36 réponses à ce sujet

[ipgd]

Without Justice's intensity Anders wouldn't have had the focus to champion the mage cause or destroy the Chantry, but without Anders's anger and hatred for the institution, Justice wouldn't have the capacity for the raw vengefulness he demonstrated. They are both exactly the worst kind of person for the other to merge with, and they are both equally responsible for the negative feedback loop that ultimately lead to his psychosis and his actions against the Chantry.

I think trying absolve one of blame by shifting it wholly onto the other is short-sighted and a disservice to the character.

Modifié par ipgd, 25 mai 2011 - 02:51 .

[Kawamura]

wildrivr wrote...

a disservice how?

when i was listen to them bs behind me i swore justice sounded like a demon half the time, and i lost any respect i had for him.

besisdes the chantry need to go anders did the world a favor, one less cult to deal with. i think i was justice that wanted to merge with anders, possibly to get anders off his lazy butt if nothing else.

anders anger to me is justified, they locked him alone in the tower for a whole year. if i was locked up in someplace that was like an asylum for even 5 minutes i would be messed up. anders is one of those kinds of people that doesn't do well caged, so that means he was tortured mentally and i feel that to be worse then physical torture by a mile.

Because shifting blame onto a single party gives a simple answer when such a complex problem needs a just as complex answer, no?

What part of him sounded like a demon back in Awakening?

By cult, I'm assuming you don't mean the neutral definition fo the word and would like to draw upon the nastier ideas associated with it. If so, the Chantry is not really that sort of institution. What the Haven village had was a cult (in your use), but not greater Thedas. It sounds like Justice offered, that's true, but Anders wanted to help a friend.

Oddly, it sounds like Justice sorta wanted to as well. Help a friend, I mean.

Anders' anger is expected and has good reasons to exist. Is it justified? That is, is he angry at the "right" people? Probably not. Anders is messed up. 

But then... so is Justice. He's got massive culture shock, he's playing with rules in a world that doesn't really have them. He's also got Anders' bad emotions to infect him, and no real way to deal with them.

They're bad influences on each other. And I feel sorry for both of them. But blaming Justice alone isn't right: he's both the one causing damage and being damaged. As is Anders.

[ipgd]

Kawamura wrote...

Because shifting blame onto a single party gives a simple answer when such a complex problem needs a just as complex answer, no?

This, basically.

Anders is an interesting character because of his contradictions and flaws. Making this kind of oversimplification in order to render him more "morally palatable" strips him of that complexity.

There is a difference between being a good person and a good character. Putting him on some sort of weird fangirl pedestal and blinding yourself to his faults in order to reconcile the two is unnecessary.

[Kawamura]

wildrivr wrote...

well the templars shouldn't have locked anders up and he wouldn't be messed up now, what harm was it in letting him have his freedom, what damage is one mage who is proven to be lazy going to do to hurt anyone.

i find complex answers usually don't end up working, i trailed xemnas' history and i had a ton of complex answers by the end, and i researched him until i had no leads left. and the answer ended up being simple, well simpler then all my theories.

now i see that the complex answer isn't always the right one.

and to answer your question every time justice ever spoke he sounded like a demon, he even asks you for lyrium that sings the same crap that ruined batrend and the templar lady that i forgot the name of.

by cult i mean an organization that that accepts one view and bows to one person, if andraste told them to go out and murder everything i think they might, it's just like the christian church and that place bothers me to the core.

i doubt anders and justice were actually friends, justice has no concept of the idea. i think he just wanted justice to be carried out and not much more. he saw an injustice and was going to correct it no matter who got hurt along the way, and anders was a mage and an unfortunate target.

that's all i see.

is he made at the right people? yes. the people made the chantry, the chantry made the templars, the templars made the circle. i honestly say he should go after the founders of the chantry in general and cut off the head of the snake so to speak.

bad emotions wouldn't be there if the chantry wasn't, they locked him up for being born, plain and simple.

Are you honestly serious with this or are you trolling? I'm not very sure at the moment...

It's hard to imagine he's messed up just from that one instance. It most likely didn't do him any good, mind you, and did seem to have a big effect on him, but ... He hasn't exactly proven to be too lazy to hurt anyone. He shows a callous disregard for lost life even in Awakening (as long as the lives are of a certain group), remember.

