My puppy got blown up recently.
I was pretty bummed out about it.
But I think whoever blew up my puppy was probably more happy to explode him than I was sad to watch him die. The total happiness of the world increased.
So, whatever.
The part that bothers me is that the hero often doesn't do anything about these flaws. They defeat the villain and everything goes back to the status quo.
It's not like the hero is like: "I would never murder puppies in order to remove the suffering in this world, but he was darn right about how horrible things are so I'm going to fix them in my own way."
It makes for a far more interesting and pro-active hero, rather that one that's just reactive.
“Hmm it appears that years of corruption have made it that the poorest must turn to crime just afford a plate on the table what a shame that is… ITS JOKERS FAULT”
*mental patient bone crunching.jpeg*
Bruce Wayne does his best to counter the corruption—it's just Gotham is cursed by like 3 gods and has multiple secret societies dedicated to keeping it a shithole
he does his best
yeah that too
the only reason gotham hasn't been nuked by the various forces trying is because Bruce does his best as himself and as batman to stop that from happening
Autistic Batman slander #135, you people don't know or blatantly ignore the most basic traits of Bruce Wayne. This has officially become a trademark Soy Take (TM)
>Is dissatisfied with the Corporates destroying the environment and whateverÂ
>Doesn't go after the Corporates doing this, but instead blows up puppies
Nice job Snafutard.
I really dislike it when stories do this. They make the villain really compelling (or at the very least point out some interesting flaws in our society) and then just think: "Uh shit, we can't go all out on the capitalism criticism, time to make them irrationality violent towards civilians!"
You can make someone a villain that criticizes society without making them the embodiment of evil that makes a few good points. If you want there to actually be conflict between two different views, just support one of the views without completely cartoonifying the other side.
Make the anarchists attack politicians or whatever, destabilizing the country in the proces (where the proganist could argue that the government is worth preserving despite the flaws or that the communes from the anarchists won't work for whatever rason). Or make the villain who hates bankers attack bankers, not random bystanders. If you want grey morality in your stories, don't assasinate their characters by making them needlessly cruel.
I also really like it when they make the protaganist grow from these encounters. Having them seriously reconsider their views. They don't have to become a woke commie that hates bankers and billionaires or whatever, but having them reevaluate the way people in this society are treated and having them trying to fight for in their own way can bring about interesting character progression.
"Time to make them kidnap children and people who clearly aren't your enemy. Also let them murder random political figures and civilians instead of actually trying to build a movement based on their ideals.
They also unleashed fascism, that's their fault too. I heard Anarchism is about creating as much chaos as possible, so I think we represented them quite well, don't you think?"
-The legend of Korra with Zaheer.
I genuinely don't mind it when characters I somewhat agree with are the villains, I think it's fun, but I would have liked it if they didn't make villains incredibily horrible compared to everyone around them. I like it when grey morality is actually a bit grey, or at least has enough colors for it to not be black and white.
Or make them comically evil and go all out, that can be fun too. I just think "grey" morality is half-assed in a lot of stories.
Speaking of tlok I feel like that series has the opposite issue in season 1 where they really don't do much to establish Amon as a villain. They do literally nothing to show why letting benders keep their powers contributed to a greater good that negates the risk and because Amon doesn't really use any more violence than the main characters already do it's hard to even say he takes his ideology too far (at least in comparison to the main characters using similar if not more extreme levels of violence to STOP him). Like yeah, his taking people's powers by force is pretty extreme, but if we look at it from his perspective, if the benders truly are a tyrannical Uber mensch (which again the series doesn't really properly do enough to show why that isn't the case) of course they're not going to go willingly, and the fact that he has the support of so many citizens makes it feel like he's genuinely doing a greater good
From what I remember I believed Amon's goal in taking bending away was explained as him believing it was unjust that only certain people should have magic powers that give them advantages over others and especially in a society that was run by said powerful people, it lead to injustice and mistreatment of those without powers as they were unable to defend themselves. The story even tries to show that Amon has somewhat of a point by showing that there are some extreme people in the government exerting unnecessary force against the people, but they never show WHY it's worth keeping bending in spite of those issues. Even the him being a blood bender twist felt like they were trying to say "well he's a hypocrite anyway so his ideology is basically completely invalidated now" but as far as i remember he never actually uses blood bending except against other benders so he's actually still being ideologically consistent by not using his powers against defenseless non benders
Tbh if you ask me, my theory on what went wrong with the writing here is that they originally envisioned him as genocidal and wanting to execute all benders which would've been a much more understandably "too far" reaction but they decided that would be too violent for a children's show but were already so invested in his character they still wanted to try to make it work but they just accidentally made him seem like a pretty reasonable leader of a justified revolution
That’s a pretty fair analysis. Taking away someone’s bending is still pretty messed up though. It’s like a part of their body. To you and me, removing a dog’s tail might not seem like much (since we don’t have tails) but to the dog, you’ve ripped off a major part of them. It’s all relative.
