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[YamiSnuffles]

ipgd wrote...

Back on the subject of the Anders/Justice merger: I honestly wish they'd just gone straight out and made Anders and Justice two people in the same head. It would have been quite a bit simpler, for one. But he makes contradictory statements that simply cannot both be true, and I can't think of any psychological justifications to take Anders's statements describing them as fully merged as the emotionally dishonest ones; in the cases where he ascribes autonomy to Justice, it is almost invariably negative and defensive. Those are the statements I have to find suspect.

That's also the main problem I have with the "spectrum" hypothesis. It's technically possible to be true -- but given that he is very definitive and emphatic when describing Anders/Justice as being fully merged and indiscernible, it also contradicts his statements on that matter. Obviously his wildly incompatible statements mean that the true nature of it would be contradictory to one group of them no matter what, but I cannot find a satisfactory emotional explanation for why he would describe A/J as being fully merged when they are not in the same way I can to explain why he describes Justice as more separate than he actually might be.

My only problem with the completely merged Janders theory is that there seems to still be moments of pure Justice. Like Justice popping out occassionally on the rival path to yell at Hawke. Or, in the Fade when only Justice is speaking. If they are completely one, why is there no discernable "Anders" at these points? Or, at the very least, why the voice change?

I don't know. Like I said, I find the whole thing utterly confusing. Your theory on the whole thing really does make sense to me... mostly. It's just the little niggling things that make me swing back and forth on the whole matter.

EDIT: well, since we haven't had any pictures in a while, I'll repost an old one that seems vaguely relevant.

Modifié par YamiSnuffles, 29 juin 2011 - 08:56 .

[KnightofPhoenix]

YamiSnuffles wrote...
My only problem with the completely merged Janders theory is that there seems to still be moments of pure Justice. Like Justice popping out occassionally on the rival path to yell at Hawke. Or, in the Fade when only Justice is speaking. If they are completely one, why is there no discernable "Anders" at these points? Or, at the very least, why the voice change?

I believe a strong indicator that this might be a merger is in Act 3, when Anders is beratting Orsino. Justice "pops up" and speaks in perfect unison with Anders, something that never happened before as Anders was never aware what his alter ego wa doing or saying.

Which imo, coupled with the codex, makes  it look like more of an assimilation than a merger. I think Vengeance was taking over and Anders had no direct conscious control over it (but had indirect control via emotions).

[ipgd]

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

Frankly, this is why JAnders did not turn out to be as interesting as I thought he would be pre-launch (he was easily my most anticipated character). Because either I am not really grasping what he is (which maye have been intented), or I am simply confused by what he is saying (which could also be intended).

I won't say he was badly written, primarily because I am still not sure how he was supposed to be written. I think Justice should have recieved more air time for us to make more sense of it.  I share CGG's sentiment that it is annoying that we never get to really communicate with Justice, even if it's in vein.

I can take the contradictory data and beat it up into a somewhat cohesive hypothesis, but it's so jumbled and haphazard that at this point the only conclusion I can really come to is "the only reason this makes sense to me is because I commit to gross overanalysis and make gigantic extrapolations that most people would not be able to pick up on from the text". Which is, most likely, past the window of "clever complicated writing that demands extensive critical thought" and into "this **** is just confusing" territory.

Queen-Of-Stuff wrote...

I don't really think even he understands it.  In some cases I think he ascribes more autonomy on Justice than is due, in order to put blame on the spirit rather than himself.

But is that "spirit" a literal entity, or a psychological construct that he's convinced himself is an autonomous spirit in order to absolve himself of responsibility?


And, regarding the possessions:

The "possessions" are less clear. I can hypothesize that, like a blood sample in a centrifuge, stressful stimulus causes his "Justice" aspect to rise to the top of his mind and appear temporarily distinct from the whole. In a normal state, "Justice" is dispersed evenly through his consciousness, but extraordinary circumstances can separate the metaphorical colloid. He may black out as a sort of defense mechanism. As far as I am aware that is something that can happen in real life.

I really don't like this explanation much. But, still, without it, it's just damn inconsistent, and that drives me batty.

Modifié par ipgd, 29 juin 2011 - 09:04 .

[River5]

ipgd wrote...

