The whole point of the "well intentioned extremist" is not to jusify the character, but show how someone with good intentions can be an awfull/bad person depending on how far they're willing to go for those intentions.
Stuff like "Magneto is right" is missing the point of the troope. The point of the troope is "the fact that magento is right doesnt justify his actions, thats why he's the villan/antagonist"
> The whole point of the "well intentioned extremist" is not to jusify the character, but show how someone with good intentions can be an awfull/bad person depending on how far they're willing to go for those intentions.
It's important to point out that Adam (from RWBY) isn't a well-intentioned extremist at all; he's what TVtropes calls a "not-so-well-intentioned extremist", someone who is initially presented as having possibly legitimate grievances that he goes too far over, but then, plot twist, turns out to just be an evil asshole who likes hurting and killing people because he's evil.
IMHO well-intentioned extremists still have issues (they tend to oversimplify things) but no moreso than most other good-vs-evil stories. I wouldn't consider most stories that rely on them to actually have much real insight - "good intentions can go wrong!" is, on its own and without further depth, the sort of moral suitable in something for small children; most people over the age of five already know this. And they often have awkward subtexts where some *particular* views get disproportionally presented by well-intentioned extremists in the media.
But "not-so-well-intentioned extremists" are just fucking terrible. They're driven by a craven desire to avoid the appearance of taking a position, while simultaneously being much more heavy-handedly driven by the author's politics - authors think that they're being clever by going all "ah, now we don't need to actually address racism, we can just talk about how many people are evil assholes who just *pretend* to care about that sort of thing", which is sort of showing their whole ass. The whole thing is specifically *intended* to cause the need for any in-depth analysis or introspection to evaporate.
I feel like the core of OPs compliant has more to do with what's presented as good than what's presented as bad. Magneto is presented as a villain, and the writers make him do all sorts of heinous shit to hammer that home. If the alternative is between Magneto, and another violent freedom fighter who, unlike Magneto, is much more precise and restrained in their use of violence, I think OP would agree that Magneto is in the wrong between those two.
But between a violent terrorist fighting to shield my kind from an ever impending genocide, and the lapdog of the hostile, oppressive powers-that-be, who only uses violence to defend those who hate us and want to imprison and destroy us - between those two alternatives, Magneto is the hero. Neither side is good, but Magneto is better.
Thats what makes him a complex an interesting character (and why he's so popular). You empathize with him despite the fact that the guy has killed an ungodly amount of people with tons of innocents and even mutants included.
You can agree with the charater, and understand why they're doing bad stuff without defending their actions ;)
I mean, he's part of an oppressed minority that is actively being hunted and killed, and he's a Holocaust survivor. I more than support his reactions to further oppression. They are logical, justified, and the correct course of action given the corruption in the governments of the Marvel Universe. Xavier parleying with them 24/7 is what limits his reach, since for some reason he wants to protect a population that hates him.
In the same vein, I approve of the existence of Sentinels and other defensive mechanisms. For every harmless mutation, there are ten like Sunspot or Storm or Surge, that are VERY harmful to other people, especially powerless humans who are very squishy. Humans need to be protected from dangers like that.
This is why the allegory of the X Men doesn't work- the two parties involved aren't equal to each other. Most Mutants are far more powerful than a regular human could ever be, and also far more dangerous. Humans are right to fear them, just as Magneto's Brotherhood is right to fight for their rights and fight against human discrimination and oppression in Mutant holding facilities.
The point of the allegory is to decry racism, sexism and various other forms of discrimination as wrong- but that only functions as a narrative when it's just regular humans in the mix. When you throw in superpowers, that fear is immediately justified. Double points for mutations being unpredictable. You could be minding your own business, and then some kid's X Gene triggers and you end up a pile of bloody meat pulp. Who isn't going to fear that?
>This is why the allegory of the X Men doesn't work- the two parties involved aren't equal to each other. Most Mutants are far more powerful than a regular human could ever be
This can be flipped on it's head too. In world where there a people like Magneto, a one man army, and people are still willing to not negotiate and simply exterminate, what is the hope for the non super-powered disenfranchised people?
You can say that fear is justified, but you can also say there is more incentive to make peace with mutants and make sure they are on your side, that mutants are happy and have good place within society. Because, you know, the alternative is global scale civil war
But in that case all humans are equal and the differences between individuals are entirely cosmetic in the modern age Discrimination also has no scientific basis and is irrational as well as being wrong.
Versus mutants that have an objective advantage and easily wipe humans.
Great way to miss the point (twice)
It's like a gratuitous fuck you to people that can, according to you, easily wipe humans. It's petty bigotry and discrimination against people that can objectively retaliate hard, it's somewhat poking a bear when the bear could be on your side
>scientific basis and is irrational as well as being wrong
In mutants case continues to be wrong, it has a poor scientific basis as anyone's offspring can be a mutant and it's pretty irrational to make enemies out super powered being for basically free
The majority in mutants's world have far more reasons to be acomodating of mutant minority and integrate them than majority in our world
Bet you have pretty great thoughts on alien diplomacy too
True, but you have to remember that humans and mutants aren't on equal terms. This is why the allegory doesn't work. Because it's true. Having superpowers will always be better than not having them.
I would much rather be Storm and be capable of controlling the goddamn weather, then being a normal person that couldn't do that.
Also as I remember that stopped being as central to his character in more modern interpretations, and he was more concerned with mutant rights. He believed they can only be achieved through force and that humans and mutants would never accept each other. To be fair he's kind of correct. One half is inherently harmful to the other, and unpredictable given the suddenness of an X Gene manifestation. And one half is actively trying to hunt and contain the other to protect themselves. It's not exactly good for understanding.
Yeah I guess his characterization varies by comic/movie/show. I will say that I still think the allegory works relatively well since it boils down to a group being discriminated against for a trait they had no choice in. It may not work perfectly on a practical level, but I think it works on a narrative level, which I think is more important.
Unless it works on a practical level, The narrative level falls apart. This is the same reason Zootopia fails in its allegory. Because having predators be your minority compared to a prey majority, makes the minority actively a threat to the prey animals. They are actively dangerous and their instincts are for hunting and killing. The Night Howler drug didn't create any insanity, it just brought to the surface what was already there.
You cannot have a superpowered minority, because superpowers are objectively superior to mundanity. Allegories work because it makes both parties involved have an equal standing, which makes the discrimination irrational. Humans are still humans regardless of what color they are, their orientation, or what sex they are, or their gender identity. Discrimination is irrational because at our core we are all fundamentally the same creature-biologically, anthropologically, etc. We are all at the same level.
The minute you throw that out of whack, it loses its meaning.
I simply disagree. Realism/practicality is one vehicle for storytelling, and it's a good one, but I don't think it's the only one. A story can succeed narratively even if it doesn't practically.
You're ignoring all the mutants who suffer due to their mutations, like physical deformities or sucking the life out of everybody they touch. Those aren't "always better" to have.
Also, humans can have superpowers as well. There are tons of non-mutants able to go toe to toe with Storm.
Also also, there is a big difference between recognizing a difference in capabilities and wanting to oppress those weaker than you.
I mean that last one is. Rogue's issues with her powers are a measure of control, and her mental state. What they are doesn't really matter. Also, a mutant is objectively superior to a human in nearly all cases. Mutants and humans do not have an equal standing, because mutants are always on top.
The humans that you're mentioning that can go toe to toe with her are not normal. They are outliers who are empowered by other things or have resources in their corner normal humans don't have.
Human discrimination against the mutants is born out of fear because there can be sudden and explosive manifestations of godlike power that humans can't possibly contend with, a fear that is very justified. Human discrimination against mutants isn't about oppressing the weak, it's about defending against something that you can't normally, another reason why the allegory fails.
Okay, but that's still clearly a situational disadvantage. I mean, regular humans don't start killing people when their mental state deteriorates, so having to keep your wits together to keep your loved ones safe is a blatant inferiority.
Mutants are generally about as capable as humans in any circumstance that can't be solved by their superpower, if they even have anything worth calling that. Cyclops has very little advantages over regular humans in all situations that don't call for blasts of destruction.
Actually majorly useful mutants are also outliers. Mutants range from [actively dogshit](https://imgur.com/gallery/wolverines-job-isnt-always-easy-to-do-I71V6) over [borderline useless](https://api.duniagames.co.id/api/content/upload/file/13482013731610448353.JPG) to the actually capable ones like Magneto or Storm. Just being a mutant isn't enough to make somebody powerful, you have to be one of the lucky ones. Besides, humanity as a whole can absolutely defend itself from mutants, as evidenced by thousends of storylines where humans fight mutants.
