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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert

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Originally posted by sno4wy

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Originally posted by Wooly Rupert
So the good drow living in this utopian city kidnap people for coming too close? Do they wipe their memories, too, involuntarily, or imprison the people forever?

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Basically, yeah. Jarlaxle, Catti-brie, Zaknafein and Entreri wander too close and they're met with armed guards from Callidae, whom escort them to be questioned and then put under watch. They're not allowed to leave without getting their memories of the place wiped.

Visitors are allowed to stay if they're deemed non-malicious, but anyone who wants to leave gets their memories wiped. Non-cooperative people are imprisoned, and those deemed malicious are executed via exposure to the arctic conditions (or kicked off a cliff). The four protags were actually subject to this after they accidentally brought in the chaos phage, those goodly utopian drow were very quick to go from "welcome guests" to "any last words?"

The involuntary nature of the memory erasure is heavily romanticized with how wonderful Callidae is -- it's so great that all who pass through would willingly give up their memories to protect it.

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Wow, so they were going to be executed for bringing something into a place they themselves were involuntarily brought to?

...I have no words for this.

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Originally posted by Irennan

Yeah, especially considering that this chaos phage can supposedly be healed by a mere "cure disease". These aevendrow guys are said to be able to summon food at will through magic, which is a spell of similar level to "cure disease". This means that curing that disease should be a walk in the park to them.

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Originally posted by Cards77

Two things:

1) RA Salvatore writing about dark elves is beating a dead horse that's been dead for 20 years......of course it's boring. He's been doing the same trick for 20 years.

2) His highly touted "fight scenes" are just a bunch of word salad. I never did get it.

There are so SO many great authors out there who don't get nearly the credit they deserve for their characters and story development.

I'm looking squarely at Richard Baker.

Compare and contrast The Last Mythal trilogy vs....well anything else.

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Originally posted by Dalor Darden

Moral Licensing often is group inclusive. A group can do well as a whole (even if only to their own group) and then is able to justify bad things (even to outsiders).

This city-state has continued to do good for their own sake (one helping another) that they likely don't see any action they take to preserve their "Goodness" as bad.

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Originally posted by sno4wy

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Originally posted by Cards77

Two things:
1) RA Salvatore writing about dark elves is beating a dead horse that's been dead for 20 years......of course it's boring. He's been doing the same trick for 20 years.
2) His highly touted "fight scenes" are just a bunch of word salad. I never did get it.
There are so SO many great authors out there who don't get nearly the credit they deserve for their characters and story development.
I'm looking squarely at Richard Baker.
Compare and contrast The Last Mythal trilogy vs....well anything else.

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"Word salad" I LOVE IT. May I borrow this descriptor for Bob's combat scenes?
Agreed about Richard Baker, although my personal favorite is a different trilogy of his. Still, really happy to see the mention!

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Originally posted by sleyvas

So they just happened in, got the chaos phage, and showed up right as "the power's out" .... and that's why they're going to use "the power" to mind rape them and send them away? I mean if they have magic to "mind rape", they should have power to cure disease. Admittedly, I didn't read the book, and I'm basing this on what I'm being told, but something sounds hinky with this explanation. Maybe its divine magic that's affected by the Autumn Equinox and not arcane?

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Originally posted by Irennan

Yes, that's an important observation, actually. They are able to effortlessly resolve famines and plagues, yet they choose to not do anything. Like, if my understanding is correct, it would cost literally nothing to them. They can summon infinite food (top tier quality, all the flavors you want at that!), which means they can also likely cure illnesses at will (since the power/energy required is roughly the same). They could *teach* this creation magic to others (btw, what kind of magic do they use?), even upon compensation (though they have no use for compensation or resources of any kind, since they have all they need). They could streamline it, produce tomes/manuals and send them everywhere, and make all he world a perfect utopia. This too would cost them little to nothing--if they have all the resources they need, then they have unlimited free time to write those manuals too. However, they choose to do nothing about this and just hide under some glacier, and for whatever reason the story ignores this and labels them as "good" (I'm also willing to bet that RAS sings their praises throghout the book).