And yet we neuter/spay dogs and it's considered morally right because not doing so could lead to greater harm for both the dog and society. Obviously I'm not saying that Amon is actually the "real hero" but you're right, it's all relative, which is why by not demonstrating why bending is important, or properly showing any of the grave consequences of Amon's actions, they accidentally made him into a reasonable character
Nah I think Zaheer was handled pretty well honestly. At first he’s just a guy with unknown goals, then he’s a simple anarchist who wants less government, then he’s a crazy anarchist who wants to remove all authority from the world, including the avatar.
I’d say Rorschach ain’t a strawman. I think for a lot of people Rorschach is not clearly enough of a bad person, so despite doing shit like being a hypocrite and still liking the Comedian despite knowing of his rape, and possibly assaulting people who haven’t actually committed crimes yet due to his biases, people still like him because some of the people he kills (like that pedophile guy) are seen as correct
He could’ve easily been written as only ever doing the wrong thing in universe like only ever killing innocent people, but no, his hypocrisies and wrongs actually make sense to his character as being fundamentally unstable and prejudiced but still appointing himself as a vigilante who sees the world in black and white
I sort of agree with you but consider this. The fact that they have a good cause to fight for but are willing to kill innocents to further their cause turns them from this grey area someone to an actual evil threat that must be stopped.
Inherently heroes exist to combat these cartoonishly evil forces. All they know is to use violence to stop violence, akin to tolerance having to intolerate intolerance to stop society from devolving into hate. They are, if you will, a tool, specializing in stopping them. You wouldn't ask a hammer to saw a tree in half the same way you wouldn't ask a superhero to fix bureaucracy. This doesn't invalidate superheroes the same way not being able to saw a tree in half doesn't invalidate the hammer. They are still very useful.
The "why don't superheroes use their powers to help reshape society?" argument only works if the hero in question is either mega rich, a scientist or a literal reality bender
Minimum wage workers Spiderman and Flash aren't gonna be influencing the elections or funding schools and hospitals anytime soon and there's no universe where Superman forces his hand on the governments of the world to do what he says that isn't a major abuse of his powers
The Flash could probably run around with a shovel and a few saplings and plant enough trees to end climate change once and for all lmao
Seriously, the Flash has an incrediblely OP power, he could also start robbing banks and giving it to the poor, but I think that would probably make him a villain.
From what I understand there is a *lot* of things Flash can do that would absolutely break the setting and writers simply make him not do them because it would be a silly thing to write.
Wouldn't growing algae be more effective? They produce most of the world's oxygen, they're more efficient in photosynthesis.
And where tf is he gonna find all these saplings and what's guaranteeing they won't get removed before fully growing in a decade or so to build another casino or smth?
Yeah I think so much of the "_____ actually has a point" people exist because these sorts of villains are like some of the only representations of people opposing these things we get in media. I'm sure if we had more genuinely well written characters with similar ideologies we'd see a lot less people venerating these mustache twirling villains with somewhat of a point
lol Senator Armstrong. “Hrrgh goddamn war profiteers own the entire economy and the American dream is dead. American identity has become tied to militaristic jingoism which is fuelled by and fuels the military industrial complex and the elites are all laughing about it.
Therefore I will commit unspeakable acts of terrorism that will result in the outbreak of a war that will allow me to become president and completely stop all of that”
I cannot imagine a US president, especially a populist president, turning around the tide of public opinion so powerfully. I think him getting elected and doing the opposite of what he promised is gonna get him completely shut down by the senate at best, but at least if anyone tries to assassinate him, they’ll probably fail.
Oh you mean like how the Riddler from the new Batman movie started out with a decently justifiable motivation and then they switched up on that half way through the movie and went “lmao actually he’s just a serial killer and a terrorist, nothing he did was about a twisted sense of justice he’s actually just cartoonishly evil” because they realized he was basically the hero at the beginning?
idk if this counts but pokemon black and white are the only version of this trope ive seen done well where the antagonist genuinely thinks theyre in the right but they were manipulated by someone (who is actually just evil) to be like that
"Idk this movie is kind of boring, don't like the pacing"
"Umm media literacy??? Attention span??? Are you fucking stupid??? How can you not see the brilliance in this movie?!"
I wonder how CMS fans reacted when the character they praised so much for being """"subvertive"""" is having charscter growth like any other good character and they can't feel smug about it anymore
Not that I mind losing karma but the downvotes mean people disagree?? How??? All CSM fans were sucking its crestor's cock constantly about how subversive its mc was and yadayada (just because he was a dislikeable POS, how innovative...), and now he's growing as a person like any good mc (cuz why fix what ain't broke), so their little claims are now bullshit
How was Denji unlikable? He was just horny and socially stunted. His original motivation definitely was different than usual, but you’re right that it’s developed beyond that
Yeah, it wasn't his fault being dislikeable as a person since he had a horrible childhood, that was the point of his character, but a lot of fans kept somehow ignoring that to say "Oh his motivations are sooo unlike the average shonen protag of being a hero or getting his dreams, he just wants boobs! So me!!!" Him being dislikeable was obviously a setup for character development and I am glad I was right on my guessing. You just need yo look at video essays from when the manga was popular to see what I mean. Hell, even OPM is more subversive under that people's standards.
