Death Note

You notice how I said—right in the block you quoted—that motivations matter at sentencing? Thus making it fairly obvious that I'm talking about people who kill within the bounds of a civil society and who would thus be being prosecuted for violating said civil society? That should exclude soldiers from this conversation altogether, since soldiers, generally speaking, do their killings in warzones which exist well outside the bounds of civil society, and are governed by their own sets of rules. Those who violate said rules by committing warcrimes, or who bring the ethos of the warzone back home to civil society are, needless to say, a completely different matter, and should be prosecuted to the fullest extent of the law.

As to the question of legit vigilantes...I hope you're using "legit" as a comparison with Light (who is not a vigilante; he's just a plain old Serial Killer) because the reality of course is that there's no such thing as a legit vigilante in real life. In real life a vigilante belongs in prison because they are taking the law into their own hands and that's generally inexcusable. Now, fictional examples can be different and fiction often goes out of its way to justify vigilantism (hello superhero comics), but in those cases my opinion is gonna vary case by case and from vigilante to vigilante.

Outside of Greg Rucka's excellent run on the title I have no time for the Punisher. He's one of my least favourite characters in the whole of the Marvel Universe, because while his stories try their hardest to justify his vigilantism, it all falls flat in the face of the fact that he exists in a world wherein his actions are totally unnecessary (Spider-Man, or Daredevil, or pick-your-hero will clean up and arrest anybody Frank misses). If he were a real person in the real world I'd want him thrown in prison.

That being said, given the choice between Frank and Light I'll take Frank in a heartbeat. Unlike Light, who'll kill anybody indiscriminately for reasons as petty as "they insulted me" Frank has a specific group that he targets and never takes things farther than that. That's patently unrealistic (in real life he'd have hit some bystanders by now), but within the bounds of their respective fictional worlds he's a better person than Light by a mile. Doesn't change the fact that he needs to be arrested, because he's violating every law known to man, but he'd be a lower priority target than Light who has a higher bodycount and does not discriminate in his victims.

Put more succinctly Frank Castle is a better person than Light Yagami but this does not change the reality that they are both criminals, that they are both dangers to the public, and that they both belong in prison.

edited 1st Jul '16 8:26:02 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

Ah, gotcha. Misread that part.

I was in fact, comparing them to Light, who, like I said, thinks himself a vigilante and presents Kira as one, there's a difference between thinking and being. I wouldn't say all vigilantes should be thrown in prison though, especially in this current day and age. Like most things, it's a case-by-case basis.

From what I understand, it's the opposite. Frank catches the people that Spidey and Daredevil missed, and are too small fry for the Avengers and other "bigger" heroes to deal with.

As for him being better than Light, I do agree that Frank is "better" by the virtue of actually acknowledging that he's no better than the criminals he kills, and carries himself accordingly.

edited 1st Jul '16 8:40:10 PM by Rynnec

In real life? They absolutely should be. You do not get to take the law into your own hands. If the state permits you to do that then the state is giving up its monopoly over the use of force, and its monopoly on the right to enforce the law. That way lies failed state status and utter societal breakdown.

And "in this current day and age" with policing more effective than it has been in centuries, there is simply no excuse in a First World setting for vigilantism. If you are living in a civil society you do not get to enforce the law yourself.

Not really. That's an excuse that's often presented by writers to try and justify Frank's actions, but it frequently falls flat on its face. In a world where there are countless active superheroes, many of them at the street level, there is little to no cause for a man with an M-16 to be wandering the streets looking for targets.

One of the reasons so many people like Punisher MAX is because it takes place in a 'verse where Frank is the only "superhero" and therefore more justified in his actions. I dislike the series intensely, but it's not the premise that's the issue.

