Dumbass heroes being punished for being dumbass heroes.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 10:49 am

So, you're well aware of this storytelling bullshit. Hero doesn't want to do something morally questionable like break his 'never kill anyone' rule. Or has rules like 'don't stab bad guys in the back' or 'if they have children it's okay not to kill them'.

And we know that despite the obvious drawbacks of 'being a hero', it all works out in the end. Maybe the villain tries to attack the hero while he's being pulled up so the hero is justified in letting them go and they 'die'. Or their tortured lackey finishes the job for the hero. Or the fact that Batman continues to let Joker live is brought up. And if you're feeling really contrived, when someone does a practical solution like kill the Joker the Joker gets reincarnated as an uberdemon.

What I want to know is, are there stories that show heroes engaging in this kind of frippery that actually condemn the hero for doing this kind of thing? I know there are stories like the Punisher who don't care about being called out on his less-than-heroic actions, but it's usually a 'yes, I am naughty but I don't care'. I'm looking for a story where the concepts of 'good' like not using poison or using a lightsaber over force lightning is criticized.

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 11:06 am

The "A Song of Ice and Fire" by George R. R. Martin does this in some rather big ways. Of course in that case we're talking about a story where heroes are weeded out at a very perceptible rate and the world really has no mercy for the righteous whatsoever.

Lago PARANOIA · Post by **Lago PARANOIA** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 11:12 am

I'm not familiar with F&I aside from stereotypes, so take this comment with a grain of salt.

But. I don't mean a story where being 'righteous' gets you punished or suffer Spider-Man style humiliation where you're a bleeding corpse but at least you went out with your dignity; I meant stories where being 'righteous' actually decreased the amount of good in the world.

Caedrus · Post by **Caedrus** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 11:21 am

Lago PARANOIA wrote:I'm not familiar with F&I aside from stereotypes, so take this comment with a grain of salt.

But. I don't mean a story where being 'righteous' gets you punished or suffer Spider-Man style humiliation where you're a bleeding corpse but at least you went out with your dignity; I meant stories where being 'righteous' actually decreased the amount of good in the world.

Oh yes. I mean, things like "marrying for love" instead of taking the politically manipulative arranged marriage will fuck the world over hard.

I'd go on with the grisly details, but I fear I've already been too spoilerific.

And seriously, even that is just one of many examples.

Honor and chivalry? Ouch. That one's going to cost. And you can sure as hell bet that people are going to condemn you for it.

ASoIaF is not a series where moral stereotypes prevail.

FatR · Post by **FatR** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 11:26 am

Off the top of my head, Fist of the North Star. Not only it is set in the post-nuclear world, where the only realistic way to stop bandits is to bust their heads; but mercy is never appreciated and no villain ever relents before being fatally wounded. Whenever the main character decides to spare a thug, said thug stabs some innocents to death within a chapter or two. So he generally doesn't offer second chances. He's is universally seen as righteous, and the (relative) aversion to killing people demonstrated by his brother is perceived as a flaw.

Maxus · Post by **Maxus** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 11:37 am

There's a few Discworld novels where people screw the pooch through excessive heroics.

I'm a little muzzy right now, but I know the hero screws up in Thief of Time. He's racing to get to a disaster and stop it before it happens. His old mentor stumbles. What does hero-boy do? He runs back to the old man to try to help him.

He narrowly misses averting the disaster because of this, and in dealing with it a lot of things happen, one of the more awesome of which is him explaining to someone why he failed to stop it, and the person going, 'You...hero!' in the tone reserved for 'you frothing idiot' and a running joke being that sometimes you have to be a cold, calculating bastard to be good at saving the world.

Interesting Times, Eric, Jingo, and Monstrous Regiment all fiddle with the hypocrisy of 'honorable' warfare. Eric even has it happen during their version of the Trojan War, and the whole wooden-horse trick is described as being what happens when you take the execution of warfare away from the people who enjoy it.

Going Postal and Making Money have, as their hero, a con-man whose crimes, according to a golem, have done enough harm to be the equivalent of two-point-something murders by doing crimes he believed were faceless. And then when he complains about his unenviable position at one point, his, well, boss points out that he's here because of crimes against the trust of man for man. For big effect, read Jingo and then read The Truth.

Some of the City Watch books (Men At Arms and Feet of Clay and a couple of others, I'm sure) also poke fun at how it's weird to think of an honorable Assassin (The Assassin's Guild has a code of conduct which has things like 'Can't just shoot them dead in the street, can't do it in a way which may cause undue harm to bystanders' and it's actually possible to learn what this code is and plan for it. Vimes has his home and around his office extensively trapped, because those are the only places he has to worry about attempts).

But, mostly, when I've encountered this idea, it's in the case of someone thinking they're being a hero or being honorable, but actually being a big damn idiot.

