Wynne dragonage when she has to listen to the supposed savior of the world getting rawdogged every night by some freak who won't shut up about her bosoms

✨When you are a giga-strong mountain of stone muscles crushing the heads of weak people, and your wife a diplomatic, intelligent mage who needs to be protected✨

Wynne from Asunder. Artwork from 2012

Stamina regen ⬆️⬆️

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BONUS Wynne:

So what happens when we do this?

Yeah. I have seen people make this same comparison between Oghren and Zevran as well. The claim was people only dislike this personality trait in Oghren because he is not considered good-looking/sexually appealing. I’m sorry but NO.  Both Anders and Zevran are flirty, being a flirty male doesn’t immediately equal a creep.  Interesting that Isabela also hits on characters and the player all the time and people don’t call her a “womaniser” or a “maniser” ?? (lol we don’t even have a word for that)  Women are considered hypersexual whores simply for showing interest and men are considered hypersexual womanisers and creeps simply for showing interest.  So maybe let’s not do that. Let’s not have this puritan view.

I could even mention other female characters who make unwanted advances. Leliana stares at Morrigan’s chest and hits on her. Morrigan hits on Sten. However all of these characters (Isabela, Morrigan, Leliana, Anders, Zevran) call it quits fairly quickly when they are turned down. Oghren is different from them. Oghren also walks in on a female warden having sex and pretends it was an accident but it’s obvious it wasn’t. He is giggling and enjoying himself when he invaded someone’s privacy. Nobody else behaves like this.

(I say all of this as someone who doesn’t hate Oghren, I find him an interesting character and kinda entertaining to be honest. But I fully understand why people dislike him. And the distinction between him and the others has to be made.They are not the same.)

I know someone might bring up Zevran and Wynne so I must mention... the only time Zev doesn’t stop hitting on someone is when Wynne tries to guilt trip him and she won’t let it go, so he just decides to annoy her in return. In such an interaction you can tell (and she can tell) that the point is to return the favor, there isn’t a power imbalance here, they mutually bother each other. His tone is snide and sarcastic and there is a lack of sexually threatening feeling in the interaction, Wynne even says she knows he doesn’t mean it. Compare that with Sigrun who is more disgusted than simply annoyed when Oghren flirts with her and she also knows that Oghren means it, he is fixated on her and he won’t stop. (By the way Zevran is also quite polite when flirting with the warden, he asks does it bother you? should I stop?)

People also say that Anders makes unwanted advances at Hawke just because he can initiate flirting. In games we are used to the idea that there is an entire list of people who are interested, but actually if you don’t show interest then they don’t ever express it either. That’s not realistic. Anders accepts it if you turn him down. In fact if you do that and later choose a flirty dialogue anyway then he will tell you not to flirt with him when you already made it clear you are not interested. He is not pushy. These are normal forms of communicating interest or lack thereof.   (Of course with Anders another big factor is that male gamers were bothered by a guy flirting with them so openly. )

Sit the fuck down and shut the fuck up, Wynne, and lets discuss this without the limitations of three dialogue options to choose from.

There has NEVER been a case in history where oppressors were shown the error of their ways by the oppressed ‘showing them they can be trusted.’ Because there is nothing that is ever good enough in their eyes. And you’d think the fact that the Chantry will never allow freedom would be a red flag??? That you need to fear your survival at all???

Why YES, I remember the Circle. I remember a warden mage, an apostate, a warden warrior and their fucking dog having to step in to do the job the templars are supposedly meant and trained for, but opted instead to just kill everyone. Fucking pinnacle of an example there, Wynne.

And really? “Give the templars an excuse?” THERE IS NO EXCUSE FOR MASS MURDER OF INNOCENTS.

To quote Briala in The Masked Empire, “Freedom is not given. It is won.” Trying to be as perfect an underling as possible will never amount to anything, because it will never be good enough. There is nothing you can do to convince oppressors to just grant equality to people they see as beneath them. That’s kind of the whole damn problem. You cannot expect change to come without confronting the problem.

Finally, this conversation is important to note, because I occasionally see people say that the mages never wanted to rebel until Anders blew up the Chantry, when that just isn’t true. The Libertarians are the second largest group of mages. That is a really big portion. Enough so that in 9:31 they have enough power to petition separating from the Chantry the first time, as detailed by Wynne right here. They try again in 9:37. Then finally in 9:39, the rebellion began. So, let’s not pretend that there was no large force against the Circles before Anders blew up the Chantry. Fiona was working her ass off for years, before Anders even took his Harrowing.

I think it’s also important to note, though, that what’s underlying Wynne’s sentiments here is fear.

