5087 réponses à ce sujet

[uwyz]

botfly10 wrote...

Anyway, thanks guys for the opportunity to discuss and process and just plain exalt.

This thing was an epic emotional ride for me.

Good for you. I think the writers of the ME series intended to create this kind of response in their audience. The ME series certainly pushed the standards of story telling in video games. Many of us shared your emotions until the end.

This thread is not here to argue that people shouldn't enjoy the ME ending. (Though I admit that my posts are very aggressive in tone) I am here because the ending hit a bad note for me and provoked very different responses - shock, disbelief, then disappointment, and finally revulsion and disgust. The OP helped to deconstruct my emotions and articulate my concerns. Discussions on this thread has since given me new insights.

[botfly10]

As an aside, in my thread that was initially just a celebration, but was later flame bombed... well...

I just teased out from the primary instigator that he views it as his personal mission, as do many others on this board, to brow beat anyone who likes the end into submission and force them to accept that it sucks. Or drive them out of the community.

He thinks this will accomplish his goal of forcing Bioware to scrap and rewrite the end.

Sorry to bring that here, but I'm just shocked.

[botfly10]

uwyz wrote...

botfly10 wrote...

Anyway, thanks guys for the opportunity to discuss and process and just plain exalt.

This thing was an epic emotional ride for me.

Good for you. I think the writers of the ME series intended to create this kind of response in their audience. The ME series certainly pushed the standards of story telling in video games. Many of us shared your emotions until the end.

This thread is not here to argue that people shouldn't enjoy the ME ending. (Though I admit that my posts are very aggressive in tone) I am here because the ending hit a bad note for me and provoked very different responses - shock, disbelief, then disappointment, and finally revulsion and disgust. The OP helped to deconstruct my emotions and articulate my concerns. Discussions on this thread has since given me new insights.

Yeah.  Its all very intense.

I just finished the game today, so I had heard rumors about people really not liking the ending.  Like a lot of people.

So maybe its was hyped enough for me that it didn't seem so bad when I got there?

idk.

Modifié par botfly10, 06 mai 2012 - 05:17 .

[marknud]

Personally , I would have been happy with the game ending at the scene of shep sitting next to his dear friend watching the battle and slipping into the unknown darkness of the afterlife ... Made Nightwing , you have an awesome professor who made some extreamly vallid points ... Now if only Bioware would hire him to consult with them on fixing their mistake ...

[edisnooM]

botfly10 wrote...

As an aside, in my thread that was initially just a celebration, but was later flame bombed... well...

I just teased out from the primary instigator that he views it as his personal mission, as do many others on this board, to brow beat anyone who likes the end into submission and force them to accept that it sucks. Or drive them out of the community.

He thinks this will accomplish his goal of forcing Bioware to scrap and rewrite the end.

Sorry to bring that here, but I'm just shocked.

Sorry do you mean this board as in the forum in general or this thread?

I didn't think anyone here was trying to force anyone to change how they view the ending, and I certainly apologize if anything I've said has given that appearence.

Also tis a dark place beyond these walls, both sides have firey catapults hurling back and forth. I tend to try and find the calm spots, or funny places.

[uwyz]

botfly10 wrote...

I didn't see it as all beings becoming homogenized, but rather all organics and sythetics swapping some key characteristics without changing species.  Much like on earth, all organisms share many of the same characteristics and anatomy without losing biodiversity... 

Every species on earth has reproductive organs, a respiratory system, digestive system, nervous system... etc.

I agree with you. Synthesis does not completely eliminate diversity. Different species still look different, though they all have circuit boards on them now.

My point is that in a way, synthesis is saying that civilized life forms cannot be trusted to keep the peace by themselves. In uniting the galaxy, Shepard and his crew (Wrex, Garrus, Mordin, Legion, etc) performed enormous feats to overcome the prejudice, chauvism and mistrust that divided it. But synthesis seem to suggest that his effort is irrelevant - the galaxy they united by virtues of trust, compassion and selfless sacrifice will come apart sooner or later - and expanding on that thought, trust, compassion and selfless sacrifice are empty because they always lose out. This idea undermines Shepard's achievement.

And you can see that if I were to apply this sort of moral reasoning to contemporary problems, how distasteful it becomes.

