The kid became Ronald McDonald...
-
So if I kill while high on drugs it's a-okay, right?
moreso if you were drugged unwittingly, or against your will.
-
I would not have Ellie kill Abby. I'd keep the ending the same but have Abby be the one with the upper hand at the end of the fight, then she decides not to kill Ellie. It makes more sense to me that Abby would see that killing Ellie will just perpetuate the murder cycle, as Abby did when she killed Joel. That's something Ellie can't admit to herself because she lets her anger guide her actions, even when it hurts her friends and loved ones. By letting Ellie go you are robbing Ellie of her vengeance, making her sacrifices pointless, which would hopefully show her that her violent ways only lead to violent ends for her and everyone around her.
I feel like that would be a better ending because Abby seemed more like the hero of the story than Ellie did. Ellie is definitely the villain to me because at a certain point in the game I stopped sympathizing with her. I think that is why Ellie having a change of heart at the end felt so off to me. We just helped her kill hundreds of people without shedding a tear. That person would not stop when they finally had their chance for revenge, especially with what it cost them to get there.
By letting Ellie go you are robbing Ellie of her vengeance, making her sacrifices pointless, which would hopefully show her that her violent ways only lead to violent ends
This more or less happens in the middle of the game, and it does not stop her. She's not ready to stop then, so she just invents new reasons to keep going.
We just helped her kill hundreds of people without shedding a tear. That person would not stop when they finally had their chance for revenge
I don't think this is true. I think you're looking for a simple way to understand why she did what she did, but in doing so, you're kind of reducing her to a cartoon character.
When Ellie found Abby, she was already strung up, starved thin, possibly victim of a lot worse, and in the middle of being executed. And now Ellie's come to beat her... more? There's very little satisfaction to be gained from this. There's very little to do here that would feel like victory.
When Ellie cut Abby down from the pole, she was already having doubts. When Ellie moves to the other boat, the way the camera follows her almost feels like she's about to get in and paddle away. She doesn't start on Abby until after looking at her own blood, as if it had to remind her why she was even there.
In that moment, I think Ellie had already given up. It was only through inertia that she continued. She might've been thinking, as you are, "if I'm not going to kill her, what was the point of all this?"
If Ellie were so focused on the uncomplicated style of revenge I feel like you're suggesting, you might ask why Ellie cut her down at all. Why not just stab her on the pole right there? Why threaten Lev to make Abby fight back? Ellie had plenty of opportunity, but she chose something approaching fairness instead.
This comment is already long, so I don't want to burden you too much further. But I don't think the deaths from elsewhere in the game don't weigh on Ellie either. I think she's fine with it in a "you gotta do what you gotta do" kind of way—if I remember, she was rattled after she tortured what's-her-name. And when she let Abby go, I don't think this is because she suddenly adopted a moral stance against killing people in general, I think it's because the weight of what she was doing, the weight of everything she had lost, and the deeply unsatisfying nature of her victory finally got to her.
And just a final note, none of this is a defense of Ellie as a good person. I agree with you that Ellie was a villain by the end. I liked her character more, but if only one of them could live, I did not think she deserved to; the game knows you have an emotional attachment to her from the previous game and tests the strength of that feeling very heavily.
-
This post did not contain any content.
Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge? That you?
-
Ah, so just from complete ignorance, then
Just referencing a longstanding meme in line with the OP, bro. I didn't realize not watching a single movie made me completely ignorant, but then I guess that's the ignorance in action. Anyway thanks for the unnecessary condescension over fucking batman
-
For me, the best version of this is Avatar: The Last Airbender. Aang spends an entire arc lamenting how he may need to spill blood and kill the Fire Lord. Meanwhile the very same Aang had previously sunk an entire naval fleet single-handedly.
