Code Geass

Everyone is selfish to some extent, that's a fundamental aspect of human nature. It doesn't make them 'ungood' just because they have more than one reason for why they're doing what they're doing.

Plus condemning an otherwise completely justified rebellion against an evil empire just because it's leader doesn't meet some arbitrary standard of moral uprightness strikes me as pretty fucking petty.

Plus, people would complain if the leader were some faultless paragon.

There's a reason why I admire selfless characters in fiction, sire, and it's exactly this.

Lelouch strikes me as petty, self-serving and incongruent with his own plans(i.e.: I am doing what I must! No wait, my sister is in trouble fuck you rebellion!) what am I supposed to do? Adjust my moral standards so I don't find him as bad as I find him?

To rationalize his actions is to do the work's job for it. It presented me a morally flawed rebel leader up against a naïve princess and her selfishly self-less bodyguard/lover. Why do I have to side with the group that presents the less moral characters in the conflict because of the big picture? Is it a rule of fiction or what?

There's no such thing as an utterly selfless character; we do things because they have value to us, even if it goes against materialistic self-preservation. No one ever does an action thinking it wouldn't benefit them in some way, even if it is merely satisfaction for 'doing the right thing'.

And as we've noted, it's not that Suzaku is entirely Selfless; he has very personal reasons for not wanting to go against Britannia. To me he isn't particularly courageous for what he does, since he's dully bowing to Britannian authority. It's not that I don't agree with Suzaku that innocent people will die because of Lelouch's actions, it's that he is either totally ignorant or willfully blind to how unendurable Britannian submission is to the Elevens and how unchangeable the Britannians' perspective is. If this was something like say, The Skyrim Civil War, where the Imperials are reasonable people more or less trying to keep the peace the best they can, while the rebels, despite having genuine greviences, tend to be just a disruptive force; then I could see Suzaku's outlook working.

And keep in mind Lelouch isn't fighting Suzaku himself; he's fighting Britannia and Suzaku has made himself complicit in defending Britannia's principles. There's just something kind of disgustingly paternalistic about Suzaku, how he's portrayed I mean.

You keep singling out two characters; two characters do not save the vileness of the Empire. Lelouch, for all his flaws, is human. He is a human with human motivations, and just because he has multiple goals doesn't mean any of them are subordinate to one another. He's a man who wants justice, but he also wants revenge, but he also wants to make his sister happy. The execution is sloppy, sure, but he is conceptually complex, again, and I'm watching this play myself, like Hamlet. Why are Suzaku's claims that he cares about the wellbeing of the people anymore sincere than Lelouch's?

edited 10th Oct '12 10:40:55 AM by Scherzo09

I think Suzaku has a pretty good idea of how Britannia treats Elevens, seeing as how he kind of is one.

I mean, to the atrocities on a whole. He seems like he represses it, either that or his rationalizations are just really half-assed.

Well, during the Shinjuku massacre, he seems to buy the explanation that the deaths were caused by terrorists releasing poison gas, even though he saw for himself that what the terrorists stole didn't actually have any gas inside it. So I'd say there's definitely some willful ignorance there.

Yo are getting reality mixed with fiction again, in fiction, individuals are capable of utterly selfless action that goes both against self-preservation and emotional payoff. Archer did good for the sake of doing good, and he hates himself every second for it.

I've already said that they don't save Brittania's actions. I ask, why is it not valid that I wanted to see Suzaku's ambitions prosper why wanting to see Lelouch's fail? If he accepts that he wants justice and revenge and making his sister happy: he must accept which one of these is the greater good and stick with it, he doesn't, whenever any of these enter in conflict, Making his sister happy becomes priority, vengeance comes second and justice comes third. Why is Suzaku more sincere? Because he doesn't hide under a false hero persona to manipulate people.

edited 10th Oct '12 11:33:46 AM by vandro

Fiction is a reflection of reality; if characters do not act in recognizably human ways, however stylized or abstracted or reduced to absurdity, then we tend to reject them. And most people tend not to go to literature to see mere Morality Plays unless they're indulging in some Holier Than Thou fantasy (Such as taking all the arbitrarily 'good' options in RP Gs with a binary morality system, which I personally intensely dislike but whatever).

It seems to me rather, you just like Suzaku as a person more, and therefore you're more inclined to forgive his actions, whereas you see Lelouch as someone who is duplicitous and hypocritical, and therefore everything he does is invalidated. I can't argue that there aren't times when Lelouch is full of shit. But to me, conceptually, putting aside for a moment his execution, it's unfair to merely reduce Lelouch to his negative aspects. He's conflicted, I don't think there's some order to his motives, though I used to, and that brings out a humanness, even amongst his pragmatism. Suzaku to me doesn't have ambitions, he has this vague desire to change the system from within but really puts no effort before running into Euphemia, and really has no means, to carry it out. He's just a dog on a leash, and furthermore I'd posit that he's against revolution not primarily out of a genuine respect for human lives, but because he personally does not want to live with the guilt of being responsible for any more deaths. That's not necessarily a bad thing but that isn't selfless.

On the account of the latter point, guilty as charged.

Pretty much. Even if Suzaku is hypocritical, he is not duplicitious.

I don't reduce him to his negative aspects, I simply consider them too big for me to wanting to see him prosper.

I find changing the system from within to be far more noble than razing it to the ground. Whether he had the means or not is not the point.

Honestly, by the time of Suzaku and Lelouch's meeting during the second Black Revolution, Suzaku was the character in the series I hated the most. That was mainly because I absolutely despise hypocrisy, and Suzaku was a gigantic hypocrite.

edited 10th Oct '12 1:09:49 PM by deathpigeon

Suzaku was also a lot luckier. Not to say there was any serendipity (or hax, as far as Geass is concerned) involved with Lelouch, but the latter definitely made a lot more happen, and it was through his actions that Suzaku even had a way in.

