Uh... on second thought, never mind, I rescind my earlier statement. I want to see more fics where the good guys are paragons of justice with no flaws whatsoever and the bad guys are unquestionably evil kitten eaters, so that they won't result in morality debates.
Wormverse ideas, recs, and fic discussion thread 1
- Thread starter Yog
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Come on dude. That's just stupid. Or rather, I'm not arguing that Purity is a person without emotions, an evil so vast and vile that her very existence yada yada yada.
I just object to the white-washing that's going on, especially considering some of the shit she gets up to. Any journey towards not being a horrible person will be long, difficult, and probably not even worth it in the "Other person takes time and energy doing so" department.
Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
The wicked things that aren't white supremecist terrorism, to be specific.
Target non-white bad guys you mean.
The concept of "bad guys" being highly nebulous and up to interpretation.
AKA, white supremecist terrorism.
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Like, if she really has such a big problem with fighting the E88 because they used to be her friends, then she can move to Boston and beat the shit out of Accord. There, problem solved. Either she actually acts as a hero and fights the LARGEST GANG IN BROCKTON BAY or she doesn't.
Edit: If the E88 were two weak Parahumans and a dog, then ignoring them would be sorta dumb and questionable, but okay I could excuse it sorta, maybe, or whatever. But literally every other gang combined had fewer capes than the E88.
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I'm not saying that because I vehemently disagree with any position that's being held, I'm just tired of people arguing.
EDIT: Also, I feel kind of bad for inadvertently bringing up the topic to begin with.
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Night
Widow Null
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- Hoff
...this is a pretty obvious error.
She has a problem with fighting E88 because then Max Anders takes Aster away. Unless you're arguing the first thing she should do would be "kill Kaiser". Which ignoring any other issues with it is not a simple task short of blowing out a few floors of the Medhall building right after calling his office to confirm he's there. Which would not be terribly heroic either.
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Where does it state this?
Purity's explanation, from the Interlude: Kayden frowned, "Hard to avoid, when the only notable gang of whites is yours. Some old friends and allies of mine still work for you… I can't go around attacking them, can I? I'm working to improve our city, but I'm not going to beat up people I've been out to drinks with."
******
She does not say, or even think, anything remotely like what you just said. Is it WOG or something?
Her motivation, at least the stated one that she doesn't contradict, seems to be in bold.
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- Earth Prime
*sigh*
Right. So she doesn't actually want to do good, and she secretly wants to be part of the E88. That's totally why she left them. Making changes in your life doesn't always mean a complete 180 in all things and all ways right away. In fact, expecting it to be so usually results in 100% failure as you revert, and in reverting even once, even a little, you recriminate yourself and convince yourself it's hopeless and ... give up trying.
Move to Boston? That probably would be smarter.
And the white supremacy is something she may or may not want to get over, but clearly IS NOT over by her own admission. But the terrorism? That's actually part of what she wants to get away from.
"Oh, she's attacking non-white criminals, so it's clearly white supremacy terrorism" is a remarkably E88 attitude you're holding, there. As evidenced by the fact that it's Max's attitude. It's very much the position of a dealer who doesn't want his addict to get clean: besmirch the effort by pointing out all the ways it isn't yet perfect, as evidence that it can't work. Because anything but perfection is obviously insincere and failure.
Kayden has solid reasons for not attacking the E88. She also has solid reasons for not going to Boston, now that I think about it: she's terrified that Max would take any further effort to distance herself as an excuse to use the legal system to take Aster away from her. How reasonable you find that fear is up to you, but he is the girl's father and he's got money and influence. Literally the only card she could play would make her an "unfit mother" and get her sent to jail for life (along with Max, admittedly, but he's got ways around it if necessary that she does not).
Her twin goals are not mutually exclusive, but do have the leverage of one get in the away of the other.
The one thing she COULD do but doesn't think of because she's not got the knowledge of just how corrupt the Protectorate is is go to the Protectorate and volunteer to join them, if they'll ensure that she gets to keep custody of Aster.
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What? Literally what? You're comparing us to Neo-Nazis and drug dealers?
