fandomsecrets | [ SECRET POST #1615 ]

[ SECRET POST #1615 ]

⌈ Secret Post #1615 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 08 pages, 185 secrets from Secret Submission Post #231.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 1 - too big ], [ 0 - repeats ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments and concerns should go here.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

I like your opinions. Honestly, this is why I sided with the mages. While I do believe in some sort of balance, the Templars in Kirkwall were too corrupt. They were just locking up mages and while the majority of mages you were running into were blood mages, 90% of them were driven. The Tranquil Solution was scary. They would do that just for disobedience. Imagine having all your personality, what makes you you, ripped away from you just because you were being problematic.

Civil Disobedience can only get you so far. What do people expect Anders to do, just sit there and boycott? In that type of political climate, the only sure way to do anything is to fight back. And some became desperate enough to do blood magic for it. How desperate can you be when you're taught "communing demons is bad" and you do it anyway?

The Chantry isn't the right solution. Locking mages and oppressing them at the levels Kirkwall did only causes mages to desperately seek other means. And taking teenagers and turning them into drug addict killing machines just in case "mages go bad" is fucking disgusting. I recently just went through the conversation when Allistar mentioned his templar training. To force a demon into someone just to see what would happen and testing a templar? Dear god.

I don't know. Maybe I think this way because I'm an ex-anarchist so I know this point of view all too well but seeing what happened in Kirkwall was disgusting.

And Anders does have his selfish moments. But that comes with being a human character. I find that the majority of your party is flawed and selfish in some fashion or another.

Oh yeah, Anders is no saint either, but I find people really wail on him and then go easy on Fenris and Isabela (don't get me started on Isabela! I LOVE her, but she possibly caused more death than Anders did for incredibly selfish reasons, not to mention her complete disregard for the Qunari's culture in stealing the Tome in the first place.) and it really bugs me, because yeah, Anders has his moments, but so does everyone else.

The Tranquil Solution terrifies me because yeah, I'd be one of the first people to go. I'm not good at keeping my mouth shut when I don't like something. Tranquility in general scares me because I've always been a problem child, so again... they'd make me one faster than you can say "little smart ass". And then I wouldn't be me anymore, I wouldn't feel anymore... the tranquil themselves are both incredibly creepy and sad at the same time.

What would he boycott anyway? What would anyone boycott? And yeah, even the Templars themselves are victims of the chantry's system. I've hated the chantry since DAO honestly.

I'm lucky in that I live in the US so I personally will never have to worry about oppressive governments, but I did an entire year's worth of research on the Cultural Revolution in China, and have read quite a few books about the DR under Trujillo, so it's not too hard for me to see what happened in Kirkwall in that light. I think for a lot of people though, it's impossible to really think about... and mind you, I have no idea what it's like IRL and I hope I never do.

Ah fuck it, unanoning.

I'll be honest that I've just gotten into the games so I don't know how fandom treats the characters. I'm unsurprised, however, that people don't sympathize with Anders. Anders is essentially a terrorist, when you look at him. However, if you look at what is going on as a whole, you can understand why he is driven to such means. Not to mention Justice/Vengeance doesn't help the matter.

I am not going to get into what Isabela did. In some ways, I think she made the situation worse because her actions led to the Viscount being killed. That led to Meredith taking over the city.

That aside, I wish people would not look at the story as "X was made to look evil." It's all a matter of perspective with the story. In my eyes, The Chantry wasn't great and the Templars were driving the mages to take extreme measures. That's how I viewed the game. It is a game where you can view the story differently, as much as it has its' flaws.

There was a lot going on that made both sides look "bad." The Templars with psycho in command and oppressing behavior; The mages with the blood magic and some being down right insane. It's just what you skew it to be in the end.

..I'm making so many edits. It's late and I should clearly be in bed. XD

Edited 2011-06-06 06:23 (UTC)

Are you the anon above, or someone new? ^^

I understand that Anders is a terrorist in way, but I don't know. It's hard for me to feel any sadness or horror at the chantry going, I guess because I feel so strongly about oppressive governments and environments. (I would not blame someone in Libya for blowing up Gaddafi and his supporters, for example). He did the only thing he could do to solve the problem, and it was nasty. People compare killing him to killing a rabid dog, but I see that with the chantry more so. These were people willing to turn a blind eye to unjustified magical lobotomies and to give people crippling addictions to make sure they continued to serve them. Their very doctrine was based on marginalizing and denigrating a group of people for an aspect of themselves they cannot help. It's like if Jesus' only message had been "X group sucks, God gives them this feature to mark them, feel free to treat them like shit". The disgusting "mark of Cain" excuse for slavery comes to mind.

Again, I love Isabela but her motivations were also much more selfish-- she was only thinking about what would serve her best, and she had no qualms about bringing the entire Qunari fleet down on Kirkwall... and then there's the utter disrespect in taking what was a sacred tome in the first place like it was just some trinket... if we're applying modern terms and Anders is a terrorist, Isabela is a colonialist looter, and Fenris is a violent bigot. :P

Obviously not all Templars are like that-- Thrask and Cullen himself come to mind. And mages are not entirely innocent either.. but... again, I feel they're in a situation where they have to no real good, "nice" choice.

