#anders supporting awful shit when it comes to fenris is such bullshit & makes no sense

[berrymeter]

took a minute to think about dragon age & my blood pressure has successfully risen again. imagine if they wrote the games good

[joons]

Fire emoji- no topic, just one you've been dying to share

Anders in Dragon Age starts out as a really fun, wonderful character. He’s introduced as a scatterbrained, sensitive and kind of badass mage trying to escape the confines of the mages’ obligatory service. He likes cats, and he’s funny. What more do you need?

In the sequel, Anders is willingly possessed by a spirit of Justice that heightens his sense of alienation and convinces him that the mages must be freed and allowed to leave their bonds. (They’re basically kept in the equivalent of monasteries so they don’t harm others with wild magic, especially demon possession.) Everyone who has played the games pretty much agrees with his take, that the Circle of Magi is too draconian and that mages should be able to have more choices on how to spend their lives. Even the Circle of Magi is ready for reform, at least from a lot of factions!

So Anders ends up in an especially draconian city that’s especially draconian to its mages, and he spends a lot of time getting righteously angry about it and fomenting a revolt that would like ... liberate the mages or whatever. (His plan is awful and plays right into the hands of people who hate mages, but ... LOL WHATEVER, ANDERS.)

That would still all be a fine plot, but the way Anders is written is so AWFUL. He refuses to tell your player what he wants to do and then threatens to cut you off as a friend if you don’t completely buy into his plan that he won’t tell you about, because he knows if he does, and admits that his plan involves killing people, you won’t agree to it. It’s the most manipulative bullshit ever; like I could not believe it when I first heard it, because he’s a widely liked character and I’d thought about romancing him at first since ... that’s just what a lot of people do! Anders also spends the whole game saying that mages have it rougher than slaves and spares absolutely no compassion for a former slave in your group, who was enslaved by mages. “Fenris let one bad experience color his opinion of mages forever.” Yeah, no shit, Anders, a.) that’s exactly what you are doing with all non-mages, and “one bad experience” is not the same thing as a lifetime of compelled slavery, ugh. Like, okay, part of this is a flaw in the way DA2 is set up -- they basically make the player choose between two factions that are totally opposed to each other. There’s no space for compromise in the plot, and Fenris and Anders always have polar opposite opinions on things, because Fenris is super distrustful of mages and Anders hates Fenris for ... some reason, but still Fenris as a character grows so much more than Anders in almost every playthrough you can get. But Anders spends the whole time calling Fenris a dog because he happens to be a romantic rival and !!!!!! it’s gross gross gross. Anders dehumanizes everyone he hates for the smallest slights and sees everything as further proof that he’s a victim, and he is so exhausting to be around and know.

Anders had the beginnings of a cool character, and even the Justice/Anders thing is interesting because in some dialogue, he seems to indicate he’s not in full control of himself. But as it is, it comes off as so blood-boilingly dumb that I’m supposed to sympathize with a terrorist (which we could all get by with, this is a fantasy game, I like conflict!) who tries to guilt-trip you into supporting him no matter what, which is the grossest conception of friendship I can think of!!! Like, really good job at portraying an abusive friendship, but as far as ~conflicted villains~ go, he sucks. He’s so awful to you and there’s no nuance to his plan, so there’s nothing there that makes me want to give him the benefit of the doubt or to even be interested in his arc. Just flat-out made me (me! who has to make even fictional characters like her) cut him out of my character’s life because I couldn’t deal with him a second longer.

OH and also I flirted with him ONCE which apparently triggers too much plot because LITERALLY the next time i spoke to him (like years later in-game), he’s like, “I NEED TO KNOW IF YOU REALLY LOVE ME OR YOU’RE JUST USING ME ....... LIKE EVERYONE ELSE” and i’m like ... “i told you once your eyes looked kind of nice, can you shut UP”