Three times a month I'm writing up a big post about gender in dragon age and then deleting it because I realize I sound out of my fucking mind

I was talking to my friend about DAI's treatment of Anders the other day and how it drives me INSANE. This game is SO cruel and uncharitable to him! Firstly, the only time we EVER see his manifesto in canon (as far as I know) is in the house of a crazed murderer with a pile of bodies in his basement. Every single mention is placing the blame firmly on his shoulders. I know some people subscribe to the "Varric is distancing himself from their actions for his/their safety" which I subscribe to as well simply for my own sanity, but it does sometimes become hard to swallow when it's been revealed that (assuming you romanced him) he knew where Hawke and Anders were the entire time yet he continues to let others trash Anders while he chimes, etc. And I DO understand and sympathize with Varric in a way, Kirkwall was his home and when the war broke out there was mass death and destruction and he had to leave. Anders did play a role in that, but he only sped up the process, he was not the root cause and they were heading that direction anyway. Also, he saw Meritdith's red lyrium nonsense firsthand, he saw the cruelty that preceded it, and everything she did aligned with what Anders was so concerned about. The Thedas-wide fighting is not "blondie's mess". I originally had my imported Hawke set to "supported Anders" but I had to change it to "didn't support Anders" in my next playthrough because the supportive Hawke straight up calls him a "monster" so I found the alternative to somehow be the lesser of two evils. In the end, I guess that's more accurate to my Hawke anyway because he was upset that Anders went behind his back and didn't tell him first, he would have liked the time to prepare for the aftermath and all that. But yeah, the "I don't know if there ever was an Anders" from a conflicted but still loyal Hawke is easier for me to roll my eyes and ignore than "he wasn't a hero or a monster, maybe he was both" from a supportive Hawke. But ugh, I digress... As for the other main characters, I do understand that none of them knew Anders personally, they only know him from the big action he took with the chantry and nothing more. So I think it makes sense that they don't necessarily have a favorable view of him, some of them seem rather confused if anything. Not to mention a lot of them did not personally endure the circumstances that led Anders to do what he did. But I really would have loved for there to be more NPCs that supported him, especially when DA2 introduced "The Resolutionists" who seem to align pretty damn well with Anders.

And we got a character that supported Loghain which is a 10+ year old topic but not a single one that supported Anders who seems to be a hot-button issue atm? At the very least, I wish there were at least some people that questioned the whole "Anders did this, this is all his fault" narrative (especially once DAI itself revealed that the war did not, in fact, start because of Anders) or at least SOME differing opinions on him?? As far as I can tell, the only person who has been remotely charitable to him is Solas in this conversation (the thing my friend sent me that got me talking about it):

And the only other mention I could find of people that may have supported him is in the Annexing Kirkwall wartable mission where Sebastian mentions "Anders's associates" who he believes might know where he is. But then again, this is coming from the man who wants to march on a city of innocents for to find a man who probably isn't even there so should be taken with a huge grain of salt.

FWIW I now play with the mod that makes Aiding Kirkwall trigger every time because it better aligns with my HCs for Seb and I will never in my life kill Anders so... I actually like Sebastian even though I don't agree with him most of the time. I get his immediate hurt and betrayal at the end of DA2 because he effectively lost his family again, but I'd like to after 3 whole years of being prince he'd have cooled down enough to uhhh... not march on a bunch of innocents??? Which seems very antithetical to his character and development in DA2?? Annexing Kirkwall is silly, so I do not see it. But I digress, this is an Anders post!!

Anyway, I know I am not saying anything that hasn't been said to death by this point. I love each and every DA companion in their own way, regardless of whether or not I agree with them. But I feel like this is less an issue with them and more an issue with how the writers chose to frame the narrative. I do have to wonder if the fact that so many people hated and were averse to Anders made them think that this is what the people wanted. I have quite a few issues with Anders's writing and handling in DA2 as well, don't get me wrong, but at the very least I enjoyed the ability to support him all the way through.

hi okay i hate sending asks to people without knowing them but you seem kind so im trying: during the break, i’ve been working my way through VM, and i’m at episode 75. my question, because i’ve read some of your more recent meta, is “what’s Percy’s deal?” i know he’s loved by the fandom, but i can’t find myself relating to him, and i find his assertions that he’s the only one with a plan offputting. is there more context you can give to me about percy’s character that explains his motivations?

aww, thank you!

