thinking about that banter where anders asks fenris if he's ever considered suicide and it's weird bc anders definitely started this conversation to upset and embarrass and trigger fenris, and a lot of fans are upset and embarrassed and triggered by it (myself included tbh. i remember it starting up in my game once and walking directly to the nearest stage change to make it stop.) but i think everyone gets too caught up in how shitty it was for anders to do this that they tend to miss fenris's actual response and that this banter becomes one of the most even keeled conversations the two of them have in the whole game. like fenris refuses to emotionally escalate. anders likewise backs down. the result is this incredibly morbid and melancholic little exchange where they ruminate on the differences between their values and characters - that fenris would rather submit than die and anders would rather die than submit - and for a moment they're both sharing the same sadness about where these limitations have gotten them. it's amazing. it's weird. it's a bit of concilation and compassion that never would have happened if anders hadn't been the most tactless person in the thedas.

Fenris's anger towards Danarius in act 1 is so deceptive. Not that it doesn't exist - it definitely exists, is very real and all-consuming. And Fenris definitely creates a very logically sound argument for why it exists and why Danarius deserves to die and why it would be incredibly insulting to just pay Danarius for his own freedom - ie. the institution of slavery is evil! after everything he's taken from me, why does he also deserve my money?! (Absolutely a fair point. But nevermind that Fenris knows perfectly well that Danarius is already extremely wealthy, and already expending a far greater amount of money having him tracked and hunted and brought back alive than Fenris could ever hope to match.) And I think it all distracts from the fact that Fenris is just not a very ideological person and isn't actually motivated by ideological ideals. Which is what makes him a sensible and reasonable and pragmatic person (unlike Anders who is 100% fuelled by outrage against injustice in the face of every practical impossibility to his plans, and is thus insane (i say this affectionately, please keep your Anders hate/salt off my post)).

There's just a very practical reason that Fenris is so angry in Act 1 and I think it's that his anger is one of a very few things that's keeping him from going back to his abuser. Like, Danarius has gone out of his way to make as sure as possible that Fenris's time as a man free is as miserable and uncomfortable as being his slave, if not more. When you meet Fenris, he's being chased across the filthy backwaters of Southern Thedas by bounty hunters, hounded and paranoid and unsafe at every turn, without access to adequate food or housing or medical care, incredibly lonely and entirely without allies (and who would want to ally with him, when it comes with the strife of becoming a target of those bounty hunters too??). He is living a miserable grimy existence, and he knows that the easiest way to make it stop is to give in. To go back to Danarius - let Danarius be the solution to the problem that Danarius created in the first place, entirely with the intention of bringing Fenris back under his control. And the only thing stopping Fenris from doing that is him reminding himself at every inconvinient moment that he's furious with Danarius and the guy made his life hell and deserves to die miserably. And you think so too, right, Hawke?! Tell him you think so too!

So that anger is important, but the things that Fenris said in it also can't really be taken as a literal understanding of his thought process or his actual desires imho. It's just pretty obvious by the time you reach acts 2 and 3, when Fenris has far more in the way of resources and allies and security, that all his conviction and outrage in act 1 about how he'd go and hunt down Danarius and kill the man himself was an extremely empty bit of hot air. His grand plan for dealing with Danarius in act 3 is 'hope that guy has moved on and forgotten about me so I can meet my sister in peace'. Frankly, he doesn't want to kill Danarius - doesn't want to have to. Much in the same way he didn't want to have to kill Hadriana. He doesn't give a shit about revenge or whether or not they deserve it for their magical crimes. It's just that none of these fuckers will leave him the fuck alone to move on with his life.

I often wonder what exact deal got cut between Hawke and the Tethras brothers regarding the profits from the Deep Roads Expedition /before/ everything went pear-shaped with Bartrand. Because it brings me a lot of joy to imagine Varric thinking he’s found a total 🍭 and drafts up this complicated set of contracts that guarantee Hawke will barely be breaking even on this Expedition no matter how much he and Barty make. And then Varric gets back home half starved and freshly betrayed by his brother and rips up the contract and retroactively convinces himself it was never the plan to scam Hawke and he always intended to split the profits fairly.

