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Post by Canuovea on Jan 9, 2019 23:13:50 GMT
Rule of cool. Superheroes are supposed to be cool. But they almost never get swords and swords are one of the most cool weapons someone can have. If superheroes were allowed to kill people more often, then they'd have swords more often, obviously, so they should be allowed to kill people more often. QED.
More seriously though... are we really supposed to believe that superheroes don't kill people quite a lot? Thor is, uh, Thor yeah but... he throws a massive hammer about. Now it doesn't draw as much blood or anything, but it really does kill people if you put any thought into it. Iron Man killed a whole bunch of people in the first movie too! Remember that tank he blew up? That tank had people in it. The realistic bit is that if they're killing people anyway, why not be open about it? And that's what happens if you're in a straight fight with someone and both trying to win. Only someone who is so much more powerful ever needs to bother with not trying to kill their opponent, and in that particular case it makes the fight less exciting. Point is, sanitizing it and pretending people don't kill other people is just inherently dishonest. Why not just let it happen? And they did kinda go that direction. That one guy gets speared in the back by Vision with his own glaive thing. Thanos takes an axe to the chest.
We need to end the prejudice against superheroes with swords. I'mma start a movement.
I will agree that advanced technology allows a society to be softer in some areas. It has its benefits for sure. But I don't think that makes it necessary to be culturally like the West in order to be technologically advanced. It is nice to think that technological advantage follows what we perceive as moral correctness, but that seems more wishful thinking to me than anything else.
For instance, Rome. Of fucking Rome. Rome is uh... pretty backwards morally compared to a lot of the people they conquered. A massive chunk of modern Western Culture came from a bunch of desert nomads who the Romans conquered and ruled over, and that is where a lot of morality came from. Now Rome was socially complex, and arguably more progressive before it became an Empire, but it was technologically miles ahead of anyone around it even though we'd recognize a lot of those people as being better "modern" people than the Romans.
A bigger realism flaw with Wakanda is, frankly, that they're isolated, protected, have advanced technology, are incredibly prosperous... how have they not become a bunch of pansies? I mean, even the Qing dynasty tried to maintain a warrior culture during a period of prosperity and failed.
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Post by Harkovast on Jan 9, 2019 23:42:36 GMT
I should clarify, I dont necessarily mean they have to be like us or that being nice is essential. I can imagine a fantastical society that is advanced and not nice at all.
Its more that the Wakandans are...crude.
Like THe klingons, where you can hit the leaders with a sword nad then you get to be in charge. that's not a culture that is going to produce space ships in my view!
If the wakandas had strange ideas on what leaders should be like (maybe with fighting prowess as one aspect) thats cool. But when its literally "fight a dude and you get to rule" that just seems too dumb for suc han educated people to accept.
IN our democracies we have tons of stupid shit we like in leaders. We vote for poeple we feel we could "have a beer with" or who speak well...two skills COMPLETELY unrelated to actually running a country. So the idea that the Wakandas would value strange traits is fair enough.
I don't want them to be like us, I just want them to seem a bit cleverer. And if they had democracy or representation, it could be in a very strnage form, with wierd rules for how people get represented. You could imagine a really odd system, like say each tribe has ten representatives, the army has ten representatives, the priests have ten rpresentatives and the police have ten representatives, adn the representatives vote on everything, with the king getting 30 votes of his own. I just made that up off the top of my head. Its a democratic kinda system but its wierd compared to what we are used to, where factions get votes within the country and have to make alliances and stuff to get what they want. that might be a worse system than what we have but it would show the wakandans have given some thoguht to how to run a country rather than just " man in cat p.js is the boss".
Its need more of that kinda thing for me. More sophistication.
But what the fuck do I know? black panther made a quadrillion dollars!
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Post by wordweaver3 on Jan 10, 2019 0:48:36 GMT
More seriously though... are we really supposed to believe that superheroes don't kill people quite a lot?
To be fair to the Marvel movies they don't harp on "no killing". But they also don't seem to acknowledge any time they kill either, so...
