Save Everyone, or Save Someone?

It’s been a while since I’ve made a topic here. Let’s change that, yeah?

I’ve been watching some stuff recently (which I’ll pothole, for fear of spoilers), and it’s gotten me thinking about a plot thread that’s come up a couple of times before. I guess you can think of it as an offshoot of a Sadistic Choice — the situation where the good guys have to decide whether they’re going to do their part to save the entire world, at the expense of one person, or if they’d value that one person enough to say “screw you!” to the planet.

Or, alternatively — and the one I’d prefer to focus on — they have to choose between finding a way to save everyone 9even if there’s no guarantee it’ll pan out) and going with the surefire way to save at least some people (at the cost of any number of sacrifices). Things in Fiction Land tend to make a third option viable in the end, but it still makes for a nice plot thread. It shows what kind of person a character really is, and creates opportunities in the story.

So I thought I’d bring “the choice” up for you tropers and your respective characters — especially if they DO have to make that kind of decision. (Or you could just play the hypothetical game.) Given the choice between maybe saving everyone and definitely saving some people, what would they go for, and why? And as a corollary, how would they handle a sadistic choice?

It’s in your hands now, tropers. Do it for the Green Goblin — oh wait, no, don’t do that. He was a bad guy.

edited 26th Sep '14 8:04:22 PM by Voltech44

For most of the protagonists in my stories, the choice is pretty obvious. Even if it was the person they cared about most, saving everybody else, especially considering that includes the other people they cared about, would be more important.

Most of my protagonists are Genre Savvy to have a backup plan/third option to avoid a Sadistic Choice (they even have an entire team of soldiers who act as spanners in the works), but if they're presented with this without any third option, they'll usually take the "save everyone else" option unless the "friend" in question is extremely vital to them. Almost all of them are very selfless.

edited 26th Sep '14 1:30:23 PM by ironcommando

Depends on the numbers and relationships involved. I'd trade an acquaintance for, say, 20 innocent bystanders, but I'm not letting my kids go for less than most of the human race.

The question is not whether they'll try to save more people rather than fewer (they will), but how the choice will ultimately affect them. Even the villains recognize the value of a dozen loyal footsoldiers over the one they happen to like.

edited 26th Sep '14 8:44:28 AM by Night

I don't think a villain should make the selfless choice unless you're trying to make them really sympathetic.

It's not exactly selfless to make an act that will win you loyalty and dedication form your Legions of Evil by hanging a friend out to dry.

Also, complex characters. You should probably look into that.

The way I see it, if your villain does have a legion of henchmen, he shouldn't care about the lives of twelve of them, he's got plenty more to spare. That's what makes him the villain.

Should he also shoot otherwise entirely loyal henchmen who fail him as an example to the rest of his forces? An irrational villain trope can only appear so many times before someone feels the need to create something like the Evil Overlord List.

I'll see your overlord list and counter with Ming's Overlord List, which encourages all the sorts of things the original list mentions. Example: Ming's Rule #1: "Merciless" is not a name given to Ming by his enemies, it is the name he chose for himself. Don't waste your time on a name that pretends you're a good man; why conquer the world if you're going to spend the rest of your life playing spin doctor?

Bullshit. You want your people to fight for you, you have to motivate them. They've got to believe in something, and as Napoleon said, a man does not get himself killed for sixpence a day; you must speak to his soul.

Also I have to question why you insist on writing villains that are so cartoonish. The majority of the time, you'll get in trouble writing bizarre behavior much faster than you will writing bizarre anything else. We've discussed this a number of times in regards to genre and Christian fiction.

edited 26th Sep '14 2:23:21 PM by Night

hmm. in my story, my MC is the hostage, so she never has to make the choice herself. But if she did, well, she'd probably save her friends. she might hate herself for it, but she's not a hero, she's deeply flawed, and she's been so lonely. to watch her friends die, even if she was saving others, it would break her, body and soul. she's not strong. she's not brave. She'd pick her friends, knowing that was the wrong choice and in the moment not caring.

it would break her in the end, though, knowing what she had done. she's not cut out for the hero business, and Fate knows that, which is why Fate didn't pick her.

she'd wrack her brains trying to come up with a third option, and she's pretty genre savvy, so she might find away, but if there was no option, just friends or innocents, she'd save her friends, and it would be a messssss. poor girl. it's a good thing she's not the Hero.

