Politics in Media - The Good, the Bad, and the Preachy

Yeah, that's what I'm getting at. That there are multiple ways to power for the Sith, but the Sith who go through hardship and conflict in the Old Republic tend to be more competent and smarter with how they use their power, compared to Sith who take the easy way and stagnate.

You can even see the difference with Baras and the Sith Warrior.

What's that about Darth Baras?

See, Darth Baras is indeed high up on the Sith pecking order, and his expertise is planning, espionage, and all sorts of Sith political subterfuge. But he's also gotten complacent and let his fighting skills decay.

Meanwhile, his apprentice, the Sith Warrior has their talents in planning and is very good and maneuvering through Sith games, and has the added bonus of actually doing their own dirty work most of the time, and going through the struggles and hardships of their class storyline, including multiple near death experiences from Baras' own schemes to eliminate them once he decided they were more a threat than asset.

So when it's time for the Sith Warrior and Baras to start fighting, the Sith Warrior ends up beating their old master precisely because the Sith way encourages getting stronger through adversity and misery.

Which is why the Sith can be weirdly shonen protagonist in a way. From a certain point of view, it encourages you to work hard and weather any misery and challenge to become great.

Of course, that is often how many shonen villains start out as well.

Yeah heroes and villains can parallel.

A minor thing concerning politics of a long gone age, but I was reading the trope page for an old gamebook series of my youth, Wizards, Warriors & You.

The premise was that each book had two main paths in which you could play as either the Wizard, the kingdom's go-to magic hero, or the Warrior, the kingdom's greatest warrior and Knight in Shining Armor.

The trope page brought up one interesting bit that completely went over my head as a kid. Namely, that the Warrior is not actually an official knight of the kingdom. It's pointed out that he has no heraldry, isn't addressed as "Ser", and doesn't ride out with the kingdom's actual knights. The implication I guess is that the title and responsibility of being the kingdom's Warrior champion is separate and beyond the institution of knighthood.

Trope page: Wizards, Warriors and You

Yeah, that was my addition to the trope page when I expanded it a while ago. Been considering removing it and making a WMG article, since it is speculative, even if there's strong evidence behind it. Though another troper I was talking with noted that it's a children's gamebook, and so they probably didn't consider the socio-political ramifications that much.

I found a video by Anthony Gramuglia talking about X-Men 97 and how it tackles things like performative activism and the great replacement.

Speaking of X-Men, maybe it's me being uninformed, but in regards of the latest run with Krakoa stuff and what it represents and how fans and some writers treat as as a 100% good thing, despite supposedly the one, who kickstarted the start of Krakoa wanted it to be more morally ambiguous about it, isn't the whole thing is basically ethnostate? Like aside from segregation stuff (which is treated as a good thing in the comics, since humans are the worst there), the whole thing and wording and imagery from the comics, from what i saw, was supposed to ewoke questionably feelings in readers (along with the fact that APOCALYPSE is portrayed as one of the best people on the council there apparently) and yet later on writers started to treat it as basically a heaven for mutants.

Considering how ethnostates work in real life and from what i believe segregation is frowned upon in real world (even besides that white people got the best places during segregation from what i saw), the whole arc in X-Men (considering that the themes of X-Men was supposed to parallel real life and be statements about it) does make me question if portraying the the whole thing as 100% good is maybe iffy or maybe i look too much into it?

I'm not saying that mutants wrong for hating all humans, since once again, in Marvel, especially X-Men, humans do tend to be the worst, and status quo shouldn't be kept, but the whole thing reeks weird.

Edited by VeryVileVillian on May 18th 2024 at 12:45:48 PM

An ethnostate is probably the wrong solution, and mutants kind of got a big ego trip but you can't blame the people who cheered when the mutants looked at the world that constantly tries to kill them and went "fuck you, I'm out", honestly. What else can they do if most of humanity seems hellbent in murdering them?

I realize Marvel Civillians suck but are any of the big mutant genocides in canon a result of humans? One of those scans show the X-Men blaming humanity for not stopping the attack on Genosha (“16 million of us”) but that was done by Cassandra Nova (not human) in a really short period of time. The X-Men themselves weren’t able to do anything about it.

Edited by CheapMarzipan on May 18th 2024 at 4:09:05 AM

IIRC, days of futures past (and some of Moira's previous timelines), FWIW. Unless you want to discount machines too.

I used “in canon” as a qualifier for that reason since those are defunct timelines. Though Moira’s past lives are fair since those are the main impetus for forming Krakoa.

Watching Bad Boys 2. Interesting how this film opens with our heroes busting a KKK gathering and then slinging casual racism for the rest of the movie. Michael Bay, everyone.

Wait, what?

Mind elaborating?

It opens with the heroes busing a klan meeting because they have drugs and then they casually trade racist quips with a pair of Hispanic cops for the rest of the movie.

From what i gather there is constantly the possible future in X-Men where mankind exterminates mutants or puts them all in concentration camps. This future is always shown and is used to say "Magneto was right" and mutants should have ethnostate.

As i said, Marvel Civilians is horrible in general and in X-Men they pretty much always go beyond being horrible.

The hero cops are black, to boot.

Is it done in an unironic way, or just friendly banter?

It was probably banter, but I also remember a certain two robots in Transformers 2, so…

Edited by BigBadShadow25 on May 19th 2024 at 10:11:02 AM

I've never watched The Office, either one, do they try to excuse or justify or empathize with terrible boss behavior?

I've only seen the UK version, but in that one they don't really. Like, you're meant to sympathise with David Brent (the boss), but he's never portrayed really as anything but a terrible and out of touch boss.

So anyone here play Stellaris? The premise of the Earth Custodianship is one of those things that would be debatably a good or bad future for humanity:

"The Custodians were originally designed to function as robotic servants and workers, simplifying everyday life for their human creators by performing menial tasks. As their creators retreated into lives of leisure and comfort made possible by increasing levels of automation, the Custodians were gradually assigned higher and higher level functions in human society. Eventually, all facets of civilization on Earth were run and controlled by the Custodians, with their makers relegated to an existence as pampered, but passive dependents.

As technological developments brought the Custodians toward interstellar exploration, their duty remained clear: to protect and serve organics, who without the gentle guidance of logical machines invariably turn to chaos and destruction."

Unlike most futures where robots take over, the humans of this timeline explicitly surrendered their rights and freedoms to the Custodians in exchange for comfort and leisure. And there's an Ambiguously Evil aspect to this faction since the Custodians may or may not want the destruction of non humans organics depending on how you play but they are explicitly the least evil of the machine empires.

It's kind of fascinating to think about, since usually this kind of government would be portrayed as totally bad, like Wall-E, but you can play them as heroically as possible even them conquering planets from their POV is just wanting to serve and pamper said organics.

That sounds a little like the Culture of the Iain M. Banks novels, where the AI Minds run the huge ships and, effectively, the society.

And are sometimes willing to do very shady things for the greater good.

Changing topic, there was this discussion I had with my editor in regards to works involving Alien invasions.

For all the speeches of how "Humanity will stand strong and united against the Alien scum", most of the subtext and everything around it shows it as "But only the Americans/British/Japanese/Indians/Chinese can get the job done, so all hail them!", it feels very empty if it comes down to a patriotic fervor when it's their military or key members involving the countrymen.

Do you think there should be more works where it truly emphasizes on the Human spirit in regarding to Alien contact without showing it solely focused on a single nation that somehow saves the day by implying they're stronger than any country on Earth?