But like I said, I believe the true reason behind synthesis is to solve technical singularity. I can hardly see the authors of the ME series deliberately passing a message that "bigotry will always win over tolerance" without a making spirited defence for it.

[botfly10]

uwyz wrote...

botfly10 wrote...

I didn't see it as all beings becoming homogenized, but rather all organics and sythetics swapping some key characteristics without changing species.  Much like on earth, all organisms share many of the same characteristics and anatomy without losing biodiversity... 

Every species on earth has reproductive organs, a respiratory system, digestive system, nervous system... etc.

I agree with you. Synthesis does not completely eliminate diversity. Different species still look different, though they all have circuit boards on them now.

My point is that in a way, synthesis is saying that civilized life forms cannot be trusted to keep the peace by themselves. In uniting the galaxy, Shepard and his crew (Wrex, Garrus, Mordin, Legion, etc) performed enormous feats to overcome the prejudice, chauvism and mistrust that divided it. But synthesis seem to suggest that his effort is irrelevant - the galaxy they united by virtues of trust, compassion and selfless sacrifice will come apart sooner or later - and expanding on that thought, trust, compassion and selfless sacrifice are empty because they always lose out. This idea undermines Shepard's achievement.

And you can see that if I were to apply this sort of moral reasoning to contemporary problems, how distasteful it becomes.

But like I said, I believe the true reason behind synthesis is to solve technical singularity. I can hardly see the authors of the ME series deliberately passing a message that "bigotry will always win over tolerance" without a making spirited defence for it.

Well, to me its about granting redemption to the reapers and in turn also the organics.

I guess the only bigotry I see is Shepard presuming to know what redemption looks like for anyone else or who should recieve it.  But at that point, you are so up in everyone's business as it is...  I just rolled with the idea that a decision had to be made and you were there, so it had to be you.

[botfly10]

edisnooM wrote...

botfly10 wrote...

As an aside, in my thread that was initially just a celebration, but was later flame bombed... well...

I just teased out from the primary instigator that he views it as his personal mission, as do many others on this board, to brow beat anyone who likes the end into submission and force them to accept that it sucks. Or drive them out of the community.

He thinks this will accomplish his goal of forcing Bioware to scrap and rewrite the end.

Sorry to bring that here, but I'm just shocked.

Sorry do you mean this board as in the forum in general or this thread?

I didn't think anyone here was trying to force anyone to change how they view the ending, and I certainly apologize if anything I've said has given that appearence.

Also tis a dark place beyond these walls, both sides have firey catapults hurling back and forth. I tend to try and find the calm spots, or funny places.

I meant the forum in general.  Sorry... mixing forum lingo. 

This was all in a different thread.

[uwyz]

botfly10 wrote...

Yeah.  Its all very intense.

I just finished the game today, so I had heard rumors about people really not liking the ending.  Like a lot of people.

So maybe its was hyped enough for me that it didn't seem so bad when I got there?

idk.

Nah, I say people react differently to the ending because of the different perspective they have.

I have friend who is totally okay with the ending and does not share in my strong response. He believes that ME's main theme is "synthetics vs. organics", that this theme overrides the other themes (multiculturism, self-determiantion, etc), and that synthetics are not life forms. 

My friend is a very talented engineer well versed in sci-fi. To him, ME borrowed everything from other sci-fi fiction, - and in his experience most sci-fi involves a 'synthetic vs. organic' theme, and the conclusion in these other works are always that organics and synthetics cannot coexist. So he is comfortable with accepting the catalyst's fatalistic view. He is also comfortable with picking destroy and whacking the Geth, because it is no different than turning off a computer to him.

I am also an engineer but I read about genocides in my spare time. So everytime I see intoleration or dehumanization, it raises a red flag in my mind and elicit strong moral responses. In my mind the ME3 ending evoke memories of Stalin, Jews, Kulaks and the great purge (some crude parallels can be drawn). And you see why I seethe with rage.

In the end, both emotional responses have validity - because they are both very personal. 

[Sable Phoenix]

botfly10 wrote...

uwyz wrote...

botfly10 wrote...

