Complaining that a character didn't "suffer the consequences of their actions" or didn't "get the punishment they deserved" is petty.
Many Americans seem to have this thing where they believe every single story ever has to be a didactic Aesop fable where everyone gets their just desserts. But stories aren't limited to being that. They can convey all sorts of intents and experiences for you to make all sorts of conclusions.
If some character did something morally questionable and didn't get severely punished, I usually don't get riled up about that. That's just how things happened here. Real life doesn't always end up with everyone getting punished for their crimes either, I'm sure everyone here has at least one or two questionable things they've done at some point that went unpunished. That's just how things are. The story doesn't have to teach you that bad things never pay or whatever, you're not five and no one said there's any obligation for the story to do that.
The only times I get annoyed at lack of consequences or punishment is when it's a character I already dislike. Which brings me to my point that complaining about muh consequences is just a roundabout excuse to harp on a character you dislike to begin with. If a character you like did something morally questionable and got away with it you wouldn't be bothered. Odds are you'd be jumping through hoops justifying them.
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We get mad in real life too when evil goes unpunished.
Would you get mad if I said I once stole some comics from a kid in 4th grade and never got punished for it?
And I mean that was a shitty thing to do BUT realistically there was no way I was going to get my hands on those otherwise
The single periodical comic format was incentivizing me to steal
>I stole
>I didn't even bother to ask if I could borrow first
you really are a fricking loser, holy shit
We can be proportional in our responses.
That's why the law is set up to allow for different sentences for different crimes.
And a 4th grader stealing from another isn't even something any reasonable person would consider criminal, just typical kids' misbehavior.
As for your motive a good parent would say that doesn't matter in this case.
How would answering yes or no to that be of any relevance to that anon's point that unfairness in general is something that's hard to get people to accept whether it's in fiction or real life?
As for me, that does make me a little mad seeing as how most kids that age understand that stealing is a shitty thing to do and even IF I wanted to chalk that up to youthful mischief that doesn't warrant such a harsh judgment, you're on Cinemaphile as an adult defending the argument that people should just accept unfairness so it doesn't seem like you changed all that much.
I just remembered that because of this thread and felt like reflecting, this isn't meant to support OP's point
Honestly knowing nothing else I'd assume you're a c**t.
I had books stolen from me in middle school that I worked hard to save up in middle school. Realistically, if I had found out who stole them, it'd have taken me all my self control to keep from breaking their knee caps.
being mad is one thing, calling the plot bad because a character got away with something is another.
>commits an act so stupid it has terrible ramifications for the world over
>you cant say the plot is bad
Can morons like you frick off? Im being serious how do idiots like you function?
Plots are commonly built on characters dealing with ramifications of someone's bad decisions. Playing the blame game instead of that is petty and achieves nothing. Into The Woods had a whole musical number about that lol
Yes, and when they make even worse decision that have even more terrible ramifications you have to look and go: what the frick just happened. Why is the villain more in the right then the Hero.
Is this bad writing?
>. Playing the blame game instead of that is petty and achieves nothing.
Bullshit playing the blame game is how people get shit done in real life
>Alright this shit doesn't work, who was responsible for it? Comb over his work and see where the frick up started. Lets see what we can learn from this.
By never acknowledging someones frick up and holding them accountable they never grow as people.
>Why is the villain more in the right then the Hero.
If you're thinking this you probably hated the hero to begin with and were looking for a reason to interpret their actions in a bad light and assume the worst, while assuming the best about the villain. See: Owl House with Belos, Hazbin with Adam, Azulagays as an extreme case, etc.
>Bullshit playing the blame game is how people get shit done in real life
People get things done by fixing mistakes, either their own or someone else's. Placing the blame is a very small factor in this. For instance, if you have a faulty piece of hardware or code, you can fix that without even having to know who caused the issue in the first place.
>they never grow as people
Characters in a story are not obliged to change into who you'd prefer them to be. They are designed wirh specific personalities in mind.
Not that you do shit about it.
Where do I start?
