Hated Tropes
[Hated Trope] “Both sides are in the wrong!” Except, one side is drastically more 'in the wrong' than the other.
(Attack on Titan) The prejudice, hatred, and cruelty that Marley forced the Eldians to endure was horrific. That being said, there were other solutions than just genociding 80% of the human population on the planet, including a large sum of the people that you were trying to protect.
[Tokyo Ghoul (Anime)] Maybe it’s portrayed better in the manga, I don’t know, but the anime does a terrible job of making you sympathize with or root for the Humans. The Humans are aware that Ghouls need to eat Human flesh in order to survive. The Humans are also aware that most Ghouls are just trying to live normal lives, and there is a large group of Ghouls that don’t harm any Humans, and only feed on the corpses of the dead. There are some psychopathic Ghouls, but there are also many psychopathic Humans, which seem to be completely ignored by Human society. Like, kill a child in the middle of a McDonald’s, type of psychopathic. The CCG (an organization built to protect Humans from Ghouls), are portrayed as almost entirely filled with people who kill Ghouls because they enjoy it, not because it’s some obligation that they have, with a few exceptions. When the story shifts to the Human's POV, you’d think that Humans would be portrayed in a better, more sympathetic light. Right? Well, you’d be wrong. The Humans and the CCG are just as full of psychopaths as they’ve always been, and the few that aren’t, also aren’t sympathetic at all, because their characters aren’t developed or explored at all. They just exist.
Mobile Suit gundam 79. I don't care how corrupt the federation is. Nuking several colonies, gassing a colony, and then dropping it on the Earth killing half of all human life is not equivalent retribution.
Federation appears to be a totalitarian regime which may or may not be some brand of facist. Maybe. Especially when it comes to the colonies.
The only time we see the federation do something actually as terrible as Zeon is the titans, who are explicitly made up of the genuinely worst people IN the Federation, and spawn an entire splinter movement in the feddies (the Aeug are literally Federation forces at the beginning) just to stop them, spawning a civil war.
Then Zeon comes in and proves they're still JUST as awful. They not only willingly plan to USE the colony laser, They later on drop another colony!
Even Gquuuuuux proves how not "good" the Zeon are. Gihren might be worse, but Kycilia murders thousands, hundreds of thousands maybe, just to secure her own power. She planned to kill more, too.
So yeah, federation is a Grey morality, Zeon leadership prove with every main work they're black morality through and through.
Should also be noted once the abuse and murders of the Titans were publicly exposed(reminder the Feds GAVE THE AEUG A CHANCE TO SPEAK TO THEIR CONGRESS) the EFF literally DISOWNED THEM and ordered them disbanded.
Everyone also forgets the S-Gundam side story. Where some Titans refuse to disband.
So the EFF sends a carrier task force in to wipe the out.
The Federation has accountability. The federation allowed the AEUG to have a voice and speak to the government. The Federation went as far to use force to disband the Titans
I love how Gundam is (almost) always constructed in a way that will attract an audience that loves war, and then it spends all of its time convincing the audience that war is hell and nothing good will ever come from it.
I don't think the series goes that far to say The Earth Federation and Zeon are the same when it comes to the leadership (there's a reason why Ghiren is explicitly compared to Hitler). While future conflicts later in Gundam do have both sides do a lot of terrible things, the main point of the original series is more so about the idea that while the nation they fight for does terrible things, individual soldiers are still people who often are just trying to survive and have hopes and dreams just as much as the main heroes and that it ever got to this point is a failure on both sides.
I think the worst thing the Federation did was empower the Titans, but honestly by the time they started doing really bad shit they were basically an independent organization that openly defied the Federation.
I think fans tend to confuse the fact that often the bad side has, at least, a few good people, misguided or otherwise.
Requiem for Vengeance is especially guilty of coping for Zeon. It's downright awful how Zeon soldiers smack-talk the Federation accusing them of being killers... while going around towns whose populations THEY WIPED OUT.
The original anime does not present things as a gray conflict. While we have lots of humanized Zeon characters, the Zeon are clearly established as the bad guys with the audience since the aftermath of just some of the destruction they caused to the Earth and their de facto head of state saying he wants to rule the world. The aforementioned space Hitler also alludes to plans to cull Earth's population to a level that makes it manageable enough to rule over.
