- Joined
- Mar 14, 2021
While I agree that the "good" characters in Dragonlance are morons I will defend the test.
The point when you're willing to kill your own sibling because they turn out to be better at the one thing you're good at is still an absolutely monstrous thing to do. While you can empathise with Raistlin and understand his reaction it was still wrong and pushing people to their moment of deepest despair is how you can truly know their character. He managed through the rest of it but identifying that weak spot and kicking it as hard as they can to see how he'll react was a perfect way of confirming what sort of person Raistlin was, a selfish dick who only coped with life by clinging onto his one achievement. As soon as someone came to take that away he flipped the fuck out and committed fratricide.
When the test is filtering people by good, evil and neutral dropping people in neutral requires pushing them as far as possible to understand at what point they are willing to commit heinous acts. For that unless I am misremembering they shoved him into into the neutral end of things, which for someone willing to re-enact Cain and Abel when pushed too far is actually a fairly nuanced take on the matter. Had they dropped him right into team evil for that I'd be mocking it too.
That said the inevitability vision was a weird fix. I think the authors probably intended it to teach him that, however envious he might be of other people for their strength, agility, charisma, wealth and so on, their fates were all the same. Death, one way or another. I think an argument might also be made that, because of the settings beloved "balance" matter that the only way he could be helped was with a curse, as sitting him down with a stable and well adjusted member of the good aligned wizards would probably get the evil tower of sorcery lot whining about it being unfair. It's still silly.
The point when you're willing to kill your own sibling because they turn out to be better at the one thing you're good at is still an absolutely monstrous thing to do. While you can empathise with Raistlin and understand his reaction it was still wrong and pushing people to their moment of deepest despair is how you can truly know their character. He managed through the rest of it but identifying that weak spot and kicking it as hard as they can to see how he'll react was a perfect way of confirming what sort of person Raistlin was, a selfish dick who only coped with life by clinging onto his one achievement. As soon as someone came to take that away he flipped the fuck out and committed fratricide.
When the test is filtering people by good, evil and neutral dropping people in neutral requires pushing them as far as possible to understand at what point they are willing to commit heinous acts. For that unless I am misremembering they shoved him into into the neutral end of things, which for someone willing to re-enact Cain and Abel when pushed too far is actually a fairly nuanced take on the matter. Had they dropped him right into team evil for that I'd be mocking it too.
That said the inevitability vision was a weird fix. I think the authors probably intended it to teach him that, however envious he might be of other people for their strength, agility, charisma, wealth and so on, their fates were all the same. Death, one way or another. I think an argument might also be made that, because of the settings beloved "balance" matter that the only way he could be helped was with a curse, as sitting him down with a stable and well adjusted member of the good aligned wizards would probably get the evil tower of sorcery lot whining about it being unfair. It's still silly.
