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[knickerweasels]

OOC Information; Name; Shimmy Personal Journal; Spicyshimmy Contact; whoisbrazil (at) gmail ; spicyshimmy (at) aim Other Characters; None! IC Information; Character Name; Anders Canon; Dragon Age 2 http://dragonage.wikia.com/wiki/Anders Canon Point; Between Acts 2 and 3, after the battle with the Arishok but before the events of Act 3 proper. Age; There is no canon age listed and Anders’s timeline is admittedly somewhat convoluted if not downright contradictory, but it is not unreasonable to assume he’s somewhere in his late 20s around the events of Awakening and close to 30 when Hawke meets him in Act 1 of Dragon Age 2, some year and a half later. (This leaves ample time for Anders to be taken to the Circle after the manifestation of his powers during pubescence, undergo the duration of his apprenticeship, and pass his Harrowing in his late teens—then embark upon his myriad escape attempts over the course of the following years. As punishment for said escape attempts cannot include tranquility once he’s passed his Harrowing, it can be assumed these seven attempts and the full year of solitude for the final failed attempt would likely make him an emotionally immature late-20-year-old when he first appears in Awakening.) As one year passes during the events Dragon Age 2’s Act 1, three years pass between the end of Act 1 and the beginning of Act 2, and another year passes for the duration of Act 2, Anders is probably somewhere in his early to mid-30s by the chosen canon point. (Sorry for the long-winded explanation. If only they’d given an exact age!) House; Anders is a healer, so it might seem to make sense to place him in Sigyn for that reason—yet his personality in Dragon Age 2, his determination and dedication to his cause, seems to indicate he’d be a better fit not for a house of those with meek personalities but rather one whose members are devoted to the extreme. Therefore, I think Heimdall would be more appropriate for him, based on his defining characteristics and overall character traits. This makes even more sense when one considers the first power of level one damage drain—which is similar to a healing spell, but also has the added element of taking that pain onto oneself. Anders would gladly do this for any of the mages he sees suffering in Kirkwall, and has sacrificed his own comfort, well-being and safety for them, so I do think Heimdall is the best natural fit! Power; Damage drain, for its correlation to healing, and its connotations to Anders’s personality as outlined above and below! Personality; No word other than “change” better encompasses who Anders is: a man changed by his experiences, and a man determined to effect greater change. That Anders has changed is obvious, considering he did make a bargain with an old friend—the spirit of Justice—a merger, a possession, a confluence of emotions and impulses too strong to handle, changes too big for even the man in question to measure properly. He has his reasons for accepting and indeed inviting the change, for taking on a task he once would have shied away from in horror. But in order to understand who Anders is it’s necessary to understand who he was and who he’s always been, once a callow mage who behaved with less maturity than his age would indicate, with a penchant for bad jokes and deflective humor and oft-botched escape attempts, fleeing the institution that’s kept him behind tower walls since his childhood: the Circle of Magi in Ferelden. When he’s first introduced in Awakening, Anders is—at face value—a funny guy. “I didn’t do it,” he says with a shrug and a cheeky grin, and that defines his prevalent and more obvious character traits—avoidance, irreverence, and a heaping side of immaturity. He doesn’t take things seriously; in fact, he does his weather best to do anything but. His immaturity comes alongside a clear strain of selfishness, favoring his own freedom over the broader concept of mage freedom, and indeed mention of the topic has him in top form, turning the conversation from serious questioning to his version of witty repartee. Anders is easy to read—or so it seems—because he does his best to make himself easy. All he wants, he says, is “a pretty girl, a decent meal, and the right to shoot lightning at fools.” The line sounds good. It’s believable. He flirts when he can, leers when he shouldn’t, laughs when no one else is laughing, and does all in his power to present himself in ways that neither shock nor astound—nor cause him to be clapped in irons and dragged away. Anders as we meet him is who Anders thinks Anders should be, outside of the Circle, experiencing “freedom” at last. Yet even this Anders is more than just the sum of his presented parts, quips and jabs and jibes and the inability to take anything seriously, a fondness for cats and earrings and scarves and silly names. Having gone from a sheltered life within the Circle—a life which is later shown to have made its mark far more deeply and far more darkly than Anders is willing to attest to during the course of Awakening—to a wide world full of constant adventure and darkspawn-slaying, it’s possible to argue Anders is simply having fun with this sudden turn of events, reveling in so much glorious change. Yet it