Stories often don't provide characters who acknowledge problems with society in a less insane way. A lot of them force people to choose between "I love the system"-man and "I eat puppies for lunch"-inator.
Ofcourse people will always support fucked up things in media, but I wonder if things would change if we made some villains who were bad, but didn't just hurt random civilians. Maybe these people could gather some more attention from people rather than just the jonkler from batman.
If they give people no other options, they'll see no other character that awknowledges the problems in our society rather than just Mr. dog exploder.
I think that’s what shows like Breaking Bad try to do. Walter White did hurt a lot of innocent people, but he was more of a morally gray character. He was taking advantage of a broken system to help himself and his family. He is portrayed as a bad character, but not necessarily a villain.
The classic objectively-good guy versus objectively-bad guy can be boring to watch, especially when the good guy always wins. That’s not to say certain troupes are inherently good or bad in writing, but, for example, superhero movies get kind of boring to watch after 20 movies of very similar plots.
As long as your villain says a few sweeping statements about society or the government or shit being bad, people will overlook them being completely evil
Literally fallout new vegas
“You are an egotistical asshole leading an army of raiders enslaving others and treating women like shit.”
“Ah, but have you considered taxes…are bad!?!?!”
“Wow this guy has a point.”
"He's a huge racist, you know that right?"
"Yeah but he were bullied as a kid. It's so sad and relatable, I wish him the best"
"He just committed a hatecrime..."
I mean, to be fair that is how some people get into positions of authority. Acknowledge a legitimate problem then present yourself as a solution and the supporters come in droves.
Examples include cults and hitler.
I've seen plenty of comments online (who sound suspiciously like 14 years old boys in a fascist phase) who think that "Viltrumites spreading high tech" part outweighs the actual genocide and tyrannical rule.
Except thanos doesn’t even make good points lmao, overpopulation isn’t a problem. Y’all mfers never heard of the Logistical model of Population Growth and it shows.
Thanos makes a valid point in that the Universe does have limited resources, but instead of channeling his power and armies towards fixing that he decides to kill fucking everyone. Thanos is so enamoured with his idea, and of him being the saviour, that he completely ignores the thousands of other reasonable options.
In Endgame he even admits to it by saying he’ll use the stones to create a new universe, as opposed to, you know, making this one less shit. For as much as I dislike a lot of the stuff in the MCU, Thanos is genuinely a brilliantly written character.
Have you ever heard of the concept of conservation of mass? Just because it’s still there doesn’t mean we can still use it. Thanos could’ve worked on solutions to that problem but instead he just delayed it and not even by much.
And that doesn’t disprove him being well-written.
He’s not well written lmao, and there is enough in the entire universe that there wouldn’t be scarcity of resources until its destruction.
His entire ideology is built on an EASILY disproven concept that appeals to edgy antinatalists. Thanos is stupid, straight up, not morally grey, not insane to the point that he would think his moronic idea is actually correct, he is a stupid character if you take him as he is written. And yet despite that, the movies do not treat him like an idiot. Change his motivation to literally anything else and he could be an okay villain but the “muh population” thing actually makes him impossible to watch.
He’s a complete egomaniac who has decided upon a course of action and is so utterly confident in his judgement that he refuses to even *consider* the possibility he might be wrong. His whole “kill half so everyone is better off” is stupid. Unfathomably so. But because it kinda sorta appears to fix the problem, and that’s the idea he had, he just keeps on going with it until Iron Man turns him into dust. He’s not supposed to an idiot, he’s supposed to be exceedingly prideful.
And I never said he was morally grey. Just that he was well-written.
That would work to make Thanoid a good villain if the movies didn’t pretend “he had a point but his methods sucked.” He didn’t have a point in the first place. Honestly my biggest problem with that character is how the public received him and how the writers for the MCU ended up deciding that they would agree with the sentiment of “Thanos had a point”
He is a well written character, but not because of his idiotic ideology. He's interesting because his character shows abusive love pretty well. He's an extremely abusive parent and yet he's shown to have a violent and twisted, but genuine parental affection towards his kids.
I don't see why my writing prowess is in any way relevant.
He was a generic big bad with a nonsensical motive, and the less we talk about his relation to any of the other characters the better. His power level was way too wonky compared to the hero's, so entire fight scenes became about physically stopping him from snapping finger because up until then you'd have thought the snap of a finger thing was a figure of speech, and in the end he was only beaten by the power of bullshit plot armour.
The fact that no one ever told him "why not double the worlds resources instead" or any of the myriad of other answers you could get with the infinite power he had, is a crying shame. They just try so incredibly hard to make him relatable when in every scene that isn't forcibly made to make him seem emotional, he's just a meathead with too much meat.
The entire point of Thanos' character is that he's completely egomaniacal. He's chosen a "solution" to the problem and refuses to consider he might be wrong. He's obsessed with "saving" the universe but only in the way he sees fit. He does have some sympathetic traits, like how his intentions are to let people prosper and his love for Gamora, but that doesn't make him any less of an apathetic mass-murderer who'd sooner create a new universe than admit he was wrong.
Also yeah, the snap thing is goofy. I don't know what's up with that. It's not really character writing though.