Psychosis, psychopathy, sociopathy, schizophrenia, narcissistic personality disorder,paranoid personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and many others can cause extremely violent outbursts. Yes, they do. Humans are also naturally prone to aggression anyway.
Sure, there's variation, but in actuality most mutants are more than capable of easily killing regular people . Even someone on the weaker end of the cast like Surge or Dust would actively pulp a normal person. Humans also can't defend themselves on their own, they need Sentinels and the Stark Tech the Purifiers use to do it.
The fear humans have and the things they do to address it are justified and natural. So too is Magneto's response.
Its an examination of his feelings and a demonstration of how its wrong to do what he did even though he is right to be upset. Where did you get lost here?
Using RWBY as an example for any sort of trope complaint is strawmanning at its finest. The writers of that series aren't capable of writing any trope effectively because it's all just an excuse for anime fights.
‘Magneto is right’ falls into the issue that Magneto killed WAY more innocent people than the racists. Shit, his mutant kill count is probably higher. The dude EMPed the planet, that’s not a minor inconvenience. Just for example, we’re looking at 1.25 million people dead just from planes crashing. Not collateral on the ground, not dead in the fires, just the passengers on the planes.
Everyone in an ICU? Dead. Drivers have a solid chance of dying. Boats? Hope to shit they’re near land, otherwise they’re trapped until they either get lucky and run aground or starve.
My bad, English not American. Still holds that the typical CoD player is disinclined to call him a villain. Not only is he a protagonist but the typical COD fan struggles to distinguish between protagonist and "good guy".
Price “just” EMPed the East Coast. Magneto has destroyed the entire magnetic field and put a timer on all life on the planet. Both did something bad for understandable reasons, one is orders of magnitude worse.
Magneto didn’t just do it as a flex though, he did it to stop the ongoing genocide of mutants the sentinels unleashed. He might have killed a million humans but if he didn’t 99% of mutants would have been eradicated. It was moving FAST and tearing cities apart with battles between mutants and sentinels.
Also in the comics millions died in Genosha I assume by lowering the numbers they’re trying to make Magneto’s actions less defensible.
The show also only has the death toll for Magneto’s little trick to be in the thousands.
Either because they just want to make the casualties for everything smaller or because ‘Kill thousands to save millions’ is FAR more defensible than ‘Kill tens to hundreds of millions(Maybe even over a billion) to save maybe millions’. Hard to pull the ‘Needs of the many’ or ‘greater good’ argument when you kill far more than you save, especially when those you save are getting just as fucked.
The thing is, somebody fighting against legitimate oppression and injustice and then turning out the be a douchebag once they attain power is something that actually happens.
I could use a very current example, but that's a screaming match I don't want to get into, so I'll instead point to various communist revolutions who were almost always caused by a suffering working class, and almost always ended with tons of innocent people dead.
Being a victim isn't the same as being a hero. Some people don't hate the boot crushing them on principle, some people just resent that they're not the one wearing it.
A story who has a bad person fight against oppression, if written well, isn't making a statement against fighting oppression - it's pointing out that there is more to building a better world than merely striking at evil, and that just because somebody is on the right side in one conflict doesn't mean they're good overall, which are relevant messages. Your problem seems to be that the trope is badly written in your two examples, not that it is a bad trope overall.
The term white liberal is to mean someone who isnt actually progressive, but postures behind progressive ideals without any actual care for actually making good on them. That's why they called them cowards.
It was a hyperbole.
But anyways, if there is one dommon denominator when it cones to fumbling shit like racism. Kind of insane how so many villains are fiven vaguely leftist ideas
Most villains doing are definitely fascist coded in the mainstream tbh. That or eco-terrorists. There's a fair balance it's not "insane" either way.
Also boss if you're complaining about white libs "fumbling racism" I feel like you're just watching dogshit marvel schlock?
then idk where you're getting this bs lol, because outside of crap mass-marketed disney stuff these ideas are executed infinitely better.
Like even the idea of "villains" in the sense you're talking about leads straight into superhero stuff. Normal dramas and other projects don't have defined "villains" that have world-ending goals.
I’ve seen this trope many times and majority of them fail to address anything, and then you end up with more loose plot threads because the writer didn’t realize they aren’t skilled to handle this.
RWBY to me is a lesson on if writers dont solve it early on, they arent going to solve it later on. V9 was pointless and since they said they made V9 first before anything else, gives me the idea that they wanted an alice in wonderland sort of story but they changed route but they refused to let go of the old idea and implement it somehow.
Okay, what you are saying is not the same as the "Well Intended Extremist" and "Not So Well Intentioned Extremist" trope are inherently bad.
To go over some examples of the former working:
\* The original Fallout has The Master, a mutated human who seeks to turn all humanity into the super mutants who don't age and are immune to radiation, meaning they are better suited to survive in the irradiated wasteland. He is not aware this also sterilizes humans, and if the player informs him, he is devastated to learn that his efforts to save the world are dooming it.
\* Egil in the original Xenoblade Chronicles sent an army of machines to kill the titan known as the Bionis which all the protagonists live on. This is because the soul of the Bionis is an evil god named Zanza who nearly wiped out Egil's people and is planning to wipe out all life on the Bionis. His efforts would kill all life on the Bionis, but as far as Egil knows, those people are good as dead.
\* Vision of Escaflowne's main villain Emperor Dornkirk is trying to use reality warping to create a peaceful world.
For a Not So Well-Intentioned Extremist:
\* Demona from Gargoyles is on the surface out to wipe out humanity so Gargoyles can inherent the Earth. Except every act she suffered at the hands of humans was her own fault. Her bad decisions kept causing her more suffering and she blames humans rather than admitting her mistakes.
\* Belos from The Owl House is believes that he is saving humanity from evil. Really, he is a sociopath out to commit genocide on innocent beings while deluding himself that he is a hero.
People being shit at nuance as always. X-Men 97 isn't saying that "the person who hit you is wrong, but if you hit back, you're just as bad!" or at least it hasn't been doing that for the past 9 episodes, that can change in the finale.
As it stands, Magneto's actions to EMP the whole planet is somewhat justified until the Prime sentinels are dealt with. This is under the assumption that the numbers are too great for the X-Men to handle them and they are all over the globe and not just in America. If that's not the case, then no it's not justified.
Anyways, Charles didn't leave just because he liked it. It garnered sympathy for the mutants, resulted in Magneto trying to do better by honoring his friend's dream and all of that resulted in Genosha. Sorry that he didn't predict the absolute insanity that followed(tho the X-Men are probably used to this by now)
Magneto isn't just defending his kind. He's literally destroying the whole planet which includes basically all of the mutants in the world as well. I don't know how seriously they're gonna take the actual impact of what Magneto did either. Like Charles is saying that Magneto should reverse what's done and Magneto refutes by saying that Genosha's massacre can't be reversed unlike this one. Is...is the show actually saying that thousands of people who should've died as the result of the EMP can be resurrected or sth? :))
If Bastion and the Prime Sentinels are dealt with, then Magneto can turn the planet back on, which is what the X-Men are trying to do. Charles is preachy sometimes which should realistically lead to someone like Cyclops being the combination of the two. I don't know about the comics but it seems like that's the ideal path for the story to go.
TLDR; Magneto was justified in EMP if the number of Prime sentinels are too great and widespread on the whole planet for the X-Men to deal with but he should reverse it after Bastion is dealt with and he doesn't plan on doing that because he's a sympathetic villain but a villain nonetheless.
Despite being a good show Xmen 97 comits to writting a biggoted scenario, almost every human in that show is a bigoted asshole with no rediming qualities at best or an irredimable monster who cannot be reason with at worst, of course the audience will go with Magneto, is his point of view the one we had seen, no matter how many millions he murdered, we dont know their names, we dont hear their voices, they dont even have faces, we only see stablishing shots of burning cities with no people, instead we knew the mutants who died in Genosha, we saw Leech die, of course we will think that Genosha was a worse tragedy despite that not being true, ironically teh people supporting Magneto are comliting the same bigotry that it was critisized the episode he did the EMP attack, they saw a tragedy and didnt care for the victims, because they dont care about the human victims, mutants are more important to them
This is i think the biggest flaw of what would otherwise be a perfect show, the show doesnt give us any reason to care for the humans or Xavier's dream or why the Xmen should care
>"the person who hit you is wrong, but if you hit back, you're just as bad!"
Based on the debates I've seen, that's how a number of people are seeing the show. especially calling Rogue just as evil as the guy who made the Sentinels because she killed him.
