I'm not sure what's worse: a shit reason, or no reason at all.
We were taught all mages had to be locked up to protect society from us, and to protect us from ourselves. That's if we survived the cute little life-or-death ordeal they force upon every mage, a nice coming-of-age ceremony involving drugs and a trance state that we'd best shake before they thought we'd been under too long.
And this was just another measure of control, the teaching that we were weak and prone to corruption. Teaching us to hate ourselves. I believed that was perhaps the worst of it all, the pretense that everything they did was for our own good, and more than we deserved.
Only now I start to wonder. It was a shit reason, but it was a reason. It was something to think about, and something we could choose to reject.
[His description of mage oppression has been animated, almost rapid, certainly forceful. Now, though, Anders speaks more slowly, thinking aloud.]
On this ship ... we're not given a reason. We don't know why we're here. Unless there's something I haven't read, or run across, or no one's seen fit to tell me.
There's nothing to argue. No one to denounce, or take down. There's nowhere to run -- I escaped the Circle seven times, I kept trying until freedom bloody well stuck, I'd do it again if I got half the chance. But there's no place.
no subject
We were taught all mages had to be locked up to protect society from us, and to protect us from ourselves. That's if we survived the cute little life-or-death ordeal they force upon every mage, a nice coming-of-age ceremony involving drugs and a trance state that we'd best shake before they thought we'd been under too long.
And this was just another measure of control, the teaching that we were weak and prone to corruption. Teaching us to hate ourselves. I believed that was perhaps the worst of it all, the pretense that everything they did was for our own good, and more than we deserved.
Only now I start to wonder. It was a shit reason, but it was a reason. It was something to think about, and something we could choose to reject.
[His description of mage oppression has been animated, almost rapid, certainly forceful. Now, though, Anders speaks more slowly, thinking aloud.]
On this ship ... we're not given a reason. We don't know why we're here. Unless there's something I haven't read, or run across, or no one's seen fit to tell me.
There's nothing to argue. No one to denounce, or take down. There's nowhere to run -- I escaped the Circle seven times, I kept trying until freedom bloody well stuck, I'd do it again if I got half the chance. But there's no place.