brasca wrote: ↑Fri Jul 06, 2018 5:51 am
Nobody actually died. And strangely enough attempted mass murder doesn't seem to bother as many people on this board as sex. You keep going on about how all these people are compelled to do things against their will, but if the desire is there it just overrides their better judgement. Gabrielle wanted Teddi as soon as she saw zie, but would've waited to intervene as a matter of strategy. The pheromones overrode that judgement and so she leaped to Teddi's defense. Tandy on the other hand is having some inappropriate dreams, but she's not acting on any of it. Maybe I'm wrong about all this, but until proven otherwise I prefer to think that the devil isn't responsible for everything except nudging them in the wrong direction.
I take everything as a case by case basis. The succubi are not good, they are demons, but Chloe tries to fight against her nature so I tend to view her differently. Teddi has been thrust into situations no one zies age should be in and doing the best zie can. Sure zie has made some mistakes, but zie's heart is in the right place much like Chloe's so I view zie differently. Intent matters and if Teddi were abusing zie's power the way Blair would if he could trade places then I'd have a different opinion.
We usually tend to judge morality and criminality not by whether or not somebody succeeds but whether or not they tried to do something. There is a reason why attempted murder or conspiracy are still crimes even if nobody gets hurt.
So Cerise intended to murder several people and did her best to do it. Her incompetence at doing so shouldn't make her any less of a villain than Blofeld's inability to kill James Bond excuses anything he does.
So I agree with you that Chloe isn't as bad as the other succubi because she isn't generally trying to do bad things. Even when she does do something "evil" - like during the Valentines Day arc - we see her feeling remorse or guilt. In a kind of mirror image of Cerise she wants to do good but just isn't very good at it. So she's not a villain but an incompetent good guy with good intentions. Which for me is a lot of her appeal. Seeing her struggle with her nature rather than simply accepting it makes her a lot more interesting to me than somebody like Lucretia who we only see being traditionally "evil".
When it comes to people being "compelled" to have sex it's equally clear for me that the comic has put people into situations where they aren't giving fully informed consent. Sometimes - as with Faith misusing (albeit unconsciously) the school's power to get people to like her enough to want to have sex with her or Mel's reaction to zapping Ash and Dio- the comic makes it explicit that that is something bad. Other times we don't get the same editorial judgement shown but are left to make our minds up.
Delatorre, for example, made it clear that he didn't want to have a relationship with Jacqui. And the only reason he entered into one was because she used magic to change her appearance and claimed to be somebody she wasn't. Now it's true that Delatorre agreed to have sex with the person Jacqui was claiming to be but only because he'd been tricked. It's a bit like an identical twin claiming to be their twin to sleep with their twin's partner. The partner consents to the sex but only because they've been conned into it. There is consent but it really isn't informed consent because deception is involved.
So Jacqui did something reprehensible which I really didn't like seeing even though I thought she was one of the more interesting of the Hellrunes. Partly because she wasn't obsessed with power, prestige and school politics but also because she had an intelligence and insight that the other two lacked. . Delatorre being deceived didn't stop me liking her completely but did make me like her a lot less and I was glad that the story line wasn't really pursued.
It's the same with Teddi and the harem. I used to like Teddy a lot. As a geek who liked the idea of disassembling a mechanical duck he was always an unlikely hero for a "teen" comic. But then the comic became almost solely concerned with Teddi having sex that it took over pretty much all the rest of his character and turned him into a one act bore.
I don't blame him for wanting to have lots of sex. I don't blame her for the fact that the jocks want to have sex with her - looking like she does it would be surprising if most of them didn't - because I don't think we've seen anything that suggests Teddi should know that they might not be acting normally. I do though condemn her for being willing to risk their lives or serious injury when the lucky winner of his virility contest eventually got fed to Chloe but that's a different debate.
But it's very different when it comes to the harem of ex-bullies.
Teddi knows for sure that they aren't acting normally but still has sex with them. It's just about understandable that she might think sleeping with the first girl was a way to dispel the charm she thought they were under. But when it failed to work on her sleeping with the rest of them served no logical purpose. Neither did the sleeping with them multiple times when it should have been obvious that it wasn't helping but was simply Teddi taking advantage of their altered state for her own benefit.
For me that was like sleeping with somebody you know is drunk and who wouldn't sleep with you sober. You may not have got them drunk but taking advantage of the fact that they are is still a pretty shitty thing to do. Doing it once would be bad enough but doing it every Friday night is pretty inexcusable.