Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

Yeah, I think that whole sequence were Raiden is forced to feel the emotions of the mooks he kills is one of the most effective scenes in the series.

Even more than the sorrow hallway.

There is something to be said if certain stories saves all their Thou Shalt Not Kill energy for only the Big Bad, when they have the greatest crimes and not properly justify it. It has a sense of contrivance. Killing in the heat of battle, while the Big Bad surrenders is one thing. Sparing the Big Bad, because that's considered the most expedient way to reaching their goals is also similar. But mowing through Mooks, then also having a moral issue with killing when it gets to the main villain and only them is another thing entirely. Sparing the Big Bad while the Mooks die in droves, and sparing the Big Bad while they are still actively dangerous is even worse than that. Saying that Mooks should die because they are obviously evil because they work for the bad guy, in part dehumanizes the variety of reasons people fall into that type of work, because the creators don't bother to spend time on it.

Some examples I can think of where it starts to feel contrived are with A:TLA, where Aang was in conflict of having to kill Firelord Ozai, saying he never used his powers to kill anyone before. But that somewhat rings hollow when there were at least a couple of instances where the situation feels like he definitely killed people. Like in the Northern Air Temple where he used an avalanche over a squad of Fire Nation soldiers, or Avatar Day where he launched one guy off a cliff, the same cliff that killed Chin the Conqueror when Kyoshi split the island. And it's not like Ozai surrendered, he fought until he couldn't fight anymore, and only because Aang was granted spirit bending at last moment was he able to subdue him.

Another example was in the escape from Vault 101 in Fallout 3. When your dad escaped from the Vault, the Overseer went crazy at the chaos, and ordered the security detail to shoot to kill in order to maintain order and you had to effectively kill your way out the vault since you couldn't talk to any of the security officers anymore. He became so extreme he had Officer Mack torturing his own daughter for information. When you make your way to the Overseer, you are given the option to talk him and only him down. And you have to convince him to let you leave, rather than the other peaceful option of surrendering to him and laying down your arms, because if you surrender to him, he takes your weapons and starts shooting you. If you end up killing him, his daughter (who was just being tortured under his orders moments ago) comes in to admonish you for killing her father, despite him being an autocratic asshole who got countless innocents killed and sent officers to their death because he was the only one programmed to be allowed to surrender. And if you do talk him down, it's not like he learns. The vault will go to hell with him still in charge anyways.

Not to say it can't be done properly. Sometimes there are good philosophical and strategic reasons why allowing the Big Bad to surrender, but not his Mooks that would make logical and emotional sense (in say a war between two relative powers, killing their leader can potentially cause more political strife than setting grounds for their surrender). But just like everything else in fiction, it has to be done well.

Edited by HeyMikey on Mar 29th 2024 at 12:13:41 PM

It’s Wolfenstein, I suggest a free DLC where when fighting the Nazis a group of whinny 21st century Nazis time travel to you and start spouting Nazi apologia at you, so you shoot them.

I also wouldn't mind more games like Mafia III that gave you a chance to shoot up a KKK rally. Okay, technically they're called the Southern Union, but they're clearly based on the KKK.

Bonus points since they're also human traffickers, another group that I don't think should be controversial to kill off in a videogame.

Edited by M84 on Mar 29th 2024 at 6:00:45 PM

In The Farthest Shore, the archmage Ged says he doesn't punish. So when rescuing the prince Arren from a ship of slavers, he doesn't kill any of them: he just rescues Arren and leaves, comparing himself to a wolf recusing his cub.

But he does free the other enslaved on the vessel, who make up the majority of the crew including the oarsmen, and leaves the slavers on the ship alone with them. He leaves their fate in the hands of their victims, and doesn't wait to find out what that fate will be. Maybe they will be killed by the people they captured. Maybe they will be enslaved themselves now. Maybe they'll be able to bargain their way out. Ged might not be the one who mete out punishment, but he won't protect them, either.

Edited by SilentColossus on Mar 29th 2024 at 1:38:42 PM

I just feel like Nazis have run their course. I just think they’re a bit overused. But they are easy villains to have since in theory nobody likes the Nazis. Germans sure, but not the Nazis.

Personally I prefer the Japanese as my villains for a WW 2 story since I find that part of the war more interesting but that’s just personal taste.

How so?

What part? The overused part?

Basically all the examples we have of Those Wacky Nazis, Stupid Jetpack Hitler and more. Tropes are tools so it's not a dealbreaker or anything, and a lot of my favorite movies like Indiana Jones feature the Nazis as bad guys.