I am constantly driven insane by the differences in how Anders and Merrill were treated by the narrative.

Like Anders and Merrill are both reactionaries to Chantry-led imperialism and genocide, re: mages and elves respectively. They have different priorities, but ultimately both are sociopolitical undesirables trying to find ways to push back against the reigning theocracy that is trying to eradicate a mix of their people and culture. Like, yeah, Anders is a bit more actively in the trenches of trying to get people out of the Circle, whereas Merrill is a bit more on the research and development side of things with the Eluvian (it boggles my mind that nobody in DA2 seemed to recognise what the Eluvian can and will be used for, and it was a bit of a relief when Blackwall in Trespasser finally puts to words how they can be used to mobilise troops and evacuate civilians). But by the end of DA2 as confirmed in DAI, Merrill is actively involved in doing social outreach with Alienage elves, which is basically what Anders was doing in Darktown at the start of his run in DA2. And just- beyond that they are both terribly proud, insecure, arrogant, stubborn, passionate people who try to protect themselves from the (deadly) scrutiny of others by feigning harmlessness and moral righteousness.

But the way the narrative treats this, like- I think a lot of people at this point recognise the ableism in how both these characters are treated, but I’m not sure how much people see the sexism. Like- there’s this persistent message in the game that, when Merrill attempts politically subversive actions, she is misguided and needs to be taken back under the wing of someone like Hawke who can steer her straight. Which is so very obviously paternalistic imho regardless of what gender Hawke you’re playing. Versus Anders, whose politically subversive actions are the centre of the plot by the third act and are treated with utmost seriousness and severity. The game constantly reinforces the message that downplaying Merrill’s work and goals is the correct course of action, while doing so for Anders’s is painted as ultimately foolish, and enables his ‘betrayal’ of Hawke and Varric at the end of the game. It’s like, when he attempts to disrupt the political order of the city, he’s dangerous and needs to be put down. When she attempts the same, she needs to be herded back into the kitchen.

Like obviously I don’t think either of these are the right approach when Anders and Merrill are pushing back against what is the equivalent of the Vatican at the height of the crusades. But these characters are just so similar and imho really deserved the full narrative foils treatment, and it drives me absolutely insane that nobody on the writing team wanted to treat Merrill seriously enough or treat Anders humanely enough to see that.

As a disclaimer: This is very deep in the DA2 approval lore. And this is a very buggy game and I can in no way guarantee that this wasn’t just a programming mistake. And beyond that I think many of the approval point calculations in DA2 were poorly considered, and I would totally be brushing this as one of them if it was about any other two characters. But I’m going to let myself indulge this one and feed my merders agenda m’kay.

Very obsessed with the change in Anders approval rates between the first and second passes on giving Merrill the Arulin’holm. And I really do wonder if it was on purpose and what, if anything, the writers intended to say here.

Without, like, installing the new EA app on my dying laptop and running off to get the screenshots as proof, iirc the first pass happens right after Marethari has given Hawke the Arulin’holm. Merrill is at that point breathing a sigh of relief that Marethari has relinquished it in the first place, and largely taking for granted that Hawke will hand it over.

It’s after that first pass that Merrill realises she has to make a rhetorical claim to the artefact. And her argument is basically this isn’t Hawke’s decision to make and she knows what she’s doing.

And Anders doesn’t have any dialogue here between these two choices but I am intrigued by the possibility that he did find that argument at least partly convincing. Note you do still get +10 approval for refusing to hand it over, so he’s def not broken up about whether Merrill actually gets what she wants here or not. But I like the idea that for a moment he recognises part of himself in Merrill. Like, he may not support what she’s doing or approve of giving her the Arulin’holm, but maybe he approves of the fact that Hawke is deferring to another mage’s decisions and expertise. They are living in a time when the general consensus is that mages shouldn’t be allowed to be in charge of their own lives, in a time when Anders himself is constantly dealing with others’ judgement about the choices he’s made with Justice and the Underground and the sacrifices he’s made with his time and health to sustain them. So maybe Hawke understanding that and responding in defense of mages’ right to those choices is as important in his eyes as whether Hawke agrees with his feelings about the actual choices themselves.

