#andersdidnothingwrong

I’ll never understand the frothing at the mouth hatred that Anders receives from a majority of the Dragon Age fandom. He doesn’t deserve it. He’s the most complex, interesting, and tragic character in the series, but he gets brushed off by just about everyone and for such shallow reasons. He is so often analyzed on a surface level and without any consideration for why he is the way he is or why he needs to be the way he is. 

I’ll really never understand people whose hatred of Anders stems from a love of Fenris. As a Fenders fan, I adore both characters, but you don’t have to be into Fenders to appreciate that both characters are the opposite sides of the same coin. For nearly every complaint against Anders, I can find an example of Fenris being just as bad.

They’re both assholes. They’re both sweethearts. They’re both wonderful. You don’t have to hate one to like the other. 

Is so stupid and before I get into it, I want to preface this and say that I love all of the DA2 characters to death, but especially Anders and Fenris.

Everyone who hates Anders likes to latch onto the fact that he approves if you sell Fenris back as proof of him being an awful person and that he’s down with slavery(???). 

1. It’s not. 2. It’s a ridiculously shallow reading of what is a pretty nuanced situation, but you know what? I’m not even going to argue this point. I could, as there’s a lot that goes into why Anders would say something like that, but I have another point that I want to make. Should he have bit his tongue? Yeah, but...

Actions speak louder than words.

While everyone’s huffing and puffing about how terrible Anders is for approving... no one stops to think about how no one else cares. Oh sure, the rest of the characters will disapprove, but they don’t actually speak up - they react negatively, but they don’t try to stop Hawke. The player is not given a dialogue wheel in which they try to talk him out of it. After it’s over, they don’t condemn Hawke for what he’s done. They don’t leave the party, which is the normal fucking reaction to your leader selling one of your own to his former master. 

It’s the worst thing you can do in DA2, in my opinion. You sell someone that has fought by your side for years to his tormentor. Whether your Hawke likes him or not, it’s awful and once it’s over, everyone’s like, well, I guess there was nothing I could do. Carry on. 

Or here, same thing: Fenris. Fenris, the one who is super anti-slavery, the one who’s been a slave, doesn’t stop you from taking a slave!!! I repeat, Hawke can acquire a slave and sure, Fenris will argue with you and spit in your face, but when you tell him to fuck off he goes, “Fine, keep your slave. Let’s continue my quest.” If that’s not selfish, I don’t know what is. 

Ya’ll acting like Fenris wouldn’t approve if Hawke gave Anders up to the templars. 

Alright, so it's easy to call someone to blows up a building a terrorist. If you look at the definition of terrorist: "a person who uses unlawful violence and intimidation, especially against civilians, in the pursuit of political aims." Sounds a bit like what Anders did, yeah?

So sure, in that sense you can call him a 'terrorist'. If you want to, I'll even agree that he technically is a 'terrorist'. It's when people call him a terrorist and leave it at that... That's when I feel like people are being ignorant.

Anders gets a lot of hate for a lot of reasons. For changing between games (completely realistically, interestingly, and not nearly as inconsistently as a lot of people claim), for constantly going on about his cause (god forbid he address the cruelty and abuse that the mages of Kirkwall are going through on a daily basis), and for forcing Hawke into his plan/blowing up the Chanty no matter what you do (this is honestly more Bioware's fault than Anders' - the whole bit was rather forced, don't you think?).

I'm fine with people hating Anders. Even if I don't agree with the above points (and not agreeing with them is pretty important to seeing my point of view), I understand why that could make him unlikable to someone else who just wanted the funny guy from DAO to come back with no character growth or someone who wants their party to be more light and milder in their views as to not be 'annoying'.

I get it, but I feel like a lot of people don't stop to look his point of view. They vilify him because they don't like him for whatever reason and so when he does something drastic, they dismiss his actions as, "There is no excuse. Intentions don't matter, he's a terrorist that deserves to be skinned alive and fed to wolves."

I can't help but wonder... did we play the same game?

Thing is, intentions do matter and if you actually follow his plot and the plot of the mages, it's not as drastic as it seems on the surface.

The first thing to consider is that Anders is not just Anders. In DA2, Anders is Anders and Justice. This is important and super interesting because you can absolutely see both Anders and Justice from DAO in this character. His growth is actually really consistent between games and I could argue this point alone for several paragraphs, but I’ll refrain because this is already really long. A lot of people condemn Anders for the joining (which is part of why they don't like him). They basically boil their argument down to saying that Anders is a hypocrite for taking a spirit into himself and making himself an abomination (particularly because he’s against blood magic), which is what started his descent into madness in the first place.

They're not wrong. His joining with Justice is what made him the way that he is and it is a big part of why he did what he did, but... Justice isn't a demon. I know this may be splitting hairs, but there is a difference between spirits and demons. Spirits encapsulate good traits and demons bad traits. Consider this: spirit healers, which is what Anders is, rely on summoning spirits of Compassion for their healing. That's literally why they're called spirit healers. As such, Anders has had plenty of experience with good spirits before, so even though it could be considered 'risky' to join with a spirit, he thinks he's joining with a friend, a friend who needs him as his body is literally rotting away, in an attempt to do good.

Good that Justice convinced him to do in DAO, by the way:

Justice: I believe you have a responsibility to your fellow mages. Anders: That bit of self-righteousness is directed at me?  Justice: You have seen oppression and are now free. You must act to free those who remain oppressed.  Anders: Or I could mind my business, in case the Chantry comes knocking.  Justice: But this is not right. You have an obligation.  Anders: Yes, well... welcome to the world, spirit.