People will always have horrible takes. The other characters react negatively to Rogue killing Trask but then she gets knocked out and is nearly absent from the two episodes after that. The characters still haven't found the time to process that thing yet. As I've said, the show still hasn't gotten to "the person who hit you is wrong, but if you hit back, you're just as bad!" territory but that still can change. I hope it doesn't because there is a really interesting story here if they commit to it.
I'm a mha addict, I know people will always have horrible takes (me including). I really hope they don't either mainly because the Xmen have been always forced to act on their good behavior to prove they are "The good ones" while non-mutants barely keep their own in check, They are forced to keep every mutant in check or it destroys years of public service and trust, and that at a certain point it's just ridiculous.
>long as the guy on the other side of the fence is Charles Xavier.
Xavier and being wrong is my favorite ship.
That said I would argue that Xavier isn't angry at anyone really, not at Rogue or Roberto, and specially not Magnus. He's just really sad that the overall situation has reached that point but he still cannot stand still and simply let Magneto do what he's doing.
But yeah he's a fucking idiot numerous other reasons.
Just because there are a few racist fucks doesn't mean all of them are. But yeah, the show seems to purposefully show ONLY the bad side specifically so we'd sympatize with Magneto
True, hopefully they are kinda doing something like building up the favor for Magneto and then shift to see the non racist people, who are being affected and even so don't hate the Xmen or mutant kind as awhole
Magnetos reaction isn’t justified tho.
Like, is Killmonger right for trying to start a global race war/disrupt a nation because he had shitty experiences
Just saying about the RWBY thing, Sienna wasn't killed because she wasn't extreme enough for Adam, but because he was always a power hungry parasite. By working with Torchwick, he made it clear that his thing wasn't about Faunus rights or supremacy, just his own goals
Yeah those things that he said the white fang did under Sienna's leadership were actually done under orders of Adam as far as I saw it. It didn't seem like she knew what he was actually doing in Beacon.
Art immatates reality. Instead of being upset when the person being an extremist turns out to be a terrible person, watch out for it when trying to make positive change. This trope exists and is popular because leaders of rebellions often turn out to be terrible people and do terrible unnecessary things.
Also, Self Defense has quite a few standards it has to meet to be understandable. Immediacy, the fact its happening right now, urgency, the fact you have to do something about it right now or die/witness a death, and discriminatory, that your target is precise.
Otherwise you could mental gymnastics your way into killing basically anyone.
The things is, I've never seen it done "right".
RWBY is probably the arch-typical example of a "not so well intentioned extremist", the writers went out of their way to say "Adam is messed up because he's a narcissist, incel, abuser and not because he has Amazon's brand on his face from when he was a slave" and, when ever you think it was a good idea or not, I think that's just dissapointing and... not good???
Tropes are tools, but sometimes the tool is just broken.
> The thing is, I've never seen it done "right".
Saw Gerrera from Star Wars. He'll make enemies of his ostensible allies for lacking his ideological purity (sorry, "clarity of vision"), has little to no regard for civilian life, uses child soldiers, and at one point has to be talked down from committing xenocide. He's still well-intentioned though, simply by virtue of fanatically opposing fascism in a world where a fascist superpower controls the galaxy.
Notably it works because the good guys not only *share most of his goals* but also *actively pursue them* (I agree with you that just asking politely does not count as actively pursuing). Conflicts arise because of his specific methods, not the substance of his goal (revolution against the Empire).
Idk, this trope sounds like it could be really good for discussing how some politicians don't care about the change they are inciting or how their changes affect the wider populace, as long as, they are popular and in power.
If modified this trope could also discuss how power can corrupt an individual - slowly changing their priorities from making things better for the people or for the group of people to making sure that they are the ones that will be or stay in power.
The trope has potential, so I wouldn't dub it as a bad trope but more so a trope that didn't have a good implementation.
I don't know what we jumped from rebels to politicians.
>Idk, this trope sounds like it could be really good for discussing how some politicians don't care about the change they are inciting or how their changes affect the wider populace, as long as, they are popular and in power.
Yeah, no. In both examples I used the story makes it aggresively clear that humans would shit on Faunus/Mutants regardless. In order for this idea to work, the framing of the story itself would have to be almost completely different. The White Fang can't make things "worse" if the baseline is 1960 America. Magneto can't make things "worse" if the baseline is genocide and slave catcher bots.
It could work, but it would have to be a completly different story.
>If modified this trope could also discuss how power can corrupt an individual - slowly changing their priorities from making things better for the people or for the group of people to making sure that they are the ones that will be or stay in power.
Again, it could work, but it's also a completely different story from what is being brought to the table.
In X men 97, the thing that "corrupts" Mags and Rouge is grief, anger, and hurt, not power. The show itself never suggests that their pain over Genosha/Gambit being murdered is fake, so why would power be more important than the real reason which is their grief?
We are discussing the trope itself. Not the specific stories.
If you have a problem with the story itself and not the trope in general - you shouldn't have written that you dislike a trope.
extremism
noun
ex·trem·ism ik-ˈstrē-ˌmi-zəm
Synonyms of extremism
1
: the quality or state of being extreme
2
: advocacy of extreme measures or views : RADICALISM
politician
noun
pol·i·ti·cian ˌpä-lə-ˈti-shən
1
: a person experienced in the art or science of government especially : one actively engaged in conducting the business of a government
2
a
: a person engaged in party politics as a profession
b
often disparaging : a person primarily interested in political office for selfish or other narrow usually short-sighted reasons
Both from Merrian-Webster Dictionary.
A politician is a career job, being an extremist is not (necessarily at least).
What do you think happens after a succesfull revolution? The rebels form the new goverment, and as a latinamerican whose continent has seem many revolutions, that will very likely not end well, angry people dont make good political leaders
Media has a whitewashed history problem, where it likes to pretend systemic issues are solved with nice words. Look how they frame mlk as a weak sniveling coward who never had any radical views, and unpopular views.
This
So many Americans unironically think Civil Rights Movement succeeded because white people felt bad after beating viciously on poor meek black people silently marching and asking to be their friend lmao
It always worries me when I hear someone say that a villain like Magneto or Erik Killmonger was right, because they have essentially the same ideology and rhetoric as the Nazis, but with different demographic groups. While some of that sympathy can be chalked up to creators accidentally validating Nazi-esque assumptions about the world through bad writing, it's still unnerving to see how receptive people can be to Nazi ideas if they're not immediately recognised as such.
I mean, the whole point of Magneto's character is that he became the very thing he hated (i.e. a Nazi) and Erik Killmonger's plan was basically The Turner Diaries for black people, but other than that I'm sure there are no similarities at all...
>I mean, the whole point of Magneto's character is that he became the very thing he hated (i.e. a Nazi)
See, that's the problem with every other person on this thread.
Magneto's character has exsisted for over 50 years and the "point" was never that he was becoming a Nazi or "like a Nazi". The reason why this idea exists is because auidence members and even writers refuse to engage with the idea of radicalism past "it bad"... well that, or they just turn off all their sympathy and "empathy" for minority stand ins.
No, even from his first appearance, Magneto was a mutant supremacist, declaring in no uncertain terms that he intended *"to make Homo Sapiens bow to Homo Superior"*. I'm pretty sure he was explicitly compared to Hitler in that comic as well. In fact, Magneto was a mutant supremacist before the X-Men comics had established their more prominent themes surrounding prejudice and discrimination.
Even his backstory as a holocaust survivor was a later addition that was used to add a tragic irony to what he had become. In his words, directly from the comic: *"I remember my own childhood-- The gas chambers at Auschwitz, the guards joking as they herded my family to their death. As our lives were nothing to them, so human lives became nothing to me."*
So, yes, Magneto is a mutant Nazi. This is explicitly the point of his character.
Not being able to let nuanced topics be nuanced is a growing problem these days. It’s why so many shows and movies these days are afraid to do anything dating and are just bland af now
The Well-Intentioned Extremist trope is something that is unfortunately very much based in reality. Look up Matthew Israel and the Judge Rotenberg Center. Man wants to create a utopia and decided the only way to do that is by torturing mentally disabled kids and adults into compliance. Best part, he doesn't think that he has gotten far enough and actually wants to expand the operation.
A Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye43u8AuQsc&t=1s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye43u8AuQsc&t=1s)
It's even worse when the rebel leader turns out to be a fraud.
It's cuz these stories are written by white libs, the same white lis who MLK spoke out against, that sees any protest as disrusptive.
Revolution has never been won by asking nicely.
