an art blog

Justice: I do not know what makes demons as they are. Such evil angers me, but I do not understand it. Anders: Well, I hope you never come to understand.

the justice/anders relationship is one of my favourite parts of all the dragon age games, any permutation of it is so intensely tragic. Their old selves died and created a new one and they don't even know that they should be mourning what they lost? tragic. They exist in an uneasy fusion until all that is Anders is gone and Justice is back to possessing little more than a corpse? tragic.

BUT. my favourite dynamic is that Anders is not as controlled by Justice as he says. Because imagine. you're a mage and all you want is agency, the freedom to live your life your way. you say mages should be free, and at best you get a half-hearted 'eh sure'. but then, when a literal embodiment of justice starts saying it, people listen. surely a spirit whose entire point is Justice knows whats objectively right? and the result is intoxicating -- you can start voicing things you've been saying for years and for the first time people take you seriously.

but then maybe you start to rely on it a bit too much. you make an overly cruel remark and get odd looks. you can't have that, you've learned that the only way to survive is to be charming, to make people like you. you blame it on Justice -- any outburst, any unpopular opinion, any selfish action, its the spirit's fault. maybe you believe it too -- after all, you're the suffering idiot who made the mistake of trusting a demon. and now you're getting sympathy as well as recognition.

and then all of a sudden it turns bitter. you vent to your friends, and they beg to not lose yourself to the demon. that's weird, that was you speaking. and now any opinion you have is Morally Right. you aren't allowed to be wrong. You make a mistake, someone gets hurt, and people still celebrate you as the arbiter of right and wrong. you just want to run away from it all, but that means justice has abandoned all mages. you have to stay. you know how it must end.

and you realise that the freedom you so desperately wanted is gone. that you are in a prison of your own making. not free to make your own choices, not free to speak your own mind. you are but a Symbol, that some revere and some revile. because a possessed voice is a dispossessed voice.

and alongside all this, you've trapped, betrayed, and besmirched a friend who trusted their soul to you.