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Natural 20 posted:“You can do it, then?” Elayne asked. “Kill women?” Lots of people say they support equality, I look at their actions. He rises high in an organization that tortures and executes women who are slightly too good at herbs. Galad is the platonic ideal of "how can I be a bad person when I think I am a good one?"
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Jan 2, 2022 00:42
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Jaxyon posted:Lots of people say they support equality, I look at their actions. Are you missing out the whole plotline where he wipes out a ton of the corrupted leadership and forces them to accept alliance with said witches? I think he might even dissolve the Questioners as a whole, or maybe just the leaders.
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Jan 2, 2022 00:45
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The whitecloaks existing is the problem. Just because Galad is personally doing his best to make it a fair organization, it still exists to enforce their own concept of purity on literally everyone.
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Jan 2, 2022 01:17
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Oh sure, but you can't say you judge someone on their actions then ignore them putting their life on the line multiple times to personally change things.
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Jan 2, 2022 01:18
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:Oh sure, but you can't say you judge someone on their actions then ignore them putting their life on the line multiple times to personally change things. They don't wipe out his action of "still being a whitecloak"
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Jan 2, 2022 01:19
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The aes sedai existing is the problem. Just because Moiraine is personally doing her best to make it a fair organization, it still exists to enforce their own concept of purity on literally everyone.
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Jan 2, 2022 01:28
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CainFortea posted:They don't wipe out his action of "still being a whitecloak"  oh well
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Jan 2, 2022 01:38
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Tezer posted:The aes sedai existing is the problem. Just because Moiraine is personally doing her best to make it a fair organization, it still exists to enforce their own concept of purity on literally everyone. I don't think this is really the own you think it is.
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Jan 2, 2022 02:02
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Also if anything the Aes Sedai are left in a worse situation at the end of the books where Cadsuane is going to be the Amyrillin Seat. Cadsuane is loving insufferable. Her plan with Rand hilariously backfired with Rand almost tipping over to the Shadow completely. Like she's a total gently caress up of extra proportion.
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Jan 2, 2022 02:31
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:Oh sure, but you can't say you judge someone on their actions then ignore them putting their life on the line multiple times to personally change things. You can, though. This is what I meant in my earlier post. The Whitecloaks are systemically bad. They're a fascist organization that exists solely to stab their version of the Light into other people. They cannot be fixed, from the inside or outside. They can only be dismantled. The only correct moral choice is to not be part of them. Galad is exactly like a "good" cop thinking they can change things while, at best, ignoring/justifying all the bad poo poo the organization does...and being complicit in it, at worst. There may be Whitecloaks who are otherwise good people, but there are no good Whitecloaks.
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Jan 2, 2022 02:58
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So what you're saying is that there are certain people who are completely irredeemable?
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Jan 2, 2022 03:13
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Comrade Blyatlov posted:So what you're saying is that there are certain people who are completely irredeemable? Not at all. He could easily redeem himself by not being a Whitecloak. "Whitecloak" is not something immutable. He could cast it aside at any time. I'm saying there's institutions and organizations that are irredeemable, and belonging to them is loving bad regardless of how much good poo poo you do otherwise. Look, I like Galad for the most part...but he actively aids and covers for an organization that tortures women to death for being good at saving lives. Same with Geofram Bornhald. He seemed like a mostly reasonable dude, but he was still a Whitecloak and AWAB.
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Jan 2, 2022 03:21
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Yea the Whitecloaks and the Seanchan are both bad guys that fight for the good guys.
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Jan 2, 2022 03:34
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Finished "The Shadow Rising" and I'm ashamed to say I'd completely forgotten that Rand gets Osmodian as a teacher. I remembered him trashing Rhuidean though. Lanfear's got that real Goku energy of powering up her enemy so she can have a better time.