>complain about that in real life too
>have morons like OP make excuses for why the local dindu was in the right to lasso and rape a woman
That's a lot of words to say "I FRICKING HATE MORALgayS".
Anyway having an obnoxious character that simply exists to piss of the audience only to not do anything with that resentment is tone deaf and narratively unsatisfying.
Plus, it would be one thing if the character got away with it and rightfully earned it through being cunning and talented as opposed to them being handed a deus ex machina. Shit like that is why pic related is so hated and why no one hates characters like Evil Morty.
Stories aren't real life.
They are meant to entertain inform and teach
If a piece of shit, whoever you are obviously defending, gets away with fricked up shit then it leaves a bad taste in the mouth of people who look unfavorably upon whatever they did, feel terrible because someone got away with something and begin to not care abuot anyone inthe story, and are taught subconsciouly that immorality and evil go unpunished and that is normal.
You are a piece of shit.
No one fricking likes MUH SMURT CHARACTER GOT AWAY WITH EVIL either.
They just empathize with the idea of a plan happening and going smoothly.
The fact that you are NEVER shown the true cost of their OH SMURT victory is a trick of the medium and story.
Not acceptance that it is good and correct.
No, a lot of people evidently like to associate with an evil plotting character due to moral freedoms that come with it. Look at Death Note's success, and that's considering Light on his own is a very flat character that never really changes or gets his views challenged, but that doesn't matter because people watched it for the thrill of the evil mastermind being chased and striving to outsmart and deceive everyone.
People who wanted their EDGY PHASE did.
We KNOW this dude is an evil piece of shit and that he was doing evil shit
We don't want to be preached to about the rightness of his obvious evil or for someone liek the joker to constantly get away with the most horridly evil shit
It's awful and leaves a bad taste in the mouth of everyone.
>No one fricking likes MUH SMURT CHARACTER GOT AWAY WITH EVIL either.
>They just empathize with the idea of a plan happening and going smoothly.
but you're wrong though. evil is fun. people play evil characters in games. you're just autistic.
>and why no one hates characters like Evil Morty.
They only work because everyone else is just as bad as them; some, (if not many) being way worse.
Moralgays are usually the shittiest people and project their shittiness onto other people.
Take all those big bible thumping pastors who preached against those evil homosexuals and drugs.. only to be found with drugs and male lovers.
Nothing I love more then people who are unironically evil pieces of shit who are DESPERATE to shit on anyone or anything good by using HYPOCRICY and saying that becasue that person over there did something then all the evils of the world are permitted.
Worse kind of people.
You are brainwashed, there are more people who didn't do it than who did.
Sure anon. Don't even get me started on all the moralgays crying over e-girlsho content that get exposed as actual pedos.
that's more the fact that politicians or heads of a relevant political origination are virtually all pedos.
Not talking about politicians, rando moralgays on social media.
it'll be fun to see what's in what your hard drive. you're stupid, you probably just put your shit in a "hidden file".
>NOOOOO DON'T ATTACK MY HECKIN HYPOCRITICAL PASTORS NOOOOOOO
The audience is not a hivemind. Not everyone will hate the character that you do. Plus not all stories are meant to be satisfying in the first place. Stuff like Se7en or the Shoujo Tsubaki anime or Blood Meridian isn't meant to be satisfying.
Aren't you taking this too personally? Like you said, stories aren't real life. But that doesn't mean they can't showcase specific experiences and aspects of it that don't necessarily fit into a neat mold of morality.
