Doominike
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Post by Doominike on Aug 22, 2019 19:24:43 GMT
Tbf though, how hard is it really to do blood magic ? Jowan in DAO apparently learned it by himself in secret with presumably no book, and he wasn't a particularly good mage. You probably need actual instruction and study for the advanced stuff but the basics seem pretty easy.
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Post by gervaise21 on Aug 22, 2019 19:40:18 GMT
Tbf though, how hard is it really to do blood magic ? Jowan in DAO apparently learned it by himself in secret with presumably no book, and he wasn't a particularly good mage. You probably need actual instruction and study for the advanced stuff but the basics seem pretty easy. Well WoT2 explained that mages like Jowan weren't doing it entirely on their own but were being led astray by Uldred. Apparently he taught blood magic to those he thought could be useful to him and one of those uses was then ratting out on them to Irving, thus making it seem like he was a loyal and vigilant senior enchanter rooting out corruption among the rank and file. So this would be how Jowan got access to books of forbidden knowledge and he may even have been taught the basics by Uldred, although making contact with a demon in the Fade is also a possibility. That originally seemed the danger with blood magic to the user. You acquire the knowledge through doing deals with a demon, which places you on their radar, opens up your mind to them more easily and puts you at greater risk of possession. Jowan seems to have avoided this but may be he wasn't yet powerful enough to be attractive to the sort of demon that takes advantage of such ambition. After all, ultimately it would seem that Uldred was possessed through dabbling once too often with denizens of the Fade.
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Post by azarhal on Aug 22, 2019 19:46:57 GMT
Tbf though, how hard is it really to do blood magic ? Jowan in DAO apparently learned it by himself in secret with presumably no book, and he wasn't a particularly good mage. You probably need actual instruction and study for the advanced stuff but the basics seem pretty easy. Irving removed the blood magic related books from the library and kept them in his office at some point (you unlock the codex for Blood magic with them in the Magi origin) or/and Uldred had an amazing ability to root out Bloodmage in the Circle too.
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Post by Sifr on Aug 22, 2019 22:59:23 GMT
Even before WOT2 confirmed it, I always figured that Jowan was set up by Uldred to take the fall and deflect suspicion away from his more capable acolytes, the same ones that the Warden later encountered throughout the tower.
Jowan was the perfect scapegoat, as Templars would expect mages like him (not particularly powerful and fairly weak-willed) to easily turn to blood magic or fall prey to demonic influence.
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Post by phoray on Aug 23, 2019 0:25:24 GMT
Specilizations in DA:O were not character specific, so you could have saved before the demon, unlocked blood magic & loaded up the old save again, I remember unlocking the Bard as a warrior & the Reaver as a rouge, once unlocked by ant character, they were there Yes, I know you could cheat, but the fact was that if you played the game as it was intended then you could not have the blood magic spec without doing the deal with the demon. Then when you got to DAA I think you simply had to buy a book to unlock it, which was a bit of a cop out by the writers. DAO had situations where if you adopted the moral high ground, you were denied certain benefits and as I have said before I think that was true to the setting and the temptation that gaining a form of power unavailable to other people presented. Drinking the Avernus' Warden Concoction wasn't something you could get in a book, at the very least.
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Doominike
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Post by Doominike on Aug 23, 2019 2:41:25 GMT
I kinda forgot about Uldred xD
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Post by phoray on Aug 23, 2019 2:43:33 GMT
I kinda forgot about Uldred xD I've played Origins 4 times, and I agree, he is not much of a character, even in the mage origin. He caused the Mage Tower massacre (supported possibly by Loghain) but he really just gets a bit of a mwuhahaha speech before you slaughter him in battle.
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Post by gervaise21 on Aug 23, 2019 9:26:53 GMT
Drinking the Avernus' Warden Concoction wasn't something you could get in a book, at the very least.
It had the requirement of being a Warden though, didn't it? (I don't know because I never bought Warden's Keep DLC). Anyway that was a specialist application and it came under the heading of dubious practices that the Grey Wardens permit if it helps the fight against the darkspawn. This is why condemning blood magic out of hand might seem rather strange when you have already been through the Joining and may also see potential benefits in using blood magic against the darkspawn. So the moral dilemma about learning the specialisation in DAO was not that it was blood magic but that you were required to sacrifice the soul of Connor to do so. Now a Warden might justify this on the grounds of all the theoretical potential benefits they would gain, so even there it was not necessarily the "evil" choice but the pragmatic and practical one.
This was in fact true of many of the morally questionable decisions you could make and once again was true to the setting we were in. It was in fact what Alistair never appreciated when he started ranting at you about things he did not agree with. He had this notion of the Wardens as wonderful morally upright heroes but historically that was not the case. As is often stated, they did what they needed to do to get the job done, however dubious some of their methods might appear. So someone who plays a PC who totally gets this rationale could make decisions that other people might think are evil but they feel were necessary to succeed in battling the Arch-demon and its minions.
