"the hero gets revenge on someone who wronged them" has been a trope in human storytelling for literally thousands of...

>"the hero gets revenge on someone who wronged them" has been a trope in human storytelling for literally thousands of years
>media in the last few decades pushes bullshit "if you get revenge, you're just as bad as them!" narrative

explain this shit

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>what if superman was unironically evil
>every villain needs to be sympathetic
Can't be a coincidence with all this right

It's because you expect the hero to get revenge plain and simple, so the writers did the opposite in order to create a more compelling narrative
However that became a trope very quickly and now we're in a state when actually evil villains are the unexpected, eventually you'll see a weird return to form and so the cycle shall continue
It's the same thing with the gentle giant trope where you expect a big burly guy to be mean, so a lot of big characters ended up being nice and now that's kind of the norm

That works if the hero turns into a spiteful prick.

This, it was seemingly done to subvert the idea of revenge just happening for revenges sake, and it gives some supposedly moral high ground to the person not doing the killing.

But now its just an expected trope to the point where someone (especially a protagonist we're meant to think is a good person) actually just straight up going for revenge is more surprising/cathartic.

Like the whipping scene in Django.

Yeah, it's actually nice to see someone get their revenge. Ain't it crazy?

I'm pretty pro revenge but I think the point of this episode was that Katara couldn't reconcile killing someone who was defenseless and pleading for their life. If the dude came out swinging and was completely unapologetic it wouldn't catch her as off guard as it did.

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I think more stories should let the hero go through with the revenge but should realize how little it resolved and so forth. Only one I think that's done it that comes to mind is the Mortal Kombat animated movies (by extension, the games of course).

Probably. Though the guy (even jokingly) offering to let Katara kill his mother in return was something pretty abhorrent even if the mother was a cunt.

Guess someone hasn't seen John Wick

I think that creating a culture that advocates for murder is setting itself up for failure, ultimately you do need to look at why humans do the terrible things that they do in order to fix those core issues. Relying on murder or prison is just pushing the problems out of sight. So maybe teaching kids that mentality isn't too bad
But also Katara should've killed that guy

because killing someone in revenge is probably just going to send some angry guy after you in revenge as well, and then you get killed and someone dear to you goes after that guy to get revenge, etc etc. in a world like ATLA where everyone's throwing these crazy elemental powers around, this cycle of violence would never end. she just needed to be the bigger person and step away, as gay as it really is

>explain this shit

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While I hate 'muh cycle of violence' as an excuse to allow people to walk all over you and abuse you without fear of repercussion, it has its place in fiction, especially children's shows, because you want recurring characters. Villains are often the most interesting character in any given show, so killing them off can feel like a waste.

The cycle of revenge is a fucking meme. Chances are the guy you killed doesn't have many loved ones if whatever he did made you want him dead.

Murder is wrong.

>because killing someone in revenge is probably just going to send some angry guy after you in revenge as well
Wouldn't it be far better storytelling to have that actually happen, instead of just having other characters tell the hero not to do it, then refuse to elaborate why?

I saw that episode, the point of the epicsode is that getting revenge will not make you feel better. They did the same thing in an episode of Transformers Prime where Wheeljack and Miko get revenge on the hardshell the Insecticon that almost killed Bulkhead.They took out Hardshell but it didn't make Bulkhead's friends feel better.

I agree with your point, but that isn't the best example to use cause Katara decided not to kill because he was so pathetic he wasn't even worth killing. Better to let him live in misery

it's not that you're as bad as them, it's just that killing someone just leaves you with more death and nothing will ever bring your loved ones back
you'll never feel good the way you expect to