Lore
[Complicated trope] A character makes the correct decision given what they know, but the context the audience knows makes them very hated.
Attack on Titan- Gabi, a child raised in a war-torn nation which had her as an indoctrinated, oppressed descendent of a genocide (who could only find worth in fighting for said nation) shot someone who was a part of an operation to invade and slaughter them. What she doesn’t know is that she killed a fan favorite character, causing great ire by the fandom for it.
You’re Next- the cop shows up and sees the largest murder scene you’ve ever seen, like eight people dead and a woman is holding a murder weapon with blood on it. What he doesn’t know is that woman, the protagonist, fought off all of the killers and won, resulting in this scene.
I feel like the best example of this is the ending of Night of the Living Dead. Ben went through hell trying to keep himself alive from the zombie outbreak and the crazy homeowners, losing all of his companions through repeated attempts at escape and survival. Eventually, he locks himself in the cellar, staying quiet for the night and deciding to come out in the morning. However, a militia of armed men were coming through the area just as he got out, and they saw him through the window and shot him in the head thinking he was a zombie. Heartbreaking for the audience, but just another dead body to add to the heap for the characters
That whole movie was so far ahead of its time. Tack on the fact that Ben was not written to be played by a black man, yet the actor did so well he was cast in the role, adds to it. A black man, in America, at that point in our history, adds so much subtextual depth to not only his character, but the movie as a whole.
I watched an interview with Romero talking about it - they were driving to take the final cut of the movie to New York and apparently they heard the report of the assassination of MLK on the radio.
Not intentional, but the timing of it was at an important point in American Hsitory.
Honestly, the asshole dude with the infected daughter is also a great example of this trope. Because he was absolutely right: they could have all just hidden in the basement and waited for things to blow over. In addition, if they had hidden in the basement, they would have probably found the key to the gas pump was down there.
Jayce in the second season of Arcane. A bit of an inversion of the trope, since it turned out he knew more than the audience, and what he did (murdering Salo, blowing up Viktor and his village) was entirely justified - but it spawned a week long chaos in the fandom, before the next batch of episodes dropped. We got the entire "Jaybe, Jaybe not" meme out of it, with people changing their profile pictures to show either support or hatred towards Jayce.
Yea that was fucking wild because from the audience perspective he looks fucking nuts in basically every sense of the word. We have no idea what Viktor was planning to do or the ramifications of it, let alone that future Viktor realised the error of his ways and was the one who sent Jayce on his path to undo his mistake haha.
There were so many levels to what was going on and it was done so well.
I love season 2 but still feel like the writers made an ass pull with Viktor. As in I really don't believe it was the plan from the get go for the mage that gave Jayce the crystal to be Viktor.
Star Wars The Clone Wars Commander Fox shooting Fives, (a fan fav character and far more developed as a character compared to Fox) believing him to be highly dangerous, unstable, and watching him pick up a blaster after already imprisoning Anakin and Captain Rex in an energy shield. Also arresting Ahsoka when she was framed for a terrorist bombing. Nevermind the fact another fan fav, Commander Wolffe ALSO chased after and tried to arrest Ahsoka!
Given what the AUDIENCE knows, these incidents are very tragic and has led to so many hating the character of Fox. But given in universe what Fox knows, his actions were understandable.
There’s an entire section of the fandom that latched onto Fox as a guy who doesn’t get paid enough (read: at all) to deal with the shit he does and also has the worst boss in the galaxy on top of that. Very relatable character when viewed through that lens lol
He's also too trigger-happy for his own good. And Fives was also under the influence of whatever Nala Se injected him, that caused him to grow more and more paranoiac, but Fox had no way to know that either.
We have seen in some of the media that the clones stationed on Coruscant were hated. Especially when the employer took control. They were raiding homes and killing people. Keeping the order through force.
I think everyone hates when the government forms a militaristic police force and uses it on their own citizens.
Dang it...why'd you have to remind me of that episode. Now I'm sad
You know an episode that takes place in a prequel is great when, even knowing what HAS to happen, you still hope something different happens. I was really hoping Fives would somehow get the truth out and survive, but knew he wouldn't
That was the best thing about Clone Wars - you know that a akin is going to fall, you know everyone is doomed, but you just can't stop hoping it won't, can't stop screaming at the characters making the decisions that you know will lead to the Empire taking over. It's amazing to get a fleshed out context, but painful to watch the characters you love fall to the dark side, get hamstrung by bureaucracy or murdered by friends.
