[Dragaera] Vlad's passivity

[Alexx Kay]

Jerry Friedman:

> Instead of "reactive" and "proactive", maybe the distinction
> is whether Vlad is trying to prevent someone from messing
> up a long-standing acceptable situation or trying to improve
> a long-standing situation.  In the three books you named,
> Vlad is doing acceptably till Mellar, Loraan, and Fornia
> threaten him (and in two cases, his friends).  Alexx's
> point may be that we have not seen Vlad, unthreatened, say,
> "It may seem like things always have to be this way, but I'm
> going to change them."  Improving things, for him, has been
> gravy while protecting himself or getting revenge or doing
> something he was hired to do.

Yes, this is what I was trying to get at.  Thanks for phrasing it more
clearly.

> One exception might be courting Cawti.

Having just reread _Yendi_, I don't really think so.  He spends most of
the 'courting' period holding back, under the assumption that he's going
to be dead in a week, so starting a relationship would be pointless and
cruel.  Cawti proposes to him anyways.  He certainly enjoys the changes
that she brings to his life (at least until _Teckla_), but he didn't
actively seek them.

Alexx

"Now, Ed came to decapitation and actual serial murder later in life, after
 first serving a sentence as a juvenile for the killing of his own
 grandparents.  For no apparent reason whatsoever, the thirteen-year-old
 Kemper shot his grandmother through the back of the head.  He then waited
 for his grandfather to get home and shot him too, though this seems more
 of an afterthought.  When asked why he'd killed his grandmother, Kemper
 said that the gun had been to hand and he'd thought something along the
 lines of: "I wonder what would happen if I killed grandma?""
    -- Alan Moore, in correspondence with Dave Sim about _From Hell_