The Japanese part?

I watched The Pacific lately and I just found this aspect of WW 2 fascinating, probably some combination of the tropical settings, island hopping and the experiences of the US marines. Also, have been reading lately about the history of Japan during WW 2 and how they fought China, conquered the Philippines and more. Oh, and the dogfights. Pretty cool.

Plus I have Godzilla Minus One in my memory and that helps. Not really a WW 2 story but it feels appropriate to mention.

I don't know, I feel like having Nazi's as villains is more relevant now than at any point since the end of WWII, given how fascism has disturbingly been gaining ground of the last decade.

Even though Imperial Japan was a fascist power too, so I think it can still count.

With Showa Statism specifically, they're essentially Japanese Nazis.

I will say I think I have seen a few stand-ins for them. While this is very likely unintentional, the Space Pirates in Metroid (particularly Prime) gave off Showa Statist vibes. Mostly the Kamikaze enemies in the third game and the biological weapons. Caesar's Legion too gives off similar vibes.

I suppose the question it might depend on how broadly we're defining Nazism. For example, would a stand-in for the KKK count ala The Founders from Bioshock Infinite? Or Juche-ists or something?

speaking of which, I heard that Disgaea 7 had some criticism of Imperial Japan in the form of its antagonist. I'll try to explain things as best as I can, but I would appreciate it is someone more familiar with the game's plot can chime in.

The game had a few references to Japanese history with the alleged villain being a Commodore Perry reference, however said antagonist is possessed by a demon known by the name of Mugai, claimed to had been a noble hero, but in truth was a cruel and wicked man who had among other things cursed his son to die if he has any empathy, cursed the wife of his vessel with the same curse. and manipulated the events of the game to try to inflict it onto everyone in the setting (and beyond) turning them into either heartless sociopaths or corpses. He also spearheaded the advent of weapons forged using a myriad of souls using one of them as a fetter for his own and the vector to posses the Demmodore

said son is one of the protagonists, alongside the daughter of the man Mugai possessed. To say the former held a low opinion on the man is an understatement. However there is some wrinkles to unpack with Mugai as his motivations for doing this was his wife dying to protect their son from bandits among other things, but that seemed to be the inciting incident. He also used the same curse on himself to ensure he would go through with it, and had hypocritically showed empathy for his granddaughter.

FWIW I'm certain the story framed the villain as well, a villain, especially giving that among the heroes that thwarted him were people that suffered by his hand, including his aforementioned son, his granddaughter, the aforementioned daughter of the Demmodore, the local shogun and his little brother, an amnesiac angel and a fellow zesshosai.

also to circumvent some confusion the cure in question had some loopholes that its victims had exploited. If it could be rationalized as a selfish act that happened to have the side effect of helping others, then it wouldn't kill them. The son used miserly behavior to that end and the Demmodore's wife used the fact she was betraying Mugai as the cover for the act.

I will say that I get some Small Reference Pools vibes when I see bad guys Putting on the Reich.

I'd also there's variation in how much you want to intellectually engage with the ideals of National Socialism. For example, part of what makes the newer Wolfenstein games so good is that they don't gloss over the fact that the bad guys are, well, Nazis.

IMO, if you're going for something more of a generic "G-Rated" imperialist, I'd suggest something akin to the British Empire. Colonialists can be terrifying if you want them to be (see The Combine Empire), but you can make them Lighter and Softer if you want to.

I'll say for my part, Nazism is a very Nightmare-inducing ideology, in just how over-the-top evil it is.

Some alternatives to Nazism for terrifying political ideologies might be:

• The worst forms of Colonialism
• Fundamentalism
• Totalitarian Marxist-Leninism
• Anarcho-Capitalism (well, reading their wikipedia page made my skin crawl, anyways)
• Something like The Mongolian Empire

And of course there's also super-racist ideologies that are technically not fascism (IE, the Klan, National Anarchism, Juche), but you can mix-and-match these things.

"Introduce a little, anarchy. Upset the established order. And everything becomes, chaos."

"I'm an agent of chaos."

"Oh, and you know, the thing about chaos? It's fair."

Not sure why this popped in my head but it did.

..........................

To change gears a bit, I have been watching The Chosen. Season 4 isn't out for me to watch yet but what I have seen is pretty good. It had so many herculean tasks that made me think, nah it can't be THAT good. But this is a case where I am happy to be wrong.

