The Walking Dead

[The Human Q-Tip]

Pretty sure that, in the comics, he talks about getting a hard on from beating someone to death with his bat at least once. Not sure if that happens on the show or not, though, as I haven't watched it since the episode before he kills Glenn.

He did that on the show as well. That's not a guy who kills reluctantly. That's a guy who likes killing. He doesn't do it randomly because he is calculating, and wants to extract personal value from the living whenever possible. But that doesn't mean he doesn't get off when he is presented with a (to his warped thinking) justification to kill.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

Like I said, they were part of a group that was killing scores of his men. In the circumstances, I'd probably get satisfaction from killing my enemies.

You might get satisfaction from killing enemies. But the sheer enjoyment of the pure brutality of it...nah. That dude's toxic.

 

[Chris]

Well, nobody ever disagreed with that. It’s just funny as viewers how our heroes get a pass when they do reprehensible things. “Oh he did that but its okay. But that other guy is evil!” Meh.

Anyways,

What episode did he say that in? I don’t remember.

 

[Jack Brickman]

He did that on the show as well. That's not a guy who kills reluctantly. That's a guy who likes killing. He doesn't do it randomly because he is calculating, and wants to extract personal value from the living whenever possible. But that doesn't mean he doesn't get off when he is presented with a (to his warped thinking) justification to kill.

Based on where the comics have taken his character, I do think a lot of what he did was just putting on a show to keep his men in line. Like Cercei on Game of Thrones, Negan rules through fear, and people are going to be afraid of a guy who gleefully kills people with his named bat and burns people's faces as a warning for crossing him. Once Rick gets in his head, he definitely seems like a different character who realized the error of his ways, which is why I think a lot of his actions were for show more than because he actually enjoyed them.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

Based on where the comics have taken his character, I do think a lot of what he did was just putting on a show to keep his men in line. Like Cercei on Game of Thrones, Negan rules through fear, and people are going to be afraid of a guy who gleefully kills people with his named bat and burns people's faces as a warning for crossing him. Once Rick gets in his head, he definitely seems like a different character who realized the error of his ways, which is why I think a lot of his actions were for show more than because he actually enjoyed them.

Again, for those of us who have only seen the show, we can only judge the guy on what he does. Although I do think what you described is at least an attempt to present what some may consider an interesting moral question about how we can/should judge people like Negan or Cersei.

Personally, I've never really found those kind of questions all that interesting because I see them as excuse-making that people tolerate only in fictional stories, not real life.

 

[Jack Brickman]

Again, for those of us who have only seen the show, we can only judge the guy on what he does. Although I do think what you described is at least an attempt to present what some may consider an interesting moral question about how we can/should judge people like Negan or Cersei.

Personally, I've never really found those kind of questions all that interesting because I see them as excuse-making that people tolerate only in fictional stories, not real life.

Right, but neither Walking Dead nor Game of Thrones takes place in real life. I'm more inclined to believe that what Negan has done is acceptable than Cercei, simply because Negan is operating in a fallen world where, by and large, it's kill or be killed. It's not until Rick presents him with another way that he realizes that that way exists, and even Rick has done more than his fair share of horrible things in the name of an eventual greater good. That's just the world The Walking Dead exists in. There aren't many people who haven't had to do something terrible in the name of survival.

Cercei, meanwhile, often has less cruel ways to get what she wants, but she always defaults to cruelty because that's just who she is.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

Right, but neither Walking Dead nor Game of Thrones takes place in real life. I'm more inclined to believe that what Negan has done is acceptable than Cercei, simply because Negan is operating in a fallen world where, by and large, it's kill or be killed.

No, it isn't. Not remotely, and he knows it. The perfect examples are the peaceful communities he abused -- the Kingdom and Hilltop. Those people were perfectly fine growing their own crops, trading peacefully among themselves, etc.. The biggest threat to their existence/survival/health were the Saviors themselves taking half of what they produced, by force. Alexandria was perfectly fine as well.

