57020 réponses à ce sujet

[maxernst]

Upsettingshorts wrote...

After college I am permanently hardwired to hate Che shirts and the people who wear them. Please don't make me hate this thread. I like to visit every now and then.

You know, to get away from the crap.

I have a Che shirt that might amuse you.  Below the image, it says, "I have no idea who this is."

[upsettingshorts]

Ha!

[ipgd]

maxernst wrote...

I have a Che shirt that might amuse you.  Below the image, it says, "I have no idea who this is."

I would wear this shirt.

[Sialater]

YamiSnuffles wrote...

Sialater wrote...

Then.... Don't Tread On Me?
-snip-

Oh, now that just gives me the most ridiculous ideas.

LOL, should I be afraid?

And yes... I'd wear that shirt, too. 

[Silfren]

kromify wrote...
gregoir has grown on me. irving is such a s*** for wanting to implicate lily because she happens to be part of the chantry. way to remove mage-friendly preists, first enchanter.  <_<

A bit old, but I can never keep pace with this thread, lol.

Anyway, I don't think it's accurate or fair to dismiss Irving's push to have Lily punished as being just because she "happens to be part of the Chantry." He makes it abundantly clear that his reasons have to do with the fact that it is hardly fair to punish Jowan and NOT punish Lily when both have broken the rules.  After all, no, Irving didn't actually implicate Lily, which implies his wanting to set her up; she implicated herself by her own actions--Irving simply wanted to ensure that she didn't go unpunished if Jowan did not. He seems to not really want to punish Jowan at all, but is resigned to it because he knows that Chantry law doesn't draw distinctions between mages who are foolish but not dangerous.  He was hellbent on punishing Lily from the standpoint that if an exception wasn't going to be made for Jowan, then it was only right that the woman who also broke the rules by not only breaking sacred Chantry vows, but also conspiring with a mage to escape the Circle, be punished as well. 

What exactly is it about being determined that the Chantry holds initiates equally accountable to its laws as mages, that makes Irving a ****? 

Also, I'm not sure I would consider Lily a friend to mages, given her own dialogue.  She seems to think of them as, at best, hopelessly cursed victims.

Modifié par Silfren, 16 juin 2011 - 08:16 .

[DreamerM]

Jowen. I have known people like Jowen. The kind of person you can put in just about any situation and just KNOW that no matter how bad things already are, that guy is gonna find some way to, with the purest of good intentions, make things MUCH MUCH WORSE. The kind of guy who's never made a good decision in his life.

I went way out of my way trying to save Jowen, both from the forces against him and from himself. He didn't mean anyone any harm, he was too bumbling and stupid to be malicious. Which is more then I can say for Janders.

Modifié par DreamerM, 16 juin 2011 - 07:50 .

[ademska]

SurelyForth wrote...

excellent words

ruh roh here comes the necro

i think i worded my post really badly because it was like 4am and i was watching sons of anarchy

i didn't mean to imply anders was without emotion, reaction, or idk harbored sociopathic tendencies or anything silly like that.  dreamerm's argument was that anders, after the justice joining, rocked some pretty brutal violence that he/she wished had occurred again in the game so to showcase justice's nasty tendencies, and my point was that anders isn't exactly new to the concept of violence, and that justice is not solely responsible for anders' instability as janders. he was always a bit messed up, and i say that with love, because he's gone through some terrible things

i will gladly concede that i should have given anders a lot more credit as a compassionate person in daa.  he's just so wrapped up in his own self-defense mechanisms of selfishness and humor that it doesn't manifest very often, imo



and kromify, congrats!! what level of degree?

Modifié par ademska, 16 juin 2011 - 07:49 .

[ademska]

DreamerM wrote...

Jowen. I have known people like Jowen. The kind of person you can put in just about any situation and just KNOW that no matter how bad things already are, that guy is gonna find some way to, with the purest of good intentions, make things MUCH MUCH WORSE. The kind of guy who's never made a good decision in his life.

I went way out of my way trying to save Jowen, both from the forces against him and from himself. He didn't mean anyone any harm, he was too bumbling and stupid to be malicious. Which is more then I can say for Janders.

you know, i have a friend running through dao for the first time right now as amell (first person i know to start with mage origin), and her reactions to jowan are really interesting.  she's so desperate to do good and save him, because he's the first npc she really connected with, but as she progresses through the game and sees him screw up over and over, she's becoming increasingly frustrated and callous

it's a nice parallel to what her amell is feeling

i love jowan in all his patheticness <3

[leggywillow]

DreamerM wrote...