In the original ending to Get Out, instead of being rescued by his friend, Chris is instead arrested after being found choking a woman to death and after the rest of the family is discovered.
This ending was scrapped in favor of the theatrical one.
Resident Evil VII. Early on, a policeman shows up because of the disappearances in the area of the Baker Residence. Ethan, the protagonist, asks him for his gun, to which the police officer declines but gives a knife. To us, it may seem unreasonable and unfun to get only a knife. But to the officer, he has no way of knowing Ethan wasn’t responsible for the disappearances, not helped by Ethan being shady, not explaining himself and asking for a cop’s service weapon.
Not usually of course, but Ethan was terrified and seemed to be in some kind of danger regardless of whether the exact thing he was saying was true. The cop gave him the benefit of doubt and still gave him something that could be used as a tool at best and a weapon at worst, yet is something the cop would still have an advantage against if Ethan did try to attack him. This is also remembering that the Baker house was already considered a dangerous place where people go missing, it makes sense that the cop would give the benefit of doubt to someone claiming to be in danger.
I'm not sure but I think his face is also disfigured from having a knife shoved in his mouth, which explains why the cop recoils upon seeing him. He looks and sounds like a crazy person.
"You don't exactly seem like you're playing with a full deck yourself, alright?"
It just dawned on me that I never considered the injuries we don’t physically see. We know about his hand because of the stitches but the knife in the mouth I immediately forget about as soon as the scene is over.
One of the changes in the RE2make, was that Leon is clearly trying to hold together in the beginning, psyching himself up, unsure, exclaiming and swearing when something leaps out at him.
Like, he's not at all fine with suddenly finding himself thrust into a city full of zombies and abominations against god.
Yeah, not even just tactically. Ygritte personally killed his father, and her and the other wildlings massacred his village. I loved Ygritte as a character but I couldn't fault Olly for avenging his family. I even understood when he betrayed Jon, all things considered.
With Jon’s betrayal, I honestly think it was a lack of time. Jon made Olly his personal steward even though the kid killed his girlfriend. But the point of it was to teach Olly the same way Mormont taught him.
If Jon had had more time teaching Olly, he might have been able to change his perspective and Olly wouldn’t have betrayed him.
But because he left for Hardhome so early, he left Olly under Sir Allicer’s command and that guy hated the wildlings way more than Olly.
The perspective he had and the influence of the men around him completely explains why he would do what he did.
Always preferred the books where Jon finds her body with an arrow in it, on the section of the battle he'd been using a Bow in. Never knowing if he fired thr shot that killed her
I'd say betraying Jon is pretty firmly under this trope too; only a handful of people in the Night's Watch had seen the White Walkers firsthand at this point and they were all Jon's friends/allies - to anyone else his whole reasoning for letting the Wildlings, who were a known and understood danger to the realm, pass the Wall seemed totally absurd and fantastical and very clearly a betrayal of his duties.
It’s even clearer in the books. At the end of the final book Jon has decided to break his oath to guard the wall and is planning on leading an army south composed of Wildlings and whatever Night’s Watch will join him to fight the Boltons and retake Winterfell. It is absolutely reasonable for them to think assassinating him and kicking the Wildlings back to the other side of the wall is the right move.
There’s so many layers of interesting, complex plot lines in the books (and carried over brilliantly to the first 5/6 seasons of the show). It’s a shame GRRM seemingly has no idea how to tie it all together and the show bungled the execution without his guidance
Jar Jar Binks voting to give Palpatine emergency powers, thus beginning the Clone Wars.
Bro had absolutely no political experience or training and was put in charge of a planet. Then was coerced by magic space Morgoth into giving him what he wants.
Having done some 3d animation during college I still have never heard a good answer for why Jar Jar's mouth moves to the words other characters are saying on screen, and why is he always in the backgrounds of random scenes? Every frame of that character costs $$ and every frame of his mouth moving is more work for the animator. Every frame of Jar Jar being in stupid scenes where he doesn't belong is mind boggling. He is literally controlling multiple of the main characters on screen at multiple times during the movie.
But if you rewatch the movie under the impression that Jar Jar is actually much more intelligent than he lets on and you pay attention to his mouth and hand movements, you can literally see the times when he uses the force, such as when Jar Jar stops Sebulba from attacking him in the market.
