#anders was right

[elvenforestwitch]

I feel like people forget that the Kirkwall Chantry was the place where Anders found out they lobotomized his boyfriend for the main purpose of capturing Anders. Honestly I don’t know how he made it six years WITHOUT blowing that place up

[sisifroggy]

Silence, hetero 🦀💥

[anderswasrightt]

[sunsetzer]

I will never get over how Bioware wrote a blatant fascism allegory in the first two Dragon Age games, and they still try to compare it to gun control, and tell us that Anders was wrong, and the templars weren't actually that bad. Their "canon" is a world state where mage Hawke disapproved of his actions and executed him on the spot. The man who blew up a religious institution that symbolized everything wrong with their society at night, when innocent civilians were not likely to be caught in the crossfire, who knew that it was a terrible thing to do and expected to be killed for doing it-- yeah, he's the fucking worst actually. Think of all the innocent people who will suffer because of the war he started!

(Oh wait, he didn't actually start the war at all. Nothing in Kirkwall mattered whatsoever because the mages were totally already planning to rebel and his actions messed everything up for them and made it all worse. Nevermind Varric's statement that the Circles began to rise up as a direct result of what happened. He's a pathological liar, you can't believe a word he says!)

Honestly. Fucking gun control. You know what the Circles are comparable to? Internment camps. You know what the Chantry's preaching of mages being inherently evil and deserving to be locked up and tortured for the good of everyone else is comparable to? Hitler's rhetoric about all of the world's problems being the fault of everyone who was targeted by the Nazi regime. The Chantry's takeover of all of Thedas and forcing everyone to follow their doctrine or be branded heretics and subjected to an exalted march? The Nazis taking over other countries and forcing their regime onto them. The Chantry's massacre of the Dalish, and the confinement of city elves to the alienages, and the fact they're treated as less than people? Nazis mass murdering and confining Jewish people to slums, and considering them subhuman. The Chantry is not good or correct in any way.

Genuinely believing the gun control analogy is apt is a huge red flag, and if that is your stance you need to really do some thinking. Thank you.

[the-savage-nymph-art]

Why We Never Got to Read Anders’s Manifesto in full (imho)

You know what always struck me about Dragon Age II and Dragon Age: Inquisition?

We hear about Anders’s manifesto all the time - it's lying around in Hawke's mansion and later in Inquisition we find a snippet on the Storm Coast - but we never actually get to read it. Not all of it.

And I think that’s deliberate.

Because if BioWare ever let us read the full manifesto, the illusion of “grey morality” would collapse.

Because Anders’s writing voice would be calm. Rational. Structured. He’s not stupid - he’s a healer, a man who’s spent years trying to reason with a system that calls his existence a crime.

His spoken voice might be erratic and emotional (and honestly, who wouldn’t be, after everything he’s lived through?), but on the page? He’d be articulate. Meticulous. He’d be able to lay out — point by point — why the Circle system is institutional abuse disguised as protection.

And that would make it impossible for the player to sit comfortably in the middle.

Because once you strip away his anger, his bitterness and his other very real flaws, all that’s left is the truth - that the Chantry and the Templar Order survive by punishing everyone for the crimes of a few.

And then the whole “both sides have a point” narrative falls apart.

There’s no moral greyness in systemic oppression.

So the game can’t show us the manifesto. It can only hint at it.

It lets characters ignore it. Or just talk about it - but never lets us read the words themselves. Because if we could? If we could see the reason beneath the rage?

People would have to admit that Anders was right.

(If you want to read my version of it, hit me up. But be warned. It's... long.)

[princessshikky]

Forever bitter that Bioware didn't let me give Anders a standing ovation then have sex with him atop the still smoking ruins of the chantry.

[valyrianrepublic]

the maker gives his toughtest battles to his strongest soldiers

(im defending anders on reddit)

[paranoiareigns]

Hello strangest target audience of fellow sad mage enjoyers