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Of course you can. after all, we're in it for the species , people!

 Yodhrin wrote:
Wait, you think bigotry can be justified?

Magneto was right.


We've only reached episode 2 in the UK and I've got to say, the opening scene of the (the family bowling night flashback), is what got me really engaged with the show, it's what convinced me the show is going to be more than just a Heroes remake with a bigger budget.

Thought the first episode was pretty weak but the second was better, the budget sentinals in Ep1 were funny in a bad way.

OTOH, Polaris is much prettier than I had expected.

She was always hot in the comics.

 Yodhrin wrote:
Wait, you think bigotry can be justified?

I don't, but that's the central debate of most x-titles. Magneto, the Brotherhood and all the other evil mutants and villains essentially create the villainous legislation that outlaws and persecutes them. The kid in this show basically wrecks a school because 'bullies' were... pouring water on him. Do his rights justify risking the safety of all the other kids (and adults) in the school? Especially since his default reaction to everything is attack?

It isn't like the black/white white/black species in star trek as a very obvious analogy to racism. Marvel mutants are often overwhelmingly dangerous, which makes the context quite different to real world racism or sexism. Especially since the legislation that persecutes them is often a direct response to Magneto or mutant groups ripping up cities, taking control of nuclear weapons or whatever. It tries and fails to be analogy, because the heroes or even normal working day mutants are rare compared to the evil ones. Finding a way to protect against mutants is merely rational and practical. (though the implementation in most marvel titles is absolutely insane).

Voss wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
Wait, you think bigotry can be justified?

I don't, but that's the central debate of most x-titles. Magneto, the Brotherhood and all the other evil mutants and villains essentially create the villainous legislation that outlaws and persecutes them. The kid in this show basically wrecks a school because 'bullies' were... pouring water on him. Do his rights justify risking the safety of all the other kids (and adults) in the school? Especially since his default reaction to everything is attack?

To be fair, it wasn't just that the bullies were "pouring water on him". It might have started that way, but remember that the kid in charge of it started saying something like "Oh, is it too cold? Let's warm it up" and twisted the knob as far over to hot as it could go.

It might sound stupid but you can get fairly significant burns from showers, especially if it's an older water heater or if there are problems with the safety mechanisms that would prevent things from getting too hot too fast.

It isn't like the black/white white/black species in star trek as a very obvious analogy to racism. Marvel mutants are often overwhelmingly dangerous, which makes the context quite different to real world racism or sexism. Especially since the legislation that persecutes them is often a direct response to Magneto or mutant groups ripping up cities, taking control of nuclear weapons or whatever. It tries and fails to be analogy, because the heroes or even normal working day mutants are rare compared to the evil ones. Finding a way to protect against mutants is merely rational and practical. (though the implementation in most marvel titles is absolutely insane).

I mean yeah, sometimes the legislation makes sense with regards to the circumstances but more often than not it's just knee-jerk panic lawmaking.

Actually being dangerous to huge swathes of people has always been one of the problems of the metaphor for X-men though. In the Ultimates universe at one point Magneto changed the Earths magnetic field and shifted the planet slightly causing earthquakes, tidal waves, and millions (if not billions) of deaths. At that point it isn't really a good metaphor for just being different.

I am definitely attracted to her....

Voss wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:
Wait, you think bigotry can be justified?

I don't, but that's the central debate of most x-titles. Magneto, the Brotherhood and all the other evil mutants and villains essentially create the villainous legislation that outlaws and persecutes them. The kid in this show basically wrecks a school because 'bullies' were... pouring water on him. Do his rights justify risking the safety of all the other kids (and adults) in the school? Especially since his default reaction to everything is attack?

It isn't like the black/white white/black species in star trek as a very obvious analogy to racism. Marvel mutants are often overwhelmingly dangerous, which makes the context quite different to real world racism or sexism. Especially since the legislation that persecutes them is often a direct response to Magneto or mutant groups ripping up cities, taking control of nuclear weapons or whatever. It tries and fails to be analogy, because the heroes or even normal working day mutants are rare compared to the evil ones. Finding a way to protect against mutants is merely rational and practical. (though the implementation in most marvel titles is absolutely insane).