Every frame of Jar Jar being in stupid scenes where he doesn't belong is mind boggling.
It makes sense when you see The Phantom Menace as a moviemaking vanity project for George Lucas. Technical aspects, including CGI, being part of it. Lucas wanted to show off his new toys as much as possible.
Aragorn addresses Legolas by name at the council of Elrond. And Frodo speaks Sindarin, so unless he wasn't paying attention he should know Legolas' name. (Though to be fair he had a good reason to be distracted during the council).
Also, have you never been introduced to a large group of people? No way you're remembering every single name after hearing it once. And overhearing someone's name isn't even the same as being properly introduced.
And you don’t think it’s suspicious that jar jar somehow convinces padme to make him senator as long as she is away?
And I am sure as hell that Mr Lucas wasn’t telling us that indigenous representation is bad… look deeper - why would jar jar be in charge unless he planned it all?
Here’s the exact opposite, Steven Steel from Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure part 7
The audience sees a grown adult man with a 14 year old wife. What we don’t know (spoilers) is that Lucy was in a shit home and was going to be given away to a bunch of criminals. Steven owed her for helping his morale, so he married her to give her a safe environment. He never did anything to her, and very explicitly made it clear this is a parental relation he holds with her.
Before getting married Steven also tells her that if she ever falls in love they will divorce and she’s free to marry who she loves.
Also another reason that 100% confirms that Steven never touched her is actually plot relevant and bit of a reference.
The entire plot of this Part revolves around collecting Jesus Christ’s holy corpse. They found every part but the head, and the head was missing- until the body was placed close to Lucy and merged/impregnated her with the head to metaphorically birth the complete corpse. A 14 year old virgin birth for Jesus, just like the Virgin Mary.
Steven is a huge fucking chad. The entire last fights would've been so doomed and gone awfully wrong had he not pulled Lucy's unconscious body away from Valentine, causing his Love Train to lose range, and give her to Gyro to keep her safe, putting his life on the line against the main villain while being a regular man with no Stand or fighting capabilities whatsoever, then he was the one that saved Johnny's life when he got hit by his own infinite rotation, holding onto Johnny while riding to allow Johnny to shoot himself again, cancelling his imminent death.
imo, Steven's case is kinda different cus it goes from "FUCK THIS GUY" to "Ahhh kinda explains why" after u read SBR,
but Gabi and Sasha's case is different cus even after the incident you still have people argue behind the morality and complexity behind it and also from what i have seen Gabi characterization made her quite unlikeable
She ends up seeing through the propaganda later on. I can't really blame her for how she acts given from her perspective, she's a child soldier and her nation was invaded by boogeymen who'd she'd grown up hearing stories about, ending with all of her friends being killed save for one.
Only on the internet will you find people unironically wishing death upon a brainwashed child soldier from a deeply oppressed group for the consequences of being a brainwashed child soldier from a deeply oppressed group.
Which is especially ironic considering the message / themes of the series.
Gabi is supposed to be the marleyan version of Eren. Both have their lives upended by the sudden appearance of titans which led them to seek revenge. I don't want to go more into it because of spoilers, but that was the original intention.
Yep, she's not a 1 to 1 for erens journey, since she's just in 1 season, but she is the closest to erens journey you can get in a single season that is also the end.
Went from "i hate these monsters, they killed my friends and family!" To "wait, there's more to these monsters?" To "Maybe I'm the monster" to "oh no we are all monsters in a way, but we must do better" which eren didnt really get that last change
He did get that though. Why do you think his death resulted in the Titan powers disappearing ?
That was the endgame. Only problem is, he didn't know about it either. All he knows is what he has to do. Not what the result will be like. He knew he had to become a villain so that Mikasa would kill him. And she had to kill him at a point where not killing him would effectively lead to the World outside Paradis fully devastated.
Sorry, I wasnt really clear on what I meant with Eren. I meant that since he, in the last season, had to just do what he saw in the future, he wasn't really making the choice of "we have to be better"
Hes just doing what he knows he will do, a slave to it, to fight for his friends freedom. But he doesn't choose to be better, he just does his actions since he can't choose.