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Originally posted by sno4wy
[...]how soft and gentle she looks and it's like, how tf is anyone supposed to get that impression from the description? But yeah, lots of stuff like that, all the time.

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Originally posted by sno4wy

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Originally posted by sleyvas

So they just happened in, got the chaos phage, and showed up right as "the power's out" .... and that's why they're going to use "the power" to mind rape them and send them away? I mean if they have magic to "mind rape", they should have power to cure disease. Admittedly, I didn't read the book, and I'm basing this on what I'm being told, but something sounds hinky with this explanation. Maybe its divine magic that's affected by the Autumn Equinox and not arcane?

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That's not quite how it goes, but it's on me for not laying out the plot. In my defense though, the sequence of "this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened" is less exciting than some grocery lists that I've read.

Alrighty, so, the four protags were trudging around at the top of the world trying to figure out where Doum'wielle went two years ago after being thrown up there by Gromph. There's an avalanche, Entreri and Catti-brie get injured, the four find a cave to rest in. Zak explores the depths of the cave and finds an egg hatchery tended to by a frost giant. Frost giant didn't like having an intruder and fought with Zak, Zak gets injured and returns to where the others are. They're approached by a drow who's actually a blue slaad in disguise, more fighting ensues, Zak gets infected with chaos phage, they kill the slaad and gtfo from the cave.

Then, more wandering around, eventually finding Callidae. The aevendrow interrogated them and wanted to know literally everything that happened to them since they showed up in the north, they left out the detail about the slaad cave because the slaad's drow disguise spoke in the same dialect that the aevendrow did.

Zak's chaos phage is exposed when he was wrestling with an aevendrow in a vat of frozen grapes because that's apparently part of their wine-making process (they actually like having blood in the wine). The four protags were then seized by these good drow who jumped right to the assumption that they intentionally deceived them, all the while the protags had no idea what they did wrong as they're being exposed to the elements with their warm clothes preemptively stripped away. Charming, right?

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Originally posted by sleyvas
If they want blood in their wine, I'm now wondering if their overly good representation isn't closer to what I'm talking about (as in they're actually being represented as hypocrites with a moral problem whose focus is only on themselves).

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Originally posted by Irennan

On a related note, erasing memories might sound as not so much to some people, but it's huge. It's the same as erasing a person, or at least a part of that person. Our brains are associative, a huge part of what we think, feel--on a sensorial and emotional level--comes from association with memories. This process is so fast that the impressions related to memory come before our conscious thinking can kick in (and is one of the reasons behind A LOT of people's problems). Memories are very important to our identity, because they are key to the narrative that the brain creates of ourselves, and they massively influence the way we interact with the world (which is why character filter in narrative is so important--it makes the characters feel real). From many recent neuroscience studies, we know that memories are so important to our identity that, when an event doesn't conform to the idea that we have of ourselves at a given time (which also comes from previous experiences and memories), the brain alters the memories of the new event (or even creates events and stuff that didn't actually happen) to make them align with the perception that we have of ourself at the time. Basically, for something to become part of our personal memories, it has to align itself with the idea that we have of ourselves at the time.

It takes a lot of efforts to perceive things objectively (actually, as objectively as we can), and it takes a lot of actively being aware that our brains work like this to overcome all the problems that come from it (like certain kinds of bias and prejudice, or the fact that first impressions are hard to overcome, and that a lot of people don't even try to change them). Trying to forcefully alter someone's memories is however a violence on a deeper level than some would think.

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Originally posted by Irennan

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Originally posted by sleyvas
If they want blood in their wine, I'm now wondering if their overly good representation isn't closer to what I'm talking about (as in they're actually being represented as hypocrites with a moral problem whose focus is only on themselves).

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Why would liking blood in wine hint at any of that, though? It's just flavor stuff, and it's harmless. As I said, yeah, the hypocrisy would be an interesting narrative to explore, but the problem comes when the story doesn't show any of that. When, as sno4wy pointed out, the story romaticizes the erasure of memory, by saying that people are willing to have their memories erased because they want to protect Callidae so badly, then the story is condoning the aevendrow. Maybe this will change in future books, but for now we have a story that wants to have its cake and eat it too (by offering a "oh so perfect" society that does bad stuff, while ignoring that such bad stuff is, well, bad, and instead trying to paint it as ok).