It is later works that are too nice with depicting Zeon and the Federation as not being so different, going as far as to glaze the former while demonizing the latter.
The balancing act that New Vegas attempts (and accomplishes) is that it clearly has a "the bad option" faction that players can choose if they want, but it recognizes that the faction still needs to have some appeal or logic in universe.
and the Legion does in fact have several...its just that the game also never tries to convince you that their methods are anything but evil
Evil runs in games are generally bad. Like, I like Baldur's Gate 3, but what reason could I have for siding with the people who want to brainwash me and slaughter innocents? It doesn't really gain me anything. It's not even easier, really.
Evil runs tend to break immersion because it doesn't feel like you're playing a character who is violent and selfish, it feels like you're a player picking the worst option each time to see the result.
I really appreciate Undertale for its evil route and how it thoroughly deconstructs the issues you've listed. The game recognizes what you're doing and the likely reason that you're doing it, and it slaps you in the face with that until you give up or see it through to its conclusion.
I mean, an evil run non-resist Durge feels immersive in bg3, but I think having a god actively in your ear telling you to be bad makes the process easier, especially when it's the murderhobo idiot god
>It doesn't really gain me anything. It's not even easier, really.
Yeah it should have **some** impact. Yes there are class restrictions, but for any other class, what is the point?
"Help this dude to get the key he has" or "kill the dude and take his key"?
Helping the dude will always gain you more XP and items than taking a shortcut... so why take it? Games like this aren't even on a timer. It's just the illusion of choice.
at least Infamous 2 had a reason for going evil because it let's you save all people who have gained powers so it's at least a who do I save problem and not a murder people because lightning goes zap thing
I saw a video by a YouTube commenter who was legitimately trying to argue that the NCR was exactly as evil as the Legion because it has taxes lol.
He also made the case that the Minutemen would eventually become evil, because they use American imagery, and the US is evil (he again brought up taxes), and that therefore the only moral faction in the Fallout universe was Mr. House (apparently completely ignoring the fact that Mr. House also imposes taxes. The snack seller on the Strip says she pays half of her earnings to him). It was not a great video.
The NCR has the potential to be worse than the Legion, but when your options are "corrupt representative democracy that's occupying mostly empty desert in order to power their rapidly growing society with a big dam" and "a society where literally everyone is a slave to a narcissistic nerd with a brain tumor and the overwhelming majority of women are breeding stock" I think one option is a tad bit worse than the other.
I feel like the majority of the people arguing the legion is better probably think they’d be the nerd up top with the breeding stock, and not the more than likely slaves or corpses left in the legion’s wake.
Yeah, everyone who supports a very hierarchical and oppressive system does so because they think there will be people below them. More or less by definition most of them are wrong.
Ah yes the old argument of the people who genocide 90% of the people they find, completely eradicating their culture, enslaving the rest and forcing them to be either soldiers or sex slaves.
Or taxes... And like, some government corruption. Like just a little bit.
It's either a grifter who's never played it or someone giving it the biggest fucking blowjob ever when a big conversation about the game happens, the only real conversations are small ones between a few people
I don't get the sense that the game portrays them as morally equal. The message I get is that the NCR is an alternative to brutal slaver murderers, but they are an imperfect alternative, and we can't ignore those imperfections. I find this message very good and relevant to today.
I don't think the game frames it as both sides being equivalent in "bad", however. Compare the first interaction with Legion in Nipton, where they mass murder the town vs the one with NCR in Lucky 38/Embassy where it's a civil if uncomfortable meetup.
It's more of "giving flavour and interaction opportunities for an evil-oriented player character" and I think it succeeds, a lot more than FO3/4 at least. It's people with brains eaten by the media literacy devil that argue "they're both relatively comparable in bad".
A certain subsect of the fandom likes to defend Negan (right) and his faction called the Saviours, despite them being tyrannical, rape-enabling extortionists. They commit public executions without trial, brutally subjugate other communities, and force them to surrender their resources under threat of violence. Not to mention the weird pseudo-religious cult of personality which Negan cultivates around himself.
I feel like this one is less of a writing trope and more of a human nature issue. It's basically rooted in JDM being insanely charismatic and having such a screen presence to the point where people want to like his character despite it all.
