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#anders was right
namespara · 3 months
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Hello strangest target audience of fellow sad mage enjoyers
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kirkwalldrama · 1 year
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people: 'anders killed hundreds of people in that explosion'
also people: ignore the fact that hawke killed like 1000000 people in the streets for gold
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eobard-thawne · 2 months
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honestly? if i could choose to play as an apostate, i would.
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justcallmecappy · 11 months
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One of the criticisms I've seen DA players have in response to Anders' actions at the Kirkwall Chantry is some degree of, 'his actions forced innocent mages into a war they had no choice whether or not they wanted to be involved in'.
What a lot of these players seem to miss is this: The mages were already involved. They have been involved since childhood, when their magic manifested.
If you are born a mage in Southern Thedas, you are marked. The Templars will find you, or your neighbors who were conditioned by the Chantry to fear magic will turn you in, and you are brought to the Circle where you are at risk of Tranquility, or Annulment, and subjected to a Harrowing. Your children born to you in the Circle will be taken from you to be raised in a Chantry orphanage (like Wynne's child was). You are not allowed to get married, or start a family, or own land. You are not allowed to leave your Circle ever, unless conscripted to fight in the army (like in the Fifth Blight) or fulfilling some whim or need of those in power (like Malcolm Hawke being made to entertain nobles at a party). You might be thrown into the dungeon and left to starve to death, like the mage child Cole (and other mage apprentices of the White Spire) did. You are at risk of physical and sexual abuse, like the mages of the Gallows were.
Innocent mages were already involved. They were already being killed, they were already fighting for their lives for centuries since the inception of Circles, long before Anders' actions.
Also, in the case of the Gallows specifically, Knight-Commander Meredith had already called for the Annulment as early as the beginning/mid of Act 3. The mages' lives were already in danger, even before the Chantry was destroyed.
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Anders tried for six years to make people listen and show how magic is not meant to be feared and can be used for good -- by publishing a manifesto, by providing free magical healthcare in Darktown -- to bring people's attention to the plight of mages and change things for the better. It took the imminent threat of his people being slaughtered wholesale for him to resort to what is aptly titled 'The Last Straw'.
If players want to blame anyone for subjecting mages to a conflict they did not want, look no further than the Chantry and their system of exploitation and oppression over the mages. Put blame on the Chantry for forcing mages into lives they did not choose, and asserting methods of culling and control over them, simply for how they were born. It was the Chantry that gave them no choice whether or not they had a say in staying alive or dying.
And if DA players would still say that the mages could have tried for a more "peaceful route" to alleviate their circumstances (despite seeing how Anders' manifesto, his Darktown clinic, and years of trying to negotiate with Elthina failed and Meredith was calling for Annulment anyway): very rarely do the oppressed win change by pandering to the morals of their oppressors.
Innocent mages were already suffering and being murdered in droves, for centuries. Innocent mages were already involved in this struggle, whether they wanted to be or not. And Anders' actions at the Chantry was like a rallying cry: If we're going to die anyway, then I'd rather die trying to take them down than giving them what they want.
(Also, I have not yet gone into detail on what actually started the mage-templar war, which was the Seekers hiding the cure for Tranquility, and Lord Seeker Lambert's decision to dissolve the Nevarran accord and take the Templars hunting for the free mages across the countryside because he decided dead mages were better than free mages -- because that's a whole separate post.)
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sillyliterature · 1 year
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Knowing what we know of the real Cole, a character introduced in DAI, Bioware had the gall to blatantly villainize Anders by inflating the number of casualties of the Kirkwall Chantry explosion, by giving his signature outfit to random outlaws in the Hinterlands and to Imshael, a demon no less (and by a bunch of other things like failing to give the player the option to make the cure for tranquility known, the main reason for the mage rebellion, not the Kirkwall Chantry explosion (and failing to make Cassandra accountable as the avatar for the Seekers order in the Inquisition;) by not including a single mage to speak positively about being finally free from the Circle or about Anders (we did however get a Loghain's apologist, but not for Anders, no sir🙄)
Anders could have ended up like the real Cole. If he didn't it was pure and utter luck that the templars didn't completely forget him when he was in solitary confinement for a whole year but he could have died of starvation... How many other mages died forgotten in dungeons of Circles throughout Thedas? And you're telling me bombing one Chantry was an overaction - the institution that's the templars' puppet master and condones these abuses on mages?