How many thousands of sailors, most of them probably people drafted against their will, did you kill that day Aang? Remember when you literally sliced entire ships in half? Your hands cut through steel, would you have even felt the flesh you were cutting through? Or how about all those ships you sank? A fair number sank instantly. You think everybody got out safely from those ships? Or how about that time you destroyed that giant drill machine, the one manned by thousands of soldiers, outside the walls of Ba Sing Se? You think everyone managed to miraculously escape that fireball? And those are just the major battles. How about the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fire nation soldiers you casually tossed around like rag dolls with your powers of air, water, and earth during dozens of minor skirmishes? What are the odds you managed to toss all these men around like playthings and NOT have a few of them have their skulls bashed open on rocks when they hit the ground wrong?
The point of this is not to condemn Aang's actions through the series. His actions were fully justified, as he was fighting a war against an expansionist colonial military power. What he did was an objective good. But by the time he's hand wringing about having to kill Fire Lord Ozai, Aang had almost certainly already taken hundreds of lives. Hell, he probably killed hundreds just in that final climactic battle against the airship armada. The Hindenburg disaster saw 1/3 of the passenger and crew parish. And that was from an airship that crashed when it was already landing and close to the ground. Aang was dropping ships from miles in the sky. Maybe some soldiers with fire bending powers could somehow slow their own descent enough to survive, maybe they had some parachutes. But there's zero chance that Armada didn't have a fatality rate at least comparable to the Hindenburg disaster.
So Aang blithely kills hundreds of conscripts without a second thought. But then he has a crisis of conscience that takes multiple episodes to resolve, and that crisis of conscience is all about...Fire Lord Ozai? This is like if someone nonchalantly participated in the Firebombing of Dresden and then suddenly developed complex moral doubts about putting a bullet in Hitler's head. Aang had already killed hundreds of people that Ozai had sent to their deaths. No one was forcing Ozai. He wasn't a conscript. He had full autonomy; he's the absolute ruler of the Fire Nation. He doesn't even have a Congress or Parliament to answer to. He has absolute total moral responsibility for every evil thing the Fire Nation has done. Yet, when it comes to actually holding the powerful accountable, suddenly Aang wants to talk about the morality of killing.
-
I get the vague impression that this is meant to subtly influence western society into believing that the masses aren’t truly people, that only the ones steering our collective wheels are actually human. Green arrow basically said as much for like… 5 seasons. Then it got weirder.
There's no conspiracy. It's just people being lazy about good writing.
Also it doesn't happen just in western society. There are plenty of asian movies which fall in the same problem.
-
She also didn't know he'd magically find a magical being that would give him to power to permanently strip Ozai of his powers.
Though, to be fair, he only found that magical being because he kept searching for a different solution. Had he given up and listened to everyone, he wouldn't have met the turtle.
-
Though, to be fair, he only found that magical being because he kept searching for a different solution. Had he given up and listened to everyone, he wouldn't have met the turtle.
Wasn't he already on the turtle's back when questioning the past avatars about his moral conundrum?
Had he chosen to listen to one of them, he would on the next day have still noticed that the island had moved away and found the lion head.
But I get your drift, he still searched within his own mind after his friends told him to finish Ozai off. -
Batman is super full of shit in this department
Bateman, on the other hand...
-
If you missed 69420, don't worry about it, because 69422 is 69420, too.
See, this is why I regret dropping out of high school.
-
Wasn't he already on the turtle's back when questioning the past avatars about his moral conundrum?
Had he chosen to listen to one of them, he would on the next day have still noticed that the island had moved away and found the lion head.
But I get your drift, he still searched within his own mind after his friends told him to finish Ozai off.wrote on last edited by [email protected]Sure, he was on the turtles back, but I think the show explicitly tells us the turtle only came because of his strong will to finish the fight without killing Ozai. Had he been convinced by his previous lives, his will wouldn't have been strong enough to summon the turtle.
Also, even if the turtle had still come and taught him the technique, he'd have been overpowered by Ozais spirit during the final confrontation. Aang only defeated him during their battle of wills because of his unwavering spirit.
-
For me, the best version of this is Avatar: The Last Airbender. Aang spends an entire arc lamenting how he may need to spill blood and kill the Fire Lord. Meanwhile the very same Aang had previously sunk an entire naval fleet single-handedly.