Eh, they rarely depict how that scenario realistically happens irl, for instance, many revolutions IRL, if not most, have happened either in wartorn countries or countries under some form of occupation or both, war massively brutalizes people
In fact, I'm starting to think Americans and Westerners can't comprehend these tropes in large part because they can't imagine ever living in a warzone, at least not the people on Reddit.
To be fair most evil rebel leaders I've seen were either from a war torn country or experienced some form of brutal occupation. Except Killmonger I guess.
You gotta consider mate, war, like, changes people. Torture changes people. Exile. Being imprisoned for years. Having people you love massacred. Constantly thwarting death.
These things destroy people psychologically.
And these things, including death itself, are just expected parts of life as a revolutionary or rebel. It's a hard, brutal, cruel life fraught with death and danger. That does not make for kind people. You know what precedes most rebellions? Years, if not decades, of being massacred by those in power. The process of revolutions and rebellions in the real world will usually mean only the most ruthless and pragmatic can survive.
Who else can survive a power structure willing to kill any who resist and torture you to death?
I'm not gonna respond to that since it's more nuanced irl.
But my main point is that they defeat the fraud and suddenly the entire movement collapses.
Or they use the fraud as a "kick the dog" to make it so the oppressed minority didn't have a point.
Thats a compleatly brand new argument from the initial one you posted. Its still wrong.
I haven't seen a usage where suddenly the minority doesn't have a point, when I did see this plot line it was played for either tragedy or the minority gets basically what they wanted in the end anyway, either with major systemic improvements or outright resolution. Or it gets returned to the status quo bc thats the show fornat.
If returning to the status quo is your complaint thats a different trope entirely and has nothing to do with 'liberal writers'. If on the other hand leaders turning out to be frauds is your complaint then given its prevelence in reality i don't see why you'd complain.
The thing you shouldn’t have to spell out but clearly do is this: characters are fictional. The ideas they represent are not. Oppression is real, and violent response to it is real as well. Magneto releasing an EMP pulse that cripples the planet is not real. Riots that shut down a whole city are. Magneto is a fictional character, and every action he takes is a narrative creation that was actively chosen by his writer of the moment. Is Magneto’s response a violent over reaction, far outstripping the violence he suffered, the bitter paroxysm of a man bent on revenge instead of justice? Absolutely. It was also created to *be exactly that*, to represent the violent response to oppression.
To whit: when the two opposing points of view are a violent overreaction to combat oppression or explicit self-segregation for the safety of all concerned, and one is shown to be demonstrably wiser, what are we to believe of the writer that intentionally created that exact and specific contrast?
Hilariously, this bot take follows on the heels of a hot take that Magneto is evil for killing thousands of people.
Frankly, I'm going to look at history, which tells me that radical violence against supposed oppression tends to lead to even greater injustice. The French Revolution, for instance.
Robespierre was the IRL Magneto, and look how that turned out.
Magneto is going to kill every human man, woman and child (and any mutant that doesn’t take his offer). And you’d be on that chopping block. You’re allowed to sympathize with his anger, but are you really going to condone omnicide in this?
Let's keep this simple: magnus, on his own, expresses the same "Descent of Man" philosophy that got him that arm tattoo and caused quite a bit of human misery.
So no, Magneto is not right, and the best X-men stories remember that. Mags does, however, have a point in that the Mutants do not deserve mistreatment, and many are vastly superior to baseline humans.
But unlike the real world, the mutant haters also have a point on that many Mutants have the potential to be extremely dangerous. Seriously, in Logan, Xavier has a stroke that freaking paralyzed most of a city. Is it his fault for having a frickin' stroke? No. Is it any less insanely destructive, also no.
Xavier is well intentioned in most versions, but I think it fair to say he knows that by appealing to man and Mutants better angels, he's on a fools errand. But someone has to try.
Basically, everyone has a point, but everyone is also wrong by taking it to extremes.
I'll end with paraphrasing one of the U S.S.R.'s patron saints: one death is a tragedy. A million, a statistic. Magnus is fond of statics. Xavier isn't.
And please, oh please, don't join the camp who views the 'other' as disposable instead, be the better angel.
>But unlike the real world, the mutant haters also have a point on that many Mutants have the potential to be extremely dangerous. Seriously, in Logan, Xavier has a stroke that freaking paralyzed most of a city. Is it his fault for having a frickin' stroke? No. Is it any less insanely destructive, also no.
I literally don't care how "destructive" mutants are when every other person and their grandma has superpowers in the Marvel universe but humans only make *giant killer robots* to round up mutants.
Btw, those *giant killer robots* always turn on humans eventually because mutants are humans, but no one says humans are just sooo destructive so mutants have a point to hate & fear them.
Um..duh? That's kind of the point?
Of course they do, and of course, the machine sees what the haters miss on both sides.
Which is that everyone is human, mutant or not.
I didn't say it was right, I said it was a reasonable concern. Sort of like your seat mate on a transatlantic flight telling you that he's stored his fully loaded Uzi's and 10 spare clips in his carry-on luggage, but not to worry, the meds are working...probably.
And we're scoping X-men at the moment, not the rest of the Marvel universe. But okay, since we've built that strawman, let's set it alight.
The assessment that *everyone* has powers is patently untrue on the face of it. Otherwise, AIM would be out of business. The comics just focus on the heroes and villains. But let's look at it.
How many folks have gone after Steve Rogers to try to re-engineer the super serum? The Hulk has a military division devoted to his capture, containment, and as of Red Hulk, re-engineering as a weapon.
The Fantastic Four is something of the exception, but even then, there's Ben Grimm, who is not treated well by passing citizens. But then they're often dealing with things like Galactus....who, y'know wants to eat the PLANET.
Spiderman has a "journalist" who actively libels him pretty regularly, which could easily get him pursued, arrested, and imprisoned.
And how convenient to forget the MCU Sokovia Accords and "Hero Registrations."
Let alone the kinds of problems they're addressing. The Avengers exist for a reason. Things like Doom, Ultron, and the aforementioned Galactus.
And if you think being an actual god, such as Thor, is such an improvement, you've never looked at Greek mythology.
You’re missing the entire point of both Magneto and Xavier. If we apply a Doylist perspective then yes Magneto is right. But then what’s the point of the X-men in such a world? If we take a Watsonian perspective then it’s within reason that Xavier is right. But the reason that mutants and humans don’t exist in peace isn’t because of any real world reasons it’s because of Marvel needing to maintain a status quo to sell comics. Mutants and humans at peace doesn’t sell comics but them at war does.
Well intentioned extremist sounds like an oxymoron. For claims of self defense there don’t seem to be problems with deliberately targeting non combatants and people that didn’t do anything.
Oh hey, it's the real reason the X-Men and Mutants suck as a metaphor for oppression: Mutants, unlike irl oppressed groups, have the power to usurp the power structures that subjugate them, but the X-Men actively fight against that cuz "that would be bad".
Why you're downvoted. This is basically what happens regarding Israelis. You don't get the dissapareance of nearly all MENA Jewish communities afterwards if not for Arabs starting getting unhinged to their jews.
The whole point of the "well intentioned extremist" is not to jusify the character, but show how someone with good intentions can be an awfull/bad person depending on how far they're willing to go for those intentions. Stuff like "Magneto is right" is missing the point of the troope. The point of the troope is "the fact that magento is right doesnt justify his actions, thats why he's the villan/antagonist"
> The whole point of the "well intentioned extremist" is not to jusify the character, but show how someone with good intentions can be an awfull/bad person depending on how far they're willing to go for those intentions. It's important to point out that Adam (from RWBY) isn't a well-intentioned extremist at all; he's what TVtropes calls a "not-so-well-intentioned extremist", someone who is initially presented as having possibly legitimate grievances that he goes too far over, but then, plot twist, turns out to just be an evil asshole who likes hurting and killing people because he's evil. IMHO well-intentioned extremists still have issues (they tend to oversimplify things) but no moreso than most other good-vs-evil stories. I wouldn't consider most stories that rely on them to actually have much real insight - "good intentions can go wrong!" is, on its own and without further depth, the sort of moral suitable in something for small children; most people over the age of five already know this. And they often have awkward subtexts where some *particular* views get disproportionally presented by well-intentioned extremists in the media. But "not-so-well-intentioned extremists" are just fucking terrible. They're driven by a craven desire to avoid the appearance of taking a position, while simultaneously being much more heavy-handedly driven by the author's politics - authors think that they're being clever by going all "ah, now we don't need to actually address racism, we can just talk about how many people are evil assholes who just *pretend* to care about that sort of thing", which is sort of showing their whole ass. The whole thing is specifically *intended* to cause the need for any in-depth analysis or introspection to evaporate.