(and yeah, asks like this are totally fine, i totally get that anxiety, good job on sending this!)

i mean, first off, you don't have to like a character everyone else does? if you don't relate to percy you can just, not relate to percy, that's fine

(and to be fair, as much as i love him as a character, i would not want him as a friend, because he's a very flawed person that has a lot to work on, but in fiction those traits are interesting to watch rather than difficult to deal with)

but, percy's deal! the short answer is people generally like him because taliesin's funny and charismatic and he does morally grey right, which is rare and a fun thing to explore (also in his relationships with other people, the entire vex-vax-percy-keyleth square is full of neat parallels and opposites and interesting things and i have whole essays in my head on all six combos there)

i don’t know which posts you’ve read so i’ll link this one here too, just to cover a couple more of the generally unnoticed aspects of his character, and things i like about percy

he’s also far from perfect, as you’ve noted, he does tend to believe he’s the smartest person in any given room, because he’s young and clever and used to being that, which you’re allowed to find off putting, but i will say i find he does that less than a lot of characters of his general archetype? he listens to pike, he listens to keyleth, he listens to vex, he respects when they have more knowledge than him on a particular subject, he’s not above asking for help. and generally most of the arguments he has with keyleth on that subject aren’t him asserting he knows more than her, but more a matter of principles and values (they’re a really interesting pair that way, they have similar backgrounds, both children of royalty running away from the crown, but they’re such opposites. percy is a natural leader who would rather anyone rule than him, keyleth fumbles her way through all of it but sticks to it because she doesn’t want to let anyone down, percy is a pragmatist, keyleth is an idealist, they both are too focused on the big picture but in two completely different ways, i could write a whole other post on this, but to get to my point, they wouldn’t be such good balances for each other if percy didn’t absolutely respect where keyleth is coming from)

for the long answer, i’m gonna break this down into parts and try to get to the core of percy's character and why he is the way he is

(under the cut bc this gets long)

1 - heavy trauma

like... this is the really really big one. percy, at age 17 or 18, had his entire life up to that point completely destroyed. his family was killed, his friends were killed, people he trusted like family (professor anders, who was a more present figure in percy's life than his actual parents) betrayed him and helped the briarwoods, he was imprisoned in his own castle's dungeons and tortured for information, they threw his siblings' bodies in there with him to make a point, cassandra helped him escape but as far as he knew she died helping him. he has two years of his life after that he straight up doesn't remember, his hair turned white from the stress of it. 

trying to go after ripley the first time didn't work, he was captured and left to starve in a prison cell, for the first few months of travelling with vox machina he genuinely believed it wasn't real, because realistically no one was gonna come save him, this was just a hallucination of his dying mind. returning to whitestone he was forced to confront the fact that literally everyone he ever knew growing up (with the sole exception of archibald) was either dead or working with the briarwoods, and even after retaking the city there's a lot that can never be repaired. 

and he's just... never really dealt with any of this? like, he gave vox machina the technical details of what happened to him in the briarwood arc, because they needed to know that information, but the first time he actually started processing his trauma, the first time he admits it out loud to anyone, is the final episode of campaign one. before then it had been occasional snide or handwavey comments, and like, he'll let himself feel the anger over it (in the beginning of the story he encouraged it, because then he didn't have to feel anything else), but he's never processed the grief, never admitted to himself how badly that affected him

which means he's got a lot of pent up emotions in there that he just keeps burying, and sometimes they come out in unhealthy ways. having so much taken from him also makes him really motivated to keep the things he does have - he’s got some deep set abandonment issues and takes any kind of betrayal really badly, don’t know if you’ve got up to the scanlan stuff by the time i post this, but that’s something to keep in mind as to why he acts the way he does there. (and it’s not more explicit because percy was raised nobility, keeping a brave face through anything is part of who he is, he tends to cover emotions he’s insecure about in snark or indifference or, for the intense ones, anger, because those are the things he thinks he’s allowed to show, but the real emotions show up occasionally, when they’re particularly strong, or if you’re reading between the lines. he really does care a lot about vox machina)

2 - legacy and loyalty. 

