spicyshimmy:

katiebour:

“(Frustrated) There’s nothing a mage can do to prove himself- everyone needs to be protected from you.  The end!”

i love howden’s work on anders. i honestly never thought that i’d be able to accept it—tempered as it is, a tone in some ways scooped hollow by the enormity not of his own emotions but of other forces, yet still framed by anders’s humor, anders’s bittersweet desires—because i also love ellis’s work on anders. he so captures this younger man, all his frustrations and wrong-footed jokes, feelings unanswered and unbalanced by wisdom, bursts of anger and unexpected tenderness. anders is so much more than just funny. he’s full of sound and fury, quiet admissions that aren’t an easy pulse to pin down, and that’s on purpose; he’s full of these moments, too, when it all comes tumbling out, when the tight hold he lives with flies loose, when you can just imagine the way he cuts off at the end and looks over his shoulder, knowing too well what—or who—comes after such an outburst. his frustrations, his despair, what he admits and what he doesn’t. how it all seems so cocky and so cheerful, right up until it cracks and suddenly it isn’t. and the anger in this is so young still, but with a depth of conviction behind the words. somewhere between it’s so unfair and its counterpart, this is an injustice.

it’s all he’s known. it’s so much less than he wants. and that’s how it’s been, for so many years. the end. only for this story, it’s actually just the beginning.