(And all that being said, Marethari handing an ancient Elvhen artefact to a human, knowing Merrill would do anything to get it, knowing Merrill is isolated in an environment when Hawke holds clear social privilege over her, is fucked up in ways Anders won’t even begin to understand. So, yeah, this post isn’t trying to erase any of the ways he’s still being awful in this scene as much as trying to examine the specific nature of how.)

Think I'm going to tie these posts together now and say that, beyond the reasons Fenris just isn't likely to pick up Merrill's schtick about being one of the 'good' blood mages, Merrill and her struggles generally represent an attack on how Fenris has come to understand his identity and how to keep himself safe. Like, Fenris has told himself a story to explain the circumstances of why he feels so alone and betrayed and threatened, for which he is holding Danarius fully responsible. If he, as an elf, hadn't been born without magic, if he'd been educated as a free man, if Danarius hadn't ripped him from his family (and he's adamant he never would never have chosen to leave his family), then he would not be struggling the way he is now. And Merrill is, well... lovely and brilliant and huge fucking mess of anxiety and neurosis and loneliness and self harm and relying on Hawke for protection just as much as Fenris is. (Which is also reflected in the way that Fenris in the precanon short story characterises the Dalish as people who've been given all the boons of freedom, and are wasting it mucking in the mud.) Basically, if Fenris allows himself to empathise with the decisions Merrill makes about her family - if he entertains the idea that he could be literate and a mage and have had a childhood with a very expansive family, and still be blisteringly unhappy with them - then he has to accept the possibility that he is partly responsible for where his life has ended up, which corrodes his ability to be angry with Danarius for this. And of course I talked about how Fenris being angry at Danarius is absolutely vital in order to keep him from taking Danarius back.

I think this is supported by a lot of Fenris's dialogue surrounding the Merrill and Marethari issue. Of which I can most easily point to this horrific little banter:

Basically him saying, "it's repulsive you had someone who cared about you that much (the way I wish I'd had) (ignore that she constantly negged and belittled and gaslit you), and you still couldn't get your shit together."

But in a way I think the real killer for this relationship is that Merrill on some level knows this about Fenris. On some level, she accepts that he needs to hate her. Merrill would absolutely be willing to be friends with Fenris, if he could suck it up and be nice to her, but when he doesn't, she responds with pity. When he goes off about how mages all deserve to be locked up, she goes 'Well, you're wrong and your opinions suck and here's why, but I wouldn't expect someone in your situation to know any better.' Which I think in a way is way more terribly uncomfortable for him than dealing with Anders. Like, Fenris can safely hate Anders, and Anders will safely return the favour and hate him back. But with Merrill he's stuck in this more low broil seething anger that he can never fully voice or act out without being made to lose face. Which is also delicious.

i feel like i'm trying to have level 2 critical discussions about dragon age and everyone keeps derailing me with level 1 disagreements about things everyone already cleared up ten years ago in the canon of definitive dragon age meta analysis posts that everyone clearly should be required to read upon their entrance to this fandom so i can stop having to explain things like 'marethari uses abusive shunning tactics' and 'actually the circle mages as involuntarily confined unpaid labourers are slaves even if they're not chattel slaves' and 'anders can be a real meanbutt sometimes'.

was talking about how the amount of explosive material needed for the chantry boom, even /after/ that material been refined from the raw ingredients, is probably a lot more than anders and company could gather from a single trip to the sewers/mines without even bringing a cart. (which is cooroborated by the concept art of anders's bomb setup, although I don't think that picture makes much logistic sense either). all of which makes me wonder if the quest we get in canon was more like a scouting mission for anders to see where he could get the materials or arrange the bomb setup rather than the actual dirty work.

