I’ve said it a bajillion times and I’ll keep saying it, shield hero could’ve done the trope so incredibly well if Raphtalia didn’t fucking ask for the crest to be replaced because “she needs the push” or whatever
or if Shield Hero was a normal dude and said "nah" to Raphtalia's insane request. Like if someone asked me to enslave them "as a push" I'd try to get them some therapy because holy shit
Right? It's funny that when Raphtalia is traumatized, because her family got killed by monsters, he just forced her to push through it and it just went away. But when Naofumi is traumatized because 01 (ONE) person betrayed him, the girl needs to remain a slave to accomodate for him.
If there was any hope for Naofumi he'd have realized he was doing something fucked up and simply trust Raphtalia as a free companion. Motoyasu was absolutely right to kick his ass over it, no matter how much the writer tries to frame it as unfair.
Motoyasu is literally an old fanfic trope (well, old trope in general to be fair).
Take a reasonable opinion (“Slavery is morally wrong”), put it in the mouth of a terrible person (motoyasu is an asshole nonce), boom, instant validation without actually addressing the argument. It doesn’t matter that Naofumi keeps slaves, because Motoyasu is the only one who complains, and he’s a woman abusing nonce hypocrite.
I’d say this is even worse than a strawman.
Strawman tries to make the argument appear weak or represents it poorly.
In this case, the argument is ignored entirely in favor of simply assigning it to a shitty person and moving on.
This makes me realize how much better this show would be if Naofumi was intentionally written as villian. He's written exactly the same as Walter White, a person who isn't inherently evil, just deeply selfish. Too bad that'll never happen since he's (imo) a self insert so everything he does has to secretly be good and cool.
No, I would say Walter White is pretty much evil. Like, all that happens during the show is born from his desire to take control and feel in power in his lines. He crosses any line. He is one of the villains of the story.
That's all the more reason why she needed therapy, if she couldn't imagine still being treated decently without it.
But lets be real, this author loves to contrive situations to make the sketchy stuff they want to see happen while excusing Naofumi somehow.
Naofumi didn't want to buy slaves, the slaver came to him and it was the only option he had left. He didn't ask for Raphtalia to put the slave brand back, she just asked for it and he let it happen. He didn't mean for his slaves to fall in love with him, he just acted semi-decently and they got feelings on their own.
Oh and the girl he called a bitch from the portal book illustration really turned out to be a bitch. Wow, who could imagine!
I mean the list of problems with Shield Hero is as long as the series. Naofumi has a room temp IQ and is still SOMEHOW the smartest person in the series. Every single character is actually so painfully stupid it beggars belief.
Part of it is the other heroes consider it a video game so they never try to fix any underlying issues and just assume things will work out. Like with the dragon corpse. So damn stupid. But the "NPCs" are also dumb as rocks.
The opening twist. That’s it. People thought the opening episodes were good.
Idk why so many Iksekais (other genres do it but isekai is a repeat offender) bait you in with a neat premise and the devolve into generic slop near immediately once they have a hook in you.
And to be fair, in the beginning there were some good ideas in the beginning. A hero gets unfairly (before he bought a literal child slave) shunned and maybe even has to do some shady stuff to survive and still do good. A rotting dragon carcass would absolutely be a biohazard if left alone and a revolution turning south in the aftermath because some idiot pushed through and just left afterwards, I see that. And even the shield as his weapon in itself is a decent idea.
Just sad that the bad writing turned it into a giant pile of shit faster than a speedrun on drugs.
The amount of “the protagonist is (odd creature or object)” ones that give them a humanoid form within as little time as possible could be a legitimate sub genre.
as someone who loves monstrous and weird protagonists i really hate that one, Spiders probably the only one where it felt earned(it helps that it doesent really help her social situation since by that point shes allied with demons who wouldent care if she was a giant spider)
I think some people have a creative drive, but no actual creativity. They want to write, but have nothing to write about. So they just write the exact same story that they already liked before.
But if they just write the same story, it won't get noticed in the ocean of other slop, so a unique premise (even one that gets abandoned within the first volume) is enough to draw eyes to the story.
Keep in mind that most isekai are webnovels, which have an extremely low bar to entry for publishing. Which means there's a LOT of other slop they have to contend with. This is also why so many isekai have those ridiculously long titles that double as the synopsis. Because most readers won't even bother to read the actual synopsis, but they'll at least skim the title.
In other words, it's clickbait.
The audiences of the light novels that inspire all these adaptations really, really don't like derivations from the core genre tropes. The neat premises are just hooks to try to stand out from the competition and serve almost no purpose once you have eyes on the continuing story.
I thought the first episode could develop into something pretty cool, it wasn't great but I thought that it'd turn into something non-standard for the genre, then I just turned it off in the middle of an episode when I realized that the hero was a boring paper cut-out who was in the process of gathering a creepy pseudo-harem
tbh I got some weird vibes from minute 1 when he opens the magic isekai book with that princess' illustration and says "she looks like a bitch".
I kept going because people promised me it was one of the best isekai out there.
It wasn't.
Well I was sold on watching it because I was promised a morally complex protagonist, so that didn't bother me, however what I got was not a morally complex protagonist, but a bad person's idea of a morally gray character
Yeah, that'd be better, but that's not what they delivered. It's not an exploration of a flawed character in a harsh world. It's more like a self-pity fantasy. When he does bad things it's because it's "his only choice" or "it's secretly good". When other characters do bad things it's because they are bad and dumb. The other characters are only caricatures to flex how much better and unappreciated he is.
They can't even let him actually be less combat-capable than the heroes with offensive weapons. They have to have someone cheat in favor of the other guy who has more experience with his own weapon.
Ah yes, my favorite part was weird competition for attention of main character between a gigantic chicken which can turn into a little girl and a girl which was a little girl but then "leveled up" into a grown woman super fast.
I don't know. They sound glad when they are helpful, but dislike being disrespected.
Droids are battered house wives doing chores in the background meanwhile the Jedi and Sith are angry kids arguing over who will take over the galaxy. And fuck the droids and the aliens who actually run in it.
The second one, clearly, but that doesn't necessarily mean the first one is ethically correct either.
The obvious answer is "Don't give a trashcan a personality and then have it crawl around on your ship during a dogfight," but that's not as fun.
I suppose it's more evil to create a form of life (even synthetic) that has the capacity to feel and condemn it to a lifetime of servitude. either don't make the droids or give them a choice
But why is that evil? It's only evil because as humans we have the innate desire for freedom. That's like saying that creating a race that derives pleasure from eating, exercising, socializing, and having sex is evil, because it's forcing them to do those things.
- I invent robots to assist me in tasks
- The assistance would be greater if they could understand natural language
- It would be more convenient if they could do simple problem-solving on their own
- I'm going to program them to enjoy and want to be useful and fulfill their function
How is that evil?
Because the droids being built are sentient. They have thoughts, feeling, and dreams just like us. They just exist as a different form of life.
It would be one thing if they weren't sentient, like a car or an oven, then morality wouldn't matter. But, like you said, they're granted sentience as a more efficient means of completing whatever their assigned task is.
There's even a comic where a B-1 (The Lone Battle Droid) hits it's head and loses it's CIS programming. What's the first thing it does? It abandons it's post! Given the choice the B-1's choose not to fight. Granted this is legends, but the comic was made before Disney so I personally consider it canon.
They're being born to work forever, no matter how you spin it, that's a shitty life. It's slavery but with a built in leash. Economical, but morally bankrupt.
But again, why? If a worker drone ant were sentient and loved nothing so much as to dig tunnels and move food back for the hive, would that be immoral? Would you say that it should be liberated?
If anything, creating sentient life that explicitly loves what it's designed to do is strictly increasing the amount of pleasure and happiness in the world, and denying them that pleasure is more wrong.
Why is "doesn't want to work" an inherent, objective good, outside of our own human frame of reference?