Frank (when well-written) is better than Light because he doesn't murder people for insulting him. Frank is better than Light because he doesn't kill cops or superheroes who try to stop him—given the choice between killing Daredevil and going to jail, Frank will take jail. Frank is better than Light because he restricts his targets to violent criminals, most of whom are engaged in actively breaking the law when he catches up with them, or who are part of larger criminal organizations. Frank is better than Light because he actually saves innocent people from violent situations on a regular basis, something that Light, after the first episode, has only done by accident. Finally, Frank is better than Light because he hasn't killed near as many people.

That's...debatable. Especially if you're a POC. And given a certain incident that happened the past couple years, and what's even happening now, I don't want to really get topical so I'll cut to the chase; the bottom line is certain groups of people, people of different race/ethnicities or sexualities and gender identities especially just plain don't feel safe even with a Police force. In fact, in some cases it's even the police themselves that cause them grief. In cases such as those, the idea of taking the law into your own hands can sound mightily appealing.

Agreed on all accounts...except for that last one. Especially since Frank's kills are actually legit, if anything, him having a higher bodycount would have a positive effect on the world, basically how thing were towards the end of Kira's reign, except relatively better because A) Frank isn't enforcing a Social Darwinist rule, and B) The Avengers and countless other Superheroes would be their to make sure Frank never crosses the line.

Not trusting the police does not give you cause to out and kill people yourself. Particularly since absent the tools of a police force you are highly likely to assault or kill the wrong people and provoke retaliation against your own community.

No it wouldn't. First off you can't actually reduce crime rates through murder. That's an actual statistical impossibility. The death penalty doesn't work, every study has shown that, it does not work. Secondly, a world in which rule of law is enforced via people getting shot without a trial—which is what Frank is doing—is not a good world to live in. It is a fundamentally broken one. Criminals should be arrested and stand trial. Every person that Frank guns down is a person lost to the justice system, and that in turn is a net loss to society.

Frank Castle is a better person than Light Yagami. That does not make him a good person, and it does not mean I want him killing more people.

Not talking about killiing every criminal that comes your way, but certain criminals, especially criminals that escape the law and/or get off scott free, could certainly be dealt with by vigilantism. Violent racists, homophobic and sexist murderers, rapists, domestic abusers, etc. who either don't get their due and/or escape from the law should are also people who need to exposed for who they are and (if it comes down to it) be dealt with by whatever means necessary, even if it means operating outside the law. But this is getting off topic a tad.

Perhaps, but I was mostly taking Cardboard Prison into account. But whatever, we all know Ghost Rider's the best Marvel hero anyway.

Again you are making the assumption that people have the right target and a group of vigilantes operating outside of the law with no actual checks on them are not going to always going to get the right target. The legal system, with all its safeguards and all its checks and balances still gets the wrong man with depressing frequency. A vigilante group, which has none of those safeguards built in, is certain to get more wrong targets and kill more innocent people and that is not acceptable.

That's without getting into the fact that I personally don't think that anyone, even a convicted serial killer or war criminal should be executed. I'm not sad when somebody like Light dies, but that doesn't mean I think that we should be killing people for their crimes. In the list above you're advocating killing people for crimes other murder, which goes well beyond what any civilized state allows, and thus goes well beyond even the concept of "taking the law into your own hands". When you are dealing out "punishment" well in excess of the law to potentially innocent victims that is not even an approximation of justice.

To bring it back to the topic at hand, this is a large part of what makes Light so utterly vile. He deals out "punishments" that are well in excess of what the legal system allows (we do not execute purse snatchers. Or even sex offenders) to victims whose guilt has either not been established or who are already under arrest and serving their sentences. He does so en masse and with at most cursory examination of the facts of the case, and in doing so, virtually guarantees that a sizeable number of his victims are innocent people. Given the number of minorities who are wrongfully convicted in the United States alone, Light will have killed enough innocent persons of colour to give the Klan a wet dream—which ironically means he's one of the very people you yourself would single out for vigilante execution.

Vigilante "justice" is the enemy of any criminal justice system. Light embodies that concept taken to its radical extreme when any notion of justice drops out of the equation and it becomes a simple matter of "punishing" anyone whom the vigilante views as unworthy.

