#it's so sad bc billions of them are slaughtered

[bunnihearted]

the way humans regard animals is so insane. like farm animals fight for their lives to escape and flee slaughter. they know it's all wrong.

[randomnameless]

Not to bring irl shit but when you consider that there are people who believe in their own moral superiority, that everything should burn to the ground, people should die for their cause and those they don't like deserve to die for justice, it makes sense why there would be Agarthan stans despite how comically evil they are in the games. Not saying it's good (it's not), but it's the same sort of edgelord doomer nihilist mentality. Or maybe I'm thinking way too hard about this and they just support them because their waifu is working with them and they can't be bad if she's "purely good" despite their actions in game saying otherwise.

Uh...

I guess everyone knows there are people who are pos around, but what became more and more annoying with the years is how some of those beliefs have been romanticed for X and Y reason (marketing purposes because earl grey sells) and if you add to that the performative era - where being a fan of a character means you have to endorse everything this character says or does, we end up with some mess.

And I think while the devoted fans we all know and love have their part of responsability in this - as you say - supporting characters no matter what to the point of swallowing their nauseabond rhetoric because waifu allies with them before backstabbing them offscreen...

I still believe content creators are sort of also to blame with this, see the earlier earl grey marketing reasons.

IIRC, in the Marvel movies the purple guy who erases half of the universe is/was/got a cup bcs sad uwus he's ready to sacrifice his daughter for the greater good?

Cry me a fucking river !

What about the rest of the world who was zapped due to his whims? Why should I care about the feefees of someone who slaughters billions and not the feelings of the ones slaughtered?

Take Kishimoto : trying too hard to make people sympathise with his anti-heroes ultimately means that their victims have no voice to any chapter, Ramen Guy will never be able to express anger (if he wasn't dead when Konoha was flattened) at Nagato turning his daughter in a pancake, or Sakura will never weep for her parents, etc etc... but we get a long FB about Nagato's sad backstory with, what can be summed up as "the world fucked me over so I'll fuck over the world and you can't stop that unless you decide to fuck me over too" without anyone telling him that his reasoning is puerile and quite frankly stupid.

Madara being very sad not being elected big boss so he takes out his salt by launching repeated attacks at the village and its inhabitants? "Who cares, he was very sad (tm) when Hashirama decided to kill him to protect the village, what a hypocrite !!!"

The less is said about AoT, the better we all are lol, but in honor of MHA ending I'll just say that... I fucking loved the panels at the end (or last chapters?) where randoms civilians are shitting on Shigaraki, even if the panel with the old lady who blames herself for not helping him back then or taking his hand was hilarious, considering that in his FB, he said he would have killed her too "oh poor him if only i died for his sake he might not have grown up as a vilain" come on that's too much earl grey i'm out of this.

As for FE Fodlan, given how earl grey was used to sell and advertise the game, I guess you can't talk to Garcias or Nathalies and ask what they're thinking about the war that is razing their homes because someone wants to unify the world and is willing to sacrifice them to do so, or hell, we can't even listen to Merlinus voice his thoughts about the strange plague in Remire and how horrible it is, to Amy wonder why the fuck her parents transformed in demonic beasts and tried to kill her.

So when even content creators believe that their vilains have to get a pass regardless of the amount of shit they pulled off - I can't exclusively blame devoted fans for going very very far with their takes to support the bae.

Special mention to Miura (rip) who never lost an occasion to portray Griffith as manipulative and conniving, and yet some people really believed (and some still do?) he did nothing wrong...

[tarajenkins]

apocalypsegay

@tarajenkins​ tbh giving any sort of backstory let alone sympathetic ones to Fuckin Fantasy Nazis is a bad idea to begin with bc real-ass fascists dont have any motivation other than hatred. but i would've accepted the story to go deeper if they hadn't just straight up called him a Tragic Hero like OH my GOD. hes not even "a hero to his people" his people are dead and never asked for this?

I would say a character's past doesn’t play a part in the writers’ ability to be clear in condemning the atrocities they've committed/hatred they have--if the writers do make it a sad past, though, they should use the opportunity to stress that no matter how sad it may be, it's no justification. 

