#And if someone tries to enforce consequences THEY'RE the bad guy.

[criminalcase-confessions]

criminal case CAN be copaganda when the protagonist is a cop and extremely good at their job (and virtually the good guy no matter what)

🔍

[codenamesazanka]

Two things I'm noticing more with the series ending is that the heroes and series have these two very shitty ideas

1 "Actions have consequences but only if the person is labelled a villain,"

Endeavor as a public figure and major player law enforcement has engaged in a list of crimes including: Child neglect, mental & emotional abuse, physical abuse, quirk marriage. To the point his eldest had a mental break when his youngest was born because he was blatantly being replaced, his wife five years later has a mental breakdown and maims the youngest, eldest shortly after has another breakdown and 'dies'. Doesn't need consequences he just needs to give a half ass apology and barely improve over the buried bar he has set.

(from the team up mission side series) Man's quirk dispels a poisonous gas from his mouth, he is not allowed to use it ever as he isn't a hero. The gas builds up leading to a medical emergency, and is no longer able to hold it back. Despite him literally having a medical emergency and being unable to control it, tries to getaway from people. The heroes (Mirko, Deku, and Dynamight, maybe more) assume maliousness and go to attack him. Deku realizes and informs the others what is happening. And at the end Deku informs us, this man who was having a medical emergency from following the law, will get a light sentence.

The violent quirkists who attacked Spinner, Shoji, Himiko's parents, they totally don't need consequences, their victims need to be the ones to inspire them to stop. And if they can't well we can't be expected to hold these poor violent quirkists accountable for their actions

Etc

2 So long as there is one exception to shitty behaviour of heroes & society, nothing needs to be done

I haven't watched the third movie but I have a general idea. Rody has to care for his younger siblings after his dad is kidnapped, heroes, social services, etc do nothing to help this child who is caring for his siblings for years. Deku who isn't even from this country helps once, Heroes are perfect

Deku's a good hero so we don't need to worry about the commission having assassin's

Etc

I'm in a rush but I can probably think of more later

(That Team Up Mission chapter pissed me off so bad!!!! It qualifies as a medical emergency, doesn't it??? He has no control over the poisonous gas build-up in this body! And it destroys his body! But to release the gas is to use his quirk, so he can't, because quirk use is illegal and he'll be arrested as a Villain. Which happens anyways! And in the end, Deku says "when the full story of the day's events hits the news, there's sure to be a petition to lighten his sentence," and while that sounds hopeful, you realize that mercy for this guy is solely on if people know and can offer some sympathy. It's so fucked up.)

I'll also add Iida running off to be a vigilante and kinda ready to murder a guy... but because (he had friends who got there in time to stop the screw up from going FUBAR and) he's promising young student, he's let off the hook. (Meanwhile, Gentle, who tried to help save someone, does fuck up, and iirc is expelled and given criminal charges.)

I think in all the examples you've used, there's also a line between whether quirks were involved or not. Domestic violence, bullying, village blood cleansing (jfc) - No (or technically no) quirk use, so we don't really see those actions resulting in any legal consequences. Heroes' (and the story's) focus is on Villains, so it often feels like they're willing to ignore non-Villain crimes.

So long as there is one exception to shitty behaviour of heroes & society, nothing needs to be done

Oh yeah. This. I hate this.

Man I really hope the epilogue might address this. (said without hope)

Thank you for your observations and sharing them!

[redshiftsinger]

And if you're having trouble getting past "but then there's no incentive to not make stupid decisions if you just get helped the same as someone whose disability ISN'T their fault" or whatever punitive mindset you're hung up on, consider:

In many cases, you cannot clearly define whether it is or is not someone's own fault that they became disabled. How would you ever expect to enforce a separation of the "blameless" disabled vs the "at fault" disabled? What metrics would be used to determine blame? How would you ensure that the metrics used aren't being manipulated to deny assistance to as many people as possible, instead of truly being implemented impartially? Would the bureaucratic overhead cost of that system of determination be higher than the cost of simply giving disabled people assistance without policing who "deserves" it based on how they became disabled?

Victim blaming is a very real thing that people do -- well, you were in a car wreck and now you're paralyzed? Why weren't you paying more attention to the road? Did you look at your phone or fiddle with the radio or glance at your friend in the passenger seat or doze off or have low blood sugar? Can you prove that you weren't distracted or mildly cognitively impaired from a temporary debuff caused by something technically "in your control" but that everyone slips up on once in a while, like having a poor night's sleep or going a bit longer between meals than you should, and really couldn't have avoided the collision if you were paying more attention? Even if the other driver was determined to be "at fault" for causing the wreck, in a lot of cases an attentive driver can avoid a wreck even when someone else does something stupid in their vicinity, so this isn't necessarily easily solved by "who broke a traffic rule" -- and even if it was, failure to signal a lane change is enough. Even if you tried to signal but didn't realize that your blinker bulb was out (your fault for not maintaining your car better! Can you prove that you checked that you had a functional blinker before you started driving, and thus it must have burned out en route? Even if you do check every single time, which most people don't, can you prove it?)

Is there a point at which a person has adequately "served their time" for the mistake they made, and no longer deserves to suffer unassisted? How many years of struggling to afford assistive devices and healthcare while being hugely limited in employment options is "fair" for a teenager who wrecked a car while distracted and got paralyzed, before they've "paid for" their mistake? Five years? Ten? The rest of their life (really?)? Should people still be actively punished for mistakes they made in their 20's when they're 70, or is the continued unavoidable consequence of remaining disabled forever "enough" at some point? And is it better or worse for society if the priority is helping people have the ability to continue contributing, vs if assistance is withheld from them that might make the difference of being able to get and maintain a job?

What if they need assistance to survive their acquired disability? Are you comfortable with dispensing death sentences for the crime of human error + bad luck, or for poor judgment that did not involve harming anyone else? For addiction, for not properly stabilizing a ladder, for changing the station on the car radio at an unfortunate moment? Of course sometimes people do die in such circumstances, with nothing that can be done to save them, but assuming they can survive the acute damage but will need assistance to survive their resulting disability long-term, are you comfortable telling them that they deserve to die (probably slowly and in pain, definitely preventably) for their mistakes?

If they have dependents, are you ok with condemning those dependents to suffer along with them, just because they "did it to themselves"? Does the guy who fell off an improperly-stabilized ladder's five year old son deserve to grow up in poverty with a housebound father who can't afford a wheelchair, just because his dad was an idiot about ladder safety that one time? And if they won't survive their disability without assistance, are you comfortable with condemning their spouse, parents, friends, and children to watching them die for their mistake?

Disability rights should extend to people who did that to themselves. To the bloke who got paralysed because he was trying to do a dumb trick on his skateboard, to the person who has diabetes because they ate unhealthily, yes even to those people who got blinded at that NFT convention.

As an on again off again alcoholic who has tried and tried again at recovery, I find myself in a space now where I'm starting to lose my liver function, and I'm now therefore chronically ill. And it sucks, I've tried medication that just exacerbated my mental health issues and I'm signing up for my fourth AOD service. It will always be my fault that I'm chronically ill, but the idea that there are good disabled people and bad disabled people kicks people like me out in the cold.

I think everyone deserves equal opportunity to access disability services, get government pensions, use mobility aids, etc etc, without people going 'actually, you did this to yourself'.