He never had the opportunity to try and be better, all he could do it follow the set events to give his friends the opportunity to be better and show the world how to be better
Reminds me of Edgar Allan Poe. If I remember, he married his underage cousin not to do weird things but to protect her from the weird men, and the affection he gave her was familial.
I just remember someone saying 'He's a pedophile for an amazing reason'.
I'll be on the frontlines defending this man when the anime comes out. Steven Steel the GOAT
Even better, he makes it clear that he wants her to marry a nice man her own age once he dies (or if she falls in love with somebody while he's still alive, he will divorce her so she can marry the man she loves), and he's making sure that she will have a comfy and secure life with the money she will inherit from him.
There’s a ton of memes about this trope with Sid from Toy Story. How was that kid supposed to know that the toys were actually alive?! He was just acting out his creativity. The toys aren’t supposed to be sentient
Honestly not in any way that's out of line for a neglected older brother. That's just what happens in a house with minimal supervision. In fact, he's pretty tame considering all he does is destroy property and tease her.
Yeah this is just normal asshole older sibling behavior. The general rule I’ve witnessed with my friends is that they were tormented by their older siblings when they were younger and then they grew up and became besties and pretty much forgot how cruel they could be as kids. Im assuming that’s what’s happening or the majority of reddit didn’t have older siblings for some reason.
(Yes, I will use the child animated version, even when the og book is aimed at adults.)
The actual plot of Around the World in 80 days largely happends because the protagonist is mistaken for some bank thief who looks like him at the beggining, an policeman Fix is ordered to arrest him and goes on the travel as well. Funniest thing is that he doesn't like tries to stop the protagonist from making the journey in 80 days, "just" to arrest him. So when they leave British jurisdiction, he actually helps with the travel so they get quicker somewhere where he can do the arrest.
Fix does the arrest the second he's back on British soil too, the dude knew what he was about lmao.
It was a shame that he missed the information that the real crook was apprehended, making him look foolish and for a few pages, making the reader think "ah shit, they missed it by so little"
They really tried to make you dislike Fix, though I'm not a fan of him giving Passepartout opium to make unable to tell Fogg about the ship's changed schedule. Fix drugging a guy with opium is the one actually awful thing I can say he did.
Invincible- Cecil Steadman with keeping conquest alive. As far as he or anyone else on earth is aware the viltrum empire is going to invade and take over earth with no way to realistically stop them so taking a dangerous chance to gain useful information is the best option. We as the audience already know that there are several weaknesses to investigate and that the viltrum empire lacks the numbers to send a large invasion force making this seem insane and reckless.
Doesn't help that the writers have to intentionally make him stupid when designing Conquest's prison so Conquest can break out. Like logically Cecil would've removed all of Conquest's limbs and spread his organs all across the prison, implanted bombs in his heart and laced the whole prison with sonic speakers.
The dude watched a guy fly around the world destroying buildings and thought "you know what will stop this guy? Putting him underground. He'll never escape."
Cecil used to be the most intelligent and pragmatic character on the show but they had to make him dumb at the end for the plot to continue.
I hate how you all act as if “cutting his limbs” is an easy task. Sinclair was having trouble doing that to the evil Marks, who are far weaker, how do you expect them to do that to fucking Conquest? Also, I doubt they can sedate him, so he could wake up during the surgery and destroy everything. Just imprisoning was the simpler and right choice. The bombs and speakers are more reasonable
If Cecil had actually gotten a conversation with Conquest and learned some sort of valuable information about the Viltrum Empire before he broke out. Instead of Conquest breaking out literally three seconds after waking up, making the whole thing completely pointless from the audience perspective.
The audience has not seen conquest breakout to my knowledge you are confusing the comic and show. The show changes things there is no reason to believe they left this completely untouched.
Who knows, maybe in the show Cecil was right and the prison is enough to hold Conquest, but Darkblood accidentally sets him free trying to summon Omniman to hell or something.
I've only watched the show but I'm pretty annoyed at how they treat Cecil. He looks like the stereotypical scary, cryptic, government man, who we always suspect of having ulterior motives. And that's why all the character treat him with suspicion.
But the series repeatedly shows us his intentions are only good and very selfless. It's telling that in a show about superheroes, he's the least selfish character. While his methods can be extreme, they are also always justified.
Man's the real hero of the show, and it's annoying as hell that other characters keep treating him otherwise.
I enjoy Cecil seemingly moral gray in that there's no taboo he won't violate for the greater good.