"why did he bothering inviting hawke et al then, if he wasn't even using them for the bulk of the actual labour?"

well, that's the thing. I'm wondering how much hawke et al's involvment in helping anders gather bomb materials is entirely symbolic.

other parts of the same quest are definitely symbolic. asking hawke to distract elthina with questions about mages as he goes about his business in the chantry is symbolic. he knows elthina isn't going to budge at that point. he just needs to build up a situation where she was given this last chance to save herself from what he's about to do, so that he can justify what in his own mind feels unjustifiable (though I do not see it that way, and I don't think merrill or isabela do either for that matter)

and given anders manages to set up the bombs just fine even if you turn down the quest…

how much is hawke et al going to find drakestone and sela petrae symbolic? how much is it making them complicit in the bombing simply for the sake of it? how much is this putting hawke et al in a position where their actions mean 'you're either with me or against me (and nothing imbetween)'?

like he really wants someone on his side so badly. so much so, he's willing to interpret lukewarm statements from hawke about not hurting mages as a radical statement of support. willing to interpret what was probably a lukewarm statement from donnic about disliking meredith as a reason donnic is more meaningfully on his side than aveline's. it's not hard for me to imagine anders spinning hawke et all bumbling around as he gathers samples of shit and sulphur and charcoal into a whole emotional experience of support and solidarity.

"so you're saying this was all a manipulative attempt by anders to gain support - support he didn't even really need - under false pretences?"

yes...? but also... no?

i feel like the thing canon doesn't really quite capture, and the thing i don't want to belittle, is how real and visceral and human these needs are? like, yes, maybe anders doesn't /need/ someone there to help him scout bomb ingredient locations to get the bomb built anyhow but-

to want companionship and personal recognition and support and someone to hold your hand through an emotionally difficult task? those are certainly things that pretty much everyone needs to be happy, even if they can persist and survive without. and anders has been denied these things at a lot of avenues of his life, has been taught he cannot ask for these things plainly and expect to get them. so I think it's entirely understandable that he resorts to manipulative, underhanded, and aggressive methods to get those needs met in lieu of even knowing how to pursue them genuinely anymore.

like- fenris crossed several continents to get to a place and a people for whom his experience of slavery hadn't been entirely culturally normalised. where he wasn't constantly being gaslit about how, actually, what he went through was excusable.

whereas anders is really living in the middle of cultural apologism for the circle as an institution. and where the person he seems to consider his closest friend can't accept and respond to anders trying to give away his mother's pillow as the desperate cry for attention and validation and help that it is.

idk, it's difficult bc- I will definitely make fun of anders's dysfunctional methodology for trying to get the attention and help and support that he needs. because he really does behave in ways that are cruel and aggressive and manipulative and stupidly misaimed and wildly alienating, and turn away people who are actually sympathetic to chase after hawke and varric being their least genuine.

but I never want to make fun of anders actually needing attention and help and support. like, yeah, we all do. all the moreso when we're standing up against tyrants and abusive prison camp wardens.

I see the idea sometimes that Fenris thinks Merrill is sweet and childish, but also foolish and naive and not realising the trouble her blood magic will get her and everyone into. Basically with this sense of bafflement that a blood mage could be so nice. And I always do something of a double take because... this is how Varric and Hawke and Isabela see Merrill. This is not how *Fenris* sees Merrill. And, frankly, he has no reason to see her this way to begin with. (Although I will admit, I do not think Fenris is entirely above entertaining this infantilising rhetoric when he thinks it will hurt her, as he does in the banter that follows her act 2 quest.)

Number one. Fenris already *knows* blood mages can be sweet. Fenris spent his formative years around blood mages, engrossing himself in their struggles, empathising with their work, fighting Danarius's battles for him. He is perfectly aware that they can be charming and loveable, cannot bring himself to disagree when Danarius says Fenris once found something worthy of his affection in a blood mage. I would say that Fenris clearly considers the fact that blood mages can be sweet as the larger part of the damned problem. They're sweet, and that sweetness tricks you into overlooking the fact that they're ambitious unrepentant murderers, with powers to mess with your mind and body in ways nobody without magic can. And they will do so if either greed or desperation pushes them to it, whichever comes first. Which may not be universally true, but is all definitely true of Merrill, as it was for the people he knew in Tevinter.