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On a related note, erasing memories might sound as not so much to some people, but it's huge. It's the same as erasing a person, or at least a part of that person. Our brains are associative, a huge part of what we think, feel--on a sensorial and emotional level--comes from association with memories. This process is so fast that the impressions related to memory come before our conscious thinking can kick in (and is one of the reasons behind A LOT of people's problems). Memories are very important to our identity, because they are key to the narrative that the brain creates of ourselves, and they massively influence the way we interact with the world (which is why character filter in narrative is so important--it makes the characters feel real). From many recent neuroscience studies, we know that memories are so important to our identity that, when an event doesn't conform to the idea that we have of ourselves at a given time (which also comes from previous experiences and memories), the brain alters the memories of the new event (or even creates events and stuff that didn't actually happen) to make them align with the perception that we have of ourself at the time. Basically, for something to become part of our personal memories, it has to align itself with the idea that we have of ourselves at the time.

It takes a lot of efforts to perceive things objectively (actually, as objectively as we can), and it takes a lot of actively being aware that our brains work like this to overcome all the problems that come from it (like certain kinds of bias and prejudice, or the fact that first impressions are hard to overcome, and that a lot of people don't even try to change them). Trying to forcefully alter someone's memories is however a violence on a deeper level than some would think.

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On an unrelated note, I wonder why they don't just conjure wine like they do with everything else. Is it just because they like the wrestling on grapes thingy?

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Originally posted by sleyvas


On the blood in the wine thing... it CAN depend on the representation. But for them to specifically call this out in the novels makes me think that the point was to "point out something". Drinking blood is something that has long been thought of as evil (i.e. vampires).... and now my mind as a result of typing this just went somewhere I didn't expect.... or at least somewhat barbaric. What would be interesting to note would be "whose blood"... is it the blood of animals who have been slaughtered for food (wait, they make their food with magic, no)? Is it the blood of their own people or their enemies? Is there secretly a group of vampires living amongst them that like living in the far frozen north because its dark for long periods?

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Originally posted by Irennan
On an unrelated note, I wonder why they don't just conjure wine like they do with everything else. Is it just because they like the wrestling on grapes thingy?

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Originally posted by Irennan

@Wooly
Yep, since human brains are associative, memories of traumas are one of the biggest factors in shaping a brain's "control theory" (a model it creates about how to control your environment, which is a huge part of people's identity).
Even though the example that you made is an interesting situation, and we see a removal of memories leading to a more assertive person, the original identity effectively disappeared. In this case the result was a "more efficient" person, but she could have become that even without giving up her memories. Basically, the erasure of memories made her skip the act of processing the trauma. I'm not saying that this would be a bad thing or a good thing in reality, btw. If that was actually possible for us, it should obviously remain a choice/option for people who suffer from trauma: for some people it could be a good thing, for some other a bad thing, but what's lost in this process should always be made clear to the person (also because this has practical downsides along with the upsides, especially in traumas due to abuse).

For example, in the case of this story, maybe the protagonist would have still become as a more assertive person if her memories had remained and she had processed her trauma, but her experiences could have reinforced her compassion and empathy towards others, and given her a different perspective on her power (using it only for dire needs, for example, because possessing people is a violence. Also, imposing herself limits on what to influence of aperson's life, etc...). Heightened compassion and empathy would have been the result of the part of her identity that the memory erasure sacrificed. Just making assumptions here, to explain what I mean.

About the story itself, IMO, it would have been more interesting if she had chosen to lose her memories, and we were shown the consequences of that choice--both positive and eventually negative--and she had to deal with all that. The choice should have been tied to the fatal flaw of the protagonist, which would have made all the consequences meaningful, rather than having the memory loss happen to her (which is my impression of what happened, from your description). But perhaps the focus of the story wasn't the loss of memory, and that was just a device to get the protag going for the 'real' plot (though in that case I'm left wondering why the author chose to even include the loss of memory and the processing of trauma if they weren't relevant to the core of the story--it would have been better to just start with an assertive character who possessed that power, give her a fatal flaw, and focus on the point of the story).

