359 réponses à ce sujet

[Nightwriter]

Depends on the tone of the scene. If it had been confrontational and a little bit hostile, his line could be interpreted that way. But the tone of a scene is extremely interpretive. I personally thought it was sort of solemn and sad. So an "I ain't puttin' up with her BS" comment seems out of place.

[Count Viceroy]

It's funny how a thread about semantics can become 8 pages long

[Darc_Requiem]

@Count Viceroy



Hmm....you are right.

[Leanansidhe]

I'm a woman, and the first time I played the game, and Jacob said that line, my jaw dropped.  For a guy, it's a "go get her, I wasn't good enough for her, but you'll be the man of her dreams!"  For a girl, it's insulting.  That's all there is to it.  And, because of that line, I've never been able to romance Jacob.  After all, you never get a second chance at a first impression.  He's a clueless jerk in my book, and so shall he stay.

Unfortunately, I chalk it up to trying to make lines do double duty.  I understand why they have to.  It would be prohibitively expensive to have totally different dialogue depending on what sex your Shepard is.  I'm just wondering why no women on the project caught this.  I'm pretty sure Mary and Sheryl over on Dragon Age would have jumped all over that line, and had it changed.

Modifié par SKRemaks, 30 août 2010 - 03:06 .

[Hex of Hell]

SKRemaks wrote...

 I'm just wondering why no women on the project caught this.  I'm pretty sure Mary and Sheryl over on Dragon Age would have jumped all over that line, and had it changed.

Maybe they were just too close to the project? I've noticed that a lot of the apologists for Jacob repeatedly bring up what Jacob meant by the line and his history with Miranda in order to illustrate what he really meant. Females on the Dev side of things would know all of those same things really well, and perhaps they too kept seeing things from Jacob's perspective and didn't realize how it would seem to a character who didn't know all of that stuff?

... or maybe they hated it and screamed in righteous fury as nobody listened to them and left it that way anyway.

[upsettingshorts]

SKRemaks wrote...

I'm a woman, and the first time I played the game, and Jacob said that line, my jaw dropped.  For a guy, it's a "go get her, I wasn't good enough for her, but you'll be the man of her dreams!"  For a girl, it's insulting.  That's all there is to it.  And, because of that line, I've never been able to romance Jacob.  After all, you never get a second chance at a first impression.  He's a clueless jerk in my book, and so shall he stay.

No man would ever imply - let alone come out and say "Go get her, I wasn't good enough for her, but you'll be the man of her dreams!"  Our egos simply will not allow a public acknowledgement of this.  I highly, highly doubt that's what he was going for.  We'd go with some line like "It just didn't work out man" or something that was much less loaded with self doubt.

Furthermore if a guy said that to me - a guy - I would be immediately suspicious and question his motives.  That's not being self depricating, I'd truly think it so out of character that it would give me pause.

I truly think it was just a poorly written line that, as a result, got across an idea that is incredibly offputting to female gamers.   I don't think it's being an apologist to get into a semantic discussion about what he was trying to say.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 30 août 2010 - 03:23 .

[In Exile]

The thing with taking this line as a pot-shot against Miranda being high maintenance is how Jacob delivers it. Jacob's all forlorn about it, insteand of dismissive, and if he meant the line in a dismissive way, you would expect him to be.

[upsettingshorts]

In Exile wrote...

The thing with taking this line as a pot-shot against Miranda being high maintenance is how Jacob delivers it. Jacob's all forlorn about it, insteand of dismissive, and if he meant the line in a dismissive way, you would expect him to be.

Maybe he regrets that she's so demanding and high maintenance because the sex was unbelievable or something?  Or maybe he's just regretting having to talk to his commanding officer about his relationship with a co-worker?  I think the former is more likely, as Kasumi says: "Because, damn!"

I'd have to replay the dialogue with Jacob before I speculate more, though.  It'd be interesting if a writer got in this thread and cleared it up, since it is just semantics and not really any big secret.  We'd just like to know what he meant, if it was intentionally worded, etc.    Maybe it was written one way and the voice actor blew the delivery.  We can't really know just speculate.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 30 août 2010 - 03:28 .

[Pacifien]

Captain Hex wrote...
Maybe they were just too close to the project? I've noticed that a lot of the apologists for Jacob repeatedly bring up what Jacob meant by the line and his history with Miranda in order to illustrate what he really meant. Females on the Dev side of things would know all of those same things really well, and perhaps they too kept seeing things from Jacob's perspective and didn't realize how it would seem to a character who didn't know all of that stuff?

... or maybe they hated it and screamed in righteous fury as nobody listened to them and left it that way anyway.

