How much do you use Acceptable Targets?

Remember that Assault Weapons Initiative thread in this forum not so long ago?

I made a country that has a few stuff that I don't like particularly. There are a few Acceptable Targets traits in that fictional nation.

• The authoritarianism of China
• Gun culture of the United States
• Unilateralism of both of the above
• Legislative violence of Taiwan
• Amalgamated hooliganism of soccer and rugby countries

Yes all the things that I don't particularly like all meld into the fictional culture and laws of this nation. It also my favorite faction in the story.

So how often do you use Acceptable Targets?

Is it in not very serious works? Minor characters?

Do you present them separately? or do you just squish it all into one character or group?

Any dictator or totalitarian country will either become a target of my main special forces squad, or the butt of a joke someone tells.

My latest story pitted my Good Is Not Nice Anti-Hero against a ring of human traffickers. Did I mention he's also a pimp?

It sounds like you're talking about Villain by Default, not Acceptable Targets.

Edit: For my part, my personal "acceptable target" tends to be the news media. I don't think I've ever written a work without featuring at least one Type 4 Strawman News Media. Of course, I don't consider them strawmen - I think this is exactly what the American news media, regardless of its position on the political spectrum, is like in Real Life.

I did deconstruct this once with one of my villains, an alien who wanted to Kill All Humans because of how vapid we are. To paraphrase the hero's Patrick Stewart Speech: "We're shallow, thoughtless, and vapid. You want to commit genocide because you're annoyed. Who is the inferior species, again?" Overall, though, I'd say the news media is still my most consistent Acceptable Target.

edited 13th Jul '11 10:16:00 PM by nrjxll

The nation I describe is not a villain.

Think of them like the Horde from Warcraft post WC 3.

Actually they more or less are the Horde only in a more modern setting.

edited 13th Jul '11 10:23:34 PM by Worlder

No, but it's a subversion of lots of things that would normally make them a Villain by Default. That's not really what Acceptable Targets are.

Ah well I really didn't know how to present my problem.

But yeah you got what I wanted to ask.

@OP: hardly ever, and I try to never do it. IMO, there is no such thing as a completely acceptable target.

I don't ever recall using Acceptable Targets.

I have characters who find certain things to be Acceptable Targets. The working poor, Yanks, incompetent people, cats, dogs, the French... the list goes on.

That is not to say that I agree with them, I'm just putting down what they would logically believe in.

If I have any sort of Acceptable Target, it's incompetent, corrupted fantasyverse politicians that I have taken great pains to distinguish from any and all real life examples.

Edit: I've attacked the concept of fast food in Project 154, actually.

Project 154 takes place in a semi-alternate universe where all the brand names are different, though (not even any obvious knock-offs exist except for the Desert Eagle Prairie Chicken), so no real brands were attacked.

Mass murderers. They're the only characters I have absolutely no problem killing off.

OK, mass murderers and redshirts with no dialogue to be killed by the aforementioned mass murderers.

edited 20th Jul '11 8:16:32 PM by BobbyG