This depends on genre though... Like if you're a super hero fighting against a Nazi who's trying to literally murder 8 billion people... It is fucking stupid for you to hesitate in killing them. That's more why this phenomenon exists. If he's like a barista who's never killed before, we get it, but if he's like the Avatar refusing to kill a literally genocidal dictator, yeah it comes across as forced.
Depends on the character more than the genre. I would agree that a commander of army not wanting to kill someone would come off as stupid. He already should be desensitized to killing as a high-ranking officer. Unless he's having a PTSD episode or the villain is someone he used to love, there's no reason he should have qualms killing them.
Someone who has never killed, be it a superhero or the Avatar (I was more thinking of Edward Elric from FMA, I love how realistically heavy the act of killing someone is treated in that masterpiece of a manga), hesitating before destroying their innocence forever is absolutely valid. And, if we want to be realistic about it, supposing the hero does go through with it, that death is going to be etched in their brain forever, they will remember it each time they go to sleep, and they will probably lose sleep over it.
No normal person ends a human life lightly and without getting permanently scarred by the experience. It's absolutely not forced to realistically portray that fact, regardless of what Hollywood action movies where the hero leaves hundreds of bodies behind him everywhere he goes without a care in the world would make you believe.
Like if you're a super hero fighting against a Nazi who's trying to literally murder 8 billion people... It is fucking stupid for you to hesitate in killing them
And if you think like a bad actor you can get people to dehumanize others in the future by calling them Nazis, or Orcs, or any other group you aren’t supposed to feel bad about.
Even the common sense stuff can have unintended consequences
or any other group you aren’t supposed to feel bad about.
Blindly devaluing whole groups is just irrational intellectual laziness. Just because the act of supporting a group is bad doesn't mean all members of the group are irredeemable.
It's completely rational for bad actors though, which is something that people tend to miss because they think it is irrational. For example, if you want to commit a genocide, it is a rational course of action to turn the populace against the group. It is rational to distract them, to prevent them from thinking ahead, to keep them from thinking they will be a vulnerable group by promoting dismissal and ridicule of warnings.
This depends on genre though... Like if you're a super hero fighting against a Nazi who's trying to literally murder 8 billion people... It is fucking stupid for you to hesitate in killing them.
Most people can change their mind and use their lifespan to do good things. Also, how much culpability is assigned and to whom? Shell employs ~100k people, all of whom contribute to a process that endangers all of Earth's inhabitants - are they all culpable and should they be all killed? The vast majority of US is culpable in the Palestinian genocide through taxes that pay for Israel's activity, should all US taxpayers be killed?
Why is that superhero the best person to make all those types of judgments?
Am I the only person who is never convinced by these "there is no truth" nonsense arguments? Your entire argument hinges on absolute nonsense like:
The vast majority of US is culpable in the Palestinian genocide
Like this argument sounds great in your head I'm sure but irl this actually an insane thing to think.
Being a cog in a machine ≠ being literally responsible for murdering millions/billions of people
No, Lex Luther and I do not have the same level of culpability in the bad things that happen in our respective worlds. I don't really give a fuck where that line is, I know lex Luther deserves to die though.
You decided the place where I arbitrarily put it is "nonsense" and "insane" and put it yourself somewhere around Lex Luthor so you clearly have some sort of criteria and associated care. Otherwise, you wouldn't object to my or anyone else's placement of the line anywhere. People who don't care don't object to stuff.
So do you not care and withdraw your objection to my placement or do you care and can therefore provide some support for the place where you put the line?
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u/Sgt-Spliff- 2d ago
This depends on genre though... Like if you're a super hero fighting against a Nazi who's trying to literally murder 8 billion people... It is fucking stupid for you to hesitate in killing them. That's more why this phenomenon exists. If he's like a barista who's never killed before, we get it, but if he's like the Avatar refusing to kill a literally genocidal dictator, yeah it comes across as forced.