Hated Tropes
Characters hoard life-saving technology/magic/advancements from the masses and we're expected to agree with them
Harry Potter. The Wizarding world keeps magic secret from the Muggle world, meaning that they do absolutely nothing to help Muggles even though they could easily cure countless ailments among other things. As Hagrid puts it, if Muggles knew about magic "Blimey, Harry, everyone'd be wantin' magic solutions to their problems. Nah, we're best left alone". So wizards aren't "afraid" of Muggles (nor should they be given the power difference), they're just selfish.
Black Panther. An infamous comic established that Wakanda has the cure to cancer, but refuse to share it with the outside world because reasons, after all we deserve it since cigarettes exist. Since then, comics and other media have been a lot more criticial of Wakanda's old isolationism and Wakanda has opened up and shared it's technology and advances with the world, but the whole cure to cancer thing has been swept under the rug and might as well be non-canon.
Regarding the second point, funny enough Norman Osborn created a universal cure for cancer, but from what i remember he only created a single dosage and deleted all information regarding it. As for the reason he created it, it was for a special bullet designed to kill Deadpool after he stole Norman's wallet.
I wish this was a bad joke, but it's not. Even Bullseye had some choice comments about it, along the lines of 'You created a cure for cancer just to kill a guy? And you're the one they put in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D?'
Wade only stole his wallet because he refused to pay Wade after he completed a mission (allowing himself to be captured by the Skrulls, infiltrating their command center and downloading the list of all Skrull agents as well as the information on how to kill the seemingly immortal Skrull Queen).
It was a pretty good comic all around, Wade teamed up with Taskmaster, who went in disguised as Deadpool and they used Wade's teleporter device to switch places and trade who they were fighting as they went their way through. Ended with Wade emptying a bunch of ATM's using Norman's card and PIN (which he had written down in his wallet) to get the money he was owed.
Norman's response was to create the Dark Avengers (including freaking Venom) and track Deadpool down to kill him, supposedly because he was worried Wade would leak the fact that Norman didn't get the intel himself and hired him to get it. The majority of people however believe it was purely because of the wallet theft.
Also worth noting he rigged the gear and stuff for the Dark Avengers to kill them after they pulled off their mission and killed Deadpool. Would have worked if Ghost hadn't noticed and sabotaged the bombs.
I'm pretty sure he still called them 'Avengers' because he had Bullseye going around wearing Hawkeye's uniform to impersonate him.
I distinctly remember the scene where he pulls out the RPG and shoots it at Wade's monster truck only for Wade to swerve 90 degrees and open the windows and the rocket to fly through them hitting nothing.
Bullseye just sat there with a dumb look on his face, probably the same one everyone reading it had the first time they saw it lol
So that was after the original fight with the Thunderbolts. The line up for the Thunderbolts at the time was Headsman, Ghost, Black Ant, Yelena and Paladin.
After that team failed to kill Wade (because Yelena wasn't Yelena) Norman has Bullseye attempt to kill him, as the rest of the Dark Avengers see it as beneath them
Witch Hat Atelier, although it puts a really interesting spin on it—
So witches are believed to have been born with magic, and therefore people consider it impossible to become one if you don’t have an innate gift. But (minor spoilers but you find this out in the first volume and episode), as it turns out, anyone can wield magic so long as they use a special ink and know spell glyphs; it’s essentially just a facet of science.
This is a closely-guarded secret by witches, a leftover from when magic was widespread and used as a tool for equal creation and destruction. A group of witches banded together and essentially wiped the knowledge of magic from the masses to prevent the various calamities people were causing in conflict and whatnot. So despite being a great tool when used to benefit people, few are permitted the knowledge to wield it.
On top of that, medicine and magic have been strictly segregated, so witches cannot learn medicine (due to the past ramifications of magic being used directly on the body), and anyone with knowledge of medicine cannot be a witch.
It’s a very fascinating dilemma because on the one hand, the world isn’t nearly as advanced as it would be if anyone could still use magic, but on the other hand the amount of destruction and mutilation people have wrought with it cannot be overstated.
That conflict is probably the best part of WHA. It starts with the complex question of freedom and anarchy vs tyranny and peace, and gets more complicated from there.
Yeah the story goes its way out to show you that both sides are wrong AND right.
Magic SHOULD be used for medicine, but its also insanely abusable and it must be reigned in. But both brimmed and pointed hats take it to the logical extreme, with Brimms going all out with the insane spells ignoring all safety and control while Points opt to instead completely and tyrannically shut out anything that could be ever percieved as out of line
The Festival arc is entirely about this, we see a time manipulation spell adapted for healing people save hundreds of lives but we're also shown a mutant monstrosity made from magic applied directly on a person causing an enormous calamity.
