ROUND 1 — Match 48 of 138
Problematic because: "He’s one of the ancient Tevinter magisters who tried to physically break into the Golden City and claim godhood for himself, which is kind of the original Dragon Age “maybe don’t do blood magic imperial hubris” incident. By the time we meet him, he’s an ancient darkspawn who still thinks the universe owes him a throne, and his response to discovering the heavens are apparently empty is not self-reflection, it’s “fine, I’ll become god myself then.” In Legacy, he manipulates the Grey Wardens guarding him, messes with Hawke’s family bloodline because Malcolm Hawke helped seal him away, and can jump into other Blight-tainted bodies instead of dying properly. Then in Inquisition, he’s behind the explosion at the Conclave that kills Divine Justinia, opens the giant Breach in the sky, and starts letting demons pour into the world. He also builds armies through the Venatori, red templars, corrupted Wardens, and anyone else useful enough to throw at his “I should be worshipped” project. Basically, Corypheus is what happens when ancient Tevinter entitlement survives for a thousand years and comes back with a dragon, a cult, body-hopping, and zero interest in learning anything."
Propaganda: "The idea behind him is genuinely great, even if Inquisition sometimes makes him stand around giving Evil Villain Speeches. He’s one of the people behind the biggest religious wound in the setting, he comes back from history as proof that all those old stories are messier than anyone wants them to be, and his whole reaction to finding no god waiting for him is to decide he’ll take the job himself. That is such a good kind of arrogant."
Problematic because: "its tricky because he’s both victim and failed authority figure. he doesn’t crash the tulpar - jimmy does, in a failed murder-suicide after anya’s pregnancy threatens to expose that he raped her - and curly is horribly injured trying to stop it. but before that, curly is still the captain. he’s the person at the top of the command chain, and when anya tells him jimmy makes her uncomfortable and is being sexually inappropriate, curly’s response is to take over jimmy’s psych eval rather than actually remove jimmy from access to her or treat the situation like the red flag it is. later, when anya tells him jimmy raped her and she’s pregnant, he talks to jimmy, but jimmy immediately turns it back on him by pointing out curly will be held accountable too. curly lets him go. the ship crashes after that. so curly isn’t the monster jimmy is, and he doesn’t deserve what happens to him. but he’s still the captain who saw enough warning signs, cared more about smoothing things over than acting decisively, and underestimated how dangerous his friend was until everyone on the tulpar paid for it. his tragedy is partly that he tried to be decent without being brave enough, fast enough, or willing enough to make the hard call."
Propaganda: 1. "hes not evil, but he is responsible. sad captain man with corporate loyalty, conflict avoidance, jimmy blind spots, and one catastrophically delayed moment of action. did not deserve what happened to him. still failed anya."
2. "His failure is so horribly ordinary compared to Jimmy’s violence. He isn’t sitting there plotting disaster. He isn’t cruel to Anya. He isn’t trying to hurt the crew. He’s trying, in that exhausted captain way, to keep the ship functioning, keep everyone calm, keep his friendship with Jimmy intact, keep the company line from fully collapsing around them. That’s exactly the problem. I like him because Mouthwashing gives him a very uncomfortable kind of culpability. He’s punished far beyond what he deserves, physically reduced to pain and silence while Jimmy rewrites the story around him, but that suffering doesn’t magically make his earlier choices clean. He had authority. He had warnings. He had Anya standing in front of him with fear and then with proof, and he still treated Jimmy like a problem to manage rather than a threat to stop. That makes him more interesting than a simple innocent victim. Curly’s tragedy is that being nicer than Jimmy was nowhere near enough."
3. "I still believe in him :( I think if he had another 24 hours of being alive and well, he might have actually done Literally Anything substantial to protect Anya and/or to hold Jimmy accountable"
Who should advance?
Remaining time: 2 days 23 hours
(Disclaimer: All text above was sent in by submitters and not written by OP.)
