[Well now there's an interesting point of view. The idea that magic doesn't change a person wasn't one David shared, mostly because he knew Loki and Billy. Though he supposed Loki changed Loki and Billy, for all that he was a god to be, stayed rather the same. He just changed everything around him. But did he change people? That's a whole philosophical debate he'd love to get into with Loki sometime. Or Stephen Strange. Still, he takes the point Balthier is making very seriously.]
So you see magic as like a prism. The way it can amplify is like light passing into the planes of glass. While it doesn't destroy the light, it does show us the constituent parts, and perhaps makes some of them a bit more obvious than others. Or maybe a lens is a better metaphor, in that it can enhance and magnify, and perhaps even leave us burned by the intensity of the focus it brings to bear. I've got to admit, that's a new take for me. Though the magic I've run into that I see change people tends to actually be soul magic, and it has a warping affect due to very specific properties of how it damages a soul.
[Fratricide. Some would call it a great sin. From what little he's learning of Balthier's father, he doesn't think it was that simple, or that easy. And David had known people who had done that before, accidentally or deliberately. And had forgiven it as well.
Still, by the end he's merely nodding and, having finished his cup of highly caffeinated tea, he sets the fine cup aside.]
Do you think I'd want to know you less for making a hard choice like that? Saving the world is a hard thing to do. Fighting someone else you love to do it is even harder. Feeling disappointed by, or like we are a source of disappointment for, our fathers isn't simple either. There are still fine details that matter in the grand scale of measurement of the good or ill of such actions. But please, allow me to be blunt, Balthier.
The day I met my best friend, he almost murdered another friend of ours as part of an attack by the anti-mutant group he had joined, not knowing he himself was a mutant. But I still love him. Hell, my con artist ex-boyfriend's subconscious once manifested and stabbed me in the back, leaving me paralyzed. What you did? You did to help someone, and helped the world in the process. Even while hurting you. You clearly don't revel in it. And that? That means that the only reason I'm getting out of this seat is to get us fresh cups of tea. Rose again? Or, would you perhaps be willing to take a recommendation from a strange source? Because my cup was very insistent that it quite likes the spiced orange tea here, and I think I want to consider it's suggestion.
no subject
So you see magic as like a prism. The way it can amplify is like light passing into the planes of glass. While it doesn't destroy the light, it does show us the constituent parts, and perhaps makes some of them a bit more obvious than others. Or maybe a lens is a better metaphor, in that it can enhance and magnify, and perhaps even leave us burned by the intensity of the focus it brings to bear. I've got to admit, that's a new take for me. Though the magic I've run into that I see change people tends to actually be soul magic, and it has a warping affect due to very specific properties of how it damages a soul.
[Fratricide. Some would call it a great sin. From what little he's learning of Balthier's father, he doesn't think it was that simple, or that easy. And David had known people who had done that before, accidentally or deliberately. And had forgiven it as well.
Still, by the end he's merely nodding and, having finished his cup of highly caffeinated tea, he sets the fine cup aside.]
Do you think I'd want to know you less for making a hard choice like that? Saving the world is a hard thing to do. Fighting someone else you love to do it is even harder. Feeling disappointed by, or like we are a source of disappointment for, our fathers isn't simple either. There are still fine details that matter in the grand scale of measurement of the good or ill of such actions. But please, allow me to be blunt, Balthier.
The day I met my best friend, he almost murdered another friend of ours as part of an attack by the anti-mutant group he had joined, not knowing he himself was a mutant. But I still love him. Hell, my con artist ex-boyfriend's subconscious once manifested and stabbed me in the back, leaving me paralyzed. What you did? You did to help someone, and helped the world in the process. Even while hurting you. You clearly don't revel in it. And that? That means that the only reason I'm getting out of this seat is to get us fresh cups of tea. Rose again? Or, would you perhaps be willing to take a recommendation from a strange source? Because my cup was very insistent that it quite likes the spiced orange tea here, and I think I want to consider it's suggestion.