Anghraine

jubaah responded to this post:

It normally aggregates many things I dislike: the unreasonable villany escalation you mentioned, the implication that the way it currently is is better than The Alternative (and its twin sister which is Putting Revolution On The Mouth Of The Villain), and my number one enemy, Kill The One Bad Person and you solve the problem

I replied:

Yes! The whole structuring of “there is but one alternative to the way things are and it is Bad” is so frustrating (LOK in particular avoids this sometimes but only sometimes, and it’s a super common trope regardless). It’s as if the possibility of imagining things being different and better is beyond the scope of fiction (which it manifestly is not!!!).

And yes, distilling a problem down to one person who simply needs to be defeated is … aghhh. It’s one thing when it’s like—okay, there’s a specific person or people who pose immediate and powerful threats that have to be dealt with and there are more systemic problems to confront. But it’s so often reduced to just that one person being The Real Problem and then everything is fine (in Book 4, there’s this thing where a heroic character is like “well, if we assassinate the enemy leader it will solve everything” and I’m just WHY. WHY WOULD IT DO THAT).

moggett said:

I’m also starting to become deeply distrustful of “too far” narratives because I think they ultimately serve reactionary ideological goals. The moral discussion becomes all about the how (admittedly important) without truly engaging with the uncomfortable-to-the-status-quo questions.

I replied:

Exactly!!! The part where they’ve got “the right idea” and just went about it the wrong way becomes overwhelmingly about The Wrong Way, with only the most token of nods to “hey, they were fundamentally right, we do need to address this entirely valid problem.” That's something much more challenging creatively and ideologically than constantly restoring the status quo in the standard “well, it’s imperfect but dealing with its problems is too difficult and complicated” way.

I think it’s partly frustrating because there’s so rarely a counterweight of major characters who, for instance, advocate for the same essential cause (treated as The Right Idea by the narrative!) as the villain but don’t go too far. Maybe it's partly because defining what is and is not “too far” is something a lot of creators are pretty skittish about, but I think if you’re going to bring in these kinds of issues, you … don’t get to be skittish, really.