[ SECRET POST #551 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #551 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Going to be doing some advertising until the 15th!

livelongnmarry - fandom auction type place! For a good cause.
Juxtapose Fantasy [website, art/fic] - Yaoi/slash fans - have you visited JuxtaposeFantasy yet?
doctorwhy - A daily webcomic featuring the life and woes of our favourite (tenth regeneration) Time Lord.

Secrets Left to Post: 06 pages, 150 secrets from Secret Submission Post #079.
Secrets Not Posted: [ 1 - broken links ], [ 0 - not!secrets ], [ 1 2 - not!fandom ], [ 1 2 - too big ], [ 1 2 - repeat ], [ 1 - take it to comments ], [ 1 - posted twice ].
Current Secret Submissions Post: here.
Suggestions, comments, and concerns should go here.

Comments

[poisontea.livejournal.com]

167. Um, right. You know, I totally agree with part of this! Sadly, the bombings were necessary. It's not a wonderful thing, it was a crap thing to have to do, but it was needed and it saved countless lives.

However? Showing the tragedies of war? Doesn't automatically mean whoever wrote the script is "butthurt" or is trying to go "OH YOU HORRIBLE PEOPLE LOOK WHAT YOU CAUSED, YOU MAKE CHILDREN CRY." The fact is, the innocent people who died when those bombs were dropped were still innocent people. There were children who died. It sucks, it's regrettable, and you know, if you're a balanced individual, you should regret the necessity of it. Laying waste to so many human lives IS a tragedy, even if it was the right thing to do. Portraying that is in no way belittling the necessity of the action itself.

Kind of related example: one of the best chapters of Shin Petship of Horrors is the flashback one, with the Kirin that the Count gave to Eva Braun. Like hell it makes Hitler look like a good guy- cos he wasn't, and it doesn't try to imply that- but it certainly shows him as being a human being who was capable of being more than the two-dimensional charicature most people like to make him out to be (and adding a semi-awesome twist to him "loving his dogs," especially Goldie). Or, for a "non-weeaboo" example, Guillermo del Toro portrayed El Capitan from Pan's Labyrinth as a monstrous man... but gave little indications that made him so much more than a monster, and strengthened his character. Terry Pratchett often points out in his books that deal with the subject that in war, the other poor bastard on the opposite side is usually just some guy like you, who you might quite like if you met in a pub, but because of the stupid war you have to kill him before he kills you.

Less TL;DR: SOMETHING BEING NECESSARY DOESN'T AUTOMATICALLY MEAN IT IS A WONDERFUL PERFECT THING AND NO ONE SHOULD BE SAD ABOUT ANY ASPECTS OF IT, DUH. Especially for people like me who actually think about people and realize that all human beings are human beings and a death toll being "better than it could have been" doesn't make everyone involved just an emotionless, worthless statistic.

Clever you for seamlessly implying that anyone who disagrees with you has no real reason to and is only doing it because they worship Japan or something, though. Well done, that, except for encouraging the misuse of the word weeaboo which I am coming to hate for the simple reason that no one knows what the fuck it means.

[vivalanaomi.livejournal.com]

Gah, I wish I could have given such an in-depth and eloquent response. I could only throw out a few facts like high-heel shoes when a victim is cornered in a slasher film (Grave of the Fireflies being set after the Kobe firebombing is obvious if you actually watch the film. Return that history diploma for a refund please).

"No, s-stay back! Your opinions are uninformed and gross! You'll never get away with this! Rather than being propagandist, Grave of the Fireflies is actually strongly anti-war, with the enemy nations not even being mentioned by name! Weeaboo weeaboo weeaboo!"

[poisontea.livejournal.com]

Okay, I just have to say, that cry of "weeaboo weeaboo weeaboo!" at the end there made me think it was a siren and that is awesome.

Not as awesome as your icon, however. XD

[vivalanaomi.livejournal.com]

I used to have a whole bunch of snarky Last Unicorn icons. Those were the days; I lived the high life. Champagne poured from fountains and dames had gams up to here.

[poisontea.livejournal.com]

Up to their eyeballs (http://lackadaisy.foxprints.com/exhibit.php?exhibitid=26), eh? XD I. Seriously. I love the way you think. The phrases and ideas you think in. WHATEVER.

[vivalanaomi.livejournal.com]

And I like the cut of your jib ;)

Whenever I use noir speak, I'm worried I'm actually saying something spectacularly racist.

[poisontea.livejournal.com]

Hahaha, that's why I'm too wimpy to use words that I don't quite know the meaning of, even if I've heard them used that way before. On a mildly related note, I was surprised that one of my favorite manga uses a term a lot that is actually a majorly insulting word to Chinese people. ;; THAT SORTA THING JUST SORTA POPS UP.

