[ SECRET POST #3183 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3183 ⌋

Warning: Some secrets are NOT worksafe and may contain SPOILERS.

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 047 secrets from Secret Submission Post #455.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

Have you ever watched/read something and felt the "bad guy" or just the antagonist in general made better points and was better supported by the story in their views than the supposed "good guy"?

My example below

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[feotakahari]

As a Utilitarian, I felt really awkward killing all those greater-good people in Bioshock 2. I felt like I could get along with them if they stopped trying to shoot me all the time.

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[dethtoll]

See, I'm all for a utopian society, but "the greater good" is usually an excuse to commit atrocities in the name of some noble goal. And let's be real here, the whole thing was an elaborate -- and deeply unethical -- experiment by Lamb anyway.

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

So, I just watched X-Men: First Class and…I don't really get why Erik is wrong, necessarily?

He was completely right that the governments would see mutants as threats and attack them.

He never went after humans who weren't hurting anyone - but he clearly wasn't willing to let people who threatened him walk free.

I mean, at the end of the film, the navies FIRE at them, clearly intending to kill. Erik doesn't take the helmet and decide to go on a killing spree -- he's clearly acting in self-defense. If he just dropped the missiles/bullets in the water, what's to stop another salvo from being sent.

And they're military men too -- it's not like he's targeting civilians.

And Charles, dear god, what were you thinking? "Just following orders" -- to a Holocaust survivor. Was that meant to be an intentionally bad argument?

Moreover, I don't see why Charles blames Erik for being paralyzed. Erik deflected a bullet being aimed at him. That would have killed him otherwise. Could he have halted it in midair? Maybe -- but he only had a split second to think about it and it was clearly an accident. It seems to me that Moira deserves equal blame at least for trying to shoot someone who can control metal.

Just…that film made me side with Erik at least as much as Charles. Charles seemed really naive in a lot of ways...

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

The problem here is that XMFC is a terribly written movie that doesn't understand the characters it's portraying.

FFS, the 90s X-Men cartoon had a better grasp of Xavier and Magneto's characterization and the moral ambiguity inherent in both their worldviews, and this was a show written to be intentionally dumbed-down for an audience of small children.

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

I think that was the point of that one? I mean, he was a good guy until the last five minutes or so. All of them had pretty sympathetic viewpoints, really.

Except I am still SO MAD AT MYSTIQUE! I have siblings, and I would *never* turn my back on them like that! The Erik and Charles break seemed very difficult for both, but Mystique? She just says some encouragement to one of her love interests and /totally ignores the person she was *raised* with/???

*has whiny huff at that*

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[kaijinscendre]

"He never went after humans who weren't hurting anyone." Just in XMFC, yes. Though, in XM:DOPF, he does some pretty dangerous stuff that I can't fathom at least 2-3 people didn't die from.

"If he just dropped the missiles/bullets in the water, what's to stop another salvo from being sent." Well, they have a mutant that CAN teleport them away.

"And Charles, dear god, what were you thinking? "Just following orders." Charles is a telepath. He has a greater insight about what the men are thinking than anyone else. And those ships have hundreds of men. And only a small group is responsible for firing on them. Most probably have no clear idea about what is going on.

What Charles said was stupid, but it wasn't like he had a lot of time to think about what to say.

"I don't see why Charles blames Erik for being paralyzed. Erik deflected a bullet being aimed at him." Well, yeah he should have halted it midair. He could have stopped it instead of flinging them around all willy nilly. If it is okay for Erik to fuck up in a split second, it should be okay for Charles too.

Moira doesn't know that Erik would be strong enough to just stop a bullet. All she knew was that this maniac, dragged a dead body out of sub while wearing the helmet of that dead person, gave a speech about how evil humans were, and was not about to kill hundreds of people.

All in all, it was a fucked up situation and Erik isn't really shown as a bad guy in XMFC.

Though, Erik and Mystique are big fucking hypocrites and that is the biggest problems I have about them.

edit: Oh yeah. Erik YOU HAVE A TELEPORTING MUTANT! HOW ABOUT YOU GET HIM TO BRING CHARLES TO A DOCTOR BEFORE GIVING YOUR WITTY ONE LINER AND BAMFING OFF?

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[belladonna_took]

Well, Charles had some perspective that Erik didn't in that situation because of his mutation. Being a telepath, he probably did still see the military not as "the enemy" but as individuals who have their own opinions, and may have the capability on a personal level of accepting mutants as part of society in the future.

I see Charles as more optimistic than naive, anyway. He'd have to have been aware of the darker side of people from a young age even if he'd rather not focus on it.
For someone who reads minds, he does really suck at constructing a persuasive argument.

I'm playing devil's advocate here.
I agree that Moira was the real moron of the moment. She's lucky he didn't deflect the bullet straight back at her.

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

The humans in Avatar. :

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

So, so agreed

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[herpymcderp]

Disagree in the name of science. That tree of life shit is clearly something that required further research.

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

Why would you not disagree with the humans in Avatar? I assume you mean that you agreed with the destruction of the planet and genocide of the native inhabitants by humans in order to gain resources to fix a self-inflicted problem back on Earth.

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

Anything where people are living happy lives and don't know they're secretly prisoners being used for something, and if things go as planned they'll never find out. (Two examples: The Matrix and the book Running Out of Time.) I always hate the heroes who expose the truth and "rescue" them. What right do they have to disrupt these people's lives and put them at more risk? It's a cure that's worse than the disease. If there's someone who doesn't want to be rescued, they'll always be portrayed as wrong and I'll take their side.