Now, I thought the writer largely succeeded in that regard. The entire game is about us stopping this kind of monstrous shit, after all. I never bought into Emet-Selch’s backhanded shtick, myself--I even expected him to try playing us like he did, like the Ascians always have played people. I also thought they showed us after Gulg, without question, Emet-Selch was not only irredeemable, but had zero regrets.

Some players remain hung up on his “tests”, as though somehow, if we only passed them, the Ascians would accept their lot or find “another way”, that he really didn’t mean all this. That is was OUR FAULT we couldn’t live up to his standards. Well, first, if we DID pass muster, Thancred ASKED what would happen when we still refused to go along with the Rejoining:

Second? The people of the Shards don’t NEED to pass anyone’s tests for the right to exist. I am pretty sure that was the whole point of showing this type of conflict.

This is NOT a sympathetic character, lmao. Sympathy is “yes loss is sad” in a general sense, I may have to clarify my own posts even further. That up there? That is someone who beats you near to death and then asks, “why did you make me do it?”. 

“Passing the test” would lead to him going down the same path, he is just offering us a place at the slaughter. He asks us to embrace the Ascians’ methods, and of course we do not. When he says something about needing no "heroes"/being disappointed in them? That isn’t some sad statement. That implies he's been disappointed in past heroes for not being “worthy” enough to accept the murder of billions of innocents. It’s a good thing he’s been disappointed!

This isn’t even a matter of the writers making it hard for us to imagine the scope of their crimes so it is harder to assign the responsibility. Most of the characters we’ve known and loved have been affected by the Ascians’ machinations, as your comic presented so powerfully. ShB presents us with another whole world that has suffered catastrophic loss at their hands. But I already pointed out in my own posts that there’s a vocal part of the fanbase who would sooner dehumanize one of Emet-Selch’s victims than allow Emet-Selch himself to bear any responsibility. (And yeah, sure is funny the one who gets hated without critical thought is the fat one.)

I don't know what Square is planning about Tempering, or the reality of the Amaurotine. The Amaurotine seemed really fixated on conformity, which kind of throws up some red flags to me. And FFXIV is not without its plot holes, double standards, just plain sloppy bits (See Eulmore arc), and just plain creepy shit (see dude in Doman Liberation Front who bought Yotsuyu, see pushing the narrative that the Weeping Warbler's patron is really just a Poor Old Nice Man, see their awkward attempts to make Fordola Also Really A Nice Person Deep Down Somewhere As She Threatens To Kill Us Again). 

But Square is going out of their way to fanservice THIS character, with all these atrocities at their hands, and yeah, it’s disturbing. 

This isn’t the kind of “hero” I signed up to play. 

[archivestoriescrafted]

“you can’t just shut off your emotions,  b’elanna.  sooner or later,  you’re going to have to let yourself grieve.” “why?  so i can go through it all over again?  [....]  when i was four,  my father walked out on me.  when i was ninteen,  i got kicked out of starfleet.  a few years later,  i got separated from the maquis.  and just when i start to feel safe?  you tell me that all our old friends have been slaughtered.  the way i figure it,  i’ve lost every family i’ve ever had,”

k but after b’elanna finds out all the maquis are dead, she says  “i’ll make someone pay, i swear i will,”  and then starts running all the super dangerous programs on the holodeck without safeties almost immediately.  so i guess you could say she punishes herself  ---  at least, that’s how it starts. it starts with her being so angry, she can’t accept it, it’s not real  ---  they can’t be dead.  but they are.  and she’s not,  because she’s on the other side of the galaxy.  she wasn’t there to die with them,  and she hates herself for it   (   she hates herself, anyway, but this only makes it worse   ).   she wasn’t there to die with them,  so she starts taking all these risks,  and then she realizes that she’s not angry anymore.  she’s not anything anymore,  and it only gets worse,  and then we get to extreme risk where she almost dies and finally starts getting help but gOD that’s six months later.  six months where she distanced herself from everyone,  and everything,  because she doesn’t feel anything,  and because she manages to convince herself that every family she’s ever had,  found or biological,  leaves or dies because of her,  and she can’t let herself lose any of the family she’s found on voyager bc she knows she can’t take losing anyone else.  nothing makes her happy,  or sad,  or even angry anymore.  six months of solitude,  where she does increasingly dangerous things in an attempt to feel.  i’m fine.  i just have approximately a billion feelings,  this is fine.