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Moral Ambiguity (Grey Vs Grey) Vs Black Vs White Morality
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Post by
588688
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Post by
367020
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Post by
Adamsm
Anyway......Legend of Zelda series is also a good example of a Black vs White story, it manages to be filled with mystery and sometimes creepyness while still being a black and white story. Especially majora's mask, which I hope they make a 3ds version of soon.
I wouldn't say that Zelda is the best series to reference for story, especially given that Link is a silent protagonist, and he doesn't have the strength of world and supporting characters that, say, Gordon Freeman has.
But Twilight Princess does have Midna; who's clearly there to provide the 'evil' to the game to go with Link's wolf form....that said though, compared to most of the Twilight creatures and Zant, Midna is a bit less; she's a washed out white heh. Ganon of course, has been a Black Hat no matter what game he shows up in: King of Thieves, Ultimate Puppet Master of Doom, and of course the Dark World transformed into him into a massive Pig(which was meant to signify his greed and lust for everything).....why Link became a Bunny in LttP, I'll never know; the Nintendo Power comic version was good as it had him transform into a Wolf to signify his own rage and anger against the evils of the world and could possibly turn him into a monster as well if he let it rule him.
Post by
588688
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Post by
gamerunknown
One, Tolkien was a writer very unlike the writers we have nowadays.
He was a fantastic writer, but could he be compared to George R R Martin? I always cringe a bit when people assume that nobody will ever top the previous generation of writers.
Real life tends to work that way, hence the more realistic characters.
One can have characters with loads of depth and neurosis that will always take the moral choice rather than the most expedient one... At least after being forced into it, like the Wildstorm doctor.
DBZ was predictable, but characters could be injured, fail and even die. Some grey with faction changing (in the case of Vegeta) and some amorality like Buu. But the main character died and went to hell; he still fought for what he believed in.
Also, I find the worse when a character is portrayed as white, when his actions are black by my standards... My review of Boondock Saints. (Spoilers throughout, can't use the spoiler tag for some reason).
1. Wouldn't getting shot in the back of the head create an exit wound larger than to allow a small coin to comfortably rest on it?
2. How could 3 police officers not recognise an execution style killing, nor the FBI guy name it?
3. Christians don't believe in the river Styx, nor would they particularly want to ensure safe passage to the other side to someone they detested. If they were feeling particularly clement, they might offer up their names for a repose for the souls mass.
4. Would someone working on a murder case for the FBI really clasp his hands to the head after getting the victim's blood on them?
5. In the universe of the film, the Italians are accepting of the Russians and the Irish aren't. Why would a mafia boss send his underling to his death by opening fire on a room full of Russian mob bosses? Wouldn't that just instigate a gang war?
6. The Saints say one of the crimes they persecute is murder, but they're murderers themselves, since murder is killing not sanctioned by the state. More on this later.
7. Il Duce and the Saints are meant to be, essentially (after not seeing them return to the meat plant) professional killers. How the ^&*! did they manage to not score a single critical hit in an open air shootout against each other, despite reportedly being the most capable killers on the planet? Did they take a sudden crash course from the Imperial Stormtrooper Marksmanship Academy? Not to mention in this scene they don't check if their crime was witnessed, which I'm fairly sure constitutes direct evidence.
8. Rocco complains about going to Church, but Italians are stereotypically Catholic as well. In the same scene he threatens a priest so he doesn't talk, but he could just say that he's a penitent in which case he'd be bound not to. Also, pious Irish Catholics wouldn't walk down the aisle and disrupt Mass for no reason. If they really wanted to do their own things, they could avoid Sunday mass at least. Which leads to the next point...
9. There are three qualifications to receive grace as a Catholic as far as I'm aware. Contrition, confession and penance. Since murder is a mortal sin in Catholicism and the Saints expressed no contrition over it, should they get gunned down, they'd die with those sins weighing against them, but their father extols killing more people as a matter of faith. Moral absolutism has long been Catholic orthodoxy, as in it isn't worth killing one innocent to save two innocents or whatever. Doing what is moral because it is right, not because of the consequences. Which leads to...