I didn't see it as all beings becoming homogenized, but rather all organics and sythetics swapping some key characteristics without changing species.  Much like on earth, all organisms share many of the same characteristics and anatomy without losing biodiversity... 

Every species on earth has reproductive organs, a respiratory system, digestive system, nervous system... etc.

I agree with you. Synthesis does not completely eliminate diversity. Different species still look different, though they all have circuit boards on them now.

My point is that in a way, synthesis is saying that civilized life forms cannot be trusted to keep the peace by themselves. In uniting the galaxy, Shepard and his crew (Wrex, Garrus, Mordin, Legion, etc) performed enormous feats to overcome the prejudice, chauvism and mistrust that divided it. But synthesis seem to suggest that his effort is irrelevant - the galaxy they united by virtues of trust, compassion and selfless sacrifice will come apart sooner or later - and expanding on that thought, trust, compassion and selfless sacrifice are empty because they always lose out. This idea undermines Shepard's achievement.

And you can see that if I were to apply this sort of moral reasoning to contemporary problems, how distasteful it becomes.

But like I said, I believe the true reason behind synthesis is to solve technical singularity. I can hardly see the authors of the ME series deliberately passing a message that "bigotry will always win over tolerance" without a making spirited defence for it.

Well, to me its about granting redemption to the reapers and in turn also the organics.

I guess the only bigotry I see is Shepard presuming to know what redemption looks like for anyone else or who should recieve it.  But at that point, you are so up in everyone's business as it is...  I just rolled with the idea that a decision had to be made and you were there, so it had to be you.

And this is a huge, huge mistake.

The Reapers cannot be redeemed.  They have been presented throughout three games as the worst monsters in all of history.  They have slaughtered uncountable hundreds of trillions of beings over the course of millions of years, and are utterly lacking in hesitation or remorse.  They are genicodes a billion times over.  The scale of slaughter that they have perpetrated on sentient beings is completely beyond our grasp.  No matter what their reasons, from our perspective, there can be no justification for what they have done.

I'm convinced that one of the worst failings of the ending is its attempt to "humanize" the Reapers, to make them somehow into sympathetic figures.  This is a completely impossible task.  As I mentioned in another post earlier, the only way to present them in a less than monstrous light is to contrast them against a fate that is even more horrific than they are.

Because the ending failed to do this, I had no emotional involvement at all in what it was showing me.  I ended the game feeling confused, betrayed, and ultimately, angry.  And thousands upon thousands of othe players felt the same.

[botfly10]

Sable Phoenix wrote...

botfly10 wrote...

uwyz wrote...

botfly10 wrote...

I didn't see it as all beings becoming homogenized, but rather all organics and sythetics swapping some key characteristics without changing species.  Much like on earth, all organisms share many of the same characteristics and anatomy without losing biodiversity... 

Every species on earth has reproductive organs, a respiratory system, digestive system, nervous system... etc.

I agree with you. Synthesis does not completely eliminate diversity. Different species still look different, though they all have circuit boards on them now.

My point is that in a way, synthesis is saying that civilized life forms cannot be trusted to keep the peace by themselves. In uniting the galaxy, Shepard and his crew (Wrex, Garrus, Mordin, Legion, etc) performed enormous feats to overcome the prejudice, chauvism and mistrust that divided it. But synthesis seem to suggest that his effort is irrelevant - the galaxy they united by virtues of trust, compassion and selfless sacrifice will come apart sooner or later - and expanding on that thought, trust, compassion and selfless sacrifice are empty because they always lose out. This idea undermines Shepard's achievement.

And you can see that if I were to apply this sort of moral reasoning to contemporary problems, how distasteful it becomes.

But like I said, I believe the true reason behind synthesis is to solve technical singularity. I can hardly see the authors of the ME series deliberately passing a message that "bigotry will always win over tolerance" without a making spirited defence for it.

Well, to me its about granting redemption to the reapers and in turn also the organics.

I guess the only bigotry I see is Shepard presuming to know what redemption looks like for anyone else or who should recieve it.  But at that point, you are so up in everyone's business as it is...  I just rolled with the idea that a decision had to be made and you were there, so it had to be you.

And this is a huge, huge mistake.

