ElleMullineux wrote...
Anders = Terrorist/Revolutionary/Freedom Fighter
Your choice of label is probably determined by how you view what he did and his reasons for doing so. I've found myself being pro-freedom so he falls into the latter category for me. Now this is internet land so each to their own, just remember there have been more than two buildings blown up in the history of the world. I happen to work about 5 minutes walkaway from a massive shopping centre in Manchester UK that was blown up by the IRA. Generally the people that are doing the blowing up have their reasons for thinking what they're donig is right. Whether or not we agree with them.
I think the problem is that people misinterpret what the saying, "One man's terrorist is another's freedom fighter" implies. It isn't an absolute either/or statement, it's about public perception. You can be a freedom fighter without using terrorism, and you can be a terrorist and not give a damn about freedom. You can also be both, if you're a revolutionary who resorts to terror tactics, and then "which one you are" depends on the observer's point of view - but you'd still be both.
Terrorism describes a method, not a way of life, nor even an ultimate goal. That the Provisional IRA, or Hezbollah, or Timothy McVeigh, or the Sons of Liberty, etc all have reasons which large numbers of people approve of or identify doesn't disqualify their methods as being what they are. It just means that ultimately there are some that believe the ends justify the means, or that everything else has been tried and simply didn't work. That they may have attempted other methods first and advanced to terrorism at some point doesn't really change things either, once they made that leap they became terrorists. They were always freedom fighters.
ElleMullineux wrote...
Anders = Tactician/Naive
The wonderful thing that Anders does is to see that fighting within the confines of Mages vs. Templars is still within the Chantry's structure. By fighting within those confines you agree to the terms. And he sees that, and he sees the need to deny the structure. Not only is there no compromise, there never was any compromise. The Chantry will always come down on the side of the Chantry - the mages will always be held as cursed and kept locked up, no matter what cursory "freedoms" they're granted.
As I see it getting rid of the Chantry is a symbolic act to remind the mages that they are trapped only so long as they let themselves be trapped. Individuals may be able to escape here and there, apostates do exist, but the majority have been indoctrinated into believing that they ought to be locked away.
Case in point, I'd agree with much of your interpetation as to his goals and intent as to why he escalated the scale of violence the way he did. That he originally attempted peaceful methods - via say, undermining the authority of the Circle by helping apostates, publishing manifestos, etc - is something that makes his objectives clear, but that he realized that it ultimately changed nothing.
A lot of people - either out of ignorance, or denial, or simply disinterest given the tactics involved - don't understand that groups like al-Qaeda have goals too. Goals that, given your perspective, might genuinely seem noble to some. Some posters state or imply that comparisons to 9/11 or modern Islamic pan-nationalism in a broader sense do not "count" for comparisons to Anders because such attacks are simply motivated "because they hate us" and they don't have a cause that would be sympathetic to everyone.
But that's simply not the case. Their cause means just as much to them as Anders' cause means to him, which is why they are both able to justify to themselves and indeed publicly to the world, the motivations behind their actions.
That you or anyone else could find the Provisional IRA easier to empathize with than al-Qaeda - to use the examples posed - is a good example of a lot of the resistance to the Anders-is-a-terrorist label. From this perspective, terrorists are divided into the "justified" and "non-justified" camps, and those that fall under the former category for some reason get their label replaced. But terrorism doesn't demand sympathy to be what it is. All it demands is
a political motive used to justify systematic violence to coerce people into taking action. That the cause be justified, or not jusitified, or sympathetic or not does enter into the equation as to whether or not the act is palatable to the observer, but it doesn't enter into the equation of whether or not that they did was terrorism.
If what Anders did wasn't terrorism it would make him objectively easier to side with at the end than Meredith, given a player who somehow played Dragon Age 2 and decided they didn't care at all about mages or Templars. Meredith is an oppressive figure who utilizes the tools of the police state, and indeed state terrorism, but ultimately given the situation in Kirkwall - starting with the sheer number of violently aggressive blood mages and abominations - her methods could be seen as ultimately justifiable - just like Anders - given that more even handed and peaceful attempts at managing the situation have also failed. Anders' methods need to be comparable on an ethical level to Meredith in order to balance out the weight of the decision, so I always get the feeling some of the folks who deny that what Anders did was terrorism do it out of the motivation to help justify their own decision by handwaving the implications of their choice.
By the end of the game Hawke either implicitly or explicitly endorses terrorism or the police state. That's heavy, man. It'd be cheap if it was a decision between the police state and double rainbows/happy puppies/mage revolution, and it's pretty clear that the writers intended the former.
*fills his Anders/terrorist post quota for the month*
Retour en haut
I NEVER dream of Anders, which makes no sense at all because I usually dream of everything that's passed through my head during the day and Anders is permamently on my mind these days but still - nothing. I wish you could order yourself what to dream about =(
) and the broody healer mage? Did he honestly think there'd be a different answer?
