquisitor's. Otherwise, throwing yourself at a god makes zero sense.

If someone in ancient armor descended from the sky right now and blow a hole in the middle of Missouri, how many of us would leap forward to kick his ass?

Heroes in fiction are often driven by personal vendettas (even the Inquisitor might be sealing the Breach just to save their own ass), and the ones who are duty and honor driven usually have the power to back up being recklessly stupid. I imagine the NP won't be initially so powerful that they will try fighting Solas off the bat (no, not even a mage). I imagine they will become powerful, though.

After the Veil is destroyed, the Elven Gods rise, and the Inquisitor mentors the new protagonist in thier work against Solas and the Elven Gods.

New Protagonist cleverly leads Solas into a trap, where the Inquisitor ambushes him and captures or kills him with some kind of powerful artifact (I mean, if this happens in Tevinter, there's bound to be something there that can stop Solas).

If Bioware isn't cruel, they will allow us to control the Inquisitor as she is facing down Solas (mine would be killing him, not capturing him, even though -- yes -- she romanced him).

With Solas dead, locked behind a mirror (again), or otherwise incapacitated, the Inquisitor gets to have her closure and her ending. Yay.

New Protagonist, after growing into a powerful hero under Quizzy's mentorship, then goes on to fight the Elven Gods. Wins. Then end.

I could live with this.

But even if everything played out just like I wanted, I'm still not buying DA4.

Why?

Because Bioware has already proven that they don't care about consistency. They don't care about honoring their own lore. They still don't care about their female audience: the majority of our romances are always tradgic and fucked up -- plus, they take way too much pleasure in mocking Cullenites and Solasmancers in the game itself. And finally, they are anti-indigenous, anti-pagan bigots.

So no. I won't be buying DA4.

[therealdragonnerdagain]

This is actually a really good point.

A big part of Solas' personality is that he is arrogant. He thinks he knows you, but maybe he doesn't.

At the same time, he thinks he hid from you pretty well, but to anyone who paid attention, Solas is actually a terrible actor and wears his heart on his sleeve the entire time we know him.

Solas himself mentions that in order to speak with someone in the Fade, the two people have to be within close proximity in the real world. For instance, if you bump into someone in the Fade, they're probably sleeping a bit down the road from you.

In The Masked Empire, Solas is able to talk to Felassan from the Fade because he is trapped behind an eluvian in Orlais (this is why Briala was needed. Because apparently, ancient elves and Dalish are too inferior to open an eluvian -- only a humanlike city elf and her huamn friends could do it!) and Felassan always returns to this general vicinity to speak with Solas in the Fade.

After Trespasser, Solasmancers get slides about Solas following the Inquisitor in the Fade. This has every implication that either 1) Solas is following the Inquisitor in the real world to make certain she can not stop him or 2) the Inquisitor is following Solas in the real world right on his heels in order to stop him (and he is sadly allowing her to catch up).

I mean, it's not impossible that the Inquisitor could stop Solas herself. I think people are overestimating him a bit.

But at the same time, I think it's very likely DA will be returning with a new protagonist. I can't imagine Bioware breaking their own "Thedas is the protagonist!" rule, no matter how crappy it ultimately is.  

[therealdragonnerdagain]

So . . .  I just thought of something. This is DA Inquisition rambling and it's positive. Kinda.

Just theorish stuff.

A couple years back, someone posted a theory that ancient elves see the world in black and white, the way humans see the Crossroads.

Abelas even refers to the modern elves as "shadows" and can't seem to recognize them as his people.

Meanwhile, we have Lavellan, who is said by the spirits in JOH to blaze like fire, and is again described as too bright to look at by Cole. Abelas also notices the magic in Lavellan's hand and says something about it being "familiar."

Sprits/ancient elves see Lavellan/Inquisitor as glowing brightly against a world that is otherwise gray and colorless to them because it is cut off from the Fade.

Fade Natives, as in Ancient Elves and Spirits, can not see color and light without the Fade. It's like they see light differently in the absence of the Fade than people born in a world without it.

When Solas created the barrier that divided the world, it changed everything (lol, no I didn't quote him on purpose). Without the Fade, people changed and evolved into something else, thus the reason Solas doesn't regard modern people as "his people."

This means that Solas might not be acting racist when he says the Inquisitor is different from other people. He literally means the Inquisitor is different: they are the only glowing, burning, colorful thing in a world that -- to him -- is drab and colorless. Everyone else is a mere shadow and Solas only knows what hateful, ignorant crap he learned while eavesdropping as he slept (in his prison. I still think the ancient elves managed to lock him away ala Corypheus as punishment for taking away the Fade). Also, being attacked by the Dalish when he tried to lord it over them likely shaped his bigotry further.

Solas literally can't see that the people of Thedas are people. They are literally SHADOWS to him.

Thanks to the Anchor, the Inquisitor is the one person who shines brightly enough to cut through the darkness so that Solas can see they're an actual person and not merely a soulless shadow.

If all this is true, it makes Solas less of an asshole and more of a tragic figure.

