Comments by "Jim Luebke" (@jimluebke3869) on "Trope Talk: Sins Of The Father" video.

  1.  @zoro115-s6b  Yeah, when the old guy in Captain America said that only people who had been weak could be trusted with power because they could empathize with the victims, my response was "You sure about that?"
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  2. Vengeance has a deterrent quality to it. If you want to maximize evil in this world, allow everyone who acts in an evil way, to get away with it.
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  3. The canonical modern Western revenge story is the Count of Monte Cristo, where the title character is wronged by villains A, B, and C. Dumas made the Count heroic and not simply selfish, by pairing him up victims X, Y, and Z, who villains A, B, and C had also wronged subsequent to the wrong that they did to the Count -- demonstrating both the villains' villainous character, and giving the Count's revenge a dimension of magnanimity. Interestingly, Shakespeare twists and turns the idea of a revenge story -- Othello is absolutely wrong to seek revenge, Romeo's vengefulness (and the vengefulness of the two families generally) causes the whole problem of the play, Hamlet is wracked with doubts, non-vengeful Brutus is noble while vengeful Cassius is petty (and the reprisals from Pompey onwards crash the Republic), and Titus Andronicus is basically a monster. About the only time vengeance is seen as laudable, is when it's against a main character -- MacBeth's end is seen as morally justified, On the lighter side, Prospero is arguably a good guy because his "revenge" plot is generally just toying with his enemies, with an eye to a happy ending. Oberon and Titania's feud is a prank war played up for laughs.
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