Number two. Fenris isn't going to think Merrill is sweet because she is not sweet to him. Don't get me wrong, Merrill can be very sweet. She is frequently very sweet with Hawke and Isabela and Aveline. But she is not sweet with *Fenris*. Her interactions with Fenris consist of: acting like Fenris is pitiful for not knowing about the Dalish, telling Fenris he's dropping the ball by not caring more about the elves in the alienage or the history of her people, telling Fenris he'd look much prettier if he smiled more often, etc. Merrill is not sweet to Fenris.

I will say, Merrill is often *good* to Fenris. As much as they fight, as much animosity as he shows her, as much as he refuses to return the favour, she never lets it become a reason to jeopardise his safety from his pursuers or his standing with Hawke (which is the major foundation for that safety), or equivocate on his right to be free and freely express all his opinions no matter how distasteful she finds them. And I do think it's possible that he might someday feel safe enough around her to appreciate that goodness in her.

But in the meantime, no, he's just not going to be impressed by the fact that she manages to make herself look sweet and naive enough that the humans around them are going to overlook her ambitions or what she'll do to achieve them as a blood mage.

I think beyond all the superficiality of ‘grr tevinter bad, mages bad’ and the rhetoric Fenris had borrowed from southern thedosians to justify mage persecution, and even beyond all the little ways that Anders and Merrill can be condescending and invasive and terribly annoying, the real core of the issue Fenris has with them is this:

They have made the decision to be dangerous rather than victimised, and refuse to own up to it. They’ve decided very definitively that they’d rather be blood mages and abominations, that they’d rather kill other people, than ever risk being dragged to the circle, back to solitary confinement or to their clan’s ignorance.

(And, like, yeah - 100% the correct and mentally healthy decision to make.)

But they’ll never admit it. Because of their own hangups. Because they’re afraid of the kind of social backlash they would suffer if Hawke and Varric and Aveline decided that being unapologetic meant they weren’t worth protecting. They’ll lie even to themselves. How can Anders live with himself, if he admits he not only sold himself out to a demon, but he likes it better that way. Better that - than the kind of powerlessness he lived in the Circle. How can Merrill admit that whether she uses other people’s blood in her magic or not actually means fucking nothing when she’s running around bleeding bandits out on the street anyhow?

And Fenris - he lives like that too. Fenris was a bodyguard, and he earned his keep and his favour by killing other people, other slaves, Qunari, fog warriors, and Danarius’s blood sacrifices. Fenris knows, unequivocally, that he is someone who can and would hurt and kill anyone if it meant safeguarding his own safety and comfort, that he is a dangerous lyrium-encrusted monster. Danarius made that choice for him! (Or so Fenris thinks.) He made Fenris into this person, and now Fenris is stuck living with the consequences!

And here Anders and Merrill are, making that same choice, but for themselves. But they’ll sure act morally superior and say that they’re not. Typical mage arrogance, Fenris thinks.

This is probably not the only interpretation of what Fenris’s big beef with Anders and Merrill is, but I think it’s interesting, and accounts for a lot of the difference between how Fenris treats Anders & Merr vs mage Hawke, imo.

So Merrill's story in DA2 has this whole bend about her having come from a nomadic hunter-gatherer culture and then moving to Kirkwall, which is part of a greater agricultural and proto-industrial network, in order to repair this ancient artifact of her people from a time they themselves were not nomadic. Which is a whole 'nother post and not actually my point here. But, see, because of this, I headcanon that Merrill's favourite foods are starchy, carbohydrate-rich products of an agricultural lifestyle - things like noodles and dumplings and porridge - that she wouldn't actually have had much access to living with Clan Sabrae.