How many thousands of sailors, most of them probably people drafted against their will, did you kill that day Aang? Remember when you literally sliced entire ships in half? Your hands cut through steel, would you have even felt the flesh you were cutting through? Or how about all those ships you sank? A fair number sank instantly. You think everybody got out safely from those ships? Or how about that time you destroyed that giant drill machine, the one manned by thousands of soldiers, outside the walls of Ba Sing Se? You think everyone managed to miraculously escape that fireball? And those are just the major battles. How about the hundreds, perhaps thousands, of fire nation soldiers you casually tossed around like rag dolls with your powers of air, water, and earth during dozens of minor skirmishes? What are the odds you managed to toss all these men around like playthings and NOT have a few of them have their skulls bashed open on rocks when they hit the ground wrong?
The point of this is not to condemn Aang's actions through the series. His actions were fully justified, as he was fighting a war against an expansionist colonial military power. What he did was an objective good. But by the time he's hand wringing about having to kill Fire Lord Ozai, Aang had almost certainly already taken hundreds of lives. Hell, he probably killed hundreds just in that final climactic battle against the airship armada. The Hindenburg disaster saw 1/3 of the passenger and crew parish. And that was from an airship that crashed when it was already landing and close to the ground. Aang was dropping ships from miles in the sky. Maybe some soldiers with fire bending powers could somehow slow their own descent enough to survive, maybe they had some parachutes. But there's zero chance that Armada didn't have a fatality rate at least comparable to the Hindenburg disaster.
So Aang blithely kills hundreds of conscripts without a second thought. But then he has a crisis of conscience that takes multiple episodes to resolve, and that crisis of conscience is all about...Fire Lord Ozai? This is like if someone nonchalantly participated in the Firebombing of Dresden and then suddenly developed complex moral doubts about putting a bullet in Hitler's head. Aang had already killed hundreds of people that Ozai had sent to their deaths. No one was forcing Ozai. He wasn't a conscript. He had full autonomy; he's the absolute ruler of the Fire Nation. He doesn't even have a Congress or Parliament to answer to. He has absolute total moral responsibility for every evil thing the Fire Nation has done. Yet, when it comes to actually holding the powerful accountable, suddenly Aang wants to talk about the morality of killing.
wrote on last edited by [email protected]I like the way that Aang took Ozai's bending powers.
There are at least two good aspects about it:
-
Aang teaches the viewers that there are sometimes non-violent solutions to hard problems that appear at first glance as if violence was the only solution. And i think it's worth it trying to find these non-violent solutions. Aang was telling himself that he needed to kill Ozai after he spoke to the previous avatars on the Lion Turtle's back; he then just luckily encountered the Lion Turtle and found another way.
-
The other interesting aspect that i find about the Lion Turtle is that it teaches us that besides the bending of the four elements, Lion Turtles bent the energy inside humans, which i understand in the way that Lion Turtles drove human development forward through some process maybe similar to evolution(?), and that just opens up a very interesting potential for side-stories. What else did the Lion Turtles bend? What other tricks do they have?
-
-
I like the way that Aang took Ozai's bending powers.
There are at least two good aspects about it:
-
Aang teaches the viewers that there are sometimes non-violent solutions to hard problems that appear at first glance as if violence was the only solution. And i think it's worth it trying to find these non-violent solutions. Aang was telling himself that he needed to kill Ozai after he spoke to the previous avatars on the Lion Turtle's back; he then just luckily encountered the Lion Turtle and found another way.
-
The other interesting aspect that i find about the Lion Turtle is that it teaches us that besides the bending of the four elements, Lion Turtles bent the energy inside humans, which i understand in the way that Lion Turtles drove human development forward through some process maybe similar to evolution(?), and that just opens up a very interesting potential for side-stories. What else did the Lion Turtles bend? What other tricks do they have?
wrote on last edited by [email protected]There's more things that i like about the Lion Turtle. For example, it says to Aang:
"Since beginningless time, darkness thrives in the void, but always yields to purifying light."
What does that mean? What is the purifying light that the Lion Turtle talks about? Is there, maybe, a psychological state which conquers the harmful behavior without exercising violence?