This is largely true of each of the protagonists and why Dragon Age isn't a traditional hero saga, although you still have the option to play your PC that way if you wish.
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Post by Deleted on Aug 24, 2019 21:49:00 GMT
No, a good writer should be able to write outside of their experiences. Will a woman on average write a more authentic viewpoint of a woman? Most likely yes. Will a LGBT+ person have a better handle on those issues? Again yes. But that’s not to say a male or a straight person can’t try to write for those perspectives.
I find the issue is more when a writer writes a character outside of their personal experience but does not make an attempt at empathy or understanding to that viewpoint. The story of female writers in DAI having to tell the male writers that a scene could be seen as rapey is a problem.
A good writer, though, should automatically be attempting that empathy/understanding to the perspective they’re writing. That’s the point of being a writer.
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Post by Hanako Ikezawa on Aug 24, 2019 22:26:27 GMT
I still find it strange how it seemed none of the writers saw it as rape in more than one way. They saw the Leliana one, but missed the even more greivous one of it being the Inquisitor themselves getting raped.
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revelationeffect
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Post by revelationeffect on Aug 24, 2019 22:28:33 GMT
I'll say that regardless when trying to write outside of one's perspective it is always good practice to listen to the thoughts of others who have those lived experiences. I don't think that only people in a given group can write characters of that group, but getting input, especially when said characters are members of oft-misrepresented minorities, is very important. There are limits to how much raw empathy can do, at the end of the day it's still going to be extrapolation from one's own lived experience.
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Post by SwobyJ on Aug 28, 2019 1:34:03 GMT
Can I say 'why not both?' without it being snarky? Because that's what I'm trying to do. You and you, you're both and all right!
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Post by linksocarina on Aug 28, 2019 3:39:34 GMT
I kinda forgot about Uldred xD I've played Origins 4 times, and I agree, he is not much of a character, even in the mage origin. He caused the Mage Tower massacre (supported possibly by Loghain) but he really just gets a bit of a mwuhahaha speech before you slaughter him in battle. Outside of Loghain which of the villains had a deep character? Howe for example I remember simply because it was Tim Curry as the voice. Not much else to him other than ambition.
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Post by Sifr on Aug 28, 2019 8:02:00 GMT
I've played Origins 4 times, and I agree, he is not much of a character, even in the mage origin. He caused the Mage Tower massacre (supported possibly by Loghain) but he really just gets a bit of a mwuhahaha speech before you slaughter him in battle. Uldred was also briefly seen during the war council meeting at Ostagar, getting shut down by the Revered Mother when he suggested using mages in lieu of the beacon. Which when you think about it, wasn't a bad suggestion and shows how the Chantry stifles the mages even when they could use their magic in a positive manner.
Does it really make sense to divert soldiers and Grey Wardens away from the battle to guard a signal tower, when you have a group of people at your disposal, capable of launching a magical volley from their fingertips, that everyone would see just as well?
This same Revered Mother also sent Alistair as her messenger to the mages deliberately to insult them. I can't really blame Uldred for siding with Loghain in exchange for Circle independence, if the upside meant that he no longer had to be under the thumb of people like her anymore.
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Post by boxofscreaming on Aug 31, 2019 22:09:20 GMT
I miss 2011.
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Post by pessimistpanda on Sept 4, 2019 6:45:30 GMT
Can you use real examples to support your argument, because one can definitely be gay and black in Dragon Age. I mean, this reads as some argument you're carrying over from an entirely different time/thread that you're still bitter about. I wasn't talking about the content of Dragon Age, I was talking about the general attitude of this forum. It is blatantly obvious that what really pisses people off about the article is that the author wants BioWare to hire black writers. Hence the blatant misrepresentation of what the article actually says (by OP and by a number of others); WHY she wants black writers doesn't matter, their problem is that she wants them at all, and dares to say so on the internet.
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Post by colfoley on Sept 4, 2019 8:10:05 GMT
Can you use real examples to support your argument, because one can definitely be gay and black in Dragon Age. I mean, this reads as some argument you're carrying over from an entirely different time/thread that you're still bitter about. I wasn't talking about the content of Dragon Age, I was talking about the general attitude of this forum. It is blatantly obvious that what really pisses people off about the article is that the author wants BioWare to hire black writers. Hence the blatant misrepresentation of what the article actually says (by OP and by a number of others); WHY she wants black writers doesn't matter, their problem is that she wants them at all, and dares to say so on the internet. Just in case, I will speak only for myself here...but BioWare genuinely can hire as many or as little black writers as they want. They can hire an entire black staff or they can hire no black staff. Race really does not matter in this context. The issue is the definite insinuation that only 'black people' (or other minorities) has access to some special perspective when it comes to oppression that other races or socio economic groups (mainly white people) do not.
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