Female Lavellan - Tumblr Posts

A Lavellan I did kind of half thinking half not. Started from a pose reference generated on sketch.me I think, and then spiralled from there. Took inspiration from paintings of some traditional Roma clothing, as I could find barely any references for irish travellers clothing, even in plates or paintings. I've done my best to keep everything respectful, but let me know if I've done a faux pas, and I'll amend it

Various photo references used

Building off this, I find the way they worked with Elven Inquisitors so interesting. Especially in the view of a queer white person like myself. It gave me the opportunity to truly have a first hand sort of "experience" with oppression of other races IRL deal with simply on the fact of them being people of color, or in this case, Elves. I also want to believe it's intentional to show the horrors of colonization as a whole.

You learn that everyone lived in peace, Elves lived for centuries, but then Humans came and fucked everyone over. Tevinter starts the blight because they're humans looking for MORE power. They're wanting to take over Thedas, they believe it's their right.

Then the Chantry, how it turns its back on you, shuns and tries to quell rebellion, only for the Mother to look at you, as an elf and go; It doesn't matter to me if you're an Andrastian, you are a Dalish Elf, or sent by the Maker or not. You are here, and you are wanting to help and that's enough for me.

You learn about Krem, and his awful backstory and how he was almost tortured and killed for being transgender. You learn about Iron Bull, who turned himself back into the Qun to be basically brainwashed. Then, they betray him. His own people, the one thing he feared most, being a Tal-Vasoth, and he turns out that way because he wants to save his company over his people... Because what has his people done for him? But it's a brutal experience for him, he defers to you. A Dalish Elf, because who else would be fitting to make the choice? Freedom, or Suffering?

When you romance Solas, you see a person who doesn't want to be a God. He just wants things to go back to his normal. The normal he knew, but better. He doesn't want his own kind to fight and put each other down, he just wants to have a land where everyone is free to exist, where spirits may come and go as they please.

I mean, the list goes on. It's such a depressing narrative, but it's also very much giving warnings and small sectors of hope. Here you are, a person who has been oppressed for so long, having to do the most anyone has ever done. You are here, righting wrongs from every side and angle. You are the indigenous person who is learning their own culture after being separated from it and only hearing bastardization from other people's mouths. Your people lost, now found because YOU can lead them. You can change the world, even if it was a mistake of coming into the power of rifts.

You changed the world, not because of a mark on your hand, but because at the core, you want to help others. You, a person who has seen suffering, genocide, and have generational trauma got the chance to change the world and took it. Because at it's core, it's not about your beliefs. It's not about the journey or defeating Corypheus. It's about making sure you learn from everyone else, and make the world better because the change starts with you.

Is the narrative perfect? God no, but that's what I took from it. That I need to be a better listener, that sometimes the hard decisions have to be made, and there will be impacts, but everyone must be free by any means necessary. If that even means loving Fen'Harel, and going against, helping or saving him? Then who am I to say anything different.

I’ve heard that DA:I was originally planned for the MC to only be able to be human, so idk if this is intentional or not by the devs.. .

Playing Lavellan, regardless of gender or sexuality, is just so insanely isolating and depressing, especially if you’re someone like me who latched on SUPER hard to the Dalish.

The Dalish elf gets sent to see if the humans can actually work out their problems. If they can give the mages rights, more freedom than they’ve ever known, maybe that means hope for how the Dalish are treated. But then, surprise, the Dalish tries to help a human woman being sacrificed by people who have sworn to protect the good of all, and everything goes to shit.

They’re suddenly at the head of a religion that has spent hundreds (thousands????) of years hunting them, hating them horribly, so much so that one of your first conversations with Josephine she mentions some of the rumors being Dalish making blood sacrifices. You’re “claimed” by this religion, and have no choice but to work with them. No matter what you believe, you cannot escape this. From this moment on, your entire heritage, family, and beliefs will be forgotten. You are carved in history as the history that even the “savage” Dalish can be claimed and saved by Andraste.

This could be endured. It’s horrible and icky, but on its own could be endured. No one has control over how the world perceives.

But nearly every companion either refuses to acknowledge you are Dalish and that matters to you, or they (Looking at you Sera) outright are disgusted by you, and vocalize how much they hate that part of you at every chance they can. Cassandra, though I don’t think she means to, is horrible insulting by asking if there’s not some space for one more god for you, as though they haven’t used “the Maker” to hunt and punish Dalish.

Josephine is the only one who shows softness or understanding.

But you endure. There has to be a reason, and even if there isn’t, you have to protect the world, because if not you then who will? All the while, this budding, horrible fear of what happens after. No Lavellan can be foolish enough to NOT have that fear. When the threat is dealt with, the dust settles, and the humans grow more comfortable and forget how grateful they are to you, what will happen? A Dalish will not be allowed to keep such power, wielding it over humans. Especially not if you has the misfortune of being born a mage.

And then Trespasser. Your gods aren’t gods, and even if they were, they never cared about you. You’ve spent all your life clinging to the pride that even though life as a Dalish is hard, it is worth it because you are FREE. You are not servants or slaves, you are free, and that makes the suffering worth it. But you were never free. You willingly welcomed slave markings, and the world was too shattered for any of your people to ever know the truth of their history.

And though you and your people have prayed to the gods all their lives, it’s no a single one of them that gives you the mercy of this truth. No. It’s the most feared of the gods, the unspoken, the whispered, the cursed. The Dread Wolf. The rebellion of those slave markings, in your midsts, and in my case, in your bed, in your heart.

Your world is shattered. You are dying. Everything is in tatters because you were foolish enough to try and help a human woman, when no human has ever reached a helping hand to you. Yet, the only remaining constant is that you are alone.

You are alone and you are a fool.