Cardboard Prisons only effect supervillains not average criminals. And Frank literally can't do anything to the likes of Sabretooth or the Red Skull or any of Marvel's actual monsters.

I don't think that's what makes Light vile. It makes him stupid and immature, yes, but not "vile". What made me root against Light was his manipulation of Misa (and to a lesser extent, Mikami and Takeda), caring more about killing Mello than his father dying, and his eventual slide into social darwinism (though from what I understand, it was always there in the manga). It was at that point that Light solidified his villain status for me.

Optimally, a hypothetical vigilante group wait until after the law passes judgement on a criminal, and would also have at least some intelligence group to inform them on criminal activity. Something Light never even entertained the notion of.

edited 1st Jul '16 10:05:29 PM by Rynnec

at what point do you draw the line between stupid and immature and "vile"? I don't see them as mutually exclusive, really, one thing leads to the other. He's so convinced of his own infallibility and godhood that he doesn't even begin to consider that he might be making a mistake.

My main issue with Light is that I honestly don't think he has any humanizing or positive qualities. The memory gambit personality was unconvincing and he rarely shows anyone any kind of genuine warmth or decency. It also makes him kind of an uninteresting character imo.

edited 1st Jul '16 10:03:26 PM by wehrmacht

Light was the villain from the end of the first episode. His villain status is not due to not caring about Misa or his father (that makes him an asshole, it doesn't make him deserving of arrest) but because he killed thousands of people without cause. And that's all there is to it. Light needed to be stopped the moment he decided that he was going to murder thousands of people and he became totally unsympathetic the moment he murdered Tailor, whom, lest we forget, he thought was a cop for the heinous crime of calling him out on being evil. He then compounded that by murdering a dozen actual cops when he whacked the FBI, thus establishing that he's not even dedicated to his own ideal of building a better world.

What you're talking about proves Light is a dick on the personal level, and it proves he's void of redeeming feature despite what some of his fanboys and fangirls claim, but it's not why he deserves every iota of what Matsuda dealt out to him at the end. He deserves that because he, say it with me, killed thousands of people.

Under this logic Stalin is a monster, not because he killed anybody who so much as looked at him funny, but because he was a dick to his son.

If the law is arresting criminals then you've just destroyed your own argument for needing a vigilante group. Unless you're planning on murdering people who've been found innocent in which case you've just screwed up the entire point of the justice system and belong in the worst prison we can find for you.

edited 1st Jul '16 10:38:18 PM by AmbarSonofDeshar

A rapist, sexual offender, child murderer, a cop that kills people of color out of racism without giving him civil rights, etc. aren't exactly what I'd call innocent, which is what I was getting at. There are fucked up people in this world, and sometimes even the far from infallible justice system fails to hand out proper punishment.

Back on topic though, can we at least agree that we can hate Light for different reasons?

There was that one time I heard Frank dropped a mininuke somewhere... He might have racked up quite the death toll there.

But yes, Punisher is better than Kira for the reasons Ambar stated. Of course, Frank has the benefit of being stronger, tougher and better-equipped than Light ever could be. He can afford to take on mob bosses and Daredevil in the flesh. also going to prison is significantly less of a hindrance in a comic book so he can afford to surrender, too. (ironically, the revolving door prison system tha thelps Punisher also justifies his existence because supervillains get out just as easily. Although not all supervillains are deserving of Frank's type of justice)

Not that I think Light would personally want to go out there and fight crime - he's a detective-in-training and potential L for a reason. He likes solving problems, not "righting wrongs."

But overall, yes, as I observed when I read the series, the moment Light killed those FBI Agents, he crossed a line Frank wouldn't.

"Light could have just gone "I save those kids and that woman, I did the right thing, and I'm putting the book away until the next time I see somebody in immediate danger". Instead he goes on a murder spree and declares himself God."