[vivalanaomi.livejournal.com]

Oh. My. God.

Hana Yori Dango? Best J-Drama ever? Heroine goes to New York and is attacked by black people everywhere she goes! They say things like, "What are you, Japanese or something?"

THEN, relief, they're back in Japan. But they are not yet safe from black people! Then a group of "gangstas" surround our curly-haired hero, and this group gets promptly beat up after they call him "Sammy Davis Junior". Because he has curly hair.

WTF, show! I mean, I'm having a good time. I'm getting my melodrama and my exhaustion comas and my lovers running towards each other in dramatic slow-mo and then BAM! Racism so random I can't even get mad. I just boggle and go, "Wow, that's racist."

You're weird, Hana Yori Dango.

[poisontea.livejournal.com]

W-wow. That's. o_____o That's just weird. That's so mind-bogglingly over the top that I can see not even being upset by it. Just... what?

Haha, in the Keroro Gunso manga, the word the aliens use for Earth is "Pokopen." In the anime, they changed it to "Pekopon," which seemed like the most random change ever... until I looked on Wikipedia and found out that Pokopen was actually a really derogatory word for China, during the Sino-Japanese Wars. That word is actually not allowed to be aired on Japanese TV, hence the change...

... so a total crack anime about alien frogs had to change a word around to avoid the TV censors for being severely racist. XD THAT'S KINDA CRACK ITSELF.

[vivalanaomi.livejournal.com]

I'm like, "Do... do they know that's racist? Shouldn't somebody tell them?" XD

[poisontea.livejournal.com]

Yes. Somebody should. I nominate Nicholas Cage.

[vivalanaomi.livejournal.com]

In a bear costume.

[poisontea.livejournal.com]

With bees.

Or will the racist people have bees? I forget how this goes already!

[vivalanaomi.livejournal.com]

No no, not the bees! Not the bees! They're in my eyes! My eyes! Aaugh aaaaugh blibble blibble cough...

[poisontea.livejournal.com]

I think it was the blibble blibble that won the award, there. *GIVES YOU AN AWARD*

[lanjelin.livejournal.com]

I really, really question the necessity of dropping those bombs on a nation that had run out of weapons, food, and pretty much all other resources, and was seriously making plans of having the population meet the invaders on the landing sites with spears.

The real reasons could be disussed at length, but considering that the U.S. still has two military bases in the country...

[poisontea.livejournal.com]

Well, to me, that would have also been at least part of the reason why it was necessary. In that case, people on our side still would have kept dying- even if not in great numbers- but hell, any country that's that desperate and still not even thinking of giving up needs a short, sharp shock. It was probably better for them to get those two bombs than for countless more to go to the front with spears and be mowed down that way.

Either way... it got them to surrender, and whether that was better for us or for them is debatable, but still.

[lanjelin.livejournal.com]

A short sharp shock? Are you serious? You really don't know the effects of those bombs, do you? Didn't you learn these things in school? We were taught about those bomds in fifth year. and the stories gave me nightmares. They are horrible, terrible weapons that never should have been created.

And using that sort of weapon against people with nothing left but sticks...

Simply doing nothing would have made surrender inevitable. Not to mention that they had no means of hurting the rest of the world anymore.

[poisontea.livejournal.com]

I in no way meant to make it sound so flippant, and I apologize for that because I see how it might have. I don't mean to belittle the effects. The effects of nuclear weapons are horrible, and last for so long after the initial drop, after doing horrible things to anyone caught in the radius...

I suppose it's that I don't believe that action was unnecessary. An action that would end everything right then. I don't believe surrender would have been inevitable if we did nothing; as you said, this is the country that was ordering its countrymen to the front with spears. Against machine guns and tanks. Just because they were losing didn't mean they'd give up, and while I can see not supporting a nuclear weapon drop because of how absolutely horrendous it is, the number of people it killed was far less than the number of casualties, both American and Japanese that would have happened before Japan finally crumbled... not to mention that Japan surrendered instead of actually crumbling, which is of course a good thing.

So it's not that the ends justify the means, because the means were flawed, but the ends and what would have happened otherwise certainly necessitated action.

But really the whole point of this is that, even if it HAD been absolutely necessary- if they were like... I dunno, using Hiroshima and Nagasaki to summon Elder Gods or something- the individuals who were involved were still living human beings who had lives, families, emotions, dreams, and futures. That's why even someone who's fucked up in the head enough to become a serial killer having to be killed is still a tragedy to me. Not that they shouldn't be if it's necessary, but because they were a human being who got that fucked up and then had to die- no future, poof, and everyone who loved them impacted- seeing a person fall that far is a sad thing. No matter how fucked up they get, they're not just a charicature. And implying that all of the innocent civilians, families, and children killed is not tragic simply because the action was a necessary one is extremely distasteful.