2019-2-17 - [DMFA #1970] - I got all the cootie shots

[GreenReaper]

My point wasn't intended to be personal - it's that I don't think it's a coincidence that the two dragons are agreeing that Cyra is evil. Or that two cubi have the opposite view; one subtly slipping in aspersion of Hizell, the other casting Cyra's actions as "noble and justifiable". 

We all have an innate bias towards our species. Ultimately, who we are colours our opinions - and not just because we associate with a particular side, or share a culture seeped in racist propaganda, or because we're under constant threat of being killed on our father's orders (though those are big factors) - but because we have shared experiences and physical realities associated with the simple fact of who we are. It's not the only factor, but it is a factor.

To Dan's credit, he didn't try to excuse Cyra's actions upon finding out what she did. But then, he spent most of his life up to that point not knowing (and then initially denying) or experiencing that he was a cubi to start with, so perhaps it's not surprising that he started as an exception to the rule.

I suspect, though, he's just young, and in time (and he'll have a lot of time, if not killed) he'll tend towards the average cubi perspective. Already, he's looking to forgive her.

[MT Hazard]

Already, he's looking to forgive her.

That might be something to do with fact she's his grandmother, not that she's cubi.

[Ixal]

My point wasn't intended to be personal - it's that I don't think it's a coincidence that the two dragons are agreeing that Cyra is evil. Or that two cubi have the opposite view; one subtly slipping in aspersion of Hizell, the other casting Cyra's actions as "noble and justifiable". 

I still prefer it that you do not look up my username on the net and bring up whatever you think you found into a discussion about a webcomic. For me thats making it personal.

[GreenReaper]

That might be something to do with fact she's his grandmother, not that she's cubi.

Could well be. Like I said, not the only factor.

At the end of the day, it looks like she regrets her actions, but it's plausibly still due to the unanticipated consequences. By doing something big and noble right now with the power she gained, perhaps she can make the deaths of those she killed by accident worthwhile.

And I'd be fine with that. I don't think every killing is murder - after all, most of the dragons don't seem to see it that way. Even when it is considered murder, most beings seem to be able to live with accepting blood money, albeit under duress. And if we want to go there, M'Chek was negligent in not fully considering the impact of his death; perhaps moreso than Cyra, who failed to find out something that he'd gone to some effort to keep secret. (Though, who can say if she'd have actually been a good replacement?)

The moral of the story seems to be that with great power comes great danger of irresponsibility and unintentional consequences. But also that anyone taking that power is liable to get burned as well. Might be best for everyone to stop trying to change the world - but of course that wouldn't work so well as a comic.

[YBlu]

Let's take a break from this discussion about the nature of evil and marvel at the gorgeous art in this strip, especially those lighting effects.

Yeah, I love the lighting, especially in panel 2, and also the shattering letters effect in the last panel, though I think Amber has done that before.
(Side note: I wonder how many more pages are there gonna be til the next scene change, I mean, as much as enjoy reading this story line and everyone's comments about it, it's a lot to take in, and I kinda wonder what some of the others are up to)

[Galis]

I would say, GreenReaper, that M'chec's own crimes are actually not relevant to Cyra's motivations for killing him, because she was unaware of them.  She says straight out she believed him to be the city's guardian.  Now, that's hardly a negative connotation, even if we don't know exactly what she meant.

I agree every killing isn't murder, but it's not the victim that makes it murder or not, it's the reason you kill them.  Self defense is the easy example to come to.  But conversely, killing a random passerby because you just feel like taking a life is murder, even if said random passerby ends up to themselves, through later investigation, turn out also to be a serial killer.

She would have killed M'chec even if he was a saint, is the point, so what does that say about what kind of person she was then?  What kind of person she is now depends on what she's learned from the experiences beyond just grief, and how that changes what she would do then or might do later.

[HaDDea]

Hm... I suppose its the nature and relationship between life, souls and magic that would ultimately shed light best on this discussion (not that I expect it right now, it just seems that it would provide the best insight, and I do expect we'll learn more before the end). Something has made ascending to Tri-wing status increasingly soul-dependent (vs. other potential sources; the latest tri-wings have all ascended due to the absorption of another Creature's soul). Something about absorbing soul energy extends one's life, and based on Zezzuva's and Cyra's statements, it is likely many (all?) powerful dragons have been using Soul harvest to extend their lives for millennia at this point. Amber has also hinted that there is a price for using this energy.

I guess the questions would be: Had Cyra explored other options for Ascension? What led her to choose M'Chek as her intended victim (was it just power/convenience, or was there more to it than that)? What role have the dragon race (including M'Chek) played in the increased difficulty of ascension, and is it related to their soul harvesting? What are the repercussions for absorbing all that soul energy for the dragons? for all races? for magical energy on Furrae?

