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Author Topic: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)  (Read 306855 times)

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2385 on: November 13, 2022, 09:59:28 AM »
I don’t watch the vampire show because I don’t subscribe to AMC+, but that sounds to me like good old fashioned “teenager gets superpowers and murders their high school bullies” type of plot. It’s just as badly motivated. Just because someone is mean to you doesn’t mean you have any right to murder them. That’s just pettiness.

If it was framed as bad for the protagonist to become a slasher villain, then that’s one thing. This sounds like it’s framed as a good thing, which is not a healthy message to promote. “If you don’t like the way someone treats you, then you should kill them” is a terrible message.

Eirikrautha

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2386 on: November 13, 2022, 10:33:36 AM »
I don’t watch the vampire show because I don’t subscribe to AMC+, but that sounds to me like good old fashioned “teenager gets superpowers and murders their high school bullies” type of plot. It’s just as badly motivated. Just because someone is mean to you doesn’t mean you have any right to murder them. That’s just pettiness.

If it was framed as bad for the protagonist to become a slasher villain, then that’s one thing. This sounds like it’s framed as a good thing, which is not a healthy message to promote. “If you don’t like the way someone treats you, then you should kill them” is a terrible message.

According to the Critical Drinker, a similar thing happens in Wakanda Forever.  Not to spoil it, but a "hero" escapes by killing a mass of cops (via thrown object and explosion) who are just trying to stop them from leaving.  Something that should result in a prison sentence, but in this case goes totally without remark for the rest of the movie...

The Critical Drinker's After Hours review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPRUAqraFFY

BoxCrayonTales

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2387 on: November 13, 2022, 02:25:42 PM »
Sigh. What would you expect from the “#kill all cops” crowd?

Stephen Tannhauser

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2388 on: November 13, 2022, 02:35:18 PM »
I don’t watch the vampire show because I don’t subscribe to AMC+, but that sounds to me like good old fashioned “teenager gets superpowers and murders their high school bullies” type of plot. It’s just as badly motivated.

Out of curiosity, other than Chronicle, are there a lot of that kind of story?  Certainly one side effect of Columbine was to really deglamourize violent teen revenge stories, so I don't remember a lot of them.

And to be fair to the new Interview, Louis does still struggle with being a murderer, it's just really obvious which victims the showrunners expect the audience to find more sympathetic and which ones they expect the audience to forgive Louis for.
Better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. -- Mark Twain

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Ratman_tf

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2389 on: November 13, 2022, 05:49:46 PM »
I don’t watch the vampire show because I don’t subscribe to AMC+, but that sounds to me like good old fashioned “teenager gets superpowers and murders their high school bullies” type of plot. It’s just as badly motivated. Just because someone is mean to you doesn’t mean you have any right to murder them. That’s just pettiness.

If it was framed as bad for the protagonist to become a slasher villain, then that’s one thing. This sounds like it’s framed as a good thing, which is not a healthy message to promote. “If you don’t like the way someone treats you, then you should kill them” is a terrible message.

According to the Critical Drinker, a similar thing happens in Wakanda Forever.  Not to spoil it, but a "hero" escapes by killing a mass of cops (via thrown object and explosion) who are just trying to stop them from leaving.  Something that should result in a prison sentence, but in this case goes totally without remark for the rest of the movie...

The Critical Drinker's After Hours review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPRUAqraFFY

The morality of some "heroes" is something I've found disgusting.
Like, in the extended version of LOTR, Aragorn cuts the head off the Mouth of Sauron, when in the scene in the book, it was clearly stated to be a parley that both sides honored, and Aragorn didn't just fly into a rage an behead someone over smacktalk.
Optimus Prime in the Bay films gets worse and worse. He executes a helpless foe seemingly just out of spite.
And so many stronk female characters who abuse their power to torture some dude who acted sexist.

I don't expect fictional heroes to act like saints, but I do expect them to have some kind of restraint.
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wmarshal

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2390 on: November 13, 2022, 10:05:25 PM »
I don’t watch the vampire show because I don’t subscribe to AMC+, but that sounds to me like good old fashioned “teenager gets superpowers and murders their high school bullies” type of plot. It’s just as badly motivated. Just because someone is mean to you doesn’t mean you have any right to murder them. That’s just pettiness.

