On Tue, 22 Jun 2004, Mark A Mandel wrote: >On Mon, 21 Jun 2004, David Silberstein wrote: > >#And Yendis are kinda like evil Issola anyways - all the courtesy >#serving the multiple (very often nasty) surprises. > >Yendi aren't evil per se. They're just twisty. Was Pel evil? > What, you're going to make me clarify a pararectal, ad hoc, off-the-cuff, casual generalization? While Issola are *potentially* deceptive (that is, their courtesy might well be hiding a less that entirely benign inner motivation), Yendi are *actively* deceptive. Deception involves untruth, lying by omission or commission, and lying is more often evil than not (other than social lying - which is what Issola might do), especially when it is meant to manipulate. And while I would not accuse Pel directly of being evil, note that he is the most ambiguous of the four friends. In tPG, his manipulation to help bring attention to themselves nearly got people killed. His ambition caused him to sign on with an usurper, and worked against the plans of one who was dedicated to restore the true Empire (Sethra Lavode), and who knows what he might have done to Zerika if his friends had not in fact shown up? And while his motivation was friendship, he turned his back on his employer without a second glance. Pel has loyalty to his friends, but he is also fairly determined to serve his own ambition, and while ambition itself is not necessarily evil, it is all too often associated with ruthlessness, and ruthlessness is but a hairbreadth of conscience from being active cruelty, which is, I think, unambiguously evil.