(At the same time, it doesn't excuse the underlining themes of imperialism and racism against indigenous people present throughout Dragon Age.)

[therealdragonnerdagain]

"It is very hard for evil to take hold of the unconsenting soul."

That's a line from A Wizard of Earthsea in the chapter where Ged is almost tricked into letting himself get possessed by an evil spirit.

"Evil can not come unless invited" is a very old storytelling device, usually used to portray the weakness of a hero in a story. If evil comes, it's because the hero had a moment of weakness, etc.

It's one of my favorite "tropes," for lack of a better word. And even though it's been used in stories since the dawn of time, I feel like Le Guin set the precedence for it in modern storytelling.

We see it repeated in just about any story with supernatural elements. Vampires can not cross a threshold without being invited in Buffy. Spirits can't enter a person without consent in Dragon Age.

I think one of the things in Trespasser that really convinced me that Solas was (once) a pride demon had to do with Cole's inane ramblings in the DLC. Cole will say "He didn't want to come but she asked him" which may or may not be referring to Mythal and Solas.

A while back, I posed a theory that all the elven gods were simply elves who practiced spiritbinding, which would have made them powerful enough to stop the titans. Each elven god bound themselves to one of the Forbidden, becoming powerful abominations that were able to defeat the titans.

When the Forgotten ones were summoned by the elven gods to be bound in service, they refused and were banished for refusing to help in the titan war. So the Forbidden ones were bound instead.

Each elven god then bound themselves to a spirit.

What I'm driving at here? Mythal summoned Solas and bound him to her in her service. Solas and Mythal became one, and Solas helped Mythal to defeat the titans and save the elven people.

Later, when the elven gods became tainted and evil and Mythal was slain, Solas carried on living. Now separated from Mythal, he burned her slave markings off his face (again, something Cole hinted at) leaving the mark on his forehead, and decided to avenge his friend by fighting for the elven people in a war against the gods.

Given all the indications in the DA lore itself, a relationship between a person and the spirit sharing their body is a very intimate one. Solas and Mythal had to be very close after that experience. So them touching foreheads and everything in the epilogue would have made sense given this theory.  

I know most people are probably sitting with their fingers paused over their keyboard, ready to reblog this with a reminder that Solas denies being like Mythal in Trespasser.

That's because Solas isn't like Mythal. That doesn't mean he's not a pride demon turned flesh. If Lavellan asks if he's like Mythal, Solas will say he's always been Solas. . . . in other words, he's always been Pride. It's the same way Cole could say he's always been Compassion.

This is just another lie by omission, which Solas does pretty casually to Lavellan's face. He tells her the truth but not the whole truth, and he's perfectly comfortable doing it in this case because her knowing he used to be a demon would just be icing on the cake after all the other lies.

Then if Lavellan should ask Solas to take her with him, he says he wouldn't have her see what he'll become. You can take this figuratively and assume he means becoming an even bigger jerk by killing everyone. But I think Solas is referring to some kind of transformation that will happen to him when he takes the Veil down.

As I said in an older post, it's mentioned in DA that spirits are formless and frightening to mortals in their true form. If Solas took the Veil down -- and if he really is a pride demon made flesh -- then he will return to his true, horrifying form and likely scare the hell out of Lavellan.

For me, it all makes sense.

Yeah. I still think of the DA lore sometimes. I loved this game for years and invested years in it, only to come to the dismal realization that the game is fucking racist and religiously intolerant. Which is utterly depressing. Because part of me still loves the lore. I love plenty of flawed things, but I can't love something that openly supports Manifest Destiny and the justification of mass genocide. I . . . can't.

Also, the religious intolerance.

There are so many different people across the world who worship spirits as gods. To make a mockery of that and reduce it to "savage demon worship" is really shitty of Bioware. Yet if the opposite had been done and Christianity had been disparaged as a bunch of demon worship or false foolishness, there would have been an uproar.

What's really ironic? Everything about Christianity is based on PAGANISM.

Christianity is, like, the ultimate form of culture appropriation. Taking other people's shit and pretending it's yours, then telling those same people they're inferior for continuing in the same traditions you stole from them.

Yeah. Even the fucking Christmas tree has pagan roots. Christians who shit on paganism look stupid every time they open their mouth.

[therealdragonnerdagain]

For some reason tonight, I been thinking about Solas.

I've come to realize that the Solas/Lavellan romance is just as toxic as Celene/Briala. And what's hilarious is that Solas approves when you take the trickster route by putting Briala in a position to go on manipulating Celene.

Think about this.

Celene doesn't see the elves as people, to the point that she casually slaughters them to prove she is racist against elves and stilll loyal to humans. At the same time, she cares enough about Briala -- or rather, enough about keeping Briala as a pet -- to try to sheild Briala from seeing the atrocities she's committed. When she casually slaughters Briala's PARENTS, she tries to hide the fact from her, not wanting to hurt her.

Celene doesn't mind doing shitty, manipulative things to Briala because she sees her as a beloved pet, an inferior, not an equal or a fucking person.