is also important to note that he still isn’t his own man; being a Warden might offer a few good meals and the ability to shoot lightning at fools, but it doesn’t offer anything close to freedom—just a new set of parameters and a new hierarchy for Anders to subscribe to. Even during this time, fitting in nicely enough to his role as the funny guy, understanding what Anders doesn’t say—what he doesn’t give away, how despite all his obvious behavior, he’s actually astoundingly subtle—means understanding the system he’s lived under for years, set for keeping an eye on and, ostensibly, controlling the mages in Thedas. Anders explains this later as a world where no one dared to love, where no one was allowed to care for who they wished and show it how they wished, where every emotion was as closely guarded as magic itself, and the apprentices who bore both emotion and magic were kept in line by templars capable—even if they didn’t always act on them—of gross abuses. Anders’s humor, the way he plays himself off as a series of jokes, the hilarity of imagining someone trying seven times (and all times but one unsuccessfully) to escape the same place—all of these details have a touch of hidden pain to them, a vein of sadness and regret and even anger that Anders clearly isn’t keen to put on display. It’s all buried deep—but it has to be, as Anders has always needed to fend off demons that prey on his more painful desires on the one hand and keep himself safe from real world abuses on the other. Being an apostate in Ferelden might be what he wants, or thinks he wants, or keeps trying to become—but it isn’t safe. Nor is being a Circle mage, for that matter, where everything is so strictly regulated, where so much is prescribed and more importantly proscribed, and where Anders underwent an entire year in solitary as punishment for one of his failed escapes. At the core, Anders is a product of this system. He is all its failures, all its regrets, all its frustrations. And he carries them with him always, even when he’s laughing loudest. Maybe especially then. There’s a lot more to Anders than the ability to shoot lightning at fools, a naughty comment about nudity or a holy statue of Andraste. But for a man who pretends to wear his heart on his sleeve, he actually plays his feelings close to the chest, and with the life he’s lived, the changes visited upon him and his personality from an entire year in solitude and his own inclinations—that he’s never been able to accept living life the way he’s meant to in the Circle—it’s easy to see the cracks appear in the Anders he’s created. He’s not just the funny guy. He’s always been more than what he seems. Anders undergoes what appears to be a drastic personality shift between Awakening and Dragon Age 2. And, indeed, he’s no longer what anyone would call “the funny guy,” despite the moments of humor—still mostly inappropriate—he manages to keep with him. But the truth of the matter is—even with the element of Justice and the advent of Vengeance transforming him into a very different person on the outside—it isn’t all that surprising to see why Anders would become the man he is in Kirkwall’s slum Darktown, so much less the callow youth and so much more the tempered healer, escaped not only from the Fereldan Circle but also the Wardens after it, and attempting to do good for other mages—working now not just for Anders’s freedom but for mage freedom itself. What had its inception as a personal effort to help himself and his friend Justice out of two tight spots is an event that forces Anders to come face to face with the anger, the fear, the pain he’s always harbored, the sense of greater injustice—something beyond himself, so much more than himself. And that changes him. It changes Justice. It is difficult for Anders to tell where one facet of himself ends and the other begins—by his own admission it’s nigh impossible for him to draw those borders, and as time passes, they blur more and more. His propensity to continue hiding certain more severe truths persists; perhaps purposefully, he confounds the meaning of that merger and all its implications. Or maybe he simply doesn’t understand it himself, problematic as it is. It’s difficult for anyone, especially so complicated a man, to explain himself. The difference now is that he’s found someone to try and share it with—for Anders opens himself up to Hawke in ways that he never opened himself to the Warden in Awakening, sharing past experiences and pain, so many personal details, so much hidden eagerness to have that opportunity for friendship, and maybe something more than that. He comes on strong, but is it any surprise that he would be so desperate? After everything he’s seen happen to his peers at the hands of templars, after narrowly avoiding betrayal at the hands of a prejudiced Warden, after all that he’s been denied and divested of—after a failed attempt to rescue an old friend and lover, Karl Thekla, only to find the man turned tranquil at the hands of the over-zealous templars of Kirkwall—is it any wonder Anders is desperate not just to cause real change but to find those simple things, like love and honesty and companionship, that the non-mages of Thedas take for granted? The incident with Karl is a prime example of what Anders is working