The Dresden Files > DF Spoilers
Vampires and Evil, a philosophical rabbit hole.
Shift8:
--- Quote from: DonBugen on September 25, 2017, 05:14:43 PM ---Ok, so to answer a few things:
Please don't dodge by saying that "it's not real so it doesn't matter." None of this is real. I'm asking you if you're stating that in a clear case of predator/prey in which one MUST kill the other to survive, that it is the predator that must be exterminated. That instead of enduring the occasional death of members of one species, that it is preferable to go with mass genocide. And if you would willingly and happily consign yourself to the same fate if you found homogeneous sapiens in that boat.
Besides, it's a big universe. You literally don't know if the same thing cannot be said of us. If dolphins are discovered to be sentient and mankind is killing them by polluting the oceans and causing climate change, does that mean that if man won't give up industrialization, we must be exterminated?
Michael would disagree with you. Nicodemus is arguably a worse person than Hitler, having done more damage over his thousands of years and committing more atrocities. And yet Michael risked his life, Harry's life, Uriel's grace, to offer the chance of redemption. No one has gone so far as to not turn back.
If you disagree, OK, that's your opinion. Dresden - at least, Dresden as he is now, and certainly early Dresden - would agree with you. But just because you say that he's a monster and should be wiped out without a second thought doesn't make it gospel truth.
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Just an FYI, the fact that Dresden would agree with me one of the reasons I love this series. You rarely see heroes like Dresden anymore because too many people who write stories have a morality system where the only true crime is to dare call anything evil, or anything good.
Arjan:
--- Quote from: Shift8 on September 25, 2017, 05:28:27 PM --- Seen if before. All nonsense. Essentially a bunch of drivel that implies a euro centric setting must be racist in nature, amongst other simplistic thinking.
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The writer mostly concludes he was not a racist but it describes why people would think so.
It is not a crazy question especially since racism was everywhere in pre war europe, not just in germany and there are themes in his books that can and have been be abused in that way.
Shift8:
--- Quote from: Arjan on September 25, 2017, 06:10:20 PM ---The writer mostly concludes he was not a racist but it describes why people would think so.
It is not a crazy question especially since racism was everywhere in pre war europe, not just in germany and there are themes in his books that can and have been be abused in that way.
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I get what you are saying. But I do think it is a unfair question in light of the very clear values espoused by Tolkien throughout the books whenever they actually come up. Not to mention the very clear opinions he gives in his letters. Had Tolkien been Japanese and wrote a Fantasy where the heroes come from a Shogunate and the baddies are from a western European kingdom, nobody would have accused him of anything.
Kindler:
--- Quote from: Shift8 on September 25, 2017, 06:05:38 PM ---Just an FYI, the fact that Dresden would agree with me one of the reasons I love this series. You rarely see heroes like Dresden anymore because too many people who write stories have a morality system where the only true crime is to dare call anything evil, or anything good.
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I tend to agree; I really don't like the way false moral equivalency has spread through much of modern fiction. Functionally, I understand the need to have a heroic protagonist agonize over killing a bad guy—because emotional torment is useful to the narrative—but, really, too many characters make outright idiotic decisions because they simply refuse to recognize evil when they see it.
Dresden is a good compromise. He makes the hard choice, but feels bad about it. For reference, see his emotional state in Proven Guilty, after killing Corpsetaker. He's still guilty (pun unintended) about it—funny enough, not so much with Cassius, which he should feel guiltier about, considering the guy was down for the count when he had Mouse off him.
As for morality and vampires... well. You know. Murderers, seducers, and so on. There are likely outliers in terms of moral code, like Thomas, but they're functionally evil, because they do evil things. You don't have the right to someone else's life or liberty. Being born or forced into taking it doesn't relieve culpability in my book.
Con:
I said a little racist and I thought I wrote something about being progressive for his time, but I must of deleted it.
At the very least Tolkiens treatment of Eastern peoples and "Black Numenoreans" are a lil suspect as a race war against all the "white races."
However I do agree that the said white races have a diversity of cultures that have diversity of cultures within their cultures.
Theirs also evidence to suggest Numenor the Tolkien Atlantis was predominantly Black.
I just think within the books themselves their is a very west vs east attitude, which you can make arguments about the morality of the Ottoman Empire all you want but thing is Tolkien fought the Germans and came to respect them not hate them. Why couldn't he apply that to eastern peoples?
Though again it's implied that Aragorn himself gained respect for said eastern peoples when her travelled their fightin with and against them going as far south as Haradrim.
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