******
You keep on stereotyping our views and then tilting at windmills. Nobody's saying she's a pure evil monster who eats babies. Well, Reveen is very negative on her, but even so. We're just saying she's a pretty bad person and her attempts to be a better person have mostly failed and then she gives them up awfully quickly to crawl back to the E88.
Can she become a better person? Maybe, sure. It's possible, I guess.
But there's a long list of villains and other people who are closer to "redemption" or whatnot, so I'm not sure why a hypothetical protagonist would bother. Or what an author would gain from taking the huge amount of narrative time and space it'd take for her to become even moderately less of a bad person.
Because the level of her problems means it's not something you could just 'fix' offscreen as even a halfway decent author. It'd take large amounts of time and effort on her part, and probably on the part of a lot of therapists and etc, to get her to anything like halfway decent.
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Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
Imperfections... Like being intentionally terroristic.
She identifies the presence of non-white groups as the source of crime and problems, this means any action she takes as a result of this worldview inherently becomes intended as an assault on non-white people. This is terrorism. This is the exact logic right wing terror groups like the KKK use to justify their lynchings and attacks.
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I'm comparing your arguments to those made by a neo-nazi, yes. Because he made literally the same argument. It always fascinates me just how people fall for the "Hitler liked puppies" logical fallacy. I do apologize for coming as close as I did to invoking it; I was trying to be witty and it clearly failed. (That's what I get for trying to be something I'm not.)
You seem to be arguing that she can't seek redemption because she hasn't achieved it perfectly in the canon storyline.
The question raised, however, was, approximately: "Why do so many people want to write about Purity being redeemed?"
The answer is deeper than this, but the biggest part of it is simply that she is shown, in canon, to want it. She fails. Oh, does she fail. And the pathos of that failure is part of the tragedy of her character. But somebody who sought redemption, even if they failed to figure out how to find it, is a powerful thing to most human beings. Most of us have a yearning to help them. To see them succeed. It creates instant sympathy for those who haven't seen enough of what they wish to be redeemed from to hate them to the core. And like it or not, we don't see most of what is even suggested. We don't see her breaking arms. We certainly don't see her hurting sympathetic characters. And that makes her sins less hurtful to us. So we tend to focus on what is showcased more than what is glossed over. And that is her DESIRE for redemption.
That's why she, more than others who you seem to think are "closer to redemption," gets the redemption arc. Regardless of how close to redemption, say, Regent is, he never really expresses a desire for it. (I don't know who you had in mind as being closer to redemption, or if Regent even qualifies. I just kind-of spitballed there.) "I want to stop being evil and start being good! Watch me try, even if I'm not very good at it!" is a beacon for most people. We want to root for her to succeed at that laudable goal.
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Then New Wave is also engaged in terrorism.
Night
Widow Null
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- Hoff
Stop quoting and think. Not everything in a story is explicit in the text, but that does not mean the author did not intend it.
We know that Max Anders is a respected citizen, a CEO, and quite rich. We know that Kayden's status and means are not equal to his to the point he could realistically drown her in a court battle. We know that Max is manipulative to the point of abuse. We know that Aster is their daughter and they can both legally claim to be her parents. We know that Kayden divorced him for fear of Aster growing up under his thumb. We know that Aster means more than anything to Kayden.
When talking to a man who could make a play for my child, who I am aware is trying to manipulate me (see other quotations from that scene which have been made in this discussion) and who I am aware is a manipulative bastard in general, I am not going to give him another lever. What she says is what is safe to say. It need not and almost certainly does not comprise the whole of her reasoning.
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Reveen
Castro-Trudeauist
New Wave isn't honed in on non-white communities as an inherent source of crime to be targeted as such.
( As far as we know)
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Stop quoting and think? She doesn't, at any point, think of any of this logic. We have an entire chapter from her point of view, and at no point does this occur to her. If it's really so central to her motivations, she should have a, "But of course there's a deeper reason, one that I don't want to remind Max of" moment.
Maybe it should have occurred to her, and if you want to make an AU Purity where it does, then fine, do that. But it didn't in canon. She had a moment where that should have come up if she was thinking about it, and it didn't.
Maybe it's your headcanon, and that's fine, people have headcanon.
But the idea that it's somehow 100% canon and I'm stupid for not agreeing with you is annoying.