Jowen. I have known people like Jowen. The kind of person you can put in just about any situation and just KNOW that no matter how bad things already are, that guy is gonna find some way to, with the purest of good intentions, make things MUCH MUCH WORSE. The kind of guy who's never made a good decision in his life.

Pictured: Jowan on a normal day.  Hmm... being a mage and all, he very well could have set his cold breakfast on fire at some point.

Amell:  

I loved Jowan.  I really connected to him for some reason, possibly because whiny, inept nerds hit close to home for me.

[DreamerM]

ademska wrote...
dreamerm's argument was that anders, after the justice joining, rocked some pretty brutal violence that he/she wished had occurred again in the game so to showcase justice's nasty tendencies

Not in so many words. What I was looking for was some establishment of Justice's actual power, as a way of upping the stakes for everyone, including the player. Give us some sense of what might happen if Anders lost himself to Justice totally, and maybe the player will have a clearer, more concrete reason to hestitate before telling Anders he made the right choice fusing with a fade spirit or encouraging him to merge deeper.

[ipgd]

DreamerM wrote...

Give us some sense of what might happen if Anders lost himself to Justice totally, and maybe the player will have a clearer, more concrete reason to hestitate before telling Anders he made the right choice fusing with a fade spirit or encouraging him to merge deeper.

I don't think that's really necessary. Justice could have stood to be more sympathetic, even.


Part of the point is that Justice is not just a one-note demon who is unambiguously a negative force within Anders.

Modifié par ipgd, 16 juin 2011 - 08:08 .

[ademska]

DreamerM wrote...

ademska wrote...
dreamerm's argument was that anders, after the justice joining, rocked some pretty brutal violence that he/she wished had occurred again in the game so to showcase justice's nasty tendencies

Not in so many words. What I was looking for was some establishment of Justice's actual power, as a way of upping the stakes for everyone, including the player. Give us some sense of what might happen if Anders lost himself to Justice totally, and maybe the player will have a clearer, more concrete reason to hestitate before telling Anders he made the right choice fusing with a fade spirit or encouraging him to merge deeper.

idk, i'd say if they did that it would have tipped the scales far too much against him.  the way it's written, you see anders simultaneously as a compassionate, selfless healer figure and a person literally possessed of a spirit, a spirit whose personality is ambiguously suspect

there's already plenty of reason to hesitate telling him he did the right thing, what with the stigma against any kind of possession. given the general bsn response to anders, i'd say a lot of people opted to believe that stigma warranted

[YamiSnuffles]

Sialater wrote...

YamiSnuffles wrote...

Sialater wrote...

Then.... Don't Tread On Me?
-snip-

Oh, now that just gives me the most ridiculous ideas.

LOL, should I be afraid?

And yes... I'd wear that shirt, too. 

I'll admit to this being something that probably should never have been made.  However, it's the first thing that popped into my head and I figured other people might as well be scarred by it too.



Please resume intelligent conversation now.

Modifié par YamiSnuffles, 16 juin 2011 - 08:25 .

[DreamerM]

ipgd wrote...

Part of the point is that Justice is not just a one-note demon who is unambiguously a negative force within Anders.

I'm not saying he's "unambiguously negative" force. Justice does inspire Anders to do good things, like help the refugees and protect the innocent, even if I have a hard time believing that pre-possession Anders would have absolutely never done those things.

But what Justice does, functionally, is provide Anders with the calling to change the world without also providing any means with which to do so. Anders doesn't actually do anything, in-game, that would be outside the ability of any unpossessed mage. This means Anders didn't really NEED to be an Abomination to fullfill his role in the story.

Compare that to...say, the conflict involved in Merril's use of blood magic, where we're shown the consequences of the choices she makes in rather graphic detail. We know (seemingly better then she does) what's really at stake for her and how dangerous the game she's playing really is.

I think that's what I'm getting at. Justice/Vengence needed to be more dangerous. Not more better/eviler/nicer/meaner/whatever, and just about ALL the characters in Dragon Age are dangerous, but what was missing was a sense of Janders the Abomination and what, exactly, he has sacrificed his old identity to gain...