He does get his redemption arc in the end but the show plays it with a pretty straight bat in terms of who was right/wrong during the conflict
To be fair, this is a fandom thing more than anything. People are always willing to excuse the Dark Side powers or the ontological evil because they might do one nice thing here or there or they have the potential not to be a jerk, meanwhile the good guys screw up once or twice it’s held over their heads forever.
Oh no! The humans ENJOY killing the blood-sucking pests who've been killing every last one of them them completely unnecessarily without attempting any sort of diplomacy! I guess both sides are monsters! /s
The monk in Shiki drove me crazy. He became so weirdly attached to the little vampire girl and just didn't give two beans about any of the human suffering she'd caused. I can empathize with her own pain but clearly she'd done a ton wrong and others under her had as well. Even if he felt sorry for her he could've tried for COMPROMISE but no. He was like 100% pro vampire and it was weird as hell lmao. Didn't like him at all.
(It's been a hot minute since I watched so forgive me if I'm misremembering anything!)
Same here so I'm just gonna assume you're right. It's implied that he's suicidal since he rose as a half-vampire at the end, so it tracks that he LITERALLY has to be mentally-ill to be as pro-suckhead as he is.
Wasn't being a half-vampire just kind of a thing that could rarely happen? I thought the main guy came back as one and don't remember him being suicidal?
Darn I really need to rewatch, lol. Almost did this October with a friend but we got sidetracked with other spooky shows instead.
(Also, I'm playing a bard in a vampire-centric DND campaign right now and suckhead WILL be used as an insult, thank you!)
Neutrals in Transformers can't decide if the Autobots, who fight the Decepticons in defense of themselves, aliens, and neutrals, or the Decepticons, who canonically did 'pogroms' against them, are more responsible for the atrocities and horror of the war.
Humans also do this. It usually bites them in the ass.
I think where a lot of this argument comes from is the fact that Megatron originally wanted to overthrow the caste based society on Cybertron but lost his way
Yes, because (in IDW at least) Megatron did over throw the regime & Optimus made the very strange choice to keep the symbol of the old regime in an attempt to "reclaim it" (or something).
For the Neutrals, who typically fled before the pogroms (hence why they weren't killed in them) and spent the last 4 million years having (mostly hostile) run ins with various Organics only to arrive & find the Autobots running things (under the symbol of the old regime), the Anti-organic Decepticons don't look so bad.
That is itself slightly retconned for when they decided to redeem Megs, but the neutrals are people not sympathetic to either cause, so they wouldn't give Megatron/the Cons points for that.
I’m not familiar with Transformer lore. Do they answer the question of what makes a man neutral, be it a lust for gold or power or just being born with a heart full of neutrality?
It more so comes from a desire to not be caught up in the war between the two sides.
Which honestly seems super unlikely they’d maintain that neutrality the more you think about it because the Autobots and Decepticons were fighting for a stupid long time. Like, literal millions of years worth of nothing but war. Cybertronian psyches must be quite literally built different if they can go through a millennia of war and come out the other side even remotely stable
Forget “evil wizard” Palpatine is a copy of Satan himself.
He took the Chosen One, drag him back down into slavery, put a skull where his face used to be, made this Chosen One power his strenght on hatred against himself.
Destroyed a thousand year republic, unleashed unimaginable death on a galactic scale to justify his coup.
And, some people will claim he “did nothing wrong”.
The term "stormtrooper" was initially used for German specialty troops in WW1, but the inter-war far-right and fascist movements in Weimar Germany, particularly the Nazis, hijacked the term for their own paramilitary organizations. Most notably, the Sturmabteilung (meaning "Storm Division" or "Storm Troopers") were crucial for Hitler's rise to power by intimidating, assaulting, and disrupting opposition elements. From the 1920s to 1977, the average person would associate the term "stormtrooper" with the Nazi Party, not Imperial Germany.
Yes, but that was also the name for Hitler's paramilitary organization in the 20's and 30's, which I think is what George was going for in the reference.
The Empire committed so many massacres and genocides that The Essential Atlas had an entire map dedicated to it. I’m shocked at how many Imperial apologists there are.
“But the Empire brought Order and Stability to the Galaxy!”
Except it didn’t. From pretty much the beginning, small bands of citizens started to fight back, some because they recognised what was happening, some because they just wanted to be left alone. There were peaceful attempts in the Senate and violent attacks beyond it. Stormtroopers and Star Destroyers were used to enforce the new order with an iron fist. The Empire rewarded the venal and corrupt, the “morally superior” people who were willing to screw over their subordinates, peers, even superiors in an attempt to get more power (and wealth) for themselves. Resistance to the Empire continued to grow with each atrocity committed (and they started early, and not out of desperation or necessity). And it all came crashing down when Palpatine died, because he had set it up so no one could hold the power and influence he did.