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olillskio · 2 years
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BACK WITH NEW ANDERS & JUSTICE ART- God I love these two so NO I wont stop drawing them xD
also pls look at his face I luv this pretty man
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becauseanders · 1 year
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okay but can you fucking imagine the very first time anders delivers a baby outside of the circle, the very first time he hands a newborn to their parents, the very first time he holds a baby and doesn't just have to hand them off to a fucking templar never to be seen again, the very first time he wraps up a new baby and gets to see the joy in their parents' faces instead of the parents literally never once even laying eyes on this infant, the very first time he delivers a newborn and it's a happy day instead of a tragedy, can you fucking imagine… i mean he probably had to help with deliveries at kinloch hold right so just like, the very first time he takes part in a birth that is a joyous occasion has to sure be something for him and i uhh…yeah, i’m imagining it…
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moontheoretist · 3 months
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"It was true that Anders had been changed by his union with Justice.  But Justice had begun to change him even before that, from the moment of their first meeting.  
Back before Kirkwall, before Hawke, in Blackmarsh near Amaranthine, where the Veil had been stripped tissue-thin by dark magic, Anders and his companions had been thrown into the spirit world, and there they had found Justice.
Anders had, on occasion, encountered other friendly spirits in the Fade.  But those were like shy woodland creatures, fleeting about, silent and inscrutable.  Intelligent in their own way, but preoccupied with matters in which human beings played little part.
Justice was different.  Imposing, undeniable, like something out of a storybook.  Like something out of Anders's own childhood dreams, when he had drifted to sleep in petrified silence each night during his first lonely months in the Circle.
From the beginning, Anders had felt a sort of silent awe in Justice’s presence.  But with time, he realized that what he felt, more than anything, was shame.  
He could see, now, his own veneer of carelessness, of casual disregard, for what it was.  A protective posture.  Armor against the world.  He had long ago learned that selfishness was something to hold onto when cruel experience made believing in anything else too painful.  Selfishness meant that he was permitted to save himself, even if he could save no one else.
But in Justice's presence, all of this, everything of his former life, suddenly struck him as pale and wanting.
There were, Anders knew, certain beliefs that he had always held onto, in a locked away, guarded part of his heart.  That the vulnerable would someday find the strength to unite against their oppressors.  That their oppressors would be cast down and face atonement.  And in Justice, these ideas suddenly stood before him, given form and voice.  They suddenly seemed not only possible, but necessary.
For his part, thrown into the mortal world and confined to the decaying body of Kristoff,  Justice could not help but take note of Anders as well.  It first struck him as odd that a person who burned with such a painful longing for righteousness was regarded by his mortal companions as little more than a charming scoundrel.  Then came the realization that this was intentional on Anders's part - a disguise.  Then, the realization that the disguise was not for others' sake, but for that of Anders himself.
He noted this, for example:  Anders liked to speak about the Circle's cruelties, or the templars who now hunted him, in an attitude of annoyance, glibness, arrogant superiority.  Always masking pain, masking anger.  
When Justice finally named those things in earnest - You were a helpless child when you were taken and caged.  They should never again be allowed to lay their hands on another mage as they did you - Anders looked at him in real fear.  
He was afraid because he knew what this would mean:  to acknowledge that feeling, to face it, to give it weight.  He knew where his desire for retribution would lead him.  
That part - the endgame of all of this - was never in doubt.
But even back then, when Justice was still Kristoff and not yet Anders, his presence at Anders's side was a source of strength, almost intoxicating.  When they fought the templars who had come to recapture Anders, Justice did not hesitate to deliver the killing blow.  He seemed to regard the act as unquestionably right, as no more blameworthy than removing a dangerous weapon from the hands of a child.  
Anders envied this certainty, fed off of it, felt emboldened by it, and desired it for himself.
[...]
Justice was able to recall the first moments of their union in a way Anders could not.  Feeling the different weight and motion of a living body around him, overcome by the blinding flare of a living consciousness, colliding with the surge of conflicted emotion that Anders carried within him, and, finally, merging with the mirrored longing for justice already present there.  More painful than Kristoff, more bewildering, but more ecstatic as well.
For Anders, it was different.  Unconsciousness, panic, a sense of absence, of his body suddenly becoming foreign to him.  The experience of possession.  He was lost for some time, even as Justice worked solicitously to help him find himself again, to lead him back to the surface.  
In the days and weeks that followed, Anders found that all of the old parts of him were still there - memories, desires, fears, faults.  But something had cracked open inside him.  He had a sensation as though his innermost heart were suddenly bared to the world, raw and unprotected."
~ unison by zerodignity
I dislike people who prefer Awakening Anders and sneer at DA2 Anders, not because I dislike Awakening Anders (I didn't play it, so I can't say I dislike him), but because they miss the point of his character, just like the writers of his did. Anders is not a "bipolar terrorist" that was destined to blow up the Chantry in a misguided act of heroism that is actually a villainy. Anders is a person who commits something unthinkable because there was nothing else left. He tried for 7 years to change the fate of the mages and the only thing he got in return were more oppression, abuses and injustice. If he didn't do what he did, if he didn't remove the status quo forcibly, there would be no foundation to build mage's future on. His action was necessary. He didn't start the war, as it was started by the Templars themselves when mages voted for independence from the Chantry, but it had to be done to show that mages have enough of the status quo, that the change needs to happen. Anders before Justice was a man who hated Templars and desired justice, but never could actually pursue it, because his survival was far more important at the time. He acted the way he did, because it was easier, it was a convenient mask to hide behind, so he didn't have to face the reality of his own feelings. Justice changed all that. He allowed Anders to be truly himself. And albeit I mourn his ending in which he lives happily with the Wardens (which was retconned for the sake of DA2), Anders needed this change in himself. He needed this realization that his own survival is no longer the most important, and that he finally can put his anger to good use.
