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[AlanC9]

You're making Anders' DA2 plotline sound kinda awesome, you know.

[ComedicSociopathy]

If you want to talk about his actions in reference to Thedosian themes, fine, but throwing words like terrorism around is dismissive of and disrespectful toward people who have lost loved ones to real world atrocities. They've suffered enough without comparing their very real pain and fear to some video game plot device. Moderators have shut down threads over it in the past.

 

It might be productive to talk about character actions and motivations objectively as literary devices relevant to the setting... but that's the thing. People don't do that, especially not in the context of the world they live in. They rely on emotionally charged buzzwords. There's no discussion, no opportunity to consider the larger issue or even the extended consequences of the action.

 

It's possible to hate a character and everything they stand for, just as it is possible to express negativity without attacking those whose opinion differs. It's possible to do so without poisoning the forums, too.

 

An alternative to your interpretation of friendship Anders might be "driven revolutionary with a bad publicity agent." The difference is less than some people think.

 

Well. In most cases I wouldn't use a term like terrorism so freely, especially on a internet forum, because as you say it can be reduced to a buzzword. That said, what Anders, or Justice rather, did was clearly terrorism and Bioware almost hamfistedly made allusions to it being so.

 

But, hey, if you like your sexy Anders mass murdering bipolar (yeah, Bioware flat out called Anders fusing with Justice magically bipolar-ism  ) husbando then more power to ya. I'm not going to tell your wrong. 

[KaiserShep]

I guess Anders, the pre-Justice Anders, was weak.

[berelinde]

If you want to get technical, the war between mages and templars was not, in actual fact, Anders fault. It was going to happen. The fact that it was already happening in Ferelden, Orlais, and Rivain almost simultaneously is proof of that. There are a lot of causes to that war, and it had been brewing for seven hundred years. Perhaps you aren't interested in the psychology of prisons. If not, it's understandable. It's pretty grim. Even when Wilhelm helped Maric reclaim Ferelden, the seeds of dissent were taking root. Mages were considered weapons. I'm tired after a long week of work and I've got a fever as a result of a gross and disgusting head cold, so I don't feel like typing out any more long posts tonight, but I will say that Anders had nothing whatsoever to do with Pharamond, or the decisions regarding his Tranquil cure. Kirkwall was catastrophic, but its effects were contained in a single city. Pharamond's discovery affected the whole world, and involved both the Chantry and the Seeker Order.

 

Kirkwall was a perfect storm. Ancient injustices, abuse of power by the templars, the disbandment of traditional and customary civic rule and institution of martial law by Meredith, and on top of that, it was sitting on top of a weak spot in the Veil. A weak spot that was getting weaker every day because the templars were actively abusing the mages there and slavers were preying on literally everyone, mage and non-mage alike. Something was going to break. Meanwhile, you have a politically pressurized reaction taking place in a sealed glass vessel. As long as the glass held, it seemed to be under control. Anders tapped the glass.

 

In short, saying that Anders was solely responsible for Kirkwall is rather like saying that adding a teaspoon of brandy to eggnog is unhealthy. Well, yes, but the four ounces of heavy cream and two tablespoons of refined sugar is probably worse.

[FemShem]

From the OP I just realized something...

All the straight male gamers got their bromance fulfilled with Varric, and I'm the gay one "whining" about the Love Interest.

Wow.

I never thought I'd be that girl.

 

"Ain't that the truth! Maker, I stared at the screen for a solid fifteen minutes before deciding that the only solution was to shut down the computer until I calmed down and then delete that character entirely."

 

Wow.  You deleted the character?  That is hard core.  I couldn't kill me fav Hawke.  I could kill my least fav Hawke later.

Truth is I'm not touching plot device vs. real llfe debate.  As a writer, I appreciate how characters can emulate and bring out emotions in an audience even more so than things can do so in real life...sometimes the more far removed, the easier the catharsis (i.e. musicals vs. straight plays, fantasy and sci-fi vs. modern drama).  It does depend on the audience, but as human's representation and archetypes word as strong triggers in us.

Anders ended up being...well literally a powder keg.  Both formulaically as a character, representationally, but also if you compare him in real life situations what he did is horrific out of a game play Thedas scenario.

I got into gaming...oddly...from also being killed in a hate crime.  Gaming is what I did in recovery.  It helped me deal with pain.  BioWare had plot structures, I was an Aristotelean Structuralist before everything went down, so it appealed to me (plot structure/academic nerd) .  I didn't know video games did complex stuff like this.

It beat streaming another season of Whatever while I waited to heal.

I gotta say.

This stuff...super interesting.  Glad I downloaded KOTOR to my iPad and ended playing every BioWare game.

Good writing.

Beats the hell out of my Atari 2600, which is where I left gaming when I was a kid.

 

[straykat]

 

From the OP I just realized something...

All the straight male gamers got their bromance fulfilled with Varric, and I'm the gay one "whining" about the Love Interest.

 

 

Not all. I don't like "bro" characters much. My first foray into Bioware, I killed Carth. It's been slightly better since, but still.

 

At this point, I'm mostly friendly to Varric (or Garrus), just because I can't do a lot else with them.