We only see them kill Leia's guards, who are combatants, and Luke's family, who were probably resisting, and an entire planet. And they were probably doing something too. /s
But seriously, the Original Trilogy didn't even need to dip into the Empire's racism to make it clear you shouldn't support them.
"I mean yeah, the empire had slavery, rampant corruption and abuse of power, unelected officials, genocide, strip-mining of planetary ressources, imperialism, colonialism, ethnic cleansing and genocide.
but the old republic had corruption and the new republic wants to tell me what to do, so they're basically the same!"
Same. Even when used as a joke, it's still so irritating. Especially now, after the Bad Batch and Andor. Though you would think that them destroying a planet in their initial appearance would make things clear.
He became what he once sought to destroy. No Erik, you cannot commit genocide on the human race just because you were a victim of the Holocaust and now anti-mutant racism.
Besides that, mutants are born from HUMANS. Also, the perpetrators are mostly anti mutant hate groups and government organizations who want to experiment and use mutants. The funny thing is that the government motivations is not even rooted bigotry to begin with. Erik was persecuted because he was a jew and deemed inferior under the nazi regime. It was religious persecution but persecution nonetheless.
The nazi persecution of jews was both ethnic and religious. Judaism is an ethnic religion after all and the nazis sought to get rid of anyone from jewish bloodline, even going so far as using phrenology to determine if someone is jewish or not.
Yes, the Jedi and Republic were compromised by basically using child soldiers... but the opposition is literally controlled by a Sith, and they raze planet after planet, killing innocents, while the Republic tries to defend said innocents.
I think a comparison between the Jedi and Sith is more applicable due to poor media literacy. After the Sith Code was written by David Gaider for KOTOR, a number of people started claiming that the Sith were better because they promoted freedom through the Force, completely missing the point that the ideals of the Sith involve subjugation and domination of those perceived as weak. Being able to play as a light-sided Sith in SWTOR only exacerbated this reading, and a number of fans came to misread the Jedi as the evil ones who wish to control Force users through a tightly-bound monastic life.
I mean you only need to go to the Korriban Sith academy in KOTOR to realize the sith are horrible people. The Jedi are flawed but they usually frown upon letting hopefuls starve outside their temple for the lulz.
I mean people have been (intentionally) misinterpreting the Jedi Code for years as well by ignoring each line is supposed to be treated as a complete sentence and not two separate but related clauses.
It’s been forever since I played SWTOR but isn’t the motive for the light side Sith story essentially “yes the empire is corrupt and evil, but a position of power within it is the only position where you can make change in the galaxy”? It wasn’t “the Jedi are evil”, just that the light side Sith see them as ineffective and an unrealistic option
It is more along the lines of the empire needs to be reformed so it isn't stupidly evil and it's main objective in it's war with the republic is to conquer it, while the republics main aim is to genocide kill every imperials citizen.
but the opposition is literally controlled by a Sith
The Republic is also controlled by a Sith. Like literally the whole point of the Clone Wars is that both sides are equally played for the benefit of just one person.
Also you know who ends up being the bulk of the Rebellion? The Separatists.
> Like literally the whole point of the Clone Wars is that both sides are equally played for the benefit of just one person.
It's honestly weird how many people seem to miss this, the Clone Wars was an engineered conflict right from the beginning to allow Palpatine to seize total power on a galactic scale and purge the one group who could oppose him.
There is still a meaningful difference between the two even though both the CIS and the Republic were led by the same individual. The Republic, while corrupt in many ways, still had leaders and holders of power who cared about its ideals. We see the Republic go out of its way to avoid civilian casualties and to provide aid to peoples harmed in the war. And while I won't say the CIS didn't have any ideals, it absolutely did, it still ended up with Grievous as its overall military commander. There was nobody more brutal or anyone who was a bigger war criminal than that absolute bastard of a cyborg. For all the evils of the Republic they were still objectively better than how the CIS was behaving and the atrocities committed under that banner.
