My argument is, the universe is a romantic one because it's a fundamentally good one. The player sees this through Shepard's interactions with the galaxy, but only because Shepard is the only viewpoint they have, I think. Now, as you've pointed out, it's not a perfectly good universe, and it couldn't be. There's no way that you could tell a story with any sense of drama if nobody was bad.Earlier you said the the world is a romanticised sci fi universe because people left alone would be good, I then pointed out that even prior to the reapers it was hardly a place were everyone was committed to being excellent to one another...the later you backtracked to say they needed shepard's guidance to be good or something like that, to be honest you really lost me with your argument on how its a romantic or idealized universe simply because Shepard wants or makes people work together.
The original reason we began debating Space Opera versus anything else is the nature of whether or not we were right to be surprised by the ending, and whether or not it could be considered a tone shift.
I find you mentioning the PA article pretty funny, because his strip is pretty much (in PA's eyes anyway) what the hold the liner's are demanding. The icecream because it is sweet and happy and few people would complain about getting ice cream. The segway because its for lazy people that can't even bother to walk between two points. And the cake for well...obvious reasons. It is definatly insulting, but you thinking that the strip's is nothing but a fantasticly ridiculous ending they dreamed up to be funny underlines the issue that the ones who dislike the ending have difficulty interpreting fiction at anything other than face value.
I didn't put nearly as much thought into the PA strip as you did. To me, it was simply a series of ridiculous surrealisms, which is what I associate with PA. I didn't take it to be insulting, so much as a knwoing elbow to the ribs of the opposition, because I believe that's the stance that Gabe and Tycho have taken- they liked the ending, but they understood why other people didn't, and they were okay with people asking for a new one.
Let's finish up the the reliability of the Star Child. Yeah, it's perfectly acceptable to assume the villain's lying. But, on the other hand, most villains rarely capitalize on this. The fact that, basically most of the time in fiction you can depend on the information you get from a villain to be accurate only serves to underscore the times where they don't. I'm thinking that scene from Dark Knight, where Joker deliberately swaps the addresses he gives Batman. The audience assumes what they're being told is, to some degree, the truth, and this extends to villains, and it's why we can have things like twist endings.
That being said, for all that there's a bunch of literature, now, on why someone's pulling a fast one on Shepard, none of it involves the Reapers actually lying to her. It's her own perceptions that's she getting screwed over by. The Reapers will mislead you, and they'll neglect to mention things you might've wanted to know, but when they're under the gun, they're pretty straightforward about what they're doing, and how they plan on doing it.
The lack of an epilogue really comes into play here, to. Star Child could be lying. Star Child could be a manipulative little ****. We don't know, because we don't really know what happens next. But beyond Shepard perceiving things incorrectly, there isn't anything to suggest Star Child is doing anything other than tell the truth as it knows it, just like all the Reapers do.
So, here's the final thing. An unreliable narrator, as I've said, is a great convention. When it's established ahead of time. A villain who has no reason to lie, no real foreshadowed intention of lying, and no foreshadowed evidence of existence before the final moments, who turns out to be lying, isn't an unreliable narrator, or even a villain acting like a villain ought. It's a twist Vince Russo writes.
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