Light's thinking is pretty obvious here. What you just suggested are stop-gap measures and utterly useless as a superhero who stops bank robberies and nothing else. Criminals are a symptom, society is the disease and you know the whole thing about treating the cause, not the symptoms. L himself observes this trait of Light when contrasting him with Misa as Kira - Light wants to reshape all of society and change the very way people think.You don't do that offing a punk here and there.

Personally, I agree Rynnec that the how matters far more than the what in determining how vile a person is. Like I said before but you swept it aside for no reason (I never claimed Light was a WIE or WDOW) motivations are the true showings of a person's character. If you have two people who murder the exact same number of people but Person 1 does it solemnly, regrettably, with the "gotta break a few eggs" mentality, that sure as fuck makes them less vile than Person #2 who did it all for no reason and was madly giggling at the suffering they just caused and maybe monologuing about the lovely despair that will grip the loved ones left behind.

If a character has a sympathetic backstory, or conducts their actions in a more restrained manner, then people can often, if not excuse thee actions, judge them much les harshly. Because that's why we are here - we are not here to be judges of morality, we're here to read and enjoy fiction and a more nuanced character like Person 1 is just flat-out easier to like and maybe even relate to.

Although I personally have a huge problem with the "they don't have a sob story background, thus they are assholes" mindset. I see that shit for Miranda in Mass Effect. Just because her backstory isn' tas blatantly nightmarish as someone like Jack's, Miranda gets branded a petty bitch. In case you're unfamiliar with the series, Miranda basically lived Rau's childhood, only she has the benefit of not dying prematurely and going insane. But because she got looks and wealth and power, it automatically makes her entitled and unjustified in complaining about anything because Jack was a child who was experimented on and tortured in a mad scientist lab.

Anyway, my tangent is just that, while Light had a nice, easy childhood and home life, that shouldn't count against him when comparing him with other villains.

Anyone who thinks it's possible for others to deserve to die is an awful person.

That's an absolutist statement, lumping Muslim extremists in with grief-stricken loved ones who just had their daughters/sisters/cousins/friends murdered and want the person responsible to pay.

You're also probably condemning most people throughout human history.

edited 2nd Jul '16 6:58:02 AM by Nikkolas

And again you're assuming that you'll have the right target. Which is a colossal assumption. The justice system, which has a presumption of innocence, frequently sends innocent people to prison despite that. There is simply no situation in which a vigilante, who does not have access to a fraction of the justice system's resources, can be expected to do better. And if, as you seem to be suggesting, you'd be specifically targeting people who were found innocent than your odds of having the right target sink even lower given that a whole lot of people who are found innocent are going to be—amazingly I know—innocent.

I do wonder if you'd change your tune, by the way, if your vigilante justice consisted of a lynch mob of white people coming for OJ Simpson. He's almost certainly guilty despite the verdict of innocence after all.

No it doesn't. Frank doesn't fight supervillains for the most part. Characters like the Russian are the exception among his enemies, not the rule. He mostly fights regular mobsters who inevitably stay in prison in comic books.

You don't do it by committing mass murder on a ludicrous scale either.

In that case killing criminals becomes even more idiotic. Light should be out there advocating for a better welfare system and greater income equality. Not murdering the victims of the purportedly broken system.

And if Person #1 kills a thousand people, while Person #2 kills four? That's where your Nena Trinity/Light comparison fails, and that's why I "swept it aside for no reason". There was a reason. A reason I repeatedly stated, in fact. Light killed more people. Way more people. Orders of magnitude more people. You can't make an argument about how motivations matter and how if two characters have the same bodycount you should target the one with the worse motivations when there isn't a single character in the series who can touch Light's bodycount.

As for doing it "solemnly" and "regrettably" with the "break a few eggs mentality''...Light does it while cackling like a maniac about how he's going to be God. Light's motivations suck—they're entirely personal and entirely selfish.

Oh, and you've forgotten that the follow up line to the "break a few eggs" line is that "it's amazing how many eggs you can break without making a decent omelette."

Yes it should. Light has no reason for doing what he does beyond being an arrogant dick. That's all there is to it and all there is to him.

