Okay so I know I still need to update my Champion Bethany AU posts (thinking maybe I’ll queue them?) but I just had this conversation and I’ve never had it go this way before and I’m livid. I knew about this, of course, but since I’d never seen it in action before I didn’t realize exactly how bad it actually is.
Transcript:
Hawke (diplomatic option): You can tell me anything.
Anders: Anything? Be careful what you wish for.
Anders: I just... I hope I didn’t seem too selfish when I told you about Justice.
Anders: I didn’t know what would happen. I figured a willing host, a friend... it had to be better than playing the demon and haunting some corpse.
Hawke (diplomatic option): We can’t always predict the outcome of our actions. We can only make them with a true heart.
Anders: Kind, wise, and beautiful. You must have made a deal with some demons, yourself.
Anders: I’m sorry. I shouldn’t presume. I just... we’ve hardly met and I feel like I know you.
Anders: Am I making you uncomfortable?
Hawke (”no romance” option): I don’t want you thinking about me that way.
Anders: Everyone wants to control my thoughts...
Anders: Fine. I hear you, strictly professional.
Like... yes, he does ask if Hawke is uncomfortable and then back down later, but “Everyone wants to control my thoughts” is such a shitty thing to say to someone telling you they don’t want you flirting with them when you asked if they wanted it or not. Gahhhh. I just don’t get the appeal of this man! I don’t!
(Another thing is that after all this, I actually got +5 friendship from him. I was under the impression that this conversation only led to friendship points if you flirt with him but I guess not. Honestly I’d have rather gotten rivalry here since the friendship points just make the whole thing feel extra weird to me.)
this has been sitting in my inbox for more than a year now and i think it’s time i share it with the world. enjoy two of the worst jokes ever, courtesy of me and @bookempress
Drabble prompt! (if you still need 'em): Kinda going off one of your pieces from a couple of days ago, Hawke's reaction (internal or external) to some of the more snide comments Anders (or Gamlen) makes about Fenris and their relationship. I love everything you write thank you for these drabble gifts <3
Oh, thank you so much, dear - I love doing them!
So this one got pretty weighted and heavy, and it’s going behind a cut.
This drabble involves a rather nasty argument with Anders. It takes place during Act Three. By this time, though Leo cared for and worried a lot about his friend, they were not getting along well at all, and had very few civil conversations, particularly when certain subjects came up.
If anyone reading this is the kind of fan who doesn’t like to see anything negative around Anders - either in his behavior or in the behavior of those interacting with him - please skip this drabble, and no hard feelings, ok?
I just don’t want anyone reading it without proper warning.
For the first time in days, Anders felt himself smile.
“Should I assume from this virile display that the visit withyour uncle went poorly?”
Hawke jerked, and the axe very nearly went flying from hishands. He was shirtless, drenched in sweat, hair matted to his forehead. Theexpression on his face could have been carved from stone. He set the axe down,leaving it to lean against the very large and freshly cut pile of firewood hehad made, and he stretched his lower back.
“Anders,” he greeted, and though there was still something to bedesired in said greeting, Anders warmed. Hawke’e eyes flickered, briefly, overthe other mage, lingering pointedly on his bony wrists, his dirty hair.
Anders wrapped his arms around himself, and spoke before hecould be lectured on taking better care of himself.
“You should be good for – well, at least a few years, on thatpile,” Anders said. When Hawke’s gaze left him, he felt both gratitude andloss. He watched the man’s profile as Hawke looked over the work he had done,as his big shoulders slumped and shook with a tired, defeated laugh. Hawkepushed a hand back through sweat-soaked hair as he turned back to him.
“I had to keep busy,” he admitted, almost depreciatively. “Iwant to wring Uncle’s scrawny neck every time he mentions Fenris. Let’s headin. Have a drink. Haven’t seen you in a while.”
Anders stayed rooted to the spot, staring at him, cold flashingthrough him, then heat, a spark, anger. Hawke turned that broad, bare expanseof back on him, and Anders spoke without thinking.
“Maybe Gamlen has a point.”
Hawke stopped, frozen for a long moment before he raked a handthrough his hair again, and turned back to Anders.
The courtyard at the Amell townhouse was silent, shadowed, andprivate. Anders had let himself in, and, staring at Hawke with a lump the sizeof Rivain in his throat, he couldn’t remember why. There was no ignoring theburn of that molten stare.