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[kitelovesyou]

someone who doesn't want to be rescued
does that always mean they're happy?
what about people suicidal or in domestic abuse situations?

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

I'll give you Matrix because I've never actually watched it. But Running Out Of Time?

The girl was going outside to get help because children were DYING. Of a disease that the modern world cured ages ago.

I don't see any reason why those children should die without help just because some people want to live in the "good ol' days".

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

Obviously hitting your younger sibling is wrong in 99.9% of cases... but not in that one episode of Arthur.

ARTHUR WAS NOT THE BAD GUY IN THAT EPISODE. IT WAS D.W.

D.W. WAS THE BAD GUY, GODDAMNIT.

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[dreemyweird]

Plain old theodicy or any moral equivalents thereof always do this for me. See: James Cullingworth, the antagonist of Conan Doyle's Stark Munro Letters.

>His own views of the Creator seem to me to be a more evident degeneration. He declares that looking round at Nature he can see nothing but ruthlessness and brutality. "Either the Creator is not all-powerful, or else He is not all-good," says he. "Either He can stop these atrocities and won't, in which case He is not all-good; or else He would stop them but can't, in which case He is not all-powerful." It was a difficult dilemma for a man who professes to stick to reason to get out of. Of course, if you plead faith, you can always slip out of anything. I was forced to get behind a corner of that buckler with which you have so often turned my own thrusts. I said that the dilemma arose from our taking it for granted that that which seemed evil really was EVIL. "It lies with you to prove that it isn't," said he. "We may hope that it isn't," said I. "Wait until some one tells you that you have cancer of the pyloric end of the stomach," said he; and he shouted it out again every time I tried to renew the argument.

Suddenly I had That Awkward Moment when I firmly sided with the abhorrent antagonist *shrugs shoulders*

SPOILERS FOR TLOU

[herpymcderp]

Setting aside the fact that the ending of The Last of Us had the most nonsensical premise you can imagine (there is no procedure on earth that would require removing someone's entire brain as a biopsy, and they could easily have gotten what they needed to create a vaccine with a simple cerebrospinal fluid sample).... motherfucking Joel is the worst human being in the world.

Seriously the worst. I can not believe we were supposed to root for him. That game had me and the SO both yelling angrily at the TV that we didn't get to make a choice about whether or not we'd let Ellie "die".

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[forgottenjester]

Yeah. I normally find that this is because of bad writing.

That or it's really good writing and the reveal is that the hero was the villain all along. However, this version is less common.

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

squealer did nothing wrong

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

One of my favorite books to re-read when I was little was called The Sara Summer, which is about a girl who becomes best friends with her new neighbor Sara even though her mom thinks Sara is a bad influence on her. The book portrays the mother as a big strict meanie who just doesn't understaaaand, and when I was little I took the book's POV as a given.

But when I found an old copy last year and read it for the first time since elementary school, I thought, fuck no! The mother is completely right. Sara's a horrible person who treats everyone including her "friend" like shit. Her awfulness is excused by her having a hard life and hints of mental illness, and you're supposed to feel sorry for her blah blah. But that doesn't mean she's a good friend. At the end, the main character lies to her mother to protect Sara from getting in trouble and keep from never being able to see her again, and it's supposed to be touching. It's not. What the fuck was the author thinking.

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

A pretty mundane example compared to all these other examples, but this is the reason I stopped watching "Castle." Early in the sixth season, Alexis moved in with her boyfriend (Pi, ugh), and her dad, Castle, wasn't super supportive but he let her do it anyway. Then at the end of one episode he goes to talk to her and Alexis chews him out about it and gives him grief for moving in with his girlfriend at the same time. Except, Castle and Beckett were adults who had known each other for four years before starting a relationship, and Alexis & Pi were 19/20-year-olds who had been dating for six months??? (Also before all this Alexis invited Pi to live with her family without asking Castle for permission first!) The way the plot was presented made it seem like Alexis was completely in the right and that her father owed her an apology. I bailed and never looked back, so maybe it played out differently, but I doubt it.

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I just unsubscribed from an otherwise promising fic when character A pushed and pushed character B into reconnecting with B's estranged family member, despite B telling A to drop it. A went behind B's back and contacted B's family anyway, B got rightfully mad, and now A is flipping out and having a meltdown over B being SO MEAN.

And most of the fic's comments are siding with A.

Ugh, fuck right off. B is clearly in the right, you children.

Re: Wait…are we supposed to disagree?

[(Anonymous)]

Anything where the antagonist group is made up of normal humans attempting to imprison, kill, or demonster some dangerous supernatural creature. Like, we're supposed to think they're wrong and closeminded for trying to shoot a giant nigh-invulnerable murder machine that in its first scene killed a couple dozen people? No, thanks.

It's one thing if the story's pulling a "not actually a murder machine" twist, but if we see the werewolf/vampire/whatever rip people apart on screen, don't ask me to feel bad about it being hunted because it has so much angst.

[(Anonymous)]

Edward Jellico in Chain of Command in TNG. Like, he wasn't cuddly, sure, but he was also preparing for a potential war with the Cardassians. But rather than back him up, both Riker and Geordi (they with whom we should always identify with) spent the entire time refusing to change to the point of literally disobeying orders. I mean, these guys are serving on the flagship, what the hell are they doing being whiny babies over some logical changes?

Thank goodness for Worf and Data, else I don't know how I could have respected this crew.