Earth Bond Chapter 16 - Discussion (Spoilers)

[SYED]

The most people are forgetting is the fact humans are descended from omnivore apes, while dragons are descended from carnivorous alpha predator. So each race will have unique instints, I am not saying they are blood thirsty, just have a seemingly more predatory view point.

[ThisAndThat1]

The council VS the sages.

Something is going to go splat!

[ANTIcarrot]

To dragons humans are no more then pets. Is this right? No, obviously not, but that does not make kell a morally bankrupt monster.

Actually, yes. It does. Extended failure to see people as people is another one of those 'dictionary entries under monster' things.

don't apply human morals to dragons

Blue and Orange only applies when the aliens are actually alien. Mentally the dragons are almost entirely human in all but name. This is simply a culture that believes it's okay to kill foreigners. I will apply western morality to dragons as eagerly as I apply it to North Korea and Nazi Germany. Humans don't get our morals from our instincts. We get our morals when we STOP thinking with our instincts. There is nothing instinctive about the US constitution or any of it's ilk.

And if it does i'd like to come live in your happy little black and white world, it seems quite lovely there.

The fact that you seem to think that having standards is an act of deepest ignorance possibly says more about you than it does about me. Conversely, I'd really hate to live in your world, where apparently any act can be justified, as long as the victims don't look like you do.

The fact that the hacker is chinese is irrelevant, the fact is that china is a highly competitive nation that is economically at odds with the nation the author lives in. It wouldn't matter to me if it were a belgian software engineer or a brazillian script kiddie, his intellect is the part that's dangerous, not his skin color.

Point of education: When writers want you to have sympathy for the victim, they often make them young, attractive, female, a citizen of the reader's country, and give them some personality and history. Exotic traits are common here too. (Being rich. Having magical powers. Super kung-fu abilities. Knowing a terible secret. Being the long lost heir to a nobel house. Being a dragon.) This is a way a writer manipulates the emotional state of the reader. When writers don't want you to feel sympathy for the victim, they usually make them middle aged or older, plain or unattractive, male, a foreigner, and imply they're a criminal - or they simply don't mention them at all. This is called taking advantage of the reader's prejudice. It is a well known trick of human psychology.

My problem is that I think it does matter to you, and others here. If this was a movie about government spooks trying to kill a US citizen who accidentally wondered onto a secret, I really don't think I'd need to explain to you why the spooks are wrong to act the way they do. Stories about prejudice, which includes racism, usually aren't about the author's prejudice. And the best stories about prejudice, which includes racism, are always about the reader's own prejudice.

Ad nausium ignored.

The earth bond universe does seem to have 3 possible conclusions.
*The dragons take what they want and give what they want... behaving somewhat like royalty.
*They set up trade relations and everyone sticks to some ground rules (eg, dragons acknowledging human rights, the us and china doing the same thing and humanity acknowledges draconic rights [privacy seems an important one here])
*open war

You missed out 'cliffhanger'. Also since a dragon victory in war would lead to one of the first two options, the third option really should be 'humans curbstomp dragons'.

[dawich]

You missed out 'cliffhanger'.

'cause he's never done that to us before...