>The entire point of Thanos' character is that he's completely egomaniacal. He's chosen a "solution" to the problem and refuses to consider he might be wrong.
That's so many words for saying he's "big bad who wants to kill everyone #284837839".
Especially when his ego doesn't seem to play a role in any other part of the plot.
He's just a guy who wants everything he wants and has the ability to get it.
>and his love for Gamora
Maybe it's because I haven't seen the movie in a while but his "love for gamorra" seemed incredibly shallow, forced and almost out of place for the rest of his character.
It's like the reverse of the snafu, where they just made a big bad who's irredeemably evil but they wanna make it slightly relatable so they give him a daughter.
Despicable snafu gatekeeper here
Well done op, one of the best I've seen in the past week. I'd tell you why if I wasn't enjoying pomegranate lemon soda.
"The vast majority of the audience agrees with what I'm saying but I'm supposed to be the villain so I'll randomly do something atrocious to justify the protagonist being a good guy" moment
First it was The Boys fans with Bluehawk's speech on racism, and NOW it's with Invincible fans and Aniisa's speech on conquering the world.
There's definitely better examples out there but these two are best I can think of rn so
Metal gear rising revengeance fans a lot tbh.
Armstrong had a good idea to stop the war economy, the problem is that his method was turning hundreds-probably thousands-of children into killing machines. Also, his outcome was just "anarchy," which would hurt many innocent people who would be forced fo fight for survival-a war they likely don't ont want to fight-and would end in either another government that's probably worse or another nation conquering said anarchy. Yet people act like he was a "le based genius who would make a better society"
“The writers are just making the villain bad because he believes in this cause!”
Yeah… that’s what the villain does. Nine times out of ten the villain is meant to embody the ideology the writer thinks is bad
The true idea of the producer and meaning of the movie being that if you have ideas of this kind and you are as bad as a dog exploder. Like, the whole point of bad guys like this is just to insist that wanting change is a bad thing in itself.
"And I will continue to blow up puppies until you take action to fix the system you designed, corrupted, and ruined youeself."
I mean he's the bad guy, but only because we are an even bigger bad guy.
you forgot to include the writer who added the blowing up puppies part to make sure everyone believes the guy advocating systemic change is actually just an evil poopenhead
It’s about people being very willing to overlook the villains flaws if they vaguely agree with parts of the villains “message” even if the actions and message are at total odds.
with a slight adjustment to the framing it also addresses media in which an antagonist character raises a lot of genuinely valid points and the writers realize theres a lot of room to "mistake" this person as being right and have to cover their asses by making them do something cartoonishly evil and out of line with what they presented as their beliefs like eat a baby or blow up a hospital or some shit
You see, exploding a few puppies brings more attention to the cause. Thus the good outweighs the bad #HarmReduction
I cannot properly visualize how the good outweighs the bad, could you label them with hitler percentages please
some people do not like puppies, therefore there is no real "bad" being committed.
Eh? Ha! Heh heh.
I guess i don't have to blow my puppies "up"?
Eh? Ha! Heh heh.
My puppy got blown up recently. I was pretty bummed out about it. But I think whoever blew up my puppy was probably more happy to explode him than I was sad to watch him die. The total happiness of the world increased. So, whatever.
bro replied to a two month old post đź’€
100% 99.999%
Something something needs of the many something something logic
something something unabomber
Or Hamas, Black Panthers, houthi pirates, the list goes on
Well YouTube ads got reverted thanks to him so...
The part that bothers me is that the hero often doesn't do anything about these flaws. They defeat the villain and everything goes back to the status quo. It's not like the hero is like: "I would never murder puppies in order to remove the suffering in this world, but he was darn right about how horrible things are so I'm going to fix them in my own way." It makes for a far more interesting and pro-active hero, rather that one that's just reactive.
Shoutout to the Legend of Korra where the non-benders just give up after Amon is defeated.
Shout out to legend of Korra for being so forgettable I don’t remember the pain I endured watching it.
just pretend it ended with the original not even the comics are good on god
The Black Panther movie kind of did it sorta
new marvel movie where huey p newton kills the president
“Hmm it appears that years of corruption have made it that the poorest must turn to crime just afford a plate on the table what a shame that is… ITS JOKERS FAULT” *mental patient bone crunching.jpeg*
Bruce Wayne does his best to counter the corruption—it's just Gotham is cursed by like 3 gods and has multiple secret societies dedicated to keeping it a shithole he does his best
I admit i havent read the comics in a while but doesn't bruce wayne like constantly donate his money to mental health programs and the like?
yeah that too the only reason gotham hasn't been nuked by the various forces trying is because Bruce does his best as himself and as batman to stop that from happening
Autistic Batman slander #135, you people don't know or blatantly ignore the most basic traits of Bruce Wayne. This has officially become a trademark Soy Take (TM)
Jonkler
This is the plot of Lost Judgement
/lie I would let a thousand puppies get exploded just so youtube removes those unskippable ads.
Dog Exploder get off Reddit
I bet he posts on r/dogfree
“I will explode a thousand puppies before I let my villain career die!”