The Reapers cannot be redeemed.  They have been presented throughout three games as the worst monsters in all of history.  They have slaughtered uncountable hundreds of trillions of beings over the course of millions of years, and are utterly lacking in hesitation or remorse.  They are genicodes a billion times over.  The scale of slaughter that they have perpetrated on sentient beings is completely beyond our grasp.  No matter what their reasons, from our perspective, there can be no justification for what they have done.

I'm convinced that one of the worst failings of the ending is its attempt to "humanize" the Reapers, to make them somehow into sympathetic figures.  This is a completely impossible task.  As I mentioned in another post earlier, the only way to present them in a less than monstrous light is to contrast them against a fate that is even more horrific than they are.

Because the ending failed to do this, I had no emotional involvement at all in what it was showing me.  I ended the game feeling confused, betrayed, and ultimately, angry.  And thousands upon thousands of othe players felt the same.

What if the reapers are just drones though?  Just circuitry following a program until they self actualize due to the synthesis?

[botfly10]

Probably what really happened is they ran outta money and time and just tacked that whole last mission on the end. Which is sad.

[Sable Phoenix]

botfly10 wrote...

What if the reapers are just drones though?  Just circuitry following a program until they self actualize due to the synthesis?

They seem perfectly aware of what they are doing.  Sovereign holds an extensive conversation on Virmire where he repeatedly expresses disdain for organic life as a mere accident, hardly worthy of consideration, while touting Reapers as the "pinnacle of evolution and existence" who are "perfect" and "free of all weakness".  Harbinger taunts Shepard with its innate superiority and claims that her efforts matter as little as "dust struggling against cosmic wind".  Even the Reaper on Rannoch, mortally wounded, can hold an intelligent conversation and reiterates the supposed intellectual superiorty of the Reapers by saying their purpose is "not a thing you can comprehend".

No, the Reapers know damn well what they're doing.  They just don't care.  They are sentient beings that have committed murder on a scale that would put Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin and Pol Pot and Che Guevara and Mao Tse Tung to absolute shame.  There is no way to make them sympathetic figures.

Modifié par Sable Phoenix, 06 mai 2012 - 06:16 .

[botfly10]

Dammit. Stop doing that.

[uwyz]

Sable Phoenix wrote...
No, the Reapers know damn well what they're doing.  They just don't care.  They are sentient beings that have committed murder on a scale that would put Adolf Hitler and Josef Stalin and Pol Pot and Che Guevara and Mao Tse Tung to absolute shame.  There is no way to make them sympathetic figures.

I agree that the Reapers are sentient beings capable of forumlating their own views - and their conclusion is that life has no saving grace and no value. The Catalyst claims to use the Reapers as solution to "preserve organic life from synthetics" (his formulation itself is being challenged as logically flawed) , but he and the Reapers view life in a very impersonable way. They believe that lives are expendable in the service of a goal, an idealogy or some sort of "greater good" - and historians will tell you that this is how mass murders think and justify themselves.

So even assume the Reapers no longer pose an immediate threat, the interesting question is what they place they deserve in the future. Synthesis may have removed the reason that justified the Reapers' mass murders, but it does not take away that sinister philosophy behind their thinking - "Lives are abstract quantities, of inherent values by themselves, that can be negotiated and sacrificed for a goal" - and therefore the capacity for mass murder remain. Synthesis does not help the Reapers to suddenly develop a respect for other sentient life - "learn to love" as Joker put it - nor does it give them a conscience or allow for the development of new moral perspectives. In that light, they cannot be trusted.

[MrFob]

Sable Phoenix wrote...

*quote pyramid snip*

And this is a huge, huge mistake.

The Reapers cannot be redeemed.  They have been presented throughout three games as the worst monsters in all of history.  They have slaughtered uncountable hundreds of trillions of beings over the course of millions of years, and are utterly lacking in hesitation or remorse.  They are genicodes a billion times over.  The scale of slaughter that they have perpetrated on sentient beings is completely beyond our grasp.  No matter what their reasons, from our perspective, there can be no justification for what they have done.

I'm convinced that one of the worst failings of the ending is its attempt to "humanize" the Reapers, to make them somehow into sympathetic figures.  This is a completely impossible task.  As I mentioned in another post earlier, the only way to present them in a less than monstrous light is to contrast them against a fate that is even more horrific than they are.