10. Catholics (including the Saints) carry the symbol of wrongful execution around their necks. Jesus himself talks about murder on the sermon on the mount... Matthew 5:21 (whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgement) and Matthew 5:38-39 (Do NOT resist evil). It seems that their fervour and zeal were so great that they'd ignore their God as unrighteous. Or perhaps the writer really had an issue with the gospels that they needed to address through cinema.
11. Speaking of Matthew, God also gives pretty unambiguous instructions when it comes to praying in Matthew 6:5-15. Don't pray in public, pray in private and say the words as they appear in the Bible. No real room for prayers that are passed down in the family for celebrating an assassination.
12. Diverging from theological matters, was it just me or were some of the accents all over the place?
13. Is it really likely that a barman would serve you after you called him a "fairy !@#$er?"
14. The Saints claim that all cultures and creeds can ascribe to the notion that "murder, rape and stealing" are wrong (though the saints are a little tetchy themselves on the first one). However they extend their killing to men attending a titty bar, which definitely doesn't fall under that purview. They even show bare breasts to illustrate the scene, making voyeurs worthy of execution out of the entire audience of the film. It's impossible to admire the motives of the protagonists without feeling like a hypocrite, but perhaps the entire film was a post modernist deconstruction and a "Take That!" at Christian writers of films with assassin protagonists (John Woo?). In which case Truffaut was right and I totally missed that.
15. Was Willem Dafoe hired to dismantle the set by gnawing it?
Sylvanas firmly as a gray hat.
Oooh I'd disagree. Perhaps not last expansion... No, starter quests for Putress that she was aware of were bad enough. But now she's completely jumped the shark by doing the precise thing she loathed in Arthas. I'd say Garrosh is a more grey character: he's a !@#$ to everyone in the Horde and pointlessly bloodthirsty, but in decrying Sylvanas he did stick to a reasonable moral code. The only reason you insist on calling them “grey” is because that's how they're treated by the writers in order to add a layer of depth, equivocating between Garithos and Putress and Archimonde and whatnot. If the Forsaken were not playable and not a member of the Horde, what would your reaction be to a cutscene of an undead that absolutely detested Arthas killing soldiers defending their ancestors homeland and raising them as unthinking peons of her will? Rank hypocrisy I'd say.
Also, spade head.
I address Sylvanas' actions
here
and tangentially
here
.
Post by
367020
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Post by
gamerunknown
I've done their questing, both Cata and Vanilla flavors of it. I see a people cursed with undeath, fighting for their unlives against enemies who consider them nothing more than monsters. I see them fighting against cowardly guerrilla fighters, mongrels who claim land that they had (hehe) forsaken. I see the Forsaken acting preemptively to remove a threat to their sovereign nation, by not allowing the Alliance a port city right on their doorstep. I see the Forsaken taking whatever steps are necessary to make sure their weapons will work as intended. They are firmly a grey morality faction, no matter what nonsense your worgen-loving bias will try to spew.
Don't you remember during Vanilla (or perhaps WC3) there was a theme not only of Sylvanas fighting to enfranchise her people, but also to prevent Arthas from causing more people to have the curse of the forsaken? It is eternal torment and the dialogue and voice quotes from the forsaken NPCs support that. That's what gave her moral validity (setting aside her extreme hostility to the idea that the humans of Lordaeron had a right to self-determination, let alone life). That validity is lost when she seeks to simply expand the suffering for political gains.
Post by
588688
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367020
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Post by
Adamsm
In the sylvanas story, she blatantly says how the forsaken are just "arrows in the quiver" for her to use against the lich king, and now that the lich king is dead, they are now her shield to prevent her from going back to hell where she belongs. That's not reading comprehension, that's what it blatantly says. She even treated her own high elf comrades as just "arrows in the quiver" even in life, the woman is a sociopath.Yes Sold, that's how she treated them
before the death of the Lich King
; go read the final page again, where she has her views illuminated and no longer treats her people like she can just throw them away, which isn't to say she won't do that for the rest of the Horde. Also, the story itself is god awful.