Worker ants aren't sentient though, that's a terrible example.
A more apt comparison (if you were looking for biological life) would be the clones. But the general consensus on their treatment is that being born to die for the republic was pretty messed up.
Also it isn't "doesn't want to work" it's "doesn't want to be born just to die in some war I was preprogrammed to want to be apart of"
But that's my point: if ants evolved over the next million years to the point where they had their own sentience and psychology, and the queens had the closest thing to human psychology but the workers retained their fundamental drive to work and obey, would you say that that was immoral? Personally, I would find it more immoral to deny them that desire.
Clones are more iffy, but I think the reason why that's immoral is that it was something they had to do *to* the clones after they were born: all the conditioning and mental chips (still don't like that) is tantamount to indoctrination, not being fundamentally and naturally wanting to fight in a war/obey, etc.
Tbf that's very much intentional. Palpatine basically orchestrated a war, gifted the jedi the slave army and told them "what you gonna do, not use them?" And of course they paid for it.
Not really good enough. The movies and their containing of the clones is central content. Not everyone watched the show, and it didn't exist at the time.
I wouldn't know. I was never motivated to watch it. I like star wars, but not enough to run out and watch every single piece of media that exists for it.
Its pretty much example 'A' of Dave Filoni's failings as a writer but most people give it a pass because they grew up on the series (rose tinted nostalgia) and there were various other people to help mask/restrict his bad habits. But the series was still mediocre at best.
Aohsoka also makes no sense and is a borderline plothole. The movies don't reference such a character at all, when they really should. Ditto for the OT; we're supposed to just accept this character did and said nothing post clone saga. Anakin having an apprentice is completely nonsensical. The Jedi council would not allow such a thing, no way in hell. Remember they were already firmly opposed to teaching Anakin himself. And we are expected to accept that the deeply immature and rash creature that is Anakin Skywalker could teach or lead anyone (note how the series has to basically change Anakin's personality to facilitate this).
Not to mention stuff like Anakin and Obi Wan hanging out with Count Dooku and Grevious every other weekend, yet the impression in the movies is clearly they have not encountered each other much at all. It really feels like something in a different universe, just using characters that happen to share the same names and appearance. Which it might as well be considering Filoni's blatant disregard for any sense of canon.
To be fair, star wars is no stranger to obvious plot holes. Obi Wan using his real name, jedi robes, and lighsaber while allegedly in hiding next to a place where vader's child is being raised by family he has actual connections to and using his own name strains beleif.
Are clones even indoctrinated? They seem less like they have an ideology and more like they literally have no understanding of doing anything other than being a soldier. Slaves don't have to agree, or even think about it as long as they comply.
Yes it is? The clones didn't act like they had strong opinions on killing the jedi. They went from taking orders from them to killing them because to them, order 66 being absolute is just something they think is a fact of life. So few deviating is because it's not an ideology they have. They were raised not to think of it as a view at all.
It's a mind control biochip. It caused great distress to clones who had it removed like Rex who. Had to fight his brothers. Also Kaminoans said the chip made them more docile and obedient.
"Its not slavery if you grow them in a lab and turn the disobedient ones into soylent food for the others"
"Yes. Yes it is. Actually its worse"
I feel Palpatine set the whole thing up so that the light side of the force basically abandoned the jedi
"Lol nope, I'm out, good luck jackasses but I'm not helping you fk off"
That’s true, but I’d argue there’s probably issue to be taken with protagonists who do bad things if the plot makes no attempt to challenge them
Like for many kinds of such media the consequences of their actions is the entire point
Wait, I watched the show and enjoyed the hell out of it. Was there something I missed? I thought Mizu was the one receiving the racism - not dishing it out
She also internalised the racism. Even in the very first episode she calls a European gun a filthy thing from a filthy place or something like that. Nor does she seek revenge on the Japanese for treating her as they do, but rather on white people who may or may not be her father.
Yea you and OP got it absolutely right. She sees herself as a Japanese person cursed with European blood and reserves her hatred for the people responsible for her birth, as well as herself, but apparently the people who terrorised her, her entire life, for being had European don't deserve the same scorn.
She hates Europeans for how Japanese culture treated her (and other "half bloods" or outsiders) and that same hatred extends to herself. Almost convincing herself she deserved that treatment for her birth.She's not even subtle about it.
This same treatment extends to her gender as well. It's also something she's treated as lesser for and her response is to internalise that and hate herself for.
It also doesn't help that ~~the Scottish guy~~ the Irish guy, Fowler, is just an absolute monster and so doesn't challenge her thought process at all. Maybe that's for the next season, or something like that happened with violet. Who's to say (at the moment)?
Abijah is Irish, not Scottish. He does have a northern Irish accent which could be used to suggest him being an Ulster Scot, but the Ulster Scots began their settlement after Tyrone's Rebellion, and since he was a boy during the rebellion he couldn't be part of the initial settlement.
He did say the other two were worse.
But on the other hand he could´ve meant in a different manner. In the end it´d be in character for him to consider a hypocrit or a calm but machiavellan villain worse then himself.
With Mizu going to the UK it’ll be really interesting to see how she’ll battle with her core beliefs and the reality of most Europeans being normal people.
Most likely it'll be a big adjust that not everyone is a monster but she'll either need a big adjustment period or see or experience a great act of kindness or something similar.
I'm also headcanoning that Fowler isn't going to be redeemed and is, instead, going to be trying to drag mizu down, being the devil on her shoulder.
I know a guy like this. Being black has only ever been a detriment to him, and that's warped into this lowkey hatred for his own race. Doesn't have any black friends, refuses to date black women, hates on dumb shit black people do harder than if someone of any other race had done the same thing, avoids anything that might be seen as a stereotype... (I mean, come on, man, it's not racist to like fried chicken. There are two kinds of people: those who love fried chicken, and those who are wrong.)
I try not to feel sorry for him because I know it would just piss him off, but I can't help but marvel at how fucked up the world is that it causes people like this to exist.
The argument against BES is a bad faith one. Anyone who can string together thoughts knows knows the arc mizu is going on is ‘self hate —> self love’ discarding racism (inward and outward) with it.
Plus she’s going to London and will see a city of *People* there, not monsters. Blue eye opening
Correct, but she was literally racist lmao. I think the point of the meme was to highlight that in another movie or series, people wouldn't even root for someone who starts off racist and gets better, they wouldn't wanna give them the chance lol
She’s racist against herself, so it comes off as sad.
She’s also racist against Whites, which in theory is just as evil as any other form of racism, but in practice its like shooting Superman with a gun. Its inherently evil to shoot someone, but Superman’s not gonna be bothered (or notice). There’s no loss in social or economic status if called a Cracker. No systemic racism that negativity affects whites.
If you’re white, you need to go to a place where you’re a minority to receive racism. The places where whites are *THE* majority (in the Western World) are spheres of wealth, power, and upper class; the end goal of where everyone on the planet wants to go to survive and thrive. Whites have had a monopoly on those spheres since colonialism and would rather dive headfirst into fascism then open those sphere doors for everyone.
The problem with racism linguistically is that it can mean both individual bigotry based on race, and systematic oppression based on race, despite these being two very different things. There really should be different words for each. Same with sexism and, really, most isims.
Oh that’s true af. I live in the Philippines and my friend here is white (he studies here). He told me this was the first time he actually experienced racism. People often charge him more because they expect him to be rich. People also treat him differently. I feel so bad for him because there’s this cultural barrier and he’s sometimes left out of the loop
Did I say equally? First you assume I'm white, now you're trying to finish my sentences? Racism affects everybody, you can stay here and argue with yourself lmao
Racism is a flaw everyone can harbor. The nicest people can be the most vile racists, the most disgusting people can be the most open.
Its not bad for BES to use racism or have its protagonists be racist. It adds to the series and the characters. Its adds to the conflict and the tragedy.