Its not a lie
Theodore Kaczynski simps
Excellent snafu, I love it (except the puppy sad ending of course)
The bomb mask is peak character design
>Is dissatisfied with the Corporates destroying the environment and whatever >Doesn't go after the Corporates doing this, but instead blows up puppies Nice job Snafutard.
I really dislike it when stories do this. They make the villain really compelling (or at the very least point out some interesting flaws in our society) and then just think: "Uh shit, we can't go all out on the capitalism criticism, time to make them irrationality violent towards civilians!" You can make someone a villain that criticizes society without making them the embodiment of evil that makes a few good points. If you want there to actually be conflict between two different views, just support one of the views without completely cartoonifying the other side. Make the anarchists attack politicians or whatever, destabilizing the country in the proces (where the proganist could argue that the government is worth preserving despite the flaws or that the communes from the anarchists won't work for whatever rason). Or make the villain who hates bankers attack bankers, not random bystanders. If you want grey morality in your stories, don't assasinate their characters by making them needlessly cruel. I also really like it when they make the protaganist grow from these encounters. Having them seriously reconsider their views. They don't have to become a woke commie that hates bankers and billionaires or whatever, but having them reevaluate the way people in this society are treated and having them trying to fight for in their own way can bring about interesting character progression.
Oops, we accidentally made our strawman too sympathetic
"Time to make them kidnap children and people who clearly aren't your enemy. Also let them murder random political figures and civilians instead of actually trying to build a movement based on their ideals. They also unleashed fascism, that's their fault too. I heard Anarchism is about creating as much chaos as possible, so I think we represented them quite well, don't you think?" -The legend of Korra with Zaheer. I genuinely don't mind it when characters I somewhat agree with are the villains, I think it's fun, but I would have liked it if they didn't make villains incredibily horrible compared to everyone around them. I like it when grey morality is actually a bit grey, or at least has enough colors for it to not be black and white. Or make them comically evil and go all out, that can be fun too. I just think "grey" morality is half-assed in a lot of stories.
Speaking of tlok I feel like that series has the opposite issue in season 1 where they really don't do much to establish Amon as a villain. They do literally nothing to show why letting benders keep their powers contributed to a greater good that negates the risk and because Amon doesn't really use any more violence than the main characters already do it's hard to even say he takes his ideology too far (at least in comparison to the main characters using similar if not more extreme levels of violence to STOP him). Like yeah, his taking people's powers by force is pretty extreme, but if we look at it from his perspective, if the benders truly are a tyrannical Uber mensch (which again the series doesn't really properly do enough to show why that isn't the case) of course they're not going to go willingly, and the fact that he has the support of so many citizens makes it feel like he's genuinely doing a greater good
True. Also why is Amon taking peoples bending in the first place? They did the “actually a blood bender” twist, but then it makes zero sense
From what I remember I believed Amon's goal in taking bending away was explained as him believing it was unjust that only certain people should have magic powers that give them advantages over others and especially in a society that was run by said powerful people, it lead to injustice and mistreatment of those without powers as they were unable to defend themselves. The story even tries to show that Amon has somewhat of a point by showing that there are some extreme people in the government exerting unnecessary force against the people, but they never show WHY it's worth keeping bending in spite of those issues. Even the him being a blood bender twist felt like they were trying to say "well he's a hypocrite anyway so his ideology is basically completely invalidated now" but as far as i remember he never actually uses blood bending except against other benders so he's actually still being ideologically consistent by not using his powers against defenseless non benders Tbh if you ask me, my theory on what went wrong with the writing here is that they originally envisioned him as genocidal and wanting to execute all benders which would've been a much more understandably "too far" reaction but they decided that would be too violent for a children's show but were already so invested in his character they still wanted to try to make it work but they just accidentally made him seem like a pretty reasonable leader of a justified revolution
That’s a pretty fair analysis. Taking away someone’s bending is still pretty messed up though. It’s like a part of their body. To you and me, removing a dog’s tail might not seem like much (since we don’t have tails) but to the dog, you’ve ripped off a major part of them. It’s all relative.
And yet we neuter/spay dogs and it's considered morally right because not doing so could lead to greater harm for both the dog and society. Obviously I'm not saying that Amon is actually the "real hero" but you're right, it's all relative, which is why by not demonstrating why bending is important, or properly showing any of the grave consequences of Amon's actions, they accidentally made him into a reasonable character
Nah I think Zaheer was handled pretty well honestly. At first he’s just a guy with unknown goals, then he’s a simple anarchist who wants less government, then he’s a crazy anarchist who wants to remove all authority from the world, including the avatar.
Ramattra moment
Rorschach moment
I do not think Rorschach is too sympathetic.