Back on the subject of the Anders/Justice merger: I honestly wish they'd just gone straight out and made Anders and Justice two people in the same head. It would have been quite a bit simpler, for one. But he makes contradictory statements that simply cannot both be true, and I can't think of any psychological justifications to take Anders's statements describing them as fully merged as the emotionally dishonest ones; in the cases where he ascribes autonomy to Justice, it is almost invariably negative and defensive. Those are the statements I have to find suspect.

That's also the main problem I have with the "spectrum" hypothesis. It's technically possible to be true -- but given that he is very definitive and emphatic when describing Anders/Justice as being fully merged and indiscernible, it also contradicts his statements on that matter. Obviously his wildly incompatible statements mean that the true nature of it would be contradictory to one group of them no matter what, but I cannot find a satisfactory emotional explanation for why he would describe A/J as being fully merged when they are not in the same way I can to explain why he describes Justice as more separate than he actually might be.

It would indeed have been less confusing if the Anders/Justice merger was similar to that of the Tok'ra in SG1.

Basically, you have a symbiote living in a human host that shares both mind and body, but each of them retain their own identities (and names).  Depending on the need of the situation, one is in control while the other takes "the back seat", so to speak.  But they are always both present at the same time, and share the exact same knowledge.

When the symbiote is in control of the body, he speaks with a bit of a deeper voice (like Justice), and sometimes, his eyes are glowing (like Justice...  Errr...  Wait...  Lol!).

Tok'ra symbiotes can also switch bodies, but they don't usually take a new host without his or her permission (it's been known to happen in times of emergency where more than just the symbiote's own survival was at stakes.  If not, the symbiote would normally rather die with its host, than impose its presence on anyone).

Now that I'm thinking about it, perhaps it is what's happening with Anders/Justice.  He just has trouble describing it properly.

[CulturalGeekGirl]

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

I wrote a blog about it, the link is in my sig.

I am not utopian, but I am usually progressive / reformist yea and I dislike systems that stagnate and don't evolve over time. But it's true, when the only one who seems to be competent is the PC who disapears anyhow, you have a problem. And the reason behind that, imo, is that Bioware is generally bad at writing political plots / settings, with characters that are actually competent. Part of the reason why DA2 frustrates me that much (less so in Origins, but it suffered from the same fundamental design philosophy).

And yay, another one. A few more and Queen will join us!

My minion army is getting another branch, euh I mean. I love all of you. <3

I will read your blog, in time. Right now I'm juggling a WoW friend's wedding in PA this Sunday and a possible job interview in LA next week. Wooooooo!

I don't think the simplicity of the political system is bad writing so much as the limitations of the medium, and limitations to storytelling in general. There's a serious issue with having intricate political systems in game worlds like DA:2... the variables, as we used to say in the Mass Effect forums. Allow the player to change the world in too many different ways, and the sequel games become impossible to develop. Imagine trying to make two versions of DA4: one in which the chantry still controls everything, and one in which the circles are largely allied with civil states. Either you have to have the timelines generally converge again by the time the new game starts, or you have to pick one result and stick with it. If you're going to have more games set in the same universe after the end of the big set piece game, you have to be really careful at how different your results are, and how they'd affect the framing of the next story.  This is something I wonder about a lot, when it comes to the future of storytelling and game design.

You basically have to balance the amount of change and influence the player is able to have with the intricacy and time-intensiveness of your worldbuilding. If there are no sequels planned, you can allow the player to massively change the world in huge and impressive ways, but you only have a single game in which to build the world that you want to change. If there are sequels planned, the player can only change the world to an extent that can be maintained throughout the sequels, but you have more time to establish a detailed world. You will finally get a chance to bring the chickens home to roost and show great and lasting change when you intend to end the series... or at the very least, move the action far away in the world as a whole (like from Virginia to Vegas), so these massive changes will be but small ripples that can be easily accounted for, if they need be accounted for at all.