Yeah see that's why I find your comment odd - there never seemed to be much of a "debate" going on to me. They asked the question, sure, but the answer was always pretty emphatically "no, bigotry can't be justified and is bad and you're a bad person if you're a bigot". Christ one of the big reasons Magneto is villainous is that he responds to the treatment of him by some humans by becoming a bigot himself. And you seem to have got the Magneto thing completely back-asswards - the point there was that bigoted lawmaking and state persecution create the very villains they're ostensibly designed to prevent.

As to the kid's situation - as pointed out, not only were these guys evidently people who had been violently bullying Andy for an extended period - meaning he had every reason to expect their behaviour to escalate - but they weren't just "pouring water on him", they were scalding him with near-boiling water. And that scene wasn't an accidental choice on the part of the show's creators - there have been numerous instances of kids being bullied at school(usually by bigots targeting them because they're a minority or gay or trans or the like) who've ended up with severe, permanent scarring from being held under scalding hot showers.

Protecting against mutants? Jeezo chief, the entire point of the IP is that despite all their powers it's the mutants that need protecting from us.

 Ahtman wrote:
Actually being dangerous to huge swathes of people has always been one of the problems of the metaphor for X-men though. In the Ultimates universe at one point Magneto changed the Earths magnetic field and shifted the planet slightly causing earthquakes, tidal waves, and millions (if not billions) of deaths. At that point it isn't really a good metaphor for just being different.

No, but it's still a good metaphor for not holding an entire otherwise unrelated group of people responsible for the actions of one mad individual. I mean, Hitler was Austrian, he's responsible for millions of deaths; does that mean it's justifiable to restrict the rights and freedoms of all Austrians, just to be safe, just to be sure? Now you will doubtless say "but not all Austrians are Hitler" - yes, and not all mutants are Magneto. "But most mutants can cause more damage than a baseline human" - yes, so can virologists, or people trained to use firearms & explosives effectively, or politicians and generals with command of vast armies; yet still, in no case is it OK or remotely fair to respond to one such person committing an atrocity(or, far more commonly even in X-Men, some more mundane villainy) by thereafter saying "all [X] should be treated as if they will commit a crime regardless of whether they end up doing so or not, just in case".

There is a right to self-defense, and then there's flattening a school.

If a kid is bullied by a few kids, I'm pretty sure flattening the entire school and everyone in it would be above and beyond what the law would allow.

 Yodhrin wrote:

Yeah see that's why I find your comment odd - there never seemed to be much of a "debate" going on to me. They asked the question, sure, but the answer was always pretty emphatically "no, bigotry can't be justified and is bad and you're a bad person if you're a bigot". Christ one of the big reasons Magneto is villainous is that he responds to the treatment of him by some humans by becoming a bigot himself. And you seem to have got the Magneto thing completely back-asswards - the point there was that bigoted lawmaking and state persecution create the very villains they're ostensibly designed to prevent.

Uh, no. You need to go back to the beginning: X-men number One has Magneto hijacking rockets, a military base and nukes because he decreed "the day of the mutants," and the human race no longer deserves dominion over the planet. He even calls it the "first phase of my plan to show my power, to make homo sapiens bow to homo superior." There was no 'mutant problem,' legislation or anything else. Just a nutjob on a conquering spree (his justifications and his backstory came many years later).

So actual canon is this is a self-created problem. Magneto and the Brotherhood, then others, over and over again.

As to the kid's situation - as pointed out, not only were these guys evidently people who had been violently bullying Andy for an extended period - meaning he had every reason to expect their behaviour to escalate - but they weren't just "pouring water on him", they were scalding him with near-boiling water. And that scene wasn't an accidental choice on the part of the show's creators - there have been numerous instances of kids being bullied at school(usually by bigots targeting them because they're a minority or gay or trans or the like) who've ended up with severe, permanent scarring from being held under scalding hot showers.