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Jan 2, 2022 04:54
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Nitrousoxide posted:Finished "The Shadow Rising" and I'm ashamed to say I'd completely forgotten that Rand gets Osmodian as a teacher. I remembered him trashing Rhuidean though. Uhhhh does Goku ever power up an enemy to sleep with them?
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Jan 2, 2022 04:57
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silvergoose posted:Uhhhh does Goku ever power up an enemy to sleep with them? I mean he likes fighting more than sex so I'll stand by my analogy.
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Jan 2, 2022 04:59
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CainFortea posted:I don't think this is really the own you think it is. I should have said 'Egwene' instead of 'Moiraine'. Evaluated in a vacuum the morality of every institution in WOT is suspect by modern standards. Drawing a line below which all Whitecloaks fall seems arbitrary. Who has a bigger body count, Rand or Galad?
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Jan 2, 2022 05:27
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Tezer posted:I should have said 'Egwene' instead of 'Moiraine'. Lol legit trying to "BOTH SIDES BAD THO" cape for loving Whitecloaks. Yeah, Rand dropped a lot of bodies. But I don't remember him killing an entire village just so he could have a private conversation. When he does obliterate a shitload of innocents to kill Graendal, it's rightly viewed as an horrific act and everyone is appalled. For the Whitecloaks, that's just a normal Tuesday. The Whitecloaks line isn't arbitrary. They kill and torture innocent people for no better reason than because they can and cloak it in religious extremist nonsense. They bully, threaten, and otherwise coerce people into turning on their friends and loved ones. The Seanchan line also isn't arbitrary. The Masema line isn't arbitrary. No other faction in the series matches any of them for cruelty and fascism except the forces of the literal personification of evil. Imagine saying "I have an idea!" and "Yes, the KKK is bad and waged a decades long terror campaign wherein they murdered hundreds of people, but, like, we also killed a lot of enemy combatants in WW2 so who can really say where the line is?!?" was that idea.
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Jan 2, 2022 06:06
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Tezer posted:I should have said 'Egwene' instead of 'Moiraine'. You have missed the point.
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Jan 2, 2022 07:11
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Perrin commands the Whitecloaks near the end of the series. If simply belonging to the Whitecloaks is so bad, how bad is it to lead them? The Aes Sedai/Wise Ones made a deal with the Seanchan allowing them to enslave any Shaido Wise Ones they captured. If the Seanchan are so bad, what is the moral ruling on assisting them with their enslavement of channeling women? Is it ok to enslave bad women? Nearly all of the societies described in the series would be a nightmare to live in. Even the 'good' ones are still governed by heredity rule. The book draws a pretty clear good/bad line (not-dark friend/dark friend). Adding a layer so it is now not-dark friend/seanchan or whitecloak/darkfriend doesn't add much to my understanding. Might as well go all the way and make a tier list (steddings at the top I think).
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Jan 2, 2022 07:50
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Almost done wi th fires of heaven and my main impression from this book is -LOL Nynaeve, she's done nothing but getting into fights with other women the whole book. -I still feel sorry for her when Egwene bosses her around in the dreamworld though
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Jan 2, 2022 08:11
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Enslaving bad women leads to untold suffering but doing so ended the Perrin chasing Faile storyline so it's impossible to say if it's good or bad
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Jan 2, 2022 08:20
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Tezer posted:Perrin commands the Whitecloaks near the end of the series. If simply belonging to the Whitecloaks is so bad, how bad is it to lead them? Yes, that treaty is also bad. But it was necessary in the moment to prevent further war and the eventual complete conquest of the continent by the Seanchan. It's a distasteful stopgap. What the Whitecloaks do is not necessary, helps no one, prevents no deaths, prevents no harm. Hope that helps.