Yes you can have NPCs that are more competent than BIoware's but if they are equal or greater in agency than the PC, that leaves the player feeling like a sidekick or passenger, which is bad. Also it creates what I call the Discworld RPG problem: once you're on the Disc, there are so many people who are very competent in very different ways that it's hard to imagine a problem that a non-genius can productively address before one of the very smart people in that particular reality get their teeth into it. And if you want to have major Discworld NPCs appear, the question is obviously raised as to why they don't just fix whatever this problem is. I could go more deeply into this, but I've already wall-of-texted too much here.

Also, I'm not generally a minion. Allies, perhaps?

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 29 juin 2011 - 09:07 .

[Cawti35]

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

YamiSnuffles wrote...
My only problem with the completely merged Janders theory is that there seems to still be moments of pure Justice. Like Justice popping out occassionally on the rival path to yell at Hawke. Or, in the Fade when only Justice is speaking. If they are completely one, why is there no discernable "Anders" at these points? Or, at the very least, why the voice change?

I believe a strong indicator that this might be a merger is in Act 3, when Anders is beratting Orsino. Justice "pops up" and speaks in perfect unison with Anders, something that never happened before as Anders was never aware what his alter ego wa doing or saying.

Which imo, coupled with the codex, makes  it look like more of an assimilation than a merger. I think Vengeance was taking over and Anders had no direct conscious control over it (but had indirect control via emotions).

Hi, delurking.

The game describes spirits in a way that makes them seem consciously so much stronger willed than mere mortals.  I think that Justice has the power to override Anders at anytime but chooses not to do so out of respect.  By the end of the game, Anders seems to be struggling and Justice imho just steps in and takes over when it seems appropriate to him.  

[kromify]

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

YamiSnuffles wrote...
My only problem with the completely merged Janders theory is that there seems to still be moments of pure Justice. Like Justice popping out occassionally on the rival path to yell at Hawke. Or, in the Fade when only Justice is speaking. If they are completely one, why is there no discernable "Anders" at these points? Or, at the very least, why the voice change?

I believe a strong indicator that this might be a merger is in Act 3, when Anders is beratting Orsino. Justice "pops up" and speaks in perfect unison with Anders, something that never happened before as Anders was never aware what his alter ego wa doing or saying.

Which imo, coupled with the codex, makes  it look like more of an assimilation than a merger. I think Vengeance was taking over and Anders had no direct conscious control over it (but had indirect control via emotions).

this also happened when we first met him in the clinic 

[YamiSnuffles]

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

I believe a strong indicator that this might be a merger is in Act 3, when Anders is beratting Orsino. Justice "pops up" and speaks in perfect unison with Anders, something that never happened before as Anders was never aware what his alter ego wa doing or saying.

Which imo, coupled with the codex, makes  it look like more of an assimilation than a merger. I think Vengeance was taking over and Anders had no direct conscious control over it (but had indirect control via emotions).

Well, originally this made sense to me (at least in the friendship path) in that I figured the two were somehow joined and gradually becoming more and more merged with time. Thus, by the time the Chantry bombing rolls around, the two are finally almost completely one.

Of course, as many people have pointed out, the whole thing is confusing. So I guess this could also be a sign of Janders' mental state stabilizing into a more cohesive whole instead of the continuous divide of earlier Acts.

[River5]

YamiSnuffles wrote...

River5 wrote...

YamiSnuffles wrote...

Over thinking implies that we are, perhaps, thinking too much about this stuff. Which is nonsense of course.

Sadly I - much like Anders- get a bit too confused to coherently discuss Justice much. The idea of them being sperate on both ends and all mixed up in the middle is kind of growing on me. So Justice blue, Anders yellow, and a good spectrum of Janders green in the middle. *is drawing right now so color on the brain*

Anders is YELLOW!!!  ROTFLMAO! 

Sorry, now I can't help but think about Anders throwing a Yellow party.

www.youtube.com/watch

Doesn't help that Brice has long blond hair too!

That was terrifying. And now I'm totally imagining Anders doing that in Darktown. This is my new head!canon.

LOL!  Indeed!  Yellows in Darktown!  Anders' spicy shimmy for everyone!  Whoohoohoo!  

I'm TheLostGirl21 on DeviantArt, BTW...

I couldn't keep my name here because my partner and I share the same user account.    But I'm the only one using it for posting, so it's always me.

Oh!  And Ashyraine asked me to join your open marriage...  I hope you guys don't mind!  