[Silfren]

ademska wrote...

to expand on that, you are under the impression that the violence in hepler's story is a new development for anders.  when we find him in daa, he is surrounded by dead templars and it is heavily implied that he made them that way.  throughout the rest of the game, when presented with events that provoke visible emotion from other characters, he's positively blasé

SurelyForth already tackled this quite nicely.  I just want to add that it is NOT "heavily implied" that Anders "made the templars that way."  He's standing amid a pile of templar corpses, sure, but he's also standing amid a pile of darkspawn corpses.  The only evidence we have that he killed the templars is that he's the only survivor left, and that doesn't heavily imply anything.  It's literally a 50/50 split in that it could go either way.

Besides that, I maintain that characters in DA completely lack any concept of subtlety.  You can tell when a character is lying and when they're being earnest, and Anders gives no indication anywhere in that scene that he's guilty of killing the templars.

[Sialater]

YamiSnuffles wrote...

Sialater wrote...

YamiSnuffles wrote...

Sialater wrote...

Then.... Don't Tread On Me?
-snip-

Oh, now that just gives me the most ridiculous ideas.

LOL, should I be afraid?

And yes... I'd wear that shirt, too. 

I'll admit to this being something that probably should never have been made.  However, it's the first thing that popped into my head and I figured other people might as well be scarred by it too.



Please resume intelligent conversation now.

I cannot stop giggling.  Thank you SO MUCH for that.  

[Silfren]

YamiSnuffles wrote...

I'll admit to this being something that probably should never have been made.  However, it's the first thing that popped into my head and I figured other people might as well be scarred by it too.



Please resume intelligent conversation now.

I'll never be able to unsee that.  I hate you.  This is what you did to me:

[ipgd]

Going back to this since I bothered to catch up:

DreamerM wrote...

It also makes whatever political allegory they were going for kind of hard to grasp. Anders is a would-be Karl Marxy/Leon Trotsky/Bill Ayres-style figure, and yet none of those people could blame their hard-core beliefs on a spirit squatting in their head.

In the real world, there really are people who live and breathe for one politicial cause, and destroy their lives, loved ones and futures trying to change the world. Heck, if you talk to those people, they will even say things like "if you took away my cause, what's left?" and that they live for just one thing. My feelings towards those people are ambiguous already: it's great and admirable that they believe in something so whole-heartedly, I just wish they were less willing to sacrifice so much of what makes life worth living in order to do it.

You throw spiritual possession into the mix and you kind of loose the admirable part of being a strong believer in anything. They're not even really his beliefs anymore, or they might not be. Yes there's a big thing about self-doubt and identity crisis, but those don't require spirits either. So what's going on?

I don't see how being possessed by a spirit really affects the legitimacy of his convictions. Something like the Idol is one thing -- I personally feel it was completely redundant and cheapened Meredith by making her into a magic-addled lunatic when it wasn't even necessary for her to realistically and understandably take the actions she does -- but Justice is not just a singular negative influence on Anders. Justice is a person, and he is not just an evil force bent on bringing chaos at the expense of nuance.

Not all possessions are the same; Justice and the nature of Janders is such that the complex, human reasons still remain. What he does is not something a person would need a demon inside his head to do, that much is true, but where Justice is different is that he does not replace those reasons with something fantastical. Where the Idol replaces realistic if misguided convictions with base paranoia and lunacy, Justice serves only as a catalyst for the development of still-entirely-human motivations in an individual for whom that would otherwise be unlikely. The Janders entity as a whole is a person in his own right, I don't know why it matters in this context if Anders could or could not do something Janders does. If the thoughts are coming from Justice, does it matter? Justice still has human nuance.

DreamerM wrote...

I'm not saying he's "unambiguously negative" force. Justice does inspire Anders to do good things, like help the refugees and protect the innocent, even if I have a hard time believing that pre-possession Anders would have absolutely never done those things.

But what Justice does, functionally, is provide Anders with the calling to change the world without also providing any means with which to do so. Anders doesn't actually do anything, in-game, that would be outside the ability of any unpossessed mage. This means Anders didn't really NEED to be an Abomination to fullfill his role in the story.

