I Just Love That Solas Is An Artist

this whole idea in both the fandom and the games themselves that being a people attached to their past & a lost civilization is a failing whereas a celebration of the present is something to strive for wrt elven & dwarven culture is something that reads as fundamentally western & liberal to me.

Scanned in all the pages with Solas from The Art of Dragon Age: The Veilguard :D love the concept arts so much

Ar lath ma, vhenan 🐺

Something something archdemon blood smeared across our lips like lipstick stains idk

Solas and Layla Lavellan

He  has  always  been  what  I  most  feared  becoming.  Callous  and  uncaring,  his  arrogance  unchecked.  To  have  that  much  power  and  no  one  to  remind  him  that  he  could  be  wrong...   

Well,  he  had  you

And  I  suppose  I  had  you

Fear, like every emotion, is a powerful thing.

looking at the pics in this post extra closely and um.... guys

this is joplin's version solas's ritual. first i thought oh how fun! the artifacts from inquisition were going to be relevant, heres a big one! and then i went. wait.

those headpieces look... familiar....

and then i counted the bodies around the table.

its 7, of course.

as he looks on in horror as the ritual goes wrong and it looks like... the blight interferes in some way? or just their spirits get released because rook interrupts?

so while ghilly and elgar'nan were always going to get released by solas's ritual, this literally shows solas using the evanuris bodies for the ritual. you can even see how the first is the most decayed and completely skeletal, while the 6th and 7th, edgar and ghilly, still have flesh.

so there was originally going to be some sort of explanation of what happened to the evanuris's bodies, and solas i guess was dragging them around to do blood magic on them. amazing. this is so much better than falling statues.

Sorry, but I just don’t buy the whole “actually Mythal decided after centuries of wandering Thedas as Flemeth that modern people deserve a chance” thing. Because the fragment of Mythal we’re talking about is the jaded old swamp witch who

-Inhabited the body of a woman betrayed by her lover(s) because they found common ground in their suffering and the injustices done to them. (“Once I was but a woman, crying out in the lonely darkness for justice.” - DAI)

-Resents that betrayal to the point she views men as disposable playthings that she can lure back to her hut, have her way with, and then… murder? I think? (Based on Morrigan’s own account in DAO)

-Abused her daughter under the guise of tough love in an attempt to prepare her for a cruel uncaring world. (Again, Morrigan’s account, DAO)

-Says during her appearance in Inquisition that she will have her reckoning.

-Spent centuries consolidating her power as well as cycling through different human women’s bodies via questionable means for the sake of bringing about said reckoning. (“I have carried Mythal through the ages ever since, seeking the justice denied to her.” and about the Inquisitor: “A Herald indeed. Shouting to the heavens, harbinger of a new age.” - DAI)

-During her scene with Solas at the end of Inquisition does NOT say ANYTHING about disagreeing with Solas’s plans, just that she considers him and old friend and is sorry things are going the way they are. (Seriously, is the dialogue in that regret scene in Veilguard supposed to be from a mental connection they had? Because that dialogue just isn’t in the Inquisition scene.)

And I’m supposed to believe that in her last moments, Flemythal backed off and went “actually I think we need to maintain the status quo”????

None of this paints a picture of someone who has gone soft over time. At least not to the degree that is presented in that regret scene in Veilguard. Sure Flemeth wasn’t all bad, she had some tenderness to her. She shows some genuine care for Morrigan and Kieran (if present) and seems hurt when Morrigan implies she was trying not to be the kind of mother Flemeth was to her.

At the end of Inquisition, we can’t tell for certain to what degree she approves of Solas’s methods. But it seems like a step in said methods was to absorb her power and doom her, an embodiment of Justice, to take a passive role once more. And we know what happens when a spirit is denied its purpose. Justice denied its purpose could turn to Vengeance. Which, to me, feels like it would better echo the themes of Solas’s pride/wisdom duality, inquisition’s themes around what it means to become a god-like force of nature, DA2’s question of whether violence is necessary for revolution (which literally has the Justice/Vengeance duality in it with Anders), and DAO’s theme of sacrifice for the greater good.

The Dread Wolf's Eyes

"They aren't blighted! Were they dormant?" "Maybe. They're beautiful. Much like you."

a gift for my beloved @aeducanthaig ♡

forever thinking about the role of ellipses when talk about each other. two normally eloquent people who suddenly cant finish a single sentence when the other is on their mind. not only do they share a cadence and rhythm to their speech but they share in the dissolution of it. the overwhelming-ness of their feelings for each other is conveyed through literal punctuation; always trailing off, an inability to focus

its giving "if i loved you less, i might be able to talk about it more"