[KnightofPhoenix]

CulturalGeekGirl wrote...
I don't think the simplicity of the political system is bad writing so much as the limitations of the medium, and limitations to storytelling in general. There's a serious issue with having intricate political systems in game worlds like DA:2... the variables, as we used to say in the Mass Effect forums. Allow the player to change the world in too many different ways, and the sequel games become impossible to develop.

Implementating change is a limitaiton of the medium that I can understand (and it's also realistic to a certain extent. Your ability to change th big picture, at least quickly, is limited). But writing good political plots and dynamics is not, not when I played a game that does it better than any Bioware game I've played. The Bioware games I played range for excessively simplistic politics, to downright stupid and not believable, deep or mature in the slightest. Leaning more towards the latter.

One can write a deep, mature, complex and more realistic political plot / setting in spite of the limitations.

Yes you can have NPCs that are more competent than BIoware's but if they are equal or greater in agency than the PC, that leaves the player feeling like a sidekick or passenger, which is bad.

I think a balance can be struck. I've seen it happen in the same game I mentionned above. I don't mind getting the impression that some have more power than I do. But sometimes, "little people" can hold a certain amount of leverage that would make the powerful be dependent on you (real life example, this is evident in Cold War dynamics between the small countries playing off the superpowers against each other). That can be a way in which the small fry can help influence the course of events.  Of course I'd love to have a game with a proper rise to power and moe importantly, the ability to use that power. But sadly I dont' see it happening any time soon. 

Essentially what I am asking is factions and npcs that are more or less reasonable, make sense, and display some competence. What Bioware does is generally make everyone around the PC incompetent, to give the illusion that the PC is competent. But that for me is just an illusion that is getting badly masked over time.

Also, I'm not generally a minion. Allies, perhaps?

Allies *kisses hand*

Modifié par KnightofPhoenix, 29 juin 2011 - 09:20 .

[KnightofPhoenix]

River5 wrote...
Oh!  And Ashyraine asked me to join your open marriage...  I hope you guys don't mind!  

Always room for one more

[YamiSnuffles]

ipgd wrote...

And, regarding the possessions:

The "possessions" are less clear. I can hypothesize that, like a blood sample in a centrifuge, stressful stimulus causes his "Justice" aspect to rise to the top of his mind and appear temporarily distinct from the whole. In a normal state, "Justice" is dispersed evenly through his consciousness, but extraordinary circumstances can separate the metaphorical colloid. He may black out as a sort of defense mechanism. As far as I am aware that is something that can happen in real life.

I really don't like this explanation much. But, still, without it, it's just damn inconsistent, and that drives me batty.

I remember you bringing this idea up before but it still makes me think of some sort of spectrum. So, the Anders we know in DA2 is mostly Janders but he has bits of Justice and bits of Anders still intact somewhere. In certain moments, one or the other separates out and takes over. He can either fight perhaps futiley to keep those parts intact or he can finally settle in the new person that he has become.

Although, this still makes me question him being especially... Justicey in the Fade. It's not as though being in the Fade should be stressful to an experienced mage. It certainly wouldn't seem stressful in the same way as seeing your Tranquiled lover or facing down Templars. But again, I am rambling and don't really have any cohesive thoughts on the matter.

[River5]

ElleMullineux wrote...

highcastle wrote...

River5 wrote...
<snip>

I don't think that Justice has turned, or is turning into a demon.  He just lacks the human ability to adapt to the internal changes we experience on a day to day basis, and understand the way we choose to assign priority to our needs and wants instead of trying to solve everything all at once.

Good point! It's easy to forget that spirits have dominion over the Fade and not over the mortal realm. I have to imagine there's a large amount of frustration on Justice's part at not being able to "fix" everything he wants to as easily as he may have in the past. This may also be the reason why Janders turned to the explosion. Because it's a big, one-fell-swoop type action akin to what he must be used to in the Fade.

And I refuse to acknowledge all this speculation as overthinking. Pish-posh! That implies there's something better I could be doing with my time right now.

Ooooh... I hadn't really thought about that. Justice wanting to make a real 'physical' change in the world is a fantastic concept. Add to that he's a being used to experiencing pure emotion without linear time, he must be incredibly frustrated at the waiting and the lack of change.

