bubonickitten:

daggerpen:

“Anders escaped from the Circle 7 times! What else were the templars supposed to do?”

I always find it really interesting when people defend Anders’ year in solitary confinement with this, because it’s like, you’re right, and that’s exactly why the whole concept of Circles is fucked up.

Not to go all “come and see the violence inherent in the system!” here, but, well… come see the violence inherent in the system.

We can talk all we want about “not all Circles” and “the Kirkwall Circle was an anomaly” and “Kinloch Hold wasn’t actually that bad,” but at the end of the day, it still involves locking people up against their will, for literally as long as they live. This isn’t just mandatory education in how to use dangerous powers and resist demons, something that would be an entirely reasonable – it’s a life sentence for anyone born with magic.

Maybe, if you’re really lucky, if you play the game just right and the templars like you and your Circle is one of the less shitty ones, you’re well versed in manipulation, you might get to go out on a leash now and again, and you’ll call it “freedom” and “not all Circles.” But if you don’t have the, let’s be real, not only social skills but general luck and talent for manipulation? Sucks to be you. Maybe the templars will let you get out some letters now and again. If you’re from a noble family, maybe your mother can bribe her way into a visit. (The Circle is far from the equalizer it claims to be.)

But let’s not kid ourselves here. Everything, even your very capacity to feel emotions, is 100% at the mercy of the templars. Templars who have been trained for their entire adult lives to not see mages as people, to be willing to cut down the people they lock in at the slightest sign of possession, to stand by as apprentice after apprentice is thrown to the metaphorical wolves and literal demons, to pin down struggling apprentices and give them a brand that will sever their connection with the Fade and all emotional capacity.

And all this happens in even the nicest Circles.

And if you resist, peacefully, nonviolently, but effectively? Well, they’ve just admitted it, haven’t they? There’s no recourse for it but literal violence and psychological torture.

That’s why there will never be a good Circle in the current system.

​Y E P.

Like, people who say “not all Circles” – I want to know what their baseline is for humane and just, because the Harrowing as a standard and mandatory practice? The use of Tranquility on anyone?
Lifelong imprisonment just for the circumstances of one’s birth?
Throwing emotionally vulnerable people into an abusive environment and
telling them it’s for their own good, for the good of society – that
they deserve the oppression and abuse – as though that isn’t going to
make them even more vulnerable to demons and make them resentful
and fearful enough to take desperate measures just to survive? I… just
don’t understand anyone who can play these games and say “yeah, this is
justifiable, this is excusable, this is the best way to go about
things.” I don’t understand anyone who can look at Anders’ multiple
escape attempts and think that’s an unreasonable response to this kind of abuse and torture, that it deserves punishment.

Not
to mention, like you said, there’s absolutely a hierarchy among mages
in the Circle. Neurodivergent and disabled mages? Elven mages? Mages who
just don’t measure up for whatever reason? More at risk for violence
and Tranquility.

And even ostensibly “good” templars are standing
by and letting all of this happen, even covering up the more extreme
abuses (I don’t believe for a single second that Meredith or Cullen were
unaware of what templars like Alrik and Karras were doing). Even “good”
templars are still participating in an abusive system, even if they
aren’t personally as abusive and violent as some of their peers. I
can empathize w/ some individual templars, wrt lyrium addiction and
particularly those who ended up in the Order involuntarily, like orphans
raised by the Chantry. But the Order itself? Nope. Not salvageable, not
redeemable. The Order hasn’t lost its way; it’s always been rotten,
because its entire purpose is to oppress. That’s why it exists. Well,
that, and to be the Chantry’s military force in the world. Same for the
Circle – it exists solely to benefit the Chantry. I don’t even think
that ‘protecting people from the dangers of magic’ is the main goal –
what the Circle really does is provide symbolic and economic benefits
for the Chantry, at the expense of a marginalized and extremely
vulnerable group of people.

So, yes all Circles are awful. If “not as bad as the Gallows” is a baseline for ‘acceptable’, then… wow.

​