Areas where you'd respectfully disagree with Chuck

[Nessus]

What is "situational ethics?"

Uhm nothing like I thought it meant?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Situational_ethics

Honestly I thought it had been turned into a person that goes to what ever helps them or their cause the most. The definitions here make me wonder what I had been reading to get that idea.

To be fair, the two ideas are muddled in practice because a lot of people use the proper definition in bad faith to obscure their indulgence in the improper one. They have a thing they want to do regardless, and they use situational ethics as a means to "texas sharpshoot" an excuse. Doesn't technically have to hold up to scrutiny (though insisting no matter what that it does is important to the illusion), as the real goal is to give themselves a sense of plausible deniabilty that they knowingly acted/are acting unethically.

[Nealithi]

Thank you.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

and to clarify again, Chuck seems to want Janway and Archer to ALWAYS compromise their principals, that's not pragmatism, that's selfishness and/or moral cowardice. if they never stand by their principals, what's the point of having them? like he compared the situation in "Death Wish" to the situation in "In the Pale Moonlight" but they are only slightly similar. sacrificing two lives to save billions, that is the right thing to do but sentencing an innocent to an eternity in a prison against his will for the sake of just a hundred people, absolutely not.

[Yukaphile]

Actually, I gotta disagree there. He's said before he's not praising somebody for making decisions they find disgusting, yet he just wishes they'd stop making it less complicated than it is. And yet, he does seem to be particularly drawn to that kind of storytelling, doesn't he? I dunno. I guess it ties back to what I feel; that most people don't know themselves as well as they think they do, myself included. And wait, there were billions of lives at stake in "Death Wish?" Some of his comparisons are on the nose, though, like Janeway being just like Q for refusing to let Seven rejoin the Borg. It's more of the "I'm the Captain and make this decision, thus it must be the right one" attitude. Though one area I disagreed in was his decision to discuss Vichy France in "The Collaborator" rather than what was happening in East Europe. It was just as bad, and arguably more so, and seems to get overshadowed by what the Nazis did, and no, I'm not just talking about German women and girls, but EVERY single victim - and yet, it's tragic I have to keep going back to that because people act as if they're somehow collectively guilty criminals and engage in bad messaging and bad history with them, isn't it? They need just as much sympathy and defense as all the women and girls from every other ethnic group that was a victim in that region, yet they don't seem to get it, because we see them all as race monsters. Because you know, human beings are awful. And seventy years of propaganda takes its toll.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

Seven of Nine was basically still a six year old at first, you cannot expect her desire to want to go back to the Borg as in any way rational.

and I know I said I was done but there is one other thing to say on the subject. a one dimensional villain can serve to develop the protagonists. if making a one dimensional villain is always bad writing, then how come Frieza is considered one of the best villains in anime. Or how come Micheal Myers is considered one of the best horror villains, to the point that whenever they tried to give him any kind of depth, people get pissed off?

[Yukaphile]

No, no, that's rationalization. She's of an alien mindset. And isn't Starfleet about cultural respect? She doesn't wanna assimilate them, just go back to her old life.

Um... where is this coming from?

[Mecha82]

Some of his comparisons are on the nose, though, like Janeway being just like Q for refusing to let Seven rejoin the Borg. It's more of the "I'm the Captain and make this decision, thus it must be the right one" attitude.

This is something that has always bothered me about Janeway and way she has been written. We are just supposed to believe that every decision she makes is right one because she is one making that decision instead of decision itself being right one.

[Yukaphile]

That kind of circular logic. Yup. Pretty bad.

[Dragon Ball Fan]

no one who is a Borg was made so by choice, Seven wanting to return was just brainwashing mixed with her stunted emotional maturity at the time.

and about the villain thing, here's the link that proves my point again as I feel it needs to be repeated. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t-MhMo-gL6A

another problem may be a more personal one, wile there are anti-villains that work for me, when a villain is made sympathetic, I end up rooting for them. I wanted Mr. Freeze to murder Ferris Boyle, I wanted Holokara to blow up Marvel HQ with Comicron 1. that's one of the reasons I prefer my villains to be one note monsters.

[Yukaphile]

You know what? Let's take this to a separate thread. The Seven stuff.

Why are you bringing up the villain stuff, though? And you know, there can be limits to this. People you should not show being sympathetic. Take Gilgamesh in FSN. He wanted to rape Saber in a purely demeaning way, to dominate and "own" her, and then genocide the world so the survivors would rise from the ashes, and... he's given depth, sure, but at no point is this treated as good. He's purely a villain who must be stopped. And Gil's initial impression on me (I checked out the Fate route first), given how much I love Saber and ship Saber and Shirou, just disgusted me on such a personal level, I never recovered. And people argue, "Oh the mud corrupted him!" Just... excuses. That's who the real-life Gilgamesh was as King.