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So I was partially right. Instead of killing anyone, they were all branded.
A most agreeable punishment I do say. And it earned him the respect of the cats! Let's just hope that reputation doesn't spread to bad and color the impressions of other nations.
powerful, dreadful maybe?
Such hot, much sexy, wow.
6118255 The typo claims he has a valid passport. We sent an officer with him to be sure.
this may sound off but I found this a vary tender chapter with so much love.
Celestia and Silver are only protecting there selves and all the pony's in the long run.
Silver playing dom over Celestia that was a bit of a surprise but I think it will be for the good of the herd / all of the herd.
Aila most defiantly likes to be dominated and summiting in the end, ware can I find a mare like that?
a super good chapter but that dam bracelet is still around his Jules it needs to go, or he needs to find a way to control it after all it can help story massive amounts of magic that is needed to quicken the princess.
Harts Fire
6118429 Glory to Arstotzka!
6118472 one of the reasons I prefer "might makes right" in this case. You f'd mine up? I'll f your up tenfold. Not a good political decision but quite a good personal one imo.
Shouldn't that be "as an alicorn, not as a stallion" instead?
Those who had desired "Silver's" pain or death.
Don't capitalize "the" in the sentence.
There are two spaces between "him" and "around."
6118650 The operative part of what you said is "not a good political decision." This is something I'm going to go on about quite a bit when I write up my review.
6118990 Typos reported for acts of terrorism.
Betrayals add up
Seek relief from the pressure
Cry as the shards cut
☺♥♀♀♀♀♂♀♀♀♀♀♥☺
Probably okay, but would it not be better to say sought?
My inner grammar Nazi rears its ugly head.
6119315 Tweaked.
6119063 Before anything else, I need to make a disclaimer: when I critique stories, I primarily do so with regards to how things are playing out within the context of the tale. That is to say, I'm remarking on the characters and events themselves, rather than talking about the story as a whole. Disliking a particular character, for example, doesn't mean that I think that his inclusion is bringing the quality of the story down (unless I say that out-and-out). That's the case here, mostly, and should be taken as such (save for one part where I do critique the story itself on a meta level).
With that said...I'm honestly horrified at what Silver and Celestia did here, not because of any disapproval over the nature of the actions unto themselves, but because of the utter disregard for the consequences they've displayed. The scope of just how stupid this was is so large that I'm honestly struggling to try and catalogue all of the different ways that this was a bad idea. And believe me, there are many.
Let's leave aside all of the possible repercussions I outlined in my review of the previous chapter, and instead focus on the most politically-impactful aspect of this ill-considered scheme: people died as a result of it. This is in marked contrast to what Silver said in the previous chapter about how "best of all, no one dies" with regards to this spell. He quite clearly got that wrong. Is there any circumstance where this would be considered just, or otherwise acceptable? Even in Equestria, Celestia and Luna at least go through the motions of having a criminal justice system, for no other reason that to let everypony know why they're punishing someone. This was just an instance of magical signs showing up and accusing seemingly-random cats of murder, and then having them be attacked by spectral ponies, with bloody (and sometimes fatal) results.
Oh, and lest we overlook a minor detail, Silver's spell calling its targets "murderer" is also technically wrong, since they haven't actually killed anyone in the course of this story. Unless this is in reference to Amenti's late father (which is a considerable stretch), nobody has actually died in the course of this fic, the sole exception being the assassin that Celestia slew. So the only visible explanation/accusation for why this happened - which is all that most cats will know - is going to be immediately disproven, simply because there's no body to produce in order to back up the "murderer" charge.
Of course, it might not make a difference either way, because this spell was quite clearly hideously imprecise in whom it targeted. Silver noted that he set it to "only those who desired him pain or death," so as to "avoid those who just thought he deserved a kick in the flank." Okay, except that that doesn't mean that the targets actually did anything! It's entirely possible that there are cats out there who vehemently hate Silver - which, we can reasonably conclude, would lead them to imagine him being in pain or dying - without that having manifested as them having done anything. All you need for that to be true is a significant prejudice, or intense partisanship, against ponies in general, or Equestria in particular.
This spell would have targeted cats who were attracted to Silver and were intensely into sado-masochistic fantasies (e.g. a feline version of Carrot Plate). It would have targeted down-on-their-luck cats who hated Silver because they thought he represented the worst of the smug, rich, elitist ponies from a smug, rich, elitist country (remember that falchion-wielding cat in the alley?). It would have targeted kittens that were raised by feline-supremacists and kept up with the current news about a visiting pony prince - all of a sudden this becomes a lot less fun when there are dead children involved, doesn't it Silver?