Where's the "kill or be killed" in that?

His crew that Daryl, etc., first encountered on the road weren't there to protect the Sanctuary and Saviors from being killed. They were there to steal the property of anyone on that road, and to kill them if they didn't comply. Obviously, there was the peaceful alternative available to them as well -- don't try to rob other people and steal their stuff. But that would have meant doing the hard work of supporting yourself on your own -- growing your own crops, etc.. And that was just not as much fun as robbing other people.

And what does "kill or be killed" have to do with what he did to Dwight and his wife, and to all those other women? What about the husbands/sons of those women who fled him and set up their own base? He killed all of them just because they tried to resist being robbed. He's a freaking monster.

 

[Chris]

Again, for those of us who have only seen the show, we can only judge the guy on what he does. Although I do think what you described is at least an attempt to present what some may consider an interesting moral question about how we can/should judge people like Negan or Cersei.

Personally, I've never really found those kind of questions all that interesting because I see them as excuse-making that people tolerate only in fictional stories, not real life.

This is true, in that characters can get away with a lot more than anyone in real life. Case in point, the discussion in the GoT thread about Dany burning the Tarlys. Pretty sure burning POWs alive IRL would be indefensible no matter what. But in a fictional world, like, say, a medieval style fantasy or zombie apocalypse type of fiction, you can see how people bend things.

I don't think it's a shocker to anyone to say that good villains in any story worth its weight, though, aren't just raving evil lunatics and they have nuances to them a lot of the time.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

This is true, in that characters can get away with a lot more than anyone in real life. Case in point, the discussion in the GoT thread about Dany burning the Tarlys. Pretty sure burning POWs alive IRL would be indefensible no matter what. But in a fictional world, like, say, a medieval style fantasy or zombie apocalypse type of fiction, you can see how people bend things.

But that's really something different. You're talking about a fictional world where the values clearly are different from our own, or from any real-world historical place either. And in that kind of system, sure -- you judge fictional characters in other worlds/times in reference to the morality of their setting.

Only that's not what's really happening in a lot of these situations. People don't burn other nobles alive, even in Westeros. Negan is a man raised in our own time, and we can see that his ethics are horrible in comparison with the vast majority of people. It's the fact that he's so horrible that makes him interesting. I think it is more along the lines of the weird shit we see with women sending love letters to mass murders. People Romanticize (capitalization intentional) villains because they're "interesting". It happens a lot with book characters because people don't fully think through the reality of what the character actually did. They confuse someone not being one dimensional (which nobody really is) with mitigation.

I don't think it's a shocker to anyone to say that good villains in any story worth its weight, though, aren't just raving evil lunatics and they have nuances to them a lot of the time.

I agree -- I think good villains are interesting even if they're still evil as fuck.

 

[Chris]

Well I was on your side in the GoT topic. But you can see how people would defend it. Nobody would defend it if it happened in our world.

Personally I consider villains with zero redeeming qualities to be pure evil characters and I just can‘t say Negan fits that category for me. A guy like, say, Joff or Ramsay in GoT certainly would. It doesn’t mean anyone is defending his actions. It means he isn’t all bad. Almost nobody is.

It’s okay to disagree.

 

[The Human Q-Tip]

Well I was on your side in the GoT topic. But you can see how people would defend it. Nobody would defend it if it happened in our world.

Personally I consider villains with zero redeeming qualities to be pure evil characters and I just can‘t say Negan fits that category for me. A guy like, say, Joff or Ramsay in GoT certainly would. It doesn’t mean anyone is defending his actions. It means he isn’t all bad. Almost nobody is.

It’s okay to disagree.

Out of curiosity...what is Negan's "redeeming quality" on the show?

 

[Chris]

Out of curiosity...what is Negan's "redeeming quality" on the show?