against, what Anders is desperate to change. It’s a prime example of the nexus between the personal and the principle, of which Anders is ever a locus. It also reveals the path that his desperation is bound to take, as he’s certain death is preferable to tranquility—and he’s strong enough to kill Karl because Karl asks him to do it. Anders’s anguish and pain at having his hand forced is all part of a loss that affects him deeply, yet another good mage falling prey to the system that has them all entrapped. Few could take the life of someone who was once so close to them, but Anders doesn’t commit to such a thing lightly. He does it because he must. He does it because he knows what it means and because Karl begs him for the mercy. It’s an act of generosity and violence, of strong morals and good intentions and tragic outcomes. And it won’t be the last. The trouble is, Anders is never one thing or the other. The trouble is, he’s both—both hero and villain, both fool and martyr, both justice and vengeance. On top of that, as a vital part of that, he’s also a single man—a network of impulses both selfish and selfless. It’s so much more intricate than a situation of either-or. Anders is too much all at once, and all his instincts are blown out of proportion with Justice’s instincts because they’re kept so close together, impulses affected by the demands of a Fade spirit and muddied by Anders’s own memories. Anders has indeed become someone moodier, unable to turn a blind eye to pain, his healer’s desire to heal casting a far wider net than it did before. He dedicates himself selflessly to a task that’s as ceaseless as it is without rewards, without mercies, without end. And as time passes and the plight of the mages escalate, he becomes more difficult, less predictable, angrier. Selflessness is a noble ambition; in practice, it has too many flaws, and Anders is clear example of all of them. And that’s on a good day. On a bad day, he nearly kills a girl because the force of his rage at seeing injustice takes over, going far beyond his control. On all the other days, he’s simply impossible to get along with, butting heads most often with those who don’t share his view on mages. He fights most with the members of the party who refuse to share his views, who stand in direct opposition with them; there’s no love lost between him and Fenris, for example, and the two are better considered enemies than they are friends. He comes across as difficult, argumentative, determined to be make sacrifice no matter the cost of sacrifice—but this is because there is no one else willing to fill that role in a city in such dire need of catalyst. It has to be someone. That someone was always Anders. He’s inflexible, to be sure; he repeats himself constantly, but this may be because so few are actually listening. He isn’t the sort you’d invite to a party anymore because he excuses himself from those parties most of the time, and his single-minded focus on mage rights is alienating indeed. The fact of the matter is, Anders can no longer be swayed. He has the strength of purpose, the otherworldly and at times inhuman drive—all part of the spirit possession deal—to keep himself on that path toward its necessary conclusion. And though his old self would never have considered it—though his old self outright denied the desire to engage in anything of the sort—the seeds for such an outcome were ever there, waiting to be nurtured, waiting to grow. Some think him an abomination. There are days when his moods get the better of him, when all the anger overwhelms even the best of intentions or the noblest of causes. There are days when he’s dangerous—perhaps those days are every day—to himself and to others, to his enemies and to those he wishes to protect. He suffers from kindness, from regret, from misery, from all those darker emotions, from all those helpless ones, from the inflexibility of his position, and also from his own determination. His hatred of templars is born from real reason. He can no longer afford to see things in shades of gray, though it takes every one of those shades to describe him. But there’s been too much compromise already—and there can be no peace. Samples; Network Sample; VIDEO; [ the face that appears is harried—weary but firm, resigned but not gentle. it has gentle elements, yes, its gentle moments or even inclinations but the mouth is hard, the jaw beneath the stubble hard, the color of the eyes yet harder still. ] I’ve seen a lot of tricks in my time, but this… Well, it’s more than just a warden prank or a harmless bit of apprentice hazing—or Hawke’s usual idea of “witty,” isn’t it? The joke’s on me. Very funny. [ but there’s a clip to his tone, something that signifies there’s more to it than that, or he suspects there is, or he knows there is—that he’s known it all along. ] …Though I have to admit, it’s even more unpleasant here than the Bone Pit. One might even say— [ if his voice wasn’t hard enough before, it has a dire edge to it now, a flash of quick anger, of personal pain, a lack of any scant mirth or compromise. ] —it’s tranquil. [ he might say more, but the word twists something in his mouth. ] You can see it now, can’t you? The Knight-Commander will go to any lengths, no matter how dire, to stop innocent people from operating