okay i keep seeing this post fly around and the amount of traction it’s gotten is astounding so i feel like i should say something anders’s defense, since a lot of your points come completely out of left field and are an oversimplification of anders’s characterization. Show
this part i feel can mostly be accredited to the writers trying far too hard to play up the rivalry between both anders and fenris when in fact, canonically, it makes very little sense and is hardly consistent with anders’s character. we get it, bioware. they hate each other, but there are several moments where anders is seen condemning slavery and even comparing the oppression of the mages to it—and he’s not too far off base, especially with the rite of tranquility providing the chantry with a free labor force. they hate each other sure but there are several examples of them having genuinely civil interactions. one example is during the legacy dlc, there’s banter to show anders and fenris often play card games together, and apparently anders owes fenris a lot of money so we can safely assume it’s a common thing. not only that, but anders is amused and genuinely laughs when fenris attempts to flirt with hawke in front of the party. there’s also this moment here that demonstrates yet another example of some growing civility between the two. fenris also has a terrible problem with being unable to distinguish magisters from your average mage, which is understandable given his fear of magic and trauma to back this up, but we’ve seen through both bethany and a mage hawke that he’s quite capable of getting along with them—even tells a mage hawke “whether you’re anything like danarius remains to be seen”—so it’s not impossible for he and anders to find some common ground. so we’ve got plenty of evidence that they’re decently civil towards each other, so why the sudden ooc hostility? anders may not exactly be the most intersectional with his fight for freedom, but condoning slavery seems a bit too far fetched in my opinion. now then there’s justice and how he plays into this. in awakening justice will actually show great disapproval of anders owning a cat because he thought he had enslaved it, as shown by this banter here:
so why would a spirit of justice, who calls out all forms of injustice when he sees it, allow anders to say shit like that? it doesn’t make sense at all.
again, i’m going to have to place this as hepler’s fault because she actually believed something as biphobic as anders not telling a f!hawke about his sexuality so the typical straight girl gamer would “think he was straight if they chose to do so” which shows her inability to not only write a bisexual character, but also her aptitude into falling into extremely offensive and downright creepy heteronormative dynamics. here’s the full quote on that: “No matter who the player is, Karl was always someone [Anders] was romantically involved with,” says Gaider. “The part of him the player is exposed to, however, is different. Anders doesn’t mention Karl to a female Hawke because Jennifer Hepler [Anders’ writer] didn’t think he would – and also because a player who prefers to think of Anders as straight is welcome to do so.” she tried so hard to pidgeonhole an f!hawke with anders with the whole revolutionary bad boy trope, even going so far as to erase his sexuality, that it’s really fucking uncomfortable to watch, and there are several examples if you play as an f!hawke trying to romance anders where hawke comes on incredibly strongly with anders after he warns you to stop, so it goes both ways, but i can understand how it would make someone uncomfortable.
i wouldn’t say “creepily obsessed” given he only really shows disdain for your love interest once in game, but it is strongly implied he falls in love with hawke regardless of your romance options. i’ll point to my previous point listed above, because hepler really just cannot write anders for shit.
so i double checked this and this doesn’t happen??? the only instance you net rivalry points with him is if you hand idunna over to the templars for a total of +5 rivalry. so i really don’t know where you got this from. here’s the full breakdown of party approval just in case you were curious:
you can double check me here,
this is a point i’ll concede, because it’s very much consistent with anders’s character to be jealous of your other love interests, but i feel i should also point out that even varric will essentially shit talk your love interest regardless of who you pick and although it’s not out of jealousy some of the stuff he says is really out of line and can be really ableist. theres’ also the fact that fenris does something similar if hawke decides to romance anders in the legacy dlc, where if you choose the purple dialogue while talking to larius where hawke says “because i always like to follow the advice of tainted crazy people” (god the ableism is so gross here) and if you have both fenris and anders in the party fenris will say “that hasn’t stopped you before” clearly referring to the romance between hawke and anders. you can find this here if you don’t believe me. anders is canonically mentally ill, so you can see where this is ableist and completely uncalled for. throught the game there are plenty of dialogues between both anders and fenris fighting over hawke, particularly if you flirted with both of them, so this isn’t exactly an anders exclusive criticism, but it is a valid one.