Although most of the Marvel movies don't have a lot of human bad guys. Avengers is a lot of aliens. AoU is a bunch of robots. Thor is often killing fantastical creatures in some other realm. Out of all of them either Iron Man or Captain America seem to have the highest on screen human body count. Makes sense for Cap since he fought the Nazis. We know less about Widow and Hawkeye, but we can assume they both have quite a few notches on their belts as well given their work. Current era Spider-man has no kills that I can recall. It would be hard to imagine that Hulk never killed anyone accidentally considering how much damage he can do without even trying.
As for superheros using swords, I have it on good authority that in the next Avengers movie Hawkeye is going to ditch the bow and pick up a sword when he dons the Ronin persona. Typically when he does that in the comics he kills a LOT of people.
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Post by Harkovast on Jan 10, 2019 17:28:46 GMT
Yeah Marvel has never made a point of a code against killing. I grew up on Batman the animated series, where he wouldn't even let enemies die by his inaction (he saved the joker repeatedly from falling into various boiling substances.) I always respected his moral convictions!
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Post by TempestFennac on Jan 10, 2019 18:11:34 GMT
Considering how The Joker seems to repeatedly escape from wherever he's locked up to cause more misery, I personally can't (I have a similar view to Ki when it comes to this sort of thing so I'm in favour of just ending superpowered people so that they can't make people suffer). I know that wouldn't work well due to removing the writer's ability to use recurring villians but in real life it really wouldn't be a good way to deal with them.
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Post by Harkovast on Jan 10, 2019 18:44:56 GMT
Yeah but if batman goes around murdering people...that makes him a horrible, horrible monster. I guess I like that there is a restriction on him, he doesn't just do whatever, even though it puts him at a disadvantage. He doesn't just do what's convienient (buy a gun, blow up arkham asylum etc), he does what he considers right and wont compromise when the going gets tough.
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Post by TempestFennac on Jan 10, 2019 19:12:39 GMT
To be fair, he is at a disadvantage due to being a vigilante rather than having the legal right to use what I'd consider to be reasonable force (it would still be better just to kill most of the antagonists from that though; it reminds me a bit of how Rich Berlew classed Belkar wanting to just kill the Linear Guild members who were captured after the first LG/Order of the Stick fight but I'd say handing them over to poorly equipped guards despite Hayley knowing that Sabine was an Outsider who had been sent to hel Nale was far more evil due to the distinct possibility of Sabine liberating Nale and Thog).
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Post by Canuovea on Jan 10, 2019 19:22:00 GMT
Realistically the government would have executed the Joker ages ago. I mean, the USA still has capital punishment in some places and it would 100% reinstate it if supervillains were a thing.
That or a police officer would take it upon themselves to summarily execute Joker. Goodness knows I'd consider it. Not all vigilantes are so law abiding as Batman.
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Post by Harkovast on Jan 10, 2019 19:31:38 GMT
The thing with batman is, you gotta get the tone right. If Joker just constantly kills poeple, thats too much, he would be killed (as you rightly point out). The trick is that he's dangerous and has killed people, but its not a total slaugther. Most of the time he's stopped before he does too much damage. The animated series gets this balance pretty well. If you make the bad guys too lethal, batman starts to seem useless and the whole justice system bgins to seem INSANE. This is why I don't like the villain Zsasz. The idea is kidna cool, a serial killer who cuts tally marks into his body when he kills people... The problem is it seems like hes killed several hundred people, making him one of the most lethal serial killers ever! He doesnt even try and hideit or deny it, he just kills poeple. That's his whole thing. Its all he does. Other villains are crazy and evil but they do various things. Like the Joker sometimes steals stuff, or sets traps, or plots to beat batman...zsasz just murders people. That's the extent of what hes about. He sticks a knife in people. I don't know why he would be in arkham, hes not criminally insane. I mean yeah he murders people and loves it so hes wrong in the head but thats not how the insanity defence works! The Joker dresses up as a clown and thinks everything is a big joke, The Riddler is compulsively obsessed with puzzles, two face bases decisions on a coin. Those are clearly bonkers. JUst murdering poeple cause you like it doesn't get you out of a prison sentance...or an electric chair! This guy just murders people, gets caught...then escapes and murders more people. Yet everyone just accepts this. Like its just a thing. "Zsasz gonna zsasz, what ya gonna do?" Batman is a stylised character so works best in a stylised world. Its not hard to make the situation look ridiculous, its harder to make it seem credible. Zsasz just makes the whole situation look ridiculous. its tryign to be edgy but almost turns it into self parody.