That's to say nothing of the fact that these dead cats will have family and friends who will mourn their deaths and who will not let this go. There's going to be a call for justice, and at least some cats who will never forgive Silver for this. That's usually why we - and Equestria - doesn't hold revenge to be a virtue; it tends to escalate a conflict, rather than ending it. Plus, I doubt the survivors - guilty or not - will let this go very easily. In the short-term they may be scared off, but anyone who receives a beating tends to get over the fear with time, even as they internalize the hatred and humiliation and, in many cases, start to work on getting revenge of their own.
There's also the fact that Silver and Celestia seem to be looking at this spell as an absolute; that is, that it was perfectly effective in its targeting. That overlooks the fact that the cats have their own spellcasting subset of the population (e.g. the nekomata). While this is a spell cast by two alicorns, the vast majority of its power was (to my mind) used in spreading it over such a large area, and giving it such a complex mixture of effects (e.g. mind-reading to determine guilt + fireworks show + conjuring spectral ponies + draining the targets' magic and sending it to Silver + branding them). That means that any nekomata with countermagic at their fingertips (or rather, their tails) would likely have been able to dispel or disrupt this spell when it reached them, or some cat near them (presuming they weren't in some sort of warded area, or had a protective magic item, etc.).
Even the "traitor" brand that this put on the targets doesn't make sense, at least technically. In order to be a traitor, you need to be working against a group that you're ostensibly a part of. The cats that were targeting Silver were never a part of his retinue or his nation to begin with, so they weren't committing treachery, strictly speaking. I suppose one could make the argument that they were traitors to Amenti's government, but that's a dicey proposition, since it gets into the nuanced question of who they were working for and how much authority that individual had. Either way, it's certainly not for a foreign prince to decide who is and is not a traitor to Anugypt.
Moreover, let's not forget Celestia's public statement, which was a half-witted move if ever there was one. I say "half-witted" because it was half of a good idea; namely, that Celestia maintain plausible deniability so that she not be implicated in any fallout. That's all well and good, but by stating publicly that she didn't know of or approve Silver's actions, she's giving herself far less room to maneuver (where protecting Silver is concerned) should there be any negative consequences from this. By disavowing any knowledge of what Silver did, she'll have a much harder time sticking up for him should Amenti's government want a pound of flesh in return. After all, her statement implied disapproval, so then why wouldn't she want justice to be done?
But apparently that's not a concern...because now we come to my real complaint with this chapter: the public reaction to Silver's spell.
If you had been in my house when I got to that part of the story, you would have heard a loud cry of "BULLSHIT!" That was me, yelling at the screen, as my suspension of disbelief was completely broken by the passages on how the cats of Catro reacted to Silver's attack on their neighbors. Simply put, I found that impossible to swallow. He assaults the people of the city, and their reaction is to collectively get horny for him? What the fuck is up with that?!
Seriously, forget what you know about Silver specifically for a moment, and try to imagine what this would have been like for your average cat on the street. You're minding your own business, vaguely aware of some visiting foreign officials, when suddenly you see an image of one of those officials and the word "murderer" over the head of some random cat down the street. Then, those spectral images fall upon that cat, biting and tearing at him as he screams. Assuming you haven't run away in terror by this point, you might even notice a symbol being branded on their head...all clearly the work of this foreign wizard-prince.
That's it. That's what you know. You don't know anything about the cat who was attacked, and there's certainly nothing to say that they were actually a murder (or a traitor, if you recognized that symbol). Is your reaction to that to think to yourself 'wow, he's my wet dream come true. I have to meet him!' or is it to think that he's some sort of dangerous lunatic, and that those poor cats did something to piss him off?
But hey, apparently it's the former. Seriously, I can't get over how utterly backward that reaction is! It's like the Joker showing up in Gotham and leaving a trail of bodies in his wake, in reply to which the people decide to throw him a parade and give him the key to the city!
Can you imagine how this would have gone over if some visiting royalty had pulled this stunt in Equestria? Imagine if somepony - Applejack, let's say - heard that a visiting griffon prince had attacked several ponies among the Canterlot nobles, even killing a few. Can you picture her hearing about that and sending him a basket of apples and a letter that says "Dear Sexy Foreign Murderer, I heard that you bumped off some of the muckety-mucks up in Canterlot. I never liked them anyway. How about dinner and a show sometime? XOXOXO. -Applejack."
