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[LobselVith8]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...

I agree that the Dalish are, on their surface, very stereotypical-seeming. But I absolutely love the twist that they're trying to preserve and recover cultural heritage in a world that wants them to assimilate... and assimilate in a way that makes them implicitly subordinate. It's their "we have this knowledge and we are going to try to keep it for as long as possible" thing that appeals to me more than their "let's live in the woods and frolic" thing, if that makes sense.

Their nomadic mentality comes from the fact that the templars hunt them because of their elven mages, which Merrill points out to Hawke. It's the reason why the elven mages in the clans don't use their abilities in public - so templars can't tell which one is a mage (and the Keeper) if they're keeping an eye on them. Staying in one place makes them vunerable, which seems to be the issue with the Hinterlands boon and how King Alistair responds to Merrill about it, implying that all the Dalish were killed.

Addai67 wrote...

LobselVith8 wrote...

I remember your Dalish Warden story, I replied to you once about it. I made the comment about the Warden being the kwisatz haderach at FF.Net. Your Dalish Warden would head to the semi-colony of clans on the border of Rivain?

Oh yeah, thanks for that. The Dalish story did not get a lot of attention so all reviews were appreciated.

De Nada. I thought it was really good, but I'd imagine more people read it than review it; sometimes it's hard to put into words what to say in a review.

LobselVith8 wrote...

I had written that she spent a year with that semi-colony in Rivain to develop her magic- sort of a Mary Sue thing but I thought it might have been possible- so yeah I figure she goes back there anyway.

Doesn't seem Mary Sue to me, since she's heading to probably the only stable colony of Dalish in all of Thedas. I'm surprised Anders never considers heading to Rivain, given Genitivi's codex about how the Rivain seers have merged with spirits for a milennia. I'd figure that either the Rivanni seers or the Tevinter mages would be able to aid Anders.

LobselVith8 wrote...

She also was my only character who annulled the Circle in Origins. I figured that she saw Circle mages as more dangerous even than the templars, if they could not control their powers any better than they were.

The Dalish certainly don't seem to like the Circle or the concept of it, given Merrill's conversation with Bethany and how Ariane talked about it in Witch Hunt (calling the Circle 'wretched' and saying they took the knowledge from the Dales).

[LT123]

On the Anders vs. Fenris topic, I like that Anders is more tied into the main plot. On my first playthrough, I missed Fenris entirely and ended up wandering around in Act II going, "So when am I supposed to pick up the white-haired elf?" It's kind of like with Alistair and Zev in Origins. Zev's romance is fun, but the Landsmeet and endgame are more dramatic if you're romancing Alistair, since he's both the heir to the throne and a Grey Warden. It's a lot easier to throw him at the throne or at Morrigan if you're not romancing him. In my opinion.

I love that the Dalish are getting so much content. I've seen several "What is your favorite Origin?" threads where that background was near the bottom of people's lists, so it's great that having a Dalish Warden plays a significant role in Witch Hunt and DA2. Although it bugs me that if the Warden wasn't Dalish, Merrill doesn't mention the hunter with Tamlen, even though Ariane does in Witch Hunt.

[kromify]

yeah - they were the least involved in the plot which made them less fun.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Addai67 wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
And there we go back to the devil again.

I think there is a very specific reason that Vengeance is called Vengeance and not Wrath (or Rage, or Pride, or Justice, for that matter, to be entirely fair.) He is neither good nor evil.

If you were truly Dalish you'd realize that Vengeance is not something to be scorned. It is something to be gently calmed and reasoned with, when it goes too far. For every Elgar'nan, there must be a Mythal. Without Elgar'nan, the earth would be nothing but a plain of ashes, but without Mythal the Sun would never shine.

Yeah, I'm not going to get into that debate, I was speaking metaphorically.  I could call Justice a deus ex machina, that's what I meant by the comment.

Although, Elgar'nan is not a happy god by any means.  The elves pray to be protected from him.  And I don't buy that Fade spirits= elven gods.

I'm not saying they're equivalent, I'm saying that the story in question is... illustrative?

