#I will never EVER forgive them for butchering Solas the way they did when he had potential to be one of the best franchise characters

[ziracona]

It's honestly kind of hypocritical, the way Anders is condemned for destroying one Chantry when his actions didn't cause nearly as much death and destruction as Solas will. And yet so much of the fandom has this knee jerk reaction to Anders.

It’s not even that. It’s that one character is an oppressed minority under systemic violence he’s been protesting peacefully most of his life, who /only/ chooses violence when there aren’t other options left that are better, and takes full, immediate and complete responsibility for his acts to an extreme even, and the other is a race Supremacist trying to commit genocide against every other race on the entire planet not even to save his people, but to restore them to the height of their societal opulent glory, even at the senseless cost of billions. And notably, the fact that DA has chosen to portray the former as uncalled for and unforgivable, and the latter as deeply sympathetic and understandable just too extreme.

It’s not the same kind of act but in greater or lesser amounts at all. Elthina was an awful person, but that doesn’t even matter. It would still have been a both necessary and just act even if she wasn’t. By the time Anders blows up the chantry, Meredith has already sent for the right of annulment, and Justinia is about to take an exacted March, whichever happens first is the question, but either way, the death toll will be horrific and colossal, and no one is doing a thing to stop it. At best, every mage in the city dies. He then makes a very hard thought out, hard felt choice to provoke violence while there are still enough Mages left to have a fighting chance, and to force everyone else into action before it is too late, both to save Kirkwall, and to provoke further conflict in the hopes of things finally actually changing for Mages (a plan which is successful), because they’ve lived under horrific oppression for centuries now with no hope. That’s enough to justify it on its own. He pulled the switch on a trolley problem. And he acted in favor of a minority that would have been wiped out, if at the cost of some innocent lives. But on top of that, he approaches this entirely responsibly too, maybe to a fault. He follows this plan fully expecting and ready to be immediately killed for the act regardless of if that’s the right thing to do, and is very aware that he killed some innocents personally, and others will die as a butterfly affect of his choices, and even suggests killing him is probably just, as payment for the lives he took, himself. He acted for the greater good, but he in no way trivializes the lives he takes or his guilt for them. If anything, he takes it more responsibly than he needs. Painfully so. Immediately after destroying the chantry, he forfeits his life and disarms himself voluntarily and sits alone on a box to wait passively to be judged no matter what it means for him, and he will not fight back or even flee if you choose to kill him. He simply accepts his fate. He approaches everything leading up to that fully expecting he’s essentially committing suicide, and will be hated and killed for it. He says goodbye to the people he loves beforehand, tries to give away his things and make sure they know he loves them, and is shocked if Hawke chooses to forgive and let him live, let alone condones the action. He also explicitly lies to Hawke about what he’s doing and does not ask for help because he wants the blame all to lie with him, and not to be on their head or conscience, and to be the only one who has to die to pay for it if someone does. And all of that for an act that is easily ethically justifiable on its own, without accepting penance for it.

That’s not the same class of action as Solas choosing to enact racist supremacy Genocide to restore his race to their former opulent glory. It’s not even an act to save lives, just an act of bigotry and immense pride. The dehumanization of every other culture and race on the planet to justify such an act to yourself not even to protect lives, but to protect maximum quality of life, is a straight up mind bogglingly vile Supremacist move, and they DIDN’T even let him have like, the moral complicatedness of early Magneto, or like, even the bad guy from Jujutsu Kaisen or something where it’s species supremacy but at least with the ‘we’re being reviled and killed by the majority’ minority complexity with SOME actual merit added. They retconned elven history to make it so he’s not even trying to give the Dalish back stolen lands for their explicitly based on indigenous peoples culture to be restored, or something, but made him alone from Ancient Opulent European Slaver Elf Society instead bc god forbid they say a minority enacting harm is justifiable. They really said skinheads are more sympathetic than minority action in DAI and thought that was ok and I am still reeling from it like I was hit by a bus.