#imaginaryprisons

[arrenkae]

imaginaryprisons replied to your post “Okay guys here’s a thing I need more practice with quick sketchy…”

Safiya looking focused, please XD

[ravel-puzzlewell]

let me introduce myself ask: 17, 18, 19

17. A fact about my life - I suck at it, someone give me a competent lets play

18. Phobia - hm. I’m afraid of the heights in a weird way, like my subconscious deep down is really sure that if i step off a cliff I’ll just fly, like it’s a deep ingrained confidence, normal and casual thing like riding a bicycle, and all of my preservation instincts just go crazy like “there’s no bicycle, no, get out of here, don’t temp this asshole who thinks we can fly” 

19. Middle name - don’t have one:D

[ravel-puzzlewell]

hmm are you shipping Siara with anyone? haven't had enough of her in ask memes :)

i actually lowkey ship her in Kana/Siara/Hiravias OT3 which is kinda rare for me, bc i’m snob for dynamics compatibility in the ships, but i kinda really like it here :D  

[ravel-puzzlewell]

Character ask meme: 11, 32 and 33 for Ari

11:Who are the five most important people in the world to your OC?

my first reaction was - haha, what, she doesn’t have 5 important people in her life. Okay, let’s see: Gann, Daeghun, Safiya… Sand probably. Okku.

32:Which of the seven sins (lust, greed, gluttony, sloth, pride, envy, wrath) is your OC most guilty of?

Pride.

33:Which of the seven virtues (chastity, charity, diligence, humility, kindness, patience, justice) does your OC most embody?

Is chastity really all that virtuous? Eh… probably charity.

[ravel-puzzlewell]

I promised this post long ago, so here we go - Intelligence vs. Wisdom. Actually, more of Wisdom exploration, but we’ll get to that.

As an illustration I want to bring up a sequence from Mask of the Betrayer, so minor spoilers here. The protagonist and Safiya, Intelligence-based wizard, wind up in a city, and it’s being sieged by an army of spirits, led by one of many local spirit-deities. The old god asks for the protagonist to be given to him and he doesn’t harm anyone else. People in the city refuse to battle the spirit army to protect the foreigner and give them right to gather up resources and take some time, but eventually deal with the spirits by themselves.

Safyia calls locals “ignorant” and claims that they’re refusing to help just out of fear, so she’s condescending to them. But she doesn’t realize one simple thing - spirits are integral part of this land and culture. They are not monsters to be feared and battled, they have agency and connection with locals. Some of them can be helpful, some of them are to be avoided, but ultimately they are essential part of Rashemen’s life. So imagine, if two shady foreigners appeared at your doorstep (one of them is from Evil Wizards Academy), claiming their supposed innocence, would you fight an army of a god-protector of your own land? It’s not ignorance, it’s a specific cultural view, grounded in reality and practical, but Safiya can’t see it, because her mentality is based on Intelligence of wizards - and wizards do not ask world to cooperate, they bend it as they please, crushing any resistance. She’s sure that only her worldview is right, because it’s logical for her, and she makes rationalizations without  considering context here.

To counter her view, there’s Gann -  Gann doesn’t worship spirits, far from it - he taunts a spirit god in his face all the time. But he respects them as powerful beings with agency and he knows that they are not be dismissed. Safiya advises to focus on killing the old god - because it’s a rational choice, logically if the leader dies, his army will have no motivation to keep fighting. Gann advises to fight an army first and only attack the god when an army is weakened - because he has context and he knows that the god takes energy from his army and is literally invisible while an army is at full strength. It might seem that Gann gets this understanding just due being local and knowing how things work here - but lately, in Safiya’s home Academy, it’s him who negotiates a discount with the devils and even gets a job offer - even though he never even knew about their existence before. He doesn’t have knowledge of them, but Wisdom allows figuring out context, the core of how things work in every particular case without having any actual intel.     