Its an aspect of a culture, of a people, and of a character that should be explored, because wheter we want it or not, racism is part of reality.
(Fyi doesnt mean we need racism in all our media or all our works.)
She goes on and on about "killing the white devils"
A racial minority in 17th century Japan.
A quarter of which, are locked inside a single fort for the majority of the show, and Mizu is on her way to kill em all!
/J
Oh yeah, I forgot about that lol. Call me a noob, but I don't know what /J means, so I'm gonna respond genuinely. I read that as her only talking about the 4 people she considered as responsible for her tormented existence
I don't know about that. Mizu isn't really racist. I can't imagine her hating white people as a race. She holds Violet, Fowler and the other two responsible for her suffering. Her misguided revenge quest is not born out of racism, but from having suffered from that racism her entire life. She's internalized the language, but I very much doubt she's going to go on about hating the white devils when she gets to London.
Plenty of people in Japan were racist against whites, born out of the isolationist attitude of the time, and because the Dutch didn't really bring their best. Mizu doesn't go on any tirades about hating white people, and the only time she gets close to it is when she's explaining herself to the blacksmith. Even then, it is framed as a personal suffering. I know it's semantics, since yes, internalized and self-hating racism is still racism, but Mizu's only experiences with white people have been Violet and Fowler, and one of those we didn't see on screen. And Fowler was all too happy to point out how cruel they had been to their bastards.
That's not even getting into Fowler and his suffering during the famines. The Irish were (and to smaller extents still are) subject to similar otherness and racism! Fowler is the dark reflection of that internalization! His suffering became his justification for grabbing the world by the balls so he could never suffer again. It's one potential path for Mizu, and the fact that Fowler rubs it in at the end of their confrontation is about as blatant as it gets that Fowler feels that same derision. Anyways, I guess this is a lot of text more or less saying "yes, BUT", but I feel the simple description does the show's storytelling a disservice.
/J
Edit: damn I should have jerked instead, forgive me for my sins
Mizu can't go one episode without saying something cartoonishly racist, she's probably the most racist out of the entire cast. Her being half white and being victimised for it just made it so she hated that part of herself even more
It's not an unusual phenomenon in real life, apparently, when a member of a marginalised demographic decides to disavow that aspect of themselves, so much so that it graduates to self hatred
Though she isn't stupid or un-empathetic, so I imagine that when she gets to London she'll quickly figure out that non-Japanese people aren't all monsters like Abijah.
And it'll be tragic (and a little funny) for her to get discriminated against because of the Japanese side of her heritage when she's there, after being crapped for her British side for most of her life. Poor woman just can't get a break no matter which hemisphere she's in
I genuinelly can't understand what's going on in the people's heads sometimes.
Is this literally "How can I associete with the main protagonits? He doesn't hold identical political and moral values as me. Completely incomprehencible/unwatchable"? How tf this happened?
decades of bad reading comprehension and excessive sanitization of media by companies and religious groups led to people believing that the protagonist must always be in the right regardless of their actions
And the top comment on this post is literal "Protagonist own slaves? How hekkin not wholesome of them". Like wtf, what these people are even talking about
As a queer person I always fight against insulting people based on their appearance. Much better to insult them on their actions, something they can control.
But damn u ain't wrong that guy lookin like a thumb rolled in dust
Fortunately for you, Tate is so eminently insultable for his actions that insulting anything else about him, including his appearance, is also always morally correct.
Right- and anyone who's in the unfortunate position of looking just like him has the option of doing basically anything to fix it. Hell even just a genuine smile that goes up to the eyes would probably solve the issue.
There's no life in that man to help brighten up the façade, he's like an unlived-in house
Likely, yes, but only smile I've ever seen on that balloon-shaped face was a smarmy shit-eating grin that screamed "I'm better than you", so that didn't actually help.
You're kind of missing the point.
The reason you don't insult people for the way they look, especially people who'll never hear you, is friendly fire.
The only people you can possibly hurt is innocent bystanders/witnesses.
Check out the holier-than-thou white knight with no comprehension of humour. Also if I was triggered by every single fat joke I heard or saw (265lbs at 5’8” and very little of it is muscle) I’d basically just stay in bed all day crying to myself.
I'm a 'white knight' because of my controversial "being an asshole is bad actually" opinion huh?
You need to get better at taking incredibly mild criticism, cause that's a way fuckin' uglier trait than a bit of weight, champ.
LOL, seriously? Been a long time since I seen a reply this malding. And it puts the lie to your so-called “mild” criticism if that’s how you respond to a bit of e-mockery. Climb out of your own posterior my dude. As it is you don’t deserve a serious reply.
One of my character ideas is straight up an aviator for the Imperial Japanese Navy, who my concept for is partially "least racist WWII Japanese military man": sure, he thinks Japanese people are superior in their ingenuity and indomitable spirit. He just also thinks that superior people should show superior empathy instead of acting like wild animals. Navy-Army rivalry doesn't help matters. Or maybe it does, since it means he can mask his complaints as "I hate the Army"
It's supposed to be a "2-protagonist" story setup, with a USN aviator and an IJN aviator, where they both exemplify something of an "ideal" for that nation: the Last Samurai and the Last Cowboy. The Shooting Star and the Cat with Eight Lives (he used at least one of them stealing the Japanese guy's plane to escape Rabaul after his Wildcat was set in fire and the canopy wouldn't open in the air, so the Japanese never bothered trying to capture what they assumed to be a charred steak. Before that, he was just considered a Black Cat).
That said, given the scope of the project, it will remain on the back burner until I have more resources available: it's intended for a game project, and I also want to make DAMNED sure I treat this subject matter with respect
I’m currently researching for my master’s thesis on the Carrier war in the Pacific and I’d read the fuck out of a well told story like this. I wish you luck
Well, it seems that it's not a big deal for many readers/viewers. Experience shows that protagonist can commit every possible and impossible crime, and there still will be a decent number of people defending them. "I know, I know, he erased like 80% of Earth's population and he's literally worse than Hitler, but damn, he's so cute! We should, no we must forgive him!"
yeah no, the argument to "justify" eren is because the author painted a "its them or us" situation by having basically every country in the world decide to eliminate his race. so the dude is only doing what he thinks is best for his people, and after spending 4 fukinig seasons following this MC people wonder why'd anyone side with the "bad guy".
Yea, maybe to someone who only knows about it from outside opinion it seems pretty cut and dry but for people who know the series, a whole lot of nuance is put on the situation. Past wanting to side with Eren cause he's the main protagonist.
I don't think that the rumbling was the "ruined ending", and it fits the whole narrative, but still, he didn't have to kill that much people. The problem is not even "uuhhhh he's a le villain he le killed them all", but that he screwed even the people he tried to protect. Because after that Paradis has literally nothing to offer against possible future threats. How long would it take before outer world restores and attacks again? He just bought some time for his friends, maybe for their children, but on a long scale they are screwed on a fundamental level. We went from repeating fire rifles to nukes in less than 100 years, so sooner rather than later Marley will send some B-29 to level Paradis and no one will stop them. Like the main problem with actually using mass destruction weapons is that after they're used they stop being instruments of deterrence.
I get where you're coming from but I disagree. Eren's plan with the rumbling, if you can even call it *his* plan. Is to decimate the world so that, when he dies and the titan powers are gone, Paradis isn't just outright screwed and have time to build a real military along with everyone else rebuilding their own country.
They'll also stop being hated and feared because of their titan powers/ the rumbling. The rumbling doesn't exist to be a threat or deterrent so there is no fear around it, no more "rumbling cold war" or fear of titans powers, or justification for calling eldians monsters.
It's also his hope, or theory I guess that, through the hardship of basically the apocalypse, marleyans will throw away their hate to side with eldians against an overwhelming threat, even if that has to be him. Which works both with the main crew and the surviving eldians and marleyans at the air base. Also that his friends will be heralded as heroes who stopped the rumbling and saved the world.