Compare that to...say, the conflict involved in Merril's use of blood magic, where we're shown the consequences of the choices she makes in rather graphic detail. We know (seemingly better then she does) what's really at stake for her and how dangerous the game she's playing really is.

I think that's what I'm getting at. Justice/Vengence needed to be more dangerous. Not more better/eviler/nicer/meaner/whatever, and just about ALL the characters in Dragon Age are dangerous, but what was missing was a sense of Janders the Abomination and what, exactly, he has sacrificed his old identity to gain...

I don't get the impression that Anders joined with Justice to gain the power to help mages. He seemed to have joined with Justice for the misguided purpose of giving his friend a host. He probably didn't gain that much power as an abomination; his nature and conflict is mostly a personal one, it's not that critical to his actions and I don't think it's supposed to be.

Having Justice become even more dangerous than he already is would make the issue kind of one-sided. It's difficult enough as it is.

Modifié par ipgd, 16 juin 2011 - 08:44 .

[ademska]

Silfren wrote...

ademska wrote...

to expand on that, you are under the impression that the violence in hepler's story is a new development for anders.  when we find him in daa, he is surrounded by dead templars and it is heavily implied that he made them that way.  throughout the rest of the game, when presented with events that provoke visible emotion from other characters, he's positively blasé

SurelyForth already tackled this quite nicely.  I just want to add that it is NOT "heavily implied" that Anders "made the templars that way."  He's standing amid a pile of templar corpses, sure, but he's also standing amid a pile of darkspawn corpses.  The only evidence we have that he killed the templars is that he's the only survivor left, and that doesn't heavily imply anything.  It's literally a 50/50 split in that it could go either way.

Besides that, I maintain that characters in DA completely lack any concept of subtlety.  You can tell when a character is lying and when they're being earnest, and Anders gives no indication anywhere in that scene that he's guilty of killing the templars.

and i already replied to her with the concession that i was incorrect lol. i've got no issue admitting to that.

i'm altering my argument today. what i should have said was that anders' capacity and potential for violence, general dangerousness, is in no way restricted to post-justice.  but w/e, this aspect wasn't even close to the crux of my discussion with dreamerm anyway

eta: oh god i've got NO issue NO ISSUE admitting that, lmao

Modifié par ademska, 16 juin 2011 - 08:45 .

[Frishmet]

Queen-Of-Stuff wrote...

I can't really hate on Irving. I feel he genuinely does care for the Circle and its mages, but there are limits to what he can do when he is operating within a system so skewed against mages. He's a sneaky politician to be sure, but a man in his position really has to be.

I feel the same way. He seems like he really is protective of his mages. But he believes (and is probably right)  that playing the political game is more important than always doing what is right for individuals within the circle. He knows sometimes he has to sacrifice some (like Jowan) in order to protect the whole. He does what he has to do but that also makes him more difficult to trust.

As for Jowan, I think of him as the kind of  person that used to be one of your closest friends growing up. But as you grew into adulthood, he was never able to mature. You're still friends but more out of habit and a sense of loyalty than because he's someone you'd pick as a friend in this point of your life.

Modifié par Frishmet, 16 juin 2011 - 08:56 .

[kromify]

ipgd wrote...

I don't see how being possessed by a spirit really affects the legitimacy of his convictions. Something like the Idol is one thing -- I personally feel it was completely redundant and cheapened Meredith by making her into a magic-addled lunatic when it wasn't even necessary for her to realistically and understandably take the actions she does -- but Justice is not just a singular negative influence on Anders. Justice is a person, and he is not just an evil force bent on bringing chaos at the expense of nuance.

just popping back in before i go to bed. (i'm whacked)

i don't believe it does dimish his convictions. i think it was to strengthen the case of the templars because he's a dangerous abomination, otherwise any old 1-person revoltionary would have been fine. perhaps meredith was under the influence, as it were, for the same reasoning. 
bioware was merely trying to blur the lines by making neither of them the best person for the job.

anyway - that's my take  

Frishmet wrote...

Queen-Of-Stuff wrote...

I can't really hate on Irving. I feel he genuinely does care for the Circle and its mages, but there are limits to what he can do when he is operating within a system so skewed against mages. He's a sneaky politician to be sure, but a man in his position really has to be.

