[ SECRET POST #3312 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #3312 ⌋

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

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12. http://i.imgur.com/v42amcn.png
[link for anime porn ... type stuff? I'm not even sure what's going on here]















Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 00 pages, 000 secrets from Secret Submission Post #473.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 0 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 0 - not!fandom ], [ 0 - too big ], [ 0 - repeat ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[fscom]

07. https://56.media.tumblr.com/9b0bfb609278a0156214bf0f87274221/tumblr_o15ppk3f5V1sivacmo1_r2_1280.png

[(Anonymous)]

Points for using Snidley Whiplash and Nell Fenwick in a secret!

[(Anonymous)]

Snydley Whiplash!

[(Anonymous)]

As long as you're not trying to justify said villian' actions, I don't care. I love villains as much as the next person, (Jasper and Erik are my faves for life)but some villian fans take it way too far tbh and it makes actual decent discussion awkward and hard. I've been attacked and shit on by so many loki stans for not liking their precious woobie, that I now hate the character and I can't take any meta or discussion of him seriously.

[(Anonymous)]

You'll probably find a lot of Loki fans who have had the reverse experience, and also avoid meta discussions because they're sick of bring shat on.

[(Anonymous)]

Lmao I'm sure they are.

[(Anonymous)]

But it's not incorrect to say 'cool motive, still murder'. it's entirely correct. and even compatible with a more involved discussion about the motives.

OP

[(Anonymous)]

It's not "Cool Motive, Still Murder" itself that annoys me - it's that sometimes people do use it to shut down a more nuanced argument. It does have its place, and I do agree that it can be used in more involved discussions about motives.

[sarillia]

It's true but it's not always relevant if the person being replied to never actually claimed it wasn't murder and in that case it shows the person who said it isn't really listening.

[(Anonymous)]

I hate it because it's unnecessary and patronizing. It's like giving a "friendly reminder" that the character is a murderer. Yeah no, we know they're a murderer, that's exactly why we're talking about their motive!

[(Anonymous)]

I agree. I wouldn't say that phrase if so many people who defended villains tried to argue that they 'didn't actually do x thing"

ex: the Snape argument yesterday with people claiming that the idea that Snape was a bully was just silly tumblr bullshit flavor of the month (When JKR confirmed it herself) or he wasn't THAT bad whereas James picking on Snape was some indicator that he was going to be horrible in EVERY OTHER ASPECT of his life.

Sorry but some people need to be reminded "cool motive, still murder" when they're acting like what their character did was somehow different.

[(Anonymous)]

I have actually reached the point where I don't even care about acknowledging the villainous deeds--in real life I am pretty benign, even kind, so if I cotton onto a villain who is pretty, or gets the best lines, or looks magnificent as he flies off to incinerate Laketown, I am not even sorry. I have spent a long time apologizing for this and now I find I have not a single fuck to give. It's really liberating!

[(Anonymous)]

Same. I don't even care if I'm apologetic of them. They slaughtered a village because someone was mean to them? Fine with me! No real people were harmed, only fictional villagers who literally have no names, faces, or personalities. I don't need to care what happens to them. I only care about the character I know and love.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm skeptical just because there are loads of times when someone says "Ah, yes, we're just talking about the motive" but does so in a way that absolutely minimizes the misdeed in question and excuses it and justifies it. It happens all the time. Even people who would say they're reasonable - you know, saying you're reasonable is no proof of anything.

[scrubber]

That's absolutely true, and not only that but that type of talk very quickly can turn to "And this is what the villain's victim's might have done to cause it..." or "And by the way, consider that the Hero did this bad thing..." which both aggressively toe the line of straight victim-blaming. It's really hard to find an analysis of the villain that successfully and sympathetically replicates their worldview without in some way attempting to validate it. It's frustrating.

Also let's be real, most villain backstories are a product of tacked-on, hackneyed, cornball garbage writing anyway. I get very tired watching people fall for the same pathetic attempts at depth. Before you put this murderer in jail, consider that he was.......... AN ORPHAN. Not so easy now is it?????

[(Anonymous)]

My question is, why do you care if fans are minimizing the misdeeds of fictional villains? If they're not forcing their views on you what does it even matter?

[(Anonymous)]

I get this, but I only feel the urge to say "cool motive, still murder" when discussion veers around to blaming said villains' targets or nemeses more heavily than the villain for either perfectly legitimate responses to the villainy, or for not having a more "compassionate" response. Or accusing the targets/nemeses for their own relatively minor actions that said villain had excessive and over-the-top reactions to.

And I'm sorry, but for all the #notallfansdothis, it's an extremely thin line that gets skated over more thoroughly than Rockefeller Centre rink. If I never saw another "if Thor and Odin hadn't made Loki feel so isolated he wouldn't have started a genocide" or "if 10 year old Snow White hadn't told Regina's secret, Regina wouldn't have felt the need to become a mass murderer and curse an entire land"; which then gets into Thor and Snow and Odin having entire hatedoms formed largely on these bases...

I mean yes, theoretically the motives and psychology of villains should be able to be discussed without it veering into apologism, in fandom practice though? It doesn't happen often.

