Film: Serenity

[Frustration]

He was sitting in the cockpit behind a relatively fragile window. If he'd been someplace better-shielded, he couldn't have been impaled by the Reaver spear, but then the ship could never have landed properly... and he would probably have died anyway.

Even if he had anticipated the Reaver attack, he would have done it anyway. Heroic death.

I'm put in mind of the events in the Dresden Files novel Battle Ground.

[Fianna]

All of them went into this situation knowing they'd be under attack the entire time and might be killed at any moment, and chose to do it anyway, Wash included.

[stryke]

I'm put in mind of the events in the Dresden Files novel Battle Ground.

And that's probably one of the the most despised things the author has ever done.

Personally I thought those last two books were a lot of a mess in general but that one specifically was what really riled people up.

[Riedquat]

He was sitting in the cockpit behind a relatively fragile window. If he'd been someplace better-shielded, he couldn't have been impaled by the Reaver spear, but then the ship could never have landed properly... and he would probably have died anyway.

Even if he had anticipated the Reaver attack, he would have done it anyway. Heroic death.

I'm put in mind of the events in the Dresden Files novel Battle Ground.

You could say the similar sorts of things about Tasha Yar's death. It needs more than just a bit of "sh1t happens" for a character doing their role for a death to be heroic instead of just mean-spirited, lazily written and random. Book had a heroic death (albeit still a bit lazily done), Wash did not.

[McAvoy]

The only difference between ''general'' and ''war criminal'' is the winner.

In the US, we had a Civil War with the losing side top General has never been called a war criminal. General Lee.

But there could be an argument made about the winning side with the Union Army about war crimes.

You're kidding, right?

I don't know. Am I?

Tell me about General Lee.

[Madner Kami]

Shall I? Can I even get through the mist risen by the Lost Cause?

[...]

During the invasion of Pennsylvania, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia enslaved free black Americans and brought them back to the South as property. Pryor writes that “evidence links virtually every infantry and cavalry unit in Lee’s army” to the abduction of free black Americans, “with the activity under the supervision of senior officers.”

Soldiers under Lee’s command at the Battle of the Crater in 1864 massacred black Union soldiers who tried to surrender. Then, in a spectacle hatched by Lee’s senior corps commander, A. P. Hill, the Confederates paraded the Union survivors through the streets of Petersburg to the slurs and jeers of the southern crowd. Lee never discouraged such behavior. As the historian Richard Slotkin wrote in No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, “his silence was permissive.”

The presence of black soldiers on the field of battle shattered every myth that the South’s slave empire was built on: the happy docility of slaves, their intellectual inferiority, their cowardice, their inability to compete with white people. As Pryor writes, “fighting against brave and competent African Americans challenged every underlying tenet of southern society.” The Confederate response to this challenge was to visit every possible atrocity and cruelty upon black soldiers whenever possible, from enslavement to execution.

As the historian James McPherson recounts in Battle Cry of Freedom, in October of that same year, Lee proposed an exchange of prisoners with the Union general Ulysses S. Grant. “Grant agreed, on condition that black soldiers be exchanged ‘the same as white soldiers.’” Lee’s response was that “negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange and were not included in my proposition.” Because slavery was the cause for which Lee fought, he could hardly be expected to easily concede, even at the cost of the freedom of his own men, that black people could be treated as soldiers and not things. Grant refused the offer, telling Lee that “government is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due to soldiers.” Despite its desperate need for soldiers, the Confederacy did not relent from this position until a few months before Lee’s surrender.

[...]

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ee/529038/

Are you aware of his treatment of "his" slaves in general? Or how Blacks were treated by Confederate armies, both soldiers and civilians? If you think Lee and any of the southern generals are free of the taint of war crimes, you've not really paid attention. The only thing that kept these wretches from being hanged after the war, was the misguided efforts of the Reconstruction.

[McAvoy]

Shall I? Can I even get through the mist risen by the Lost Cause?

[...]

During the invasion of Pennsylvania, Lee’s Army of Northern Virginia enslaved free black Americans and brought them back to the South as property. Pryor writes that “evidence links virtually every infantry and cavalry unit in Lee’s army” to the abduction of free black Americans, “with the activity under the supervision of senior officers.”

Soldiers under Lee’s command at the Battle of the Crater in 1864 massacred black Union soldiers who tried to surrender. Then, in a spectacle hatched by Lee’s senior corps commander, A. P. Hill, the Confederates paraded the Union survivors through the streets of Petersburg to the slurs and jeers of the southern crowd. Lee never discouraged such behavior. As the historian Richard Slotkin wrote in No Quarter: The Battle of the Crater, “his silence was permissive.”

The presence of black soldiers on the field of battle shattered every myth that the South’s slave empire was built on: the happy docility of slaves, their intellectual inferiority, their cowardice, their inability to compete with white people. As Pryor writes, “fighting against brave and competent African Americans challenged every underlying tenet of southern society.” The Confederate response to this challenge was to visit every possible atrocity and cruelty upon black soldiers whenever possible, from enslavement to execution.

As the historian James McPherson recounts in Battle Cry of Freedom, in October of that same year, Lee proposed an exchange of prisoners with the Union general Ulysses S. Grant. “Grant agreed, on condition that black soldiers be exchanged ‘the same as white soldiers.’” Lee’s response was that “negroes belonging to our citizens are not considered subjects of exchange and were not included in my proposition.” Because slavery was the cause for which Lee fought, he could hardly be expected to easily concede, even at the cost of the freedom of his own men, that black people could be treated as soldiers and not things. Grant refused the offer, telling Lee that “government is bound to secure to all persons received into her armies the rights due to soldiers.” Despite its desperate need for soldiers, the Confederacy did not relent from this position until a few months before Lee’s surrender.

[...]

Source: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/ar ... ee/529038/

Are you aware of his treatment of "his" slaves in general? Or how Blacks were treated by Confederate armies, both soldiers and civilians? If you think Lee and any of the southern generals are free of the taint of war crimes, you've not really paid attention. The only thing that kept these wretches from being hanged after the war, was the misguided efforts of the Reconstruction.

Sure keep going. My family was in still in Ireland when the Civil War happened.