And I'm not saying we need to debate theology... I'd sooner just run off to Rivain and become a nice, peaceful, benign pantheist. Pantheism is so easy. Nobody knows any offensive pantheist jokes.

But Justice isn't just a deus ex machina. It's very important that he is a concept, and a force, and... quite possibly... a "person" (for certain incredibly strange values of person.) Justice/Vengeance is pushing for the things he's pushing for for a definite reason, and one that is deeply tied to his identity as a primal force or an anthropomorphic personification. He's no more of a deus ex machina than Delirium is in Sandman, or Castiel in Supernatural, or... some third thing is something that's less obscure and more culturally accessible! Argh! Help me out here, what do kids today relate to? Are there any good anthropomorphic personifications of concepts in today's media that I'm not "down" with? I can get jiggy! I'm jiggy-capable!

Sorry. Sorry. Coffee and insomnia. I just don't see how Justice is a Deus Ex Machina... since that's supposed to be a random unpredictable thing that shows up at the end and is all like "hey, I'm all powerful and am suddenly going to intervene then leave earth forever for no good raisin!" Justice is both a dude and a force that is an undercurrent throughout the entire story. He's always there, and the concept that he represents is always important.

I love it when concepts are people and people are concepts. It's one of my favorite things, from the Endless to the Incarnations of Immortality to Darksiders and beyond. This is my literary bread and butter. I sometimes wonder what it would be like if we got a compassion "abomination." Would she just try to love and tolerate the **** out of people?

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 13 juin 2011 - 06:03 .

[Addai]

GAH!!!  Let's see if BSN allows me to stay logged in long enough to actually post something....

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
I'm not saying they're equivalent, I'm saying that the story in question is... illustrative?

And I'm not saying we need to debate theology... I'd sooner just run off to Rivain and become a nice, peaceful, benign pantheist. Pantheism is so easy. Nobody knows any offensive pantheist jokes.

But Justice isn't just a deus ex machina. It's very important that he is a concept, and a force, and... quite possibly... a "person" (for certain incredibly strange values of person.) Justice/Vengeance is pushing for the things he's pushing for for a definite reason, and one that is deeply tied to his identity as a primal force or an anthropomorphic personification. He's no more of a deus ex machina than Delirium is in Sandman, or Castiel in Supernatural, or... some third thing is something that's less obscure and more culturally accessible! Argh! Help me out here, what do kids today relate to? Are there any good anthropomorphic personifications of concepts in today's media that I'm not "down" with? I can get jiggy! I'm jiggy-capable!

Well, it's like this.  I'll use Song of Ice and Fire as an example since I have it on the brain, but it's also applicable because the writers have said ASoIaF was a major inspiration for Origins.

ASoIaF is a low fantasy story in that magic is present in the world only as something basically forgotten, which has died out, but it makes occasional incursions back up through the surface.  The problem comes when those magical incursions start driving plot, I start to get suspicious and to dislike that.  The story is cranking along with lots of complicated, gooey politics and character-driven themes, and all of a sudden Melisandre pops up with her voodoo interventions, and I'm not happy about it.  But GRRM kept that limited so I was mostly satisfied.

The DA writers said they departed from the ASoIaF underpinning in DA2 and went in a different direction, and to me it shows, and for me personally is less the sort of story I am interested in.  Plot is driving characters rather than the other way around, the characters are just passengers (Hawke most of all), and the supernatural is much more of an active force rather than something that ****s with people's minds but may or may not be real.

That's where I'm coming from.

Modifié par Addai67, 13 juin 2011 - 06:24 .

[Collider]

Anders Loves You

[mellifera]

Collider wrote...

Anders Loves You

*dies*

[ipgd]

Collider wrote...

Anders Loves You

This is a good video.

[Sarielle]

Queen-Of-Stuff wrote...

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...


I love it when concepts are people and people are concepts. It's one of my favorite things, from the Endless to the Incarnations of Immortality to Darksiders and beyond. This is my literary bread and butter. I sometimes wonder what it would be like if we got a compassion "abomination." Would she just try to love and tolerate the **** out of people?