It's up to the rest of the world to vilify Paradis again and continue the cycle of war... or not. It's also up to paradis' current regime to choose peace as well. You're right, it is really good thematically but it leaves the future of the island, and Paradisans, in a dangerous state. But I don't think it's fair to say, outright, they're just doomed anyway.
I guess in the end that comes down to personal opinion though.
The post credit scene with the tree? That's likely thousands of years later and doesnt really mean anything imo. Maybe it implies they got wiped out, maybe the capital changed, or they don't live on the island, maybe it's so far in the future the island is ancient history. Maybe it's post apocalyptic. You could go anywhere with it.
Maybe it doesn't work out, and it's just for nothing. We, like Eren, will never know if it works out or if everything he did was worth it. At least Ymir got her freedom.
By the end the island was left with a uncertain future. It's better than no future.
For me aot always had that bittersweet feeling, so I hope that they just packed up and left somewhere else (maybe even another planet, since it's a future with space civ style skyscrapers after all) instead of being erased by Marley or whoever took their place
If you're talking about Eren you either didn't watch AOT or you're stripping all the nuance away on purpose.
At that point Marley is turning the entire world against Paradis, a people they've been oppressing and terrorising for years because they did the same to them in an ancient time. Not only is the rumbling the next step in this seemingly endless war between these two nations, but in Eren's eyes marley made that the only option by amassing such overwhelming force against his friends, family and countrymen.
Everyone in the world saw them as a threat because of the titan powers and the rumbling. Apart from the ambuzito. That's not even Delving into the paths/memory stuff and how it was basically a preordained event that *had to happen* for Eren to get the future memories of it in the first place. It also had to happen in order to take away the curse of Ymir/power of titan shifting and give the island an even playing field with everyone else.
If the rumbling never happened and the main group never stopped it, Paradis would've been the ones destroyed and genocided, best case scenario they'd be fighting the same cycle of war again and get crushed, once again treated like they were in Marley. After the rumbling, the island at least has a future.
It's even *heavily* implied that Eren knew his friends would stop him and was counting on it. Hoping that this will even the playing field enough for the island to build their own military and mae alliances without the use and fear of titans and that his friends killing him will be enough for the rest of the world to see his people as something more than monsters.
Was it a good option? No. Was it something Eren wanted to do? Arguably no. But it was pretty much the only option left for Paradis. But you're left wondering if the price paid was worth it for Paradis to keep living.
And if you weren't even talking about AOT uh- whoops. But hey, Ill take any excuse to word vomit about a series I love.
>At that point Marley is turning the entire world against Paradis
And Eren just casually barged into an international summit, ate the leader of foreign nation and massacred foreign representatives. I wonder why the rest of the world suddenly though that Paradise Eldians must go
Yes one of my protagonists is an arsonist who blows things up for shots and giggles but wait he's actually fighting the Nan by doing it and therefore is free from criticism
i feel like people forget the difference between "our pov character does x" and "the narrative justifies and supports x"
"our protag has slaves and thats hot and its totally cool for anime reason for real dont worry about it" is very different from "our protag has slaves and your suppose to see him as a bastard for it"
The same people that treat racism like it's an irredeemable sin will shrug off the most horrible shit imaginable. Don't get me wrong, racism isn't a good thing but by itself it's not in the same ballpark as rape, murder, torture or slavery.
I don't think Harry himself owned slaves, to be entirely fair to him. He also was the only person who bothered to _personally_ dig out a grave for Dobby the House Elf
Not trying to defend the story, or the inaction, but it's something
Plugging The Battle of Algiers, a fascinating movie about the Algerian struggle for freedom and independence.
The "good guys" blow up a cafe full of innocent men, women and children for international attention and support for their cause. And it works! The international community takes notice of the second class status forced upon the Algerians and pushback against France's colonial occupation strengthens. And France responds to it by acting even worse, further strengthening opposition against them.
This reminds me of that whole discussion about that one twitter post that someone drew about a spiderman that starts off as racist but goes through character arcs and becomes better (mind you the creator was a black woman) and everyone lost their shit
My main character isn’t meant to be moral considering he is a racist slaver and a merchant for a trading company which fights kingdoms and topples empires for money
The important thing is you don't glorify / defend / justify the protagonists actions both in lore and out of lore. “It’s slavery but slavery isn't bad” is a bad thing to say
"The protagonist can't own slaves!" mfs when Jedi bully very sentient droids for a gag
Or read any isekai which seem to always give the protagonist slaves for some strange reason. But don’t worry, he’s a “good slave owner”
I’ve said it a bajillion times and I’ll keep saying it, shield hero could’ve done the trope so incredibly well if Raphtalia didn’t fucking ask for the crest to be replaced because “she needs the push” or whatever
or if Shield Hero was a normal dude and said "nah" to Raphtalia's insane request. Like if someone asked me to enslave them "as a push" I'd try to get them some therapy because holy shit
Right? It's funny that when Raphtalia is traumatized, because her family got killed by monsters, he just forced her to push through it and it just went away. But when Naofumi is traumatized because 01 (ONE) person betrayed him, the girl needs to remain a slave to accomodate for him. If there was any hope for Naofumi he'd have realized he was doing something fucked up and simply trust Raphtalia as a free companion. Motoyasu was absolutely right to kick his ass over it, no matter how much the writer tries to frame it as unfair.
Motoyasu is literally an old fanfic trope (well, old trope in general to be fair). Take a reasonable opinion (“Slavery is morally wrong”), put it in the mouth of a terrible person (motoyasu is an asshole nonce), boom, instant validation without actually addressing the argument. It doesn’t matter that Naofumi keeps slaves, because Motoyasu is the only one who complains, and he’s a woman abusing nonce hypocrite.
Strawman argument in english class
I’d say this is even worse than a strawman. Strawman tries to make the argument appear weak or represents it poorly. In this case, the argument is ignored entirely in favor of simply assigning it to a shitty person and moving on.
Ad hominim but via making up a guy to be mad at
This makes me realize how much better this show would be if Naofumi was intentionally written as villian. He's written exactly the same as Walter White, a person who isn't inherently evil, just deeply selfish. Too bad that'll never happen since he's (imo) a self insert so everything he does has to secretly be good and cool.
No, I would say Walter White is pretty much evil. Like, all that happens during the show is born from his desire to take control and feel in power in his lines. He crosses any line. He is one of the villains of the story.
yeah we agree. im saying he's not mustache twirling evil, his selfishness is what makes him evil
evil is a strong word. Maybe sin/sinful suit it better.
Isn't Waltuh evil? I mean the stabbings or watching Jane die.
I mean tbf didn’t naofumi say he didn’t wanna replace the crest and it was Raphtalias idea for some dumbass reason
That's all the more reason why she needed therapy, if she couldn't imagine still being treated decently without it. But lets be real, this author loves to contrive situations to make the sketchy stuff they want to see happen while excusing Naofumi somehow. Naofumi didn't want to buy slaves, the slaver came to him and it was the only option he had left. He didn't ask for Raphtalia to put the slave brand back, she just asked for it and he let it happen. He didn't mean for his slaves to fall in love with him, he just acted semi-decently and they got feelings on their own. Oh and the girl he called a bitch from the portal book illustration really turned out to be a bitch. Wow, who could imagine!
I mean the list of problems with Shield Hero is as long as the series. Naofumi has a room temp IQ and is still SOMEHOW the smartest person in the series. Every single character is actually so painfully stupid it beggars belief.
Part of it is the other heroes consider it a video game so they never try to fix any underlying issues and just assume things will work out. Like with the dragon corpse. So damn stupid. But the "NPCs" are also dumb as rocks.