She doesn’t say ‘I think the brightest future we can have is by working peaceably with the chantry’. She says ‘our only hope for survival is to show them we can be trusted’. And this comes from a lifetime of internalizing that people are justified in fearing mages (because of course, that’s what Circle mages - and even those outside the Circle - are always told), and believing that it’s this fear that needs to be defeated. If only they weren’t afraid of us, many mages think, then everything would get better. If only Bad Mages would stop giving people reasons to hate us, then we could show them that we’re not all like that; we could earn our freedom and livelihoods by defeating fear.

Except, the fear of mages (not magic - mages) in Southern Thedas is something the chantry encourages. It’s basically hard-coded into their take on Andrastrianism, and is one of the cornerstones of their politics. Fear of mages is what helps rally people against Tevinter, and it’s what ensures parents turn their mage children over to the Circle, and supply the chantry with free labourers and the nobility with exclusive access to the best healers and long-range combatants in the world. It’s what provides the chantry with any templar recruits who aren’t conscripted from the orphanages. There is no recourse for assuaging that ‘fear’, because the people who keep perpetuating it are engaged in a calculated form of propaganda, and have no interest in ending it. They benefit from it. They actively encourage it, so it’s not a genuine misunderstanding by any stretch of the imagination.

Wynne’s approach is exactly what the chantry wants. Mages working quietly to try and gain more autonomy, which they will never be granted because the condition of that autonomy is ‘well you can have it when you prove you can be trusted with it’. And then, invariably, some mage does something bad (because even if mages never had a reason to be desperate or take drastic actions, you’re always going to have asshole mages - there are assholes in every group in the world), and this becomes the excuse to tighten the leash and put off all those pesky issues of freedom and individual rights. This whole conversation demonstrates the problem, really - Wynne brings up Kinloch Hold as an example of why the Chantry might currently hesitate to let mages govern themselves. What she doesn’t seem to realize is that there is always going to be something. Some Circle with troubles, some rebellious mages with issues, some maleficarum stirring up nonsense, or hell, even just Tevinter continuing to exist, will provide the Chantry with the means to go ‘mmm, I dunno, you guys don’t seem like perfect saints to me yet - best we keep on imprisoning you, executing you, and cutting out parts of your essential beings to turn you into obedient labourers whenever we feel like it. But, oh, of course, just as soon as you achieve a level of monolithic virtue that literally no group of people has ever achieved before, you’ll be free to go. I’m sure it’ll happen for you any day now.’

It’s hard to blame Wynne for wanting to believe it could work out, though. Just like it’s hard to blame Vivienne for hating the war. Violent conflict is… well, violent. And it’s very hard to instigate a revolution when you know that, by the same stroke, you’re definitely consigning vulnerable and innocent people to die in the fallout. The Tranquil, the little apprentices, the elderly, ill, or disabled mages, the ones who aren’t good at fighting or casting big spells or surviving exposure to the elements - these are the people who will be cut down, who will suffer once the situation turns to full-blown rebellion.

I think it’s really telling that Wynne and Vivienne are both people who express a lot of distress at the suffering of, like, mage children, or Tranquil. Viv gets very upset over the Tranquil skulls issue in DA:I, and when we meet Wynne, she’s doing her level best to protect the apprentices from the abominations roaming the halls. Circles are communities. The same mages who have to decide whether or not to go to war are the ones who teach the young apprentices, who grew up with Senior Enchanter Marvin who’s faulty hip means he’d never be able to run in a crisis, who knew Tranquil Gwen back when she was an eight-year-old girl who cried from homesickness and missed her mother’s hugs.

The templars have much less dilemma. For example, someone like Cullen would never have to worry that going to war with the mages would mean bringing along his sister’s children, and watching them struggle or go hungry or be cut down by enemy swords. It makes it hard for me to be at all angry with Wynne, or any other mage like her - they want to find a peaceful resolution.

It’s just, they can’t, because the chantry is not a peaceful organization. And that’s heartbreaking. It’s sincerely awful that there’s really no recourse for the people who genuinely don’t want to hurt anyone, to obtain the basic rights they need to avoid being killed or violated on a regular basis.

15 Day Dragon Age Graphics Challenge

I mean, this isn’t a direct direct quote from that Circle meeting, but god was that the energy

The Heroes of the Fifth Blight compilation post.

I thought I may as well put this together. Wanted to include my Warden too but I won’t have time for many many weeks so eh.

Alistair | Oghren | Leliana | Sten | Zevran | Shale | Wynne | Morrigan

Faith. Justice. Compassion. 

"Are you angry at me?"

At the Abyss - Fanart, inspired by the Dragon Age novel "Asunder", written by David Gaider. (page 185)

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