Discussion Main / RousseauWasRight

Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: split WhiteAndGreyMorality and , started by MagBas on Jul 23rd 2010 at 7:06:23 PM

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

This would definitely make more sense as "Locke Was Right" than it does now. Not only because, as others have said here, Locke is more known than Rousseau or because Locke is a better parallel to Hobbes, but most primarily because this is actually what Locke espoused unlike Rousseau who, like the page says, espoused /innocence/, not necessarily good.

What would be the inversion of this trope?

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Who exactly is Rousseau? I read the entire page and Still don't know, shouldn't the trope namer be explained a little like on the Hobbes was Right page?

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Inuyasha fits this trope. Heck, even Sesshomaru does.

Removing...

• Don't forget Mother Brain. She kills pretty much inert humans so that they will stop polluting the earth. What is the point? The earth is already a wasteland, there's no reason to jump to genocide. Machines are so much more powerful that if they decided to not kill the humans, the humans couldn't really pose that much of a threat anyway.
  • If you actually read what she says, Mother Brain's written off Earth as a loss, and now is attempting to prevent Lavos spawn from seeding other planets.
    • Actually, that was a mistranslation. In the retranslated DS version, Mother Brain says that the planet will eventually heal, and when it does they can make a... how should I say this... "Robotopia". Plus, the humans would just take up space and get in the way.

As someone who grew up with the SNES, it always bugs me when people make false accusations about the original game just to pimp the rerelease. That was not a mistranslation that the DS version fixed. The Robotopia thing is EXACTLY what Mother Brain said in the original release. The person who said she was trying to stop Lavos was just plain wrong (or at the very least, bizarrely focusing on one line about "the spawn won't have to leave" to the exclusion of the rest of her whole speech about forming a machine empire that will envelop the world - it's pretty clear in the original translation that, at most, she only wanted the spawn around to keep organic life from posing a threat). Since there's no way to fix it without rendering that bit of Conversation In The Main Page nonsensical, I'm just removing it, especially since Conversation In The Main Page is bad anyway.

As another example of this sort of thing (and Square-Enix rereleases seem to be huge magnets for it), another page once said that Ultros's lecherous dialogue was hopelessly bowlderized in the U.S. Final Fantasy III release, and only fixed in the DS FF6 rerelease... and then, as an example of the newly restored dialogue in the DS version, quoted a line that was exactly the same in the original American release. *sigh*

Edited by BritBllt "And for the first time in weeks, I felt the boredom go away!" Hide / Show Replies

Everyone knows Hobbes and Locke. Calvin, somewhat, from Calvin and Hobbes. Rousseau is less known to college crowd (since Locke is more likely to be discussed in high school). Should the trope be renamed to Locke Was Right, Hobbes Was Wrong, or Calvin Was Wrong? Or should Locke just be an example in the Real Life section?

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So the pessimistic "Hobbes was right" gets real examples, but this one doesn't?

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Does this setting really avert tropes like Moral Event Horizon and Complete Monster? I've seen a few examples with these tropes in them. Like The Dark Knight. In fact, the Joker actually shows up on the Most Triumphant Example page.

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Could Elfen Lied be considered as Rousseau Was Right, being that it's full of Humans Are Bastards and Humans Are the Real Monsters, the exact opposite of the trope.

Edited by 69.172.221.4

So... I noticed the talk of moving tropes. This one isn't being cut out completely, is it?

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Dropped thread-mode bit on Jail from Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha. If he is a good, clear example please Repair Dont Respond and read Example Indentation In Trope Lists.

Jail actually seems to be another example of this, oddly enough. It's implied in the manga that his desire to overturn the TSAB was actually artificially implanted in him before birth by the people responsible for his creation. If nothing else, he gets a few sympathy points for treating the Numbers like his own children rather than giving them the usual Tyke-Bomb treatment.

• Err... You do remember his clone-based exit strategy, right?
• There is that, but the implication that Jail spent his whole life under More than Mind Control brings up the question of how much of that was his programming being too successful and how much was genuinely Jail's decision. It's worth noting that in SSX, Jail has an encounter with Cinque after most of the cyborgs have joined the TSAB and he bears her no ill will for turning her back on his ideals.
• Even if Jail isn't pure evil, Due and Quattro have virtually no redeeming qualities.
• According to the manual, Due and Quattro were also created with trace amounts of Jail's DNA (same goes for Uno and Tre, but not for Cinque or any of the other Numbers.). If Jail is evil because of his genes, it follows that Due and Quattro would be evil for similar reasons.

Edited by Camacan

Dropped this from Knights of the Old Republic — does not explain how putting a ghost to rest is an example of Rousseau Was Right.

Used to bittersweet effect if you choose to tell Ajunta Pall, the ghost of an ancient Sith Lord, that he doesn't have to be in pain any longer.

• How is it bittersweet? Becoming one with the force is the Jedi equivalent of Heaven, and after all, he was, well, a tormented ghost

Edited by Camacan

Dropped this conversation from Dr Who since it didn't add to the main point.

• He didn't give one at the end of Midnight. No siree!.
  • To be fair, he was being kind of stupid. While the passengers were irrationally paranoid his no killing rule really got in the way of their safety.
  • To be fair, for the most part they had no reason to kill the monster, as all it was doing was spooking them out.

I think White-and-Grey Morality should be its own trope, not just a redirect to this one. This page seems to refer to any example where Humans Are Not Bastards, or any character who holds these views. White-and-Grey Morality would be the counterpart to Black-and-Grey Morality, and thus refer to the entire tone of the work.

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