Different kinds of spirit-abominations have me intrigued too, and especially the idea of a Compassion spirit. I wonder if it would be possible to "corrupt" Compassion into something bad - how can you hurt someone with compassion, after all? Perhaps this spirit would hurt its host sooner than anyone else by preventing it from defending itself from attackers out of fear of causing them pain. I also wonder just how many different kinds of spirits there are.

Maybe do harm by doing nothing...like a certain Grand Cleric we know?

I think just about ANY emotion or virtue can be bad when it's not tempered with anything else...that's what Justice didn't understand, being from the Fade and all. Meekness (a Christian virtue, anyways) could again lead to inaction when action is needed. Truth...sometimes a lie can save the innocent -- IE, people hiding Jews from the ****s. Etc. Etc.

[LT123]

Collider wrote...

Anders Loves You

What is this I don't even

People can do an awful lot of bizarre things even without the toolset. Unless that's a glitch.

[Sarielle]

Oh my. I can't say ****? LOL.

I wasn't suggesting Elthina was necessarily motivated by compassion, just that inaction CAN be harmful and COULD result from virtues held onto too strongly. I didn't express that very clearly.

I guess a better example would be if you feel compassion for the escaped prisoner that's really the Magistrate's son. He's obviously very messed up, and I can even see him as an object of pity in a way, but if you don't kill him, you allow him to potentially hurt a lot of other people.

EDIT: Most people could make the distinction. I'm not sure a Fade spirit could.

Modifié par Sarielle, 13 juin 2011 - 06:48 .

[kromify]

just realized that the voice of garrett hawke is also the voice of vaughan... stange to hear m!hawke saying "arrr i rape you all!"*

*may not have happened like this


yeah. anders

[CulturalGeekGirl]

Addai67 wrote...

GAH!!!  Let's see if BSN allows me to stay logged in long enough to actually post something....

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
I'm not saying they're equivalent, I'm saying that the story in question is... illustrative?

And I'm not saying we need to debate theology... I'd sooner just run off to Rivain and become a nice, peaceful, benign pantheist. Pantheism is so easy. Nobody knows any offensive pantheist jokes.

But Justice isn't just a deus ex machina. It's very important that he is a concept, and a force, and... quite possibly... a "person" (for certain incredibly strange values of person.) Justice/Vengeance is pushing for the things he's pushing for for a definite reason, and one that is deeply tied to his identity as a primal force or an anthropomorphic personification. He's no more of a deus ex machina than Delirium is in Sandman, or Castiel in Supernatural, or... some third thing is something that's less obscure and more culturally accessible! Argh! Help me out here, what do kids today relate to? Are there any good anthropomorphic personifications of concepts in today's media that I'm not "down" with? I can get jiggy! I'm jiggy-capable!

Well, it's like this.  I'll use Song of Ice and Fire as an example since I have it on the brain, but it's also applicable because the writers have said ASoIaF was a major inspiration for Origins.

ASoIaF is a low fantasy story in that magic is present in the world only as something basically forgotten, which has died out, but it makes occasional incursions back up through the surface.  The problem comes when those magical incursions start driving plot, I start to get suspicious and to dislike that.  The story is cranking along with lots of complicated, gooey politics and character-driven themes, and all of a sudden Melisandre pops up with her voodoo interventions, and I'm not happy about it.  But GRRM kept that limited so I was mostly satisfied.

The DA writers said they departed from the ASoIaF underpinning in DA2 and went in a different direction, and to me it shows, and for me personally is less the sort of story I am interested in.  Plot is driving characters rather than the other way around, the characters are just passengers (Hawke most of all), and the supernatural is much more of an active force rather than something that ****s with people's minds but may or may not be real.

That's where I'm coming from.

