Maker's Breath.... (Official Cullen Rutherford discussion)

Ehh... can't say I like that. You go from being a defender of the world to being a defender of the Chantry. No point in keeping the Inquisition alive then.

You see it as bogus and I see it as a chance for role-playing a person who does put the Inquisition over the welfare of her lover.

I see it as bogus that there isn't any drawback to his going through withdrawals. If you want reality, he should have been at least temporarily removed from service to deal with it. Yet the power of "you can do it!" Created a withdrawal free Utopia of success

*shrugs* you feel very strongly about this. I don't.

in other news, I found another sweet cullen comic by same artist as last time.

Cullen and headaches

Leliana is a nutcracker that shouldn't be in charge of anything. I've written long posts on her insanity. 

I think we can both agree we prefer nuanced outcomes. Bioware thrives on the morally grey. 

Cullen isn't going to leave his gf when she agrees with him that he needs to be at his best right now. She also supports him getting off it at a later date. He can literally die from withdrawals. You take your stance as a person with metaknowledge, you know he'll kick the addiction with no consequences to his service to the Inquisition. But if you're truly roleplaying, and strip away the metaknowledge, he could literally die within another week and you will be short a commander of your forces. 

.... I think your lack of lore education is showing. No one dies from a Lyrium Addiction as if it's crack or meth. You lose your mind over many years, as in, it'll take until Cullen is gray haired before you see the signs of it. If it was actually life threatening to be on, it wouldn't be a good drug to leash them with. Only Lyrium that will kill you is the red stuff.

My stance on a Leliana Divine is that it's a Feel Good Choice on the Surface that makes me uneasy. I feel like Bioware is ignoring how insane she is, it's possible Hardened Leliana is the truth of it whereas Soft Leliana is just there to make people who choose her feel better. If Cassandra was willing to start allowing other races into the Chantry, I'd back her 100% because her moderate beliefs and personality appeal to me much more. And I don't even like her as much as I used to.

Fair enough.

I don't strongly like any of the three options in any event.

Of the given options, I probably favour Cass a bit more, but there was a conversation between her and Dorian where he asked her whether she would grab and drag him to the Circle given the chance and she said 'without hesitation,' which made me very uneasy.

Indeed. I also dislike her "I accept differences in faith" comments when they're directly to your face, but in an unguarded moment in the Temple of Mythal it is very clear she thinks any who don't follow andrastianism is being nonsensical

There probably should have been a third option where he wanes himself off of using it gradually rather than quitting cold turkey.

Samson did NOT go bonkers. He is sane in literally every conversation you have with him. He's wrong, but wrong doesn't equal insanity. And he's rationalized all his wrongness because of the Chantry casting him out.

It's a matter of time. Decades of time.

Forcing him to take it forever causes him to die-- truth. Maybe because there is no one there to limit him on how much to take. But the epilogue slide is super ambiguous about when Scout Harding finally decides to mercy kill him. Could be a couple years. Could be ten.

People get addicted, then go sober, then get on again, then go sober again. Sometimes it doesn't stick the first time. But to say he can't realistically ease off a narcotic at a later date ever does not represent reality.

I'm not arguing anything but that I'm okay with the choices and outcomes as they are. You are arguing to bring reality into it. so I brought up the fact that, reality is, getting off is more dangerous than staying on in this case, based off many many many cases in the books and games.

your core message is simply that anyone that takes the middle ground doesn't really love Cullen, doesn't deserve him, and should be punished by a loss of the relationship. I disagree with anything that paints our fellow fans and players in a negative light because I have a huge peeve with people personally attacking the players when anything, literally anything in the games can be supported by imaginative and creative roleplaying. Also a willingness to explore humanities greys.

I'm firmly in the camp that Meredith, Loghain, and Samson were absolutely wrong. But their convictions were believeable ones to have, and if we, as players, want to explore a character with "wrong" convictions as well, I don't think that Bioware should punish that. Otherwise, only goody two shoes vomit inducing heros would ever get to do anything in this game and succeed. And that's not fair to what I love about Bioware games.

Edit add: please quit putting words in my mouth or implying the RP reasoning I've given as hypothethical "how could someone do this and still love Cullen?" scenarios are something I personally believe in. 

I am not the characters I play in my video games. Shouldn't that be obvious?

^^^ Two cases of putting words in my mouth. One was actually in reaction to saying I didn't feel very strongly about debating this, but you tagged me for more anyway by implying I believed that "Everything is ok as long as it's temporary." Something I didn't say at all, therefore I felt prompted to defend myself.

Keep on imagining that I was talking about players and not game dynamics.

Yes. I don't like it that the choice of temporary and no lyrium leads to exactly the same ending and same slides. There are other things in the games I don't like that aren't Cullen related.

Kindly f*** off with judging me, especially when you're wrongly imagining what my reasons were for stating my opinion.

I haven't talked about other players. I specifically talked about the game itself and how choosing a middle option affects Inq's relationship with Cullen as well as his future within the game.

I dislike how the middle option is reflected within the game. I've made no judgement on people who choose the middle option. Nor have I said anywhere that people shouldn't be allowed to choose it.

phoray revealed that she started this conversation not to discuss various points of view with me, but because she read my words in a certain way and decided that I've formed some opinion towards other players which I don't even hold.

In case anyone is doubting this simple truth of life I'll say in very plain words.

OMG the sky is blue and NO I don't think anyone has the right to tell other players which game option they should choose. No, I was not implying that nobody should be allowed to pick temporary use option. That's idiotic beyond words to think you can tell some internet people you've never met before that they're wrong in choose some game option. The grass is also green.

Saying some option sucks and not liking it, doesn't equate to bashing other players.