Yes, power can be sexy, and so can danger. But random acts of violence - and that's what this was, since there's no context to make sense of Silver's charges of murder and treachery - are not arousing! If I were to try and repair my suspension of disbelief, I'd imagine that these letters were from people who had an axe to grind against some cat that Silver happened to target, from misfits who were looking to amplify their "rebel" imagine by throwing in with some sort of crazed terrorist, genuine dissidents or power-parasites who wanted to attach themselves to Silver's status purely for personal gain, or just plain lunatics.
Of course, even if they weren't cats that Silver wanted to get to know personally, that doesn't make it any less ironic that this was still a good chance to get his stud on (he can apparently breed any female of any race, we presume now) which he overlooked in favor of playing with two mares who are already pregnant (most likely, in Shei's case) and can't currently be impregnated (e.g. Celestia). (And just to keep throwing stuff out there, if Silver can now drain magic remotely via those spectral ponies, then I'd bet that that connection can be exploited in the other direction, if he ever tries that trick again - I say that because that's a major ability, both in terms of being able to take someone else's magic for his own, and because he can do it at a distance, and so be removed from reprisal. Together, those border on being overpowered...though I suppose some of that is inevitable, given his alicorn status.)
Plus, you know, all of that political fallout that I outlined in the previous chapter.
So overall, I wasn't a fan of this chapter. It felt self-indulgent in the extreme, to the point of the consequences of Silver's actions being wildly counterintuitive for no plausible reason. Politics is a game that is 99% nuance, since its misapplication has the power to cause strife in your community...which at Silver's level is the entire world. This action of his eschewed that entirely, and it was not something that should be so blatantly rewarded.
While the spell itself was cool, and kinda plausible, I'm not entirely convinced the resultant reaction would have happened. 6119420 does have some very valid points, but I'm not of the impression that you're going for hyper realism anyway, or even realism for that manner (perhaps Alzrius hasn't read the other prequels?)
Anyways, much fun was had, looking forward to finally leaving this city.
Keep going! ;)
6119420 I feel it was more of a show of power.
Screw with us and we will destroy you type...
It happend A LOT in history.
6120350 "Realism" is a very loaded term. There's a difference between "realism" as "meant to mimic the conventions (usually but not always in terms of physics) of the real world," and "realism" as "maintaining internal logic and consistency with itself." I don't care very much for the former, but the latter is very important, to my mind.
And if you want to know if I've read the prequels or not, maybe you should look in the comments there.
6120375 It was obviously a show of power. That those happened a lot throughout history doesn't in any way mean that they're a good idea, at least when done so blatantly and without concern for what the response would be (which is also a lesson of history).
6121009 When they show "dez Powerz", it usually mean they think they are obviously stronger and can take on others if it come to that.
It might not be a good idea all the time, but it does work from time to time.
6121060 That largely depends on how you make a show of force; if you're making a display that's arresting but not punitive, and if you make your parameters clear, then it might be abided by (though that's a gross simplification).
This, however, wasn't that. This was a massive assault on various people - some of whom died - with no wider explanation to help it make sense to the rest of the population. You can't ride into a town, hurt and kill its citizens, toss out a quick notice of "they deserved it, they were murderers and traitors," and then expect that everything will be all fine and dandy.
At best, Silver might have scared the local population into submission for the immediate future. But even if he does, that will rapidly fade away, while the anger and hurt and humiliation remain.
This won't be seen as the act of some fearsome being who must be left alone - he came to their country, after all - it will be seen as bullying (if not terrorism), and I can't imagine the country letting it go, especially with regards to future dealings with Equestria.
It's things like this that start militant/terror groups (the "Meowslim Brotherhood" perhaps?) - when they feel that they're being oppressed and have nothing left to lose by lashing out. Even if they don't lash out at Silver specifically, they will take it out on somepony - Equestrian citizens probably, or even ponies from other countries. Someone is going to pay for Silver's brazen attack, even if it's not him.
Violence begets violence; that's why it's not the answer.
6121009 I'm not going to start a comment war, but suffice it to say we stopped expecting consistency when every other chapter Silver was in and out of love and married/not married, and changing species/gender every two to four months.
Granted, a lot of that stuff has calmed down, but when he's still callously brushing off Twilight to Celestia for Celestia's sake, you have to wonder if those spurts of assertiveness are just for show and question his sincerity with all this. You don't just drop someone you've been furiously courting just because someone else mentions they love them too. Maybe that's part of Silver's psychosis, but even you have to admit it's a hard sell...
