The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Vampires and Evil, a philosophical rabbit hole.
Con:
White Court Vampires are Etruscans. This implies a lot of things, but particularly that Roman society was based off of Estrucan society as much as Greek. Early Romans were a mix of Greek colonies and the tribes Latin hills. They frequently traded and were at war with the at the time much more powerful Etruscans. Who frequently traded and fought with the Gauls of northern Italy.
Anyway Romans named many of their early gods after Roman gods. Minerva, Jupiter, Mars all original Etruscan jobs. Mars for instance never reall had much in common with the Greek god Ares.
My point is Etruscans had a major influence on early Rome, including huge influx on sexual peversity and kink. Presumably in the Dresdenverse this was where the White Court had their peak controlling the Roman Empire.
Seven Deadly Sins were formed by Catholocism in part as a response to what they believed to be the ultimate flaws of the Roman Empire and decadence, combined with a growing for chivalry to instill honour in early dark age knights and warriors.
It's possible in the Dresdenverse the White Court are the epitome of the Seven Deadly Sins which is back up by the three major houses, but also in Paranet Papers the RP, where theirs another minor house that feeds on Wrath and fight clubs.
It should be noted that I think it was Quantus who theorises the White Court have more to do with Greek spirit personifications. Eros, Phobos and so on and so forth. It's possible. but the Greeks personified everything into spirits.
.......
RED COURT
Again if you take Paranet Papers as canon which I think it is as Jim reads through it offers advice and approves of it before publication.
The Red Court became powerful because they captured and imprisoned ancient Inca gods. I think it implies they did similar to the Ancient Mayan and Aztec gods. They imprisoned they ancient Inca gods and physical fed on them. You are what you eat.
I believe they did similar things to the Ancient Mayan and Aztec gods which is implied by the Red King taking on Kulkulan name and position, as well as Dresdens theorising he wasn't the original Kulkulan in one line where the Red King wasn't sure who Susan as a KOTC was under the invisibility cloak.
Red COurt feed on blood to the point that it's an addiction and several have shown they find sexual pleasure from feeding. It is a physical addiction to them but I don't believe it has any direct impact on their Morality. Keep in mind the real world Cartels in the same region do everything the Red Court does and are all perfectly human. I would still have major problems if any federal government launched a genocide against all cartel members and gangs. Which has been done before.
What makes the Red Court different is the fact that they have become dark gods. (Mostly retired according to Vadderung). In all ancient cultures gods provided a service, of good fortune in exchange for worship and sacrifice. Some Pantheons were said to abuse this relationship, and according to Thomas as well as a lot of mythos the Dark Gods were defeated by other Gods. Those Dark Gods were put Outside of reality, but are still powerful enough to launch invasions and incursions into reality every so often.
..........
Black Court okay I'm keeping this one short because internets about to run out.
The most common and prevelent theory is as people have mentioned.
Dracula tried to impress big daddy Drakul who might be an Outsider himself trapped in human form.
Dracula tapped into the Outside in an Acnsion ritual gone wrong and became Black Court. Still tainted with the Outside. The Outside in its nature is outside reality, evil and wrong.
We also know Black Court power up from mass killing. That is by any definition Evil.
More later
DonBugen:
--- Quote ---Actually the bigfoot trilogy refutes this fact, he survived because he had a larger gas tank for her to syphon...
--- End quote ---
Oops, OK. Let me rephrase. Every White got that way from a fatal feeding except one lucky chick who shacked up with a Forest Person scion.
Curious question... can a Red or White or Black get by with consuming animals, rather than people? I mean, Thomas doesn't eat the soul of a person; he eats the life energy. Reds drink blood. Blampires... I don't recall, exactly. Blood, too, if Stoker was on the money on that one, too.
Don't look at me that way when I mention Whampires eating animals. It's icky, sure, but no more morally wrong than foie gras. Which is ALSO morally wrong, sure, but we don't arrest and kill folks coming out of French restaurants.
If these phages can consume a food other than man, and are thinking and rational beings, there should be a way to peacefully coexist. If they have to eat man, then I think there's ultimately not much hope.
jonas:
--- Quote ---I believe they did similar things to the Ancient Mayan and Aztec gods which is implied by the Red King taking on Kulkulan name and position, as well as Dresdens theorising he wasn't the original Kulkulan in one line where the Red King wasn't sure who Susan as a KOTC was under the invisibility cloak.
--- End quote ---
I have a slightly different view Kulkan is actually identified as Quetzalcoatl in Aztec Myth,
--- Quote ---Quetzalcoatl (English: /ˌkɛtsɑːlˈkoʊɑːtəl/; Spanish pronunciation: [ketsalˈkoatɬ] (About this sound listen)) (Classical Nahuatl: Quetzalcohuātl [ket͡saɬˈkowaːt͡ɬ], About this sound modern Nahuatl pronunciation (help·info)) forms part of Mesoamerican literature and is a deity whose name comes from the Nahuatl language and means "feathered serpent".[2] The worship of a feathered serpent is first documented in Teotihuacan in the first century BC or first century AD.[3] That period lies within the Late Preclassic to Early Classic period (400 BC – 600 AD) of Mesoamerican chronology, and veneration of the figure appears to have spread throughout Mesoamerica by the Late Classic period (600–900 AD)
--- End quote ---
Which then, as I think has repeated through reality/history a 'fall' happened based on the N paradigm, With the Help of Mayan Blood sacrifice He changed persona and the identity they named him as changed to Kukulkan too
--- Quote ---In the Postclassic period (900–1519 AD), the worship of the feathered serpent deity was based in the primary Mexican religious center of Cholula. In the Maya area, he was approximately equivalent to Kukulkan and Gukumatz, names that also roughly translate as "feathered serpent" in different Mayan languages
--- End quote ---
This fall/change I think happened repeatedly through history and can be seen in the Greek Gods becoming decadent Roman ones, Sumarian into Etrusican, ect.