That one single line is the least of Jacob's issues with female Shepard. Nevermind a female developer demanding that line to be changed, what were they thinking about everything else?

Call me an apologist over this one line (which is somewhat demeaning to my stance on the issue, but moving on), but there are a lot worse issues with ME2 that should never have passed female gamer screening and yet did.

Modifié par Pacifien, 30 août 2010 - 03:30 .

[In Exile]

Halo Quea wrote...

I'll say it again, it's a very mature comment.

It's not a statement about his own worthiness, or placing anyone(least of all Miranda) on a pedestal. It's a statement about the kind of person Ms Lawson IS.

A better man perhaps would look past all of her BS and manipulation. He'd have to.

You're completely right. It's like that time I told my coworker about how uptight and useless my manager is by pointing out how she deserved a better employee than me. It conveyed everything about the situation: how by literally demeaning myself, I was instead implying she was useless.

[Mondo47]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

I truly think it was just a poorly written line that, as a result, got across an idea that is incredibly offputting to female gamers.   I don't think it's being an apologist to get into a semantic discussion about what he was trying to say.

Didn't put this one off... I thought, hey, he's not that good at stringing a sentence together, but he's easy on the eyes and not quite so much of a drip as Kaidan, so hey, f*ck it. I've been around the block enough to know guys sometimes don't say the right thing at the right time (sometimes?), and I know myself well enough not to feel I have to dress my intentions up if I'm just looking to get my ashes hauled for fear of not meeting some draconian concept of femininity... it's the 21st century, after all, I can say that now, can't I?

Does that make me an apologist?

[upsettingshorts]

I think all of the romances suffer from the same problem: The believability of romantic love developing over the course of a small handful of conversations. I'd have to suspend disbelief a lot less if the LIs were more casual in nature, or at least started out that way.

Ooh I know how I can express it. There's not a lot of really believable sexual tension. There's no buildup. It's a kind of medieval approach to relationships in which you approach your object of desire and gift them something to earn their favor. Except in Mass Effect 1-2 that gift is "attention."  They're all one sided, either Shepard is pursuing aggressively or the LI has an obvious crush or something.

Meh, I'm rambling about what amounts to little more than a feeling I get from all the romances.  It's not something I've spent a lot of time crafting an argument about. 

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 30 août 2010 - 03:32 .

[TelexFerra]

What really offends me is that he should say



"She deserves a better man than me"

[Count Viceroy]

TelexFerra wrote...

What really offends me is that he should say

"She deserves a better man than me"

lazuli wrote...

ciaweth wrote...
Uh. "Better than I" is correct.

It's
contested.  "Than" could arguably be a conjunction or a preposition. 
You're arguing for it being a conjunction.  Siansonea II was leaning
towards preposition.

This has already been discussed. I wish people would take the time read through threads instead of jumping straight into the last page after reading the subject and possibly the op.

[TelexFerra]

Tell me when you want me to hit them with the good stuff.

[Yakko77]

Pacifien wrote...

I see a lot of people bring up that line as evidence that Jacob is a horrible romance option. I interpreted the line differently. More like "Miranda is high maintenance and I'm not the man who's going to deal with that ****."

I agree.  Miranda is high maintenance and a bit full of herself and it would takea certain personality to deal with and accept such a person.  I think it might have come accross better if he had said a "different" vs "better" man than he bit otherwise I don't think it was an unintended insult to femshep.

[In Exile]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

Maybe he regrets that she's so demanding and high maintenance because the sex was unbelievable or something?  Or maybe he's just regretting having to talk to his commanding officer about his relationship with a co-worker?  I think the former is more likely, as Kasumi says: "Because, damn!"

But he's making it about him. It's just weird to interpret that as a line about Miranda.

The line could have been meant ironic - but to mean it ironic there has to be something there to go off on.

Depending on where you are in the game, you don't neccesarily get the impression that Miranda is high maintenace. There's absolutely no interaction between you and Jacob about Miranda.

[upsettingshorts]

She = subject
requires = verb
a better man than I = object

Miranda is the subject.

What he's implying depends entirely on what exactly he means by better (it could mean "more patient and understanding" - both positive traits), and what exactly he means by requires (it could mean "demanding".)

But like I said, it's speculation over semantics.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 30 août 2010 - 03:44 .

[In Exile]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

She = subject
requires = verb
a better man than I = object

Miranda is the subject.

What he's implying depends entirely on what exactly he means by better (it could mean "more patient and understanding" - both positive traits), and what exactly he means by requires (it could mean "demanding".)

But like I said, it's speculation over semantics.

Whether or not gramatically she is the subject of the sentence (and this is a pretty hefty linguistic issue I would rather avoid) does not mean Miranda is the focus of the sentence.