I have a few "main" character's in my main story:

• One of them is a kid, he'd probably save the someone, more out of naivete and optimism about how the world works though.
• One of them would definitely save the someone because of personal loss, he would refuse to risk it again.
• The last is a tossup, he'd probably save the someone, but he would definitely have some sort of plan to save everyone too, even if he wasn't sure it would work.
• The rest would save everyone, none of them are naive enough to think everything would work out, and none of them have lost someone close to them violently enough that it would influence that decision.

Fausto Cross would either flip the tables on whoever's forcing the choice through usual trickery, or, without even batting an eye, choose to save everyone. Cross is a Utilitarian at heart. If he thinks that even for one second, letting a completely innocent man die will save a thousand, he will do it in a heartbeat.

Jonathan Tremble would probably let the world die a fiery death only to save his daughter.

Frank Black (no relation), would definitely find a way to flip the tables and just wreck everything.

edited 26th Sep '14 5:29:09 PM by Gaon

Because the way I see it, once you have over 12 henchmen, you're well on the path to supervillainy. If your villain is someone who does have to worry about trading lives for hostages, he's probably only got 4-5 guys with him.

To be honest, that wasn't the 'Black' I had in mind. Though to your credit? Flipping the tables doesn't sound like the most graceful option, but I'd bet that it can be pretty effective when the time comes. Or messy.

An MC that's the hostage? Interesting idea. But man, it sounds like putting her through that choice would be absolutely brutal. I kind of feel bad for even asking.

On the other hand, adversity builds character.

yeah. She's 15, and she never really had friends until the adventure started, poor duck. She ends up in this fantasy world and goes, " yes, this is awesome, I get to go on an adventure like all the characters in books, and I'll be a hero, and make friends..." and then it turns out she's there by actual mistake. not 'they think it was a mistake but she's the real hero" but " no, why are you here?" so while the others get special powers and weapons and the ability to use them perfectly, she...doesn't. she's helpless in a fight, which leads to her getting held hostage.

fortunately, this is a book for kids and she and her friends make it out alive, more or less, and the villain is defeated with some help from Mella, and there's happiness and therapists all around.

Between save some & save everyone, I actually do have this come up in the climax of 1st story.

The answer is that she'll choose to save some instead of everyone. She'll try everyone if it's conceivable, but if she's not confident enough to take the path, she's more than likely to cut her losses and use those losses to create a new opening to take down whoever is responsible for things, so at least those losses aren't in vain. As to why she would, it's because there is a certain risk/reward to what she does she always factors in. As much as she'd love to save everyone, she realizes that sometimes it's not possible and she's not comfortable gambling with the lives of others she's 100% certain she can save.

While the decision itself is one she admits she'd make again later on the exact same way, the weight of it still bothers her. It's another reason she becomes intent on taking down the Big Bad.

Frank is a "all or nothing" guy. Comes with his extreme Blood Knight nature. He's the man who'd definitely bet the fate of the universe in the skill of his sword.

It would depend on the scope of the "everyone" - it'd be a cartoonish villain indeed that decided to wipe out the Earth's entire population and leave him/herself alone, so I'm assuming that the "everyone" is still some subset of the world's population - and the nature of the "some".

For some people, I'd happily sacrifice a major city or two.

As to the reaction to the sadistic choice, the villain signed his/her death warrant upon uttering it. Whether I let a city's population die for the sake of a loved one or let a loved one die for the sake of the entire country, I would inhume the villain with Extreme Impoliteness - so there'd be one death that I wouldn't feel shitty about.

And that's presuming I could see any point in making the choice - if I felt desperate/hopeless enough, the "third option" would be "kill the villain outright".

edited 28th Sep '14 8:29:33 PM by Wolf1066

This is actually a major plot point in one of my stories. While it's not a clear-cut choice, my protagonist has the choice of saving his captured mother and sister or immediately stopping the Big Bad from bringing about the End of the World as We Know It. If he takes the time to save his family, it gives the villain more time to execute his scheme—and since he is literally the only one capable of successfully killing the man without causing the apocalypse, it has to be him.

However he chooses to rescue his mother and sister first, and when chided about the delay putting millions of lives at risk, he openly says that without his family in it, the world really means nothing to him. And when his comrades try to force him to carry out the original plan, he threatens suicide—again, because he is the only one who can stop it.