I have no idea what a Xemna is, but I've found that most often complex questions require complex answers, unless it's been set up to be simple. When I was younger and doing algebra, the teacher would set up an ugly looking problem to solve as a simple answer because all the terms fell out. But as I got older, every problem I've come across has had an answer with a complexity proportional to the question. People and what they do to eachother, hwo they feel and how they treat each other, is miserably complex.

Unnecessary complication is bad. Too much simplification is maybe even worse.

Perhaps you should learn more about the various Christian sects. Some are alarming, some are not, and I imagine it's more ignorance that "bothers" you.

Lyrium appears to be directly tied to the Fade. Asking your Warden for lyrium is an awful lot like Zevran wanting Antivan leather boots. There are things that sound "demony", but that's not really one of them.

You and I have a different idea of what the right people would be. Anders is angry at a lot of things. And a lot of people that he's never met or interacted with.

Justice and Anders seemed to have interesting talks. They seemed to have gotten along well. I would imagine they're friends, as it's a bloody intimate thing to do letting someone inside you, body and mind. Justice wanted justice. But that's... complicated. Difficult.

If you noticed, many of his problems came from oversimplifying things, seeing them in black and white, without comprimise. Isn't that how you're also seeing things?

[ipgd]

wildrivr wrote...

yep i see things as black and white, except when it comes to merging fantasy with reality, i like to put as much fantasy into reality as i can get, but reality should stay away from fantasy.

When dealing with something that draws so many real life parallels and treats them seriously, ignoring them detracts from the narrative. Fiction is inextricable from real life, in that it draws heavily on metaconcepts concerning our culture in order to engage us in things that appear ostensibly foreign and unreal upon superficial inspection. If you don't want to think about real issues, maybe this will be more up your alley.

as for the church, just being in the building freaks me out. but it is not an interest of mine so i don't bother researching, that would just be a waste of my time.

If you know nothing about something and are adamant on remaining willfully ignorant about it you probably shouldn't engage yourself in discussions about it or criticisms regarding it.

i can believe he is messed up from that very easily. and the only reason anders is the way he is in awakening is because he went through all the crap he went through before awakening. they should have taken him into the circle for as long as needed to train him and then release him, and he wouldn't be so messed up.

That's not how Thedas works, you know. Mages are functionally prisoners of the Circle the moment they are born. They don't get "released".

[highcastle]

As ipgd said, you can't disavow reality from fantasy, especially in a work which is deliberately done to mirror certain real world implications. Just because the setting is moved into something more fantastic does not mean the work has no merit or comment on reality. Sadly, this belief is prominent, and a huge part of the reason why SF/F isn't taken seriously as art or literature in general.

It's especially sad in this case because Anders' situation draws many parallels with mental illness as well as terrorism. We should be able to discuss these real world issues in the context of the game. And part of art criticism is to look at what the work says about reality. It might be harder to do in some fantasy or science fiction pieces, but it's not impossible. Philip K. Dick, George R.R. Martin, and even Tolkien have consciously or unintentionally commented on real world issues in their diverse body of work. And author (or creator) intent isn't inherent to a critique. Whether the author meant for a message to be included in the text or subtext doesn't necessarily prevent the message from existing.

What I'm trying to say is that we should encourage talk about DA2's comments on real world situations, not discourage them. First of all, it allows our chosen medium to be taken seriously as a legitimate artform. Secondly, it's through the perspective of a character like Anders that we might glean deeper understanding of a complex issue.

What I mean to say is that you can't solely blame Justice for the Chantry jenga. Yes, he is part of the corrupting influence (if you want to call it that), but you can't mitigate Anders' responsibility completely. Even on the rivalry path, Anders remains aware of what he did, while Justice's Harbinger-esque moments leave him with blackouts. So he was clearly cognizant of what he was doing. Blaming Justice is the easy way out. It ignores the other factors that may have contributed to Anders' actions (his confinement, his abuse, his mental instability, etc.). And those other factors are the ones that might be most useful when we ask why people might be driven to similar acts in the real world. Or when we agree with such acts, and when we draw the line. When does a freedom fighter become a terrorist in our eyes?

These are good questions to ask. There's no definitive answer, but asking them might help us understand our own biases, prejudices, beliefs, and opinions.

[ipgd]

Then what's the point of this thread? Do you just want to ****** about your own neuroses?

[upsettingshorts]

Then you should empathize with Justice, wildrivr.

He didn't belong in the real world, let alone sharing the mind of a biased mortal.   He comes from a place where black and white and warped logic defines his own narrow focus.

They ended up being a bad influence on each other.