He's making a statement about himself in relation to her.

There's no way to parse the literal meaning of "better than I" into "someone willing to put up with her BS" unless were looking statement as being sarcastic, and Jacob's delivery (and the situation, and his character) do not point to him loading every sentence with backhanded compliments and sarcasm.

[Pacifien]

JohnnyDollar wrote...
I'm not really convinced yet, of whether or not the gender of the developer has as much do to with this as some people presume it to be.  There are plenty of successful female and male script writers, as far as I know, anyway. 

Oh, the scriptwriters can write decent romances. All the other romances in the game have their fans. But while you'll get people defending the character of Jacob, less likely will you find someone extend the defense to the romance.

This is why asking the development team about their intentions with Jacob's romance is on my top five list of questions I'd love to ask. What were they trying to convey? What did they think was the appeal? Did any female in the office take a look at the romance scenes and go "yeah, that's looking good?" (On the Game Informer article about the creation of Thane, the ladies in the office did have their say in the creation of his character -- at least in regards to his look.) If you actually reverse the roles and play it as a male Shepard and alternate female version of Jacob, does the romance suddenly become more interesting?

So anyway, a female scriptwriter can write a bad romance just as well as a male scriptwriter. But would a female scriptwriter have written this type of bad romance?

[Hex of Hell]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

I don't think it's being an
apologist to get into a semantic discussion about what he was trying to say.

Except that it's essentially apologizing
for what he said by explaining what he really meant. I don't know if you attach some dire meaning to the word or something, but an apologist is just someone who defends a particular position. Someone defending Jacob's position would be an apologist for Jacob, would they not? My entire point
was that what he said can come across as insulting. What he really
meant is irrelevant as my character doesn't know any more than what he
actually said. This is about my character, not the all knowing player
who is me IRL.

Mondo47 wrote...
...Does that make me an apologist? [smilie]../../../images/forum/emoticons/wink.png[/smilie]

No? I don't know how you could think that other than to deliberately misunderstand me... [smilie]../../../images/forum/emoticons/andy.png[/smilie]
Your
Shepard simply wasn't offended by it. That's fair. And your reasoning has little to do with Jacob and everything to do with your Shepard's character. Which to me, makes more sense from an in-game perspective.

[Hex of Hell]

It could be that the romance was intended to be this bad. Perhaps Jacob was meant to be the temporary, booty-call type relationship which is more about blowing off steam than building something to last forever. Jacob's history with Miranda and the comment could have simply been to cement that into the player's mind to differentiate him more from the others. I mean, the males got a booty call type thing if they chose the renegade path with Jack. Those that went into it only seeing it as temporary likely wouldn't care if he loved someone else or thought you weren't as great, etc. They would just grate cheese on his abs and try to get him to talk as little as possible until the suicide mission when they would potentially never see each other again/die.
I suppose in that case, the kind of Sheps who find his line insulting are the kind of Sheps who shouldn't be romancing him in the first place.

Modifié par Captain Hex, 30 août 2010 - 04:46 .

[Festi]

So I'm just kinda jumping in here but here is how I take it. Jacob says this after the completion of his loyalty mission. All romances start after the completion of the loyalty mission. At that point it seems as though Jacob is making a statement about his relationship with Miranda that has nothing to do with Shepard. Jacob is a stable and mature guy so he is saying nicely that they didn't mesh and that she needs something he wasn't able to give her.



I also believe that his attraction to Shepard catches him somewhat off gaurd as he is a military man and may not have expected it. He may just not have been expecting to feel something for her from the beginning. That may have to do with or not have to do with his past adventures and his own saving of the council.



As such, being caught off guard and being a tactful person (can't say the same for Shep male or female) he now finds himself in a relationship where he is happy and where he wants to do his very best for Shepard regardless of past relationships. I don't think he means that Shepard is worth settling for but that he was maturely handling an old relationship and then being caught up in one with Shepard who is much more of a handful than Miranda if you ask me. But it's a place where he wants to be... because she pushes his buttons and makes him like it .



I can understand how it could be found insulting but I also understand why it shouldn't be dwelt upon. In all honesty Jacob's romance is over all pretty cute, a little over sexualized (but same can be said for Miranda) but cute. I don't believe he was meant to just be a booty call character but that his character wasn't handled as well as it should have been. But imo there are much bigger problems in ME 2 (as has been mentioned) than JT's line. Every romance has it's issues imo but Jacob's is easy to pick apart bit by bit because things seem to stand out more such as Femsheps way of addressing him or the prize line. JT not to shabby in the end.



Besides... he can light fire on fire.... so... ftw