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Post by wordweaver3 on Jan 10, 2019 20:00:28 GMT
The thing is that Batman is already skirting the law, if he just starts killing than he simply becomes a criminal. A guy dressed like a bat who runs around and foils crime, ties up the bad guys for the police to find, and disappears into the night might be tolerated in a city like Gotham. Realistically even that would be a fairly futile endeavor, since every person ever captured by Batman would likely get a lawyer who would attempt to summon Batman as a key witness. At that point Batman would have the choice to show up, which would require him to state his legal name for the record and out himself as Bruce Wayne, or ignore the summons and risk the criminal getting off on a technicality.
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Post by Harkovast on Jan 10, 2019 20:53:27 GMT
Honestly to me it seems like people do the proper "no killing" super hero so rarely these days, actually seeing it feels like the subversion. Even batman just murders fuckers in the movies!
Murderous super heroes...it just don't seem right. Especially a super powered person killing normal powered people. It feels like if you are massively more powerful, you should be able to resolve things without slaughter. That's what seemed wierd in that Wonder Woman film, when shes killing all these WW1 soldiers. Those are young men who were conscripted, probably 19-21 years old. Seems kinda harsh to use your goddess-like powers to turn them all into ground beef!
Did you guys found Weird Britannia frustrating to read because the heroes didn't kill all the bad guys?
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Post by Canuovea on Jan 10, 2019 22:02:58 GMT
I find it odd when good guys who are super powerful kill clearly weaker enemies... especially when it is not necessary. I found it kinda ridiculous when Wonder Woman casually murdered Ludendorf. Sure he buffed himself up to fight her, but he was never on her level.
But with enemies who match them in strength/power, and with the lives of others on the line... sure the good guys shouldn't necessarily murder them if they've been rendered defenceless and all, but they should be going all out and trying to win the fight as quickly as they can if their enemy is doing the same. That includes using lethal force if necessary. Anything else is irresponsible, not just for the hero's safety but the safety of those they are trying to protect.
If that is not the case, then tension dissipates. In Weird Britannia it isn't so bad because most of the time we are dealing with super Humans beating up mooks and there isn't really that great of a threat to their lives in those situations usually. Even outside of those situations you've got a bit of a Batman scenario where the adaptives have to appear to not be too violent for their own good.
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Post by zaealix on Jan 10, 2019 23:00:24 GMT
For me personally I tend to not think about it. Like yes, I can understand those mooks are indeed actual people with actual lives but on the flipside once they're down and not going to be a problem that's that. Dying or not doesn't really enter into it. Now should Supers not kill? I can definitely get behind that yes but it's not a rule I cleave to as closely as you do Hark.
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Post by Harkovast on Jan 11, 2019 0:04:30 GMT
Its wierd but I've found a hard ban on the heroes killing people made the game feel MORE violent. Players had to get creative to hurt people and invent ways to disable them. Knives are used to slash tendons, noses are shattered to disorientate, arms get broken etc. It seems much more specific abotu how people are getting hurt then the usual "I hit him with my sword" kinda thing. It ends up quite visceral.
And then when people do get killed, it seems REALLY bad. Chapter 2 felt like it ramped up into completely insne ultra violence by the time it got to chopping up coked up gimps with a katana sword.
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Post by Canuovea on Jan 11, 2019 4:06:27 GMT
I've put people off by being creative with violence before... if I recall correctly.
But yeah. Gets a bit more descriptive for most people, I suppose.
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