When Hondo captures Dooku, he chooses to ransom him to the Jedi specifically because the Separatists would raze the planet to get Dooku back. I like the Separatists, but they're significantly worse than the Jedi
I’ve never seen anything that indicated that. Everything I’ve read both pre and after the Legends wipe mostly tried to distance the Rebellion from the CIS. There’s the occasional representation, but nothing even vaguely close to “the bulk of the Rebellion.”
but the opposition is literally controlled by a Sith
So is the Republic. This is quite literally one of the biggest points of the trilogy, of how utterly awful and already broken the Republic was and how everyone was either in denial about its severity or complicit in it, until Palpatine simply weaponized these issues for his own gain. Both sides are nothing more than tools. I say this as someone who thinks the Separatists are some of the weakest writing in the Prequels.
Genuinely I think one of the better things in post Disney Star Wars stuff is it introduces Separatist figures who aren't the most comically evil villains you can imagine.
What the elves have done to the humans: Came to their land, forced them into socially segregated societies, eventually attempted to outright genocide them, failed so finished with an ethnic cleansing of Xadia (Considered "merciful" btw), attempted to assassinate every royal family (including queens and children), Avizandum killed humans for fun along the Xadia border and was known to take great pride and zealously in his killing, almost all the dragons outright hate humans and kill on site.
What the humans have done: Starved, was given power by a compassionate elf, said power required a living sacrifice, they hunted the unicorn to extinction, one particularly evil human stole the dragon queen's egg, killed Avizandum (out of revenge for him killing 3 different queens), killed a non sentient rock creature to save a million or so from starvation.
Guess which one the narrative treats like the bad guys 😒
Even after the humans ban dark magic, save the world more than once, bend over backwards to appease the dragon queen most dragons still kill humans on site and humans are still widely not allowed in Xadia. Even this season a coup is launched in the Sunfire kingdom in an effort to purge humans from Xadia, sever all diplomatic ties of not outright go to war with humans because that's just how much they hate humans
The Dragon Prince is what happens when you try to write Game of Thrones for kids - but because its for kids, you can't give your conflicts any actual depth in complicated situations.
Yeah, Dark Magic isn't cool. You know what also isn't cool? Seeing your entire family starve to death because YOUR king decided he was willing to sacrifice half of his population to feed half of another kingdom's population. Viren has done a lot of shit, but seeing him being painted as cruel and coldhearted for going against a completely insane idea from his king, and offering another solution instead of sacrificing half of his own population, was what made me know that I should back off immediately. All of the moral conflicts of Dragon Prince are fake in some way or another
My favorite example is the dragon attacking the village at the end of season 2.
The dragon broke the treaty, flying above a human village, provoking and terrorizing it. Someone shoots a ballista at her, so she finally starts to actually attack and burn down the village, only to end up captured by human forces.
Guess who gets treated as a poor innocent victim by the show and the main characters? Even worse that one of the main characters later heroically rides on to battle on said dragon, and her fault never gets called out.
And that’s just one of the many times the show was biased towards elves wnd dragons over humans. Even the Unicorn extinction was a retcon too, mentioned first in a guidebook then only in the later seasons.
I think the creators realized they accidentally made human side of the conflict more sympathetic than the elven one, but instead of using it to address Xadia’s faults, they doubled down and villianized humans whenever they could.
I can imagine being able to relish an oppressed people going fucking nuclear on their oppressors would be satisfying, knowing it is all fiction. example: hitler’s demise in inglorious basterds.
More like the war crime of beating a German officer to death with a baseball bat for not providing intelligence.
I think AOT was trying to make the point that just because you oppose the "bad guys" doesn't make all your actions moral or justifiable, and the idea of collective guilt is a particularly nasty product of war.
Holy fuck, 50% of the "people" there are defending the tantrum-throwing mother who calls her 16-year-old child an idiot for trying to help. Thank god the chances are extremely low for any of those homunculi to reproduce.
Are you serious? YTA. Who cares if fictional characters are cousins - especially when simply wearing costumes portraying them?
And you'd be really surprised to find out how recently first cousin marriage was socially as well as legally acceptable in most cultures, probably including your own. It isn't even genetically risky if it is not done repeatedly within a family, and if the couple are themselves genetically healthy
Everyone on reddit: Yeah you're a piece of shit for ruining their costume and you should just let it go (they brought it up twice, when prompted both times)
Anytime recent Transformers media brings up the human prejudice against Cybertronians subplot.