Near boiling? From a school shower? Not a chance in the world.
And it undermines your point- it presents the argument that responding to the violence with more & disproportionate violence is the appropriate reaction. Justifying both the evil mutants and laws against mutants with hunter/killer bots as backup..

Protecting against mutants? Jeezo chief, the entire point of the IP is that despite all their powers it's the mutants that need protecting from us.

Ostensibly, yes. In practice, that isn't the message they send. What comes across is the X-men are the rare exception- unicorns in a sea of goblins, as it were. They vacillate between trying to pose it as a black/white problem and a nuanced problem. But the actual implementation is generally pretty poor- with buildings and entire cities getting wrecked, with lots of helpless humans caught out. Some sort of response from governments is entirely reasonable, and given the scale... well.

In practice it's a poor racism analogy and a pretty good gun control analogy.

 Ahtman wrote:
Actually being dangerous to huge swathes of people has always been one of the problems of the metaphor for X-men though. In the Ultimates universe at one point Magneto changed the Earths magnetic field and shifted the planet slightly causing earthquakes, tidal waves, and millions (if not billions) of deaths. At that point it isn't really a good metaphor for just being different.

No, but it's still a good metaphor for not holding an entire otherwise unrelated group of people responsible for the actions of one mad individual.

It isn't, though, because the 'evil mutants' are presented as the norm. It's never 'one such person.' It's an endless cavalcade of foes, and short list of exceptions.

Thinking about it, this show has the same problem the Cap. America Civil War movie had- the governments' position is actually fairly reasonable, and the only reason the characters care at all is because it affects them personally. And even known terrorists/assassins should be defended against the big bad government, because reasons..?

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
There is a right to self-defense, and then there's flattening a school.

If a kid is bullied by a few kids, I'm pretty sure flattening the entire school and everyone in it would be above and beyond what the law would allow.

At that point it's a terrorist act. Send in the Seals*

* The fish eating mammals. No one expects Bob the Sea Lion!

 Yodhrin wrote:
No, but it's still a good metaphor for not holding an entire otherwise unrelated group of people responsible for the actions of one mad individual. I mean, Hitler was Austrian, he's responsible for millions of deaths; does that mean it's justifiable to restrict the rights and freedoms of all Austrians, just to be safe, just to be sure? Now you will doubtless say "but not all Austrians are Hitler" - yes, and not all mutants are Magneto. "But most mutants can cause more damage than a baseline human" - yes, so can virologists, or people trained to use firearms & explosives effectively, or politicians and generals with command of vast armies; yet still, in no case is it OK or remotely fair to respond to one such person committing an atrocity(or, far more commonly even in X-Men, some more mundane villainy) by thereafter saying "all [X] should be treated as if they will commit a crime regardless of whether they end up doing so or not, just in case".

I'm not sure how discussing a flaw in a metaphor meant jumping to Hitler but if that is the road you need to walk to feel good you go for it. Nothing I said dismissed the entire idea, just that it doesn't work 100%.

So... People with powers can kill people much more efficiently than people with say a knife or a car so we must restrict all people with powers even though the vast majority of people that have powers are law abiding citizens and use their powers responsibly?

Hey whats wrong with a little mutation:

 JohnHwangDD wrote:
There is a right to self-defense, and then there's flattening a school.

If a kid is bullied by a few kids, I'm pretty sure flattening the entire school and everyone in it would be above and beyond what the law would allow.

And what happens when that kid being bullied had never shown mutant powers before?

Because that's the whole lead-in for the family. The dad charges mutants but what happens...dramatic pause...when the mutants are his kids?!

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
So... People with powers can kill people much more efficiently than people with say a knife or a car so we must restrict all people with powers even though the vast majority of people that have powers are law abiding citizens and use their powers responsibly?