Solas and Lavellan is the same damn thing.

Solas doesn't have a problem casually slaughtering Lavellan's people and all the people of modern Thedas, but he cares enough about her feelings that he will make some gesture to hide the truth from her. In the final cave scene, he is doing his best to hide things from her that would hurt her. Eventually, he decides not to tell her the truth about his casual slaughter of a thousand people at the temple of sacred ashes and takes what he thinks is the less painful route by telling her something else instead.

Solas wants to protect Lavellan from his atrocities, but at the same time, he doesn't have enough respect for her nor consider her his equal, so he will not tell her the entire truth (even in Trespasser) and will continue in his shitty, racist misdeeds.

Like Celene, Solas is an utterly selfish asshole who only hides the truth from Lavellan because he wants her to go on loving him (not because he really cares about her and respects her as an equal). Just as Celene selfishly wants Briala to go on loving her -- even after she KILLED HER PARENTS.

The one great thing about Briala and Celene is that at least Briala eventually realizes she is nothing more than a cute and cuddy housecat to Celene, who warms the woman's bed. She is not a person to Celene, and to get revenge, she uses her own brand of trickery to manipulate Celene and to help her own people.

Briala realizes Celene only ever saw her as a pet. Briala takes action. Briala gets vengeance.

It's almost like we're supposed to see Solas in Celene and Lavellan in Briala.

Except Lavellan never gets vengeance.  Lavellan can yell at Solas (I prefer having Lavellan cry, because it makes him feel bad) but she never really gets to one-up or stop him or . . . anything. And that's utterly ridiculous.

Solas stole everything from Lavellan, even her role as protagonist. Lavellan is now a character on the sidelines. And the reality is, she was always a simple plot device in Solas' story. Someone to be fridged to make Solas more sympathetic, in Weekes' own words.

Seriously. Weekes tricked us into thinking the Inquisitor was the protagonist, when it was Solas all along. And while this is an interesting twist, it's still bad writing. Why? Because this isn't a fucking novel, where such a twist would be delightful and welcome.

This is a video game, where the player IS the player character. It is disjointed, not to mention stupid, to have us hop from pc to pc, leaving every past player character's story half-finished because "Thedas is the protagonist, not us!"

Such a concept would work in a series of novels (in the Earthsea cycle, the world is the protagonist, not any of the characters, for instance), but not in a video game where the player participates in shaping the story.

That they thought they could bring novel writing to a video game is shortsighted and dumb. And it's the reason why every protagonist has a fucked, clusterfuck of a story: the Warden's excuse for not being around is contrived, Hawke's fate is given without any fucking explanation, and the Inquisitor loses against the real antagonist and is relegated to the sidelines as a guest NPC for the next game.

Yeah. Dragon Age is full of "good writing."

[therealdragonnerdagain]

Something has been bugging me for a while now.

Why do Dalish fans like Briala?

Have you people actually read The Masked Empire?

Briala is no different from the racist Orlesians who hate the Dalish.

She hates the Dalish -- an entire people -- because she met *one clan* she didn't like.

She hates the Dalish because they didn't fulfill her childish fantasies of being great heroes who could liberate the city elves and singlehandedly end institutional racism.

She hates the Dalish for looking down on her as a city elf and being so utterly useless and inferior that they can't even open a fucking eluvian without her help (though they were depicted this way because of the anti-indigenous writers).

When your Lavellan meets Briala in the game itself, she makes it abundantly clear that she despises you for being Dalish. She sneers about you not caring about the city elves and is hella rude to you off the bat, no matter what you say to her.

If your Inqisitor successfully charms everyone at the ball, Briala is jealous that you are a better manipulater than her and sneers that it won't last long.

It's easy to like Briala because she is presented (like Sera) as a champion of oppressed people, but at the same time, she has been depicted as a bitter assshole, who gets to decide which oppressed people to care about (not Dalish) and lashes out at her own allies and accuses them of racism and hatred before they even open their mouths.

In other words, Briala has been depicted as the typical anti-pc bigot's cartoony idea of a "sjw" and she is not really likable in the slightest.

I know how Dalish/Elf fans feel because I wanted to like Briala too. In the end, it is readily apparent that she is an asshole who hates the Dalish in the books, and an even bigger asshole who is willing to kill her own people to cover up her past in the game.

I just don't get why Dalish fans like her. For me, she was yet another reason that playing as Lavellan sucked.

I remember being excited about meeting her character in the game, and the way she kept sneering on my Lavellan for being Dalish was pretty shitty. And she kept doing it long after a point where I could give her a break.

In the end, she is no different from Solas, Sera, and basically everyone else in the fucking Dragon Age setting: an anti-indigenous asshole.

To me, it will never stop being ironic that Cassandra -- the fucking super templar -- is the least bigotted person possibly in all of Dragon Age.

(Yes, even Varric is an innocent bigot. I've discussed before how he seriously believed forcing Clan Lavellan into human society and making them give up their own culture was "good" for them. It came from a place of good intentions and was still just another shitty way that Dragon Age insisted white culture is superior.)