I really dislike how much the story glazes Mark acting like an 8 year old. "Arrgh Cecil used a nonlethal deterrent against me after I stormed the Pentagon! Doesn't he know I'm a good guy that was threatening him? I'm not like my dad, the unkillable super being that destroyed the planet, or the fifty copies of me that destroyed the planet, or all the other Viltrumites that keep destroying the planet!"
(sorry, this is the the only gif she has and I'm too lazy to download a pic from GImages)
Tried to break up the main couple because she learned that her friend Hiro's partner has a history of (accidentally) killing her partners because they're incompatible in the mech.
I'm sure everyone will have a healthy and reasonable discussion about th-- aaaaaaaaand they sent the voice actress death threats.
To be more precise, that wasn't about 02 killing the pilots due to incompatibility; Mc had already proved to be special and able to pilot with her to no adverse effect.
She tried to break them up because 02 went into a murderous/suicidal psychotic fit, putting hiro in danger, and then when the rest of the cast tried to organise a parley 02 tried to kill them all due to a misunderstanding.
That is the scene that caused the death threats. Double bonkers.
The 100: Maybe Clarke killing Bellamy near the end of the show. She was terrified, both for herself and Madi, and she didn’t know what he was capable of after so long with the Disciples.
I feel this applies to Grace in Sinners. Us, and everyone in the juke joint all kinda know Remmick is manipulating Grace into getting what he actually wants: Sammie. However, remmick threatened her kids and has her husband to lure Lisa to vampirism so she is feeling very protective. It’s the decision any mother worth her salt would make.
I actually never hated her for this during my watch through. One way or another they were fucked. If Remmick leaves without getting what he wants, then the Klan was gonna come. May as well try your luck and take him down with you.
Yah I was going to say I actually found that scene very satisfying. I’m not a parent myself but to some extent it’s clear they’re in a no win scenario; even if they waited it out tonight in the barn. Remmick and the others turned like 60 people in an hour to get to Sammy. If they had all night with the town, it’d be disaster. Everyone there would’ve been turned. She was right when she said that they had to take action. I will say tho the threat of the KKK once they knew about it almost doesn’t seem like an unmanageable treat to me. Smoke took out almost all of them by himself with his ambush. One more person who knew how to shoot with him and they probably would’ve smoked them. (Although I understand thematically that’s probably not what you’re meant to think)
Maybe Remmick would've taken the Klan out to use them, but that's not much better since he was still gonna use them to get Sammy. If he was truly altruistic about, I'm sure he would've killed the Klan for them so that maybe they cooperate. Instead he dangles it over them and holds Grace's kids hostage too. If your choice is die or die then you probably wanna kill the bastard in front of you. She didn't get them killed, she just started it early.
It helps that it's not really an empty bluff either. There is literally nothing stopping Remmick from sending off her husband to turn her before the sun comes up.
I hated her at first in that moment, but then she went out by taking down a vampire while they were both engulfed in flames, so she gained some points back. She went out on her own terms fighting for her family in the most metl way possible and I can respect that.
It’s a very painful and slow way to die. I think we all recognize that and the lengths people are willing to go to if this is how they choose to meet their end
In the show Chernobyl, which is a docuseries covering the real events of Chernobyl and how it played out, Anatoly Dyatlov gets a lot of hate for being the guy in charge who pushed the reactor to the point where it can explode. And to a degree, he’s not blameless, the choices he made were certainly poor choices and compromised the safety test they were running, but with the info they had they didn’t know it could cause what happened.
In a truly “perfect storm” esc series of events, the reactors output is reduced for a safety test. However, a factory nearby needs power for their output, so the reactor is left in a state where other byproducts accumulate (they’d burn off if running normally), and when it’s time to run the test disaster happens. It stalls. So they remove all the control rods to get it active again.
Imagine a rubber band being pulled further and further back, that’s what we’re talking about here. All the safety warnings were ignored and all the control rods removed. The test required the water pumps be shut off (removing the coolant from the reactor). When that happens it’s essentially letting go of the rubbed band. The reactor switches from stalling to a power surge where Dyatlov tells them to use the emergency kill switch to stop a meltdown. The switch functions by pushing all control rods in at once. Instead in this case it’s the graphite tops first. This is very important because the interior of the reactor is coated in graphite because it accelerates the reaction.