Because the ending failed to do this, I had no emotional involvement at all in what it was showing me.  I ended the game feeling confused, betrayed, and ultimately, angry.  And thousands upon thousands of othe players felt the same.

As things are right now, I couldn't agree with you more. However, I think the problem is not necessarily that the task was impossible but just that the reasoning that was given was just too shallow and flawed.
Just out of curiosity, would you have felt the same way if BW would have rolled with their first idea (the dark matter ending). Never mind the logical flaws that were in that script as well, IMO it would have made the ending choice much more interesting and the morality of it much more ambiguous. It would have given the reapers a purpose that was sensible in the way that they didn't act on a hunch of some possible unprovable catastrophe that might or might not happen in the distant future but on a real and imminent threat to which they just did not see another solution.

--- Skip this part if you know he discarded dark energy plot line ---
To elaborate for those here who do not know this early idea: In this version, the first race, billions of years ago encountered the threat of dark energy build-up that would ultimately lead to the destruction of the galaxy (unfortunately there is not much background info about how exactly this was supposed to work, apparently BW never got that far with the idea). This race could only see one way to fight the threat and that was to turn themselves into a new life form, a reaper, through a process of excruciatingly painful and horrific self sacrifice. However, even this did only delay the collapse by 50.000 years, so they left the mass relays to guide the evolution of the next cycle and waited to create the next reaper from their population, delay the catastrophe further and so on and so forth. Now, the dark energy is building up again (see Tali's mission on Haestrom in ME2) but there is a special race, humanity, with a distinct characteristic -  the genetic diversity hinted at by Mordin sometimes in ME2 - that would allow the reapers to stop the dark energy problem for good. At the time ME3 ends, the catastrophe is imminent in reaper terms (i.e. no more than maybe a century away) and Shepard has a choice: S/he can defy the reapers and destroy them, ending the cycles but on the gamble that the races of the galaxy can find a solution for the dark energy problem in 100 years (when the reapers failed in billionia (is that even a word?)) or sacrifice humanity, let the reapers take them to end the threat once and for all.
--- Continue here if you skipped ---

So again, never mind the scientific bollocks do you think the reapers are wrong? Which choice is the right one here? I think this ending, if executed correctly leads to a much stronger set of choices, a far more questionable course of action either way.
And this is only one possibility, I think there would have been ways to make the reapers morally grey. All it takes is to have a real and tangible scenario instead of essentially fear of the future for a reason.

@botfly10: BTW, I saw your thread and I was sorry to see it go down the road it did. Happens too often these days on the boards, I'm afraid. I am happy that you had a great experience and shouldn't let anyone take that away from you. IMO, ME3 is a great game and I share your sentiments right up to the last mission. In fact, I think this is the main reason why so many people - including me - are so upset and why the raging parties persist. Let's just hope that in the end it has a positive effect for everyone.

Modifié par MrFob, 06 mai 2012 - 06:44 .

[botfly10]

Well, this thread is awesome.

[Shermos]

I've met a lot of Lit professors who i'm positive got their degrees out of a cornflakes box. And besides, having a qualification doesn't automatically make you intelligent and know what you're talking about. It only means you were able to jump through the hoops put up in front of you.

[edisnooM]

Shermos wrote...

I've met a lot of Lit professors who i'm positive got their degrees out of a cornflakes box. And besides, having a qualification doesn't automatically make you intelligent and know what you're talking about. It only means you were able to jump through the hoops put up in front of you.

Actually this has been touched upon several times over the last 60 odd pages, and drayfish has repeatedly stressed not to accept his views because of his title.

[BooPi]

Like.

[Hawk227]

Sable Phoenix wrote...


The Reapers cannot be redeemed.  They have been presented throughout three games as the worst monsters in all of history.  They have slaughtered uncountable hundreds of trillions of beings over the course of millions of years, and are utterly lacking in hesitation or remorse.  They are genicodes a billion times over.  The scale of slaughter that they have perpetrated on sentient beings is completely beyond our grasp.  No matter what their reasons, from our perspective, there can be no justification for what they have done.

