Open Question

[jarandhel]

What are the vices of the Seelie Court? What are the virtues of the UnSeelie Court? And vice versa?

I'd prefer it if members of each court answered about their negative perspectives of their own courts and their positive perspectives of the ones they don't belong to, since I can see this quickly getting into a set of accusations or propaganda and away from reality if people start talking negatively about courts they don't belong to and positively about ones they do. But I won't be too strict about that as long as people are trying to be constructive in their answers.

What's negative about each of these courts? What's positive about each of them?

I have the weirdest hunch that the responses I get back are going to correspond quite well to two human groups I'm observing... which kinda freaks me out.

Comments

Seelie vices

[netdancer.livejournal.com]

Inflexibility. Adherence to Order. Tradition over innovation. If you let it run wild, you can become entrapped in an amber of the mind, pinioned by stasis.

[ellseth.livejournal.com]

I suppose that they could be vices and virtues at the same time. All are accepted, no one is ever turned away. Emotional extremes, everything is felt. Change is needed, wanted and welcomed. Nothing is accomplished without change and chaos.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Is this in regard to the Seelie or the Unseelie?

[ellseth.livejournal.com]

unseelie.. I would not presume to be able to even attempt to tell you about seelie.

[zaecus.livejournal.com]

Freaked out, yet?

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Yes, actually, though it's looking like the correspondences might be the reverse of what I thought they were.

[zaecus.livejournal.com]

That is often the case. Vice and virtue are subjective not only from person to person but from idea to idea.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Yeah, but... the Seelie = the Republicans/Conservatives and the Unseelie = the Democrats/Liberals? Come on, you have to admit that sounds odd! ;-) Yet it seems to work...

[zaecus.livejournal.com]

And certain "independents", like the Libertarians and the Greens, wind up filling the roles of such esteemed beings as Puck.

Odd? Sounds so twisted I'm wondering who slipped acid into the water supply... *smirk*

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

*chuckles* And yet, oddly, it fits. Very well, in fact.

[ebonhost.livejournal.com]

Why does the way it seems to work out seem to be odd? Seelie does not equal good, after all. Tradition and order gone wrong can lead to stagnation, inflexibility, and intolerance.

We have both Seelie and Unseelie in our system. On both sides there are the good and bad examples of their kind. It's when vices or virtues are too strongly expressed that there becomes problems.

It is all a game of balance.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

*shrugs* Mostly I was just expecting it to be the other way around when I had the inkling they might correlate. It's hard picturing Dusk as Unseelie, for one thing. ;-)

[ellseth.livejournal.com]

I can't agree with you more... it is all a game of balance.

[ellseth.livejournal.com]

In many ways I find the concept of comparing the Seelie/Unseelie to the Democrats/Republicans extremely awkward. Even if you just consider the cultural aspects of things thrown into the history leading up to the time of the Courts... Maybe I am not seeing or feeling something, but I do not see the comparison to a large extent.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

*shrugs* Maybe it's just my impression. Zaecus seems to see it too though, to some degree.

[rhiannasilel.livejournal.com]

You know, those are two terms I haven't seen or used in ages. They just don't quite feel right in the evolution of my awakening, if that makes any sense. I suppose it's because the Tuatha simply don't have the Seelie/Unseelie distinctions, or maybe once we did and don't anymore, hard to say, really.

When I was still using those terms, I thought of them as being more like political parties with the Unseelie being slightly more conservative and the Seelie being more liberal. In other words, the Unseelie would be the otherworldly equivalent of the Republicans and the Seelie would be like the Democrats -- please don't hit me when I say that, as it's just a very broad generalized kinda/sorta like this thing.

[jarandhel.livejournal.com]

Heh... that's what I was originally thinking too, but the associations others are making with a stronger connection to the concept of Courts than myself are saying that it's reversed. (I was going at it from the perspective that the light elves of Alorya would be roughly Seelie and the dark elves would be roughly Unseelie, but maybe the concepts don't even map to the Aloryan side of things.)