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Jan 2, 2022 08:58
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Devorum posted:Yes, that treaty is also bad. But it was necessary in the moment to prevent further war and the eventual complete conquest of the continent by the Seanchan. It's a distasteful stopgap. The Aiel are a set of clans which war between each other to the extent that they have codified rules for indentured servitude and the amount of looting that is acceptable. They are noted as regularly leaving the waste to raid settlements in the borderlands. Was the Aiel War necessary? Did it help anyone? Did it prevent deaths? Did it prevent harm? The Whitecloaks do bad things, probably more bad things than average. They are embedded in a world full of violence, the vast majority of this violence leading to the torturous death of nameless and faceless individuals that make the narrative possible for the protagonists. This violence is done by the 'bad bad guys' (Dark One and his allies), the 'bad good guys' (Whitecloaks, Seanchan), and also the 'good good guys' (Rand, Perrin, Matt, Egwene, and their allies). Treating the white cloak as a badge of dishonor while not extending that judgement to the Aes Sedai robes or the Aiel veil elides the sins described, allowing some murders to be ranked as necessary and others as unnecessary based on who commits them. Cavelcade posted:Enslaving bad women leads to untold suffering but doing so ended the Perrin chasing Faile storyline so it's impossible to say if it's good or bad Agreed.
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Jan 2, 2022 17:38
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His Divine Shadow posted:Almost done wi th fires of heaven and my main impression from this book is My first WoT book was Fires of Heaven, when I was like 12. It was the only book I read from the series for like 4 years after that. And I kept re-reading it too. Whoo boy ask me what i thought the series was about lol.
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Jan 2, 2022 18:03
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EDIT: Arguing with Whitecloak apologists is boring.
Devorum fucked around with this message at 18:18 on Jan 2, 2022 |
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Jan 2, 2022 18:05
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Devorum posted:EDIT: Arguing with Whitecloak apologists is boring. It's not someone being a Whitecloak apologist. Your metric is really weird. Galad joins the Whitecloaks but under his command, the Whitecloaks: Throw out the questioners who were the portion performing the vast number of horrible things. Openly ally with the women they'd been pursuing earlier in the books. And to top that off, his girlfriend has an Aes Sedai advisor who literally burns herself out to protect him. The Whitecloaks are bad organisation. Under his leadership they come out significantly better to the point that it's unlikely that they'd perpetuate the actions they performed in the third age in the fourth age. By the logic you present, a character like Egeanin/Leilwin is similarly unforgiveable because they seem themselves as a Seanchan citizen even though their express goal as that citizen is to work to stop the enslavement of Damane and help relationships with the Aes Sedai.
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Jan 2, 2022 18:46
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The whitecloaks as they existed in book one are all dead (Literally) as of book 13, so it's kinda a moot point. But also, kinda tellingly, the only way to really reform a group like that.
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Jan 2, 2022 18:54
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Natural 20 posted:It's not someone being a Whitecloak apologist. Your metric is really weird. No, it really is. Every single post from them on this subject is a whataboutism or false equivalency.
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Jan 2, 2022 19:09
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Ah yes, resource raids and political manipulation. Equally as bad as those things and also torture and murder. The Aiel and Aes Sedai are not particularly good and moral groups of people, by our standards. There's still a spectrum of hosed upededness. Which the whitecloaks almost fall off the bad side of. Shageletic posted:My first WoT book was Fires of Heaven, when I was like 12. It was the only book I read from the series for like 4 years after that. And I kept re-reading it too. What did you think the series was about?
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Jan 2, 2022 19:15
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Ego Trip posted:
I'm gonna guess it was about getting hard. Just rock hard all the time. And circuses
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Jan 2, 2022 19:24
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I too take my fictional morality very seriously.
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Jan 2, 2022 19:26
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Gwaihir posted:The whitecloaks as they existed in book one are all dead (Literally) as of book 13, so it's kinda a moot point. But also, kinda tellingly, the only way to really reform a group like that. The Whitecloaks are supposed to be ferreting out darkfriends. They ended up on the right side in the Last Battle, but after that.... Without a change in purpose I'm not sure any reforms would hold. If you've got an army tromping around, you're going to find some darkfriends to persecute. I can't remember if the organization survives the Last Battle, but if they didn't I agree that's probably the best outcome. Galad (does he survive?) isn't going to beat swords into plowshares.
