🔥 + Solavellan (not your own personal ship of course, just tendencies the RPC and DA fandom have with this ship)
Unpopular Opinion Meme | Not Accepting
I’ve written a lot of unpopular opinions about Solavellan, like how I find a lot of fandom reaction to the break-up super uncomfortable and how I find interpretation of a sexual relationship to be OOC. One challenge I’ve faced writing Solas is struggling with how similar the Solas fandom and Solas hatedom are, like both take a flawed version of Solas with little to no textual support, but then use that interpretation to fuel their love/hate. Like it’s such a problem that mulling on this ask the past couple days tore me in like five different directions.
Like, both sides make Solas out to be super controlling and abusive, one side uses it to make him sexier, but neither are talking about a Solas who exists in the game. Solavellan as it exists in game is not a healthy dynamic, but We are talking about a relationship that he ends when he realises he can’t do what he has to to make it healthy. Do I talk about that? Or do I talk about alpha wolves?
One thing both sides are super guilty of is infantilisation of Lavellan, especially f!Lavellan as any other variation of Solavellan is so rare that I think Joly and I have the market cornered for nb!Solavellan.
On the fandom side you have people who play up the age to a concerning point. How they do so varies. Maybe they make it a student-mentor romance. Maybe they make Lavellan young and naive and use that as an explanation for why Solas is drawn to her. Maybe they have Solas call her “da’len” and you have to pray that they think it just means “darling.” They do what they can to make the relationship not read as equitable, even within its own limited lifespan.
On the hatedom/critical side you have people who kind of rob Lavellan of her own agency. The Inquisitor is canoncially an adult, Weekes stated once they were written to be anywhere from mid-20s to mid-40s, although people obviously go younger (and older, though less often). So in-game the Inquisitor is an adult and fully capable of choosing to enter into a relationship with someone. Multiple times, mind you, as Solas repeatedly states he isn’t sure if this is a good idea.
What makes or breaks Solavellan is portrayal. The Solavellan relationship– heck, the Solas-Inquisitor friendship– is one that, in-game, begins with shades of mentor but quickly evolves into mutual respect. Solas can drop the “da’len” line a grand total of once, only after Lavellan starts the exchange with calling him the equivalent “hahren,” but after that he switches pretty quick to “lethallin/lan,” a word used almost exclusively between close friends and equals. Just for an example, you don’t hear Marethari call Merrill “lethallan” all that often (if ever, she uses “da’len” exclusively), but you do hear Merrill call f!Hawke “lethallan.” If written correctly the Solavellan relationship will have him learning as much from Lavellan, something Solas himself acknowledges. Obviously people can write what they want, but it just kinda bothers me when I see people infantilising a grown woman b/c they find teacher-student dynamics sexy, or when people Gaider compare the Solavellan relationship to one between a condescending relationship between a professor and a student when most of the romance scenes are just Solas talking about how great you are and about how wrong he was. I could never argue it’s a perfectly equitable relationship, Lavellan is in a position where she could have Solas caged and Solas is hiding who he is, but like– that’s why he breaks up with you.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that the Solavellan relationship is fraught with things I think the games handle relatively well for as underwritten as it is, but fandom can be kind of iffy. When writing Solavellan with Joly, especially a Solavellan that stays together, communication and maintaining trust is a big theme in Solas and Ian’s story. It’s not an easy relationship in the sense that as things grew more serious both of them have had to make adjustments to make their places in one another’s lives healthy. If you’re writing it as a fan, it’s important you take care to think about the tangles in the set-up because if you don’t what works about the story falls apart. In some ways I really can’t blame some people for seeing Solavellan in a negative light, as oftentimes the fans take aspects of the relationship that aren’t there in-game and make it a thing that then gets conflated with canon.
Also, there’s no such thing as an alpha wolf, please stop invoking nonsense wolf terms just call him a dom if you insist on making Solas top.