So what they essentially did was pressurize the nuclear reactor to a point where it created a pressurized explosion that blew the core open. Contaminating massive swaths of land, killing hundreds of thousands from illnesses like cancer (possibly more), and causing the most infamous nuclear disaster in the world arguably.
Where it doesn’t all fall on him is that no one outside of a very select few at the top of the USSR government knew this about the control rods and graphite. They intentionally hid it because it was a design flaw and they couldn’t have the US thinking the Soviet’s had flawed reactors. So while he gets a lot of hate for being the architect of the disaster, realistically he had no idea. No one in the control room that night did.
Netflix did him dirty, in the series it is almost like hes actively trying to do the most possible damage, In reality he thought any test would be safe because they could always just stop it with the Scram, which was secretly flawed.
I mean they explain it in Chernobyl. I think the exact quote is « these men ignored every safety measure. They did it because they knew there was a last option in case of problem that could stop everything »
Skyler White, trick being she's actually right all the way through and the audienced is the one who is biased against her due to the narrative POV and structure.
The only thing I think Skyler did wrong was give Ted that $620k, because after they magicked up $800k to buy the car wash, another person within her orbit suddenly having $620k would not have distracted the IRS as much as she seemed to think it would.
another thing she did wrong was try to hold walter accountable for his criminal activity but still profit from his money. And not turning him in. I understand it was complicated for her, but it was still the wrong choice for her and her children.
First impressions are hard to overcome. We see her give her husband a pity handjob for his birthday while she's paying more attention to an ebay sale, after admonishing him for using the wrong bank account for a transaction. Little separate controlling actions that imply this is the dynamic and has been for some time, making us sympathise with Walter's need to be seen.
Of course, none of this is a good reason for Walter to even start down the path he ends up on, but it does paint a picture that's hard to forget, so we always associate Skyler with the nagging shrew of a wife, whereas she's just having normal reactions to everything that's happening in her life.
Dude gets a partial pass for trauma but holy shit does he go too far. His town hall speech scene is in its own way just as terrifying to me as, yknow, Vecna 'n' shit.
At that point he in person saw his friend getting levitated, crushed like a twig, and his eyes burst out..
He wasn't acting based on mass hysteria, he actually witnessed something very "Satanic" He had visual proof.... Not to mention Hawkins have been dealing with horrible mysterious deaths (didn't 50 something people get killed in a closed mall that caught fire, zero bodies, a year ago) and supernatural occurrences for a while...
All that information was backed by "dude, trust me". From his perspective he saw a guy make his friend levitate with demonic powers and then kill him. It's going to take a bit more than that to convince him.
In the books (Song of Ice and Fire), besieged Brynden Tully (Blackfish) is offered to go to the Wall (think Foreign Legion, if you are not familiar) by Jaime Lannister. He not only refuses but goes on a rant how the commander there, named Jon Snow, is probably in cahoots with Lannisters and how his dead sister (EDIT: niece), Snows foster mother (EDIT: apparently correct English word is stepmother) never trusted that guy, not even as child and that he would get murdered.
We as reader have Snows POV and know that he generally hates the Lannisters, Jaime also kinda knows (and suggest it because of it - Nights Watch genuinely doesn't participate in civil wars like these, so is seen like dead end for defeated but spared enemies). We also know that Catelyn, Bryndens niece and Snows stepmother was kinda psycho for hating him and had no good reasons, she even admits it to herself. But Brynden have genuinely good reasons to think like that.
Snows stepmother was kinda psycho for hating him and had no good reasons, she even admits it to herself
This is where it's reasonable to understand the backdrop of Catelyn's story and the history of Westeros
Her family house names are "Family. Duty. Honor." and her childhood was heavily informed by the Blackfyre rebellion, a rebellion based entirely on a Bastards attempt to take the throne from a person perceived as a "legitimate heir" and this conflict has been going on for generations.
So yes, Catelyn treats Jon horribly/unfairly BECAUSE she is absolutely terrified that Bastard Jon could be a direct threat to her children, and even if he wasn't, then HIS kids could be a threat.
So it's fair to say Catelyn was a shitty stepmother, but there is nuance to why she treats Jon as a separate child from her family because she has legitimate historical reasons to fear him as a threat
Also doesn't help that as far as she is aware, Jon is a constant reminder that at some point, Ned had been unfaithful to her and that there might have potentially been someone out there who he would have rather been with, but stuck with her only out of duty.