He's displayed leadership, charisma, compassion in multiple instances on the show. That's...not even debatable. We can say what we want about how he's gone about it, but he has built something people believe in and a lot of people believe in him to help them survive. And despite him being brutal to his enemies, he has shown great restraint in multiple circumstances- with Gabriel, Jadis, and Carl. He was genuinely upset when Carl died. I almost forgot about when he saved Sasha from being raped.

That was pretty easy. I'm sure I could say more, and you'll probably try to "debunk" all of this even though it happened and we all saw it. It doesn't make Negan a hero, or a "good guy." But it means that many of his actions are good, just like many are bad. If you asked me the same question about Ramsay Bolton or Joffrey, the two examples of absolutely bad to the core fictional characters I used before, I'd struggle to think of anything.

 

[Chris]

Getting back to Rick Grimes, I have to say I can still see the double standard at work here. Didn't Rick just murder a bunch of dudes who didn't deserve it, pretty much in cold blood? One of them just saved Rick, and he buries a hatchet in the guy's back. Isn't this murder? One of the things that has made Negan so irredeemable is the murders he has committed, right?

Rick has always been one of my favorite characters and he is, indeed our "hero" of the story. I defended him way back in Season 3 when ya'll were ripping on him. But he tiptoes along that line mighty finely, at times, and we just kind of gloss over it. Nobody cares about the shit he does. When he got to Alexandria he was a raving lunatic.

But he's the hero, we've followed him for the whole story and we've seen all of his good moments so they seem to wash out the bad, they make us more forgiving to his actions. If we followed Negan for 8 years, and I think Jeffrey Dean Morgan actually said this exact thing, I wonder how forgiving we'd (the audience) be towards his actions.

 

[inliner311]

Getting back to Rick Grimes, I have to say I can still see the double standard at work here. Didn't Rick just murder a bunch of dudes who didn't deserve it, pretty much in cold blood? One of them just saved Rick, and he buries a hatchet in the guy's back. Isn't this murder? One of the things that has made Negan so irredeemable is the murders he has committed, right?

Rick has always been one of my favorite characters and he is, indeed our "hero" of the story. I defended him way back in Season 3 when ya'll were ripping on him. But he tiptoes along that line mighty finely, at times, and we just kind of gloss over it. Nobody cares about the shit he does. When he got to Alexandria he was a raving lunatic.

But he's the hero, we've followed him for the whole story and we've seen all of his good moments so they seem to wash out the bad, they make us more forgiving to his actions. If we followed Negan for 8 years, and I think Jeffrey Dean Morgan actually said this exact thing, I wonder how forgiving we'd (the audience) be towards his actions.

I don't think Rick killing those Saviors was to push us to compare Rick and Negan. Rick has always been pretty clear about people being with them or against them, no in-between, a take no prisoners type. Ive always felt Rick sees people against them just as he sees walkers, there is no cure or redemption.

That's where I think this was brought up for though. Maggie is leader of the hill top and really believes in redemption. She took all those prisoners when people wanted to just kill them. She kept them inside the gates to protect them.

Carl's note was all about how everyone need to come together and redeem themselves for what they have done to move society forward. Will Rick be able to come to the same conclusion, it doesn't seem like it right now. Maggie and alot of the people at the hill top are in the same boat as Carl was. Rick, Daryl, and alot of the people fighting on the front lines are holding true to what has kept them alive. Maggie is really the one who has faction off.

I really believe the Rick killing those saviors was a set up on how the group will move on after they beat the saviors. Maybe they won't be one group or Rick and some of the main characters will move on without Maggie and the hill top.

 

[pl4tinum]

I think the storyline of the show would be much more interesting if Rick and Negan tried to unite together than if Rick's group just slaughtered the saviors. That could (at this rate) drive the show for another 2 seasons+. Not sure if it would be fulfilling but it would definitely prolong things. I'm not sure what would be next for Rick's group if they defeated the saviors. They've encountered and defeated everything else they've come across, this is the biggest rival they've ever faced.

On another note, too bad Shane's dead. He'd love this shit.