i’m so annoyed about how pro-freedom mages like anders and even adrian from asunder are treated. it feels like it’s only ever ok to be an aequitarian and it makes me upset. how dare mages seek freedom, am i right? lmfao. do you have any though about it?

bubonickitten:

SAME. Characters with radical politics and/or with a lot of anger about their oppression are constantly framed negatively and just generally characterized as being ‘too extreme’ or ‘too loud’ or overreacting or something. Anders and Adrian are big ones – Anders is frequently invalidated on the basis of his mental illness, and Adrian’s portrayal in Asunder is crawling with misogynistic subtext (she gets characterized as this overemotional foil to Rhys, the logical moderate man). Fiona and Velanna are other radical characters who are demonized and get treated badly by the narrative – Fiona doesn’t even get given credit in the games for all her accomplishments, most players don’t even know who she is if they don’t read the novels, and in DA:I she gets framed very negatively in ‘In Hushed Whispers’ (or, if players side w/ the templars, is killed anticlimactically as if she’s not even an important character). Even Merrill, with the lengths she goes to to try to restore her people’s history, is demonized for messing with the eluvian, while Morrigan does pretty much the same thing but doesn’t get framed as foolish or selfish for it. 

The games definitely push this idea that the middle-of-the-road/moderate position is the most reasonable and morally correct way to go, which goes along with how Bioware’s constantly demonizing their oppressed groups/characters so they can try to maintain that ‘grey morality’ theme they like so much. But honestly, given power dynamics as extreme as mage and elf oppression, there’s a very clear right and wrong imo – it’s not morally grey. Which is why favorite characters tend to be the ones who refuse to compromise when it comes to those oppression themes. “Don’t fight fire with fire” is a useless argument when the oppressed aren’t the ones starting all the fires, and there’s never going to be a fair compromise when one side has all the power, including the power to define the problem in the first place and dictate ‘right’ and ‘wrong’.