Maybe that message only makes sense to Aang, because he's an air nomad and believes in these ways. Maybe the Lion Turtle would have said something different to a water bender, or to another person in general.
What would the Lion Turtle have said in that case?
-
-
Trevor scares me. He feel so real.
There are really guys like that out there. One of the things I like about the character is even though he's a psychotic murderer, he's also loyal and will do anything for people he perceives as his friends (even if they'd rather he not come near them). There's a good person in there somewhere, but he was either born with the mental problems or made that way through a traumatic childhood. Or both.
-
Aang was very explicitly not in control of himself during the invasion of the north, and he became scared of his power due to his experiences with the avatar state.
The whole moral conundrum is about him consciously choosing to kill the Fire Lord. Yes, he most likely caused deaths before, but not consciously & deliberately.
I dunno, I think that take lacks a bit of object permanence. Just because you don't have to see the killing directly, doesn't mean you're any less morally responsible. Shielding soldiers from the direct outcomes of the violence they cause is like the defualt way of programming them and getting them to continue. A big reason why the US uses drones so much because its easier to get someone to press a button behind a screen than shoot someone in front of them.
Causing many many deaths not consciously or deliberatley is worse IMO if you wanna judge the two against each other, it shows a flippance with lives and a lack of consideration of consequences of ones' own actions. Killing Ozai woulf have been pointed and deserved, one death with a direct positive effect, which in my eyes is much more valid and less morally questionable than hundreds of offscreen deaths.
-
I dunno, I think that take lacks a bit of object permanence. Just because you don't have to see the killing directly, doesn't mean you're any less morally responsible. Shielding soldiers from the direct outcomes of the violence they cause is like the defualt way of programming them and getting them to continue. A big reason why the US uses drones so much because its easier to get someone to press a button behind a screen than shoot someone in front of them.
Causing many many deaths not consciously or deliberatley is worse IMO if you wanna judge the two against each other, it shows a flippance with lives and a lack of consideration of consequences of ones' own actions. Killing Ozai woulf have been pointed and deserved, one death with a direct positive effect, which in my eyes is much more valid and less morally questionable than hundreds of offscreen deaths.
My argument isn't that Aang didn't see the killing directly, it's that he was possessed by a very powerful and angry spirit, so he didn't have control over his actions.
Also, Aang managed to achieve the same effect - arguably an even more positive one - by not killing Ozai. Sure, killing him would have been simpler, but the show directly shows us that it would not have been better.
-
This post did not contain any content.
This is something I loved about Hitman. Theres a bit of set dressing appeal around violent infiltration, but by and large, 47 uses social manipulation, knocks out only a few people, and only kills his targets, who are terrible people that make the world worse.
It also has a nice quote in a cutscene. (Paraphrased)
“We don’t take sides. ICA always remains neutral.”
“I hate to break it to you, but neutrality is a side. It’s the side of the status quo.” -
This post did not contain any content.
Kinda like how we get people like trump for president, or any wealthy powerful person for that matter. Like the serialized fictional bad guy, they get away with it and keep getting to do shitty things because the hero can never just end the antagonist. All this fighting and legal consequences for the rabble, but when comes to actually punishing the rich or powerful person? Nah…they’re (job creators, too big to fail, might hurt their future, etc.) They go low, we go high…and do nothing.
-
Could you imagine?
“For the crimes of economy-scale larceny, murder, environmental collapse, bribery, tax evasion, and, uhh, sexual battery of a pack of golden retrievers, how do you plea?”
“C’mon, I’m just a little guy!”
“D’aww”
sexual battery of a pack of golden retrievers,
He isn't even going to get the chance to plea for his life. That's a summary execution right there, I should think. Gag him and insert the burning electric wire 1 in./min, starting at the toes.
-
Fuck that. Deus ex machina is just a fancy way to say bullshit writing that disregards everything. If they wanted that kind of story they should have used a different character.
I agree they should've handled it better. Wondering who was doing all the killing doesn't really have much of a catch when it is quite literally used mostly as a deus ex machina. Very lame manipulative levels of intrigue instead of actual character development being interesting on its own.