That's pretty much the conclusion I had drawn too regarding the explosion.  It's like Justice had managed to convince Anders to press the big red "reset" button.  Lol!

I've waited for 10 years already, you stupid human!  Nothing's change!  Press reset, NOW!  

[CulturalGeekGirl]

River5 wrote...

Spirits are static beings living in an ever moving world...
Mortals are ever moving beings living in a static world...

My point is that Justice is used to embody "justice" in a place that he can shape according to his will. Anders is used to having the world around him remain the same, while he keeps experiencing different emotions, thoughts, needs, and urges depending on the situation. In psychology, we often say that anger is a direct manifestation of a need that wasn't met.

He doesn't see the solution to human emotions as the resolution of an internal conflict (because the "driving force" behind a spirit's motivations is pretty stable), but as being an external necessity.  If I feel this, than the world must change in order to meet my expectations.

I know others have responded to this as well, but I just wanted to reinforce how much I agree with this (and the rest of the post it comes from). It rather cleverly explains a few of my major theories about Justice's difficulty adapting to this world (I need to replay Awakenings... I liked him fine then, but I didn't use justice that much.)

I actually rather like the fact that "What JAnders Is" isn't readily apparent at the start and is rather interesting and uncertain, I just dislike the fact that we can't investigate it in the game, and we are left with an ending that makes it massively unlikely we'll get any further useful data in the future, unless an analogous occurrence happens again to someone else. I feel like the death of Anders, while a great plot point for this game, wasted a huge narrative opportunity.

One of the most underused narrative techniques in game storytelling is the ability to give players a lot of clues and allow them to synthesize their own opinions, opinions upon which they can base future decisions, while more casual players can approach these decisions more instinctively. They've done the groundwork for this here, but allowing us an experimental structure and a bunch of interactions with different outcomes in game would have been even more useful especially because, and this is the good bit, the different outcomes and scenarios would affect only our personal theories about the issue, not the world in general. It allows us to get the feeling of having done something important in game (synthesizing knowledge, building a theory) without having the result change anything outside of our PC's heads (good for future sequels). Basically it's PC motivation as plot point, and it's an opportunity that was also missed with Loghain, in my opinion.

But with Anders they haven't given us enough information, and the sheer number of people who kill him makes it very unlikely that we'll ever get enough more to properly synthesize opinions. At this point there are six or seven different theories as to the nature of JAnders all of which I think are plausible... to the extent that there are some I think are slightly more likely, but if any of them turned out to be canon I wouldn't consider it particularly contradictory or surprising.

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 29 juin 2011 - 09:26 .

[YamiSnuffles]

River5 wrote...

I'm TheLostGirl21 on DeviantArt, BTW...

I couldn't keep my name here because my partner and I share the same user account.    But I'm the only one using it for posting, so it's always me.

Oh!  And Ashyraine asked me to join your open marriage...  I hope you guys don't mind!  

Oh hey! You should totally join our open thread marriage. Like Anders, it's a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. It's pretty awesome, what with everybody kissing everybody and all.

[ipgd]

YamiSnuffles wrote...

I remember you bringing this idea up before but it still makes me think of some sort of spectrum. So, the Anders we know in DA2 is mostly Janders but he has bits of Justice and bits of Anders still intact somewhere. In certain moments, one or the other separates out and takes over. He can either fight perhaps futiley to keep those parts intact or he can finally settle in the new person that he has become.

Although, this still makes me question him being especially... Justicey in the Fade. It's not as though being in the Fade should be stressful to an experienced mage. It certainly wouldn't seem stressful in the same way as seeing your Tranquiled lover or facing down Templars. But again, I am rambling and don't really have any cohesive thoughts on the matter.

Well, I likened it to a colloid -- microscopically distinct, but macroscopically assimilated. And Anders's self-perceptions are very much on the macroscopic level, leading to a distressing uncertainty and inability to definitively delineate the two in his mind; his ability to attribute thoughts to either "Anders" or "Justice" would be educated guesses at best, and a futile compulsion to separate the two would lead to his self/scapegoat dichotomy with Anders/Justice. They would only become "separated" under extraordinary circumstances, leaving him functionally merged as he describes at most times.

