Chatter post

[trashmod]

For all your discussion needs.

Ground rules:
- Try to keep it loosely trash party related, or at least Cap fandom related.
- Disagreement is fine, nastiness is not.
- Being offended is not carte blanche for nastiness.
- Trashmeme ground rules apply. Read at your own risk, no romanticizing your noncon garbage, no wank about the moral acceptability of noncon kink.
- Body shots, sniper shots, and tetanus shots are all available at the open bar. Party like it's 2014, kids.

Comments

Re: Rumlow

[(Anonymous)]

NA

On the question of whether sympathetic!Rumlow pushes the boundaries of what's allowed in this dumpster: I don't believe it does. To me the crucial distinction is that making bad guys sympathetic or understandable is not remotely the same thing as forgiving or condoning their actions. As long as we're not straying into the territory of the latter, I think we're all good here.

As for the rest of this discussion, I think there are two issues at play.

First there's the issue of personal preference in fiction, and I think that in this of all places we can all agree that whatever floats your boat is totally fine. I prefer a Rumlow who is nuanced and sympathetic - not because I think that makes his actions forgivable, but because that is far, far more interesting to me than an unapologetically evil comic book villain. On the other hand I know plenty of people who love unapologetically evil comic book villains and want to read and write about those.

Like the anon above I'm 100% okay with people creating and enjoying awful!Rumlow fics, even if they're not my personal preference. So to get back to the OP of this thread: If sympathetic Rumlow makes you uncomfortable then yes, I do think this is a don't-like-don't-read situation.

But the second issue is how this all sits in the framework of our real world experiences. And the fact is that in the real world, horrendously cruel and evil things are done by people we may well genuinely feel sympathy for. Also like the anon above, I think that for this reason it's important to examine why the idea of sympathetic!Rumlow is uncomfortable. If it's just not your cup of tea that's one thing, but if people are uncomfortable with the idea that people who do evil things are not necessarily rotten to the core... I do think that's a concern.

Because in my view, just as trying to pass off your trash as romantic dinners for two is a problematic attitude that has real world implications, so too does othering all evil actions as being solely the purview of sadists and monsters. The latter has the potential to blind us to an awful lot of evil that goes on in the real world.