Anyhoo, that's pretty helpful. There having been previous butthurt feelings between magic/nonmagic people actually explains quite a bit. Still seems a bit one-sided what with the wizards being able to jump back and forth at will but "muggles" being kept in the dark (plus aforementioned mind-dickery).
kids.
The constant endangerment of the kids is particularly hilarious. Like they have a tree who's first instinct is to demolish anything within striking distance. No fence, no nothing, just "dont' go near the tree, it'll smash you." Also, "hey you hormonally charged teenagers, gather round, lemme show you how to brew magic love potions that are morally equivalent to date-rape. But just do not use it."
Then the movie has chosen an extremely unfortunate context for itself. It's not like the writers NEEDED to tell their rant against attendance awards specifically in the form of a superhero story.p
Again, are we going to gloss over the fact that he killed off dozens of superheroes, sold the most dangerous weapons to any country who could buy them, put thousands of people at risk just so he could play the hero, .
I actually agree with entitled here...Syndrome is no doubt evil and I can get the message the filmakers are trying to get across
but the super hero thing and the way its handled (somone could have given Syndrome a "you were "super" all long" speech but that might have been a bit ham fisted) gives it a lot of unfortunate implications, which stand out more to some people
I'm going to link something first just to add it to the conversation, because a lot of you are getting completely different morals than me on many things:
Now, I may have to go back to a lot of things to get if I got the message right, but since I played ME1, which I do think is a good game, there's just a handful of things that irk me. Extra Credits did a video on exploring the controversy on the Geth decision later in the series and which decision should actually be good or bad, but I think I can argue many things I wanted to do were Paragon but considered Renegade, or at least it being more grey than they thought. I can't name specific examples at this moment, and the ones I'm thinking of could be considered very vague, but I'm probably going to replay it within this upcoming week to say what I will.
Any Gears of War novel by Karen Traviss: all civilians are worthless, two-timing, shiftless scum who at best, are apathetic about the COG's heroic efforts to keep humanity alive and at worse are criminals who'd bury a blade between a soldier's shoulders to steal his rations.
I mean, I get the context of the universe is that humanity is fucked without an ultra-militaristic dictatorship and even then they are barely hanging on against the Locust, but there is not a single decent civilian character in any of the books!
Also: to hell with your family, the military is your only real family!
Captcha:LOOK AWAY
You want me to look away while on enforced COG sentry duty Captcha!? You'll get us both shot at dawn!
?Bond came to the conclusion that Tilly Masterton was one of those girls whose hormones had got mixed up. He knew the type well and thought they and their male counterparts were a direct consequence of giving votes to women and 'sex equality.' As a result of fifty years of emancipation, feminine qualities were dying out or being transferred to the males. Pansies of both sexes were everywhere, not yet completely homosexual, but confused, not knowing what they were. The result was a herd of unhappy sexual misfits--barren and full of frustrations, the women wanting to dominate and the men to be nannied. He was sorry for them, but he had no time for them.?
The Chrysalids - Ok, so you got horribly repressed by a theological and extremist society as a side effect of it's efforts to fight back against rampant mutation and radioactivity at all costs. But it's ok because now the tables are turned, you are the future, and you'll naturally displace and kill those retrograde non-telepaths!
28 Days Later - Man must overcome compassion and kill outgroup. Woman must learn compassion and romance man.
Limitless - You've been endowed with hyperintelligence? Yeah, your default state will now be that of a bloody yuppie. Fuck original intellectual endeavour.
Foundation - We are an advanced scientific foundation tasked with bringing order, science, and civilisation back to the entire galaxy. You ask if we practice critical thinking? Nah, we rely on this old dead guy who doesn't feel the need to explain himself *at all*, and whose work is completely unverifiable.
Source Code - Yeah, you've completely screwed up various other multiverses, but never mind, you get the girl (even if you've stolen the body of someone who, in that universe, would have survived anyway).
Inception - Screwing with someone's psyche is great! I mean yeah it's grossly invasive, but the guy's dad was a bit of a dick. It's helping him! I'm sure there won't be any unintended consequences - it went so well for the last person [http://xenlogic.files.wordpress.com/2010/08/inception-mal.jpg], right?
Starship Troopers:
--------------
Women can be better military pilots than men!