If it was framed as bad for the protagonist to become a slasher villain, then that’s one thing. This sounds like it’s framed as a good thing, which is not a healthy message to promote. “If you don’t like the way someone treats you, then you should kill them” is a terrible message.

According to the Critical Drinker, a similar thing happens in Wakanda Forever.  Not to spoil it, but a "hero" escapes by killing a mass of cops (via thrown object and explosion) who are just trying to stop them from leaving.  Something that should result in a prison sentence, but in this case goes totally without remark for the rest of the movie...

The Critical Drinker's After Hours review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VPRUAqraFFY

The morality of some "heroes" is something I've found disgusting.
Like, in the extended version of LOTR, Aragorn cuts the head off the Mouth of Sauron, when in the scene in the book, it was clearly stated to be a parley that both sides honored, and Aragorn didn't just fly into a rage an behead someone over smacktalk.
Optimus Prime in the Bay films gets worse and worse. He executes a helpless foe seemingly just out of spite.
And so many stronk female characters who abuse their power to torture some dude who acted sexist.

I don't expect fictional heroes to act like saints, but I do expect them to have some kind of restraint.
I think Aragorn going Chaotic Evil on the Mouth of Sauron only occurred in the extended version, not the theatrical release. I specifically got a copy of the theatrical release of the films because I found the more Peter Jackson was able to show “his vision” of LOTR the less satisfactory it was. In some cases studio interference can be a blessing.

Thornhammer

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2391 on: November 13, 2022, 10:48:08 PM »
But I don't want to ruin her enjoyment so I don't get into those arguments.

Friends, this is a successful Wisdom check.

Stephen Tannhauser

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2392 on: November 13, 2022, 11:09:28 PM »
But I don't want to ruin her enjoyment so I don't get into those arguments.

Friends, this is a successful Wisdom check.

Much obliged for the kind words, though I can't think the DC on that one would be particularly high.  :-X
Better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. -- Mark Twain

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Chris24601

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2393 on: November 14, 2022, 07:12:17 AM »
But I don't want to ruin her enjoyment so I don't get into those arguments.

Friends, this is a successful Wisdom check.

Much obliged for the kind words, though I can't think the DC on that one would be particularly high.  :-X
It’s still high enough I’ve seen some men fail it.

Trond

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2394 on: November 14, 2022, 09:08:29 AM »
….
And so many stronk female characters who abuse their power to torture some dude who acted sexist….

I can’t tell if women in movies are supposed to be heroes or villains anymore. Occasionally they get taken down a notch if they behave like assholes, but usually I get the feeling that we’re supposed to clap and cheer for their “strong independent behavior”. I think Hollywood’s idea of what women are “supposed to” be like is in flux.

Ghostmaker

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2395 on: November 14, 2022, 10:18:26 AM »
I call it 'informed morality', a play on the trope of informed ability.

Someone with 'informed morality' is designated 'good' regardless of their actions. Even if you have to twist things into a pretzel.

The LOTR scene's a good example, though not great -- keep in mind the Mouth of Sauron was an absolute monster, a descendant of the Black Numenoreans who had worshipped the Eye. But there is a real problem with violating parley to lop his head off, no matter how much smack he was talking.

(In the books, Gandalf and Aragorn glared at him so much he actually flinched. Good times.)

But yeah. We're supposed to root for people who, if you take a tiny step back, are behaving in amazingly abhorrent ways.

Trond

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2396 on: November 14, 2022, 11:33:20 AM »
I call it 'informed morality', a play on the trope of informed ability.

Someone with 'informed morality' is designated 'good' regardless of their actions. Even if you have to twist things into a pretzel.

The LOTR scene's a good example, though not great -- keep in mind the Mouth of Sauron was an absolute monster, a descendant of the Black Numenoreans who had worshipped the Eye. But there is a real problem with violating parley to lop his head off, no matter how much smack he was talking.

(In the books, Gandalf and Aragorn glared at him so much he actually flinched. Good times.)

But yeah. We're supposed to root for people who, if you take a tiny step back, are behaving in amazingly abhorrent ways.

One that really makes me cringe for some reason is the woman in Shape of Water (and yes I know many people love that movie). The monster (or god or whatever) doesn't seem to be much more intelligent than a chimpanzee at best (the way it behaves with the cat, throws itself at food etc). And yet she's sleeping with it. She's had a hard life you see, and she's a woman, so it's OK. And of course the family guy in the movie is the real "monster". What exactly are we supposed to learn from this?

