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[Gyrefalcon]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

*snip*

Now, I define "helping" as "helping Anders have some semblance of an identity outside the cause of mages." No matter what, you're going to have to continue helping him work for his cause. If that's all he does, he'll become more and more simply an embodiment of a cause and less a person. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's not the result I'm interested in. I want to see the whole end up at least equal to the sum of its parts, rather than less. I want a functional human and a happy spirit, wrapped around a core of nougat. Left alone, the man is being consumed by the myth and the legend.

I don't think that just loving him and staying with him will help Anders. If you want Anders to get better, you're going to have to find some pro-active way to work with him on his issues.

I agree with you that just love alone would not begin to fix Anders.  Even with the happy, stay with Anders after everything ending, Anders makes it clear you have to follow him.  He cannot follow you.  He gains a measure of control over himself because he fed the needs of Vengence.  To keep having control, he has to keep working actively towards his goal of seeing mages free.  As long as he does that, Vengence would probably be mollified enough that Anders could become more functional.  Part of his dream is to see mages free to stay with their families and to start families of their own.  Because of this, pursuing romance can be a part of his agenda, but it can't be his sole reason for existence.  The path that Anders takes comes at a high personal cost.  He won't get to settle down or rest until ALL mages in ALL lands are free.  But if he lives and Hawke stays with him, his life will be bearable and he won't have to suffer the dicotomy of destroying the one thing he wants the most personally to achieve the goal he wants publicly.  Thoughts?

[ladyofdragons]

Some interesting points here. Something else to consider in addition...
During all of DA2 Anders is under the effects of what the codex refers to as the Enigma of Kirkwall. The events detailed there-- and a few hints from Legacy as I recall-- leads us to suspect there's an underlying reason Kirkwall is so hellish. It's almost like a curse, a disease, that propagates negativity in its inhabitants. 
I can only imagine this helped to compound Anders' emotional state. The veil is also thin there, so thing even non-mages are at risk for demon it possession. Obviously he's not at risk of demonic possession, but who knows how this might have affected Justice and their bonding.

Given that, I think that removing him from Kirkwall will be beneficial regardless, which is a first step to achieving better emotional stability and potentially better harmony with Justice.  I do think the key falls towards addressing the roots of the problem-- teaching Anders to have greater control over not Justice, but his own emotional states, and teaching Justice to have more trust and faith that Anders and Hawke have better knowledge on the best way to right injustices, leading to his feeling less of a need to take over. Which mostly boils down to proactive help-talk/therapy, something I think Hawke and even others can do, given the right approach.

Overall no, not a happily-ever-after end. But a happy one if being a revolutionary is okay with you. I liked it, and the fact that they had more challenges ahead of them made me feel like there was a whole new story to be unfurled.  In my epilogue they disappeared together, and in my head-canon is was to continue what he started in Kirkwall. 

The BIG BIG BIG question for me is not does Anders stay sane.... it's where is his phylactery?  Hmmmm? *problem!*

Modifié par ladyofdragons, 03 novembre 2011 - 09:41 .

[esper]

[quote]ladyofdragons wrote...

Some interesting points here. Something else to consider in addition...
During all of DA2 Anders is under the effects of what the codex refers to as the Enigma of Kirkwall. The events detailed there-- and a few hints from Legacy as I recall-- leads us to suspect there's an underlying reason Kirkwall is so hellish. It's almost like a curse, a disease, that propagates negativity in its inhabitants. 
I can only imagine this helped to compound Anders' emotional state. The veil is also thin there, so thing even non-mages are at risk for demon it possession. Obviously he's not at risk of demonic possession, but who knows how this might have affected Justice and their bonding.

Given that, I think that removing him from Kirkwall will be beneficial regardless, which is a first step to achieving better emotional stability and potentially better harmony with Justice.  I do think the key falls towards addressing the roots of the problem-- teaching Anders to have greater control over not Justice, but his own emotional states, and teaching Justice to have more trust and faith that Anders and Hawke have better knowledge on the best way to right injustices, leading to his feeling less of a need to take over. Which mostly boils down to proactive help-talk/therapy, something I think Hawke and even others can do, given the right approach.

Overall no, not a happily-ever-after end. But a happy one if being a revolutionary is okay with you. I liked it, and the fact that they had more challenges ahead of them made me feel like there was a whole new story to be unfurled.  In my epilogue they disappeared together, and in my head-canon is was to continue what he started in Kirkwall. 

The BIG BIG BIG question for me is not does Anders stay sane.... it's where is his phylactery?  Hmmmm? *problem!*[/quote]

Shh. Don't speak that out loud. We don't want bioware to get idea. Anyway in my head canon my Surana warden made sure to use her influence to get Anders and her phylactiries and destoyed them just before she disappeared.

[Carmen_Willow]

I think that even before the Anders/Justice merger, Anders was very damaged. Consider the psychological trauma he's suffered.

1. Removed from his mother in early adolescence (before the chance to naturally separate through maturation) to be forced into the Circle.
2. If I remember, his father was glad to see him taken away (serious rejection there).
3. Acting out through promiscuous sexual behavior.
4.. Being placed in solitary confinement for one year? (People become psychotic in isolation after a much shorter time than a year). Serious psychological trauma there.
5. Then he's conscripted into the Wardens. On top of the psychological stress of being forced to do something AGAIN, there is the issue of the physical changes caused by the taint (more voices in his head).
6. Last, but not least, he's possesed by an entity from the Fade.

At the very least he suffers from major post-traumatic stress disorder and from the way he cycles through very high, highs and low, lows, I would bet he is bi-polar was well, which would be exacerbated by the contiual psycho-social stress of the forced confinement to the Circle and the Wardens. Oh, and the Deep Roads!  Add the taint, so that you can't tell if the voices in your head are real or "real" and you have a pretty damaged guy.

I would guess that once he comes down from the high of starting his revolution, he's probably going to bottom out at a very low level. I would not be surprised if he manages to kill himself.  After all, he talks about it at least twice in the game (when he mentions that it is the most common way for a Circle mage to die, and when he asks Fenris if he's ever thought of it).  That tells me, that he's thinking about it. I'd be asking him if he has a plan, because my hunch is that he does.  Then, he might try suicide by Champion of Kirkwall again.

He didn't even need Justice to get him this crazy. His whole adolesence was an exercise in crazy making.  He was already most of the way there which is why he even considered possession a good idea in the first place.

Modifié par Carmen_Willow, 05 novembre 2011 - 07:52 .