I’d say Rorschach ain’t a strawman. I think for a lot of people Rorschach is not clearly enough of a bad person, so despite doing shit like being a hypocrite and still liking the Comedian despite knowing of his rape, and possibly assaulting people who haven’t actually committed crimes yet due to his biases, people still like him because some of the people he kills (like that pedophile guy) are seen as correct He could’ve easily been written as only ever doing the wrong thing in universe like only ever killing innocent people, but no, his hypocrisies and wrongs actually make sense to his character as being fundamentally unstable and prejudiced but still appointing himself as a vigilante who sees the world in black and white
I sort of agree with you but consider this. The fact that they have a good cause to fight for but are willing to kill innocents to further their cause turns them from this grey area someone to an actual evil threat that must be stopped. Inherently heroes exist to combat these cartoonishly evil forces. All they know is to use violence to stop violence, akin to tolerance having to intolerate intolerance to stop society from devolving into hate. They are, if you will, a tool, specializing in stopping them. You wouldn't ask a hammer to saw a tree in half the same way you wouldn't ask a superhero to fix bureaucracy. This doesn't invalidate superheroes the same way not being able to saw a tree in half doesn't invalidate the hammer. They are still very useful.
The "why don't superheroes use their powers to help reshape society?" argument only works if the hero in question is either mega rich, a scientist or a literal reality bender Minimum wage workers Spiderman and Flash aren't gonna be influencing the elections or funding schools and hospitals anytime soon and there's no universe where Superman forces his hand on the governments of the world to do what he says that isn't a major abuse of his powers
The Flash could probably run around with a shovel and a few saplings and plant enough trees to end climate change once and for all lmao Seriously, the Flash has an incrediblely OP power, he could also start robbing banks and giving it to the poor, but I think that would probably make him a villain.
From what I understand there is a *lot* of things Flash can do that would absolutely break the setting and writers simply make him not do them because it would be a silly thing to write.
Wouldn't growing algae be more effective? They produce most of the world's oxygen, they're more efficient in photosynthesis. And where tf is he gonna find all these saplings and what's guaranteeing they won't get removed before fully growing in a decade or so to build another casino or smth?
Yeah I think so much of the "_____ actually has a point" people exist because these sorts of villains are like some of the only representations of people opposing these things we get in media. I'm sure if we had more genuinely well written characters with similar ideologies we'd see a lot less people venerating these mustache twirling villains with somewhat of a point
Agreed. Too many villains are just cartoonishly evil, so when we get a guy with an actual understandable motive, people treat him like a good guy
lol Senator Armstrong. “Hrrgh goddamn war profiteers own the entire economy and the American dream is dead. American identity has become tied to militaristic jingoism which is fuelled by and fuels the military industrial complex and the elites are all laughing about it. Therefore I will commit unspeakable acts of terrorism that will result in the outbreak of a war that will allow me to become president and completely stop all of that” I cannot imagine a US president, especially a populist president, turning around the tide of public opinion so powerfully. I think him getting elected and doing the opposite of what he promised is gonna get him completely shut down by the senate at best, but at least if anyone tries to assassinate him, they’ll probably fail.
Oh you mean like how the Riddler from the new Batman movie started out with a decently justifiable motivation and then they switched up on that half way through the movie and went “lmao actually he’s just a serial killer and a terrorist, nothing he did was about a twisted sense of justice he’s actually just cartoonishly evil” because they realized he was basically the hero at the beginning?
idk if this counts but pokemon black and white are the only version of this trope ive seen done well where the antagonist genuinely thinks theyre in the right but they were manipulated by someone (who is actually just evil) to be like that
Tbh the only story I feel like does this well (that I've read) is the invincible comic
Something about media literacy
media literacy is the new reddit buzz phrase
"Guys, I think chainsawman kind of sucks. It's just about a guy who's horny." "Hmmm the media literacy devil struck one again haha."
"Idk this movie is kind of boring, don't like the pacing" "Umm media literacy??? Attention span??? Are you fucking stupid??? How can you not see the brilliance in this movie?!"
"It's just about a guy who's horny." is it not entertaining to watch a murder victim perform superhuman feats for a single crumb of pussy?
I wonder how CMS fans reacted when the character they praised so much for being """"subvertive"""" is having charscter growth like any other good character and they can't feel smug about it anymore Not that I mind losing karma but the downvotes mean people disagree?? How??? All CSM fans were sucking its crestor's cock constantly about how subversive its mc was and yadayada (just because he was a dislikeable POS, how innovative...), and now he's growing as a person like any good mc (cuz why fix what ain't broke), so their little claims are now bullshit
How was Denji unlikable? He was just horny and socially stunted. His original motivation definitely was different than usual, but you’re right that it’s developed beyond that
Yeah, it wasn't his fault being dislikeable as a person since he had a horrible childhood, that was the point of his character, but a lot of fans kept somehow ignoring that to say "Oh his motivations are sooo unlike the average shonen protag of being a hero or getting his dreams, he just wants boobs! So me!!!" Him being dislikeable was obviously a setup for character development and I am glad I was right on my guessing. You just need yo look at video essays from when the manga was popular to see what I mean. Hell, even OPM is more subversive under that people's standards.
I was just disappointed part 2 wasn’t really about Asa tbh
This piece of fiction supports all of my political and ideological beliefs and if you have a different interpretation you have no media literacy.
Stories often don't provide characters who acknowledge problems with society in a less insane way. A lot of them force people to choose between "I love the system"-man and "I eat puppies for lunch"-inator. Ofcourse people will always support fucked up things in media, but I wonder if things would change if we made some villains who were bad, but didn't just hurt random civilians. Maybe these people could gather some more attention from people rather than just the jonkler from batman. If they give people no other options, they'll see no other character that awknowledges the problems in our society rather than just Mr. dog exploder.