I'm convinced that one of the worst failings of the ending is its attempt to "humanize" the Reapers, to make them somehow into sympathetic figures.  This is a completely impossible task.  As I mentioned in another post earlier, the only way to present them in a less than monstrous light is to contrast them against a fate that is even more horrific than they are.

Because the ending failed to do this, I had no emotional involvement at all in what it was showing me.  I ended the game feeling confused, betrayed, and ultimately, angry.  And thousands upon thousands of othe players felt the same.

For me, this is why the ending is irredeemable. I felt that the Reapers were the perfect Lovecraftian horror, come back to extinguish life simply because it could, and I was very happy with that interpretation. There is no justification for what they do. My Shepard even said something similar to the Dalatross prior to curing the genophage: "You can't punish an entire race for what they might do". You cannot extinguish sapient life because they might create an AI that extinguishes all organic life eventually.

I've been trying to take the... Paragon route in regards to the ending, and say that a new option would be better than a rewrite, but I'm not sure. Delta_vee already pointed out that by adding a 4th option, it undermines the decision process. I'm not even sure what 4th option I could be given that would placate me. Short of a total rewrite (or IT) I think I'd want the removal of the Geth Hostages from the Destroy option. It was a contrived addition in the first place and the only thing standing between me and what I set out to do on Virmire all those years ago.

[RollaWarden]

I have a new joy.  Sunday morning coffee, and the AWTR thread.  Four pages since my last read!  In this thread, ALL posts must be read carefully, and often more than once.  Such a bounty of intellectual riches.  "Oh, my Mass Effect prophetic soul!"

Okay, I know the quote doesn't quite work.  Okay, at all.  But I impulsively reference Hamlet.  Symptomatic of Bard-itis; a condition that often carries unfortunate social consequences.

Stay on target...

drayfish wrote...

Okay, that's enough of my nonsense. I'm going back to lurking by the salsa, hoping no one notices that despite only bringing a six-pack of domestic cans, I'm drinking everyone else's more expensive imported beers. Swaying to the music, charmed, enthralled and re-invigorated through the grief by all the friendly buzz.

Beautful!  But as an only occasional poster in this our (may we claim ownership, those of us who frequent this thread?  Is that forum-etiquettely acceptable?), I've developed the persistent feeling of constantly arriving late to the party, leaving quite early, and after departing, thinking the party's conversation was magnificent, but that I didn't contribute much.  Followed by intellectual insecurity.  Or the result of intellectual security.  Ah, the strange bedfellows of self-awareness and insecurity.  But let's press on:

I fancy the virtual party construct, drayfish.  Since beer was mentioned, and as I'm a great lover of the stuff, I've imagined the pub.  My most cherished biographical tidbits include great literary frienships, forged over the course of many pints of ale or cups of tea/coffee, ala Tollers and Jack.  Would that I could have joined, just once, when those two fussed at one another over allegory vs. applicability...

Though I'm late to the pub...again...and have derailed the conversation by asking each on of you what you all are drinking, then become painfully self-conscious that in doing so I've once again pathologically called attention to myself, I'll sip my brew, and try engagement with the table's many dialectics.

First, thank you, delta_vee, for gathering a few ideas some pages back, and responding to each.  That effort provided me a summation of sorts.  I'll now mangle your efforts in my mimickry:

Sable Phoenix wrote...

Time and time again life, whether organic or synthetic, triumphs on its own terms over all attempts to suppress it.

The ending of Mass Effect 3 flips that on its head.  The only reason life triumphs is because, essentially, the Reapers (via the Catalyst) allow it.  The indomitable spirit which had so far overcome all obstacles is completely ignored.  Especially if the geth are wiped out in the process, which is where the Frankenstein Complex comes into play.  Not only has Cosmicism failed, and somehow the Great Old Ones actually care what happens to the ants, but life's perserverance has failed and it meekly accepts the conditions placed upon it.

I've been thinking a good deal, Sable Phoenix, about just why the organics vs. synthetics them resonated so strongly with me.  Perhaps it has something to do with my near-worship of Shelley's story.  BTW, that Ghost Story Gathering.  Oh, how I wish to have been in the parlor at Diodati on that dark and stormy summer's night in 1816...