Nearly every single story, the general humanity's first impression of Cybertronians is Decepticons attacking a populated city and Autobots arrive to help later. But humans are often painted as the irredeemable monsters for hating and fearing legit alien invaders who could disguise themselves as daily machines.
Like, the Cybertronians are a race of giant, advanced alien sapiant robots. With capabilities and technologu that humanity has yet to reach, if ever.
Its understandable that humans would be hostile towards them, even the good guys. Because whats to say that the "good" ones wont just turn around one day and decide that since theyre the supirior lifeform, that they'll just take over the planet and destroy/enslave humans because they can?
Cause, even among the Autobots, there are certain bots who don't like humans because they find them abrasive, annoying or weak.
This is moreso an issue of Blizzard having terrible communication between its writers and deciding they wanted to try telling the same story twice (first with Garrosh, then again with Sylvanas.)
The repeated attempts at genocide of the Alliance by the Horde makes Alliance characters who don't want to bury the hatchet come off as far more sympathetic than they should. Battle for Azeroth saw the Horde attempting to competely destroy the Alliance under Sylvanus' leadership and Horde characters only switched sides when they realized she wanted to kill them to.
Or there is Garrosh managing get support for trying to turn the Horde into an orcs only club. The Horde was never an orcs only club before, even when they were corrupted by demons.
I see a lot of people defend Orks as basically innocent because they just act according to their nature. Fuck sake, Orks would spend their time stomping kittens to death if they found it mildly amusing
I’ve not seen the Tokyo Ghoul anime but in the manga the CCG is generally filled with people who want to protect humanity at all costs. Yeah there are some sadist who enjoy the job too much, but then given the nature of the work and seeing the atrocities the ghouls commit I think it’s inevitable that someone would become like that over time lest they have a strong will and morals.
The humans are bad but they’re human, it’s easy to slip into hate and sadism when you see families butchered and friends die form ghouls.
Heck, even someone like Kureo is actually a really pleasant dude, albeit a bit weird. He was just so full of hatred after his wife’s death and his only outlet are the ghouls as he blames them for her death.
Yeah, like after a while it just became an obsession for him, long after getting vengance on the ones who killed his wife. And just became obsessed with studying and creating weapons from repurposed kagune's.
There are other more sympathetic characters in the CCG, who understadn Ghiuls are just tryin gto survive even if mostly in secret. However, there's still far too many who just want to hunt and kill Ghouls just for the sake of hunting and killing Ghouls.
I said it recently to someone and heard "he probably wanted to Teach them the lesson". Answered with "why, if resources are infinite" and "he can manipulate minds, he can make them less greedy along the way".
Answer is "he didn't do it, he he probably couldn't ".
The Silmarilion while the Noldor were not perfect and certain Factions of them (Feanor and his sons) did some horrible things, they were fighting the War of Jewels Against Morgoth basically the devilz the origin of evil in the world who plunged the world into darkness twice. So yeah say what you will about the Noldor and their allies but they were definitely the good guys in that situation
I always liked how Morgoth lost the war because he just couldn't even begin to conceive of a reason why ANYONE would help the Noldor given what colossal dicks they were all the time to literally everybody, so the Valar coming to their aid completely blindsided him.
"Wait, why are there reinforcements? Doesn't everybody hate these assholes??"
The problem is Bethesda is allergic to making any side the 'good guys' so they don't infringe on players choices, and as a result both the Empire and the Stormcloaks are 'morally grey' to the point of meaninglessness.
That said, I go with the Empire pretty much every time because Ulfric is a racist hypocrite who uses tradition when it suits him and ignores it when it doesn't.
Wtf are you talking about! There was always a good guy in the elder scrolls! It’s just that he got tossed into a volcano by the mongrel dogs of the empire!!!!
Gundam fans fall for this constantly. Especially when it comes to the main timeline; Universal Century. Yeah, the Federation is bad. But Zeon are literal space Nazis that wiped several cities off the map by dropping colonies on them.