Fuchs · Post by **Fuchs** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 12:24 pm

Quote from "Splitting Heirs":

"What a hero!"
"What an Idiot!"
"What's the difference?"

Kobajagrande · Post by **Kobajagrande** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 12:29 pm

Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever, have a long-standing tradition of characters trying to do a Big Heroic Thing, only to royally screw up a big picture, although the motifs behind such failures are different than what you're looking for.

K · Post by K » Fri Aug 14, 2009 8:11 pm

The comic series The Authority. They make no bones about the fact that they are super-heroes and are willing to murder just about anyone for a better world. Villains don't come back, which is why the series goes on hiatus for years at a time before someone comes up with something original rather than rehash the same old crap.

Probably the most "realistic" hero story I have ever read in serial and persistent form.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Fri Aug 14, 2009 9:53 pm

In Camelot (Lerner and Loew, the opera, sorry bad with names), King Arthur pretty much screws things up with adherence to All Are Equal Before The Law, rather than simply overlooking the affair between Launcelot and Guinevere (Law says some executions-type stuff is what should happen).

MartinHarper · Post by **MartinHarper** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 11:13 am

Mentioned in passing in this Naruto episode:
http://www.crunchyroll.com/media-530552 ... puden-119/

"White Fang" does the 'heroic' thing by abandoning his mission to save his team mates, and as a result more people die, he is shamed by his clan, and he eventually kills himself.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Sat Aug 15, 2009 3:50 pm

does Galad from the Wheel of Time count?

Absentminded_Wizard · Sun Aug 16, 2009 10:17 am

I wonder about that. I don't remember Galad getting anything worse than other people's contempt. The problem is, I think he was also pretty oblivious to said contempt, so it's hard to count it as punishment.

NineInchNall · Post by **NineInchNall** » Sun Aug 16, 2009 5:57 pm

Well, he may not be actually punished, but he does fuck shit up and make it difficult for the real heroes to get the job done solely because he's stuck in child morality.

souran · Post by **souran** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 4:20 pm

I would say the watchmen is basically the seminal work on what you are talking about.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 5:01 pm

I'm guessing you mean Rorschach? I don't see anyone else having much of a code (well, Ozymandias doesn't kill things, but he kinda breaks that in a colossal way).

Still, Rorschach is flat out insane, and his adherence to a code doesn't really screw anyone else but himself (and, I'm pretty sure his code allows lying, so he couldn't have simply lied his way out of getting splorched).

violence in the media · Mon Aug 17, 2009 5:04 pm

Doom314 wrote:I'm guessing you mean Rorschach? I don't see anyone else having much of a code (well, Ozymandias doesn't kill things, but he kinda breaks that in a colossal way).

Still, Rorschach is flat out insane, and his adherence to a code doesn't really screw anyone else but himself (and, I'm pretty sure his code allows lying, so he couldn't have simply lied his way out of getting splorched).

Admittedly having only seen the movie, I'd think it would apply to how it's implied that Rorschach screws up the peace bought by the destruction of New York by exposing the plot, post-mortem, through his diary.

Doom · Post by **Doom** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 5:19 pm

Yeah, I thought that, too, but there's little reason to believe that diary will 'muck up' the peace, at least in my opinion. I mean, we have much stronger evidence of comparably damaging 'conspiracy theories' pop up all the time, and such gets ignored and buried quite easily.

And, since the mucking up doesn't actually happen anyway, it's a bit too theoretical for me.

Kaelik · Post by **Kaelik** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 7:29 pm

Honestly, it's the testimony of Rorschach vs the testimony of Doctor.

He's going along with it.

Generally, if someone shows up as a giant blue man in the sky literally the size of the earth and screams "I'll blow up the rest of the cities next if you fucking launch a nuke! I mean it!"

I'll take their word that the explosions that had a special radiation signature unique to them were caused by them.

Rorschach's testimony means squat if Manhattan is admitting to it.

MGuy · Post by **MGuy** » Mon Aug 17, 2009 8:09 pm

I think Rorshach's whole point was to make sure the truth gets out there. Whether or not people believe him is another matter as long as the attempt was made. He may have been able to lie his way out of getting killed but the whole situation seemed to conflict him. On the one hand the evil plan worked for the greater good, on the other the hand injustice prevailed. In the context of this topic however he can't exactly be painted as the "hero" type considering his methods.

violence in the media · Tue Aug 18, 2009 12:26 pm

Wasn't Dr. Manhattan leaving for a distant galaxy though? In the "I'm done with you hairless apes" sense? The publishing of Rorshach's journal occured some months afterwards.

I'm not saying it wouldn't be Roswell-level conspiracy theory fodder, but without Dr. Manhattan around to refute the claims and serve as the irresistible force that everyone perceives him as, the threat becomes "merely" Ozymandias with a WMD. That's something that I think people would feel that they could resist, or that society could wait out. Nobody knows if Manhattan will live forever, but I think people are pretty sure that Ozymandias won't.