freely. All this… It’s everything I’ve feared. Hawke, if you can hear me, I—need your help. [ a pause. a shallow breath. ] …Now, more than ever. Log Sample; These things were always happening. To him, around him, near him, involving him—the combination was spectacular, always predictable in its unpredictability. They couldn’t avoid stepping right into the trap, walking straight into the action, picking up an enchanted artifact or popping into a haunted mansion or challenging a high dragon to a one-on-four duel. More like twenty-on-four, though, if you counted the dragonlings. Anders always did. They had very sharp teeth. This propensity for adventure had something to do with Hawke. It also had something to do with luck—or fate, depending on who you were talking to about it. Whether bad luck was the same thing as fate in the end was a question better answered by someone else, who didn’t have other matters to consider or other manifestos to write. The point was, it wasn’t surprising. It was just another day in Kirkwall, another group of blood mages driven to the edge and over it by situations untenable and lives unlivable, backed into the corner and lashing out like beasts. That was what the templars made of them, what inevitability made of them, bad luck and injustice and fate— And there wasn’t time for it all. There wasn’t time to fix it all. There were spells and runes and circles and the hollow of that deep voice resonant and always true, never uncertain of itself or its purpose. Their purpose. They didn’t have time for this. Anders could feel the start of a headache coming on, the sense that they weren’t where they should have been—but Kirkwall was ever drab like this so late at night, after the sun had set and the smog from the sewers began to rise, smoke from the foundry district, pollution and steam and shit and all those other dark shadows that crept one into the next. Gray, colorless, dull—except there was never a dull moment and Hawke was a burst of color, generally red, against it all. So were the fires he brought with him, the jokes, the possibilities, the chance that maybe there might be hope— Hope but also justice. Justice in the face of injustice. And vengeance, too; vengeance and Anders. It was dangerous; what they did was always dangerous. Anders listened for the clank of templar bootfalls, heavy silverite upon the cobblestone, but nothing came. He didn’t breathe more easily. He was wary now, though he was never completely alone—and that was the point, someone standing just beside him, someone at his back and not, for once, an enemy, a templar casting his or her own long shadow—and the staff held in his hand, with its familiar finger-grooves along the cinch, offered its usual protection. Except for the part where it…didn’t. Old magic, one of his oldest friends, the Fade and the Fade’s heat and the Fade’s chills—he couldn’t feel those things the way he did normally, all part of the landscape bled dry of color, the place where he he was because of fate or luck—or something no more complicated than a spell gone awry. And no one was there with him; no one except the usual. Fenris wasn’t spitting about magic and Isabela wasn’t testing the heft of her dagger against her palm and Hawke wasn’t cupping his fingers against his beard, laughing despite everything, a dry chuckle to set them all at ease. Even if it didn’t always work, he always tried it. But all that was missing. The Fade was missing. They were cut off from all those possibilities of dreaming and Anders felt, with the creeping dread of any nightmare, the new possibility. That they had found him. That they had put their brand to his brow. That they had taken him as they took Karl; that it had only been a matter of time before they did this to all of them; that this had always and ever been his end, something cold and without even the fear that was his, the pettiness that had been his, the sum of foolishness and faults and false hopes that had always been his. Little more than that. Little more than a staff and a pillow. He didn’t have much, but it was his—and they could take it away, had already taken so much. He could have been anyone. What was done to one mage was done to all. Fear overtook him. Then, he breathed. He was panicking. Something was wrong but not all was wrong, even in the face of so little that was actually right. If he’d been made tranquil, his heart wouldn’t have begun to race. He wouldn’t have felt his blood pounding because he wouldn’t have felt anything, no regrets, no longing, no despair. He wouldn’t have felt the shudder from the base of his neck to the base of his spine and certainly not the anger that followed, anger to supplant fear, nothing like complacency and no room for acceptance anymore. He couldn’t live like this. No one could. Anders held his staff more tightly than before. It was rotten, all rotten, and there was so little time, so much of it already wasted. “Hawke?” he began, swallowing down the dryness clenched in his throat as best he could. “It isn’t Feastday. You know you can’t joke about something like this.” He was met with silence—and that was the worst answer of all. * And also, just in case, a brief sample of a more informal third-person thread here: http://wildcharged.livejournal.com/3132.html?thread=36924#t36924