Cyra was indeed cruel for choosing to destroy M'Chek in order to further her plans - she has acknowledged this herself. But there seems to be something about Hishaan's underground crystal focus setup that... well, horrifies Cyra. Something that seems to indicate that if she had known about it, she might have looked for another option or even canceled her plans outright. She is horrified that M'Chek ate her father's soul, and then eulogized him. Why? In a world of "might makes right" that makes little sense. In a world where death means the soul energy is just free and available for the taking, this makes little sense. There is something of a taboo about souls in Furrae, and I think once we have a clearer idea of why that is we might have an idea of the gravity of the situation that led to the Glassing of Hishaan and the Dragon-Cubi War.

[GreenReaper]

I agree every killing isn't murder, but it's not the victim that makes it murder or not, it's the reason you kill them.  Self defense is the easy example to come to.  But conversely, killing a random passerby because you just feel like taking a life is murder...

Says who? Definitions like "murder" only make sense within a system of laws. Those making them can easily define murder as only applying to one group or another ("It's not murder if it's a Cubi..."; "Beings are just a way of keeping score..."), or set differing justifications and punishments - or even things like "nobles have the right to trial by combat" that make a mockery of the process when they're up against a commoner.

How 'fair' the laws are depends on the goals of those making and enforcing them. And if you overturn the fount of justice, such definitions no longer apply. Justice without power is empty - and the King can do no wrong.

Case in point: if Cyra had achieved her goal, who would have tried her for murder? Trick question, since she did, and there was no court to try her. You could call the subsequent slaughter of her clan justice, of a sort... but it has more of the trappings of warfare between sovereign states ("a just war" - which, as always, means whatever the state prosecuting it decides).

If things hadn't gone wrong with the crystals, it presumably wouldn't have been considered murder in any way that mattered - except by the dragons, of course - since Cyra would have been running things; a Tri-Wing is close enough to a living god to her subjects as makes no difference. Like all absolute monarchs, gods in their domain are a law unto themselves. If they slip up, it's up to them to punish themselves, too - if they choose. Or someone like Mab, who's on a whole other level, and has likewise chosen to restrict themselves.

[ArkCelosar]

If I may be allowed to say something?

I think the issue is we don't know exactly why Cyra is so regretful and sad. Is she sad because of all the people who died? OR is she just sad because her direct family was killed.

Because if it's the latter, while it is reason enough to be sad, it's also rather self-centered because it basically means we're supposed to care about her pain and her pain only. I mean, I get that this is a "dog eat dog" world where death is a rather constant thing, but the story is still ultimately trying to create drama that appeals to an audience that does not live in such a horrible world.

When a person kills constantly, but then suddenly their own loved ones are threatened or killed, then I don't think it's right to sympathize with them because that just makes them hypocrites. It's basically stating that death only matters if it affects them.

Basically, if Cyra's family wasn't in the city when the entire incident went down, would she still be just as regretful and sad? Or would all the other civilians that died not even matter to her in her quest for power?

[GreenReaper]

The whole point of the forum is to have a venue to talk about the comic, so I think you're in the right place. 😼

It's possible to read DMFA and even empathise with a character's plight without actually sympathising (or agreeing) with their world-view - either the one that they had, or the one they appear to have now.

In other words: maybe it's OK to feel sorry for Cyra, even if it's tinged with "7000 years and you still don't quite get it". I see her as a tragic figure, an object lesson for Dan - not a perfect role-model.

At the same time, projecting our world's values on them isn't necessarily going to work, and adopting them could be actively harmful for many characters. Plus it wouldn't be as fun to imagine running around as a Cubi if they conformed to our societal expectations.

Furrae has races/species of real personal power - it's not the same as here where a powerful person requires the support of others to stay in power. At most, they need to not be opposed by other powers, but the lesser beings are left to suffer the fallout of any battles.

Those with great power are also disproportionately represented in the comic, in part because their actions can have great consequences. But that doesn't make them great people. They're flawed, and power just magnifies the flaws (and, in Cyra's case at least, her body).

Of course, part of the fun of fantasy is that the world doesn't have to be or end up the way they "should" here. "Evil" can triumph - at least some of the time - and indeed it may be held up as good and virtuous by certain characters. And some readers might agree; after all having children and the power to protect them is so vitally important. Those who didn't share this worldview may well have died out, at least among Cubi.

Would it be OK to apply this philosophy to the real world if you like it? Probably not, unless you manage to bring back a Creature's powers as well.

[ArkCelosar]

The problem with that mindset is it just leads to what TvTropes refer to as "Darkness Induced Audience Apathy".

Put simply, if every character is a selfish asshole, or there's so much assholery going around that anything a good character does accomplish nothing, then why should we as audience care at all as to what happens?

The worst-case scenario is if every character were to suddenly drop dead, audience members would just shrug and just go "meh" because either this kind of death is just expected, or the characters are so horrible that you'd prefer that outcome.