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Jan 2, 2022 19:28
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MegaZeroX posted:I too take my fictional morality very seriously. That's good because otherwise reading a 14 book long morality tale would probably be pretty boring
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Jan 2, 2022 19:30
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Cavelcade posted:That's good because otherwise reading a 14 book long morality tale would probably be pretty boring I'm pretty sure the series had a couple of other things as well, like magic, character suffering and growing, fun worldbuilding, and battle sequences. But maybe I'm misremembering and I'm confusing it with the Groundwork of the Metaphysic of Morals, which is the fantasy one.
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Jan 2, 2022 19:41
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From a descriptive (in-universe) perspective, the Whitecloaks exist because of various structural failures in the Randland body politic. On the one hand, they're an indicator of how badly state capacity has declined. The rulers of various countries can't guarantee public safety, so the Whitecloaks can exploit that gap and provide protection to some peasants or merchants at the cost of preying on others. On the other hand, the Aes Sedai are basically immune to any external oversight because they have an apparent monopoly on channeling power, and their internal self-policing is garbage due to both their institutional egotism and the Black Ajah (and the Reds) deliberately undermining whatever mechanisms do exist. So the Whitecloaks are able to exploit that gap as well by offering some kind of response that isn't just "let the Aes Sedai do whatever they want with no accountability." I believe this is a deliberate situation that Jordan set up, and that the books show the other characters dealing with it. State capacity gets strengthened during the leadup to the Last Battle - Rand and Tuon both impose it by force wherever they go, and people like Elayne and Perrin act as magnets for a more voluntary form of strengthened organization. And the Aes Sedai also get better. In part this happens because they have external constraints forcing them to stop being assholes. Channelling moves from a unipolar system to a multipolar one, so they have to balance against the Seanchan/Wise Ones/Asha'man/Kin/whoever. They have to at least pretend not to be assholes, in the same way that the Cold War forced the US to get less obviously bad about civil rights. And then in an internal sense, Egwene comes in and cleans house, getting rid of the people in the Tower who were most dug in about being above the law. So the net effect of all of this is that the protagonists of the book are well on the way to fixing the structural problems that allowed the Whitecloaks to exist in the first place. And I think that's the moral statement that Jordan intended to make - if you have a situation like the Whitecloaks in real society, you have to address the structural problems that led to them existing in the first place.
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Jan 2, 2022 20:28
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RC Cola posted:I'm gonna guess it was about getting hard. Just rock hard all the time. And circuses lol not far off. it was a while ago but let me try to remember... I think I thought it was about ladies traveling the country and getting to trouble, while their friend is fighting sand wars with his family of ninjas. I thought one of the previous books had a sky battle like DBZ above Falme. I didn't know why Rand didn't like Moirane, who just seemed a lady down on her luck. I thought Mat was a fop, like he was nobility and friends with Rand. Oh yeah, I thought Perrin was a wolf.
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Jan 2, 2022 21:23
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Shageletic posted:lol not far off. it was a while ago but let me try to remember... mostly seems legit
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Jan 2, 2022 21:25
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Honestly that's pretty on target
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Jan 2, 2022 21:30
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Tezer posted:The Whitecloaks are supposed to be ferreting out darkfriends. They ended up on the right side in the Last Battle, but after that.... There is also the pretty glaring issue that the whitecloaks, the tower, and idk what other institutions you want to point to (the seanchan actually count here because of ishamael's influence on hawkwing) were literally lead or infested at the highest levels with sworn servants of the shadow. It's not like a fantasy inquisition would ever not be a bad organization, but in this case they're also on screen run by a dark friend, who explicitly committed most of the atrocities we are on screen in book 2. The tower too is literally 1/4 black ajah. Gwaihir fucked around with this message at 21:43 on Jan 2, 2022 |
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Jan 2, 2022 21:39
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