I feel the same way. He seems like he really is protective of his mages. But he believes (and is probably right)  that playing the political game is more important than always doing what is right for individuals within the circle. He knows sometimes he has to sacrifice some (like Jowan) in order to protect the whole. He does what he has to do but would be difficult for me to trust. 

As for Jowan, I think of him as the kind of  person that used to be one of your closest friends growing up. But as you grew into adulthood, he was never able to mature. You're still friends but more out of habit and a sense of loyalty than because he's someone you'd pick as a friend in this point of your life.

I don't like Irving because he threw an innocent girl to the wolves. all she was guilty of was being in love, which can make people act foolishly at times. when the system is more important than the individuals in it it becomes corrupt (i have ranted in the past about the value of each individual).
so yeah. he branded all the chantry and templars together into an amalgamation he had to fight (harvester!!!) which is not the most peaceful way of living...

Modifié par kromify, 16 juin 2011 - 09:01 .

[CulturalGeekGirl]

DreamerM wrote...

kromify wrote...

why can't anders be a revolutionary without justice? (in essence)
awakenings was clearly a set-up for da2 - it was always the point to have JAnders the way he was. this isn't the point.
the value of JAnders to the plot is because he's an abomination, which makes him morally ambiguous to a lot of people. if we had a mage like beth or a circle mage's angry relative, for instance, it would have been a lot easier to support their pov. because JAnders is the very thing the circles are designed to prevent it makes him easier to condemn.

It also makes whatever political allegory they were going for kind of hard to grasp. Anders is a would-be Karl Marxy/Leon Trotsky/Bill Ayres-style figure, and yet none of those people could blame their hard-core beliefs on a spirit squatting in their head.

In the real world, there really are people who live and breathe for one politicial cause, and destroy their lives, loved ones and futures trying to change the world. Heck, if you talk to those people, they will even say things like "if you took away my cause, what's left?" and that they live for just one thing. My feelings towards those people are ambiguous already: it's great and admirable that they believe in something so whole-heartedly, I just wish they were less willing to sacrifice so much of what makes life worth living in order to do it.

You throw spiritual possession into the mix and you kind of loose the admirable part of being a strong believer in anything. They're not even really his beliefs anymore, or they might not be. Yes there's a big thing about self-doubt and identity crisis, but those don't require spirits either. So what's going on?

One of the things that I think gets lost, and that I wish we had more of, via either short stories or flashbacks or Anders conversation in DA2, is the idea that Anders strongly believed in this cause in DA:A, but lacked the strength of will to do what it would take to make any change.

When asked why he doesn't do more for mages, his answer is "because it sounds difficult," in that one famous line. But even more telling is a later banter, where justice says "But this is not right, you have an obligation!" and Anders says "Yes, well... welcome to the world, spirit."  The world is a place where being a good person and having obligations doesn't mean you will fulfill them, where every cause can be put off 'til tomorrow.

In DA2, Anders says that after he had these conversations with Justice, he couldn't stop thinking about them.

Anders transformation is an interesting one. It is the transition from someone who is a kind and compassionate man, but whose compassion and weakness make it impossible for him to do anything more than run, to a man whose compassion is put second behind his devotion to a greater cause. That's what makes it so sad and awesome. If we just started this game with some new, entirely bloodthirsty mage freedom revolutionary, we wouldn't see what a good man has to give up in order to make him willing to do something that goes against his compassionate nature in pursuit of a greater cause.

DA2 (and the unseen time between Awakening and DA2) is all about watching Anders lose the things a king, funny, careless man has to lose to become the kind of person who can live for a cause.

This is a story we never get to see, because revolutionaries are only known to history after they've lost those things, if they ever had them in the first place. The political metaphor isn't meant to be direct. It's a human story, rather than a directly analogous political metaphor.

[Arquen]

So isn't this back to the age old question of whether Anders would do the same things in da2 without justice? I mean playing the what if game just drives ppl crazy. I guess the point is that Anders was always capable and says justice is twisted by his anger and his emotions. That he refers to justice as a force of vengeance keeps justice at a distance on purpose.

Honestly there is no reason to think justice isn't dangerous or that Anders isn't a high risk kind of guy. He could have been the same revolutionary without justice but because of justice you see what a fractured person with a third party motivation is capable of. Never did I think justice wasn't dangerous or that Anders was someone who didn't have a strong will and strong beliefs even without justice.