You have to have a licence to drive a car or own a gun. Don't we also restrict martial artists? Probably the nearest would be a contagious disease and we confine them for their own and others safety and health - its a tricky one where mutations are potentially spontaneous, have unpredictable power levels etc.

However after the first deaths / large scale property destruction I can some form of genetic testing and registration becoming mandatory - that seems logical. What you then do with those who test positive is a difficult moral decision - do you give them complete freedom even if they have no control, do you make the pass a test to give them a licence (depending on powers) or something else without going down the Days of future past route?

 Mr Morden wrote:

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
So... People with powers can kill people much more efficiently than people with say a knife or a car so we must restrict all people with powers even though the vast majority of people that have powers are law abiding citizens and use their powers responsibly?

You have to have a licence to drive a car or own a gun. Don't we also restrict martial artists? Probably the nearest would be a contagious disease and we confine them for their own and others safety and health - its a tricky one where mutations are potentially spontaneous, have unpredictable power levels etc.

As far as I can tell, no. There is nothing "restricting martial artists". There might be some sentencing modifications that come from it but that's nowhere near the same thing as licensing.

However after the first deaths / large scale property destruction I can some form of genetic testing and registration becoming mandatory - that seems logical. What you then do with those who test positive is a difficult moral decision - do you give them complete freedom even if they have no control, do you make the pass a test to give them a licence (depending on powers) or something else without going down the Days of future past route?

The irony of you stating this while saying that you "need to have a license to drive a car or own a gun" is hilarious.

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
So... People with powers can kill people much more efficiently than people with say a knife or a car so we must restrict all people with powers even though the vast majority of people that have powers are law abiding citizens and use their powers responsibly?

You have to have a licence to drive a car or own a gun. Don't we also restrict martial artists? Probably the nearest would be a contagious disease and we confine them for their own and others safety and health - its a tricky one where mutations are potentially spontaneous, have unpredictable power levels etc.

As far as I can tell, no. There is nothing "restricting martial artists". There might be some sentencing modifications that come from it but that's nowhere near the same thing as licensing.

However after the first deaths / large scale property destruction I can some form of genetic testing and registration becoming mandatory - that seems logical. What you then do with those who test positive is a difficult moral decision - do you give them complete freedom even if they have no control, do you make the pass a test to give them a licence (depending on powers) or something else without going down the Days of future past route?

The irony of you stating this while saying that you "need to have a license to drive a car or own a gun" is hilarious.

Probably wrong on the martial arts but I do have a to have a licence to practice mine but that maybe because it involves swords?

Why is it ironic re cars and guns - sorry not understanding?

 Mr Morden wrote:

 Kanluwen wrote:

 Mr Morden wrote:

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
So... People with powers can kill people much more efficiently than people with say a knife or a car so we must restrict all people with powers even though the vast majority of people that have powers are law abiding citizens and use their powers responsibly?

You have to have a licence to drive a car or own a gun. Don't we also restrict martial artists? Probably the nearest would be a contagious disease and we confine them for their own and others safety and health - its a tricky one where mutations are potentially spontaneous, have unpredictable power levels etc.

As far as I can tell, no. There is nothing "restricting martial artists". There might be some sentencing modifications that come from it but that's nowhere near the same thing as licensing.

However after the first deaths / large scale property destruction I can some form of genetic testing and registration becoming mandatory - that seems logical. What you then do with those who test positive is a difficult moral decision - do you give them complete freedom even if they have no control, do you make the pass a test to give them a licence (depending on powers) or something else without going down the Days of future past route?

The irony of you stating this while saying that you "need to have a license to drive a car or own a gun" is hilarious.

Probably wrong on the martial arts but I do have a to have a licence to practice mine but that maybe because it involves swords?

Bingo. That's the only thing I could find with regards to martial arts restrictions and it seems to be a primarily British thing.

Why is it ironic re cars and guns - sorry not understanding?

I know you've participated in gun control threads here on Dakka.

