bunabi:

mezzki:

bunabi: mezzki: I’m all for Solass hate, but could we NOT make it about his race? Like there is SO MUCH more we can be critical of him for, and his skin colour has nothing to do with it.

And lighter skinned people with dreadlocks isn’t blackface, or cultural appropriation. Come on people… There’s context for it though. The whole case of Solas having dreadlocks gained traction because of his early concept. A concept in which he had brown skin. The locs are something unique to that specific iteration of his design. There is no #Dreadlocks!Solas without brown skin. They’re not mutually exclusive things; they go hand-in-hand. But – for some reason – a majority of folks decided to cherry-pick that part of his appearance and keep Solas lily white. That was appropriative. And that in itself is the issue. Some people draw him with brown skin and dreadlocks, others don’t. That just says to me that some people like his concept art better than his alpha stage appearance. There are also people who don’t like him bald, but like his dreadlocks, that doesn’t mean they are appropriating, that means they have a aesthetic preference. Dreadlocks aren’t universally black thing either, they show up in different religions and cultures.

You may be thinking of matted hair. The Vikings, for example, had matted hair which are cited and confused for dreadlocks pretty often. Matted hair and dreadlocks are different. Matted hair can be styled but will form naturally from neglect. Dreadlocks are a deliberate hairstyle. Despite popular belief, dreads aren’t acquired without care, attention, and work. They’re not tangles or unkempt nests, but ropes of hair neatly twisted together that merge as locs over time.



Dreadlocks are really only for naturally textured (kinky, coarse, coiled, etc) hair. Not straight, relaxed, white European hair that will be stressed and damaged in the process. Drawing Dreadlocks!Solas as a white man when a POC counterpart is available and present and there makes no sense.

What is your hangup with people interpreting him as a POC or a black man specifically? Because dreads belong to everyone? Because black people don’t “own” them and shame on them for trying to? Because your argument seems to be set in that direction and I don’t want to be part of it tbh.