Stephen Tannhauser

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2397 on: November 14, 2022, 03:27:42 PM »
One that really makes me cringe for some reason is the woman in Shape of Water ... She's had a hard life you see, and she's a woman, so it's OK. And of course the family guy in the movie is the real "monster". What exactly are we supposed to learn from this?

It's a function of the basic Woke morality algorithm, which defines imposed denial of intimacy, value, and power as the primary criterion of who deserves sympathy for their suffering and who doesn't, and which blames mainstream human society for that imposition and thus justifies the rejection and/or destruction of that society and its representatives/agents.

Of course, the key caveat is that even this doesn't apply if that imposed deprivation was only personal to you, rather than a social oppression applying to everyone like you. Otherwise they'd find themselves having to defend people like Elliot Rodger.
Better to keep silent and be thought a fool, than to speak and remove all doubt. -- Mark Twain

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BoxCrayonTales

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2398 on: November 14, 2022, 04:08:31 PM »
I don’t watch the vampire show because I don’t subscribe to AMC+, but that sounds to me like good old fashioned “teenager gets superpowers and murders their high school bullies” type of plot. It’s just as badly motivated.

Out of curiosity, other than Chronicle, are there a lot of that kind of story?  Certainly one side effect of Columbine was to really deglamourize violent teen revenge stories, so I don't remember a lot of them.

And to be fair to the new Interview, Louis does still struggle with being a murderer, it's just really obvious which victims the showrunners expect the audience to find more sympathetic and which ones they expect the audience to forgive Louis for.
Most of the ones I'm familiar with, like Tamara or Toxic Avenger or All Cheerleaders Die, generally have the bullies go really far in abusing the hero/ine in order to justify killing them at the climax. Sexual abuse and murder are pretty common. It's also pretty common for the hero/monster to second guess kills or target people the narrative claims are innocent. And part of the trope is that it's common for the "heroes" to be literal monsters engaging in vigilante justice and even outright unjustified murder, depending on the precise genre.

In woke productions, it becomes more and more about uncritical petty murderous power fantasy towards people who don't yield to the protagonist's absurd sense of entitlement. Which is ironic, because they love accusing the opposition of the exact same (often validly, but I digress). For example, woke productions write incels (e.g. She-Hulk) while criticizing others for writing incels (e.g. Shield Hero). Hypocrisy at its finest.

The whole "words are violence" thing makes it increasingly difficult to take the "crimes" of the asshole victims seriously anymore. Rather than outright assaulting someone or having a history of criminal behavior, the asshole victims nowadays just say a few offensive words to the snowflake protagonist. And not even very creative ones. Just saying/implying "You're inferior because of your skin color, hurr durr" doesn't elicit as much of a visceral response as, say, "your mother whored herself to pay for your tuition" and then beating the protagonist to a pulp when he defends his mother's honor.

Someone being mildly assholish towards you doesn't justify you decapitating them with you superpowers. The punishment doesn't fit the crime.

Cyberpunk: Edgerunners got this right. The protagonist beats up his bully, embarrasses him in front of his cronies, and deflates the bully's huge ego, but he doesn't shred the bully into a pile of viscera.

jhkim

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Re: RPGnet's decay (TBP madness)
« Reply #2399 on: November 14, 2022, 09:09:28 PM »
I don’t watch the vampire show because I don’t subscribe to AMC+, but that sounds to me like good old fashioned “teenager gets superpowers and murders their high school bullies” type of plot. It’s just as badly motivated.

Out of curiosity, other than Chronicle, are there a lot of that kind of story?  Certainly one side effect of Columbine was to really deglamourize violent teen revenge stories, so I don't remember a lot of them.

Carrie and Heathers are the quintessential ones that spring to mind for me - but there are a bunch of others. The Craft, John Tucker Must Die, Jawbreaker, etc.

More broadly, there are a lot of non-teen movies where the protagonist deals ultra-violent revenge that are more broad than just eye for an eye, like Death Wish or V for Vendetta. Often in revenge films, while there was a horrendous crime that is being avenged - there is a huge body count of people who have little connection to the initial crime, like in Commando, The Punisher, Kill Bill, etc.

Protagonists like Conan, The Bride, or The Punisher aren't good people - but the audience tends to cheer for them anyway out of a catharsis of taking on even worse guys.