...It's because they're lithe and have faster reflexes and are naturally more empathic than hairy manly men
Also all the militaristic antidemocratic stuff.
-------------- Star Wars, Tolkien, etc - Moral Absolutism!
Reading through this you'd think that I really disliked all of the above, but most are among my favourite films/books - they manage to bypass any dubious message/moral input on strength of other qualities.
Here's two that I wasn't keen on at all: Never Let me Go and The Lovely Bones
In the former it just pissed me off no end that the main characters make only the most feeble effort to actually escape. The entire film seems to revolve around how much the characters supposedly love each other and blah, but apparently not enough that they'll actually, y'know, try to save each other from fucking mandatory organ harvesting. And this whole idea that they should be grateful for this 'pure' experience that they had together ('better to have loved and lost' etc) and make the most of the time they have/had? No.
The latter was a little different, but much the same general thing. The character learns, through the course of events, that anger, sadness, fear, jealousy are all somehow undesirable reactions to being brutally assaulted and murdered, and that it's far better to transcend such petty mortal impulses in favour of fleeting saccharine teen romance.
And yeah, it doesn't matter if Mr Serial-Paedo-Rapist-Murderer gets away, he'll *probably* get his comeuppance. In fact sod it, let's do away with the Police and Judiciary as well!
It's not even got the benefit of being self-sacrificing or something because she also chooses to
ensure that her remains will never be found and her killer will never be caught, something probably just a little bit upsetting to her family
Any Gears of War novel by Karen Traviss: all civilians are worthless, two-timing, shiftless scum who at best, are apathetic about the COG's heroic efforts to keep humanity alive and at worse are criminals who'd bury a blade between a soldier's shoulders to steal his rations.
I mean, I get the context of the universe is that humanity is fucked without an ultra-militaristic dictatorship and even then they are barely hanging on against the Locust, but there is not a single decent civilian character in any of the books!
Also: to hell with your family, the military is your only real family!
Karen Traviss is kinda weird like that. I did not read any of the Gears of War novels but if you read her Star Wars stuff, it follows a similar pattern. "Fuck those Jedi, the Mandalorians and their misunderstood ultra-militaristic society are really where it's at"
The Chrysalids - Ok, so you got horribly repressed by a theological and extremist society as a side effect of it's efforts to fight back against rampant mutation and radioactivity at all costs. But it's ok because now the tables are turned, you are the future, and you'll naturally displace and kill those retrograde non-telepaths!
.
Pokemon has told me, "Drop out of school, run away from home, cram animals into tennis balls, and do all of that at the suggestion of a scientist you don't know."
"And if you're under 15, dress in what a hooker would consider tacky."
Dawn is ten. Pokemon's fanbase loves Dawn's ass. She got a panty shot. Dawn is ten.
This is some other girl. I think her name's Hilda. She's not ten, She's 18. Which is slightly better. But still. What the hell, Japan?
The Chrysalids - Ok, so you got horribly repressed by a theological and extremist society as a side effect of it's efforts to fight back against rampant mutation and radioactivity at all costs. But it's ok because now the tables are turned, you are the future, and you'll naturally displace and kill those retrograde non-telepaths!
.
Ooops, spoilers - I always assume people aren't that interested in my fairly obscure 50's science fiction!
Bad things do indeed happen - the entire second half is rather more active and fast-paced than the first.
I haven't given away any actual plotpoints though - I was more referring to the attitudes expressed in a conversation with a newly introduced character (who Wyndham uses to expound on morality and evolution), rather than the actual events.
The Chrysalids is actually my favourite Wyndham book, but I can certainly see why people object to/are disappointed by the ending - it is basically the definition of a deus ex machina, with a bit of transhumanist arrogance thrown in.
Hm, what else...I guess we could say the original Star Wars trilogy, which apparently takes place in a galaxy populated by only three women (Princess Leia, Mon Mothma, and Aunt Beru) and one black dude, but that seems like kind of a low-hanging fruit, and I'm not sure it counts anyway since "Hooray for white men!" is not the message but just something he ends up saying with his casting choices.
Ironically, the Empire is supposed to have this whole "master race" thing going on, but most people never notice it because there's no real racial diversity among the Rebellion either - both diveristy among the human race, or just general sentient races. Then again, if the WWII allegory is being consistent, it kind of makes sense, given that many of the "Allies", as they're called, from WWII were pretty damn racist themselves.