Not every character who does something questionable is a piece of shit. But even if they do questionable things on the regular, there's plenty of fiction about anti-heroes who do questionable things but are still framed as narratively in the right compared to even worse characters. Narratively, the existence of such a character can bring in the aspect of having to tolerate things you don't necessarily fully approve of, like we all do in life. The other characters might be against what the offending party is doing but for one reason or another they're forced to put up with them. If nothing else, that's a "lesson" you can teach too, that not every problem in life can be solved by just killing whoever annoys you.
holy wall of text
to an extent i agree but what i think is far more annoying is when characters just succeed at everything and there's no struggle. it's also stupid when characters struggle and but they aren't changed or improved in any significant way
Not every struggle is supposed to lead to a personal rediscovery. That kinda goes against the nature of serialized fiction to begin with, it wouldn't even look natural if a character was rediscovering themselves with every monster-of-the-week, though feel free to point me to any examples of this if you know them.
i don't mean monster of the weak. i mean big character arcs that take place over long periods of time, or actually showing a character training mentally and physically for something to achieve a goal
I think there's only so many ways you can tie training to some sort of personal development.
I think by
>Americans
what you actually mean is
>autists
OP, though there probably is a lot of overlap between the two on Cinemaphile. There is plenty of American media without happy endings and with morally grey characters, but it's not the sort of media that appeals to autistic manchildren who only enjoy childrens' cartoons.
Azula and Catra did nothing wrong, it was war.
Shit like 'war crimes' is made up garbage the winner does to feel morally superior about themselves.
>Azula and Catra did nothing wrong
False
>Shit like 'war crimes' is made up garbage the winner does to feel morally superior about themselves.
True
During war, conventional morality flies out the window. That's not a good thing, wars aren't a good thing in general. But if you let the war happen, no one's going to be playing nice. It helps that real-life wars aren't usually caused by a sudden aggression of a colonialist nation but rather a complex web of geopolitical factors.
Azula literally goes crazy.
Agreed
The general populace simply want to see bad guys be punished.
While writers aren't obligated to depict bad actions in fiction having consequences (except maybe in baby shows that are meant to teach morals) when you do that you should be comfortable with the audience saying "I sure wish he got punished".
Not to mention getting the audience riled up is usually the intention in doing such a thing.
Yes, bad people aren't always punished in real life, but that's usually because of ignorance, In stories the audience is made aware of the crime.
>The story doesn't have to teach you that bad things never pay or whatever
Same way a story doesn't have to teach you that people get away with bad things sometimes.
A story being realistic doesn't always mean it's good, what matters is if characters suffering or not suffering the consequences supplement the story.
you're allowed to write whatever kind of story you want just like how people are allowed to call it shit and unsatisfying if the ending isn't enjoyable
a lot of people like horror movies where everyone dies in the end. the problem isn't that people don't like endings where the 'bad guy' wins or goes unpunished, it's that those endings can be executed poorly and thus make a story shit. just like how an ending where the good guys win doesn't automatically make a story good.
is OP still around? or will my response just ring into dead air
If you're
there's not much substance in your response for me to engage with, sorry. Like yeah, good execution good bad execution bad. Thanks for the insight. Also sky is blue and grass is green.
i'm not that anon
So you want me to figure it out or..?
i wanted to see if OP was asking genuinely or just shitposting. i will write out my response now.
>Many Americans seem to have this thing where they believe every single story ever has to be a didactic Aesop fable
i am slavic and i believe it. americans are the ones who love antiheroes and "loveable villains".
>I usually don't get riled up about that. That's just how things happened here. Real life doesn't always end up with everyone getting punished for their crimes either
art isn't real life. why should it be?
>I'm sure everyone here has at least one or two questionable things they've done at some point that went unpunished. That's just how things are.
so?
>The story doesn't have to teach you that bad things never pay or whatever
why not?
>The only times I get annoyed at lack of consequences or punishment is when it's a character I already dislike.
now i don't understand what you're talking about. who do you think people get angry at for not getting what they deserve? characters they like? what the frick are you talking about? you already disliked the character before seeing it, or what the frick? already dislike them after what?
>If a character you like did something morally questionable and got away with it you wouldn't be bothered
i would
>Odds are you'd be jumping through hoops justifying them.
duh, i like a character BECAUSE most of the things they do are morally justifiable, so there is a reason to look for such a thing in their seemingly unjust actions.
>i am slavic and i believe it. americans are the ones who love antiheroes and "loveable villains".