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valleyedprism · 2 years
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“Kieran, sweetheart, settle in for your bedtime stories.”
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meowmeowmage · 10 months
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Every time I see fics trying to change the Kirkwall finale escalation to something extremely different than canon I sigh really deeply bc most of the time they have Meredith in particular killed and all of a sudden everything is all good, bc Meredith was the sole problem in their eyes. Except she's not. She's merely a symptom of the problem.
If one person has to be singled out to blame for the situation, it is in fact Elthina, and Anders was right to target her. She is in charge of Meredith. Meredith's crimes through the ages are on Elthina's hands bc she allowed them and kept allowing them to happen. But most of all, and this is why just killing off one person wouldn't have worked, it is the system that is the real problem. The system as a whole needs to change. And it is the symbol of that unchanging and powerful system that Anders targets and destroys, to show that it is in fact not untouchable, and at the same time forcing everyone to choose side and giving his fellow mages the chance to fight back instead of getting slaughtered like pigs.
The system is a global problem and this is why local solutions don't work. Killing off Meredith (and Elthina) and having Cullen take charge doesn't work. No matter who is in charge, it doesn't change the fact that the system allows and even encourages attrocities to happen. So for as long as it stands, more Merediths and Elthinas will follow, bringing more suffering and pain.
And we've actually seen a local solution applied to this global problem - Dairsmuid's Circle. Guess how that turned out? Ended up with genocide.
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azurechicken · 10 months
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I find it curious that people who end up disliking Anders usually list their reasoning as him being snappy. Well, yeah? He is snappy, he is loud, he is fiery, and he doesn't know how to stand down most of the time. If he was not the way he is, he would be another Circle Mage. But that is not really the point, is it? He does not start out as this fiery mage who cannot shut up about anything injustice. He starts out as this jokester even the fans always look back and say "I liked this Anders better". Between the jokester!Anders and fiery!Anders, is there really that big of a difference though? Don't get me wrong, I do see the way years changed him, as well as the merging of course. But who he was and who he is are just a reflection of how he reacts to the same problem he always faced; being unheard. This man spent his entire life trying to make points that never really reached their destination. At first he joked about them, and everybody waved him off. Then he got serious, and he was shut down or ignored. From the point that we meet him, between dead templers, he already looked like he lost the argument about having anyone just listen long ago. So he jokes about it. Now, Awakening!Anders is young, not yet faced the unending taint and darkspawns, he is just starting. He didn't yet see the mess Kirkwall is, didn't help anyone who needs it in a sewer selflessly until drained. Didn't have an ethereal being of justice push him towards righting the wrongs done to his kind. He still had Ser Pounce too, if that helps. And in a way, Karl, of course. But the Anders we see in Kirkwall has seen and done all that. He is now all that he suffered. He changed, he didn't have a choice against it. But one thing did not change; he continued to make his points, and he continued being unheard. And at this point, I think it is already a bit late to hear him out. Because he has been unheard for so long, he feels unheard. And feelings are louder than facts, always. And, yes, he is snappy. He snaps because who would hear if he didn't? He is fiery because he has people to stand up for. It is not just his voice anymore, it is of many more like him. So yes, he is loud, with many voices hidden behind his own. Yet, even then, 'he is just an abomination.'
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hadeantaiga · 1 year
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Today in characters who Deserved Better:
Anders from Dragon Age.
Now, I don't mean "he didn't deserve to be taken over by Justice". Anders and Justice are sexy. 100% approve.
I mean, he didn't deserve to have the writers of the game make it so Hawke can't help him blow up the Chantry.
let me help him blow up the fucking Chantry, BioWare
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kirkwalldrama · 1 year
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can someone explain me why people treat anders as a villain for blowing up the chantry (even tho he peacefully fought for mage rights for years, led free clinic for poor refugees, helped circle mages to escape) but love and adore isabela who out of selfishness led to WAR with qunari, causing death of (probably) much more people in kirkwall? i love isabela but that's not fair fr
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mywitchcultblr · 1 year
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Anders blowing up one oppressive Church building (the chantry is a very horrible institution like Vatican who likes to burn people alive on stakes) to free his people from slavery: Got demonized and hated a lot
Celene murdered 3000 elves just to prove a point: Got an option to get back with her elven girlfriend
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rivilu · 1 year
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Act 3
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sillyliterature · 8 months
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