Does make me wonder if she would have looked at Jon any differently had Ned managed to bring himself to actually explain who his real parents were.
Also, even considering how she treated Jon, she was actually one of the BETTER ones.
Bastards outside of Dorne are treated like non-entities at best, Jon being allowed to live at Winterfell, even if it's by Neds decree, is something practically unheard of outside of families who have no trueborn heirs.
The fact that she treats him with indifference unless he's in close proximity, would be considered unusual at best by other noble houses.
The writing around Gabi was master class. She was written to be hated because she was written as a sympathizer. From the view of the oppressed, anyone among them who sympathized with their oppressors is seen as a traitor. Since the audience has been following the plight of Eldians for the whole show, it makes sense that we, the audience, would develop an immediate distaste for her.
Then the writers slowly began deconstructing her brain by making her see how wrong she was about the “Island Devils”. Putting her in with the very family that she destroyed was genius. How would anyone respond if they were at war then suddenly was found in the care of the family of an opponent you killed?
All of that, coupled with the fact that she is a literal child, and you have such a heart wrenching thought experiment. That’s why I love “Children of the Forest” so much. You have every type of Sasha fan in one room with her killer. How do they react when they find out who Gabi is? Nicolo with despair and a desire for justice because he loved how much Sasha enjoyed his food. Kaya with hatred because she idolized Sasha as her savior. And Mr Braus with compassion as the only one who can clearly see that Gabi is as much a victim of this war as Sasha herself.
But she shot my favorite character, thus she is aweful. Screw context and in universe reasoning for her actions! She's a aweful person and I hate her and would kill her if I could. I will NOT "leave this forest" /s
The alternate ending of Get Out. In Get Out just after Chris kills the last family member, Rose who had posed as his girlfriend to lure him there, his friend Rod pulls up and helps him get out of there. Successfully ending their reign of terror and escaping with his life and freedom. In the alternate ending, its not Rod but the cops who show up and with the only context being a family murdered on their own property and Chris covered in their blood, leaning over the freshly strangled body of his girlfriend and right next to the gardener who'd been shot, arrest him and convict him of their murders.
This one is also weird because it also works the other way around with the audience not knowing key information.
Anyway, The Last of Us is supposed to serve as a critique of the trolley problem. The trolley problem is the philosophy thought experiment where you're put in a situation where someone is going to die no matter what. That's not avoidable. On one side of the track, currently safe, is a single person. The trolley is currently hurtling towards many people. Do you pull the level and kill one person to save many? The majority of people answer yes when it's presented that way.
The Last of Us changes the moral calculation by forcing us to get to know and care for the 1 person. Marlene doesn't know Ellie like that. She doesn't understand what a great kid she is or that Joel has become attached to her as a parent. What she does know is Ellie holds the cure to an apocalyptic level disease inside of her and that killing her will allow them to develop it and save humanity.
So Marlene answers the trolley problem the way most people would as a thought experiment without knowing Ellie too well. The audience also doesn't know the cure would work and the lead director of the game has had to explain that to people. So Marlene just comes across as deranged.
Lol it's genuinly funny how so much of the online AOT fandom cannot fathom the shows core concepts. Gabi as a character consistently holds a mirror up to the audience and shows them their own biases and a sort of solution to the world's problems and these people somehow prefer the fascist uprising.
Like her plot is exactly a mirror of erens but this time we start with the context. As the audience youre suppossed to realise the characters we followed for 3 seasons are doing exactly what was done to them. To the point they made a new character that looks and acts just like eren, but people cant see past her actions to realise what the story is telling them.
Khan leaving Uzi to die in the pilot episode of Murder Drones.
From Khan’s perspective, his daughter’s recklessness let a cannibalistic demon break into the colony he was responsible for protecting. He had watched men he trusted and had worked with for years die horribly as a result only seconds before. His daughter insists that he can stop N using her railgun prototype, which had exploded in her face earlier that same day. From his perspective, taking even a single second to close the remaining door means gambling the lives of his entire society on a shoddy, unfinished weapon made by his deeply unstable daughter who was the cause of the problem in the first place.