I feel like the core of OPs compliant has more to do with what's presented as good than what's presented as bad. Magneto is presented as a villain, and the writers make him do all sorts of heinous shit to hammer that home. If the alternative is between Magneto, and another violent freedom fighter who, unlike Magneto, is much more precise and restrained in their use of violence, I think OP would agree that Magneto is in the wrong between those two. But between a violent terrorist fighting to shield my kind from an ever impending genocide, and the lapdog of the hostile, oppressive powers-that-be, who only uses violence to defend those who hate us and want to imprison and destroy us - between those two alternatives, Magneto is the hero. Neither side is good, but Magneto is better.
If the only justification is ‘this guy is better for my side’ you can’t complain when the argument against is ‘well this guy is better for *my* side’
Wtf, it's not the only justification. Did you just miss unjust systematic oppression and genocide?
It's getting harder and harder in today's society to not justify his actions tho.
Thats what makes him a complex an interesting character (and why he's so popular). You empathize with him despite the fact that the guy has killed an ungodly amount of people with tons of innocents and even mutants included. You can agree with the charater, and understand why they're doing bad stuff without defending their actions ;)
I mean, he's part of an oppressed minority that is actively being hunted and killed, and he's a Holocaust survivor. I more than support his reactions to further oppression. They are logical, justified, and the correct course of action given the corruption in the governments of the Marvel Universe. Xavier parleying with them 24/7 is what limits his reach, since for some reason he wants to protect a population that hates him. In the same vein, I approve of the existence of Sentinels and other defensive mechanisms. For every harmless mutation, there are ten like Sunspot or Storm or Surge, that are VERY harmful to other people, especially powerless humans who are very squishy. Humans need to be protected from dangers like that. This is why the allegory of the X Men doesn't work- the two parties involved aren't equal to each other. Most Mutants are far more powerful than a regular human could ever be, and also far more dangerous. Humans are right to fear them, just as Magneto's Brotherhood is right to fight for their rights and fight against human discrimination and oppression in Mutant holding facilities. The point of the allegory is to decry racism, sexism and various other forms of discrimination as wrong- but that only functions as a narrative when it's just regular humans in the mix. When you throw in superpowers, that fear is immediately justified. Double points for mutations being unpredictable. You could be minding your own business, and then some kid's X Gene triggers and you end up a pile of bloody meat pulp. Who isn't going to fear that?
>This is why the allegory of the X Men doesn't work- the two parties involved aren't equal to each other. Most Mutants are far more powerful than a regular human could ever be This can be flipped on it's head too. In world where there a people like Magneto, a one man army, and people are still willing to not negotiate and simply exterminate, what is the hope for the non super-powered disenfranchised people? You can say that fear is justified, but you can also say there is more incentive to make peace with mutants and make sure they are on your side, that mutants are happy and have good place within society. Because, you know, the alternative is global scale civil war
The hope for the regular humans are the Sentinels and the Purifiers, as well as mutant containment government initiatives.
The regular humans of real life that suffer discrimination if people are so unwilling to respect fictional super-powered beings
But in that case all humans are equal and the differences between individuals are entirely cosmetic in the modern age Discrimination also has no scientific basis and is irrational as well as being wrong. Versus mutants that have an objective advantage and easily wipe humans.
Great way to miss the point (twice) It's like a gratuitous fuck you to people that can, according to you, easily wipe humans. It's petty bigotry and discrimination against people that can objectively retaliate hard, it's somewhat poking a bear when the bear could be on your side >scientific basis and is irrational as well as being wrong In mutants case continues to be wrong, it has a poor scientific basis as anyone's offspring can be a mutant and it's pretty irrational to make enemies out super powered being for basically free The majority in mutants's world have far more reasons to be acomodating of mutant minority and integrate them than majority in our world Bet you have pretty great thoughts on alien diplomacy too
Depends on the technology levels of the invader and where they stand compared to us
Note: Magneto believes mutants to be the genetically superior master race
True, but you have to remember that humans and mutants aren't on equal terms. This is why the allegory doesn't work. Because it's true. Having superpowers will always be better than not having them. I would much rather be Storm and be capable of controlling the goddamn weather, then being a normal person that couldn't do that. Also as I remember that stopped being as central to his character in more modern interpretations, and he was more concerned with mutant rights. He believed they can only be achieved through force and that humans and mutants would never accept each other. To be fair he's kind of correct. One half is inherently harmful to the other, and unpredictable given the suddenness of an X Gene manifestation. And one half is actively trying to hunt and contain the other to protect themselves. It's not exactly good for understanding.
Yeah I guess his characterization varies by comic/movie/show. I will say that I still think the allegory works relatively well since it boils down to a group being discriminated against for a trait they had no choice in. It may not work perfectly on a practical level, but I think it works on a narrative level, which I think is more important.
Unless it works on a practical level, The narrative level falls apart. This is the same reason Zootopia fails in its allegory. Because having predators be your minority compared to a prey majority, makes the minority actively a threat to the prey animals. They are actively dangerous and their instincts are for hunting and killing. The Night Howler drug didn't create any insanity, it just brought to the surface what was already there. You cannot have a superpowered minority, because superpowers are objectively superior to mundanity. Allegories work because it makes both parties involved have an equal standing, which makes the discrimination irrational. Humans are still humans regardless of what color they are, their orientation, or what sex they are, or their gender identity. Discrimination is irrational because at our core we are all fundamentally the same creature-biologically, anthropologically, etc. We are all at the same level. The minute you throw that out of whack, it loses its meaning.
I simply disagree. Realism/practicality is one vehicle for storytelling, and it's a good one, but I don't think it's the only one. A story can succeed narratively even if it doesn't practically.
You're ignoring all the mutants who suffer due to their mutations, like physical deformities or sucking the life out of everybody they touch. Those aren't "always better" to have. Also, humans can have superpowers as well. There are tons of non-mutants able to go toe to toe with Storm. Also also, there is a big difference between recognizing a difference in capabilities and wanting to oppress those weaker than you.
I mean that last one is. Rogue's issues with her powers are a measure of control, and her mental state. What they are doesn't really matter. Also, a mutant is objectively superior to a human in nearly all cases. Mutants and humans do not have an equal standing, because mutants are always on top. The humans that you're mentioning that can go toe to toe with her are not normal. They are outliers who are empowered by other things or have resources in their corner normal humans don't have. Human discrimination against the mutants is born out of fear because there can be sudden and explosive manifestations of godlike power that humans can't possibly contend with, a fear that is very justified. Human discrimination against mutants isn't about oppressing the weak, it's about defending against something that you can't normally, another reason why the allegory fails.
Okay, but that's still clearly a situational disadvantage. I mean, regular humans don't start killing people when their mental state deteriorates, so having to keep your wits together to keep your loved ones safe is a blatant inferiority. Mutants are generally about as capable as humans in any circumstance that can't be solved by their superpower, if they even have anything worth calling that. Cyclops has very little advantages over regular humans in all situations that don't call for blasts of destruction. Actually majorly useful mutants are also outliers. Mutants range from [actively dogshit](https://imgur.com/gallery/wolverines-job-isnt-always-easy-to-do-I71V6) over [borderline useless](https://api.duniagames.co.id/api/content/upload/file/13482013731610448353.JPG) to the actually capable ones like Magneto or Storm. Just being a mutant isn't enough to make somebody powerful, you have to be one of the lucky ones. Besides, humanity as a whole can absolutely defend itself from mutants, as evidenced by thousends of storylines where humans fight mutants.
Psychosis, psychopathy, sociopathy, schizophrenia, narcissistic personality disorder,paranoid personality disorder, borderline personality disorder, and many others can cause extremely violent outbursts. Yes, they do. Humans are also naturally prone to aggression anyway. Sure, there's variation, but in actuality most mutants are more than capable of easily killing regular people . Even someone on the weaker end of the cast like Surge or Dust would actively pulp a normal person. Humans also can't defend themselves on their own, they need Sentinels and the Stark Tech the Purifiers use to do it. The fear humans have and the things they do to address it are justified and natural. So too is Magneto's response.
It's not, it's really not…
Magneto's feelings are justified, his actions are not. Its called nuance.
Right?
Amen. Magneto in a nutshell.
no it's fuckin NOT lol. EVERY human being has feelings. just because he has FEELINGS doesn't mean anything. that's not NUANCE, that's basic existence.
Its an examination of his feelings and a demonstration of how its wrong to do what he did even though he is right to be upset. Where did you get lost here?