Basically, from a narrative perspective, if something like memory loss to overcome trauma is included, it's important to the story, so it shouldn't just "happen to" the protagonist. It should be a choice (or at least the reuslt of previous choices), and the character should face all the consequences (if she chooses to lose memory and all goes well, then that's not much of a story). The processing of a trauma also shouldn't stop being relevant all of sudden, including stuff like that in your story means that it's related to the central theme of the story (or that it actually is the central theme itself). Then again, maybe the story actually kept exploring the topic and did things right, after all the only part that I know is the one related to the memory loss itself.

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Originally posted by Irennan

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Originally posted by sleyvas


On the blood in the wine thing... it CAN depend on the representation. But for them to specifically call this out in the novels makes me think that the point was to "point out something". Drinking blood is something that has long been thought of as evil (i.e. vampires).... and now my mind as a result of typing this just went somewhere I didn't expect.... or at least somewhat barbaric. What would be interesting to note would be "whose blood"... is it the blood of animals who have been slaughtered for food (wait, they make their food with magic, no)? Is it the blood of their own people or their enemies? Is there secretly a group of vampires living amongst them that like living in the far frozen north because its dark for long periods?

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From my understanding of sno4wy's explanation, they have gladiatorial fights in vats filled with grapes, so that the juice is squeezed out (a bit like in the past farmers would "dance" on the grapes to squeeze out the juice--rather 'eww' if you ask me, but yeah....), and at the same time some blood (from the cuts) goes into the juice. However, the fighters don't die, and the wounds are probably healed up like they're nothing afterwards, so there's no harm in this. Slaughtering animals, for example, would have indeed been interesting, and it would have pointed at something given that they can just conjure food, but this is actually harmless.

Idk, it just sounds like some edgy addition to me, given the context. Something like "they're so good and kind, but they still have this 'feral' instinct that they satisfy with harmless gladiatorial combats and blood-flavored wine", a bit like Drizzt and his hunter thingy. Don't get me wrong, channeling dark sides of your personality into constructive or harmless things is actually a worthy topic to explore, but unless it's actually explored throghout the whole story, it's just tacked on for the edge/shock factor ("omg, they drink blood??!1?? So edgy, and dark, and dangerous, and cool, and...")

As for the memory erasure, I pointed it out because if the story had actually tried to tell us something, that would have been golden material to do so. Instead, we see it condoned, which is very telling of what the author was trying to do.

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Originally posted by Irennan

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Originally posted by sleyvas


On the blood in the wine thing... it CAN depend on the representation. But for them to specifically call this out in the novels makes me think that the point was to "point out something". Drinking blood is something that has long been thought of as evil (i.e. vampires).... and now my mind as a result of typing this just went somewhere I didn't expect.... or at least somewhat barbaric. What would be interesting to note would be "whose blood"... is it the blood of animals who have been slaughtered for food (wait, they make their food with magic, no)? Is it the blood of their own people or their enemies? Is there secretly a group of vampires living amongst them that like living in the far frozen north because its dark for long periods?

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From my understanding of sno4wy's explanation, they have gladiatorial fights in vats filled with grapes, so that the juice is squeezed out (a bit like in the past farmers would "dance" on the grapes to squeeze out the juice--rather 'eww' if you ask me, but yeah....), and at the same time some blood (from the cuts) goes into the juice. However, the fighters don't die, and the wounds are probably healed up like they're nothing afterwards, so there's no harm in this. Slaughtering animals, for example, would have indeed been interesting, and it would have pointed at something given that they can just conjure food, but this is actually harmless.

Idk, it just sounds like some edgy addition to me, given the context. Something like "they're so good and kind, but they still have this 'feral' instinct that they satisfy with harmless gladiatorial combats and blood-flavored wine", a bit like Drizzt and his hunter thingy. Don't get me wrong, channeling dark sides of your personality into constructive or harmless things is actually a worthy topic to explore, but unless it's actually explored throghout the whole story, it's just tacked on for the edge/shock factor ("omg, they drink blood??!1?? So edgy, and dark, and dangerous, and cool, and...")

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