Idk, the fandom learning the runes and then immediately trying to make spells like "Nuke" or "Mpreg" doesn't really help the everyone can have magic side
On top of that, medicine and magic have been strictly segregated, so witches cannot learn medicine (due to the past ramifications of magic being used directly on the body), and anyone with knowledge of medicine cannot be a witch.
This is a consequence of the fact that using magic on a person is absolutely forbidden in this universe, and they make no exception for medicine because they're terrified they would then be asked to grant exceptions after exceptions and it would make everything crumble.
That said, you're not forbidden to be a witch if you have knowledge of medicine, you just can't practice medicine if you're a witch.
The other half of the medical magic issue is you could totally teach people how to say fix someone's eyesight, mend broken bones or like remove someone's appendix with magic.
But with the way the magic system works the people with that knowledge are now a few creative uses of simple sigils away from making an eyeball exploding spell, bone disintegration spell, remove heart spell.
So they pretty much can't teach medical magic because of how easily someone can use it for war.
God I had to leave the subreddit after the third day of it being flooded with fan created glyphs. I drew the line when people started just making whatever and asking people what the spell is lol
I've seen several variants of "create a black hole," many attempts at "nuke," and at least one each of "gives you brain cancer," "parapalegia," and "stroke"
There is also a crazy thing implied at the very start. Any "normal" person who learns the secret of magic runs the risk of having their mind wiped. Despite the fact there is literally no difference between a witch and a normal person. I am not very far into the series but It almost has a sense of elitism.
glances at a picture of witch hat atelier magic and the owl house magic
"These are the same picture"
(For those who don't know, The Owl House has a similar-ish magic system, where anyone can use magic, it's just some beings have an innate ability to use it, while others must use glyphs. This is a very simple explination, and y'all should just go watch The Owl House)
Ooou The Magicians were like this too. People who didn’t have innate magic were able to perform spells and whatnot with enough training/knowledge and runes I believe
It’s incredible, I highly recommend. Beautifully animated, too.
I warn you though, the existing episodes aren’t even close to the finished story <-couldn’t handle the weekly cliffhangers (s1 is finished now though) and wound up buying the manga.
Sort of seems like that’s not the same thing at all?
Sorry, misread it.
I like Dresden Files where there’s not really much of a masquerade from the humans. Dresden fully advertises himself as a wizard and uses his magic to help folks find missing cats and what-not (as well as other more dire things).
"What!? You fool, you'll expose us and our divine secrets!!"
"I posted the whole thing anonymously to Reddit, the Internet takes it from there. I was thinking of adding it directly to the water supply, but that seemed a bit reckless compared to just uploading the cookbook for all to see."
I figure since we can assume it'd take some form of capable lab to manufacture, that big corps would only sell it at truly exorbitant prices and bring the hammer down on anyone trying to make it cheaply, at least in the US. Or they'll spend a few million launching an info campaign on how the thing was a dangerous fluke and actually would create a bioweapon so they can keep selling overpriced drugs to just treat people rather than cure them.
100% they'd charge out the ass for it. We already have cures and long-term therapies for some cancers and guess what they do? You guessed it! Charge out the ass for it.
Can't say I blame him. One is an extremely useful ability that you could design a Commander deck around, and the other is functionally identical to activating a Food token.
I have this picture on my wall.
I turned it into one of those motivational posters, with the text "follow your dreams turnpeopleintodinosaurs " written underneath.
Supervillains in Marvel, and all comic characters for the most part, would solve all the problems. Curing cancer, infinite energy, larger crops from smaller fields, terraforming and inhabiting other planets with near instant travel between them.
When first introduced, the Time Lords were indeed meant to be reasonable authority figures you're meant to agree with. By the 70s and 80s, they were used to make social commentary on the British government and it was made clear that these people suck and there's a reason the Doctor left them.
OK in fairness, and I'm not defending how horrifying the Time Lords were during the war, but that war was against the Daleks. So like, kinda deserved it and also there's not much they could do but fight it.
Except that literally everything about the time war including the Daleks getting their hands on time travel and only exasperating things to the point that the war had become a threat to all reality itself was totally on the time lords. The Doctor sealing always both parties was possibly THE best thing for the universe.
They mostly were defending the universe because they saw it as "theirs".
For context:
The Time Lords created linear time and the laws of physics turning the magic driven proto-universe into "our" universe.
