overanalyzing a childrens book hypothetical question

Hello welcome back to the blog that has nothing to do with chess!!! I had a year of being sidetracked with relevant content, but I have recently come to terms with myself and it is much more enjoyable to talk about:

wings of fire!!!!

A book series that I used to read adamantly, so much in fact that I joined a chess.com club on it when I found the club side of chess.com. Anyways I have been following a 15-post thread for 3 years in said club with the title:

"If you had animus powers, what spell would you cast first?"

Now for non-readers, some context: some dragons in the WOF world are born with magical powers (animus powers) and can cast spells. Unfortunately, legend goes that for every spell you cast, your soul becomes eroded. Something something. So obviously it is a nice question to ask and well, I overestimated the responses. Since it is a thread with 15 comments it is not hard to go through all of them.

"I would enchant something that I wear everyday and enchant it to protect my soul so I can cast unlimited spells!"

Stop. Cut. This is going to be a recurring theme, so let me get this out here first: Have you read the books? Because it is pretty clear this person didn't get it.

In Darkstalker, we follow a young dragon (named Darkstalker, who could've guessed) with powers of mind reading, foresight, and animus (all three!) and it is quite interesting to see his early enchantments go from "wow, that's cute and nice" to "wait, what?" to "no, this is psychotic, you are insane" as his ambitions go from small to larger and larger. Later on he tries to become a dictator (twice, actually). 

It is quite interesting how if you removed the legend that "every time you cast a spell, you lose some of your soul", the story would work just as well, if not better, because there is no easy cop-out answer like "oh man, I'm a bad person because I just did too much magic lol". In fact it is never confirmed in the books directly that using magic erases your soul - it is simply "well these magic users got evil over time, so I guess?"

However there is a better explanation, perhaps found in the quote "absolute power corrupts absolutely" ( - someone i dont care enough to look up who said this). Let's think about it - the animus powers basically give you control over many things in your life that otherwise would not be possible - for anime enjoyers, think of death note, but without having to necessarily even kill someone! If you're somewhat smart, it is not difficult to get away with a lot of things just because you can. 

In that sense, perhaps for plot, we can understand why the legend was created, so that animus users dont go ballistic with their powers. But it is just as easily explained through natural causes. 

So back to the OP: if you cast a spell to keep your soul "good", due to the ambiguous nature of "goodness" it is entirely possible to do things that might be otherwise morally questionable while all the time thinking you were doing "good", and the thought that you might be free to cast whatever spell you want now may simply just make you do "evil" things much quicker, because that is what happens when you give that much power to someone.

"Yes, me too!" 

you also didn't read 

"Definitely!"

pls stop agreeing with the original poster it is too easy to be true

"I would train myself with magic for self defense"

valid

"I'll try to act normal"

no man you were supposed to say what spell you wanted to cast

"Get a chess rating of 2000 that can never go down"

basically you just casted a spell on yourself to get 2200 and then get really old really fast and then you will sit at a floor of 2000 forever and ever. 

Think bigger! you can become a gm or world champion!

"I wouldn't use it except in life or death cases or defending my friends"

w friend

"I would make myself be able to see 50 years to 1 year in the future"

In the book series, future sight only lets you see possible futures, not definitive futures. But assuming you can see one type of future, I wonder how it feels to see something bad happen and knowing that you have no way to change it? It would feel like your life has already been written from the start. Can't believe I'm bringing up a free will debate in a discussion about a children's book on dragons.

"Make my soul perfect and make myself the best at everything I do"

no man that's not how it works, that's not how it works please read the book again, you are missing things

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Guys this is why you pay attention in english class, you gotta know the themes and stuff