6121112 Violence begets violence, yet, those who hide behind the mask of peace when the time comes are no better than the evil that has caused violence.
also, many of the population fond of the show of power so that is a close call...
6121292
No, "we" didn't. You might have, but personal foibles are not in any way an indictment against internal logic and consistency insofar as the nature of the setting - including the macro-reactions of a populace whose mentality highly approximates humans living in the twenty-first century Western world - is concerned.
I don't disagree that Silver has problems, but I take his foibles to be good things in terms of generating narrative drama. I'd be bored of the story by now if he stopped making boneheaded decisions and instead always acted with perfect consideration for everypony around him. Silver's problem is that his first reaction to any situation is to try and please everybody; in that regard, he's been very consistent.
...which is all divorced from the questions of political and social fallout from his attacking citizens of a foreign country while in the guise of a Prince of Equestria.
6121296
This isn't a very helpful statement, since you don't define what "the time" is. Presumably you mean some point when violence is no longer avoidable, and one must take up arms in self-defense. That's a fair point, if an arguable one (e.g. nonviolent resistance), but doesn't apply in these circumstances either way; even if Silver tried to say that his actions were in the defense of himself and his loved ones, that's going to be a very hard sell, since they were not in imminent danger, and since he targeted a large population so imprecisely.
Likewise, I disagree with your stance that those who "hide behind the mask of peace" are as "evil" as those who cause violence. By that reasoning, conscientious objectors are no better than murderers and traitors, which is not a stance I'm comfortable with.
If you mean in terms of the immediate reaction to Silver's display, then yes they were. However, that's the part of the story that broke my suspension of disbelief - I find it hard to believe that a city would celebrate its citizens being attacked by a foreign power, even if they were "bad people."
Now, that doesn't change that that did happen within the context of the story, to which all I can say is that events are still unfolding...
6121335 "Hide behind the mask of peace" is something like this: (Sorry, I'm not a philosopher so I can't exactly put much of my though into words)
Oh, look! They are killing us, toturing our love ones, let's not do anything, it is against our moral code. We must be better than them.
Oh, look! They are hunting us down. Let's all run and never fight back, that is not our way.
Oh, look! That lady is being beaten to death. Let's "stand aside" and "watch". It's too violent to "interfere".
Oh, it is WRONG for you to defend for yourselves against attackers.
Killing is wrong, especially when the killer who is chasing us is stucking on the floor waving a chainsaw around. Throw that gun away.
The goverment is opressing us! Don't do anything, they are the authorities, the good guy. Even when they are killing us when we disagree with some aspects of theirs..
Batman (the closer to the mordern day and the mordern day one). (Too many were killed because he doesn't want to end a few certain badguys permenantly despite they repeatly committing crimes. Crimes that killed people at that)
Oh, Those two are shooting kids in school. Let them go.
Oh, these guys are evil...Let them go and hope they will change despite numerous times proving otherwise.
White knight.
Lawful good (or lawful stupid as many like to call them)
Something like that.
6121335 oh no, I did it again didn't I? I didn't mean "we" as in "you and I", it's more like "most of me".
I can see what you mean, he has been very consistent in that regard now that we think about it.
....
Not we as in you and I! Darned censor filters, one day I'll fix them......
I think one possibility is that those who liked what Silver did were vocal about it, particularly in his direction, while those who disliked it kept their mouths shut, or at least didn't write letters to the one they disliked. Silver may well have a terribly unbalanced view of the reactions.
This is especially when you consider that the cats are, well, cats. They are neither pony nor human in their instincts and mindset. David has only gone so far in showing us, so far, exactly what that mindset is. But from what we've seen it's not surprising that those who oppose Silver to express that opposition through secretive means: conspiracy, assassination attempts, etc. This may not be every cats' MO, but it is certainly common enough among them. It doesn't surprise me that none of the cats decided to write Silver an unfriendly letter, nor publically protest him.
One interesting question is, how will the Anugyptians see the branded ones? Presumably, the branded ones are all enemies of Amenti: that's the presumption that makes the brand make sense, though it's far from universally true in either direction. So will Amenti seek to make outcasts of them? Will others do so on Amenti's behalf, regardless of what she says? No cat knows the targeting criteria that went into the spell, only that they were clearly judged by the Equestrians as being 'traitors', not by the Anugyptians. If the Anugyptians do take the mark seriously, and accept its validity, the marked cats may be facing a future of being ostracized, and pushed toward either poverty and shame or being type-cast into criminal roles (whether they had them already or not). So Silver may have just cemented their future as an anti-regime force.