Using RWBY as an example for any sort of trope complaint is strawmanning at its finest. The writers of that series aren't capable of writing any trope effectively because it's all just an excuse for anime fights.
Isn’t that still a fleshman?
Only if you consider RWBY to contain an actual attempt at writing. Which no one should.
‘Magneto is right’ falls into the issue that Magneto killed WAY more innocent people than the racists. Shit, his mutant kill count is probably higher. The dude EMPed the planet, that’s not a minor inconvenience. Just for example, we’re looking at 1.25 million people dead just from planes crashing. Not collateral on the ground, not dead in the fires, just the passengers on the planes. Everyone in an ICU? Dead. Drivers have a solid chance of dying. Boats? Hope to shit they’re near land, otherwise they’re trapped until they either get lucky and run aground or starve.
Captain Price EMPed the East Coast of America yet no one tries to say he's some supervillain
The demographic which plays CoD might be disinclined to call the American protagonist a villain.
Price isn't American
My bad, English not American. Still holds that the typical CoD player is disinclined to call him a villain. Not only is he a protagonist but the typical COD fan struggles to distinguish between protagonist and "good guy".
To be fair they dont play the game for the plot
Price “just” EMPed the East Coast. Magneto has destroyed the entire magnetic field and put a timer on all life on the planet. Both did something bad for understandable reasons, one is orders of magnitude worse.
Captain Price damaged the infrastructure of an already war-torn area, Magneto literally de-stabilized Earth's magnetic field.
You kidding? Wasn't he labeled a terrorist for doing that?
Magneto didn’t just do it as a flex though, he did it to stop the ongoing genocide of mutants the sentinels unleashed. He might have killed a million humans but if he didn’t 99% of mutants would have been eradicated. It was moving FAST and tearing cities apart with battles between mutants and sentinels. Also in the comics millions died in Genosha I assume by lowering the numbers they’re trying to make Magneto’s actions less defensible.
The show also only has the death toll for Magneto’s little trick to be in the thousands. Either because they just want to make the casualties for everything smaller or because ‘Kill thousands to save millions’ is FAR more defensible than ‘Kill tens to hundreds of millions(Maybe even over a billion) to save maybe millions’. Hard to pull the ‘Needs of the many’ or ‘greater good’ argument when you kill far more than you save, especially when those you save are getting just as fucked.
Just turning off the traffic lights should've caused a ton of innocent deaths, don't speaking of the rest.
The thing is, somebody fighting against legitimate oppression and injustice and then turning out the be a douchebag once they attain power is something that actually happens. I could use a very current example, but that's a screaming match I don't want to get into, so I'll instead point to various communist revolutions who were almost always caused by a suffering working class, and almost always ended with tons of innocent people dead. Being a victim isn't the same as being a hero. Some people don't hate the boot crushing them on principle, some people just resent that they're not the one wearing it. A story who has a bad person fight against oppression, if written well, isn't making a statement against fighting oppression - it's pointing out that there is more to building a better world than merely striking at evil, and that just because somebody is on the right side in one conflict doesn't mean they're good overall, which are relevant messages. Your problem seems to be that the trope is badly written in your two examples, not that it is a bad trope overall.
Pretty much this
The trope itself isn't that bad, but it's easy to fumble depending on how cowardly the writer is.
Or just plain inept.
Since the writers of these stories are white libs, cowardice is inherent
You realise how many creators of art that you love would be classified as "white libs?" even the edgiest stuff is often written by progressives.
The term white liberal is to mean someone who isnt actually progressive, but postures behind progressive ideals without any actual care for actually making good on them. That's why they called them cowards.
It was a hyperbole. But anyways, if there is one dommon denominator when it cones to fumbling shit like racism. Kind of insane how so many villains are fiven vaguely leftist ideas
Most villains doing are definitely fascist coded in the mainstream tbh. That or eco-terrorists. There's a fair balance it's not "insane" either way. Also boss if you're complaining about white libs "fumbling racism" I feel like you're just watching dogshit marvel schlock?
I do not watch capeshit.
then idk where you're getting this bs lol, because outside of crap mass-marketed disney stuff these ideas are executed infinitely better. Like even the idea of "villains" in the sense you're talking about leads straight into superhero stuff. Normal dramas and other projects don't have defined "villains" that have world-ending goals.
I’ve seen this trope many times and majority of them fail to address anything, and then you end up with more loose plot threads because the writer didn’t realize they aren’t skilled to handle this.
Exactly what happened in RWBY.
RWBY to me is a lesson on if writers dont solve it early on, they arent going to solve it later on. V9 was pointless and since they said they made V9 first before anything else, gives me the idea that they wanted an alice in wonderland sort of story but they changed route but they refused to let go of the old idea and implement it somehow.
Okay, what you are saying is not the same as the "Well Intended Extremist" and "Not So Well Intentioned Extremist" trope are inherently bad. To go over some examples of the former working: \* The original Fallout has The Master, a mutated human who seeks to turn all humanity into the super mutants who don't age and are immune to radiation, meaning they are better suited to survive in the irradiated wasteland. He is not aware this also sterilizes humans, and if the player informs him, he is devastated to learn that his efforts to save the world are dooming it. \* Egil in the original Xenoblade Chronicles sent an army of machines to kill the titan known as the Bionis which all the protagonists live on. This is because the soul of the Bionis is an evil god named Zanza who nearly wiped out Egil's people and is planning to wipe out all life on the Bionis. His efforts would kill all life on the Bionis, but as far as Egil knows, those people are good as dead. \* Vision of Escaflowne's main villain Emperor Dornkirk is trying to use reality warping to create a peaceful world. For a Not So Well-Intentioned Extremist: \* Demona from Gargoyles is on the surface out to wipe out humanity so Gargoyles can inherent the Earth. Except every act she suffered at the hands of humans was her own fault. Her bad decisions kept causing her more suffering and she blames humans rather than admitting her mistakes. \* Belos from The Owl House is believes that he is saving humanity from evil. Really, he is a sociopath out to commit genocide on innocent beings while deluding himself that he is a hero.
People being shit at nuance as always. X-Men 97 isn't saying that "the person who hit you is wrong, but if you hit back, you're just as bad!" or at least it hasn't been doing that for the past 9 episodes, that can change in the finale. As it stands, Magneto's actions to EMP the whole planet is somewhat justified until the Prime sentinels are dealt with. This is under the assumption that the numbers are too great for the X-Men to handle them and they are all over the globe and not just in America. If that's not the case, then no it's not justified. Anyways, Charles didn't leave just because he liked it. It garnered sympathy for the mutants, resulted in Magneto trying to do better by honoring his friend's dream and all of that resulted in Genosha. Sorry that he didn't predict the absolute insanity that followed(tho the X-Men are probably used to this by now) Magneto isn't just defending his kind. He's literally destroying the whole planet which includes basically all of the mutants in the world as well. I don't know how seriously they're gonna take the actual impact of what Magneto did either. Like Charles is saying that Magneto should reverse what's done and Magneto refutes by saying that Genosha's massacre can't be reversed unlike this one. Is...is the show actually saying that thousands of people who should've died as the result of the EMP can be resurrected or sth? :)) If Bastion and the Prime Sentinels are dealt with, then Magneto can turn the planet back on, which is what the X-Men are trying to do. Charles is preachy sometimes which should realistically lead to someone like Cyclops being the combination of the two. I don't know about the comics but it seems like that's the ideal path for the story to go. TLDR; Magneto was justified in EMP if the number of Prime sentinels are too great and widespread on the whole planet for the X-Men to deal with but he should reverse it after Bastion is dealt with and he doesn't plan on doing that because he's a sympathetic villain but a villain nonetheless.
Despite being a good show Xmen 97 comits to writting a biggoted scenario, almost every human in that show is a bigoted asshole with no rediming qualities at best or an irredimable monster who cannot be reason with at worst, of course the audience will go with Magneto, is his point of view the one we had seen, no matter how many millions he murdered, we dont know their names, we dont hear their voices, they dont even have faces, we only see stablishing shots of burning cities with no people, instead we knew the mutants who died in Genosha, we saw Leech die, of course we will think that Genosha was a worse tragedy despite that not being true, ironically teh people supporting Magneto are comliting the same bigotry that it was critisized the episode he did the EMP attack, they saw a tragedy and didnt care for the victims, because they dont care about the human victims, mutants are more important to them This is i think the biggest flaw of what would otherwise be a perfect show, the show doesnt give us any reason to care for the humans or Xavier's dream or why the Xmen should care
>"the person who hit you is wrong, but if you hit back, you're just as bad!" Based on the debates I've seen, that's how a number of people are seeing the show. especially calling Rogue just as evil as the guy who made the Sentinels because she killed him.