What happened anytime people talked about registration(proper registration--where lists are maintained and accessible, not the SNAFU that we have now where the ATF aren't allowed to have digitally searchable databases) of firearms?

I don't recall being on a gun control thread except when I once asked if guns were very prevalent in the US - I think it was for a rpg/story I was running / writing and wondered what it was actually like. Can't recall another

I have little to no knowledge of the US gun control reality except what we get from TV shows and the news media.

Re swords are they not licenced in the US then? I did wonder.

 SlaveToDorkness wrote:
So... People with powers can kill people much more efficiently than people with say a knife or a car so we must restrict all people with powers even though the vast majority of people that have powers are law abiding citizens and use their powers responsibly?

When has anyone in the Marvel universe used their powers responsibly? Even the 'heroes' cause major damage on a regular basis, and end up in situations where they 'have to' infiltrate the Pentagon or other shenanigans where they end up on the wrong side of the law, even before mutant restrictions or powered restrictions come into play.

 Mr Morden wrote:

Re swords are they not licenced in the US then? I did wonder.

Swords are not licenced in the US, you may buy or make them freely.

On topic of the show, it seems alright so far. I'll keep with it so far give it its chance to sink or swim.

We had episode 3 last night in the UK and, I've got to say, I'm getting more and more into it.

Despite it not really having any X-Men in it (well, people identifying as X-Men at least), I do genuinely think this is the thing thing that has held to the spirit of my understanding of the X-Men most since the 90's cartoon. And that includes the movies.

It's a lot of the little dialogue bits in there. - Like, when they show the house being grafitti'ed, one of them comments, "but... I was on the swim team with them..." They don't even properly dwell on that, more the reactions afterwards, but that little comment....

I'm just getting more and more impressed with the show.

Voss wrote:

 Yodhrin wrote:

Yeah see that's why I find your comment odd - there never seemed to be much of a "debate" going on to me. They asked the question, sure, but the answer was always pretty emphatically "no, bigotry can't be justified and is bad and you're a bad person if you're a bigot". Christ one of the big reasons Magneto is villainous is that he responds to the treatment of him by some humans by becoming a bigot himself. And you seem to have got the Magneto thing completely back-asswards - the point there was that bigoted lawmaking and state persecution create the very villains they're ostensibly designed to prevent.

Uh, no. You need to go back to the beginning: X-men number One has Magneto hijacking rockets, a military base and nukes because he decreed "the day of the mutants," and the human race no longer deserves dominion over the planet. He even calls it the "first phase of my plan to show my power, to make homo sapiens bow to homo superior." There was no 'mutant problem,' legislation or anything else. Just a nutjob on a conquering spree (his justifications and his backstory came many years later).

So actual canon is this is a self-created problem. Magneto and the Brotherhood, then others, over and over again.

I'm fairly sure that's been retconned at least fifty times, and since I wasn't even alive when they published X-Men #1 I think it's entirely fair to go with the version that it's pretty consistently been since like the 80's, where the mutants emerge first and Magneto has some backstory beyond cackling evil 1960's baddie.

As to the kid's situation - as pointed out, not only were these guys evidently people who had been violently bullying Andy for an extended period - meaning he had every reason to expect their behaviour to escalate - but they weren't just "pouring water on him", they were scalding him with near-boiling water. And that scene wasn't an accidental choice on the part of the show's creators - there have been numerous instances of kids being bullied at school(usually by bigots targeting them because they're a minority or gay or trans or the like) who've ended up with severe, permanent scarring from being held under scalding hot showers.

Near boiling? From a school shower? Not a chance in the world.

Do you have to work hard at being so wrong, or does it come naturally?

And it undermines your point- it presents the argument that responding to the violence with more & disproportionate violence is the appropriate reaction. Justifying both the evil mutants and laws against mutants with hunter/killer bots as backup..