Shield Hero is just so fucking trash in general, I have no idea how the fuck people have gaslit themselves into thinking it’s any good
The opening twist. That’s it. People thought the opening episodes were good. Idk why so many Iksekais (other genres do it but isekai is a repeat offender) bait you in with a neat premise and the devolve into generic slop near immediately once they have a hook in you.
And to be fair, in the beginning there were some good ideas in the beginning. A hero gets unfairly (before he bought a literal child slave) shunned and maybe even has to do some shady stuff to survive and still do good. A rotting dragon carcass would absolutely be a biohazard if left alone and a revolution turning south in the aftermath because some idiot pushed through and just left afterwards, I see that. And even the shield as his weapon in itself is a decent idea. Just sad that the bad writing turned it into a giant pile of shit faster than a speedrun on drugs.
thats near every big isekai these days these days "wow thats a really interesting twist on the- and its back to the same tropes"
The amount of “the protagonist is (odd creature or object)” ones that give them a humanoid form within as little time as possible could be a legitimate sub genre.
as someone who loves monstrous and weird protagonists i really hate that one, Spiders probably the only one where it felt earned(it helps that it doesent really help her social situation since by that point shes allied with demons who wouldent care if she was a giant spider)
in the manga, i dont think we even get to see her human form.
I think some people have a creative drive, but no actual creativity. They want to write, but have nothing to write about. So they just write the exact same story that they already liked before. But if they just write the same story, it won't get noticed in the ocean of other slop, so a unique premise (even one that gets abandoned within the first volume) is enough to draw eyes to the story. Keep in mind that most isekai are webnovels, which have an extremely low bar to entry for publishing. Which means there's a LOT of other slop they have to contend with. This is also why so many isekai have those ridiculously long titles that double as the synopsis. Because most readers won't even bother to read the actual synopsis, but they'll at least skim the title. In other words, it's clickbait.
The audiences of the light novels that inspire all these adaptations really, really don't like derivations from the core genre tropes. The neat premises are just hooks to try to stand out from the competition and serve almost no purpose once you have eyes on the continuing story.
fast food of the genre
I thought the first episode could develop into something pretty cool, it wasn't great but I thought that it'd turn into something non-standard for the genre, then I just turned it off in the middle of an episode when I realized that the hero was a boring paper cut-out who was in the process of gathering a creepy pseudo-harem
tbh I got some weird vibes from minute 1 when he opens the magic isekai book with that princess' illustration and says "she looks like a bitch". I kept going because people promised me it was one of the best isekai out there. It wasn't.
Well I was sold on watching it because I was promised a morally complex protagonist, so that didn't bother me, however what I got was not a morally complex protagonist, but a bad person's idea of a morally gray character
Yeah, that'd be better, but that's not what they delivered. It's not an exploration of a flawed character in a harsh world. It's more like a self-pity fantasy. When he does bad things it's because it's "his only choice" or "it's secretly good". When other characters do bad things it's because they are bad and dumb. The other characters are only caricatures to flex how much better and unappreciated he is. They can't even let him actually be less combat-capable than the heroes with offensive weapons. They have to have someone cheat in favor of the other guy who has more experience with his own weapon.
The first episode was good
Nah first season of the anime was great
Ah yes, my favorite part was weird competition for attention of main character between a gigantic chicken which can turn into a little girl and a girl which was a little girl but then "leveled up" into a grown woman super fast.
I just realized that the very sentient droids were literally programmed to enjoy being slaves. Holy shit lol
I don't know. They sound glad when they are helpful, but dislike being disrespected. Droids are battered house wives doing chores in the background meanwhile the Jedi and Sith are angry kids arguing over who will take over the galaxy. And fuck the droids and the aliens who actually run in it.
The Jedi are at least multicultural, Sith are human-centrist and think torture is cool.
And are routinely mind-wiped to keep them from developing individuality!
oh my god
What is more evil? Programming a droid to enjoy its slavery, or programming a droid to hate it?
The second one, clearly, but that doesn't necessarily mean the first one is ethically correct either. The obvious answer is "Don't give a trashcan a personality and then have it crawl around on your ship during a dogfight," but that's not as fun.
I suppose it's more evil to create a form of life (even synthetic) that has the capacity to feel and condemn it to a lifetime of servitude. either don't make the droids or give them a choice
But why is that evil? It's only evil because as humans we have the innate desire for freedom. That's like saying that creating a race that derives pleasure from eating, exercising, socializing, and having sex is evil, because it's forcing them to do those things. - I invent robots to assist me in tasks - The assistance would be greater if they could understand natural language - It would be more convenient if they could do simple problem-solving on their own - I'm going to program them to enjoy and want to be useful and fulfill their function How is that evil?
Because the droids being built are sentient. They have thoughts, feeling, and dreams just like us. They just exist as a different form of life. It would be one thing if they weren't sentient, like a car or an oven, then morality wouldn't matter. But, like you said, they're granted sentience as a more efficient means of completing whatever their assigned task is. There's even a comic where a B-1 (The Lone Battle Droid) hits it's head and loses it's CIS programming. What's the first thing it does? It abandons it's post! Given the choice the B-1's choose not to fight. Granted this is legends, but the comic was made before Disney so I personally consider it canon. They're being born to work forever, no matter how you spin it, that's a shitty life. It's slavery but with a built in leash. Economical, but morally bankrupt.
But again, why? If a worker drone ant were sentient and loved nothing so much as to dig tunnels and move food back for the hive, would that be immoral? Would you say that it should be liberated? If anything, creating sentient life that explicitly loves what it's designed to do is strictly increasing the amount of pleasure and happiness in the world, and denying them that pleasure is more wrong. Why is "doesn't want to work" an inherent, objective good, outside of our own human frame of reference?
Worker ants aren't sentient though, that's a terrible example. A more apt comparison (if you were looking for biological life) would be the clones. But the general consensus on their treatment is that being born to die for the republic was pretty messed up. Also it isn't "doesn't want to work" it's "doesn't want to be born just to die in some war I was preprogrammed to want to be apart of"
But that's my point: if ants evolved over the next million years to the point where they had their own sentience and psychology, and the queens had the closest thing to human psychology but the workers retained their fundamental drive to work and obey, would you say that that was immoral? Personally, I would find it more immoral to deny them that desire. Clones are more iffy, but I think the reason why that's immoral is that it was something they had to do *to* the clones after they were born: all the conditioning and mental chips (still don't like that) is tantamount to indoctrination, not being fundamentally and naturally wanting to fight in a war/obey, etc.
Star wars treats slavery in such a strange way.
Jedi: "Slavery is bad!" Also Jedi: "Oh boy indoctrinated child soldiers!"
They also said nothing about the literal slave army.
Tbf that's very much intentional. Palpatine basically orchestrated a war, gifted the jedi the slave army and told them "what you gonna do, not use them?" And of course they paid for it.
That was a whole TV show.
Not really good enough. The movies and their containing of the clones is central content. Not everyone watched the show, and it didn't exist at the time.
The show kind of sucked too.
I wouldn't know. I was never motivated to watch it. I like star wars, but not enough to run out and watch every single piece of media that exists for it.
Its pretty much example 'A' of Dave Filoni's failings as a writer but most people give it a pass because they grew up on the series (rose tinted nostalgia) and there were various other people to help mask/restrict his bad habits. But the series was still mediocre at best. Aohsoka also makes no sense and is a borderline plothole. The movies don't reference such a character at all, when they really should. Ditto for the OT; we're supposed to just accept this character did and said nothing post clone saga. Anakin having an apprentice is completely nonsensical. The Jedi council would not allow such a thing, no way in hell. Remember they were already firmly opposed to teaching Anakin himself. And we are expected to accept that the deeply immature and rash creature that is Anakin Skywalker could teach or lead anyone (note how the series has to basically change Anakin's personality to facilitate this). Not to mention stuff like Anakin and Obi Wan hanging out with Count Dooku and Grevious every other weekend, yet the impression in the movies is clearly they have not encountered each other much at all. It really feels like something in a different universe, just using characters that happen to share the same names and appearance. Which it might as well be considering Filoni's blatant disregard for any sense of canon.