It is in the end, a matter of how you look at it. I find that the deviant art comm is a lot more sympathetic to Anders than the LJ comm, which is interesting in its own right and makes me think too. I absolutely love this game btw, way more than the first, because there's so much to think about.

I'm gonna say right now, when I play Bioware games I immerse into the characters so deeply that it colors my vision of everything. My first run was as a peacekeeper rogue involved with Anders, trying not to take sides, who defaulted to mages when there was no peaceful solution. So in the end when the Chantry blew up, I wasn't expecting it. I yelled at Anders and told him to get the hell out of my sight, mostly hurt because he hadn't trusted me with the truth, hadn't warned me, and I was so shocked and horrified by the violence. But by the time I got to the Circle (or what was left of it), seeing Anders there, all I could do was hold him and forgive him. :x ~~I am such a girl.~~

That being said, in hindsight, I don't like what Anders did. But I know why he did it, and on some level I know it was necessary. I honestly really do wish that we had been able to save the Revered Mother because while she wasn't perfect, as I saw it she didn't have anything against mages walking free - something I'm honestly not used to seeing in the Chantry.

And on a separate note: the whole "people are harder on Anders than Fenris"... I think I've been around the rabid fangirls too much, 'cause they all seem to want to give Anders the world. ... and a test drive. And Fenris is INSANELY biased, but if you look hard enough, he does have some valid reasons to distrust mages as a whole. It's not enough to sway my position, but as I said in my earlier post, I really do appreciate that we got more insight than just "OHMIGAWD WHAT IF THEY TURN INTO ABOMINATIONS OHGOD WHAT WOULD WE DO WE CAN'T TRUST THEM AND THE BLOOD MAGIC, FUCKNO MAGES!"... 'cause... those arguments were getting REALLY STALE.

Honestly my biggest problem was the Revered mother, because shew knew what Meredith and her Templars were doing to people, and she never did anything to stop it. She claimed she couldn't take sides, which is absurd considering one side was forcefully removing the other side's personalities because they were inconvenient-- not in the blood magic sense, but in suggesting that Meredith's methods were flawed. She had the power to stop it, but she didn't, and she paid her price.

I get really immersed as well, which is why I feel so passionately about this-- my absolute favorite Hawke who I think of as "The" Hawke was a mage who was sick of being told she was broken, and sick of watching people like her being mistreated, and my entire opinion was colored by that.

Yeah, I understand where Fenris is coming from... but again, from the perspective of my mage, it's like meeting someone who had a traumatically bad experience with someone of your nationality, and they're holding you by those standards, when you had nothing to do with what was done to them. Someone who has an entire religion telling them they're dirty and bad is not going to appreciate Fenris' quipping in and reminding them. And yeah, he reminded me too much of actual hate groups for me to really be able to get past my mage's hurt feelings and actually like him. That said, his comment to Merrill sealed the coffin.

I... want to be your friend. ♥

:O k!

I've said the exact same things about Elthina. Her stance of neutrality and finding a way to prevent bloodshed and trouble only works when there's another person doing the same. Meredith and Orsino were both teetering on the edge of the deep end, and one person couldn't pull the both of them back from the brink. On top of that, by not taking a stand, she probably made things worse, because both groups took it as tacit approval. And since she is nominally Meredith's superior, she not only could have stepped in and told her off (Rite of Tranquility forced on mages who have passed their Harrowing, taking control of the city, etc), she chose not to. To Mother Patrice, she spoke of have eyes and ears given by the Maker, she should use them, and yet three years later, she has let herself be blinded into complacency. There's no way that tales of Meredith's abuses never reached her ears, and she never did anything about it.

I think Elthina is a person with good intentions and a laudable goal. But she was also sticking her fingers in her ears and going 'lalalalala!' It doesn't make me feel like she deserved what happened, but I do think that she brought it on herself.

Overall, with Anders, Fenris, Merrill, and Isabella, I'm disappointed that if you're friend-mancing them, it basically leads to agreeing with them at every turn, while rival-mances open their eyes to their flaws and make them try to fix their problems. It really bugs me - I like to think that if you're romancing someone in a friendly fashion, you wind up trying to fix your problems to be a better person. I don't want Fenris to treat me as the exception that proves the rule, I want him to see that his attitude is destructive. Same with the others. That's about my only complaint with the game's romances.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

[ SECRET POST #1615 ]

Re: My rather unpopular on LJ thoughts

Re: My rather unpopular on LJ thoughts

Re: My rather unpopular on LJ thoughts

Re: My rather unpopular on LJ thoughts

Re: My rather unpopular on LJ thoughts

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Re: My rather unpopular on LJ thoughts

Re: My rather unpopular on LJ thoughts

Re: My rather unpopular on LJ thoughts