speaking of nobility, it's hard to do a character study on percy without mentioning whitestone and the house of de rolo. this is the number one thing to percy. he was raised to respect title and name, and most importantly, raised to respect the people he represents - both the townsfolk of whitestone and also percy's ancestors and future de rolo generations. whitestone is more important than any one life, he has a duty to protect and serve it, and that comes before any personal wants he may have. it's also important to him for family reasons - he was a pretty lonely child, but he loved reading about the history of the city, all the weird ghost stories whitestone had even before the briarwoods. it probably made him feel more connected to all of that, this is the place he belongs. and after his family dies, it becomes even more important, because this is his connection to them. the soul of a city lives as long as its people, by protecting what's left, he keeps a little bit of what came before

(and also in just tidbits to understand percy's character, he sees all cities and man-made things the same way - in a world where some races live for centuries or millennia, their history exists mostly by word of mouth, you can physically talk to people who were around 500 years ago and get their take on things - humans don't have that, they get 100 years at most, so the things they build are vital to their heritage. this is how you keep people alive long after they're gone, by honouring what they created. and especially for someone so concerned with legacy and history, percy literally says abandoning westruun would be blasphemy, because the place people grew up is important, yes it's better that they live, but letting the city be abandoned and destroyed would be an irreparable act of violence.) 

this is the number one thing on percy's mind when evaluating anything about himself, where do i come from, and what do i leave behind? which is a question that has a lot of moments to be tested, because of my next point...

3 - pragmatism and terrible thoughts

when it comes down to it, percy is a very ends justify the means kind of person. he finds it very easy to square away any kind of collateral damage as long as it gets him to his end goal. see: trial of the take, where he's fine to catch his friends in the blast radius of a new bomb design because he's so excited that it worked, preparing to fight vorugal and resigning himself to potentially having to kill innocent people to kill the dragon (he wasn’t okay with that, but he would do it), also his conscious decision to let ripley go, knowing she would lead to the deaths of thousands because it was her or the briarwoods and he wanted revenge 

(this is by his own admission his lowest point and worst mistake, because as mentioned, he thinks about the consequences of his actions near constantly, he knew she would reproduce his guns and they would lead to a whole new form of warfare. but in that moment he was just blinded by grief and way too emotionally burnt out and did not have the capacity to care. and he spends the rest of the campaign and honestly probably the rest of his life trying to make up for that one)

he's also, by his own admission, someone who has a lot of bad thoughts he doesn't act on, he's very clever and creative and ideas for ways to use those skills for violence or vengeance come easily to him (like, percy as an actual villain would be ripley but worse, ripley's intelligent but a very direct point a to point b kind of thinker, percy has multiple times criticised her lack of imagination, a percy with her lack of morals would be terrifying)

(honestly this is why i was seeing percy so much in taliesin's narrative telephone, because "sometimes i wake up having dreamed of a terrible thing, and normally i just file that away for things that i would never do, because i wanna maintain friendships, but then LIAM did something to me." and the whole being absolutely fine with throwing the rest of the cast under the bus just to enact revenge on liam was quintessential percy)

but we’ve seen the pragmatic anti hero everywhere, anyone can be a terrible person, and have reasons for it, that alone doesn’t make an interesting character (at least not for me)

what does, is my last point

4 - trying to be good

i still vividly remember when i first watched campaign one, being really surprised at how much percy asked for help? like, i went in expecting the usual full on demon possession storyline, i expected percy to hide how bad it was, i expected him to make poor decisions without realising he was doing it until he was in too deep to back out

and like, he had some of that. but at the first sign of things being out of his control, he asked his friends for help. he let pike greater restoration him. he told vax to kill him if things ever got too out of hand. he was really, genuinely scared about what he got himself into and what he might do because of it. there was never a point where he pretended, even to himself, that making a deal with orthax was okay. the minute he realised there was a demon involved, he was working to stop it. and yeah, by the time he realised it was already a bit too late, there were already some things out of his control (and also taliesin kept having the worst rolls against the whitestone corruption which was really fun on a meta level), which is how things got as bad as they did. but honestly, all things considered, there’s very little to criticise about the way percy handled himself in the briarwood arc. 