I do understand if some people don't like it. Maybe it just doesn't vibe with you. But as somebody who has wanted a faithful yet artistic portrayal of the Gospel stories.... this hits that mark. Jesus, is a character. The apostles, are characters! They get this bizarre thing called, character traits. It seems crazy but I mean it when I say that this adaptation is doing what other adaptations of Jesus stories just... for whatever reason don't do as well.

I don't wanna go on a tangent so I'll just say that this show kind of rocks. And from what I can tell, it's popular among a wide variety of audiences. So definitely give it a look through. You might be surprised. I sure was.

You know the Joker was full of shit when he said that quote right? Like, chaos isn't fair at all. It's random and unpredictable by definition.

Heck, if you notice, he always has a habit of rigging the outcome. There's no way Harvey would have been able to shoot him.

Same deal with him not looking like a guy with a plan, when he's all about plans within plans.

You could argue that the fact that Chaos is random and unpredictable is what makes it fair.

Everyone has an equal chance of getting screwed or benefiting from Chaos. It chooses no sides and plays no favourites.

Having said that, everything else you said about the Joker is true. He's totally full of shit when stating he's about Chaos, because he's constantly planning about 4-5 steps ahead and enforcing the worst aspects of human nature to get what he wants.

There's no greater proof of this than the fact that he had his own trigger to the bomb boats. He was so sure one boat would blow up the other, but he still had his own trigger just in case. And no doubt it would have triggered both, to ensure that maximum death as well.

A stopped clock can be right twice a day, but it's still broken.

Okay, I've also discussed this with Omega, but what definition of fair are you using when you are using it to describe something that could reward evil people just as much as it could punish good people?

Because, that to me isn't fair, it's just random and chaotic. To me, chaos can never be fair if it's entirely arbitrary.

Two Face is more on that idea that chaos and random chance are that only fair things in life, even more so than the Joker, and I wouldn't exactly call coin flips fair means of judgement.

Edited by RedHunter543 on Mar 29th 2024 at 9:27:42 PM

what are you talking about? coin flips are totally fair you have a 50% chance of getting heads and a 50% chance of getting tails! perfectly balanced, as all things should be

NVM the odd times it landed on its edge. :P

Edited by MorningStar1337 on Mar 29th 2024 at 6:34:07 AM

Yeah, but are you considering the law of averages? Mathematically, the coin is more likely to fall to heads than tails, and therefore Two Face would end up making more good decisions than bad.

Almost as if good is meant to triumph over evil!

The problem is that fairness is not, in and of itself, desirable. It needs context. If you punch a bank robber and then you punch a cop, that's fair, sure. But it's not a good thing for society that you did that. The robber didn't deserve that. Fairness can be a tool for creating a better society; it is critically important to democracy, for instance. But it is not an absolute good in all possible scenarios.

Some things need to be unfair. Especially if they're meant to balance out existing unfairnesses.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 29th 2024 at 7:58:02 AM

What’s that supposed to mean?

Shooting a robber is unfair but shooting a cop is not?

God I hope I’m not misinterpreting this. Shooting a cop might be expected if they are in the line of duty, but I would never say it’s fair!

Edited by Patar136 on Mar 29th 2024 at 6:58:57 AM

Changed it to "punch" 'cause I realized that was too extreme for a joke, but the mid-sincere-point gag was that cops are less sympathetic than robbers.

Edited by TobiasDrake on Mar 29th 2024 at 7:59:54 AM

Tobias going on another anti-cop joke reminded me of how Chip Zdarsky established that the Red Hood Gang that created the Joker, was actually lead by corrupt cops.

Like, there's a lot of overlap with Tobias' political beliefs regarding cops and criminals, and Chip's own.

Not hating, but just something I wanted to point out.

"Because, that to me isn't fair, it's just random and chaotic. To me, chaos can never be fair if it's entirely arbitrary. "

it is a sort of fariness, no the moralistic sense of "good people should be rewarded while bad people should be punished" but is a sort of fariness since nobody is moving the string, it just sort of happens.

"I feel like having Nazi's as villains is more relevant now than at any point since the end of WWII"

....to you.

Like, no ofense but even like that depend a lot were you stand, im a Venezuelan and for me Nazis dosent really resonate at all, hell my goverment is dictatorial and is a far left one. Palestian wont probably feel nazis resonate for...good reason and so on.

Even with facist to day it resemble not so much the ones of yesterday and also as other said, the issue with Nazis is 9 times of 10 they exist mostly as human orcs so you can butcher them and be somewhat edgy in a safe manner.