Not really. If anything, I think Soviet cinema, in spite of being propaganda-heavy, conditioned a lot of Slavic people to view things with more freedom of interpretation than Americans, who usually look for explicit narrative cues. Also you can compare the reception of stuff like Marvel Ultimate universe here (where it's dismissed as edgy slop) and in post-Soviet countries (where its' grittiness is largely preferred over the move naive black-and-white 20th century comics)
>why not?
Because it would be pretty boring if all fiction was one-note propaganda, comrade.
>who do you think people get angry at for not getting what they deserve?
If you admit to this so openly, you admit that your judgment is clouded by personal bias, which is why people usually try to hide it.
>duh, i like a character BECAUSE most of the things they do are morally justifiable,
People usually like characters for reasons besides their morality. Many types of anti-heroes are popular exactly for not being paragons of virtue.
>Marvel Ultimate universe
i don't know the comic.
>Because it would be pretty boring if all fiction was one-note propaganda
it doesn't have to be one-note propaganda to follow this basic rule: don't let the evil people win in the end.
>If you admit to this so openly, you admit that your judgment is clouded by personal bias, which is why people usually try to hide it.
i don't see where is the personal bias.
>People usually like characters for reasons besides their morality. Many types of anti-heroes are popular exactly for not being paragons of virtue.
so?
>i don't know the comic.
Well, either way. I see this tendency in Slavic people to look at a story that has a clear black-and-white morality and instead interpret it as a grey situation where everyone is somehow at fault, and the fact that the narrative clearly frames the heroes as in the right never seems to concern them. This might unironically be low media literacy, but it's interesting to observe either way, when a person just straight up subconsciously ignores the author's attempts to make them feel a certain way and busts out their own cynical interpretation based on their own life experience.
>it doesn't have to be one-note propaganda to follow this basic rule: don't let the evil people win in the end.
If you make a story about US vs. 1940s Japan, who should win in the end? The Japanese who performed atrocities on innocent civilians or the Americans who bombed innocent civilians to torturous death? Who should be the idealized flawless likable hero here? Which party did nothing wrong and doesn't deserve to suffer the consequences?
>i don't see where is the personal bias.
If you dislike someone, everything they do is offensive. This is as true to fictional characters as it is to real people. Therefore you're more prone to judge them than if you were an unbiased observer, therefore the validity of your judgment is questionable by itself.
>whats the point of this post then?
I am self-aware of it and try to not let it cloud my judgment. If I dislike a character, I will usually know it's not just because they got away with something and try to understand the real reason behind it.
>If you make a story about US vs. 1940s Japan, who should win in the end? The Japanese who performed atrocities on innocent civilians or the Americans who bombed innocent civilians to torturous death? Who should be the idealized flawless likable hero here? Which party did nothing wrong and doesn't deserve to suffer the consequences
your problem is your domain of analysis is too narrow a timeframe. such cheap comments are easy to make if you confine your analysis to the timeframe where the US and Japan were already belligerent. Makes it convenient to be a fence sitter in the cheap seats with hollow remarks like that. And then act like works of fiction must also conform to this world view vs the caricature you've assigned American media.
But you know, you do you.
Oh? Are you trying to say that if we look back far enough in history, we will discover that one of the parties here is the REAL aggressor/bad guy and therefore "deserves" all the bad things done to its populace by the other party?
If so, then you're demonstrating the slippery slope of black-and-white morality. By trying to simplify the complexity of the world to reduce it to simple didactic moral judgments, you inevitably come to a point where you start to dismiss some people's suffering as insignificant, unimportant, or "worth it for the greater good". Which people these are, depends on your ideology. To someone, you could be one of these people as well and killing you would be not letting the bad guys win.
>Are you trying to say ...
No.
And making the assumption that was what was being said, all that does is make a fallacy of extremes. A window of analysis can also be too large, but if thats all you took away from the point, or what you were ready to assign as the motivation... then despite your supposed acknowledgement of your bias, you're demonstrating remarkable selective judgement with the framing done here
>If so, then you're demonstrating the slippery slope of black-and-white morality.
this is likely the core issue that OP started with. But they are too uncomfortable to recognize their own discomfort with this has led them to retreat to a safe distance where they don't bear the burden of being scorched by the moral quandries at work. Thats fine, not everybody can deal with the heat, but its another thing to then start making remarks from the cheap seats with no skin in the game about others.