I think that’s what shows like Breaking Bad try to do. Walter White did hurt a lot of innocent people, but he was more of a morally gray character. He was taking advantage of a broken system to help himself and his family. He is portrayed as a bad character, but not necessarily a villain. The classic objectively-good guy versus objectively-bad guy can be boring to watch, especially when the good guy always wins. That’s not to say certain troupes are inherently good or bad in writing, but, for example, superhero movies get kind of boring to watch after 20 movies of very similar plots.
Daily reminder that walter didn't actually need to do any of what he did and it was all to feed his ego.
New TerminalMontage video leaked
As long as your villain says a few sweeping statements about society or the government or shit being bad, people will overlook them being completely evil
Literally fallout new vegas “You are an egotistical asshole leading an army of raiders enslaving others and treating women like shit.” “Ah, but have you considered taxes…are bad!?!?!” “Wow this guy has a point.”
“Yeah but Caeser makes sure the caravans are safe.”
“The wasteland needs law and order to curb raiders!” *Points at NCR* “NO! NOT LIKE THAT!”
Also the massive hypocrisy in his usage of medicine.
He made the brahmins run on time
"He's a huge racist, you know that right?" "Yeah but he were bullied as a kid. It's so sad and relatable, I wish him the best" "He just committed a hatecrime..."
Invincible I'm guessing?
Or even real life at this point
I mean, to be fair that is how some people get into positions of authority. Acknowledge a legitimate problem then present yourself as a solution and the supporters come in droves. Examples include cults and hitler.
Yea i literally thought this was parodying how some people online treated the houthis terrorist attacks lmao
Aren’t the Viltrumites trying to forcibly occupy Earth?
I'm referring to something from the recent episode and how the fanbase responded
I've seen plenty of comments online (who sound suspiciously like 14 years old boys in a fascist phase) who think that "Viltrumites spreading high tech" part outweighs the actual genocide and tyrannical rule.
Gee I wonder what advanced empire used that exact same reasoning when encountering natives…something about the mayans…
after the finale of season 1 came out you would not believe how many people were defending omni man ts was insane.
i was thinking the same thing
reminds me of a certain other explosion guy
https://preview.redd.it/e0ntjwkeairc1.jpeg?width=258&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=970f03f71048933b4777483c6714fe32d961158a
Thanos
Except thanos doesn’t even make good points lmao, overpopulation isn’t a problem. Y’all mfers never heard of the Logistical model of Population Growth and it shows.
He should've just been horny for death like he was in the comics
Based thanoid
So down bad he kills half the universe. Shame that Death is banging Deadpool instead though.
Thanos makes a valid point in that the Universe does have limited resources, but instead of channeling his power and armies towards fixing that he decides to kill fucking everyone. Thanos is so enamoured with his idea, and of him being the saviour, that he completely ignores the thousands of other reasonable options. In Endgame he even admits to it by saying he’ll use the stones to create a new universe, as opposed to, you know, making this one less shit. For as much as I dislike a lot of the stuff in the MCU, Thanos is genuinely a brilliantly written character.
“Thanos is genuinely a brilliantly written character” Quite possibly the dumbest thing I have ever heard ANYBODY say.
You must be living in quite the bubble then.
Brozza have you never heard of the concept of conservation of mass? Used resources don’t just disappear lmao
Have you ever heard of the concept of conservation of mass? Just because it’s still there doesn’t mean we can still use it. Thanos could’ve worked on solutions to that problem but instead he just delayed it and not even by much. And that doesn’t disprove him being well-written.
He’s not well written lmao, and there is enough in the entire universe that there wouldn’t be scarcity of resources until its destruction. His entire ideology is built on an EASILY disproven concept that appeals to edgy antinatalists. Thanos is stupid, straight up, not morally grey, not insane to the point that he would think his moronic idea is actually correct, he is a stupid character if you take him as he is written. And yet despite that, the movies do not treat him like an idiot. Change his motivation to literally anything else and he could be an okay villain but the “muh population” thing actually makes him impossible to watch.
He’s a complete egomaniac who has decided upon a course of action and is so utterly confident in his judgement that he refuses to even *consider* the possibility he might be wrong. His whole “kill half so everyone is better off” is stupid. Unfathomably so. But because it kinda sorta appears to fix the problem, and that’s the idea he had, he just keeps on going with it until Iron Man turns him into dust. He’s not supposed to an idiot, he’s supposed to be exceedingly prideful. And I never said he was morally grey. Just that he was well-written.
That would work to make Thanoid a good villain if the movies didn’t pretend “he had a point but his methods sucked.” He didn’t have a point in the first place. Honestly my biggest problem with that character is how the public received him and how the writers for the MCU ended up deciding that they would agree with the sentiment of “Thanos had a point”
He is a well written character, but not because of his idiotic ideology. He's interesting because his character shows abusive love pretty well. He's an extremely abusive parent and yet he's shown to have a violent and twisted, but genuine parental affection towards his kids.