"It was impossible to look at the city now and ignore the fact that too much of what made it an uglier place to live and raise a child in could be traced back to the same kinds of people. Sure, the whites had criminals too, but at least they were fucking civilized about it."
This is prime grade denial.
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- Earth Prime
Irrelevant. Purity isn't targeting "non-white criminals" because they're non-white. At least, not in her own head. She's targeting gangs other than the E88, because she doesn't want to fight people she had drinks with. Yes, the Venn Diagram analysis would let one REASONABLY CONCLUDE, absent the insight into Purity's thoughts and motivations, that she was targeting them because they're non-white. But that isn't what she's doing by her own reasoning.
Furthermore, the terrorism of the KKK et al was terrorism because it was indescriminate. They attacked non-whites, criminal or otherwise, because they assumed (thanks to their racism) that non-whites must all be criminal elements and must all be rooted out to solve the problem.
Purity is attacking criminals. Even if she was specifically targeting non-white criminals because she felt they were "worse" than white criminals (which is not the case as we're shown, though she admits she still harbors biases), that would be no more terrorism than what New Wave does.
Some superheroes have personal vendettas and targets they take on in the criminal world. Specific gangs they target. Narrowing your focus doesn't make it terrorism.
If "targeting criminals" is not terrorism, then "targeting non-white criminals" isn't terrorism either.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
Because as we all know, no writer ever makes mistakes.
But more seriously, why? We have an entire chapter from her point of that doesn't give any real hints she'll escalate straight to trashing the whole town if Aster is taking away either, but that was a thing that happened. To be honest given the centrality of Aster in her later characterization, she's a tiny part of Kayden's chapter at all.
So whether it's canon or not depends on whether you think it was a fuckup or a choice to make Aster not a thing in a meeting between her parents. Absent a statement it was a fuckup, I'm going to go with it being a choice.
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Warning For Marginal Behavior
Citation needed, champ. When and where did I claim that she was a monster with no human feelings? Oh right, I didn't. That's called a lie, buckaroo. I said she wasn't a good person.
Well then, let's revisit.
Patently false. We actually do know what Purity did before and it wasn't sitting on the shelf looking pretty.
Purity was Kaiser's enforcer and executioner before. Admittedly, I should have quoted this part before as well but, you did claim to have actually read their conversation so I guess that threw me off.
And your oh so great points about Jack and Black Kaze. They depopulate towns. Purity doesn't and I never claimed she did. I compared her to Hookwolf and Lung, who kill people but not that many people. And wouldn't you know it, they don't have kill orders and, shock of shocks, neither does Purity.
Again champ, when and where did I claim that Purity was going all out, all the time before? I stated that killing isn't the only thing she could have been doing. Giving that she's a living bunker buster, her occasionally knocking down a building or threatening to do so isn't that far out of an idea. Did I state it as a fact that she did so? Nope, don't think I did.
Cute. Real life Batman is a dangerous, paranoid, psychotic asshole who would be locked away for the rest of his life for being a disturbingly violent vigilante. We only root for him because his wacky comic book land is full of people who are more fucked up.
Purity was also contemplating dropping one of her interrogations on two prostitutes. You know, non-violent offenders who commit victimless "crimes." You might have a point if Batman regularly decided to string up hookers by their ankles and use them as a bat-pinata. But, he doesn't soooo...
Edit: Whoops, sorry Ganurath.
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Eeeeh. I think that depends what you mean by 'random ass people'. I have known plenty of parents who would kill to protect their children, but on the other hand Purity is not eg killing the kidnapper, she's killing people to try to strongarm the government, so that's at least particularly extreme.
Night
Widow Null
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- Hoff
Unfortunately for you, there is a thing called totality of circumstances; it means that judging someone by the sum of their statements rather than any individual statement is a valid way to judge them. So I'm going to call bullshit right here. I can go back and quote every post you've made on Purity in this thread, and your opinion of her right there when comparing her to Batman pretty much seals the deal. So thank you for making it. It perfectly proves your opinion.
That was never something I accused you of. I accused you of ignoring the fact she wasn't. I accused you of ignoring the fact that Purity is clearly not being all she can be in terms of Ethnic Oppression Lady. Perhaps now you'd care to address that point that it's been outlined, yet again.