For what was posted, you think, based on the media it produces, that Americans are overly simplistic and petty in their world view about there being consequences for someone's actions and stories reflect this are unrealistic. But then OP not only admits to only seeing a consequence as desirable outcome for a character they individually disliked, but then also concocts a rather unsophisticated and highly myopic historic case example of 2 parties engaging in moral grey areas outside of including any other consideration that might cause them to see a possibility that the morality tilts one way more than the other.
and when that was pointed out, they bristled. Well, enjoy your moral clarity for whatever its worth. And enjoy whatever media you want with all the moral ambiguity you want, but don't expect many people to resonate with OP's sentiment after even a little bit of scrutiny.
I kept reading your post waiting there to be a point but there doesn't seem to be any.
>where they don't bear the burden of being scorched by the moral quandries at work. Thats fine, not everybody can deal with the heat, but its another thing to then start making remarks from the cheap seats with no skin in the game about others.
As you yourself asked earlier: why not? You talk about not being able to take the heat condescendingly but then immediately proceed to chastise anyone who may judge your stance from the outside looking in.
>not only admits to only seeing a consequence as desirable outcome for a character they individually disliked,
I'm just being honest. For the record, I implicitly assume most people I'm talking to have this kind of perception either way, because the vast majority of the time it's true. But unlike them, I can acknowledge that's not the primary reason for my dislike.
>concocts a rather unsophisticated and highly myopic historic case example of 2 parties engaging in moral grey areas outside of including any other consideration that might cause them to see a possibility that the morality tilts one way more than the other.
I mean, the matter of fact is, there was suffering caused by both parties. In order to tell a story about this conflict with black-and-white morality, you will have to ignore some of that suffering. You're free to argue why I should do that or why stories should do that.
By the way, if you're coming from the presumption that a degree of suffering is inevitable and forgiving some of it is just practical for getting anything done, that's a pretty important prefix to include before saying anything about black-and-white morality, don't you think?
To look at the cape comics side of this, the way I see it, it's largely tied to wrestling-style heel turns and face turns. When a hero gets turned bad for an event story or something, you as a reader know they're being done dirty, that this isn't who they normally are, and you should be willing to just let the ongoing narrative handwave it away rather than insisting that hero have to face permanent consequences for what happened in a story you probably didn't even like in the first place.
The other side of the coin is characters who were actual serious villains for years getting to change sides and the writers acting like they shouldn't have to face any punishment for the years of crimes they committed, or that anyone who has a problem with them is in the wrong. This is stupid, and there should be hard limits on how far a villain can have gone before he's absolutely off the table for redemption.
Harley is the only comic villain people have problems with being redeemed and let's face it, that's because they hate the idea of modern Harley to begin with, not because of anything specific she's done in the past.
Harley AND Ivy, anon.
The X-Men books have treated virtually every mutant villain like they're redeemed, no matter what they've done, and it's moronic.
The current situation in the Spider-Man books where Norman Osborn was magically turned good by an external plot device is very obviously a short term storyline that will eventually end, but a lot of readers are losing their minds over it.
As far as I know, Krakoa X-Men are full-on grey morality with no regard for conventional morals. It's all culture war bullshit though, discussions about storylines marred by that are hardly unbiased.
That's been going on for years before Krakoa was a thing, it goes all the way back to Magneto in the 80s with the X-Men protecting him from the authorities and other superheroes.
>Many Americans seem to have this thing where they believe every single story ever has to be a didactic Aesop fable where everyone gets their just desserts.
this is probably in the modern era just as much due to pressures from outside, like the Comic Code Authority than it is any cultural broad brushing.
>If some character did something morally questionable and didn't get severely punished, I usually don't get riled up about that.
ok. you're free to have your own preference.