[KnightofPhoenix]

YamiSnuffles wrote...
Oh hey! You should totally join our open thread marriage. Like Anders, it's a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. It's pretty awesome, what with everybody kissing everybody and all.

Well no one's kissed me yet. And I am like, the core of this open marriage.

[kromify]

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

YamiSnuffles wrote...
Oh hey! You should totally join our open thread marriage. Like Anders, it's a bit of an emotional rollercoaster. It's pretty awesome, what with everybody kissing everybody and all.

Well no one's kissed me yet. And I am like, the core of this open marriage.

i think you skipped that part and went straight for the juicy bits

but here you go 

http://t1.gstatic.co...qA_uVyL-4_dIYjQ

[KnightofPhoenix]

kromify wrote...

KnightofPhoenix wrote...

Well no one's kissed me yet. And I am like, the core of this open marriage.

i think you skipped that part and went straight for the juicy bits

but here you go

Yea I tend to do that.

And thank you

[CulturalGeekGirl]

KnightofPhoenix wrote...
Implementating change is a limitaiton of the medium that I can understand (and it's also realistic to a certain extent. Your ability to change th big picture, at least quickly, is limited). But writing good political plots and dynamics is not, not when I played a game that does it better than any Bioware game I've played. The Bioware games I played range for excessively simplistic politics, to downright stupid and not believable, deep or mature in the slightest. Leaning more towards the latter.

Ahh, gotcha. I agree, though I find the "background" interspecies relationship dynamic in ME to be one of the more interesting and better-written ones I've ever encountered in a Sci-fi game, now is not the time 'nor the place for that argument, and the ability the player has to actually interact with it beyond just reading about it is either maddeningly slight or unrealistically impactful.

(Recommendations for games with good politics? Feel free to PM if it's too OT)

Yes you can have NPCs that are more competent than BIoware's but if they are equal or greater in agency than the PC, that leaves the player feeling like a sidekick or passenger, which is bad.

I think a balance can be struck. I've seen it happen in the same game I mentionned above. I don't mind getting the impression that some have more power than I do. But sometimes, "little people" can hold a certain amount of leverage that would make the powerful be dependent on you.

True. A long time ago I read a really good article on character agency that centred around balancing independence and freedom to act with power. Kings don't have the ability to run around free doing what they'd like, but neither do ability-less ratspit villagers. I do actually feel like both DA:O and ME did decent jobs of this, at least, but if you can name games that do it better I'd be interested.

Essentially what I am asking is factions and npcs that are more or less reasonable, make sense, and display some competence. What Bioware does is generally make everyone around the PC incompetent, to give the illusion that the PC is competent. But that for me is just an illusion that is getting badly masked over time.

Ahh, now I understand. I assume we're talking both about general poor planning and the idiot ball, right? I think Meredith for example would have been much more fascinating if she'd been a Joe McCarthy type, with a coherent and rational plan to discredit and destroy her enemies while forwarding her own fairly insane political agenda, to the point where it's uncertain whether she truly believes her own madness. It could have roughly the same denouement, but with less stupidity in the leadup. Is this the kind of thing you're thinking about?

Allies *kisses hand*

*blushes, clears throat, curtsies*

Yes, well. So be it. 

Modifié par CulturalGeekGirl, 29 juin 2011 - 09:50 .

[kromify]

you're quite welcome  

[YamiSnuffles]

ipgd wrote...

Well, I likened it to a colloid -- microscopically distinct, but macroscopically assimilated. And Anders's self-perceptions are very much on the macroscopic level, leading to a distressing uncertainty and inability to definitively delineate the two in his mind; his ability to attribute thoughts to either "Anders" or "Justice" would be educated guesses at best, and a futile compulsion to separate the two would lead to his self/scapegoat dichotomy with Anders/Justice. They would only become "separated" under extraordinary circumstances, leaving him functionally merged as he describes at most times.

Okay, I think I have a better picture now. Thanks for explaining more. I swear I'm not being intentionally obtuse. It's just that the more time that has gone by, the more confused I get by the whole Justice/Anders/Janders issue. So reading your thoughts on the matter helps me sort out various opinions/theories in my head.