And deciding against. But what the hell, you're talking about a crime purely of thought already, why not ignore that she deliberately didn't do it.
(A second in command is not an enforcer against external forces. They are one against internal ones. And Purity's powerset is well-suited to reminding any of E88's other capes who's in charge, and ill-suited to street-level mayhem because she's just too big a boom to throw around casually, which is one of the points I've been making all along. You don't send a Blaster 8 to make examples of street thugs.)
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Alert: Thread Policy
thread policy
Let's just drop the Purity tangent, guys. It's not doing the thread's tone any good. Same goes for spaghetti posting.
Night
Widow Null
- Location
- Hoff
A scenario.
You have the bank robbery. Taylor is present on the Wards side (though she is not a Ward). There are two adult Tinkers present with armored suits that can brawl with Bitch's dogs without fearing for their lives, but aside from basic hand stunguns that will work on people (but not the dogs) their other gear isn't suitable for this fight. (Neither of them is named Wallis.) Their objective is to capture as many of the Undersiders as possible. Lethal force is not allowed. Seriously injuring any of the Undersiders is also not allowed.
In return, the Undersiders have Spitfire and Chariot plus the original lineup. Spitfire's flames probably can be used directly on the Tinkers (even though she'd rather not), but only because their suits are fireproof. Their objective, obviously, is to escape. Risking killing hostages in the process is not advisable. Being on the scene when Triumph and a half-dozen tac teams from the PRT show up in ten minutes is also not advisable. Otherwise anything goes.
Pick a side and lay out a plan.
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For the Wards:
The Tinkers and Clockblocker are on brawling duty; the primary goal is to immobilize Bitch and her dogs by starting a fight with them before they can run away, but they're the front line and they're going to have to take on everyone that comes at them.
Taylor will attempt a knockout strike on Grue immediately. All of the spiders. All of them. Get him panicked and not paying attention to the fight. Anything else she can do is just gravy.
Aegis is to neutralize Tattletale. Since her most dangerous weapon is her ability to communicate, stungun her or sock her in the mouth when she tries to talk until she gets the hint. I don't really expect this to go smoothly, but at least it might keep her from organizing her allies.
Kid Win is to support and protect Vista.
Vista is on general support to do whatever she can to disrupt the Undersiders and help her allies.
It is probable that some of the Undersiders will escape, particularly Chariot, but they should be able to net at least a couple.
You have the bank robbery. Taylor is present on the Wards side (though she is not a Ward). There are two adult Tinkers present with armored suits that can brawl with Bitch's dogs without fearing for their lives, but aside from basic hand stunguns that will work on people (but not the dogs) their other gear isn't suitable for this fight. (Neither of them is named Wallis.) Their objective is to capture as many of the Undersiders as possible. Lethal force is not allowed. Seriously injuring any of the Undersiders is also not allowed.
In return, the Undersiders have Spitfire and Chariot plus the original lineup. Spitfire's flames probably can be used directly on the Tinkers (even though she'd rather not), but only because their suits are fireproof. Their objective, obviously, is to escape. Risking killing hostages in the process is not advisable. Being on the scene when Triumph and a half-dozen tac teams from the PRT show up in ten minutes is also not advisable. Otherwise anything goes.
Pick a side and lay out a plan.
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For the Wards:
The Tinkers and Clockblocker are on brawling duty; the primary goal is to immobilize Bitch and her dogs by starting a fight with them before they can run away, but they're the front line and they're going to have to take on everyone that comes at them.
Taylor will attempt a knockout strike on Grue immediately. All of the spiders. All of them. Get him panicked and not paying attention to the fight. Anything else she can do is just gravy.
Aegis is to neutralize Tattletale. Since her most dangerous weapon is her ability to communicate, stungun her or sock her in the mouth when she tries to talk until she gets the hint. I don't really expect this to go smoothly, but at least it might keep her from organizing her allies.
Kid Win is to support and protect Vista.
Vista is on general support to do whatever she can to disrupt the Undersiders and help her allies.
It is probable that some of the Undersiders will escape, particularly Chariot, but they should be able to net at least a couple.
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How many PRT squads on site that can be used?
What "unsuitable" equipment OC tinkers have? And what equipment they have in general (Aside from power armor and stunguns)?
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