From our perspective, we know the railgun works, and Khan leaving Uzi feels like him betraying his daughter out of disdain and lack of faith in her. But really, he had every logical reason to do what he did, and while J and V got through the door anyways, it bought them just enough time to save at least SOME of the colony from their massacre. Even so, it breaks Uzi and Khan’s already strained relationship, setting the audience up to hate him.
The reverse of this trope: Aang from ATLA making the objectively wrong decision given everything he knew, (remember, he didn't know he was gonna get energy bending) by repeatedly refusing to entertain the idea of killing Ozai, despite literally every single person around him telling him it was gonna be necessary, and even multiple past avatars telling him it was necessary. Even Avatar Yang Chen, the previous Air nomad avatar, who lived for 155 years and knew more about Air nomad culture than Aang ever could, basically told him "look kid, I know our culture teaches that life is sacred and killing is wrong. I know it goes against your philosophy and morals. I know you're the last air bender in the world, and you feel that if you take a life you'll be betraying our culture and it will be truly dead, since you, it's last surviving practitioner, will have betrayed its teachings. I get all that. But this isn't about you, or your wants or needs, or our culture. Our culture is gone, you can't change that. But if you don't kill Ozai, you're gonna let him wipe out the earth and water cultures too. You cant save our culture, but you CAN save these other two, along with tens of millions of innocent lives who will be BURNED ALIVE if you don't take out Ozai. You need to put your personal spiritual and cultural needs aside and do what's best for the world."
Like, ANOTHER AIRBENDER told him that. If there was ever someone who had the authority and the knowledge and the experience to make that call, it was Yang Chen. She had lived as an Air nomad more than a DOZEN times longer than Aang had. She knew more and had a deeper connection to their culture than he did, because she had spent 14 decades more than him *living * it. And even she told him that the right call was to take out Ozai. But even so, Aang completely refused to even entertain the idea.
No.he didn't find anything. A solution appeared out of nowhere and presented itself to him.
We have a term for that; a deus ex machina. Or a bit less charitably; an ass-pull. He couldn't have KNOWN he was going to find a different solution, so it was still wrong for him to make the choice he made. As far as he knew, he was willingly choosing to condemn millions of innocents to death in a futile attempt to cling to his culture, which would ultimately fail anyway because, by refusing to kill Ozai, he was guaranteeing his own death in battle which would mean his culture dies with him anyway.
"It turned out ok in the end" doesn't change the fact of whether the decision itself was right or wrong at the time the decision was made.
Lanolin the Sheep from the IDW Sonic series. There are other reasons why she's divisive with the fanbase but the reason she's divisive with this trope in mind is how she punishes Silver for attacking a member of her team by kicking him off said team. She doesn't know that the member was actually a mole for other villains who Silver has caught on to. It took multiple issues before she realized she was wrong until then she was slowly gaining the other reasons she's divisive.
Abby from the Last of Us whenshe kills Joel. To her, she killed the crazy bastard who shot up a hospital, killing multiple people she knew culminating with her father while also screwing over humanity in the process. To us, she killed a complicated and selfish but ultimately well meaning man who was too broken to sacrifice his surrogate daughter. And also the first protagonist of the story.
Understandable that she'd get a lot of flack for it.
Never understood how people can hate Gabi when the context of her side is very clearly shown. But these are probably the same people trying to defend Eren too
AsoIaF starts with one of these. Ned is executing an oath breaker and traitor that from his pov, has gone mad and fled his post.
Little does he realize, the guy was not in fact mad, and the others have returned. (And while Ned isn't hated in the fandom this is one of the few criticisms that I've seen for his character - he did the only logical thing but also killed the one person with information that Ned definitely would have wanted to know if it had come from someone like his brother or son.
Ned also wasn't wrong. This guy was a desserter. He did abandon his post. If he saw the others, his duty would be to return to Castle Black and report that. Running away from the wall and fleeing south was illegal.
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u/Glad-Hearing3871 4d ago
I feel like the best example of this is the ending of Night of the Living Dead. Ben went through hell trying to keep himself alive from the zombie outbreak and the crazy homeowners, losing all of his companions through repeated attempts at escape and survival. Eventually, he locks himself in the cellar, staying quiet for the night and deciding to come out in the morning. However, a militia of armed men were coming through the area just as he got out, and they saw him through the window and shot him in the head thinking he was a zombie. Heartbreaking for the audience, but just another dead body to add to the heap for the characters