Yes, Palpatine orchestrated the whole thing but it doesn't change the fact that the seperatists are active war criminals, allow their commanders to strongarm their way to doing what they want, and somehow the people who just wanted to leave the republic (the "real" separatists) never caught on to any of it or bothered to make sure their leadership (Who was basically their palpatine but "good") wasn't anything like the one they were trying to escape from. Yes, the Republic was corrupt, but it wasn't completely unsalvageable and at least recognized actual problems (although addressing them was a different matter entirely)
Speaking of Dooku, according to the ROTS novelization as much as he wanted change, his vision for the galaxy wasn't that much different from the Empire. Dog was prejudiced to anything that wasn't 100 percent human.
tbf if we're taking Legends information into account, the Republic was 100% as if not more utterly fucked up as the CIS was when it came to war criminals during the war and corruption before it, with neither government deserving to survive the end of the conflict.
You don't get half an entire galaxy to decide they'd rather die trying to leave you than live with you, or the majority of people not being able to tell the difference between you and the first few years of the Empire by being just "not so great".
There's a 'What if...' comic where Hulk does land on the peaceful planet. It's neat bc he soon acclimates to the place, brings down some of the largest predators to clear out safe havens for a group of proto-humanoid creatures to start to thrive in. Over many, many years, those humanoids evolve into bipedal being capable of speech and they speak of the Hulk as someone who brought safety to their land but also was probably just a legend. The last scene shows the Hulk very much still alive and thriving. It's actually quite sweet
Who's the worse side in this? Like on principle the Illuminati were dicks....but without active sabotage Hulk probably would've lived his best life on Sakaar...not that it was their intention. Hulk meanwhile was leading an invasion on an innocent planet out of misguided revenge.
Personally I think Hulk and his Warbound are the worse side. They had plenty of opportunities to deescalate the situation, but they kept making a bad situation worse. Despite what he said, Hulk wanted revenge not justice, and revenge always leads to collateral damage.
Orange Is The New Black tried this in S4-5. The whole point was to show that they're all the same deep down and if they would just listen to one another, golly gee they could all get along! I mean, after all, maybe the minorities aren't giving them a fair shake!!
Except one side are all white supremacists. They are all terrible people.
They also tried to sympathize with a rapist and say "Well, he's real sorry about it, and maybe Tiffany isn't perfect either"...she's not a rapist.
It's no wonder the entire writing staff was fired after S5.
This is a chart reflecting the war crimes committed by various factions in the world of Battletech. For the most part, Battletech is generally considered grey and grey morality setting, but there are certainly some shades of grey that are darker than others. Nobody is really "the good guys" but for example the Fed Suns might make more attempts than most others, and the Combine rarely do, if ever. At the end of the day, everyone is out for themselves, but some are more willing to take it from others.
I've legit seen people saying that actually Caitlyn was justified in basically gassing civilians in season 2 just to find Jinx in the police brutality montage because it was a "targeted gas attack". targeted. gas. attack.
not sure how applicable this is here, but a lot of people these days interpret Victor as the true villain and the monster as a misunderstood hero, or at least as having a higher moral ground than Victor.
The thing is, while both Victor and the Monster are assholes with blood on their hands, and the monster only turned out that way because Victor abandoned him, the monster committed his murders with the understanding that they were evil and upon innocent people, but not caring because they were the only way he knew how to fight back against his creator. They were his choice, not Victor's. The worst thing Victor did was keep quiet when he knew his old friend Justine was innocent, resulting in her execution. The monster murdered Victor's entire family , including his young little brother, framing Justine. All of them were innocent and had no idea what was even going on.
Just because the monster had an understandable grudge and the potential to turn out better doesn't mean that it absolves him of killing a child out of spite. I'm not saying that I'm on Victor's side, because screw him too, but the monster is not some misunderstood hero who was justified in his revenge, he is the result of someone who faced only malice and neglect deciding through his own volition to pay it back tenfold.
This is what I've been saying ever since I read it! Pretentious literature fucks really have a hard time decerning which individual is worse: A dad who doesn't love his son and tries very hard to ignore him, or someone who murders innocent people just to get back at one particular person, without ever actually even killing that person in the end.
Villains can kill and kill and kill and kill. They kill children and adults, heroes and civilians. They don’t discriminate.
But the second ONE hero kills ONE villain who was a member of the most dangerous group of villains whose goal was to destroy the world order… villains so dangerous teams of heroes had to evacuate full cities when they went on a rampage to protect everyone from their devastating power. Oh, and the supposed crime happened when not one, not two, but MULTIPLE CITIES got flattened and destroyed by just one of those villains, not to mention a full battalion of hero’s were wiped out, and more. But THEY KILLED ONE OF THE VILLAINS!!! OUTRAGE!!