Intelligence will try to measure - learn what’s the best way to get what you want. Wisdom will attempt to understand, to see a point of view of the opponent and source of it’s strengths and weaknesses. Wisdom will not necessarily *agree*, but it allows to get a context and perspective. Intelligence is the path of conquest, and Wisdom is a path of understanding.

And that’s one of the main differences between Intelligence and Wisdom when it comes to social interactions - Wisdom is aimed at cooperation, Intelligence - at extraction, at getting what you want without consideration for others.

But it doesn’t mean that high Wisdom automatically means “good” and “ethical”. Understanding might be used to selfish and malicious goals and to exploit these insights into person’s psychology, like, for example, Kreia does.

There are two types of manipulators - blunt and strategic. Blunt manipulators go for one-time goal without considering how it’ll damage the relationship with a person they’re manipulating. For a popular example, see House from “House M.D” - high Intelligence and no Wisdom. Strategic manipulators do care about saving their relationships, they know how to make people do what they want and still keep their image good. It’s Dumbledore from “Harry Potter” - high Wisdom and high Intelligence. More on Dumbledore in this post - http://hp-essays.livejournal.com/6158.html

so high Wisdom is not a guarantee of an ethical person. What matters is for what it’s used. Let’s see on examples of Kaelyn, Gann, Dak’kon, Fall-from-Grace and Kreia.

[ravel-puzzlewell]

character ask meme: Gann, Safiya, Kaelyn the Dove, Okku.

Gann: like:

1.FREEDOM. I know I use it all over the place, but it’s one of the main cornerstones of my identity and what I identify with characters often

2. prefer to interact with people in a controlled (by me) environment  

3. WOULD BURN THE RUDE WITCHES’ COVEN FOR MY PARENTS

unlike:

1.Gann reads people so much better, as in: Gann is great at reading people and I can’t catch a social clue to save my life

2 I don’t have self-esteem problems, as in: I’m more more calmer about my narcissism

3 Again, I respect other people’s boundaries to the point of paranoia

Safiya:like:

1 ANALYZE EVERYTHING

2 getting invested in “technology”, you can’t imagine how protective I’d be over an actual golem\homunculus

3 we’re both super smart and pretty :3

unlike:

1 hairstyles

2 Safiya can get blindly ignorant in her belief of her “logical” and “rational” point of view being superior. I was writing about it in a Wisdom vs Intelligence post that I can’t get to finishing with an example of her reacting to Rashemen’s beliefs

3 I’m much more exuberant

Kaelyn: like:

1.I do completely agree with her on “Down with the Wall”

2. We’re both pretty oblivious to social hints

3. My relatives also always try to mingle in my life choices

unlike:

1 oh my god Kaelyn you can’t just psychoanalyze people if they don’t ask you to, get some tact. it’s another thing i wanted to write in that Int vs Wis post - how differently wisdom works for dif characters, bc for Kaelyn it’s Wisdom without empathy

2 its like literally impossible for me to be a zealot, esp idolize someone to that degree

3 Who names their clique after zoo?

Okku: like:

1. I wear rainbows a lot

2. I’m fiercely loyal to my friends

3. I love sleeping for long periods of time and if someone wakes me up, I start crashing shit

unlike:

1 I’m not a grumpy granda

2 I’m totes not in tune with the nature

3 I’m not a god:(

[ravel-puzzlewell]

Dishonored James Bond AU just got 200 times better: Her Majesty’s Secret Service is now Her Majesty herself.

[sunderlorn]

meridok replied to your post “imaginaryprisons replied to your post “I don’t know if I’m feeling...”

SAME tbh. i feel u very much imaginaryprisons. *shakes fist at atlantic ocean*

Ughghgh. Fuck yes. When we transcend space-time, or figure out how to teleport while maintaining continuation of selfhood and consciousness between origin and destination, or how to transfer consciousness between strategically placed clone bodies, you’re invited to the party.

You’re all invited to the party. Except the Atlantic Ocean and The Recently Surmounted Limitations of Existence on the Physical Plane. Because fuck those guys, I mean really.