and he keeps doing that, trying to get better. he struggles with it, he struggles a lot, against his anger issues, against all the trauma, against the fact that he really doesn’t want to be here and things would be so much easier if he were dead. but he recognises he holds grudges too easily, so he starts actively trying to forgive those who’ve wronged him (this is something he and vex have in common, and something they were working on together before they were together, which probably helped a lot in getting them to that point as well). he recognises he makes poor decisions when he’s angry, so he starts learning to step back in those moments and leave the decisions to someone else. he has never not owned up to his mistakes, he takes responsibility for everything he’s done, and if he notices a problem he can’t solve himself, he asks for help.

and i find that fun to explore. like, percy’s been likened to hamlet in the actual show, and i was the kid who got super obsessed with hamlet when i was like 15 because i was in that same mental space of suicidal self hatred and existential melancholy but also thinking i was the smartest person in any given room and being too young to have gotten over the arrogance that makes you ignore everyone else’s needs for the sake of indulging your own problems. and then i got older and realised there are smarter ways to go about things, like having empathy and appreciating the light in the world and not being a dickhead to people because it makes you feel better, and maybe hamlet can be justified and in the wrong at the same time. and while there’s some stuff i won’t spoil for you, percy after ripley kills him is definitely starting to learn that, which you rarely see in the hamlet archetype, bc everyone’s like “ah yes so Deep so Important who cares what bad things this person did they had Trauma and are Clever”

well, percy cares about the bad things he did, and cares about not doing those anymore. so like, he’s still a disaster of a person bc he’s like 23 and no one has their life together at 23, especially not someone in percy’s situation, and honestly i find that fun to watch as well bc i like watching characters make stupid mistakes and do stuff i’d never approve of in real life, and as i mentioned at the start, taliesin makes captivating and funny characters. but yeah, that’s generally where percy’s at, most of the time

For the fandom asks: 001 Lord of the Rings 003 Anders from DA Pretty please ^^

Lord of the Rings 

(I’m more of a Silmarillion fan - but you said LotR, so let’s do LotR…:-))

Favorite character: Boy, that’s tough. OK, I’m gonna say Elrond. Survivor from the 1st age - and there’s that Fëanorian connection. Or maybe Treebeard. Because hooooooom, motherfucker.

Least Favorite character: I don’t think I have one, to be honest. I could pick a few in the movies, but in the books? Nope. Either I love them or I love to hate them.

5 Favorite ships (canon or non-canon): I’m not much of a shipper when it comes to Tolkien’s legendarium, not as far as romantic or sexual ships go. I’m all about brOTPs and friendships when it comes to Tolkien, with very few exceptions. I guess Aragorn & Arwen is kind of aesthetically appealing due to its connection to Beren/Lúthien and Thingol/Melian, its symbolism and the bittersweet note that it ends on, but I’m nowhere near as emotionally invested in those two as I am in the friendship between Legolas and Gimli or in whatever the fuck is going on between Sam and Frodo (and no, I don’t read that relationship as romantic or sexual and never will). 

Character I find most attractive: If we go by headcanons I have for the book, then it’s gonna be Elrond, Faramir, Legolas, Glorfindel or Aragorn. (In the movies it is totally a tie between Elrond and Saruman. And Haldir.)

Character I would marry: Can I say Elrond again? Either him…or Samwise Gamgee.

Character I would be best friends with: Frodo, Gimli or Legolas, I think. And Pippin.

A random thought: I think Legolas’s hair is actually light brown. I also suspect he’s into shrooms.

An unpopular opinion: The long descriptive passages, the songs and ‘Concerning Hobbits’ are fucking awesome.

My Canon OTP: Like I said. Not much of a shipper when it comes to Tolkien and especially not when it comes to LotR. Anyway, I’m gonna say Aragorn and Arwen because it’s kinda important.

My Non-canon OTP: Don’t have one.

Most Badass Character: Éowyn!!!

Most Epic Villain: Old Man Willow. Ha! (Didn’t expect that, did you?) OK, just kidding. Old Man Willow is quite a frightening entity in his own right, but I’ll just be boring and say Sauron. Doesn’t give me quite as many chills as the Nazgul and isn’t quite as cool as the Balrog… But he’s definitely the most epic.

Pairing I am not a fan of: I’m indifferent to most of them. If the fanfic is good, I’ll enjoy it, regardless of the pairing. 

