A great deal of my playlists would cease to be playlists if you took out the Mountain Goats, Mother Mother and Dessa. I'm a girl of simple tastes :P
@blue lawl, both those songs are on my Hawke/Anders playlist too. Spoiler: Tracklist In no particular order: I'm Not Calling You a Liar - Florence + The Machine Devil's Backbone - Civil Wars Demons - Boyce Avenue cover Psychobabble - Frou Frou Youth - Daughter Gravity - Sara Bareilles Human Touch - Not sure who the cover artist is, original artist is Bruce Springsteen, but I love the random cover I have Wait it Out - Imogen Heap Guys I make too many playlists I have a problem.
I've thankfully avoided being bitten by the fanmix bug for DA (...at least so far...) but if I were inclined to make my own Hawke/Anders mix it would totally have "Limits of Our Love" by Charlotte Martin and "The Worst Is Yet to Come" by Motion City Soundtrack on it.
Getting to my least favorite nonsensical twist (Orsino) in the KPDA2 timeline and I had to come here to rec my favorite.... uh, fix-it fic .. maybe? It's. Arguably more upsetting. But fits way better with the story and all the character voices are perfect and I love emilyenrose. Some inquisition spoilers.
This fits that narrative hole perfectly. (A narrative hole that probably wouldn't be there if some suit hadn't insisted there had to be TWO boss fights in the Gallows, for Reasons.)
Oh hey so this just showed up on my dash and I realized something. They put a MAGE in solitary confinement. For a YEAR. That's practically begging for them to start talking to spirits and demons just so they can interact with someone else. To the point that it's easy to read it as the Circle intentionally going "let's get this guy possessed so we can just kill him and be done with this."
Yeah I'm pretty sure you can read the Circle's entire modus operandi as trying to do that large scale. Either that or they are incredibly incompetent.
I mean. Comparing to a lot of real-world things people keep doing to try to solve social problems even though they patently make it worse, I don't think "incredibly incompetent" is out of the question for most of their behavior. But this kinda goes the extra mile- even if you don't think mages are people like Hawke and Cullen and don't have modern research on just how bad solitary confinement is for people's heads, it should be pretty obvious that putting an already disobedient and unstable mage in solitary is like leaving a barrel of gunpowder next to a fireplace. In fact, doubly so if you think mages are ~so vulnerable to temptation~ and will become blood mages/abominations if left unsupervised for five minutes. Anders has already run away a ton of times at this point- I wouldn't expect them to show the empathy necessary to notice that the one period he didn't make any escape attempts was when Karl was around, but I would expect them to consider that he isn't going to stop wanting to escape, that doing this to him is just going to make him want to escape more, and that backing mages into a corner can have... certain results.
Yeah, and the entire environment of the circle is incredibly stressful, and does a really great job of making mages think they're trapped, have no privacy, and are more or less at the mercy of their guards (who they know are taught to see them as less than people) and also that God hates them?
Yeah, but the people in charge think it's normal. It's much easier for them to rationalize it as ~for the greater good~, because to them that's just how the world works. Solitary is a whole different kettle of fish- at that point there's no kidding themselves that they're doing anything but jailing the person. I imagine there are a lot of Templars who say Circle mages have great lives because they don't have to worry about money or darkspawn or where their food is coming from and get to live in their nicely-furnished, well-guarded ivory tower reading books all day and chatting it up with other mages, but here's Anders locked up alone in a room that probably has almost nothing in it because he might use it to try to escape. Either they've completely forgotten the threat that's the entire justification for the Circles' existence and this is the equivalent of abusive elementary school teachers locking a "problem child" in a closet, or they're hoping that they'll catch him interacting with spirits and have an excuse to either kill him or make him Tranquil. (Incidentally, I'm still amazed that anyone could possibly have thought it was a good idea to put a Circle in a city where even non-mages get possessed. What were you expecting, you idiots.)
I have a pet theory that the Blooming Rose and the Hanged Man were 90% of what kept Kirkwall livable for as long as it was
I don't remember if it's stated in canon or not, but I always got the impression that the atrocities at the gallows are a big part of what caused the thinness of the veil. Or at least what kept it so thin. So it basically formed a positive feedback loop that's causing the veil to just be shredded and thus causing MORE bad things (possession and stuff) to happen which then rips the veil even more
I mean. A lot of atrocities were committed at the Gallows before they put the Circle there, so I feel my point stands. :::PPP
Oh certainly. I was more adding to your thought than arguing it, or at least I was by the end of writing. we know the veil can heal and thicken over time, but the constant atrocities keep the wound open and festering. But yeah I want to find whoever thought that was a good idea and just. Shake them.
...So, people who like dragon age but don't know me and thus are impartial... Should I continue with this, based on this snippet?
