justasmolweebean

[justasmolweebean]

pov: you have the misfortune of wandering into the lighthouse music room at 3am

[justasmolweebean]

someone: do you think anders is a good person

the part of my brain that engages in genuine critical media analysis: i think it's disingenuous to label him through the lens of a binary good/evil paradigm because what makes him such an interesting and engaging character is his status inbetween a human with complex emotions and desires and flaws that will never fully align with each other, and the singleminded focus and purpose of a supernatural entity that is literally justice incarnate and has no capacity for nuance and whose very nature is fundamentally incompatible with humanity but the two of them are so deeply connected that they make up a single identity that's constantly at odds with itself and this struggle causes him to act in ways that aren't always clean and often land him and those around him in impossible positions. i think he was morally justified in doing what he did to the chantry but i also believe he understood the magnitude of what he was doing which is why i inherently disagree with the notion that characters like varric or sebastian were wrong in their reactions because that's the very nature of violent revolution—people get caught in the crossfire and are harmed despite their innocence and regardless of the righteousness of the action at large. if someone killed your mom to protect a hundred orphans you probably wouldn't come out of the experience full of love and admiration for the person who killed your mother because regardless of the outcome they still fucking killed your mother. anders destroyed people's homes and lives and there's a conversation to be had about how he gaslit and exploited hawke, his own potential lover, into being an unwitting accomplice even though we know through meta knowledge that he was perfectly capable of doing it on his own and very likely only wanted hawke's involvement because he needed a powerful figure to become the rallying symbol for his cause. the reality is his very nature would have never allowed him to choose hawke and his friends over his goal because to do so would have been fundamentally selfish and antithetical to his newfound identity as one who champions the needs of the many at the expense of the individual. it's a beautifully tragic story about the lengths a person would have to go to in order to enact any sort of meaningful change while constrained in a system that benefits from their powerlessness, and how that process cannot exist without suffering and pain on both the individual and collective level. i also feel like if anders was written by a person with a degree of compassion and awareness for not only the character they were writing but just what living as a vulnerable and targeted minority is like then the narrative and message would have been vastly different than what ended up on screen because, ultimately, the game wants you to look at the stark injustice of a child being ripped away from their family to spend a life locked away in cold isolation where they're at constant risk of exploitation, abuse, death, and even a complete removal of their personhood, and think that there's room for compromise. it's a narrative that perpetuates the myth that passivity and tolerance in the face of oppression is more virtuous than burdening the masses with the discomfort of seeing their own culpability in sustaining it. a better game would have challenged varric and sebastian while also affirming their anger instead of just the latter. a better game would have explored hawke's reaction in a deeper manner that examined their relationship with the system, their own internal biases, and how anders affected their worldview.

the part of my brain that was on tumblr in 2014 and is still extremely petty and spiteful: he should have blown up the conclave while he was at it

[justasmolweebean]

Thinking about those windows movie maker lyric videos from the late 00's/early 10's...truly that era's cornerstone of society

[justasmolweebean]

pov: you have the misfortune of wandering into the lighthouse music room at 3am

[justasmolweebean]

he can be a little misleading at times i fear

[justasmolweebean]

Awakening Anders you'll always be famous my silly boy

[justasmolweebean]

of course you have a military rank and a plastic crack addiction

[justasmolweebean]

Hello I am the first female companion you meet in a Bioware game and while my haircut may or may not look gay, I regret to inform you that I am, in fact, heterosexual.

[justasmolweebean]

They've filled the Normandy with people who look up to you in an effect to placate you and make you feel at home, but it's more alienating than if everyone hated you. They've given you your own private quarters but they make you feel alone and cut off from everyone. They say it's your ship, just like the one flew on before, and that you're in command, only there are doors that won't open for you and are locked tight. They parade before you a friend you knew who is so excited about all of this, but you didn't live through that and you're not over what you lost like he is. You look in the mirror and you're literally cracking at the seams and they tell you and only you can save the galaxy - enough that you were worth billions of resources to bring back - and you think about the soldier, the friend, you lost on Virmire and how nobody thought to bring them back. You're a ghost everyone is worshipping, a legend that everyone is clinging to, a soldier, a spectre, a saviour, a hero, but not a person anymore.

[justasmolweebean]

i know what you are

[justasmolweebean]

i feel so bad for the other party members who have to deal with the non-cousland-warden x king alistair breakup

(commission info // tip jar!)

[justasmolweebean]

duncan.....

[justasmolweebean]

I actually thought it was a tiny little elf boot for an embarrassingly long time in DAI...

I just noticed on the mural where solas killed flemeth/mythal in datv his necklace is shaped wrong. it's a basic shape sure, but it's shaped like a boot instead of a canine jaw. kind of a silly oversight from the artist but the idea solas wear a tiny little boot around is neck is sending me.

its extra funny when he literally refuses to wear shoes on his feet

[justasmolweebean]

Warden Commander/DA:A companion sketch requests, sorry they got kinda messy :D the username of the person requesting is below each sketch

[justasmolweebean]

The start of Dragon Age Inquisition in a nutshell.

[justasmolweebean]

having a freeze response to stress is so funny in the context of normal adult stressors. millions of years of evolution are trying to tell me that the email will not find me if i stay very still and do nothing

[justasmolweebean]

Shephard :)