Love how your first thought was "Muslim extremists". Moving along, there's a reason why grieving relatives don't get to make the laws.

edited 2nd Jul '16 7:11:04 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

My first thought was Nazis - seeing as they had a whole ideology built around some people deserving death - but Godwin's Law and all that. It's just too cliche.

And I don't think a sob story childhood matters here. You insist body count is the only real factor we should care about but now you are also trying to say that Light living some superficially content and happy existence suddenly makes him worse. You are in short also saying that if Soichiro had been abusive, Light would at least b e marginally less unforgivable. I reject this. A character can live in what appears to be ideal conditions but still be extremely depressed. Because people are irrational creatures and slaves to body chemistry and other factors beyond their control. Light was most certainly not a happy person before the series started, no matter how ideal his life appeared. So whether he was raised in a happy home, abusive home or on the streets, it shouldn't matter.

...that would make most states with the death penalty and most 2nd Amendment activists awful people.

Not that you're necessarily wrong.

Not borderline torture porn, but the anime definitely made it a sad moment with his past self walking by. Probably torture porn for those that really dislike Light. YMMV on how sympathetic he really is - as evidenced by the last 3 pages. No matter the crimes he committed, watching someone with a bright future be utterly helpless and scared in their final moments is saddening.

This whole discussion sounds as unwinnable as any discussion on abortion, the death penalty, or immigration.

edited 2nd Jul '16 8:15:40 AM by Soble

All discussion is like that. People aren't so willing to change their opinions on matters such as this.

edited 2nd Jul '16 11:25:24 AM by VeryMelon

And of course this current argument is not only fruitless, it's pointless. I kinda just realized it when I was reading the posts and wondering "how the hell did all of this even start?"

This current argument started when Ambar took issue with me saying I hate one character more than another and setting out to somehow prove that I'm wrong.

Nena Trinity committed one ridiculously audacious act of evil. Light Yagami wrote down some names and killed a ton of people we never saw nor cared about. The Death Note is an impersonal weapon for both Light AND the readers. There's a reason few people said Light crossed the MEH when he wrote down the dozens of names before Ryuik showed up. There's a reason the posters in this thread largely lost sympathy for Light when he killed Tailor or Naomi. BECAUSE WE SAW IT.

That's the key. It's hard enough to make people care about faceless mooks in a story. You certainly aren't going to pull at their heartstrings by saying faceless mooks you never saw o rcared about died in droves.

What Nena did - attacking a wedding, which was being attended by people we knew and a bunch of people we could actually see suffering in the wake of her aftermath - hits harder than anything Light did that wasn't killing Naomi or abusing Misa or something like that.

And that's why I said I wanted Nena to die more than I want Light to die. Because that's simply how the two stories made me feel.

edited 2nd Jul '16 10:19:58 AM by Nikkolas

I always thought The West Wing summed it up pretty well. Bit I'm referring to happens two minutes in.

Given that a majority of First World nations don't have the death penalty, it wouldn't be making all that many people terrible.

No I'm saying that because there is no reason for his actions I have no sympathy for him. If Light came from an abusive environment his actions wouldn't be more forgivable they'd be more understandable and easier to sympathize with. None of which would alter the fact that he's the person in-series with the highest possible bodycount and therefore the one who needs to be stopped the most.

One of the problems with your argument here—and you've done it before in prior discussions with me—is that you consistently conflate culpability and sympathy. Having a Freudian Excuse doesn't make you less culpable (barring actual clinical insanity) it just makes you more understandable. I can empathize with a person while still saying they need to be stopped. An example I love to cite is Robert Quarles from Justified. He's a rape victim who is constantly reenacting his victimization on male prostitutes. His life's been an utter disaster and I feel bad for him. Doesn't mean he didn't need to be stopped or that his crimes weren't among the most horrifying in the show. I can, in short, acknowledge the tragedy of his life, without denying the scale and scope of his evil. If you can't do the same that's your problem, not mine.