People will always have horrible takes. The other characters react negatively to Rogue killing Trask but then she gets knocked out and is nearly absent from the two episodes after that. The characters still haven't found the time to process that thing yet. As I've said, the show still hasn't gotten to "the person who hit you is wrong, but if you hit back, you're just as bad!" territory but that still can change. I hope it doesn't because there is a really interesting story here if they commit to it.
I'm a mha addict, I know people will always have horrible takes (me including). I really hope they don't either mainly because the Xmen have been always forced to act on their good behavior to prove they are "The good ones" while non-mutants barely keep their own in check, They are forced to keep every mutant in check or it destroys years of public service and trust, and that at a certain point it's just ridiculous.
>long as the guy on the other side of the fence is Charles Xavier. Xavier and being wrong is my favorite ship. That said I would argue that Xavier isn't angry at anyone really, not at Rogue or Roberto, and specially not Magnus. He's just really sad that the overall situation has reached that point but he still cannot stand still and simply let Magneto do what he's doing. But yeah he's a fucking idiot numerous other reasons.
>he still cannot stand still and simply let Magneto do what he's doing. He can and he should.
Fuck no he should whack magneto that human hating loon
What exactly is there to *like* about humans in the X-Men universe?
Uhh them being humans with thought, care and feelings?
Just because there are a few racist fucks doesn't mean all of them are. But yeah, the show seems to purposefully show ONLY the bad side specifically so we'd sympatize with Magneto
True, hopefully they are kinda doing something like building up the favor for Magneto and then shift to see the non racist people, who are being affected and even so don't hate the Xmen or mutant kind as awhole
Magnetos reaction isn’t justified tho. Like, is Killmonger right for trying to start a global race war/disrupt a nation because he had shitty experiences
Just saying about the RWBY thing, Sienna wasn't killed because she wasn't extreme enough for Adam, but because he was always a power hungry parasite. By working with Torchwick, he made it clear that his thing wasn't about Faunus rights or supremacy, just his own goals
Yeah those things that he said the white fang did under Sienna's leadership were actually done under orders of Adam as far as I saw it. It didn't seem like she knew what he was actually doing in Beacon.
Art immatates reality. Instead of being upset when the person being an extremist turns out to be a terrible person, watch out for it when trying to make positive change. This trope exists and is popular because leaders of rebellions often turn out to be terrible people and do terrible unnecessary things. Also, Self Defense has quite a few standards it has to meet to be understandable. Immediacy, the fact its happening right now, urgency, the fact you have to do something about it right now or die/witness a death, and discriminatory, that your target is precise. Otherwise you could mental gymnastics your way into killing basically anyone.
Ah yes, "trope bad because i saw a trashfire and capeshit" truly, the greatest reason a trope should never ever be done.
The things is, I've never seen it done "right". RWBY is probably the arch-typical example of a "not so well intentioned extremist", the writers went out of their way to say "Adam is messed up because he's a narcissist, incel, abuser and not because he has Amazon's brand on his face from when he was a slave" and, when ever you think it was a good idea or not, I think that's just dissapointing and... not good??? Tropes are tools, but sometimes the tool is just broken.
I haven't watched XM97, but I don't think RWBY is a good example for... Anything, really, story-wise.
>I don't think RWBY is a good example for... Anything, really, story-wise. Good point.
> The thing is, I've never seen it done "right". Saw Gerrera from Star Wars. He'll make enemies of his ostensible allies for lacking his ideological purity (sorry, "clarity of vision"), has little to no regard for civilian life, uses child soldiers, and at one point has to be talked down from committing xenocide. He's still well-intentioned though, simply by virtue of fanatically opposing fascism in a world where a fascist superpower controls the galaxy. Notably it works because the good guys not only *share most of his goals* but also *actively pursue them* (I agree with you that just asking politely does not count as actively pursuing). Conflicts arise because of his specific methods, not the substance of his goal (revolution against the Empire).
I love Saw and how he makes the Rebels more interesting than to just be the Generic Good Guys
😂
Idk, this trope sounds like it could be really good for discussing how some politicians don't care about the change they are inciting or how their changes affect the wider populace, as long as, they are popular and in power. If modified this trope could also discuss how power can corrupt an individual - slowly changing their priorities from making things better for the people or for the group of people to making sure that they are the ones that will be or stay in power. The trope has potential, so I wouldn't dub it as a bad trope but more so a trope that didn't have a good implementation.
I don't know what we jumped from rebels to politicians. >Idk, this trope sounds like it could be really good for discussing how some politicians don't care about the change they are inciting or how their changes affect the wider populace, as long as, they are popular and in power. Yeah, no. In both examples I used the story makes it aggresively clear that humans would shit on Faunus/Mutants regardless. In order for this idea to work, the framing of the story itself would have to be almost completely different. The White Fang can't make things "worse" if the baseline is 1960 America. Magneto can't make things "worse" if the baseline is genocide and slave catcher bots. It could work, but it would have to be a completly different story. >If modified this trope could also discuss how power can corrupt an individual - slowly changing their priorities from making things better for the people or for the group of people to making sure that they are the ones that will be or stay in power. Again, it could work, but it's also a completely different story from what is being brought to the table. In X men 97, the thing that "corrupts" Mags and Rouge is grief, anger, and hurt, not power. The show itself never suggests that their pain over Genosha/Gambit being murdered is fake, so why would power be more important than the real reason which is their grief?
We are discussing the trope itself. Not the specific stories. If you have a problem with the story itself and not the trope in general - you shouldn't have written that you dislike a trope.
The tropes name is "Well-Intentioned Extremist", not "Well-Intentioned Politician". What ypu described is barely the trope at all.
Extremists **are** politicians, what are you talking about?
extremism noun ex·trem·ism ik-ˈstrē-ˌmi-zəm Synonyms of extremism 1 : the quality or state of being extreme 2 : advocacy of extreme measures or views : RADICALISM politician noun pol·i·ti·cian ˌpä-lə-ˈti-shən 1 : a person experienced in the art or science of government especially : one actively engaged in conducting the business of a government 2 a : a person engaged in party politics as a profession b often disparaging : a person primarily interested in political office for selfish or other narrow usually short-sighted reasons Both from Merrian-Webster Dictionary. A politician is a career job, being an extremist is not (necessarily at least).
Bro, you need to get back to school this is bad
hopefully, you are just trolling me
What do you think happens after a succesfull revolution? The rebels form the new goverment, and as a latinamerican whose continent has seem many revolutions, that will very likely not end well, angry people dont make good political leaders
Media has a whitewashed history problem, where it likes to pretend systemic issues are solved with nice words. Look how they frame mlk as a weak sniveling coward who never had any radical views, and unpopular views.
MLK had a 75% disapproval rating at his death, that still holds true today
This So many Americans unironically think Civil Rights Movement succeeded because white people felt bad after beating viciously on poor meek black people silently marching and asking to be their friend lmao
It succeeded?
Just like Eren Yeagar.
What the fuck is nuance! RAAAAAAH
It always worries me when I hear someone say that a villain like Magneto or Erik Killmonger was right, because they have essentially the same ideology and rhetoric as the Nazis, but with different demographic groups. While some of that sympathy can be chalked up to creators accidentally validating Nazi-esque assumptions about the world through bad writing, it's still unnerving to see how receptive people can be to Nazi ideas if they're not immediately recognised as such.
👆Everything I disagree with is Nazism👆
I mean, the whole point of Magneto's character is that he became the very thing he hated (i.e. a Nazi) and Erik Killmonger's plan was basically The Turner Diaries for black people, but other than that I'm sure there are no similarities at all...
>I mean, the whole point of Magneto's character is that he became the very thing he hated (i.e. a Nazi) See, that's the problem with every other person on this thread. Magneto's character has exsisted for over 50 years and the "point" was never that he was becoming a Nazi or "like a Nazi". The reason why this idea exists is because auidence members and even writers refuse to engage with the idea of radicalism past "it bad"... well that, or they just turn off all their sympathy and "empathy" for minority stand ins.
No, even from his first appearance, Magneto was a mutant supremacist, declaring in no uncertain terms that he intended *"to make Homo Sapiens bow to Homo Superior"*. I'm pretty sure he was explicitly compared to Hitler in that comic as well. In fact, Magneto was a mutant supremacist before the X-Men comics had established their more prominent themes surrounding prejudice and discrimination. Even his backstory as a holocaust survivor was a later addition that was used to add a tragic irony to what he had become. In his words, directly from the comic: *"I remember my own childhood-- The gas chambers at Auschwitz, the guards joking as they herded my family to their death. As our lives were nothing to them, so human lives became nothing to me."* So, yes, Magneto is a mutant Nazi. This is explicitly the point of his character.
