On Apr 8, 2005 12:54 AM, eric c <ecannelora at yahoo.com> wrote: > hi guys. this is my first "post" so I hope I'm doing > it right. > > anyway, what I've been wondering about is why people > like Aliera and Morrolan and Sethra choose to be > Vlad's friend. Sometimes Morrolan will give Vlad a > "look of disgust" and sometimes it seems like Aliera > can't see past the fact that he's an Easterner. Yet > when Vlad gets in a jamb, they are there to help him. > It's like the friendship is all about duty with > nothing about affection for a friend. When you say "Morrolan" and "look of disgust," the thing that comes to mind is when Vlad jokes about having killed <spoiler> in Issola, which I think is a pretty good excuse for looking disgusted. (Wait, that was Aliera who looked disgusted.) Look at Morrolan's relationship with Aliera--I don't think either of them really likes gushy, feel-good relationships. I think they both value competence, and aside from Vlad having saved their respective lives a couple of times (yes, they've saved his at least as often, but they probably discount that), he's their peer as a dangerous man, and it's nice to have peers. Does it really seem like Aliera gets hung up on him being an Easterner? Vlad makes a comment at the beginning of Issola about Morrolan not disliking Easterners as much as you'd expect, and Aliera not disliking Vlad personally as much as you'd expect--but I rarely see Aliera herself bringing up the matter of Vlad's species. (And Vlad's comments about likes and dislikes can probably be discounted as being part of his narrative voice.) <minor spoiler-by-inference for Phoenix> "I'll miss you," says Aliera in Phoenix. "Probably somewhere with Dragaerans, so I can go back to hating them in general and loving them in particular," says Vlad. I don't think either of them is really comfortable with this level of emotional openness. He talks about a room in Morrolan's castle where much wine has flowed, with many promises of aid and threats of dismemberment, often within minutes of each other. Sounds very Morrolan-&-Aliera-ish to me. Plus, rescuing Vlad is _fun_ and usually means killing something. Max Wilson -- I die! I mis-remember my friend's telephone number and dial into a hydroelectric dam's power line, electrocuting myself. My roommates mistake my flailing spasms for sign language, coincidentally describing a delicious recipe for fried tungsten with petroleum jelly. They try the recipe. All die! O, the embarassment.