But perhaps my obsession with the organics/synthetics theme also has someting to do with the idea of pluralism, of multiculturalism, of my great desire to be a "citizen of the world," and not just of my country.  The notion of self-identity through a collective has also thorned through me.  The two characteristics seem at once so necessary, and yet dichotomous as well.  The geth/quarians, and their story arcs, were the most deeply effective for me of the trilogy.  And thus, as I've posted too many times, my revulsion (yes, I think that's the right word) at the "destroy" option.  And my revulsion at the "synthesis" option.  Can I not celebrate/love/appreciate the diversity of my species without having to amalgamize it?  Or--good heavens, no--"control it"?  What binds the races in Mass Effect is their developing acceptance of harmony through diversity.  Not in spite of diversity.  BECAUSE of it.  Now that's a world-shaking concept.  

Oh, and Sable Phoenix--the "Schrodinger's Cat" of gaming was PRICELESS.  I re-read all about Schrodinger's theory, and giggled like a little kid.  Oh, yes.  Nailed.  Spot-down.  Booyah.

uwyz: *Clears throat* I like your agressive tone.  You cause me to sit up, put my coffee down, and read more carefully, old man.

MrFob wrote...

think there would have been ways to make the reapers morally grey. All it takes is to have a real and tangible
scenario instead of essentially fear of the future for a reason.

Agreed, MrFob.  I'll admit to the pushmepullyou of wanting my story villains to be just downright baaaaaad, and also appreciating a bit of psychological layering.  But not too much.  The gray areas are the most fascinating bits, aren't they?  Unless they're in the hands of a hack who reduces those gray areas to the paint-by-numbers strokes of "mommy issues" or "short kid in school" pseudo-exposition.  I mean, did we really have to know about Michael Myers' kiddy trouble, Rob Zombie?

botfly10, welcome, welcome, welcome!  And I'm also very, very (repetition hides my inability to choose better vocabulary) sorry your thread was nuked by thoughtless individuals who clearly have arrested interpersonal development.  I dare say you've already found your ideas are imporant to us in this thread.  The gentility and intellect here are brightened by your presence.  And I mean that sincerely.

edisnooM wrote...

Wait do the Geth have any sort of concept of Gender? I mean how does that work? And someones going to have
to sit down and give them all "The Talk".

"Um, you see Prime Unit X302T4, when one platform loves another platform..."

I have a feeling this could lead to a lot of Rule 34s.

So much more than just a LOL here, edinoosM.  And though Liara's my Shep's forever LI, I'd like to have a chat with the Asari, too:  "You know...um...this whole "mate with other species" thing you're into now isn't really cultural diversity.  You know you're just kidding yourselves, right?  You're, uh, kind of the "control" option masquerading as the "synthesis" option.  And neither's, actually, morally defensible.  That "pureblood" epithet.  Well, that's the specist's lack of self-awareness, isn't it?"

Finally, Shermos, I hope you stop back by.  I like your "cornflakes box" critique.  Actually, my papers were at the bottom of a Rice Crispies box.  The metaphor should take care of itself.  I can't speak for drayfish, the OP and, we can presume, the professor in reference.  But he and many others have oft-invited that you might see that all ideas have merit here, and will be respectfully addressed in this forum--provided that they're respectfully submitted.

Cheers, all.  Coffee pot's empty.  Probably for the best.

Modifié par RollaWarden, 06 mai 2012 - 02:29 .

[RollaWarden]

Double post.   Note to self:: please click "edit," not "quote".

Modifié par RollaWarden, 06 mai 2012 - 01:40 .

[botfly10]

Well folks, I'm out. Thanks for maintaining a space to process the ME events and keep it up. I will probably be back after the DLC.

I think I am entering the mourning phase. So sad that it all had to end.

Anyway, it was a hell of a ride.

[JadedLibertine]

botfly10 wrote...

Well folks, I'm out. Thanks for maintaining a space to process the ME events and keep it up. I will probably be back after the DLC.

I think I am entering the mourning phase. So sad that it all had to end.

Anyway, it was a hell of a ride.

I do hope you find time to pop by when you can.  I've read through all the posts since I last rolled by yesterday and I've really enjoyed your stimulating insights and contributions to the debate here.  You have somehow managed to increase  the niceness of this particular oasis of civility in the unceasing flame war that is the rest of BSN.