true enough on that first bit. anders is cruel to merrill for often unwarranted reasons. his banter with her shows well enough that he lacks a strong sense of intersectionalism when it comes to his quest to free the mages. it makes sense because anders has spent a good portion of his life within the confines of the circle, a place that imprisons mages and purposely keeps them helpless so if they don’t escape they’ll have trouble surviving in the outside world. the circle has zero consideration of elven beliefs considering it is a sanction of andrastian faith, so it makes sense that if anders was raised on that doctrine he would also be this way. is that an excuse? no, but i think that it does warrant a fair bit of explanation. not only that, but it’s constantly drilled into circle mages how dangerous blood magic can be, so he was already conditionted towards his prejudice towards her as a blood mage. anyway, dalish problems rarely intersect with circle mages’ oppression, but when they do anders hardly recognizes it and often disregards merrill. however, he is hardly the only character to do so—fenris will also disregard forms of merrill’s oppression:
not only that but fenris also remarks to her and agrees with anders that she’d be better off dead after keeper marethari sacrifices herself—i don’t think any amount of fear of mages really makes that okay to tell anyone, and i really hate that anyone only ever talks about how anders treats her and usually lets fenris get a pass scot-free. there’s also this dialogue—particularly the bolded-italicized bit—which i feel like is highly unwarranted:
however, the dialogue after a new path quest struck me as particularly ooc and cruel for both anders and fenris to make this exchange, especially since both of them know what it’s like to have no control and possibly hurt/kill someone they care about—so this i’m going to blame on incredibly lazy writing for both anders and fenris. they’re both assholes, but they’re not THAT bad.
no, he doesn’t have fenris’s fear of magic to explain it, but he does have a fear of blood mages to explain his behavior. most all of thedas has a prejudice against blood mages, and anders certainly falls underneath that category. he shows a great deal of concern for merrill in this banter:
if you’re going to hold anders responsible for that you might as well hold fenris responsible too:
okay this??? makes absolutely no sense and you came completely out of left field on this one. anders is a canonically bisexual man who wears earrings and femme robes and has an extensive sexual history and aggressive social rule breaking background in the circle with different gender dynamics. he is a promiscuous AND flamboyant bisexual man so i really have no fucking idea where you’re getting that from??? and i don’t even know what angle you’re trying to play by pulling butch lesbians into this. if you’re trying to make a parallel between how anders treats other mages, you make a pretty piss poor argument because while anders disagrees with the use of blood magic and preaches against it, he hardly uses it as a reason to blame mages for their own oppression. he makes a special comment that they’re scared and they’d have no other reason to turn to blood magic except out of desperation multiple times in game. i assume that’s where you’re going with this, but this was completely out of nowhere and hardly a legitimate criticism of his character.
are you kidding me??? the mages—particularly circle mages—could easily be read as neurodivergent people. the “you’re dangerous” rhetoric is often used against them as a justification for keeping them corralled and controlled. not only that but mages are constantly told they’re a sin in the eyes of the maker, and because of that their experiences are more often than not discredited for no other reason than for them being a “crazy” mage—so there’s a lot of gaslighting going on there. and of course then there’s the obvious connection of the rite of tranquility to lobotomy as well. there are perfectly valid criticisms of anders’s character and you don’t even have to have a legitimate reason to dislike him, but most of these criticisms are really grasping at straws and show an incredible misunderstanding of anders’s character, as well as not distinguishing the difference between a character flaw (which is consistent with a character’s personality) and a writing flaw (which is inconsistent with the character’s personality and my god with jennifer hepler there are so many with anders). but anyway i’ve said my piece and i’ll leave it at that. What should I do with Keran da2?He can then either be killed or reported to Meredith or released, in which case he intends to leave Kirkwall. If Keran is spared, he is later seen outside the Hanged Man, stating that he can't be a templar with Meredith in charge of the Order.
What did Hawke do with the Templars?What did Hawke do with the Templars? A hunt for some missing Starkhaven mages comes to a head when their leader turns to blood magic just as Templars threaten to barge in and lead them away. Hawke can either fight the Templars' leader, Karras, with the help of a lenient Templar, Thrask, or persuade them to leave.
What happens to Carver in Dragon Age 2?Dragon Age II. If Hawke is a warrior or rogue, Carver is killed during the attack on Lothering when he charges an ogre in order to protect Leandra. However, if Hawke is a mage, then Bethany dies instead while Carver survives to accompany his family to Kirkwall.
Did Hawke kill Danzig?An aggressive Hawke will kill Danzig during the cutscene, which automatically awards the xp from killing him in battle.
|
Dragon Age 2 kill Idunna or not
Related Posts
Copyright © 2024 SignalDuo Inc.