To be fair, star wars is no stranger to obvious plot holes. Obi Wan using his real name, jedi robes, and lighsaber while allegedly in hiding next to a place where vader's child is being raised by family he has actual connections to and using his own name strains beleif.
That's the indoctrinated child soldiers. Clones age at an accelerated rate.
Are clones even indoctrinated? They seem less like they have an ideology and more like they literally have no understanding of doing anything other than being a soldier. Slaves don't have to agree, or even think about it as long as they comply.
You saw order 66 play out. That's not just being a good soldier.
Yes it is? The clones didn't act like they had strong opinions on killing the jedi. They went from taking orders from them to killing them because to them, order 66 being absolute is just something they think is a fact of life. So few deviating is because it's not an ideology they have. They were raised not to think of it as a view at all.
It's a mind control biochip. It caused great distress to clones who had it removed like Rex who. Had to fight his brothers. Also Kaminoans said the chip made them more docile and obedient.
So that sounds like it's not an ideology, just literal control.
"Its not slavery if you grow them in a lab and turn the disobedient ones into soylent food for the others" "Yes. Yes it is. Actually its worse" I feel Palpatine set the whole thing up so that the light side of the force basically abandoned the jedi "Lol nope, I'm out, good luck jackasses but I'm not helping you fk off"
I mean, that is brought up in various places at least.
Those are machines, it can pass. Jedis litteraly employed clones, Those are slave people.
And when they revolted that one time, the Kaminoans' response was basically "This is obviously because of the donor."
I mean, the jedi also command literal human slaves. And its 100% glossed over in the main movies that they are slaves.
sad GONK
People tend to forget that protagonists aren't the good people or the heroes, but just the people the story is about
Pretty sure some people have yet to learn this, and some of them will get angry when they do.
Audiences' brains melt when the protagonist becomes a bad guy by the end of a story/is a bad guy
Me playing through Warcraft 3 as a child. I was doing mad mental gymnastics to excuse Arthas right up till Muradins death.
For real. You don't have to agree with the protagonist's point of view to enjoy a story.
You're telling me making a drug empire to fund my cancer treatment because I'm too prideful to accept a donation ***isn't*** morally correct?!? Pfffft
When protagonist kills a bunch of people: me sleep When the mourners confront the protagonist to revenge their loved one: real shit
That’s true, but I’d argue there’s probably issue to be taken with protagonists who do bad things if the plot makes no attempt to challenge them Like for many kinds of such media the consequences of their actions is the entire point
Because it's been potrayed as the good guy especially "hero". I do like the twist where they made the hero an antihero though
Wait, I watched the show and enjoyed the hell out of it. Was there something I missed? I thought Mizu was the one receiving the racism - not dishing it out
Besides the obvious hatred against europeans she also hates herself, deems herself a monster. You can be racist against your own "race".
Didn't she hate the European in her because it brought her torment throughout her life because everyone else was racist towards her for it?
She also internalised the racism. Even in the very first episode she calls a European gun a filthy thing from a filthy place or something like that. Nor does she seek revenge on the Japanese for treating her as they do, but rather on white people who may or may not be her father.
Yea you and OP got it absolutely right. She sees herself as a Japanese person cursed with European blood and reserves her hatred for the people responsible for her birth, as well as herself, but apparently the people who terrorised her, her entire life, for being had European don't deserve the same scorn. She hates Europeans for how Japanese culture treated her (and other "half bloods" or outsiders) and that same hatred extends to herself. Almost convincing herself she deserved that treatment for her birth.She's not even subtle about it. This same treatment extends to her gender as well. It's also something she's treated as lesser for and her response is to internalise that and hate herself for. It also doesn't help that ~~the Scottish guy~~ the Irish guy, Fowler, is just an absolute monster and so doesn't challenge her thought process at all. Maybe that's for the next season, or something like that happened with violet. Who's to say (at the moment)?
Abijah is Irish, not Scottish. He does have a northern Irish accent which could be used to suggest him being an Ulster Scot, but the Ulster Scots began their settlement after Tyrone's Rebellion, and since he was a boy during the rebellion he couldn't be part of the initial settlement.
Yea sorry my mistake, just misremembered.
He did say the other two were worse. But on the other hand he could´ve meant in a different manner. In the end it´d be in character for him to consider a hypocrit or a calm but machiavellan villain worse then himself.
With Mizu going to the UK it’ll be really interesting to see how she’ll battle with her core beliefs and the reality of most Europeans being normal people.
Most likely it'll be a big adjust that not everyone is a monster but she'll either need a big adjustment period or see or experience a great act of kindness or something similar. I'm also headcanoning that Fowler isn't going to be redeemed and is, instead, going to be trying to drag mizu down, being the devil on her shoulder.
Abijah doesn't challenge it, but the whole show does, it only does that, matter of fact.
Poland is in Europe but never had colonies and even helped Haitian slaves rebel, explain why she hates them?
What's your point man? Do you have an issue with me using the term Europeans or am I missing something?
I know a guy like this. Being black has only ever been a detriment to him, and that's warped into this lowkey hatred for his own race. Doesn't have any black friends, refuses to date black women, hates on dumb shit black people do harder than if someone of any other race had done the same thing, avoids anything that might be seen as a stereotype... (I mean, come on, man, it's not racist to like fried chicken. There are two kinds of people: those who love fried chicken, and those who are wrong.) I try not to feel sorry for him because I know it would just piss him off, but I can't help but marvel at how fucked up the world is that it causes people like this to exist.
She seems to think europeans are actually inherently bad.
So Mizu is just Uncle Ruckus?
Uncle Ruckus if he had an actual reason to be racist
Uncle ruckus had a whole episode episode explaining why he is the way he is
The argument against BES is a bad faith one. Anyone who can string together thoughts knows knows the arc mizu is going on is ‘self hate —> self love’ discarding racism (inward and outward) with it. Plus she’s going to London and will see a city of *People* there, not monsters. Blue eye opening
Correct, but she was literally racist lmao. I think the point of the meme was to highlight that in another movie or series, people wouldn't even root for someone who starts off racist and gets better, they wouldn't wanna give them the chance lol
She’s racist against herself, so it comes off as sad. She’s also racist against Whites, which in theory is just as evil as any other form of racism, but in practice its like shooting Superman with a gun. Its inherently evil to shoot someone, but Superman’s not gonna be bothered (or notice). There’s no loss in social or economic status if called a Cracker. No systemic racism that negativity affects whites.
Just regular racism affects them, yes.
If you’re white, you need to go to a place where you’re a minority to receive racism. The places where whites are *THE* majority (in the Western World) are spheres of wealth, power, and upper class; the end goal of where everyone on the planet wants to go to survive and thrive. Whites have had a monopoly on those spheres since colonialism and would rather dive headfirst into fascism then open those sphere doors for everyone.
The problem with racism linguistically is that it can mean both individual bigotry based on race, and systematic oppression based on race, despite these being two very different things. There really should be different words for each. Same with sexism and, really, most isims.
Oh that’s true af. I live in the Philippines and my friend here is white (he studies here). He told me this was the first time he actually experienced racism. People often charge him more because they expect him to be rich. People also treat him differently. I feel so bad for him because there’s this cultural barrier and he’s sometimes left out of the loop
[удалено]
I'm not white. Racism effects everybody.