And if the cats don't take the marks at 'face value', then what was even the point?
6121384 You've conflated many, many different ideas together into a single - rather unwieldy, in my regard - viewpoint. Let's try and break these down.
This can necessitate armed defense, but your example here is imprecise enough that it's iffy. Presuming that this is something less than an organized campaign of genocide, then it's entirely possible that an organized nonviolent response can change things for the better (e.g. the civil rights movement).
I really don't think that you can reasonably indict people who are fleeing for their lives when they're being "hunted down." This sounds like you're blaming them for choosing to run for their lives, rather than stay and quite possibly die in the fighting. Choosing to withdraw from a conflict - presuming that you're not abandoning any particular duty of care that you have to others in the process - doesn't strike me as being particularly immoral.
While this sounds like a black-and-white issue, I don't think that this is quite as clear-cut as you make it out to be. While we hold it to be a moral imperative to help those that are injured or in the process of being victimized, we don't necessarily hold that to be true if doing so would expose you - or others - to a high degree of harm. If a single person is vastly outnumbered and outgunned by a larger group that's intent on committing murder, then you're not required to attack them in defense of their victim, since it's reasonable to expect that you'd succeed only in getting yourself killed.
Again, this is more nuanced than you're making it out to be. The legal requirement for killing an attacker in self-defense, to use a fairly extreme example, requires that you have exhausted all of your options to reasonably withdraw from the conflict first (though there are often exceptions for if you're in your home...and, lately, exceptions for if you're "standing your ground" in a public area where you have a right to be). Simply saying "they attacked me" does not make any reaction you have necessarily justified or reasonable unto itself; there are other factors at play.
Unless you or someone around you is in imminent danger of death, then yes, killing is wrong (there are possible exceptions however; see below). Mentioning that exception does not undermine the more general point.
This is far, far more debatable than anything you've posted yet. Governments enforce laws, and laws by their very nature are oppressive, since they prohibit (or, more rarely, require) certain actions - that doesn't mean that such "oppression" is unjust or unlawful. We have governments for the sole purpose of being the guardian of their societies, and so we imbue them with the power to regulate their societies in such a fashion. That power, like all power, can certainly be misused, but that doesn't mean that any application of it is necessarily immoral.
Even when the government extends into the area of taking lives, that doesn't necessarily make it wrong. Execution - the legal act of a government leveling the death penalty against someone for crimes committed - is a power that has long been reserved for government functions (though it's also been debated throughout history; that debate largely centers around whether or not this functions as one of the exceptions (e.g. euthanasia) to the aforementioned rule that it's wrong to kill outside of self-defense).
I'm not sure if you're saying that Batman's personal prohibition on killing is a good thing or a bad thing, but either way I don't think that he's a very good example, simply because the narrative usually tends to be constructed so as to support the idea that he's right to proactively commit violence without taking human lives.
You've overlooked the very large middle ground between "(lethal) violence in response" and "let them go." That's especially true if the purported shooters are children themselves, whom we recognize lack the same abilities as adults to fully appreciate (not anticipate; appreciate) the consequences of their actions.
And who has the moral authority to declare that someone else is "evil," let alone divine with absolute certainty that they won't change their ways? This sort of moral judgment and authoritarianism strikes me as far more dangerous - on a macro-scale - than any individual criminal.
You've pushed a very large number of ideas under the same umbrella, here. Moreover, most of these seem to lack any particular nuance as to the specifics of the situations you've outlined, which suggests that you're intuiting these responses more than actually considering them and questioning how you came to these conclusions.
You don't have to be a philosopher to put more thought into your words.
6121518 Sigh...You didn't get what I was saying at all...This conversation is done. I don't have the ability to fully express my opinion.
6121555 I answered your point as best as I was able. I'm presuming that you think that violence is a moral right - if not moral imperative - if you're being "attacked" in any particular manner, something I disagree with.
6121609 My moral is rather grey.
And the color that supposely represent me is black. (i don't really care much about what that site said but i will just put that there)
Though, pointless violence isn't exactly my thing.
If it get violent, I want it to have some meaning in it.
6121654 I'm not sure anyone characterizes their own violence as "pointless" - people's own actions always makes sense to them, after all. Rather, the more germane question (to me) is whether the point being served by becoming violent is one that's justified, which is a much larger question (and one that extends beyond the personal definition of the perpetrator).
Awesome revenge.
parts
Sun Princess
queen is technically the correct word for female cat…but might cause some confusion.
weigh anchor
I enjoyed this part.