Yeah you might want to skip over that one for multiple reasons. On top of passages like that, there's also the fact that the villain's plan in the book version is the very same plan Bond ridicules as impossible in the film adaptation, to steal the gold from fort knox. It's probably best if you just skip ahead to Thunderball once you reach that point in the series.
I sometimes get this feeling from works that are supposedly satire. It creeps up when I'm not sure where the satire ends and the cigar is just a cigar. It's especially true when I find the protagonist of a story appalling.
I remember reading Nikolai Gogol's Dead souls (or whatever it's translated as in English), and near the end it reveals the protagonist is a prick like it was some sort of a plot twist. My reaction was a confused "wait, were we supposed to NOT think this guy is a selfish creep from page 1?".
Then there was this book by Frederick Pohl where the protagonist cheats on his girlfriend, then viciously beats her when she gets upset about it and says something mean. He justifies it because "wolves show subservience by rolling on their backs and she should have done the same. Instead she let out a sob and shoved me on the chest". Later he intends to propose to her and thinks she will say yes. There are other points in the story that paint the guy as kinda thick but eh... Like someone already said, how many authors actually tell a story through a character they would personally despise?
Foundation - We are an advanced scientific foundation tasked with bringing order, science, and civilisation back to the entire galaxy. You ask if we practice critical thinking? Nah, we rely on this old dead guy who doesn't feel the need to explain himself *at all*, and whose work is completely unverifiable.
Some of the later books deal with the Foundation's nearly-blind trust and reliance on the Seldon Plan, and undermine it somewhat.
In 'Foundation and Empire', as a massive crisis threatens the Foundation, the Foundationers gather around Seldon's projector, awaiting the scheduled projection to guide them... only to find that Seldon's recording bears almost no resemblance to reality. History has significantly diverged. The Foundationers panic, forced to truly rely on themselves for the first time.
Later on, as the series details the Second Foundation, it shows how the Second Foundationers treat Seldon's work as a basis, but build and alter it significantly, and alter eachother's alterations. For them, it is mutable. In 'Foundation's Edge', the Mayor of the Foundation Federation decides at one point that she believes she knows better than the Seldon Plan, and the ending of the novel leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not she was right.
The second novel, 'Foundation and Empire', is the one that I would say undermines the Foundationers' blind reliance on Seldon's work, though.
Foundation - We are an advanced scientific foundation tasked with bringing order, science, and civilisation back to the entire galaxy. You ask if we practice critical thinking? Nah, we rely on this old dead guy who doesn't feel the need to explain himself *at all*, and whose work is completely unverifiable.
Some of the later books deal with the Foundation's nearly-blind trust and reliance on the Seldon Plan, and undermine it somewhat.
In 'Foundation and Empire', as a massive crisis threatens the Foundation, the Foundationers gather around Seldon's projector, awaiting the scheduled projection to guide them... only to find that Seldon's recording bears almost no resemblance to reality. History has significantly diverged. The Foundationers panic, forced to truly rely on themselves for the first time.
Later on, as the series details the Second Foundation, it shows how the Second Foundationers treat Seldon's work as a basis, but build and alter it significantly, and alter eachother's alterations. For them, it is mutable. In 'Foundation's Edge', the Mayor of the Foundation Federation decides at one point that she believes she knows better than the Seldon Plan, and the ending of the novel leaves it ambiguous as to whether or not she was right.
The second novel, 'Foundation and Empire', is the one that I would say undermines the Foundationers' blind reliance on Seldon's work, though.
Yeah, I know it gets somewhat addressed in later books, but I still find it slightly incredible that a society founded on science and reason would put such blind trust in what is essentially a self-styled prophet, even before
the Mule. I know that some of the main leads hypothesise or 'discover' that their lack of intimate knowledge of the Plan was vital, even as early as Foundation, but that's an external handwave, not internally consistent.
The Second Foundation had some knowledge of psychohistory itself in order to at least deconstruct the basis on which Seldon made his predictions and as you say, regard it as flexible.
It's a shame that Foundation is the best written one really, because the later ones make more sense!
That said, I don't want to be too critical - Foundation is... well... a foundation of modern science fiction, and is among my favourite grand-scope science fiction.
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