#dynamic play

Unlike the Bull-related ships, which have explicit in-canon references to BDSM, the sole explicit in-canon evidence that might be construed as Solas wanting to dominate his partners is a single line said to mage!Lavellan that could be construed other ways. That, combined with the fact that the writers have confirmed they wrote the Solas romance to be ace-friendly (and while there are ace kinksters, not all ace folk are kinky), means that the evidence on the ground for canon dom!Solas is pretty damn thin. This means we’re wading into character interpretation, and given how I felt about making a call about whether Dorian/Iron Bull is abusive off three minutes of banter, you can guess how I feel about making a judgment about Solas as a dominant partner after a single line.

Now, I may have opinions about Solas based on my interpretation of the character, and I could craft a convincing argument about those opinions, but that isn’t really the crux of the issue around Solas. The issue is how fanwriters have portrayed dom!Solas, or so I’ve gathered.

And this is where I have to draw a bright, shiny line. I’m simply not comfortable publicly speculating on the motivations behind fanwork portrayals of dom!Solas. The fan culture simply isn’t set up well for analysis that close to home. Even so, I’d be wary of doing it – I remember a time when I had no idea what I was doing, either, when my writing was rooted in deeply personal fantasy and I was very defensive of it. That writing is what got me thinking about doing, and that thinking about doing is what took me into the scene.

There is, however, a question that deserves a much more in-depth examination at a time I’m not still reeling from seeing my ex at a later date: what is the social responsibility of the fanfic author? Where does their freedom to explore their personal fantasies end and the potential harm fanworks can perpetuate begin?  What do we do when one person’s personal exploration is someone else’s trigger? What is our responsibility, as fanwork authors, to our readers, especially in proportion to that fan author’s relative influence?

I’m sorry people don’t understand that sort of grey and that it affects you detrimentally. The world is rarely as simple as they want to make it.

Here's the thing. I've spent the last year having conversations about consent that focus on how to do things safely (including gaining consent), how these things work in real-time situations, and what to when shit gets broke (including violating consent). Because one of the things they'll warn you about but you won't really hear is that at some point, you will violate someone's consent, because this shit is dangerous and eventually you (or both of you) will fuck up. What you do after a consent violation matters. The thought of violating a partner's consent terrifies a lot of tops, TBH. We're trusting them too.