Discussion Main / GenocideBackfire

Not sure about this at all:

• A bit of a stretch, but in Net Hack, it is possible to get scrolls of genocide. So it is possible to use it to, say, wipe out all dwarves in the dungeon. Which kinda bites you in the ass if you happen to be a dwarf. With a little imagination and WMG you could play both the dastardly villain who wipes out the victim population, and the hero who valiantly gives his life to put an end to the monster who destroyed his people.
  • Not to mention what happens when you read a cursed scroll of genocide: Instead of wiping out the desired species, it summons a number of them instead. Genocide backfire indeed.

The trope is supposed to be about an incomplete attempt at genocide coming to bite you in the ass. Suicide via a scroll that exterminates your ass and the cursed scroll summoning a race instead of destroying it don't strike me as being this trope.

"But don't give up hope. Everyone is cured sooner or later. In the end we shall shoot you." - O'Brien, 1984

And what's with Real Life examples, like the Mossad or Armenians ventilatin their respective killers that got away?

If you do drugs... Don't to roshnah!! Hide / Show Replies

• Avatar: The RDA Security Force, under Colonel Miles Quaritch unleashed missiles on the Hometree, killing nearly every Na’Vi, including Princess Neytiri’s Father.
  • It did not have the effect Colonel Miles Quaritch had planned.

What He & The RDA Security Force did to the Na'Vi was horribly, and tragically unthinkable. Colonel Miles Quaritch would stop at nothing at opptaining the Unobtainium, and ruling all of Pandora. It had the opposite effect, it instead caused all the Na’Vi tribes to unite under one banner. The Na’vi also won a major victory at Tree of Souls.

Edited by TauWarrior566

Removed:

• An inversion: God ordered Saul to exterminate the Amalek people. When Saul spared their king, he pissed off God and lost his right to rule. Samuel gave him a talking-to for this (and, as a demonstration of what Saul was supposed to do, went up to the captured king and "hewed him in pieces"). According to folklore, the Amalekites have since plagued the Jews.
  • Well, no change there. The Amalek people had been raiding and pillaging Israel for a long time before that. It's why God ordered Amalek be annihilated in the first place. As for why Saul lost the kingship, the troops he was leading wanted to pillage Amalek, while God wanted everything destroyed and the land sown with salt. Saul wound up sparing their king and livestock. So he basically spared the person responsible for Israel's misery, and made it look like they were only doing it to make a profit. Whoops!
  • More like "intentionally failing to commit genocide" backfire then. Also, Samuel killed the last survivor and the captured animals were sacrificed; how did they continue to do anything?
    • The genocide wasn't complete; Amalekite survivors show up later in the story. (One of them falsely claims credit for killing Saul, for example.) Agag was also rumored to have sired children while in captivity, before Samuel killed him. Haman the Agagite from the story of Esther is generally considered his descendant.

Non-example and natter (complaining about moral/values dissonance and an apparent plot hole).