Light is the most evil person in the show, bar none. The magnitude of his crimes secures him that spot. He's also the least sympathetic person on the show, because he has no reason for doing what he does.

And don't give me that garbage about depression. Depression runs in my family on all sides. My grandmother has it, my mother has it, my father has it, two of my uncles have it, I have it. We've all been treated for it. None of us are killing people.

No, Nikkolas, this conversation went in the direction it did after you said Nena was a worse person than Light. Quote-"She makes Light look a saint." That's not you saying you hate her more, that's you saying she's a worse person than he is. Which is ludicrous.

That's nice. But your argument was that she was a worse person than he was—"makes Light look like a saint"—and whether or not we saw anything is immaterial to that. Light killed more people than she did by an order of magnitude. He is accordingly a worse person than her by any legal or moral measuring stick.

If your current stance is that you hate Nena more than Light, that's fine. Go ahead. But don't pretend that's what you've been saying all along. Words have meanings. Saying "Nena makes Light look like a saint" is not a commentary on who you hate more, it's a (bizarre) commentary on their respective morality.

You are free to hate whoever you want without criticism. My least favourite character in television history is Winona from Justified, whose only crime is being a terribly written love interest. You are not free to make declarations about characters' respective morality without criticism because that's a very different thing—if I said Winona makes Light look like a saint you'd all be well within your rights to dogpile me because that would be an insanely wrong and stupid statement.

edited 2nd Jul '16 10:46:59 AM by AmbarSonofDeshar

I never said Light had depression. I said an ideal home life is irrelevant because it can have absolutely zero effect on a person. The only effect Light's home life had on him was making him go after criminals just like his father did. Other than that, it sure didn't actually deliver the fulfillment and contentment that such a happy home would for other people.

And I said Nena looks a saint because she did something hideously, bombastically, pointlessly evil. And that's it. There's nothing else to her. She is defined by one ridiculously cruel act of mass murder. She has absolutely nothing in the realm of redeeming qualities or virtues. (as I pointed out earlier, Light has severa)l And that is why she's more evil as far as I am concerned.

And obviously my feelings of who I like/hate more were part of my initial post. You ignoring all of my post except for the cherrypicked line you quoted is your problem , not mine. If I was seriously discussing morals and who I wanted to die on the basis of morals alone, I'd have said Ali or Ribbons, both of whom hail from the same series and are far more evil than she is. But because I was talking about someone I viscerally, emotionally hated and not giving some deep analytical commentary on morals, I only mentioned her.

"I hate very few fictional characters so passionately I want them to die. The only one that comes to mind is Nina Trinity from Gundam 00, who leaped over the MEH in the most blatantly fucked up way I've ever seen."

An entire paragraph clearly establishing I was talking from a position of passion and emotion, not some objective analysis of morals.

edited 2nd Jul '16 10:54:48 AM by Nikkolas

I'm not talking about genuinely innocent people, Sympathetic Murderer's, people who killed in self defense or even victims of bullying that lashed out that got deemed innocent by the law. I'm talking about violent racists, rapists, and homophobic/transphobic murderers and the like. People like that are not innocent even if the law says otherwise. And you really seem to be under the impression that such an organization wouldn't have some sort of intelligence system.

Well yeah. That'd be a borderline racist hate crime even if OJ was guilty. There's a fuck huge difference from that and, say, a bunch of POC rallying against Darren Wilson. One is done by people with power and privilege, is fighting back against that power and privilege.

I wouldn't go that far. Nena genuinely cares about her family, and her motivation in the second season is fighting back against the people responsible for their deaths. Like Light, she's just a child, and to quote a certain bounty hunter; "There's nothing more pure and cruel than a child."

Nena Trinity, to me, is less evil than someone like Light because Light's childishness and his inflated ego caused him to harm far more people for increasingly less understandable or sympathetic reasons. I'd never try to say Light is better than her in any way.

Nena's also more or less a normal teenage Genki Girl when not in a Gundam or on the job. Light is always on "Evil Jerkass" mode when under the Death Note's influence.