However, I still stand by my stance, as much as I personally hate Sylvanas, she's is still a gray leader, just like all of the rest except for Velen; he's the only White Hat leader among all 12 factions, and if Cairne was still alive, he'd be the other, but since he's not, his son Baine is a good example of a Gray too.
Post by
588688
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367020
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Post by
Orranis
Sold's post made this thread have 1111 views and 111 posts :p
And Sold, if you've gotten Adams to defend Sylvanas you're probably pretty far in the wrong.
Post by
gnomerdon
a poisonous snake once bit chuck norris. after excruciating pain, the snake died.
Post by
588688
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Post by
Adamsm
The final page says that the forsaken are now not just arrows in her quiver, but a shield to protect her from death and going back to hell. Her killing herself isn't going to magically make her start caring about her people, she didn't before and she doesn't now, as the story said. They just have a new purpose to her now, to protect her from getting killed and going back to hell.
She is pure 100% evil, there is no grey morality with her, and there never was. Her and the forsaken were always black, there was never a point where they were subtle, they were always openly evil. The story showed that she didn't give a damn about her high elven people when she was alive, she didn't care about her undead people in undeath before she killed herself, and after her suicide and resurrection from hell, she still doesn't.
It says it right on the story that she didn't care about the forsaken before her suicide, and doesn't care about them either. They just now are there to protect her from going back to hell as opposed to before where they were her "arrows in the quiver" against the lich king.
"Grey" would be having to do something bad for your own good. There is no "doing bad for our own good" in the forsaken storyline. They start fights with people, then kill them. There are way too many instances where the forsaken have done something evil for no reason, just go to the undercity, or heck there journal in cataclysm hillsbrad where it talks of forsaken
hunting down fleeing peasants and murdering them
. Where is the grey in that?
Where is the grey in that forsaken who took a human prisoner in
the undercity and performed a horrific form of lobotomy on her, taking out her eyes and then fiddling with her brain so that's she's obediant, then showing her off to two forsaken citizens and them being amused by it? Where is the grey in working gilnean citizens to death in the mines in gilneas? Where is the grey in that forsaken diver's journal in howling fjord where he says he gets joy out of oprhans crying? Where is the grey in that forsaken argent tourney member who tells paletress how he punched a freakin penguin on his way to the tournament, just to see her reaction? Where is the grey in the forsaken holding prisoners in the undercity and doing horrific tests on them with experimental chemicals and then killing them and cutting them up, skinning them, and making flesh giants out of them? And the murdering people and raising them into undeath against their will?
Where? Where is the grey? I don't see any grey, I see a nation of depraved sociopaths who have no ability to feel and just only get joy out of killing people. I'm sorry, but there is not one thing grey about forsaken or their leader sylvanas, there never was in the beginning, and there isn't any now. In fact they've gotten worse since the start of the game.
Are you really going to attempt to justify any of that? How is any of what I listed about the forsaken in any way justifiable? Did those peasants who were fleeing for their lives provoke the forsaken somehow? Did that penguin who was just minding its own business in icecrown threaten that forsaken somehow to justify him physically abusing it? Did theresa in the undercity somehow deserve to have her eyes torn out and her brain screwed around with while she was still freakin conscious?
There is no grey here, it's all black, black as the darkest night.
/sigh Whatever Sold; but if someone comes in here with the same thing to bash Varian or Graymane, remember what you posted right here.
Post by
gamerunknown
*ahem*
That's really quite egregious. He went to the effort of detailing his views and you respond with a 9 second video? I'm afraid that doesn't even approach constituting an argument.
Post by
588688
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Post by
Adamsm
/sigh Whatever Sold; but if someone comes in here with the same thing to bash Varian or Graymane, remember what you posted right here.
Well if you can find me sources of varian or genn doing any of those things I listed, then sure. I expected you or taragnar to say something about each forsaken evil instance I listed as opposed to shrugging it all off, instead you try to imply that varian or genn are guilty of any of the things I listed about the forsaken, without even listing any scenarios. Oh well.
Well since both of them would be happy as hell to have the Orcs or the Forsaken completely removed from existence....which is what you say Sylvanas is Black for wanting to keep her people alive....
Post by
588688
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