I don't like voodoo (for ASoIaF's values of voodoo. Actual voodoo is really interesting because it's all about backfiring and unexpected coincidences and giving up more than you could ever possibly hope to get back but... no no. TOPICS). I don't like fate. Heck, I hate fate. You give me a prophecy that is anything more than startlingly, uselessly vague, and I will curse your name forever. Prophecies almost ruined ASoIaF for me, and they completely ruined that damned Tim Burton Alice movie that would have been completely awesome if not for the stupid prophesies. You give me a prophecy, a fate, and I'm happiest if it ends up shattered in little pieces on the concrete of reality.

I just... I don't see Justice as the intervention of magic on the human sphere, not in the way that you do. I don't see how it relates to Martin's little jaunts into voodoo and foreshadowing and... ugh... fate. (One of the reasons I love Pratchett is that Fate almost always loses, and rather messily. Take that, you dark-eyed bastard,)

Justice is a choice that Anders made, and a person who reinforces that choice, at the same time. Both those things keep him from being a maguffin. The problem is that we don't see him as either of those things in DA2 proper, I think. If Morrigan got Anders to blow up the Chantry, you wouldn't feel like it was as immersion breaking... but since the thing that did it is literally called a spirit, you can't see past that?

In some ways, Justice is a friend who won't allow Anders to compromise, who pushes him to go through with something crazy. In other ways, he's the embodiment of Anders' own decision to never give up, never stop fighting, to refuse to ever admit that sometimes you just can't do anything about it right now.

I don't know. Unless you're familiar with literature where the anothropomorphic personifications are just as human as the actual people, I guess it's hard to get behind. I'm steeped in Pratchett, Gaiman, native american folklore, and greek mythology, and all the things where the things are also people.

But if you can't see justice as simultaneously a person from a different culture who does not understand our morals (a la Sten) and a decision Anders made consciously on his own (we're not going to take it anymore), then I can understand the problem.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 13 juin 2011 - 07:07 .

[ademska]

Addai67 wrote...

GAH!!!  Let's see if BSN allows me to stay logged in long enough to actually post something....

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
I'm not saying they're equivalent, I'm saying that the story in question is... illustrative?

And I'm not saying we need to debate theology... I'd sooner just run off to Rivain and become a nice, peaceful, benign pantheist. Pantheism is so easy. Nobody knows any offensive pantheist jokes.

But Justice isn't just a deus ex machina. It's very important that he is a concept, and a force, and... quite possibly... a "person" (for certain incredibly strange values of person.) Justice/Vengeance is pushing for the things he's pushing for for a definite reason, and one that is deeply tied to his identity as a primal force or an anthropomorphic personification. He's no more of a deus ex machina than Delirium is in Sandman, or Castiel in Supernatural, or... some third thing is something that's less obscure and more culturally accessible! Argh! Help me out here, what do kids today relate to? Are there any good anthropomorphic personifications of concepts in today's media that I'm not "down" with? I can get jiggy! I'm jiggy-capable!

Well, it's like this.  I'll use Song of Ice and Fire as an example since I have it on the brain, but it's also applicable because the writers have said ASoIaF was a major inspiration for Origins.

ASoIaF is a low fantasy story in that magic is present in the world only as something basically forgotten, which has died out, but it makes occasional incursions back up through the surface.  The problem comes when those magical incursions start driving plot, I start to get suspicious and to dislike that.  The story is cranking along with lots of complicated, gooey politics and character-driven themes, and all of a sudden Melisandre pops up with her voodoo interventions, and I'm not happy about it.  But GRRM kept that limited so I was mostly satisfied.

The DA writers said they departed from the ASoIaF underpinning in DA2 and went in a different direction, and to me it shows, and for me personally is less the sort of story I am interested in.  Plot is driving characters rather than the other way around, the characters are just passengers (Hawke most of all), and the supernatural is much more of an active force rather than something that ****s with people's minds but may or may not be real.