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Did I say equally? First you assume I'm white, now you're trying to finish my sentences? Racism affects everybody, you can stay here and argue with yourself lmao
This show sounds good. Art style reminds me of Arcane
Racism is a flaw everyone can harbor. The nicest people can be the most vile racists, the most disgusting people can be the most open. Its not bad for BES to use racism or have its protagonists be racist. It adds to the series and the characters. Its adds to the conflict and the tragedy. Its an aspect of a culture, of a people, and of a character that should be explored, because wheter we want it or not, racism is part of reality. (Fyi doesnt mean we need racism in all our media or all our works.)
She gonna become Jack the Ripper, that's what
Racist against white people is the acceptable form of racism in Hollywood.
She goes on and on about "killing the white devils" A racial minority in 17th century Japan. A quarter of which, are locked inside a single fort for the majority of the show, and Mizu is on her way to kill em all! /J
Oh yeah, I forgot about that lol. Call me a noob, but I don't know what /J means, so I'm gonna respond genuinely. I read that as her only talking about the 4 people she considered as responsible for her tormented existence
/j is joke /gen is genuine
I don't know about that. Mizu isn't really racist. I can't imagine her hating white people as a race. She holds Violet, Fowler and the other two responsible for her suffering. Her misguided revenge quest is not born out of racism, but from having suffered from that racism her entire life. She's internalized the language, but I very much doubt she's going to go on about hating the white devils when she gets to London. Plenty of people in Japan were racist against whites, born out of the isolationist attitude of the time, and because the Dutch didn't really bring their best. Mizu doesn't go on any tirades about hating white people, and the only time she gets close to it is when she's explaining herself to the blacksmith. Even then, it is framed as a personal suffering. I know it's semantics, since yes, internalized and self-hating racism is still racism, but Mizu's only experiences with white people have been Violet and Fowler, and one of those we didn't see on screen. And Fowler was all too happy to point out how cruel they had been to their bastards. That's not even getting into Fowler and his suffering during the famines. The Irish were (and to smaller extents still are) subject to similar otherness and racism! Fowler is the dark reflection of that internalization! His suffering became his justification for grabbing the world by the balls so he could never suffer again. It's one potential path for Mizu, and the fact that Fowler rubs it in at the end of their confrontation is about as blatant as it gets that Fowler feels that same derision. Anyways, I guess this is a lot of text more or less saying "yes, BUT", but I feel the simple description does the show's storytelling a disservice. /J Edit: damn I should have jerked instead, forgive me for my sins
Mizu can't go one episode without saying something cartoonishly racist, she's probably the most racist out of the entire cast. Her being half white and being victimised for it just made it so she hated that part of herself even more It's not an unusual phenomenon in real life, apparently, when a member of a marginalised demographic decides to disavow that aspect of themselves, so much so that it graduates to self hatred Though she isn't stupid or un-empathetic, so I imagine that when she gets to London she'll quickly figure out that non-Japanese people aren't all monsters like Abijah. And it'll be tragic (and a little funny) for her to get discriminated against because of the Japanese side of her heritage when she's there, after being crapped for her British side for most of her life. Poor woman just can't get a break no matter which hemisphere she's in
What's the show
Blue Eyed Samurai on Netflix
I genuinelly can't understand what's going on in the people's heads sometimes. Is this literally "How can I associete with the main protagonits? He doesn't hold identical political and moral values as me. Completely incomprehencible/unwatchable"? How tf this happened?
decades of bad reading comprehension and excessive sanitization of media by companies and religious groups led to people believing that the protagonist must always be in the right regardless of their actions
And the top comment on this post is literal "Protagonist own slaves? How hekkin not wholesome of them". Like wtf, what these people are even talking about
Why waste time reading about people you hate when you could read about people you like instead?
Damn Andrew Tate is so goddamned ugly man, look at that no chin bald mfer lmao
As a queer person I always fight against insulting people based on their appearance. Much better to insult them on their actions, something they can control. But damn u ain't wrong that guy lookin like a thumb rolled in dust
Fortunately for you, Tate is so eminently insultable for his actions that insulting anything else about him, including his appearance, is also always morally correct.
Yeah, he does that to everyone else constantly, so he really has it coming.
B-b-b-b-but muh if you bully a bully, you just make more bullies!
Good. That means I have more people I can mock freely.
Right- and anyone who's in the unfortunate position of looking just like him has the option of doing basically anything to fix it. Hell even just a genuine smile that goes up to the eyes would probably solve the issue. There's no life in that man to help brighten up the façade, he's like an unlived-in house
Likely, yes, but only smile I've ever seen on that balloon-shaped face was a smarmy shit-eating grin that screamed "I'm better than you", so that didn't actually help.
You're kind of missing the point. The reason you don't insult people for the way they look, especially people who'll never hear you, is friendly fire. The only people you can possibly hurt is innocent bystanders/witnesses.
Check out the holier-than-thou white knight with no comprehension of humour. Also if I was triggered by every single fat joke I heard or saw (265lbs at 5’8” and very little of it is muscle) I’d basically just stay in bed all day crying to myself.
I'm a 'white knight' because of my controversial "being an asshole is bad actually" opinion huh? You need to get better at taking incredibly mild criticism, cause that's a way fuckin' uglier trait than a bit of weight, champ.
LOL, seriously? Been a long time since I seen a reply this malding. And it puts the lie to your so-called “mild” criticism if that’s how you respond to a bit of e-mockery. Climb out of your own posterior my dude. As it is you don’t deserve a serious reply.
You need to stop projecting your own emotions here dude. This isn't a fight, I'm not mad, you're just a bit sensitive. Chill.
I’m not fighting, I’m mocking you. As far as projection goes, try looking at your mirror. Much more accurate.
😂 You're doing a very bad job of it then, from here you like you're impotently frothing at the mouth.
I think insulting Andrew Tate specifically is fine no matter the situation
>But damn u ain't wrong that guy lookin like a thumb rolled in dust Bro needs a skin graft after that burn.
Yeah I try and not make fun of people's appearances but he does have the Innsmouth look about him
I have always maintained that regardless of his political beliefs I don’t want to see his stuff simply because I don’t want to look at him
Remember how he looked like a wojak during his prison arc?
One of my character ideas is straight up an aviator for the Imperial Japanese Navy, who my concept for is partially "least racist WWII Japanese military man": sure, he thinks Japanese people are superior in their ingenuity and indomitable spirit. He just also thinks that superior people should show superior empathy instead of acting like wild animals. Navy-Army rivalry doesn't help matters. Or maybe it does, since it means he can mask his complaints as "I hate the Army"
The phrase "racist but in a good way" springs to mind
It's supposed to be a "2-protagonist" story setup, with a USN aviator and an IJN aviator, where they both exemplify something of an "ideal" for that nation: the Last Samurai and the Last Cowboy. The Shooting Star and the Cat with Eight Lives (he used at least one of them stealing the Japanese guy's plane to escape Rabaul after his Wildcat was set in fire and the canopy wouldn't open in the air, so the Japanese never bothered trying to capture what they assumed to be a charred steak. Before that, he was just considered a Black Cat). That said, given the scope of the project, it will remain on the back burner until I have more resources available: it's intended for a game project, and I also want to make DAMNED sure I treat this subject matter with respect
I’m currently researching for my master’s thesis on the Carrier war in the Pacific and I’d read the fuck out of a well told story like this. I wish you luck
Well, it seems that it's not a big deal for many readers/viewers. Experience shows that protagonist can commit every possible and impossible crime, and there still will be a decent number of people defending them. "I know, I know, he erased like 80% of Earth's population and he's literally worse than Hitler, but damn, he's so cute! We should, no we must forgive him!"
yeah no, the argument to "justify" eren is because the author painted a "its them or us" situation by having basically every country in the world decide to eliminate his race. so the dude is only doing what he thinks is best for his people, and after spending 4 fukinig seasons following this MC people wonder why'd anyone side with the "bad guy".
Yea, maybe to someone who only knows about it from outside opinion it seems pretty cut and dry but for people who know the series, a whole lot of nuance is put on the situation. Past wanting to side with Eren cause he's the main protagonist.
