[ SECRET POST #4386 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #4386 ⌋

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

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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 33 secrets from Secret Submission Post #628.
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

[fscom]

05. https://i.imgur.com/1pHpzQb.png

[(Anonymous)]

I tend to see that as the person being unable to emotionally handle the fact that they killed another human being, not that they feel guilty of murder. Like people being upset about having to put down an animal even if they know for a fact it wasn't going to live.

Maybe you could view it as a sensitivity thing vs. a right-or-wrong thing?

[(Anonymous)]

I think this is spot on.

[(Anonymous)]

I can't think of any examples off-hand, but I feel like usually in fiction, it's portrayed as being much more about whether it was right or wrong, not just a purely emotional reaction.

[(Anonymous)]

People do that in real life, too, though. They confuse the emotional upset of killing with morality because 'if they feel horrible about it, it must be that they were wrong, right?' Even when they turn around and agree in a strictly factual sense there wasn't anything they could do. Emotions are weird like that.

So I wouldn't say it's unrealistic to portray that way. Usually the shows also have people arguing the logical side to make them stop angsting too.

[(Anonymous)]

This.

[catdetective]

I think sometimes there's a disingenuous 'killing someone makes me as bad as the murderer', which... is a very hard sell. But most of the time I interpret a character having hard time coming to grips with an act of defense that meant killing someone as being a sensitivity thing. Most of us would have SOME difficulty coping with it as a trauma thing even if we believed we took the best possible course of action, and especially if the character in question is not inured to violence, I think it works and I like it.

Of course, when it's a character who's in shootouts with bad guys every week, it can also get a little silly, but...

[(Anonymous)]

...how many people have you killed??

[(Anonymous)]

IA tbh. I'm sure that I would have *some* reaction but if it's necessary, it's necessary.

[(Anonymous)]

You say as someone who has never had to kill someone.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed, and I'm the sort of person who doesn't even kill bugs (I catch them and take them outside). Threatening or harming anyone I care about is pretty much my one berserk button and I would never regret protecting someone in a case like that.

[(Anonymous)]

I'm pretty sure I would be traumatized.

Actually, I'd be traumatized by witnessing any violent death, whether I caused it or not.

[(Anonymous)]

Same. At best, I might be able to reassure myself that the person I killed couldn't hurt me or anyone else ever again...but even then, the fact that I killed somebody would still be very tough for me to wrap my head around.

[(Anonymous)]

I don't think I'd be traumatized (I mean, I watched a kid get hit by a truck, land on our lawn, and proceeded to as my mother if I should put the ground beef back in the fridge because dinner was going to be delayed) witnessing, but it's hard to say what level of upset I'd be if I had a hand in something.

[(Anonymous)]

There's also so many ways that could play out. What if you felt this little whisper of doubt that you'd read the situation wrong, even if everyone agrees you did the right thing? What if the person you had to kill had an intellectual disability or a mental health issue or may have been drugged without their knowledge? What if it was someone you knew and hadn't known them as dangerous before? What if you felt you were right and the law agreed, but a lot of other people didn't and are very angry and upset with you and take every opportunity to let you know?

[(Anonymous)]

Well, even if the person was genuinely bad, I do think of the fact that they probably had a mother who loved him, even if no one else did.

But in general, I agree with OP in the case of a fictional self-defense or similar killing of a bad guy. Those nuances probably aren't a part of the story and he's just a bad guy.

I do think killing people is such a taboo for most of us that a part of us would feel SOMETHING.

[ninety6tears]

It's kinda the overdone treatment even if it does happen. Someone can go through that and be generally shaken up but not really experience guilt.

[(Anonymous)]

Are you me, OP?

If someone threatened my child, for instance, I would kill that person without an instant of guilt. NOT ONE. Someone trying to kill or rape me? Same.

But I am of the opinion that some people just need to die, a sentiment that seems to be considered sociopathic these days.

[(Anonymous)]

Seconding all of this.

I think I would feel bad.

[(Anonymous)]

Of course, it would greatly depend on the situation as to how bad and why. If it was someone who was pointing a gun at someone else or me and it looked like they were going to shoot, but I couldn't be 100% sure they would actually pull the trigger, or if someone was in the middle of a psychotic break or was having violent delusions, or if there was a child being manipulated to or someone being forced to carry a bomb, I would feel pretty bad. But I would probably still feel bad in a less fraught/more certain situation, not because I would necessarily be second-guessing myself, but because I would have ended a life and now there's no chance for the person to redeem themselves and anyone who cared about them will be hurt. I would also feel bad that it was necessary at all.

[(Anonymous)]

I read an article a while back about people who killed someone in unavoidable accidents and could not get over it. I don't think it's unreasonable for a character to feel bad about killing someone in self defense. It's pretty realistic

[soldatsasha]

Yeah, I think a lot of people who assume they wouldn't feel bad aren't really thinking it through. Many people in cases of unavoidable accidental death go through years or decades of extreme trauma and recovery. (Lots of people who run over a kid with their car never drive again or are even unable to be in vehicles at all, for example). And if you're talking about deliberately killing someone, like in self defense, that trauma can be even more huge. That's why militaries and police training and gangs and whatnot go to extreme lengths to condition their people to view their targets as "not people".

It's not bad to NOT feel bad, of course. Especially if it really was unavoidable, like you were protecting your kid from a rapist or something. But it's also realistic that someone would really struggle with it, and for a really long time.

Like, hypothetically, you're walking home from work and you get jumped. The attacker is a mid-30s black dude who's been in and out of the joint for his whole adult life. You hit him over the head with a brick and kill him, it's all caught on security cameras, the trial is short, and your life goes on just fine.

But at the trial, this dude's mom is there, and his friends. You find out he had a kid. Now in your mind he has people who loved him. You're going to randomly be reminded over and over again about these people, and how they must feel.

And maybe later on you're reading an article talking about the school to prison pipeline, the same system your attacker was dragged into as a teenager. Now you're thinking of him as a little boy growing up in a bad neighborhood, and how his whole life was probably this inevitable storm of shit until someone like you killed him.

And then the holidays roll around, and you're thinking about how his kid doesn't have a dad this year. And so on.

Killing someone doesn't end when they die. In your mind, it keeps going forever as things remind you that this person isn't in the world anymore.

[(Anonymous)]

I feel like there's a difference between, "I accidentally killed someone in a situation where I could not have avoided killing them" and "I defended my life or the life of a loved one" I can see how someone could be traumatized by the first. Their intention wasn't to kill someone. That just happened. But when you actively defend your own life or someone else, your intention is to cause harm. Yeah, some people would be traumatized by that, but I also believe that some people would not be. I, too, hate that the only thing you ever see in TV shows is what amounts to survivor's guilt. I want some people to be like, "That was terrifying. Glad that human is dead though and not me"

[esteefee]

I dunno. I feel an atavistic shiver of dread if I have to kill a mosquito for chrissake. I hate them bc I'm allergic to the bites, and they can carry disease, so I kill them, but I still get a shiver.

I can't imagine being responsible for a human's death, regardless of the circumstances, wouldn't have a profound effect.

[(Anonymous)]

There's A LOT of people with zero life experience & exaggerated self-esteem out there and relatively few true sociopaths. You'll hopefully grow up (soon).