[(Anonymous)]

I would like to avoid apologism when discussing villains, and I don't want to demonize the protagonists - however, I think it's possible for harmful situations to happen without the protagonists being bad people or trying to hurt anyone, while that doesn't change the fact that the antagonist's response was disproportionate and unjustified.

I really, really wish more nuanced discussion was possible, but people on both sides can be really aggressive about it.

[philstar22]

It really honestly depends on the fandom the Once fandom does do a lot of woobifying and justifying. Part of the reason I left the fandom. But in my current fandom there are only occasional attempts at woobifying. Very few people actually woobify the villains. And yet there are every once in a while people who come into the fandom discussions and insist that any discussions of positive traits or nuance is woobifying.

[(Anonymous)]

This actually seems like it denies heroes accountability in times they messed up and is flattening out villainous motives to me. Honestly, I don't think Loki's turn to villainy can be completely pinned on Thor and Odin, there was evidence in the movies (not going into comics rn, I know comics but there's other stuff going on there that doesn't seem fair to use as evidence one way or another in a different continuity) that Loki was getting shit from other areas too. And if you pull in what social expectations were for men vs women or for Asgardians in general based on the original Thor movie with supplementary research into Norse cultural history, you can get other elements that might've contributed to his getting messed up. But to deny anything Thor and Odin did for thousands of years might have shaped Loki's psyche and stability adversely, even if they didn't intend it to, seems really unrealistic to me.

If Loki had been mentally and emotionally stable, would he have attempted genocide? It's hard to say, but my suspicion is probably not. There wouldn't have been so much urgency, the motive would have come into serious question so drastic measures like that might not have even occurred to him as options. Or maybe it might have. Some villains do bad things while being mentally and emotionally stable, same way people do in real life. But Loki wasn't mentally or emotionally stable, so as an audience it makes sense to ask why and examine what his experiences might have been to bring him to the point that the choices he made seemed necessary to him. That doesn't mean Thor and Odin's experiences and intentions are less real. But heroes aren't necessarily perfect and sometimes good people can do really horrible things without meaning to. World's not so simple.

Part of good storytelling is being to understand multiple points of views I think, and to allow for characters to be the heroes of their own stories but also to allow characters to dislike or be hurt by characters who are the heroes of THEIR own stories. Otherwise you end up with flat, caricaturish nonsense.

[(Anonymous)]

As another villain fan, IA.

I want some nuanced discussion without having to add a disclaimer after each line saying that, YES, I'M AWARE SOME/ALL OF THIS CHARACTER'S ACTIONS ARE WRONG.

And even doing that is not enough, because someone always appears with a friendly reminder that talking about a villain motives is the same as "excusing" and "justifying".

At this point I gave up on discussing about my favs thanks to that.

[(Anonymous)]

And even doing that is not enough, because someone always appears with a friendly reminder that talking about a villain motives is the same as "excusing" and "justifying".

in fairness that's a very hard distinction to draw, as witness all the times when villain fans do end up excusing and justifying.

the, you know, the shoe is on both feet here, ok?

[(Anonymous)]

I find this kind of interesting. This whole moral turnaround. Back in the day, people were so freaking obsessed with Ulquiorra and Orihime being in love or something. If those chapters of Bleach had just come out now in the tumblr age, people would be screaming "ABUSE!!!" at shippers. It kind of cracks me up! Maybe she still would have gotten intense character bashing, but people would have been more protective of her too.

[(Anonymous)]

"accountability and acknowledging the seriousness of characters' actions is important"

Important to who? I for one could do without the ubiquitous Sunday School lesson that pervades discussions of villains.

[(Anonymous)]

This just baffles me because especially in Superhero genre, the superhero creating their villains is kind of the whole point. The villains wouldn't exist most of the time if the superhero hadn't caused them to turn to villainy. And if it's not that, there generally is a villain creation scene.

I know the idea has come up multiple times that Joker only does what he does because of Batman.

Two-Face is only Two-Face because of the acid to the face.

While Poison Ivy is an environmental terrorist in TAS, most other origins have her being hurt by a man and that's what turns her.

So why are people saying that discussion of this trope isn't possible? Heck, I saw people doing big write ups that men tend to have bad things happen to the people around them (parents die, wife and daughter die, wife frozen, daughter boarded a space pod and went through a portal and was lost, brother dies, etc.) but women tend to have things happen directly to them. (They're hurt, they're transformed against their will, they're raped, someone tries to kill them, etc.) and that was one of the subconscious kneejerk reactions against Rey, we never see her personally getting hurt so why would she be willing to become a hero for the Resistance? Just because people around her are? Megamind's whole movie was that when bad things happen to him he reacted as a villain, but when bad things happened to others he became a hero. (Interestingly enough, Snape follows that pattern too. When bad things happen to him he's a villain, when bad things happen to others he's a hero.)



And that's even the core of Hero/Villain! That's why they're two sides of the same coin. Bad things happen and heroes react by becoming better, villains react by becoming worse. To try to dismiss that with "Cool motive, still murder" is the same as insisting that we can't discuss how Tony Stark gets his arc reactor in the movies because "Cool motive, still heroic murder"