Also, even Justice was wary of joining with the living, but he himself was convinced that it could be okay:

Nathaniel: What if you found a living body to possess?  Justice: Even if I knew how, I would not possess the living. Such is an act for demons. Nathaniel: What if the person were willing? Justice: Why would a mortal ever allow such a thing? Nathaniel: For life. For love. Perhaps together, you can do what they cannot do alone. If you gave instead of taking, I would consider you no demon. Justice: It is...something to consider. Thank you, Nathaniel.

Honestly, Anders' and Justice's character development from DAO to DA2 is so interesting, but I'll stop gushing.

Again this kind of boils down to intentions. Anders took the risk of joining with Justice because he thought it was the right thing to do (and not as dangerous as it would seem to someone that didn't summon spirits daily) and in doing so, suffered for it. They didn't know what would come of it. Even David Gaider said that it was likely Anders' Grey Warden taint that was the source of Justice' corruption, which is something that they couldn't have anticipated.

Long story short, Justice is just as culpable as Anders, but people seem to either forget that or just write Justice off as being another one of Anders' stupid decisions.

The second thing to consider is the plight of mages (specifically in Kirkwall). I think part of the issue with this is Bioware did a sloppy job with writing the struggle between mages and templars. As rushed as DA2 was, the player doesn't really get a solid grasp of how bad it is for the mages. It's seen in a lot of NPC dialogue that you can easily miss or ignore as you run through the city. There are NPCs that talk about how they are beaten or raped and threatened with Tranquility if they say anything. Since this isn't brought to the foreground, where the player would be forced to see how incredibly messed up it is for the mages, people are just like... well yeah, it sucks for mages, but they're all blood mages in waiting, so whatever.

See, that is also a consequence of it being a rushed game. 99% of the mages you run into end up turning into a blood mage. Why? Not because it's actually realistic and not because most mages would choose blood magic, but because if they didn't, it would make who was the bad guy in the mage/templar war really obvious. The templars are utter villains (at least in Kirkwall) and so to give the player incentive to side with them, they have to put the mages in really dumb and sometimes ridiculous (Orsino, really?) scenarios to make them look bad.

So yes, let's consider that Anders, who won't shut up about what mages are going through, is in Kirkwall. It is well known to contain the worst Circle in all of Thedas, where mages are being abused daily. Anders says flat out that despite all of the abuses mages face (including the Harrowing where they get their heads chopped off if they don't pass), the cause of death he saw most often in the Circle was suicide. That was in Kinloch, which in all regards is a far better Circle than Kirkwall's. A far better Circle and mages still are killing themselves left and right (and no wonder - they put Anders in solitary confinement for a year. A year. Do you know what kind of mental damage a couple of weeks of solitary confinement can cause?)

Consider that Anders tried to resolve this the peaceful way for 10 years. I know the massive time jumps make it seem like it hasn't been that long when you're actually playing the game, but Anders spent 10 years trying to save the mages of Kirkwall, 10 years risking his neck to free them, 10 years gradually growing more paranoid by the very real possibility that he was going to be caught and be made Tranquil himself, 10 years doing everything in his power to selflessly help everyone in Darktown/Lowtown, not just mages, and can I just say, 10 years with everyone giving him shit for it.

Anders has little support from his companions who openly find him annoying (of course they do help him from time to time, I'm not saying they don't, but they do so whilst also talking shit about him and gaslighting him). I'm sorry, but Anders has a right to be 'annoying' - he's the only one putting in effort daily to help people other than himself. It is not exaggerating to say that he puts in more effort than even Hawke, but since he's not the protagonist of the game, since he's not Hawke, fighting off big baddies by himself, it doesn't count. He's the kind of hero that commits his acts of heroism day by day, doing a little at a time to try and make the place better.

This is kind of my third point. Anders (and I'm including Justice in this) is a really good person. Like, a really good person. He devotes himself to making the world better, no only for people like him, but for everyone. (Some people claim he hates elves or approves of slavery. That is ridiculous.). Sure, mages are his focus, but he runs a free clinic where he treats the sick and injured every single day. He does this to his detriment. He's devoted his life to helping others in a place that is not only dangerous for him to be at, but that is steadily getting worse.

Again, he does this for 10 years. He tries time and time again to solve the solution peacefully, but it comes to a breaking point and by that point Meredith is insane and the mages are in serious danger and no one is doing anything. Yes, he did what he felt he had to and yes, he lied to Hawke to do it because his friends don’t care and treat him and his concerns as an annoyance. Was it irrational? I feel like you could argue either way. You can say that it was an irrational action done by someone that had been overwhelmed by mental illness brought on by the corruption of Vengeance. You can say that it was a rational action done by someone that knew the only way to make a difference was to force people to pay attention and act.

Bioware actually plays up both sides of that question based on whether you were friendship or rivalry with him.

From where I stand, Anders had good intentions and that does matter. Knowing  there were innocents inside, Anders saw blowing up the Chantry* as terrible, as wrong, even, and he was willing to die for it. He was willing to accept the punishment for his actions with the hope that his death would mean something and that it would help more than it would hurt. To the very end, he was just trying to help.

He's not just a 'terrorist' and that's all there is to it. I can't stand that point if view. If you still hate him, that's fine. I get it, but I wish people wouldn't practically get off on talking about how much he sucks or how much they want to rip out his insides and leave him for the crows to peck at.

As a final thing, I know innocent people ended up dead, but the body counts of all the characters in those game are so high that it's just laughable to me that people can act like he’s so terrible. Like he’s the only one that has caused the death of innocents. Like, uh, Isabela set off a chain of events that resulted in the Qunari taking over the city and killing tons of people... but no... Anders is the only one that does wrong and deserves the intense amount of hatred he gets. Sure, Isabela isn't a beloved character by any means, but I really don't think Anders deserves the abuse he gets.

They hate him so much that Bioware basically dropped him as a character and it breaks my heart. 

some nice friends you got there davis