Oh, that's far too easy to answer: Define 'Dark spell'.
Go on; I'm waiting. And if you try to fob me off with the stereotypical "designed to cause injury or death blah blah blah" nonesense, I shall retroactively fail you for the past three years of my class.
Oh, Tosha. As if I care about passing your class. The one you enrolled me in against my wishes?
That 'stereotypical' definition, as you quaintly put it, is, it turns out, the only one worth using.
No doubt you would prefer to confine it narrowly, as 'one which can be applied empirically and solely to the property of the spell's effects upon the caster - that is, only those spells which the casting thereof may impact negatively upon the one who attempts to harness their power.'
Personally I don't much care what 'class' of spells you consider 'Dark' or 'Noble' so long as you abdicate any that don't adhere to our polite societal taboos. Swear never to cast with the intent to severely harm, kill or subjugate another living creature, and we can call an end.
Did you not stop to THINK there was a reason that volume was in a locked cabinet, behind a locked door, in a locked and warded box with seventeen individual layers of warding that had to be undone before one could get at it?
Justin, I say this to you speaking as plainly as I know how, bereft of any attempt to manipulate or deceive: I beg you, do not look to that book as anything other than a curiosity. You ought to know that I am willing to bear your death on my conscience; you may safely heed my words when I say that the results of using that book would be worse.
Find me one example of a time at which I have ever claimed they do not.
There is a reason that text is not used as anything other than historical reference, you idiot child, and there is a reason I spent so bloody long in class on teaching you what not to do with an unknown text.
I'm sure you're telling yourself that you know better than to use anything you find in that book, or in one of the others of mine that you've been 'triaging' or 'handling' or 'making safe' or any one of a thousand other euphemisms to conceal that what you are actually doing is plundering knowledge in search of power. I'm sure you're telling yourself that you're stronger than that. Better than that. More pure. More noble.
But I know you. Better, it seems, than you do yourself. All it will take is one moment of weakness. One moment of being overwhelmed. One moment with one of your targets in your sights -- me, or Bella, or Rowle, or one of the others. All it will take is one solitary stray thought of "I could do this, and it needs to be done, and I don't care what it will do to me to do it", and that will be the end of the matter.
And you won't stop. You never would have, and that is precisely why I came to realise it is my obligation to stop you -- you may go ahead and tell your wife that I have answered her question, by the way. Because yes, I made you. And I shouldn't have.
But your zealotry and conviction is going to lead you to overreach sooner or later. Almost certainly sooner. And when you do, you will wind up dead either way. A foregone conclusion.
So I regret to inform you, student of mine, that I have no desire to be anywhere near ground zero of your inevitable explosion -- and an explosion it will be. As I have no doubt you will take care of the matter for me, I do not need to be anywhere near your self-immolation when it happens; I shall take Ari's example instead. And perhaps recusing myself as temptation will point you at those others who are on my list.
If I may leave you one last word of advice: begin praying now that when you do overreach yourself, you are the only casualty that you care about.
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no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 08:28 pm (UTC)Go on; I'm waiting. And if you try to fob me off with the stereotypical "designed to cause injury or death blah blah blah" nonesense, I shall retroactively fail you for the past three years of my class.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:26 pm (UTC)That 'stereotypical' definition, as you quaintly put it, is, it turns out, the only one worth using.
No doubt you would prefer to confine it narrowly, as 'one which can be applied empirically and solely to the property of the spell's effects upon the caster - that is, only those spells which the casting thereof may impact negatively upon the one who attempts to harness their power.'
Personally I don't much care what 'class' of spells you consider 'Dark' or 'Noble' so long as you abdicate any that don't adhere to our polite societal taboos. Swear never to cast with the intent to severely harm, kill or subjugate another living creature, and we can call an end.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:29 pm (UTC)oh you idiot.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:29 pm (UTC)You've been reading De Rei Magiae?
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:30 pm (UTC)Did you not stop to THINK there was a reason that volume was in a locked cabinet, behind a locked door, in a locked and warded box with seventeen individual layers of warding that had to be undone before one could get at it?
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:32 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:37 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:42 pm (UTC)Good to know.
You were saying, about hypocrisy?
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:46 pm (UTC)There is a reason that text is not used as anything other than historical reference, you idiot child, and there is a reason I spent so bloody long in class on teaching you what not to do with an unknown text.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-29 03:11 am (UTC)I'm sure you're telling yourself that you know better than to use anything you find in that book, or in one of the others of mine that you've been 'triaging' or 'handling' or 'making safe' or any one of a thousand other euphemisms to conceal that what you are actually doing is plundering knowledge in search of power. I'm sure you're telling yourself that you're stronger than that. Better than that. More pure. More noble.
But I know you. Better, it seems, than you do yourself. All it will take is one moment of weakness. One moment of being overwhelmed. One moment with one of your targets in your sights -- me, or Bella, or Rowle, or one of the others. All it will take is one solitary stray thought of "I could do this, and it needs to be done, and I don't care what it will do to me to do it", and that will be the end of the matter.
And you won't stop. You never would have, and that is precisely why I came to realise it is my obligation to stop you -- you may go ahead and tell your wife that I have answered her question, by the way. Because yes, I made you. And I shouldn't have.
But your zealotry and conviction is going to lead you to overreach sooner or later. Almost certainly sooner. And when you do, you will wind up dead either way. A foregone conclusion.
So I regret to inform you, student of mine, that I have no desire to be anywhere near ground zero of your inevitable explosion -- and an explosion it will be. As I have no doubt you will take care of the matter for me, I do not need to be anywhere near your self-immolation when it happens; I shall take Ari's example instead. And perhaps recusing myself as temptation will point you at those others who are on my list.
If I may leave you one last word of advice: begin praying now that when you do overreach yourself, you are the only casualty that you care about.
no subject
Date: 2015-08-28 09:32 pm (UTC)You idiot.
Order Only
Date: 2015-08-28 09:33 pm (UTC)