“Tell me I didn’t hear that,” Hawke said.
Anders frowned. He lifted his chin. “Well – it isn’t just aboutbeing nobility. You’re an official figure – the Champion of Kirkwall.Publically carousing with an elf is…”
“Is what?” Hawke asked. His voice had gone low, soft, dangerous.Anders gave a shiver that had nothing to do with pleasure. It took all he hadto meet Hawke’s gaze.
“It’s distasteful,” Anders said. He had started it now – so hereasoned he might as well continue. It burned, the way Hawke looked at him now– the way he looked at anyone any time someone tried to point out howinappropriate it was to be matching himself with that elf. “It’s like seneschalBran bringing that girl from the Rose to public events all the time. No onesays anything, but they’re all thinking it.”
“You’re an expert on Kirkwall high society now?”
“I have eyes,” Anders said. “That’s all.”
“I think you should leave.”
Anders took a deep breath. His anger flickered through his bodylike heat lightening on a summer’s day. He took a step forward.
“Do you even know what we could be to them?” he demanded. “Hasit even occurred to you what we could accomplish?”
Hawke’s expression was so still and so tense, his jaw a tightline, his hands in fists. He bit out his words as if they must first becarefully measured before being released out into the world.
“You think another apostate would be more appropriate than anelf?”
“I think you could fix everything,” Anders confessed. “You havethe kind of power none of our kind get to possess! They’ll listen to you! Hawke! You’re a mage, and you let your kinsmen rotin the tower!”
“It’s not as simple as all that,” Hawke ground out.
“We could be a symbol to them!” Anders spat.
“A symbol?” Hawke demanded. He moved, an explosion of motion,descending on Anders, grabbing his arms, giving him a shake. “Unleashinguntrained apostates and angry blood mages on a city full of civilians without ahope of defending themselves – that’ssymbolic?”
“Not all mages - !”
“How many would it take?” Hawke demanded. “How many abominationsbefore innocents died?”
“How many innocent mages are dying right now?”
Hawke released him with a shove. He pressed his palms into hisface as he turned away. “I’m not having this conversation with you again!” hegroaned. “The Circles need reformation, not destruction. I’m doing what I canright now. Don’t you understand that?”
“What I understand,” Anders spat, “Is that you’re leaving ourpeople to suffer while you play house with a wolf.”
Hawke grew very still. Anders watched the movement of his backas he breathed in, deeply, slowly.
“It should have been me,” Anders said, and Hawke answered,softly, his voice like iron.
“It would never have been you.”
It felt like a knife.
Anders stared at him, at his back, broad and strong, capable ofcarrying so much more than he bothered to shoulder. He hated him, hated theache he felt for him, hated how even now all he wanted was –
It didn’t matter what Anders wanted. That hadn’t mattered in along time.
“Right,” Anders breathed. “Right, of course you would say that.”
“Anders…”
“Are you still coming to the Chantry later today? I would thinkyou owe me that much, at least. One last favor, considering…consideringeverything.” His voice tasted bitter. Tears burned, ignored, at the back of histhroat. It was almost satisfying, the way Hawke’s shoulders fell.
omfg that feel for me is the same with anders and how hes a "precious child who has done nothing wrong" but he blew up a chantry and killed so many ppl??? and they say that like nothing bad at all??
Please note: I’m generally fairly Anders neutral and I definitely won’t be discussing the finer points of the grey morality here, that’s for damn sure.
However, I have to seriously disagree with the idea that people aren’t saying bad things about Anders. I have, to date, unfollowed about a dozen blogs for untagged negativity, and about half of it was untagged Anders negativity. (The rest was all untagged Solas negativity.) People even go and post negativity into the Anders tag, they go onto other people’s Anders positive posts and write mean/angry stuff about Anders, and you can’t even write a single post (properly tagged) complaining about anyone or anything in Bioware without someone bringing up Anders… as evidenced by this very ask, as a matter of fact.
I definitely don’t think Anders is a “precious child who has done nothing wrong.” I also don’t think he’s a monster. But I definitely think that he gets shit on more than just about anyone in the fandom, including people I consider just as if not more morally grey, such as Cullen.
For fuck's sake, they said if their default canon Anders would be dead. They're not overwriting your canon decision if you use the keep or (if possible) an imported save.