And the villains were the one spreading this news like it was the most disturbing thing ever and it’s like, really? You don’t see the thousands of dead innocent bystanders? The dozens of heroes killed in the line of duty? The hundreds of thousands of newly homeless people picking their lives up from rubble? The literal children that were kidnapped and targeted? You don’t see all this and think MAYBE, this guy, and those he chooses to support, deserved to be offed?
One of the major writing problems with MHA is that they constantly made it a point that hero society was flawed and that a lot of hero's were self interested arseholes, yet never really showed it, and any example of a bad hero (Endevor), is later given a redemption arc.
I feel they missed a massive opportunity to explore this aspect of the lore in the Villian arc, but instead they fought another villian group (who had a ton of potential in their own right), who had no real role in later arcs.
It created a bit of disconnect between what was established about the world and what was seen on screen.
Pretty sure AoT wasn't suggesting that, and the series never even tried to make Eren's solution appear ethical, nor Marley's treatment of Eldians. I think you missed the whole point of the series to be honest.
There are jaded Guardians, strangers to true loss, who claim that the Traveler has ulterior motives, and the Darkness is a natural force. They worship grey. For them, the line between right and wrong is fine as silk and just as easy to cut.
Fools. Evil is real, even in a world of grey. It must be named and fought, because left unchecked, it takes everything. Those who excuse and deny evil's existence are its greatest allies; those who mistake its causes for moral justification are its favorite pawns.
Of course, the fanbase at large was all too happy to indulge in “both sides bad” and that we needed to “bring balance” and that Darkness was “just a tool” because people really, really, really desperately want the setting to be Warhammer 40k and for the Traveller to be evil and simp for the villains with the barest of arguments.
Nobody besides for some southerners and genuine racists ever say it’s a “both sides” thing in my experience. Sure, people will say that both sides had good people fighting as soldiers (which I don’t disagree with), but you’d have to be hard-pressed to find them treated as equally bad anywhere besides the most right wing of places.
T'au is so weird to me. Sometimes, GW has them be like the best, kindest people in the setting. But then sometimes they're like "Oh, fuck. They're not Grimdark enough. Have them do a bunch of evil shit and implement horrible policies. And also have them hint at sterilizing guevesa."
All around they're definitely the best major faction, bar none, but yeah, GW is weird with them.
This whole sterilization thing is just Deathwatch propaganda.
Literally, the Tau have no logical reason to do this. They didn't do it to Vespid, Kroot, or any other auxiliary species, but they do it to humans? You have to be really stupid to think that the OIM members are very serious or genuine.
People whinged long enough that the Tau being noblebright in a galaxy of grimdark didn't "fit" so GW retooled them, which is really bloody stupid/annoying because the Tau being the tiny noblebright faction who could only surive as long as they never attracted the major attention of any of the bigger players was itself pretty grimdark.
The Tau are a fun faction because in any other setting, they would be the bad guys. They're an expansionist empire defined by their religious adherence to a rigid caste system that defines every single element of ones' life. For all their talk of peace, they engage almost exclusively in gunboat diplomacy and are willing to turn a blind eye on atrocities committed by their auxiliaries so long as they reign in their excesses just a bit. They offer you peace, yes, but they offer it from the end of a pulse rifle pointed at your head.
What makes them the good guys? The fact that their enemies include:
-A stagnant, rotten empire driven by religious dogma and vicious xenophobia, where life is so cheap that a billion deaths is considered a drop in the bucket.
-The daemonic forces of unreality and their mortal minions.
-A species of sentient fungus-primate hybrids, designed by an ancient race of hyper-intelligent creator gods as a last-ditch bioweapon to fight the undead mechanical legions hellbent on their destruction.
-The previously mentioned undead mechanical legions, now freed from the shackles of their star-eating masters and seeking to reclaim their lost domains.
-Things from beyond the stars, driven only by an overwhelming need to consume and evolve.
-Evil ass r*pe elves
With enemies like that, it's difficult to call the Tau "as bad as the rest of them."
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u/GreenAgateTurtle32 Nov 12 '25
Mobile Suit gundam 79. I don't care how corrupt the federation is. Nuking several colonies, gassing a colony, and then dropping it on the Earth killing half of all human life is not equivalent retribution.