It does nothing of the sort the point is that the kid isn't in control of his actions because he is literally being scalded by boiling water. If you inject me with a drug without consent that drives me into an incoherent uncontrollable rage and I beat someone to death, you are the one responsible for that outcome not me. I mean seriously, how warped does a person's sense of ethics have to be to watch a kid being beaten and burned and jump straight to "well he reflexively tried to defend himself and caused some property damage, so that totes justifies concentration camps and murder robots"

Protecting against mutants? Jeezo chief, the entire point of the IP is that despite all their powers it's the mutants that need protecting from us.

Ostensibly, yes. In practice, that isn't the message they send. What comes across is the X-men are the rare exception- unicorns in a sea of goblins, as it were. They vacillate between trying to pose it as a black/white problem and a nuanced problem. But the actual implementation is generally pretty poor- with buildings and entire cities getting wrecked, with lots of helpless humans caught out. Some sort of response from governments is entirely reasonable, and given the scale... well.

In practice it's a poor racism analogy and a pretty good gun control analogy.

It's a garbage gun control analogy - a gun is a tool, you can choose to have one or not, you cannot choose your genetics. And regardless, even where gun violence is endemic to a degree most people think is mad, I've yet to see anyone advocating that "gun control" should consist of hyper-intrusive state surveillance of anyone even suspected of merely owning a gun, of locking gun owners away for life, of shooting gun owners on-sight, of developing special murder robots to murder them on sight, of preemptive extralegal detention of gun owners, and of concentration camps where gun owners are subjected to horrifying medical experiments and torture.

Plenty of things are dangerous but don't require or justify a fascist police state to control, and plenty of arbitrary groups of individuals have a minority who commit violent acts, even atrocities, but that still doesn't justify collective punishment, torture, and extralegal detention.

 Ahtman wrote:
Actually being dangerous to huge swathes of people has always been one of the problems of the metaphor for X-men though. In the Ultimates universe at one point Magneto changed the Earths magnetic field and shifted the planet slightly causing earthquakes, tidal waves, and millions (if not billions) of deaths. At that point it isn't really a good metaphor for just being different.

No, but it's still a good metaphor for not holding an entire otherwise unrelated group of people responsible for the actions of one mad individual.

It isn't, though, because the 'evil mutants' are presented as the norm. It's never 'one such person.' It's an endless cavalcade of foes, and short list of exceptions.

What a load of nonsense. Mutants are consistently presented as a *large* minority who, outside of mind control or someone attemping genocide on them, live like regular people. What you're saying here, in RL parlance is: The only Muslims I see on the news are violent terrorists, therefore all Muslims must be inherently bad.

Thinking about it, this show has the same problem the Cap. America Civil War movie had- the governments' position is actually fairly reasonable, and the only reason the characters care at all is because it affects them personally. And even known terrorists/assassins should be defended against the big bad government, because reasons..?

Which is funny considering you go back to the original comics to try and boost your argument above, but seem to have missed that the original Civil War was widely considered pretty laughable because the Stark/Government side of the discussion went from "Cap disagrees with me" to "THROW THEM ALL IN AN INTERDIMENSIONAL PRISON FOREVER!" with barely a pause for breath, while the more measured version from the film actually manages to make both sides sympathetic. Regardless, "maybe powered people should register and only actually use their powers when asked to" and "if you don't sign a register and subject yourself to massive state surveillance we will throw you in a prison camp and do experiments on you and if you try to resist send murder robots to murder you and we always inevitably end up doing the experimentation camps thing anyway because we're literally supposed to be an allegory for the rise of fascism" is a pretty hefty difference, and one your arguments consistently sidestep or ignore.


Anyway, still enjoying the show, but the repeated attempts to make the Sentinel Services guy seem sympathetic just don't work for me. Then again unlike some I don't think responding to a personal tragedy resulting from a single event involving a handful of people by joyfully participating in the formation of a murderous fascist police state is proportionate or ethical, and it does seem there's an audience for "boo hoo my kid died something something torture and state murder is fine now", so I'm sure some people liked it.