[Dragaera] (Dzur SPOILER) Is it odd?

[Maximilian Wilson]

On 8/12/06, Jose Marquez <jhereg69 at earthlink.net> wrote:
> >>>> 0
> >>>> 1
> >>>> 2
> >>>> 3
> >>>> 4
> >>>> 5
> >>>> 6
> >>>> 7
> >>>> 8
> >>>> 9
> >>>> A
> >>>> B
> >>>> C
> >>>> D
> >>>> E
> >>>> F
> >>>> G
> I wouldn't describe what Teldra does so much as imposing her will or
> even gentle manipulation. I don't know; both imply removing choice. Vlad
> can ignore Teldra's influence if he wants to, but Teldra is stopping him
> from getting himself killed, in some cases. I don't know. I guess I'm
> hung up on semantic differences between imposing your will (where your
> will is done no matter what) and what Teldra does. Vlad allows her to
> influence him. She doesn't impose. That would be rude. *grin*

The way I see it, the only case where it *is* practical to impose your
will on anyone is when they're potentially willing to see things your
way, given the right incentives--because people *always* have a
choice. We see this quite clearly in the confrontation between Verra
and Vlad in /Dzur/, where Vlad is almost tempted to take
almost-certain destruction over the more pragmatic letting-Verra-win
simply because Verra doesn't know beans about courtesy and phrasing
the question correctly. Teldra and Verra are both aiming for the same
outcome, which is getting Vlad to back down, but Verra makes it feel
like backing down would be against Vlad's will, which of course makes
him totally unwilling to do it.

> > A test of wills between Vlad and Teldra would be very interesting...
> > IMHO, only someone as stubborn as Vlad would have any chance of coming
> > out victorious.
> >
> If it came to that, to a point where Vlad didn't want to do something
> Lady Teldra wants him to do, and she's adamant and so is he, hmm.

The way I see it, it Vlad just doesn't want to do it, it's just not
going to happen and she wouldn't even try. More likely a situation
where he badly wants to do something like, say, kill Verra, and Teldra
thinks it's in his best interest, and Vlad also feels (through
whatever intuition he has) that he really should do something else but
can't articulate this in a way that would convince Teldra... winning a
test of wills against Teldra is going to feel a lot like giving in to
your own worse judgment--which Vlad is perfectly capable of. See the
conclusion to /Teckla/ for a case where I bet Teldra would have
interfered.

'Maximilian

-- 
Be pretty if you are,
Be witty if you can,
But be cheerful if it kills you.