>The only times I get annoyed at lack of consequences or punishment is when it's a character I already dislike. Which brings me to my point that complaining about muh consequences is just a roundabout excuse to harp on a character you dislike to begin with. If a character you like did something morally questionable and got away with it you wouldn't be bothered. Odds are you'd be jumping through hoops justifying them.
whats the point of this post then? Stupid Muricans and their overly simplistic unsophisticated world view of morality, but I fully acknowledge that if i don't like a character then I want them to suffer consequences of their choices based on my dislike of them and not any sense of morality?
weird flex.
Feels so good to be American and make the whole world seethe because of our superiority
Sneed is unlikable because Chuck is clearly more skilled and thus should still own the shop
Yes OP, thats how subjetivity works. Is an spectrum of black and white with a lot of grey. But you gotta admit that we are intelligent enough to recognize who is closer to blackness by many people just by comparing them to their more white counterparts. You put joker with supes, flash and uhhh, dunno fricking thor, and you can see that joker is the more dislikeable one just by recognizing basic morality.
This is just because of Jax so I'll use him as an example.
He can be a complete dick if that's the point but there's no clear reason why everyone just tolerates it. You could infer he has blackmail on others like Gangle but its weird no one else calls out this person doing heinous shit
>there's no clear reason why everyone just tolerates it
There can be plenty of potential reasons for other characters tolerating the abrasive character, depending on the setting. As you mentioned, they might have some leverage, such as being necessary for something, or perhaps other characters simply don't care to waste their time and energy.
>calls out
See, this is another thing. Whenever I see complaints about muh consequences it's always about how someone should totally "call out" the bad guy. As if the only possible narrative way to show someone's wrong is to have another character act as the audience's mouthpiece lambasting them with le epic speech that I can nod my head to and go "so true so true fr". I'd say it''s pretty immature to ask the story to invent a mouthpiece to literally spell out what the viewer is "supposed" to think.
And like I said, even if that would be satisfying to someone, there's artistic value to be found in denying that satisfaction.
>He can be a complete dick if that's the point but there's no clear reason why everyone just tolerates it.
IIRC they've been around him for years. By the point Digital Circus takes place, they're likely all used to his shtick. They don't LIKE IT, but they're used to it. Plus, it's not like they can get away from him - they're all confined to the same area, and Caine forces them to go on "adventures" together.
I don't have much to add but I will say it's interesting how only western animation circles care about characters getting their "comeuppance" or if something is "mean-spirited". Like yeah, I think it's cathartic seeing a total an ass get humbled and I generally prefer works to not be nihilistic unless there's good reason for it but I haven't seen this specific combination of language and mentality anywhere else. It's interesting to me.
Azula meltdown was designed to make us sympathize with her less. Book 3 wastes time with filler stuff and never gives us the WB of the fire kingdom. We get glimpses of Azula's personality in the beach episode where she has trouble enjoying normal activities. She's kind of broken but it's really hard to believe her behavior during the agni kai that's kind of her field. Having her break down after Ozai lost would have made a lot more sense as well if she had "pretended" to be friends with the avatar team. Book 3 was the most disappointing book, even more so after the sing se arc of book 2.
I guess I should've expected my thread to attract actual villain apologists.
And I mean, I don't even have a problem with that by itself, but you only do it for the attractive ones.
Azula is like the best character in ATLA. She could be ugly and I would still like her over the main cast.
maybe it'll happen later
Cartoon reviewers when the episode doesn't end in a 10 minute ass spanking montage
Something something, Justice doesn't exist in the real world so it should in fiction.
take your meds
?
>Americans think…
Stopped there commie opinions don’t matter
I feel like people wanting redemption arcs for villains would go over better if they didn't whitewash the shit the villain did and had the villain put in the work to try to make up for it.
Like if you had Tai Lung save the Valley of Peace to make up for attacking it, or if you had Harley Quinn save Gotham City or whatever. It's not so much that the villain did bad shit that pisses people off, but the way the writers dickride them.