Spoiler (03-12-2016, 11:18 PM)Nero Wrote: [ -> ]I am now completely confused, so correct me at any point if I'm misinterpreting anything you are saying.
There are two points you are arguing:
(03-12-2016, 08:55 PM)LiadansWhisper Wrote: [ -> ]...I guess I just don't understand why someone would want to use the one intrinsically good and beneficial school of magic that way when there are much easier, and more sensible schools to access.
One: white magic is used for healing and incapable of or ineffective in causing direct harm (or perhaps any harm at all), therefore white magic is inherently good and beneficial. Because white magic is inherently good and beneficial, it cannot (or should not) be used as the "evil power" in a story. Because white magic cannot cause any harm, then narratively-speaking, evil should not use white magic. White magic being used for evil purposes doesn't make sense in a story, and a "good vs. evil" plotline makes more sense with, say, a black mage villain than a white mage villain, because there are other powers (i.e arcanima, thaumaturgy) that are capable of causing direct harm and thus should be used instead.
Counterargument: white magic, while incapable of causing direct harm, is still capable of causing indirect harm. And because it is capable of causing indirect harm, white magic is therefore not inherently good and beneficial (BUT nor is it inherently bad and harmful). And because white magic is not inherently good, then it can be used for evil purposes and still make sense within a storyline. It may not be as directly evil as blowing up hospitals with thaumaturgy, but it is still capable of performing evil acts. See: keeping an unambiguously evil person alive, keeping an innocent person alive to torment them, draining all of the aether in a localized environment (and by extension threatening the indiscriminate wrath of the Elementals).
Both of these are incorrect, though, in my opinion. White Magic is
intended to be beneficial. Left to its
intended use (i.e. the
natural way the magic functions), it cannot directly harm anyone, and the only "harm" it can truly inflict is if care is not taken for the ambient aether in a given place (the implication is that you could probably drain a location of aether if you were making too much/too powerful use of White Magic on a regular basis). Which leads into:
Quote:Also, contradiction with the below point: how can a power that is inherently "good and beneficial" also be capable of destroying the world?
Initially, we are simply told that White Mages drew too strongly on the ambient aether in their attempt to defend against the Black Mages of Mhachi. And it's entirely possible that the huge draws of aether by the Amdapori and Mhachi magi to fuel their protective/destructive spells are the entire reason for the end of the Fifth Astral Era. But thanks to Lost City HM, it's kinda strongly implied that it might not have just been that. That it may also have been due to the Amdapori directly corrupting and perverting White Magic into a tool of war (as well as, of course, the Mhachi using ever more powerful voidsent to power their larger spells). In perverting what naturally works as a beneficial, healing magic into a tool of war, the Amdapori may have ended up with abilities that caused far more damage to the earth itself than the wielders intended to happen.
Quote:Two: using white magic is extremely dangerous as its abuse nearly destroyed the world. Therefore it makes no sense for a villain to use it for evil purposes or attempt to inflict direct harm with it because they risk destroying everything in the process. In addition, if a villain wishes to destroy the world, there are easier methods of doing so involving (insert: Allagans, primals, a particularly stinky cheese, etc.)
Counter: "Evil" is not limited to wanting to inflict direct harm or destroy the world. Inflicting indirect harm, or inflicting any harm in general, can be extrapolated as an evil intention. Therefore, on a purely individual basis, a good person who becomes a white mage and then turns evil for whatever reason is still capable of using their powers with evil intentions. Whether or not they would is irrelevant, what matters is that they are capable of doing so if their inclination exists.
Using a beneficial power with evil intentions in the manner in which the beneficial power is intended to be used (i.e. following the
natural and innate way White Magic works, as opposed to the
unnatural and perverted way that the Amdapori twisted it into) would still not result in using the power to
directly harm another person. You would have to actively pervert the power into a weapon, which isn't easy. What's more, 9 times out of 10, the "evil" guy usually thinks that he's either a) justified in what he's doing or b) isn't doing anything wrong at all. "Evil" people rarely see themselves as truly evil. They're doing it for their country, they're doing it for their people, they're doing it to save everyone else, they're doing it to save the planet, whatever. It's just, they think the ends justify the means.
But, I mean, this is really secondary to what I was saying in the first place.
If you want to be "evil" and do "evil bad things," there are several forbidden schools of magic to choose from that are both easier to use to that end and more fitting thematically. As Warren said, it just doesn't make any sense to me that you'd automatically pick the one school of magic that is both blatantly
good and the hardest to actually come by and go through the trouble of twisting it into a weapon that destroys the earth around you, but hey maybe it'll actually help you do
super evil bad things that you could do with, say, Void Magic - which is both easier to come by, lorewise, and already set up to bring about despair and pain.
Quote:Pretty much unrelated to my above points, but isn't this exactly the kind of thing we're talking about?
Is that not exactly what happened at the end of the Fifth Astral Era? White magic, an "inherently good and beneficial" magic, was used extensively for the sake of man's own gain. This own gain became greed and avarice. Then the Elementals retaliated by flooding the world.
Imagine if you're a white mage in the Fifth Astral Era, and you know your magic drains environmental aether, but you want to cure all of the world's diseases and ailments and rescue all the sick children with your power because you're a good person and that's a good intention. So you use your power. A lot. Unaware (or perhaps fully aware) of the harm it causes to the environment. Then the elementals flood the world and kill you and all of the innocents you were trying to preserve with your good intentions.
No. That's not what I'm talking about.
I'm talking about the fact that the Amdapori apparently hunted down any child born with a smidgen of Arcane ability and killed them. I'm talking about the fact that the Amdapori apparently tore people's souls out of their bodies and locked them into inanimate objects (though whether these were willing or unwilling sacrifices is entirely unclear). They didn't apparently allow dissent of any kind, even if that "dissent" was simply a child born with what amounts to a genetic quirk that made them predisposed to a magic Amdapor didn't like.
They knew best. That is the Tyranny of Good Intentions. The idea that somehow you know
better than those around you. That what you want is what people really
need. That it's
for their own good.
That is the true horror of White Magic when the people who wield it lose their humility and begin to believe that they really are
better and thus know what's best for everyone around them. If Mhachi was a Tyranny of Evil Intentions, then Amdapor apparently became the opposite - a Tyranny of Good Intentions, where you had no choice because
you just didn't understand. It isn't perverted magic used as a weapon. It's when perfectly good magic, clean magic, beneficial magic is used on someone against their consent. It's when the wielder stops seeing those around him or her as sentient beings with a right to their own beliefs, their own choices, etc , and
imposes his or her will upon them. It's when you sanction killing people for being born with a knack for a type of magic that is not, in and of itself, necessarily harmful (remember, Thaumaturgy came about when people needed things like
fires to ward off the cold and not get frostbite). It starts small, but can become a truly hideous thing. That's what I was talking about.
Quote:ANYWAY this is getting way off topic so I'll stop here, I just want to be sure we understand each other's points.
I get what you're saying, I just don't think you really understand where I'm coming from. Which is cool. "Good Intentions" is probably my favorite aspect of White Magic. Anyway, sorry for derailing the thread.