Modifié par Upsettingshorts, 25 mai 2011 - 05:10 .

[randomcheeses]

There is no doubt that Justice ended up being a bad influence on Anders, but Anders' anger and hatred also corrupted Justice. Like Upsettingshorts said, they're both to blame.

[highcastle]

wildrivr wrote...

my logic is very warped just to let you know.

and who are those people you are refering to? i never heard of them before.

Philip K. Dick was a pulp SF author whose work would later spawn many bad movie adaptations (and some not so bad) like Blade Runner, A Scanner Darkly, Minority Report, and Total Recall. If you read his books as opposed to watch the adaptations, you'll see that he questions the nature of reality and humanity in a science fiction setting. I thought it was relevent because DA2 poses other questions in a fantasy setting.

Martin is a fantasy writer whose work inspired (or at least is reflected in) the world of DA2. And Tolkien...well, if you don't know who he is, I'm afraid I can't help you.

if i want to hate something outright for little to no reason i will do so, right or wrong. this usually happens daily just surfing the net, if i read about 1 subject more then 5 times in one hour of surf i hate it outright. alot of things that i hated outright were. minecraft, half life series, portal, infamous, and other things i forgot.

all listed are now things i love, but i hate seeing things that are over glorfied and i don't know about yet.

i hate reality in every way shape and form.

You hate something so that means there's no other valid opinion out there? I'm really confused by this. What's the point in starting a discussion if you don't want to actually discuss it? Do you just want to vent? That's what blogs are for.

You're entitled to hate Justice. Everyone's entitled to their own opinion. What I'm saying is that holding him solely responsible for the Chantry jenga is taking the easy way out. Justice is as complex a character as Anders. You're talking about someone with a completely different world view. He's the ultimate Stranger in a Strange Land. You could read him as a parable for the way we as tourists or soldiers or anything else go into other countries and try to impose our views on them. It's the ultimate case of ethnocentrism.

And since that's a very human response, Justice is possibly one of the most human characters in the game without actually being human. So I guess Dick's famous question of what makes us people applies to DA2 after all.

[ipgd]

wildrivr wrote...

if i'm going to read anything it will be stuff on fan-fiction.net, i can't get into a book unless it is about a game character i like, or wrote it myself.

[upsettingshorts]

Yeah, Justice is who I think you ought to try identifying with. Look at it this way.

He is only interested in the concept for which he is named: If it isn't about justice/injustice he simply does not care, not just because it isn't of interest to him, but because these other things serve to distract him from what's important. His logic is inherently twisted in the sense that it only exists to rationalize the concept of justice at the expense of all other thought and emotion.

When he merged with Anders, it was to give him the power to effect the mortal plight of mages whose situation strikes him as unjust. For Anders, it was to give him the drive and nerve to go through with it. But Anders was, as per your terminology, is pretty much a standard "nt." He thinks like one, and his attitude towards the mages' plight in DA:A was clouded by a lot of emotions like fear and doubt, he also had other desires and was easily distracted.

Neither truly knew, I think, what they were getting into when they merged. But you have, in so many words, described how the "nt" thought process is alien to you, and you don't have a handle on how it works. I appreciate that point. Now imagine that your consciousness merged with one. How would you react? How would it react? Wouldn't it drive the new collective "you" mad? It just might.

And that's - at least vaguely - what happened with Anders and Justice.

[berelinde]

It might help to keep in mind that a lot of people have no clue what "aspie" or "nt" are. You don't define the terms, so how's a person to know? I do know what an "aspie" is because I have a close family member with the disorder, but a lot of people will not understand.

While it is unfair to categorize people with Aspberger's as being stupid (they are usually of average intelligence or higher), it is also unreasonable to expect the general public to instinctively know the particulars of the disorder. Especially since it encompasses such a wide spectrum of abilities and behaviors. And by the way, I am dyslexic. Blocks of unformatted text are pretty much impossible for me to read. I would not expect posters to adjust their posting habits to accommodate my limitations. Anyway, this forum is not really suited to public education.

It is unfortunate the other posters have not phrased their arguments in ways that you can understand, but that does not necessarily make them wrong.

Edit: Ah, Upsettingshorts found a way of saying it that worked for you. Good!

Modifié par berelinde, 25 mai 2011 - 10:29 .

[upsettingshorts]

I just slipped into something a little more logical.

That said, I did have to look up what "nt" meant. It's not that it isn't straightforward I just hadn't seen the term used before. Now I know.