So Merrill over for dinner at Hawke's and Orana has made this incredible spread of food in traditional Seheron style. All the dumplings and noods and all the spices and fixings. And Merrill is completely enamoured of it. So delicious. So luxuriant.

And Merrill is like 'These foods!!' 😋 'They say in the time of Arlathan, there were entire banquets of just dumplings! We elves have lost so much as a People haven’t we?' 😢

And Orana is like 😐

And Fenris is like 'Excuse you??!!' 😠

Like the elves are in the room and they're the ones that preserved and cooked up your shitting cultural experience. What are they, chopped liver?

And Merrill looking at a dumpling like 'Oh, is chopped liver what it's filled with?' 👀😋

Girlboss Rica Brosca selling herself to Bhelen to escape political disenfranchisement and abject poverty. Girlboss Vivienne telling you to your face that it didn't matter if she liked Bastien or not because he was too rich and esteemed to turn down. Girlboss Isabela spending three years trapped in Kirkwall trying to hunt down the bargaining chip she needs so that her crime boss doesn't kill her. Girlboss Morrigan being homeschooled by a mom who sexually abused her and indocrtinated her with the message that she could only expect ruthless survivalism from anyone else in her life. Girlboss Morrigan talking about how she doesn't need no man while also relying on you to kill her abuser for her.

I think Merrill probably does find Anders talking over her and condescending to her, while at the same time being possessively concerned about her as a fellow mage, highly evocative of Marethari and triggering. (And for that matter I feel like Anders probably finds watching her self harm pretty triggering too, as someone who worked as a healer within the Circle tower and as someone who has his own version of self harm overworking himself with his clinic and his cause.) But I have to say what makes this such a joy is, unlike with Marethari, Merrill actually gets to fight back with Anders. Like goddamn if she doesn’t take every bit of shit he saddled her with, wait for the moment he was at his lowest after Dissent, and then unleash all of her condescending pity on him at once ‘Oh uwu sorry you were too stupid to know better and think ahead and realise getting possessed was a bad idea, poor baby’. Fucking ruthless. Sorry, know my sadistic approach to shipping isn’t for everyone, but I love them.

I was replaying part of act 2 actually because I needed to revisit Donnic’s canon dialogue for a reason or twelve and I ended up catching the beginning of Bitter Pill in the process and one of the interesting things is that quest actually begins with Fenris indicating he was was willing to spare one of the bounty hunters that’s after him in exchange for information and then promptly killing the guy once he has said information. Which is of course exactly what he does with Hadriana later in the quest, the only difference is he doesn’t simper and whine and apologise after the fact when it’s just some hired thug who honestly has a lot more in common with him than Hadriana ever did. Which is of course exactly what I was getting at with that other post about how Fenris is a classist gremlin that has been groomed to empathize more with his oppressors than with himself and considers Hadriana more of a person than himself and his apology about killing her to mercenary scum Hawke is absolutely ridiculous but god forbid I take meta and analysis posting seriously and revisit canon and articulate my points well before posting on tunglr.com

Thinking about Fenris coming to apologise to Hawke about how he killed Hadriana and explaining how he didn't *want* to, but [justifications] and, gdi, he's insane.

Like, Fenris, babe, I know you have been socially conditioned to think that Tevinter magisters are real people and the elves and qunari and southern barbarians you have killed and continue to kill on a daily basis are different levels of subhuman spawn. And, Fenris, babe, I know you're afraid that Hawke will decide that *this* of all things is what makes you an irredeemable monster unworthy of love and unworthy of protection from the bounty hunters. But this is literally the most justified murder you have ever committed in your entire life and you are apologising for it and it's just the most fucking embarrassing thing I've ever heard.

I was told to make a post about this because it’s apparently rare knowledge and apparently my duty to spread the word. According to the DA wiki, Ser Pounce can revive allies fallen in combat. Is he a magic cat? Is this is just the power of amazing catty cuteness because all cats are magic? Is he a friendly demon disguised as a cat? Excited to see y’all incorporate this and your theories into your pounce fanfics from now on.