Character I feel the writers screwed up (in one way or another): I’m fine with the bookverse characters. I’d appreciate if Eowyn maintained more of her edge even after meeting Faramir, but I’m not super salty over it. As far as the movieverse goes… I guess I can live with Legolas and Gimli getting reduced to Mr Lean Mean Killing Machine and Mr Comic Relief (it kinda works in the film), I’m fine with how Faramir is handled (for the most part) and I get the reasoning behind most of the changes made to the characters and the narrative. But I’ll never forgive Peter Jackson for what he did to Denethor.

Favourite Friendship: Probably Legolas and Gimli.

Character I most identify with: Bilbo.

Character I wish I could be: I wanna be Legolaaaaas!

Anders

How I feel about this character: Conflicted. I’m absolutely NOT a fan of what he did. I get why he did it, though. As angry as I get with him at the end of the story, I’m still much angrier with Isabella at the end of Act II (I sometimes wonder why SHE doesn’t get anywhere near as much bad rap as Anders…at least Anders did what he did for noble reasons).

Any/all the people I ship romantically with this character: Hawke, Fenris (if it’s handled well - which ain’t easy given how unlikely that ship is), HoF (if he lives)He’s not one of my favourites though, so I don’t really seek out Anders related content much.

My favorite non-romantic relationship for this character: His relationship with HoF - and definitely his friendship with Varric. Or with Hawke (if Hawke isn’t romancing him - which, in most of my PTs, he isn’t).

My unpopular opinion about this character: Is there such a thing as unpopular/popular opinion where Anders is concerned? I mean, no matter what you say, *someone* is always gonna get terribly pissed off. (I think both Anders fans and Anders haters need to calm the fuck down).

One thing I wish would happen / had happened with this character in canon: No particular wishes for Anders. Well, maybe one: I guess I would like to see how the whole spirit possession thing affects Anders as a Warden. What becomes of Justice/Vengeance when the Calling comes?  

Favorite friendship for this character: Hawke.

My crossover ship: Don’t have one.

The 2019 mosque attack and freedom of speech in Norway | Far Right

On August 10, 2019, then-21-year-old neo-Nazi Philip Manshaus made his way to al-Noor mosque in the suburban municipality of Baerum near the Norwegian capital, Oslo, on the eve of Eid al-Adha, intending to commit a massacre of Muslim worshippers.

His murderous plot, however, ended in a spectacular failure. It was Saturday afternoon when he burst into the mosque, so only three worshippers were present. Two of them – 77-year-old Mohammad Iqbal and 66-year-old Muhammad Rafiq – managed to wrestle him down to the ground.

Several days later, the neo-Nazi appeared in court with a bruised face, having failed to “kill as many Muslims as possible” and instead having gotten a beating from two elderly Muslims.

Although there were no deaths at the mosque, it turned out that before setting off for the attack, Manshaus had killed his 17-year-old step-sister, Johanne Zhangjia Ihle-Hansen, who was adopted from China and in his mind, also constituted a “threat” to the “white race”.

Earlier this month the court case against him started, with prosecutors seeking a 21-year prison sentence for his crimes. As Norway goes through yet another trial of a murderous neo-Nazi, important questions have to be asked about how seriously violent far-right extremism is taken in Norway and how its ideas have been allowed to freely circulate under the guise of protecting “freedom of speech”.

Right-wing extremism

Despite the increasing sway of neo-Nazi ideas in Norwegian society, there is a continuous trend to perceive right-wing extremists as disturbed individuals and their violence as a result of mental illness rather than extreme ideology.

In the case of Anders Breivik, who in 2011 went on a shooting spree in Norway killing 77 people, the Norwegian media extensively covered his psychological profile and claimed he had a problematic relationship with his mother.

Some Norwegian commentators even went as far as comparing him to a “natural disaster”.

Such narratives continue to dominate the public discourse in Norway because they offer a convenient way for a society which has long seen itself as “post-racial” and “colour-blind” to exceptionalise right-wing extremism and the wider societal climate of Islamophobia on which it feeds, rather than see it as a growing native phenomenon and a real threat.

Manshaus, much like other murderous far-right extremists, was not a person with a mental illness. And he was clearly motivated to act violently by neo-Nazi ideology.