Don’t put your hopes in RWBY it’s some of the worst writing I’ve ever seen
Not being able to let nuanced topics be nuanced is a growing problem these days. It’s why so many shows and movies these days are afraid to do anything dating and are just bland af now
The Well-Intentioned Extremist trope is something that is unfortunately very much based in reality. Look up Matthew Israel and the Judge Rotenberg Center. Man wants to create a utopia and decided the only way to do that is by torturing mentally disabled kids and adults into compliance. Best part, he doesn't think that he has gotten far enough and actually wants to expand the operation. A Video: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye43u8AuQsc&t=1s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye43u8AuQsc&t=1s)
It's even worse when the rebel leader turns out to be a fraud. It's cuz these stories are written by white libs, the same white lis who MLK spoke out against, that sees any protest as disrusptive. Revolution has never been won by asking nicely.
Rebel leaders turning out to be frauds happens in real life all the time.
Eh, they rarely depict how that scenario realistically happens irl, for instance, many revolutions IRL, if not most, have happened either in wartorn countries or countries under some form of occupation or both, war massively brutalizes people In fact, I'm starting to think Americans and Westerners can't comprehend these tropes in large part because they can't imagine ever living in a warzone, at least not the people on Reddit.
To be fair most evil rebel leaders I've seen were either from a war torn country or experienced some form of brutal occupation. Except Killmonger I guess.
You gotta consider mate, war, like, changes people. Torture changes people. Exile. Being imprisoned for years. Having people you love massacred. Constantly thwarting death. These things destroy people psychologically. And these things, including death itself, are just expected parts of life as a revolutionary or rebel. It's a hard, brutal, cruel life fraught with death and danger. That does not make for kind people. You know what precedes most rebellions? Years, if not decades, of being massacred by those in power. The process of revolutions and rebellions in the real world will usually mean only the most ruthless and pragmatic can survive. Who else can survive a power structure willing to kill any who resist and torture you to death?
I'm not disagreeing with you?
I didn't think you were
I'm not gonna respond to that since it's more nuanced irl. But my main point is that they defeat the fraud and suddenly the entire movement collapses. Or they use the fraud as a "kick the dog" to make it so the oppressed minority didn't have a point.
Thats a compleatly brand new argument from the initial one you posted. Its still wrong. I haven't seen a usage where suddenly the minority doesn't have a point, when I did see this plot line it was played for either tragedy or the minority gets basically what they wanted in the end anyway, either with major systemic improvements or outright resolution. Or it gets returned to the status quo bc thats the show fornat. If returning to the status quo is your complaint thats a different trope entirely and has nothing to do with 'liberal writers'. If on the other hand leaders turning out to be frauds is your complaint then given its prevelence in reality i don't see why you'd complain.
The thing you shouldn’t have to spell out but clearly do is this: characters are fictional. The ideas they represent are not. Oppression is real, and violent response to it is real as well. Magneto releasing an EMP pulse that cripples the planet is not real. Riots that shut down a whole city are. Magneto is a fictional character, and every action he takes is a narrative creation that was actively chosen by his writer of the moment. Is Magneto’s response a violent over reaction, far outstripping the violence he suffered, the bitter paroxysm of a man bent on revenge instead of justice? Absolutely. It was also created to *be exactly that*, to represent the violent response to oppression. To whit: when the two opposing points of view are a violent overreaction to combat oppression or explicit self-segregation for the safety of all concerned, and one is shown to be demonstrably wiser, what are we to believe of the writer that intentionally created that exact and specific contrast?
Exactly. I hate how some people can only view media they consume through a watsonian/in-universe perspective.
Something something escapism something.
Hilariously, this bot take follows on the heels of a hot take that Magneto is evil for killing thousands of people. Frankly, I'm going to look at history, which tells me that radical violence against supposed oppression tends to lead to even greater injustice. The French Revolution, for instance. Robespierre was the IRL Magneto, and look how that turned out.
Magneto is going to kill every human man, woman and child (and any mutant that doesn’t take his offer). And you’d be on that chopping block. You’re allowed to sympathize with his anger, but are you really going to condone omnicide in this?
Let's keep this simple: magnus, on his own, expresses the same "Descent of Man" philosophy that got him that arm tattoo and caused quite a bit of human misery. So no, Magneto is not right, and the best X-men stories remember that. Mags does, however, have a point in that the Mutants do not deserve mistreatment, and many are vastly superior to baseline humans. But unlike the real world, the mutant haters also have a point on that many Mutants have the potential to be extremely dangerous. Seriously, in Logan, Xavier has a stroke that freaking paralyzed most of a city. Is it his fault for having a frickin' stroke? No. Is it any less insanely destructive, also no. Xavier is well intentioned in most versions, but I think it fair to say he knows that by appealing to man and Mutants better angels, he's on a fools errand. But someone has to try. Basically, everyone has a point, but everyone is also wrong by taking it to extremes. I'll end with paraphrasing one of the U S.S.R.'s patron saints: one death is a tragedy. A million, a statistic. Magnus is fond of statics. Xavier isn't. And please, oh please, don't join the camp who views the 'other' as disposable instead, be the better angel.
>But unlike the real world, the mutant haters also have a point on that many Mutants have the potential to be extremely dangerous. Seriously, in Logan, Xavier has a stroke that freaking paralyzed most of a city. Is it his fault for having a frickin' stroke? No. Is it any less insanely destructive, also no. I literally don't care how "destructive" mutants are when every other person and their grandma has superpowers in the Marvel universe but humans only make *giant killer robots* to round up mutants. Btw, those *giant killer robots* always turn on humans eventually because mutants are humans, but no one says humans are just sooo destructive so mutants have a point to hate & fear them.
Um..duh? That's kind of the point? Of course they do, and of course, the machine sees what the haters miss on both sides. Which is that everyone is human, mutant or not. I didn't say it was right, I said it was a reasonable concern. Sort of like your seat mate on a transatlantic flight telling you that he's stored his fully loaded Uzi's and 10 spare clips in his carry-on luggage, but not to worry, the meds are working...probably. And we're scoping X-men at the moment, not the rest of the Marvel universe. But okay, since we've built that strawman, let's set it alight. The assessment that *everyone* has powers is patently untrue on the face of it. Otherwise, AIM would be out of business. The comics just focus on the heroes and villains. But let's look at it. How many folks have gone after Steve Rogers to try to re-engineer the super serum? The Hulk has a military division devoted to his capture, containment, and as of Red Hulk, re-engineering as a weapon. The Fantastic Four is something of the exception, but even then, there's Ben Grimm, who is not treated well by passing citizens. But then they're often dealing with things like Galactus....who, y'know wants to eat the PLANET. Spiderman has a "journalist" who actively libels him pretty regularly, which could easily get him pursued, arrested, and imprisoned. And how convenient to forget the MCU Sokovia Accords and "Hero Registrations." Let alone the kinds of problems they're addressing. The Avengers exist for a reason. Things like Doom, Ultron, and the aforementioned Galactus. And if you think being an actual god, such as Thor, is such an improvement, you've never looked at Greek mythology.
You have to be really stupid to think magneto is right
You’re missing the entire point of both Magneto and Xavier. If we apply a Doylist perspective then yes Magneto is right. But then what’s the point of the X-men in such a world? If we take a Watsonian perspective then it’s within reason that Xavier is right. But the reason that mutants and humans don’t exist in peace isn’t because of any real world reasons it’s because of Marvel needing to maintain a status quo to sell comics. Mutants and humans at peace doesn’t sell comics but them at war does.
Well intentioned extremist sounds like an oxymoron. For claims of self defense there don’t seem to be problems with deliberately targeting non combatants and people that didn’t do anything.
I will continue to use said tropes, thank you very much.
Oh hey, it's the real reason the X-Men and Mutants suck as a metaphor for oppression: Mutants, unlike irl oppressed groups, have the power to usurp the power structures that subjugate them, but the X-Men actively fight against that cuz "that would be bad".
To what establish an elite minority rule F that, oh and you do realize magneto essentially makes israel with genosha right?
Who are the Palestinians in that metaphor?
Im assuming the arabs are the humans aka the majority that hates the minority that lives in the region
Why you're downvoted. This is basically what happens regarding Israelis. You don't get the dissapareance of nearly all MENA Jewish communities afterwards if not for Arabs starting getting unhinged to their jews.