I mean, it's basically the same thing, just faster. Says the chemist who is really glad he's managed to avoid ever having to do dissections.
Not really.
Evolution is adaptation to changes in the environment and/or competition that results in a better survival/reproduction rate of the species.
Breeding is forceful selecting traits you, the breeder, find worthwhile.
Directed vs un-directed genetic changes though man/natural selection makes a whole lot of difference.
Breeding can easily go "against" evolution and give
negative traits to the resulting race at the expense of the animals' ...
everything. And obviously, just waiting a few millions years will not give turn your pit bulls into chiwawas.
Heck, breeding can result in infertile animals (mostly through hybrids iirc). I doubt evolution can get much farther than
that.
Also, i believe that breeding is more limited in scope, if only due to the amount of time available for a breeding project being generally limited to one, or at best a couple, of human lifetime(s).
I don't think we ever managed anything quite as impressive or extreme as, say the breeding of an aquatic dolphin race out of a wolf species. Or a bird race out of big lizards.
Ultimately i don't think the differences are too big, specially when protag's family have been selecting breeding their minions of
centuries...
Hence why I'm not so sure it's a good choice. Not only will cooperation be useful in this scenario,
Black and White are not
Evil and
Good. They are methods to achieve what you (or at least the protag) thinks are
Good things to do.
I don't think this would be an issue. So long as the
Green/
Black protag isn't stupid, she will the option,
any option, that leads to the best and biggest personal growth. The only issue of black is that they see no
inherent value to cooperation above betrayal. Only the end result is important. If loyal teammates fight and survive better and achieve the mission goal better than mindless drones or than liver punching one of them to distract the enemy with it's body, then she'll be all for it.
When running away from the enraged Dragon and a someone trips and falls, a
Black mage will ask itself "if the effort needed to stop, carry, and run with the added weight hence increasing the chance of getting caught" is worth more or less than "the effort saved by having one more person able to fight and complete missions tomorrow".
Or "does a fireball to the Dragon's left nostril be enough to slow him down and the added rage be survivable"
The end result will most probably depend on the person that tripped (teammate or captured villain's minion?), and the likelihood of escaping the Dragon in the first place.
A
White mage will stop and help. No matter who tripped. No matter what your chances of survival are.
A
Black mage will be loyal to his/her teammates because betrayal is ultimately self-harming so long as they are loyal to you.
A
White mage will
always be loyal, even to jerk or evil "teammates".
A
Black Mage will fight against Walpurgisnacht and Ragnarok because "it's her planet she lives here!". Also, even if she hides and survives, a dead kingdom with no-one in it is worthless.
A
White Mage will fight those because it's the "Right thing to do".
Now add something like "sympathetic values and tragic backstory to
Walpur-chan" and/or some plot surprise
"i'm holding back something even worse than me!" and the
White Mage breaks down due to conflicting "morality" issues.
Ultimately i much rather follow a character that actually does things because s/he believes they are worth doing, rather than follow a brain-dead
thing that does things because of some nebulous will to do the "right" thing.
when you draw your power from being a bitch and because of that the world will die if you aren't bitchy enough.
Black is anything for personal power.
Red are more likely to be bitchy magic girls due to heighten emotions.
Backstabbing and power plays can be interesting, but only should be done when you don't have compatible goals or think the other party is surely acting in bad faith (like in international politics
). In this context, intrigue is wasted effort on obtaining personal power, which at best is effort not being put toward the higher cause of
stopping the apocalypse and at worst actively decreases the total power we could put toward that goal (by disempowering others more than we empower ourselves). Besides, White is explicitly capable of backstabbing and power plays if it's in the interests of the Greater Good (and yes, that's exactly as questionable as it sounds).
See you're even thinking like a
Black mage: "<random thing or act> is useful,
but ..."
Fair enough, though we haven't seen all that much White used, either. Personally, I just love the synergy between White and Green. Also, ghost-pets. They make much less of a mess than zombie-pets.
Pretty sure any
undead pets are more
Black than
White in nature...
This is an interesting point, actually. The idea that Black would help us forge alliances with people who have similar attitudes, though (...) I suppose it's possible, but getting a cynic to trust another cynic, particularly one as obviously cruel and ambitious as Black? I doubt that far more than I doubt the ability of White to forge alliances based on friendship and common interests, and she can barely string three words together in front of strangers apparently.
Have you considered the obvious result of picking
White with little to no social skills ? i doubt protag will suddenly become a paragon of social interaction...
I very much doubt a missing half the tools needed to be a successful
White is going to take any less time to fix than having a
Black work on fixing her natural arrogance and cruelty.