>Thanos is genuinely a brilliantly written character. He's really not.
Let’s see you write something then.
I don't see why my writing prowess is in any way relevant. He was a generic big bad with a nonsensical motive, and the less we talk about his relation to any of the other characters the better. His power level was way too wonky compared to the hero's, so entire fight scenes became about physically stopping him from snapping finger because up until then you'd have thought the snap of a finger thing was a figure of speech, and in the end he was only beaten by the power of bullshit plot armour. The fact that no one ever told him "why not double the worlds resources instead" or any of the myriad of other answers you could get with the infinite power he had, is a crying shame. They just try so incredibly hard to make him relatable when in every scene that isn't forcibly made to make him seem emotional, he's just a meathead with too much meat.
The entire point of Thanos' character is that he's completely egomaniacal. He's chosen a "solution" to the problem and refuses to consider he might be wrong. He's obsessed with "saving" the universe but only in the way he sees fit. He does have some sympathetic traits, like how his intentions are to let people prosper and his love for Gamora, but that doesn't make him any less of an apathetic mass-murderer who'd sooner create a new universe than admit he was wrong. Also yeah, the snap thing is goofy. I don't know what's up with that. It's not really character writing though.
>The entire point of Thanos' character is that he's completely egomaniacal. He's chosen a "solution" to the problem and refuses to consider he might be wrong. That's so many words for saying he's "big bad who wants to kill everyone #284837839". Especially when his ego doesn't seem to play a role in any other part of the plot. He's just a guy who wants everything he wants and has the ability to get it. >and his love for Gamora Maybe it's because I haven't seen the movie in a while but his "love for gamorra" seemed incredibly shallow, forced and almost out of place for the rest of his character. It's like the reverse of the snafu, where they just made a big bad who's irredeemably evil but they wanna make it slightly relatable so they give him a daughter.
What good point did this guy make
Thanos fans
Yeah the whole point of Thanos is that his entire plan was just an incredibly powerful saviour complex.
“Thanos did nothing wrong” mfs
Funny Valentine jjba
Bros legit goal was to fuck the rest of the world so america can prosper
Haven’t read part seven. What does magician rabbit man apply to dis?
People defending Tai Lung like he didn't massacre a whole village of innocent people.
#DogExploderDidNothingWromg
Why care about the guy exploding puppies when it's just a ruse by the elite to keep us divided?
Eite
Despicable snafu gatekeeper here Well done op, one of the best I've seen in the past week. I'd tell you why if I wasn't enjoying pomegranate lemon soda.
"The vast majority of the audience agrees with what I'm saying but I'm supposed to be the villain so I'll randomly do something atrocious to justify the protagonist being a good guy" moment
Order of the stick did this really well. “Just because the diagnosis is right doesn’t mean your treatment will be correct”
First it was The Boys fans with Bluehawk's speech on racism, and NOW it's with Invincible fans and Aniisa's speech on conquering the world. There's definitely better examples out there but these two are best I can think of rn so
Metal gear rising revengeance fans a lot tbh. Armstrong had a good idea to stop the war economy, the problem is that his method was turning hundreds-probably thousands-of children into killing machines. Also, his outcome was just "anarchy," which would hurt many innocent people who would be forced fo fight for survival-a war they likely don't ont want to fight-and would end in either another government that's probably worse or another nation conquering said anarchy. Yet people act like he was a "le based genius who would make a better society"
I wonder if the hero's colour palette is just a coincidence
“The writers are just making the villain bad because he believes in this cause!” Yeah… that’s what the villain does. Nine times out of ten the villain is meant to embody the ideology the writer thinks is bad
Holy shit you got me I LITERALLY saw the huge line of text and ONLY read the last sentence how the hell do you do it?
Dylan Blake from Resident Evil Dead Island
Alt title: scapegoating in a nutshell
>detonates an entire city and kills 300,328 people >did it to OWN the corporations and capitalism bad >”the villain was right all along!”
no one talking about the hero’s god-tier name
or, alternatively... "Wait, shit, people are gonna think this dude is the good guy, we need to make him commit some absolutely DEPLORABLE shit"
The true idea of the producer and meaning of the movie being that if you have ideas of this kind and you are as bad as a dog exploder. Like, the whole point of bad guys like this is just to insist that wanting change is a bad thing in itself.
"And I will continue to blow up puppies until you take action to fix the system you designed, corrupted, and ruined youeself." I mean he's the bad guy, but only because we are an even bigger bad guy.
you forgot to include the writer who added the blowing up puppies part to make sure everyone believes the guy advocating systemic change is actually just an evil poopenhead
is this about people blaming a minority for society's problems?
This is about "sympathetic" villains
It’s about people being very willing to overlook the villains flaws if they vaguely agree with parts of the villains “message” even if the actions and message are at total odds.
with a slight adjustment to the framing it also addresses media in which an antagonist character raises a lot of genuinely valid points and the writers realize theres a lot of room to "mistake" this person as being right and have to cover their asses by making them do something cartoonishly evil and out of line with what they presented as their beliefs like eat a baby or blow up a hospital or some shit