Shift8:
--- Quote from: DonBugen on September 25, 2017, 04:44:20 AM ---And Whamps, too. Don't forget, every White got that way from a fatal feeding. Every one.
In a world of many, many different species of intelligent beings, that's a very human-centric morality. There's no moral qualm to wipe out an entire intelligent species because they appear to threaten mankind? So, flipside - if one day we learned that plants are sentient and sapient, but humankind must consume either plant matter or animals which consume plant matter in order to survive, does that mean that it's only just for humankind to be wiped out?
I'm not arguing that the vampires aren't extremely dangerous and should not be wiped out. I'm just saying that your reasoning is flawed. All thinking beings have value and worth - call it a soul, call it intelligence - and it is a great tragedy to end that line.
Remember Waldo Butters with Dresden at the library in Dead Beat. Dresden says that Liverspots was a complete monster. Butters says yeah... but he was still a person.
I'm going to steal whole-cloth an argument made by some guy on Reddit a year ago, because I know little of Tolkein's orcs.
You call the orcs completely evil, and that killing them is no worse than eating a bowl of ice cream. Welll, the Whites believe that the kine are nothing but dumb beasts, incapable of real intelligence and being, and that killing them is also no worse than eating a bowl of ice cream. Who's right? You, for painting them as nothing but monsters? Them, for painting us as nothing but cattle? In the Dresden Files, mankind is just one of many thinking beings, and you can't just base your morality on "what hurts homo sapiens the most?"
That's why I say that it's immoral to end a species unless there's no other choice.
--- End quote ---
To you question about plants: If plants had Human-level intelligence, and human moral capacity, then yes we could not eat them. If your only food source is a person, your only valid choices are to die or find some alternative. Anything else makes you a monster. But plants dont have human-level intellect or persona, so it is not relevant really.
Life does not have inherent value in the purely biological sense. A Vampire or Orc no more incurs human moral concerns than a single cell organism. You seem to be operating under a false equivalency where you assume that morality as we apply it to humans should be applied to any other species of similar intellect.
And yet we do not apply this logic even to humans. We do not apply the same morality to a known murderer than we do to any random person. When we have sufficient evidence that a person has committed a crime, we treat them differently. With humans, the distinction is necessary because humans can choose.
Vampires, of the kind we are discussing, do not choose. They are by nature murderers. All of them do it. All of them will do it. This is literally a species where the ONLY type of person it contains is the sort of person who if they were human, we would generally agree should be killed.
Also I dont know who wrote that bit on Orcs, but its wrong. Orcs were evil by nature, they had to be bent to Saurons will because it was the only way to get them to do anything useful. And Aragorn's decision to ask the orcs to flee is not mercy. Its just good battlefield pragmatism. Why fight more enemies and lose more of your own men if you can scare the enemy into running? Orcs were literally the corruption of men/elves. Different in the sense that unlike men or elves, Orc's had no capacity for good except through happenstance.
As for Liverspots: Who cares if he was a person? I have never understood why anyone finds this significant. Hitler was a person. What of it? Your life no longer has ANY value if you commit acts that nullify its value. It is an absurd notion to assume that a person's value or right to life is not unaffected by the crimes they commit. In actual fact, the fact that a person who commits this level of crime is a "person" makes the crime WORSE, because they would have known by their own significance how abhorrent their crime was, but did it anyhow. This strikes me as being similar to nonsensical sympathy some people have when they say stupid things like "but the terrorist had a family!" Whoop-De-Doo. I have zero empathy for these people.
Being a person gives you your initial right to life. Be it can absolutely be revoked. To say otherwise makes a mockery and contradiction of the value of life in the first place.
Con:
--- Quote from: jonas on September 25, 2017, 03:01:35 PM ---I have a slightly different view Kulkan is actually identified as Quetzalcoatl in Aztec Myth, Which then, as I think has repeated through reality/history a 'fall' happened based on the N paradigm, With the Help of Mayan Blood sacrifice He changed persona and the identity they named him as changed to Kukulkan too This fall/change I think happened repeatedly through history and can be seen in the Greek Gods becoming decadent Roman ones, Sumarian into Etrusican, ect.
Thank you jonas for giving said ancient cultures proper respect
--- End quote ---
Of course thats my entire argument. It seems your just disagreeing on the order.
Seriously guys klingons and orcs what board are we on. They're different genres with different focuses. Besides tolkien was just a little racist. Star trek has more anthropology but still it's focus is intellectual. Dresden files is about heroism superheroism in fact. A closer fandom analogy would be marvel. But an even closer one is the actual aztec mayan and inca cultures for Red Court. Etruscan roman greek for white
Slavic russian and lower germanic cultures for black court.
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