[ SECRET POST #5826 ]

[case]

⌈ Secret Post #5826 ⌋

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


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Notes:

Secrets Left to Post: 02 pages, 39 secrets from Secret Submission Post #834.
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]

01. https://i.imgur.com/PXP2orO.png

[(Anonymous)]

Krypto blew up Krypton? Bad dog!

[(Anonymous)]

But look at that face. How could such a precious doggo be a villain?

[(Anonymous)]

Eh, even if it's overdone, I think it's a valid way to reimagine a story - especially in superhero stories where national propaganda, imperialism and plot armour for the main character can cohere together in a really toxic way to make you cheer for a character who would be villified if they were anyone else in the narrative.

[(Anonymous)]

This is very much how I feel about it. "How would I feel about someone doing thins if they weren't literally the character everyone is being encouraged to support uncritically?" is an important question, in meta.

I've seen so many stories that remind me of a cartoon with two identical drawings of a castle, a village, and some tiny ships facing each other with descriptive text like, "our noble ruler, our good people, our brave troops" and "their evil despot, savage hordes, and vicious killers." Because it can really get that surreal if the author's bought into exceptionalism: "yes, in theory, torture or murder or human rights violations are bad, but when OUR hero does it, he has good reasons for it and it's totally justified!" Some people will buy that. They always do. The ones that don't are the ones going "this hero's fitting my description of a villain."

Of course, I've seen a lot of arguments in fandom that I think would have been more convincing if the person making them had opted for "I find X character offputting because they do [these things] that make me dislike them," instead of reaching for "these things are morally wrong." There are many more heroes that manage to be insufferably unpleasant (to at least some of the fandom) in ways that don't really make the cut as evil. But - despite my opinion that people invoke the moral high ground too often and sometimes quite inappropriately - there are still times when I'm really glad that we have "this hero is behaving in a way that is immoral and unworthy" available, as an argument, because that's exactly what needs to be said.

[(Anonymous)]

Agreed. It's fun to watch/read the occasional theory, maybe to read the occasional fic, but people who insist it is/should be canon are annoying. It's always made out to be somehow better than the actual story because it's darker or edgier or whatever.

+1

[(Anonymous)]

It's fine in moderation! But people do it so frequently, even when it doesn't actually make any sense.

[(Anonymous)]

Yeah, it's the "this would be better than canon because it's DARK like the REAL WORLD" brigade that annoy me.

[rosehiptea]

To be honest that gets on my nerves too. I’m all for seeing shades of gray in things, even things that aren’t set up that way. But people who get so caught up in making things “dark” that they forget the hero did good things in the actual canon need to calm down.

[(Anonymous)]

Yes! There is a line between 'maybe this hero isn't that perfect' and 'evil is so much iiiintrrrresttttiiing'

[feotakahari]

There’s a writing prompts blog on Tumblr that’s obsessed with this, and it makes me want to write obnoxiously pure good guys out of spite.

[(Anonymous)]

I love them - when the authors of whatever media have no understanding of actual ethics and presume that their Good Main Character is a good person while doing objectively terrible things simply because they're the main character.

[(Anonymous)]

It's even better when their Good Main Character is doing things on par with (or worse than) the Villain, but the Villain is, well, vilified for it, but somehow, it's okay for the Good Main Character because... reasons.

[(Anonymous)]

Can you name some examples? I've seen scarce amount in my whole life, and most of the cited examples I've seen before are doing exactly what the OP seems to have an issue with -- claiming the good guy is a much worse person than they really are in canon, and saying X thing they did is just as bad or is essentially the same thing as Y thing that villain did... when it's really, really not.

[(Anonymous)]

Have you watched Zack Snyder movies?

[(Anonymous)]

In a low-stakes way, some of the Baby-Sitters Club books from later in the series. The basis of the series is that they care about kids, but there was one, I think a side-story was the president of the club trying to set up one of the kids to have an accident so that she could film it, like something on America's funniest home videos. They're supposed to be friends, but when Mary-Anne got a haircut all of the girls in the club stopped talking to her (because obviously she'd changed) and she noticed that all of the girls her friends think are stuck-up said something nice to her about her hair.

[(Anonymous)]

AYRT

For one, every copaganda tv show does this.

[meadowphoenix]

I really like them when there's something normative in the story that the story is presenting as obviously moral, when it's dubiously or actually amoral. If it's like, spy shit though...that's really boring to me, that feels like you're just replacing one normative system with another.

I ALSO dislike it when people think it's a "the hero is really bad" when it's more a hero is really complicated and so is the villain, but all this "the hero is really bad" has clouded people's thinking.

[(Anonymous)]

+10000. AUs? cool and fun. Doing what you're saying? Annoying.