Lelouch's revenge and sister complex took a backseat to his quest for justice by season 2. Did his leaving Japan for China and elsewhere, leaving Nunnally on the backburner not mean anything to you?

And Lelouch HAD to be at least somewhat secretive and without restraint, too. I mean, he was an ex-prince fighting alongside natives just as hostile towards his homeland, which was too oppressive to fight fairly.

Again, I was discussing season 1. In season 2, it's another matter entirely.

This is one thing I don't get about the series in general, how would the black knights react to the knowledge of his true heritage if he had said it to them directly:" oh wow, our leader is a britannian prince! cast him away!"

I mean, he is a brittannian prince alright. But a disgraced and exiled one. He had as much grievance with Brittania as them. Why couldn't he trust them with that information?

You seemed to be describing Lelouch in general throughout the series.

I remember Kirihara stating to everyone that Lelouch's identity remaining concealed was for the best at the end of their meeting.

From the very start of the argument I've said that I sided with Brittannia only during season 1. I sided with no one on season 2.

That's really two questions. First question is why did he adopt the Zero persona at all. It's basically the same reason that Bruce Wayne adopts the Batman persona; Zero could be anyone who opposes Britannian Tyranny, he's more of an ideal than a person. As to why he hides his identity to his subodrinates, I think that's more of Lelouch's hubris; there's a bit about keeping it an airtight secret as to maintain Zero's mystique, but more likely it's because he just doesn't trust other people enough, and I agree that is definitely a flaw.

To put it this way, either remove Suzaku from the mix, or section him off as his own 'reform party' if you want; would you still support the Tyranny of Britannia?

Of course not.

That, and he's still a random teenager at first glance, and a Britannian at that.

One White Sheep and one well intentioned if Wrong Genre Savvy person with a dark secret do not redeem the rest of a malignant empire.

edited 10th Oct '12 5:03:14 PM by azul120

Man, the more I read Hamlet, the more and more I realize how much Lelouch is him, what with lines like this (Immeaditely follow him killing Polonius): "I do repent; but heaven hath pleased is so to punish me with this, and this with me, That I must be their scourage and minister. I will bestow him, and will answer well the death I gave him. So, again, good night. I must be cruel only to be kind. This bad begins, and worse remains behind."

In studying American Political Theory, to go back a couple pages, something I learned from it gave a good context for the remark about the 'Tyranny' of the EU; the concept of 'Democratic Despotism' postulated by the French Political Philosopher Alexis De Tocqueville. The notion is that Democracies tend to value 'Individualism' and 'Equality'. The problem arises in that Equality and Freedom/Liberty, another concept supposedly valued by democracies, is opposed to equality; to ensure equality the government necessarily has to reduce choice, and in societies where traditional values like Religion and Aristocracy have been abandoned, more often than not there is a push towards the government regulating equality, thereby increasing its size. At the same time, with the dissolution of communal bonds, there is a rise of Individualism, which while in and of itself is not necessarily selfish, its a mindset that makes people want to separate themselves from society with their close relatives and friends and generates a feeling of independence from the rest of society, feeling like they owe no one anything. This makes them disinclined to take part in civil society, which is what the government wants them to feel because it ensures that the government's actions can go on uninhibited. The end result of this is a society of mild, mediocre people who live disconnected from one another under a massive, bureaucratic 'Schooling' Government that meets the peoples' wants but in doing so limits their ability of choice and that in the end the people lose the ability to choose at all, becoming subservient to the bureaucratic machine which every so often the people leave their subservience temporarily to 'mark' their masters before entering subservience again.

I thought learning this made the General's remarks more intelligible.

... right, but I'm not seeing how a benevolent dictatorship would help. Especially since in reality, they tend to drop the 'benevolent' pretty rapidly, and since even if you do get a single, excellent ruler, you'll only have him for as long as he lives, and since a dictatorship is, by definition, built around a single person, everything's going to fall apart after that.

I'm not saying he's right, I'm saying that's what he means by tyranny. What Tocqueville himself argues is that for democracy to work, the citizens need to be 'virtuous'; ie, they need to be personally involved civic and political matters and building a sense of community. He's not against the notion of democracy, he's just afraid that it'll go in that direction, especially of traditional ideals of Christianity and Aristocracy are abandoned.

I don't think anyone's calling for unchecked despotism, but rather the idea is posited that a more centralized Aristocracy would be better at running the country than one that merely panders to the id of its citizenry.

Unrelated, but I'm thinking about doing a fic that has CG characters in the Dishonored setting, because I think that would be a really good fit for them. Thinking it takes place like 60 or so years after the game.

edited 21st Oct '12 4:45:06 AM by Scherzo09

Hey guys, I've been wondering this for a while, but why exactly does Code Geass have its own Brother Sister Incest page? From my understanding, there's no actual incest, right? Wouldn't it be more accurate to say that it is Incest Subtext? If so, shouldn't we change the namespace? Also, it might help to avoid scaring off newcomers.

Sounds good to me.

Brother–Sister Incest is for when it's actually a thing, Incest Subtext is for when there are hints. Code Geass is definitely the latter.

Leaving aside whether I think Lelouch and Nunally actually count there definitely are quite a few examples.

Alright, that's over with. Now I can put behind me the moment when I showed a friend the main Code Geass page and he freaked over seeing in its description that it had an entire page dedicated to that.

Seriously, was the definition for Brother–Sister Incest different when the page was written, or something? Was Incest Subtext not a trope back then? I mean, sure, we can say with no doubt that Lelouch loved his sister immensely, but the sheer length of the page is astounding.