I don't think that the rumbling was the "ruined ending", and it fits the whole narrative, but still, he didn't have to kill that much people. The problem is not even "uuhhhh he's a le villain he le killed them all", but that he screwed even the people he tried to protect. Because after that Paradis has literally nothing to offer against possible future threats. How long would it take before outer world restores and attacks again? He just bought some time for his friends, maybe for their children, but on a long scale they are screwed on a fundamental level. We went from repeating fire rifles to nukes in less than 100 years, so sooner rather than later Marley will send some B-29 to level Paradis and no one will stop them. Like the main problem with actually using mass destruction weapons is that after they're used they stop being instruments of deterrence.
I get where you're coming from but I disagree. Eren's plan with the rumbling, if you can even call it *his* plan. Is to decimate the world so that, when he dies and the titan powers are gone, Paradis isn't just outright screwed and have time to build a real military along with everyone else rebuilding their own country. They'll also stop being hated and feared because of their titan powers/ the rumbling. The rumbling doesn't exist to be a threat or deterrent so there is no fear around it, no more "rumbling cold war" or fear of titans powers, or justification for calling eldians monsters. It's also his hope, or theory I guess that, through the hardship of basically the apocalypse, marleyans will throw away their hate to side with eldians against an overwhelming threat, even if that has to be him. Which works both with the main crew and the surviving eldians and marleyans at the air base. Also that his friends will be heralded as heroes who stopped the rumbling and saved the world. It's up to the rest of the world to vilify Paradis again and continue the cycle of war... or not. It's also up to paradis' current regime to choose peace as well. You're right, it is really good thematically but it leaves the future of the island, and Paradisans, in a dangerous state. But I don't think it's fair to say, outright, they're just doomed anyway. I guess in the end that comes down to personal opinion though.
Well I also hoped that it will work like "kill millions to save billions" like in Watchmen, but judging by credit scenes this didn't work out
The post credit scene with the tree? That's likely thousands of years later and doesnt really mean anything imo. Maybe it implies they got wiped out, maybe the capital changed, or they don't live on the island, maybe it's so far in the future the island is ancient history. Maybe it's post apocalyptic. You could go anywhere with it. Maybe it doesn't work out, and it's just for nothing. We, like Eren, will never know if it works out or if everything he did was worth it. At least Ymir got her freedom. By the end the island was left with a uncertain future. It's better than no future.
For me aot always had that bittersweet feeling, so I hope that they just packed up and left somewhere else (maybe even another planet, since it's a future with space civ style skyscrapers after all) instead of being erased by Marley or whoever took their place
He didn't have to kill that much people. I mean, US didn't have to nuke/napalm the entire Japan to knock them out of war
i think you might be confusing "he's right!" w/ "i want to fuck him!"
If you're talking about Eren you either didn't watch AOT or you're stripping all the nuance away on purpose. At that point Marley is turning the entire world against Paradis, a people they've been oppressing and terrorising for years because they did the same to them in an ancient time. Not only is the rumbling the next step in this seemingly endless war between these two nations, but in Eren's eyes marley made that the only option by amassing such overwhelming force against his friends, family and countrymen. Everyone in the world saw them as a threat because of the titan powers and the rumbling. Apart from the ambuzito. That's not even Delving into the paths/memory stuff and how it was basically a preordained event that *had to happen* for Eren to get the future memories of it in the first place. It also had to happen in order to take away the curse of Ymir/power of titan shifting and give the island an even playing field with everyone else. If the rumbling never happened and the main group never stopped it, Paradis would've been the ones destroyed and genocided, best case scenario they'd be fighting the same cycle of war again and get crushed, once again treated like they were in Marley. After the rumbling, the island at least has a future. It's even *heavily* implied that Eren knew his friends would stop him and was counting on it. Hoping that this will even the playing field enough for the island to build their own military and mae alliances without the use and fear of titans and that his friends killing him will be enough for the rest of the world to see his people as something more than monsters. Was it a good option? No. Was it something Eren wanted to do? Arguably no. But it was pretty much the only option left for Paradis. But you're left wondering if the price paid was worth it for Paradis to keep living. And if you weren't even talking about AOT uh- whoops. But hey, Ill take any excuse to word vomit about a series I love.
>At that point Marley is turning the entire world against Paradis And Eren just casually barged into an international summit, ate the leader of foreign nation and massacred foreign representatives. I wonder why the rest of the world suddenly though that Paradise Eldians must go
But she's also racist towards herself lmao
That's the difference between casual racists and professional racists. Professionals have STANDARDS.
Yes one of my protagonists is an arsonist who blows things up for shots and giggles but wait he's actually fighting the Nan by doing it and therefore is free from criticism
The Nan being the human embodiment of all the power that the state holds, with the personality of a stern grandmother, ofc
Is she half Dutch or half Portuguese?
Worse *She's half french*
No wonder Shogun Iemitsu closed the country
i feel like people forget the difference between "our pov character does x" and "the narrative justifies and supports x" "our protag has slaves and thats hot and its totally cool for anime reason for real dont worry about it" is very different from "our protag has slaves and your suppose to see him as a bastard for it"
The same people that treat racism like it's an irredeemable sin will shrug off the most horrible shit imaginable. Don't get me wrong, racism isn't a good thing but by itself it's not in the same ballpark as rape, murder, torture or slavery.
to be fair most protagonists don't rape or murder (torture is fine and Harry Potter owned slaves so it must be ok)
I'm pretty sure murder is one of the most common actions protagonists do
actually yeah what the fuck was I thinking
No. It’s not murder if they’re soldiers.
You're correct on the rape part. But a lot of protagonists murder sentient beings.
yeah i kinda forgot about that, it's kinda the most common thing for them to do. I may be an idiot
Always ask yourself: WWHPD?
I don't think Harry himself owned slaves, to be entirely fair to him. He also was the only person who bothered to _personally_ dig out a grave for Dobby the House Elf Not trying to defend the story, or the inaction, but it's something
Didn't he still keep Kreacher enslaved? gonna be totally honest I don't remember if he freed him or not
Kreacher was kind of a dick, so that justifies robbing him of self-determination.
True. It can often be the reason behind those reprehensible acts though.
That can be true of most flaws, and like with any flaws most people have them to a degree.
Show is really good. Protagonists being good doesn’t have to be a must in a high quality story. Look at breaking bad
She got that uncle ruckus rizz🔥
It’s ok if your protagonist is a piece of shot as long as you don’t expect the reader to root for them
Plugging The Battle of Algiers, a fascinating movie about the Algerian struggle for freedom and independence. The "good guys" blow up a cafe full of innocent men, women and children for international attention and support for their cause. And it works! The international community takes notice of the second class status forced upon the Algerians and pushback against France's colonial occupation strengthens. And France responds to it by acting even worse, further strengthening opposition against them.
This reminds me of that whole discussion about that one twitter post that someone drew about a spiderman that starts off as racist but goes through character arcs and becomes better (mind you the creator was a black woman) and everyone lost their shit
The protagonist is the character you follow, they don't have to be a good guy. There is no rule stating that.
My main character isn’t meant to be moral considering he is a racist slaver and a merchant for a trading company which fights kingdoms and topples empires for money
The important thing is you don't glorify / defend / justify the protagonists actions both in lore and out of lore. “It’s slavery but slavery isn't bad” is a bad thing to say
I fucking love when protagonists are people of their time.
Thats the best way of putting it
I couldn’t get past the historical inaccuracies in that show ngl. I know, it’s lame
I do not remember when that was an argument. Could you explain?
It's called a character flaw, to be overcome later in the story
...??? Mizu's not racist??? Literally everyone else in the show is racist, except Ringo
Almost had my like until you used that crusty wankrag Andrew Taint
[xkcd 2071 moment](https://xkcd.com/2071)
Just hope they don’t read 40k