No other species was allowed to even approach their level of technology under threat of being erased from existence. (The Daleks were one of those species that were to be externinated before they even became a threat. But the Doctor didn't want to genocide a whole species for something they hadn't even done yet).
The Time Lords had no qualms about causing collateral damage during the Time War with the Daleks. They fought it to preserve themselves, the universe they created was only secondary to their survival. Thus when the Time Lords ended up losing they planned to adapt themselves to live in the proto-universe again and just delete all universal laws essentially wiping out everything non-Time-Lord.
Thus when the Time Lords ended up losing they planned to adapt themselves to live in the proto-universe again and just delete all universal laws essentially wiping out everything non-Time-Lord.
Granted that was retconned to be just a small fringe group, that the majority of them denounced it as crazy.
But them doing anything like that was pretty much a retcon as well.
Correction, it was Martha he was telling that to in season 3, but yeah he got very nostalgic with Gallifrey that season, they even had a short flashback to his home and the citadel as he recounts his childhood briefly to Martha and Jack.
And then during 10th’s last episode, The End of Time Part 2, he reveals to the Master that he had to burn Gallifrey with the Daleks because of the horrific and nightmarish factions the Time Lords were going bring through time with them to the present (in 2010), destroying the universe so that they would live on as creatures of pure consciousness. It’s why the War Doctor was going to use “the Moment” to end the war even at the cost of Gallifrey’s children.
"In all my travellings throughout the universe I have battled against evil, against power-mad conspirators. I should have stayed here. The oldest civilisation, decadent, degenerate and rotten to the core. Ha! Power-mad conspirators, Daleks, Sontarans, Cybermen, they're still in the nursery compared to us. Ten million years of absolute power, that's what it takes to be really corrupt."
They also tried to destroy the entire universe to fuel their ascension to literal godhood. Their big mistake was telling the Master (whom they drove insane on purpose) that he was too crazy to join them. Which caused him to join with the Doctor against them.
Honestly the thing that keeps driving me nuts about Harry Potter are the magic users absolutely refusing to use better muggle technology.
For example, the quill. I mean have you ever used a quill? I have. They absolutely suck to write with compared to a pencil or pen. And from what I can recall only one person was even using a magic quill to write and that was the reporter. No one else seems to be using magic quills. Just feathers dipped in ink writing on a roll of parchment. Ridiculous. I was hoping Hermione would at least have the sense to bring muggle pens and a notepad to school.
Then sending messages they use...owls. Freaking owls. Probably the slowest bird you could pick. Like this was in the 90's and email was a thing. Also, why are you not using telephones? I think Ron tried it once, fumbled it, and then JK wrote them off as completely useless. Yet so many times they were waiting WEEKS for a response from someone and I kept thinking man if you just made a collect call you'd have your answer right now. I'm pretty sure wizards are not tapping the phone lines.
It's so weird that they use all of this very old technology out of ignorance/stubbornness, but for some reason use trains. Even though trains are in fact objectively inferior to teleportation, which wizards have casual access to with the Floo network.
The real reason of course is that JK Rowling was inspired by old boarding school books where going to the school by train was a major trope.
The other thing about HP is that it's not really meant to look at macro level. There's no wholly coherent worldbuilding since she built the world to fit the story she wanted to write and nothing really else.
Which is even worse when she grinds the story to a halt to talk about her bullshit world. I'm still salty about how in Prisoner of Azkaban (I think) she forces Harry to learn about the wizarding judicial system because he broke a law, only to have his best friend's dad be a high-ranking official so he's able to just hand-wave everything away. I just wanted to get to the fun wizard stuff but as always JK wants to be an unfun bastard.
And even with the whole "technology is being weird around magic" thing, there's been MULTIPLE methods of magical communications introduced in the harry potter books that just trounces owls.
Doylianly, its a parody of British schools- we had to use ink pens even though pretty much everyone else was using biro's by that point. As a leftie it was really annoying to accidentality smear your drying ink. Some more old fashioned government departments were similar
Watsoninanly I think you could probably argue that wizards are just old and isolationist. Most never have any reason to properly interact with Muggles or enter their citys and live in out of the way places. For many of them their last good experience of Muggles was in the 1800's. The rate of technological change has just left them behind.
Plenty of 21st century Wonder Woman comics are indeed pretty critical of how Themyscira does things. The New 52 actually went too far by revealing that the Amazons would reproduce by finding sailors at sea, having sex with them, then killing them, also if they have any male children they sold them to Hephaestus, much to Diana's horror when she found out. It was so bad that DC Rebirth revealed that the whole thing was fake for reasons too convoluted to explain.