I mean, if that logic is true, then we should've also supported Aniz in his killings and abuse of Abel, because "that's just how things are". Or we should support Dark Pegasus because he's got a ton of power and evil as hell.

My point is, if evil is the norm for this world, then why do we want to support Daniel? Either Daniel is being set up to ultimately fail and his entire adventure was pointless, or we should support him and things that are evil should be stopped.

[Merlin]

My point wasn't intended to be personal - it's that I don't think it's a coincidence that the two dragons are agreeing that Cyra is evil. Or that two cubi have the opposite view; one subtly slipping in aspersion of Hizell, the other casting Cyra's actions as "noble and justifiable". 

I still prefer it that you do not look up my username on the net and bring up whatever you think you found into a discussion about a webcomic. For me thats making it personal.

Word, that's kinda creepy

[Galis]

Says who? Definitions like "murder" only make sense within a system of laws. Those making them can easily define murder as only applying to one group or another ("It's not murder if it's a Cubi..."; "Beings are just a way of keeping score..."), or set differing justifications and punishments - or even things like "nobles have the right to trial by combat" that make a mockery of the process when they're up against a commoner.

We're just going to be heavily, heavily disagreeing there then I think if you think it's okay to kill someone for reasons like that.  I don't think you do though, I think you're trying to say Cyra might believe that sort of thing - but that's the point.  Believing those things is a motivation, but not an excuse.  I wasn't using murder in the legal sense of murder one, murder two, capital murder etc - though such things all have roots in our moral systems, but in the notion of "wrongful killing".  Your comparisons to monarchy show the same thing either - the king can get away with wrongful killing because he has made it legal but it doesn't make it just or right.  The legal status of an action is independent of its moral status and its the moral status we're talking here.  The king's motivation is he can do it and get away with it, and the legal follows, but that doesn't make it moral for him to do so even if he believes it is.

This notion of wrongful killing is pretty shared amongst all human cultures, and as I mentioned earlier, moral relativism allows some leeway on some kinds of acts - I might believe it is moral to work a certain day of the week and another person is not - but on areas when we talk about inflicting harm to another being, in this case, killing for the sake of personal wealth and power - there's not nearly so much room to hem and haw about whether it's okay to kill your neighbor and take his house for your own because you like it better or not.  Good and bad are just constructs, but they are our constructs and that's how we judge things, and by any of our morality systems, past-Cyra was a very evil person then, regardless of how the laws of her own land or species would have judged her.  If we try to take the approach of saying "Well to her that wasn't immoral" - it's almost never immoral in the perpetrator's mind to do what they did, so if that's how we approach things we're basically saying we ourselves have no moral values at all.

I don't think anyone's saying she has to end up one way or the other.  There's a couple different ways this story arc could go.  The most likely is she is remorseful for participating in the entire system, and thus has grown out of that previous life.  Or this could be getting set up as a bit of a gut-punch for Dan, who has similar moral frameworks to the readers, to realize Cyra may still be more alien to him than he thought she was.  Or somewhere where she maybe hasn't fully realized yet; her arc may not be over and he might be a necessary part of her further growth.  But I don't think it's out of the comic's realm to be considering different degrees of morality; it does it all the time, with characters taking different lessons and growth away and most of the primary viewpoint characters having very "Good" qualities in general, despite some flaws, just like most "hero protagonists" tend to.  That killing for gain is considered so "normal" in this world is something many of the viewpoint characters are finding to be a bad thing about the world, in one way or another, after all, and are not accepting.

[Alondro]

Hmm, usually at this point in a similarly-themed MLP fanfic I decide the world is FUBAR and send in Hyper God-Mode Alondro to vaporize the entire universe.   

[Titanium Dragon]

My point wasn't intended to be personal - it's that I don't think it's a coincidence that the two dragons are agreeing that Cyra is evil.

Of course. Everyone knows dragons are better at everything, including morality.

Though more seriously it has nothing to do with imaginary species and more to do with Cyra's motivations at the time.

Whether or not Cyra remains a bad person is harder to tell, but she seems to regret what she did and admitted it was malicious the first time she talked to Dan about it.

[PhycoKrusk]

I'm still not totally convinced that what happened was because M'chek didn't account for what would happen if he died, and not because it was an intentional failure mechanism that Cyra accidentally interfered with: All we know is that when he died, the network tried to feed his soul back into him (possibly to revive himself?), but that it went to Cyra instead, which started a power cascade.

[Ixal]

I'm still not totally convinced that what happened was because M'chek didn't account for what would happen if he died, and not because it was an intentional failure mechanism that Cyra accidentally interfered with: All we know is that when he died, the network tried to feed his soul back into him (possibly to revive himself?), but that it went to Cyra instead, which started a power cascade.

Good point. Even if it wasn't intentional it does sound like this feedback loop only happening because Cyra absorbed part of M'Cheks soul and thus the machine could send M'Chek to "M'Chek" and thus overwhelming Cyras ability to absorb it.