HWalsh wrote:Hotrod wrote:HWalsh wrote:It goes well beyond liking the bad guy. I'm down with liking the bad guy. The CS are basically post-apocalypse Nazis and Nazis are the best bad guys, since the Golden Age of comics they've been great.
They are coded as the one villain that you should never sympathize with. They are the closest thing in reality that we've ever had to pure evil. You can do anything to them you want really and never feel bad. That's why almost all the best fictional villains take traits from them. It's cruise control.
And yet, Oskar Schindler, Karl Plagge, Albert Göring, Albert Battel, and many others both served Nazi Germany and saved many Jews. One of the great lessons of the Holocaust was that the capacity for great evil is everywhere and within all of us, but people like these show us that it's possible to be a good person even in the service of a wicked regime. It's comfortable to think of all Nazis as being inhuman, universally evil, and unworthy of sympathy. I prefer for things to be more nuanced; there's a lot more potential for interesting character arcs there.
That's also why I loved the concept of the character Finn in the Star Wars sequel trilogy: the idea that behind every faceless white helmet lay the potential for redemption is a powerful idea, one that I rather wish they had explored a lot more.HWalsh wrote:The CS aggression isn't some kind of conspiracy. They literally have a full book called "Coalition War Campaign" where they outline directly that the CS intends on killing every deebee and every magic user in North America.
I have no doubt that, if successful , Karl Prosek would turn his eyes to dominating the world one place at a time. He's a genocidal megalomaniacal madman, and that's great! He's an obvious villain, something to strive to defeat.
Agreed! It's entirely possible to play the Coalition as 2-dimensional fascist bad guys, and if that's how you like playing them, go for it! I don't support the coalition in a "that's how I'd do it" sense, and their obvious Nazi references should make readers uncomfortable. I think it's also interesting to contemplate a world with horrors so terrible that something we today regard as the greatest evil humanity has ever faced could somehow be a lesser evil.
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As someone who knows nothing about their family because of that "lesser evil" I don't think so.
There are those of us who's entire family lost all family members past one generation, all of their family status, connections, any hope of wealth. If you think, for one second, that saying, "Well, it is interesting..."
That's really not cool.
I'm not saying that you (or anyone) losing your family members to the Holocaust was interesting. Sheesh, that would be creepy, offensive, and wrong.
I'm saying that it's interesting to contemplate how one might handle one's self in a situation where one is a member of an organization or nation that is doing objectively evil things. This is why the movie Schindler's List resonates as a story and not just as a portrayal of the Holocaust. What do you do when the people doing great evil are your friends, allies, comrades, and countrymen, and how do you live with the consequences of that choice? I think that there's value in contemplating and roleplaying that kind of scenario out.
It can be tempting to dehumanize Dead Boys and think of them as faceless, evil, disposable Stormtroopers. If that's your cup of tea, have fun with it. However, consider that, when you kill them, you're killing someone with friends and a family, someone who you might befriend if things were different. Consider that you and the enemy you regard as evil might actually agree on many important principles, and that you might even sympathize with that person's plight, even though it's in service to an evil cause that you must fight. That's the horror of war. It's a horror that I find endlessly fascinating and worthy of contemplation. I think it's critically important to understand the potential for good in the midst of evil, as well as the potential for and consequences of doing evil in the service of a good cause.
If this makes me not cool, I can live with that.
Yeah, I've seen this on the boards to varying degrees over the years, and I agree with your assessment of Axle's approach here.HWalsh wrote:That's neither here nor there. The problem is when people are obviously roleplaying as CS citizens in a non-RP forum. That is clearly what Axle is doing here.
There is a seductive appeal in fascist imagery and idealism. The name itself refers the fasces, a bundle of sticks tied together for strength, as a symbol of strength in unity guided to a common purpose. This is a compelling notion for many that appeals to a desire to be part of something far bigger than an individual could hope to be. This isn't an exclusively fascist idea, either. The U.S.'s "E pluribus unum" motto (out of many, one) on its dollar bills speaks to a similar idea. I think this tends to appeal to a fairly vocal bunch among fans of Rifts, and I can understand you finding that concerning.
HWalsh wrote:Though to touch on the lesser evil thing for a second...
There really isn't anything worse on Rifts Earth than the CS.
Hear me out:
Demons are demons. They're a race of evil beings, they lack free will, they kill and enslave (and worse) but it is just in their nature. They don't have a choice. Demons are literally supernaturally evil.
The Spluggorth aren't actually genociding anyone. Yes, they had a major battle with the Atlanteans, and they have a massive market, and they take slaves, but at the end of the day they aren't really on the CS's level of evil.
Then we have the FOM - Again, they do some slavery, and they do murder, but they're content to stay in their own lane for better or worse.
The Xiticix aren't really intelligent in the way we are and as such their mindset is completely alien. They are bugs.
Now we have the CS.
The CS wants to wipe out any intelligent species that isn't them. They don't do this because they lack free will, as demons do. They don't do this because they are under threat, the CS would burn to a crisp an innocent child that happened to have wings growing out if its back, because it isn't them - Sure, some things are sort of a threat to them, but most aren't. We are told this in the books, most Deebees are just humans with a weird skin color.
They lie to their own people, keep them ignorant and in constant fear, spread dangerous propaganda, and they know that they are lying. This isn't a matter of the CS, namely the people in charge of the CS, not knowing any better. They know much better.
They choose to do this. They choose to kill anyone and anything that isn't them and that doesn't bow to them. They don't have to. Their thought process isn't completely alien. Even the Spluggorth as a whole don't want to kill their own kind, or enact genocide, just because. The fact of the matter is that the CS are the worst kind of evil, because they don't have an excuse.
They kill anyone and everything that they don't like, not that is a threat, that they don't like.
Bringing it back to the topic at hand - To insinuate that the CS weren't aggressive or planning on killing everyone in Tolkeen is madness. They do want to kill everyone in Tolkeen. They want to kill everyone in the FoM. They want to kill everyone in Atlantis (if they knew about it). They want to kill everyone in Lazlo. They do nothing but kill and conquer and they have no excuse for it. So to say, "Erin Tarn lied, the CS are totally innocent." It just madness.
The nature of evil can be complicated. I respect what you're saying here. I'm not sure if I agree, but it's worth thinking about.
