@deadpoet117 replied to your post “Q: When will I stop being salty about Samson being referred to within...”
Yeah, but Samson got REALLY fucked yo by A LOT of red lyrium. He’s outjunkied the junkies by a long shot. Like he’s consumed so much red lyrium that it would’ve killed most people, let alone regular lyrium. Plus he’s a dick who made his choice.
I mean, he wears armor infused with red lyrium. Like armor he wears all the time. He’s definitely a junky amongst junkies.
Since you made this reply on my post, I’m taking this as open to discussion:
This is a myopic take and I’d urge you to rethink what you’ve written here with a critical eye towards causality, political power structures within the game, and the interpretation of addiction as a character flaw.
As in my original post that you left this comment on, Samson’s addiction isn’t what makes him a villain. Him being a dick has nothing to do with however much lyrium he takes. He’s a dick, like you said, because of the choices he made.
What choices? He made a choice to join Corypheus (I’d argue this was made under duress), he made a choice to attack Haven, he made a choice to kidnap villagers from the Emprise du Lion, he made a choice to grow red lyrium in not only them but some of his own men, and for those reasons - he is a villain. Like his song says - his martyr rage consumed a lot of people, including himself. In his effort to rid Thedas of the Chantry, an organization that chewed him up and spat him out (as he says during his trial), he was willing to kill innocent people. These are the choices he made, and this is what makes him a dick and a villain.
Lyrium ingestion is forcibly imposed as a divine burden to be borne by every southern Templar. All southern Templars are addicts, all of these Templars believe they will die (and they do, or wish they did) if they don’t have lyrium. Cullen is the first to detox completely from it. Because all Templars are addicted to lyrium, one being singled out for it and being called “The Junky” is at best obtuse, and at worst, an indication of how addiction is portrayed as a character flaw, instead of state-sanctioned violence by the Chantry, within the narrative and within the fandom.