That's where I'm coming from.

okay, i think i'm beginning to see the root of your issues with da2, and it may come down to personal narrative preference, thus you might never be able to enjoy it fully

dragon age origins is a game about one man or woman and how their choices shaped the entire world.  i would argue, actually, that choice is the entire POINT of the game.  you start from nothing, you choose your life story and your race, and you build that character through his/her actions

da2's narrative is FAR more linear. hawke is a predefined character even with a few predefined personality traits.  he/she has a life, a family, and a set path.  hawke is a character who is at the center of massive conflict and change, but is not the cause of it.  if anything, hawke is closest to an ishmael literary device, though not completely.  hawke is a big part of the story, but his/her decisions do not shape the world.  to be quite honest, if they had, that would have done a bit of a disservice to the warden.

you may not personally like this style of narration, but it is decidedly not a deus ex machina in any way.

[ademska]

kromify wrote...

just realized that the voice of garrett hawke is also the voice of vaughan... stange to hear m!hawke saying "arrr i rape you all!"*

*may not have happened like this


yeah. anders

oh jeezy no don't ruin garrett hawke for me, i love that scrappy bastard and vaughan is vile

[ademska]

Queen-Of-Stuff wrote...

ademska wrote...

kromify wrote...

just realized that the voice of garrett hawke is also the voice of vaughan... stange to hear m!hawke saying "arrr i rape you all!"*

*may not have happened like this


yeah. anders

oh jeezy no don't ruin garrett hawke for me, i love that scrappy bastard and vaughan is vile

He also voices Ser Bryant, a perfectly nice templar guy who totally ignores you/Morrigan being a mage and even gives you the key to a closet containing snazzy boots.

see, i knew this one, it gave me little fuzzies, i used to imagine garrett and bryant would sit around and talk at each other and be like wow your voice sounds so much like mine, well i guess that makes sense, there are only so many voices in the world, some of them are bound to sound the same

meanwhile bethany and malcolm go steal beans from the chantry garden, the scamps


don't ruin this with nasty images of vaughan

Modifié par ademska, 13 juin 2011 - 07:20 .

[LobselVith8]

Queen-Of-Stuff wrote...

ademska wrote...

kromify wrote...

just realized that the voice of garrett hawke is also the voice of vaughan... stange to hear m!hawke saying "arrr i rape you all!"*

*may not have happened like this


yeah. anders

oh jeezy no don't ruin garrett hawke for me, i love that scrappy bastard and vaughan is vile

He also voices Ser Bryant, a perfectly nice templar guy who totally ignores you/Morrigan being a mage and even gives you the key to a closet containing snazzy boots.

He also voices Xenon the Antiquarian, of The Black Emporium.

[Addai]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
Justice is a choice that Anders made, and a person who reinforces that choice, at the same time. Both those things keep him from being a maguffin. The problem is that we don't see him as either of those things in DA2 proper, I think. If Morrigan got Anders to blow up the Chantry, you wouldn't feel like it was as immersion breaking... but since the thing that did it is literally called a spirit, you can't see past that?

Yeah, the problem is that all the really interesting character drama happened offscreen in between Awakening and DA2.  It's a fait accompli and Anders is already gone.  There also is very little difference between rivalry Anders and friendship as far as I can see- other than some extra crankiness with Hawke, though he's already cranky as it is so it's just a matter of degree.

I don't know. Unless you're familiar with literature where the anothropomorphic personifications are just as human as the actual people, I guess it's hard to get behind. I'm steeped in Pratchett, Gaiman, native american folklore, and greek mythology, and all the things where the things are also people.

I'm familiar, and I do like mythology, though in a novel or game when it's only something the characters talk about, like Old Nan telling the story of Hohaku in the human noble origin, or the Dalish with their mythology.  I actually don't like a lot of fantasy literature and prefer historical fiction, or what's called historical fantasy I guess.  Also I don't find Janders in DA2 very compelling even as a mythology example.  I guess I share Torpor's opinion that Justice is just a sanctimonious crab who happens also to be murderous.

[Addai]

ademska wrote...
you may not personally like this style of narration, but it is decidedly not a deus ex machina in any way.

I said Justice was a deus ex machina.

Ask yourself- would Anders without Justice have ever blown up a Chantry building?  If you answer yes, my next question is going to be why we needed Justice in the story at all.