#do you even understand how much it's an uphill battle to get legacy institutions to listen to the communities they serve

[erin-gilberts]

I don't care what anyone says about Ao3 as a nonprofit, as someone who ran a nonprofit and is now getting two degrees in this shit, I'm in envious awe at how freakin' well they know their audience and donors and it's a mahoosive part of the reason they're so successful. Their thank-you gifts this fund drive are god-tier knowing their audience. Do you even understand how many arts administrators would kill to be part of an organization as responsive to the communities it serves as the Organization for Transformative Works? I would kill for this. We study them as a case study in how to do this shit. I give them money every fund drive if only for the fact that they're proof the nonprofit structure can thrive when people who know what they're doing are at the helm.

[bubonickitten]

This is kind of sudden, but do you think that Anders is/was devout at some point???

You mean re: Andrastianism? I think so, yeah.

I mean, it’s canon that his father was a devout Andrastian and that was the main reason his father sent him away to the Circle: 

The Circle, the templars, they’ve shaped my life. I was no more than twelve when they came for me. My mother wept when they fixed the chains to my wrists, but my father was glad to see me gone. He had been afraid, ever since the fire in the barn. Not just afraid of what I could do, but afraid of me, afraid my magic was punishment for whatever petty sins he imagined the Maker sat in judgment upon. (I have the source linked on this post)

Growing up in that environment, and then being sent to the Circle where the only perspective allowed is the Chantry’s strict version of Andrastianism, I think he internalized a lot of that (I wrote some about that at the above link). 

A lot of his personal struggle from Awakening onward is reframing his own faith to be more accepting of him and other mages. All the spiritual authorities in his life have always held the perspective that magic is inherently sinful and evil, and that there’s nothing a mage can do to truly prove themself - that they deserve imprisonment, abuse, and oppression because of what they are, regardless of what they actually do. 

He internalized a lot of that, which is why sometimes he seems to contradict himself: he says that magic is a gift from the Maker rather than a curse and that mages shouldn’t have to prove themselves any more than non-mages do, but at the same time he still has this fear of being a “Bad” mage (i.e. not being in full control of himself and his magic at all times; merging w/ a spirit; etc.), and he still has a lot of unquestioned bias toward mages who fit into those categories that the Chantry deems “Bad” (e.g. blood mages, even when their blood magic isn’t being used unethically - tho I also think some of his knee-jerk negative reactions re: blood magic are from Justice, since he seems much more harsh about it in DA2 than he does in Awakening). 

Also, growing up in the Circle means he didn’t get any perspectives on magic other than the Chantry’s, so he’s really ignorant about Dalish clans, Avvar and Chasind traditions, etc. I mean, spirit possession is a rite of passage for Avvar mages, but that’s something he would have never heard of in the Circle, so he sees possession as something that will inevitably end up badly. Basically, he grew up in a highly censored environment that views every one of those cultures as inferior and wrong, so he has a lot to unlearn & relearn. It’s also why he’s so ignorant about Tevinter - he’s skeptical about what the Chantry says about Tevinter because he already suspects that so much of what the Chantry teaches is propaganda. The thing the Chantry focuses on in their criticisms of Tevinter and the Imperial Chantry is the acceptance magic (including blood magic), rather than what’s actually wrong with Tevinter: slavery, exploitation, imperialism, wealth and class inequality, etc. (all of which the southern Chantry also engages in or ignores, so of course they’re not gonna strongly oppose those). 

He also has the occasional crisis of faith, like in the Legacy DLC, after meeting Corypheus. When he learns that some of the Chantry’s teachings about the origins of darkspawn could be true, he starts to doubt himself - “if the Chantry was right about this, what else were they right about?” (which I’m p sure in his mind also translates to “if my abusers were right about this, were they also right about me?”). It’s worth noting that he’s also more likely to go into those self-doubt spirals when he’s in a depressed mood episode, I notice - a lot of his depressive thinking is tinged with the same self-hating, self-fearing rhetoric the Chantry tries so hard to ingrain in Circle mages. He tries to fight back against those teachings, but it can be extremely challenging for him, because that’s what spiritual abuse and growing up in an echo chamber can do (for a more extreme example, check out what the Circle mage Keili has to say in DA:O). 

TL;DR: I think he tries to be devout in his own way - that is, to find a way to be devout that doesn’t have to adhere to the Chantry’s doctrine. On his good days, he talks about how Andraste would have never agreed with how the Chantry has construed her teachings (e.g. in Awakening, if you examine the statue of Andraste). He talks about how the Maker created mages, and their magic is a gift rather than a curse (e.g. in his manifesto - a lot of his arguments are actually made from a faith-based perspective, which indicates both how personal it is for him and also his understanding of how much influence Chantry doctrine has over society as a whole). He talks about how he’s Andrastian, but that doesn’t have to mean he supports the Circle - how he can believe in the Maker and in Andraste’s teachings without agreeing with how the Chantry has interpreted the Chant. 

But on his bad days, he still struggles with his faith because Chantry doctrine and all of the spiritual authorities in his life have taken a hard stance of “magic is bad and mages don’t deserve to be treated like people,” and it’s hard to break free of that when the authority figures and institutions that have had control of you your entire life have repeated it ad infinitum. Tell someone enough times that they’re irredeemable and they might start to believe it, no matter how much of a rebel they are. Personal recovery for him involves being able to reframe his faith in a way that embraces people like him, and it’s an uphill battle, but he works at it.