According to court documents, forensic psychiatrists found him to be sane and criminally liable for his actions. During the psychiatric assessment, Manshaus did not appear to regret killing his own step-sister, as he considered her “subhuman” due to her Chinese ethnicity. He did express regret that the had not planned his attack on the mosque better so he would have actually been able to kill Muslims.

In addition to espousing the idea of the “great replacement” – that there is a conspiracy to “replace” white Europeans with (mostly Muslim) immigrants – he also appeared to believe various anti-Semitic conspiracy theories and called the Holocaust “a myth”. He also declared homosexuality “a disease”.

He clearly had drawn inspiration from Breivik and Brenton Tarrant, who murdered 51 people in two mosques in New Zealand in 2019 and whose “manifesto” he cited in court.

Manshaus also applied for membership in the neo-Nazi, pan-Nordic and Swedish-dominated Nordic Resistance Movement (NRM) in June 2019, and had a meeting with some of their members. Several months earlier, after the New Zealand mosques attack, the NRM had refused to “distance” itself from Tarrant’s terrorist attack.

Manhaus’s increasingly racist attitude prior to the attack worried some people in his immediate family and social circles. In 2018, a man contacted the Police Security Services (PST) expressing concern about his attitudes, but the police did not follow up on it.

Fellow students at a rural ecological college that Manshaus attended in 2018-2019 were also perturbed by his ideas and informed the school administration, which also did not take action.

Back in 2010, the Norwegian authorities also did not act on tip-offs about Breivik.

Free speech vs hate speech

It is undoubtedly something of a paradox that it was after Breivik’s terrorist attacks in 2011, the worst in modern Norwegian history, that the Swedish-dominated neo-Nazi NRM started finding a footing in Norway. The Norwegian media reporter and author, Harald Klungtveit, has estimated that at least 81 Norwegians have passed through the ranks of the NRM since then.

Despite this worrying trend, Norwegians have been duly told by Norwegian free speech liberals in powerful positions that the proverbial “answer to hate speech” is “more and freer speech”.

Since 2011, Norwegian far-right, anti-Muslim and racist activists have enjoyed liberal access to mainstream media outlets, have had their self-published books sponsored by liberal foundations committed to freedom of expression, and have seen continued commitment to state funding of their media outlets.

Norwegian liberal media editors have enforced editorial conventions whereby clearly and discernably racist and Islamophobic organisations have been euphemistically described as merely being “critical of Islam”.

Both far-right anti-Muslim conspiracy theories like the Eurabia theory and identitarian “replacement theory” have been openly promoted by public intellectuals in positions of considerable power in Norway.  

Quite how Manshaus first came across the neo-Nazi NRM we do not know. But what we do know is that a central propaganda and recruitment tool for the NRM in Norway as in Sweden has been its public marches. When 60-70 Swedish and Norwegian neo-Nazis from the NRM, including a number of members with violent criminal records, marched through the city centre in Norway’s fifth-largest city of Kristiansand on July 29, 2017, the reaction of the very same Norwegian free speech liberals was that freely permitting them to do so was nothing short of a litmus test for Norwegian liberal democracy.

The media has also extensively covered the Manshaus trial, going into excessive details about his life and printing photos of him, including those in which he makes far-right gestures, thus giving a platform to his propaganda efforts. And just like the media coverage of Breivik’s trial, this raises the questions about the ability of Norwegian media to find the right balance between providing information of public interest and becoming a stage for extremist right-wing propaganda.

As media scholar Gavan Titley cautions in a forthcoming book, “free speech has been adopted as a primary mechanism for amplifying and re-animating racist ideas” in our times. Though relatively few of those regularly exposed to racist hate speech in any society are likely to engage in violence or terror, there can be little doubt that the propagation of hatred made possible by ultra-liberal interpretations of “freedom of speech” is an enabling circumstance for such violence and terror.

Meanwhile, members of immigrant and minority communities are increasingly living in fear. In Baerum, al-Noor mosque has seen few worshippers return and has struggled financially, as donations have dwindled. Norwegian authorities have offered little support, despite high-profile media shows of solidarity from Norwegian PM Erna Solberg and Crown Prince Haakon Magnus in the immediate aftermath of the attacks last August

“Never again” was the mantra in Norway in 2011. But here we are – again.  

The views expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera’s editorial stance.

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