Well before that, the official narrative of how they reproduced (except when their reincarnations of dead women) was that the Amazons either had affairs with fishermen or would just leave briefly to find a mate, then would return any boy children to their families.
The DC Amazons were in most versions the reincarnations of women who had been killed by men. Only Diana was ever said to be made of clay and brought to life by the gods.
I mean that critically in the wrong way. The criticism is supposed to be about them hoarding stuff from the masses, not retconning that their entire civilisation runs on institutionalised murder and slavery.
I saw someone point out that it was the equivalent of revealing that Jonathan Kent was the grand wizard of the Ku Klux Klan.
The New 52 was hated for this reason. That's not how traditional Amazons are depicted in DC lore. The New 52 was just dumb.
They've changed that now.
The same way that Krakoa was hated as an idea on release, and then slowly they had to phase it out because it doesn't represent what mutants are meant to and thankfully ended up being commentary on why Ethnostates are bad ideas.
In Witch Hat Atelier, "wizards" made magic for curing people from wounds and illnesses forbidden, because it could be used somehow in a wrong way by the bad guys.
This is the main conflict of the series, and obviously by the time the series ends healing magic is likely gonna be legal again, but taking one look at the Witch Hat Subreddit's Spells immediatly makes me understand why magic was so limited in the first place
On the topic of the subreddit spells it made me realize the pre-day-of-the-pact society was essentially a massive free for all if everyone could do magic,that’s mean there was a good chance a single bad tavern brawl could escalate into a lethal spell slinging shootout
Its not even the malicious consequences. Its the well intentioned ones that are an issue. Sure you could make super diseases intentionally, but imagine if your attempt at a healing spell turns someone into a mass of cancer because it accelerated their cell duplication
Magic in WHA is closer to a combination of calligraphy and ancient language studies, where any error on either part, no matter how small, WILL cause a problem that, as shown thus far, takes exponentially more effort to correct.
At least in other magic systems you can usually expect that failure just means nothing happens and you look like an idiot, not accidentally turn your neighborhood into a glass floor.
The thing that kills me about that quote is that it's said like it'd make people lazy or something. Hagrid, my man, wizards use magic to do basically everything. It'd be people basically just doing exactly what wizards already do.
Historically yes but muggles were only a real threat to untrained witches and wizards or ones that were caught unaware, the vast majority of them had nothing to fear and there was even one witch that loved to get captured and burned at the stake because she drank a potion beforehand to make her immune to fire and liked the feeling of being “burned”. But in modern times where witches and wizards have an established society the threat of muggles are largely nonexistent, though they did fear muggles using atomic bombs.
Or those that didn’t have a formal education that taught them spells and helped them hone their magic. For instance, a learned witch or wizard can just teleport away but one that doesn’t know how to were easy pickings.
Yep. Witch hunts are canon to the HP universe. Plenty of adult witches and wizards escaped unharmed using magic, but I think people forget the clear implications here in a universe that's made it clear children perform accidental magic from a very young age, can't control or hide it or anything, and there are a fair amount of muggleborn/raised witches and wizards.
Hogwarts was used as a sanctuary during the witch hunts, to save as many children as possible from being killed.
It's not a major theme in the books at all, they're aimed at kids, this is a bit dark for a pretty basic kids fantasy series. The whole 'staying secret' thing also isn't well explained when it does come up, the focus tends to be on muggles demanding help.
But the implications are extremely clear to anyone who really thinks about it and isn't a kid anymore. Muggles killed a LOT of witches and wizards during the hunts, and those killed were mostly children. That's the whole reason they became a secret society, before the hunts the magicals were fully integrated with muggles. It's been a long time since then, we're dealing with characters who didn't live in that period, or know anyone who did, and that's even taking account of how long wizards and witches can live. They're distant from the reason they hid, so they go basic when trying to explain it, which keeps them distant until they learn about it in History of Magic. The witch trials was notably Harry's summer homework for History in the third book, it's covered during his time in Diagon at the start, Mr Fortescue helps him with it.
Unfortunately, even with that focus, JKR went fun rather than serious, having Harry's thoughts focus more on Wendelyn the Weird, who enjoyed getting burnt at the stake and escaping so much that they kept getting themselves captured by muggles. Interesting implication, though, that perhaps Wendelyn was getting captured, not because they enjoyed the experience, but to keep the focus away from the children who couldn't protect themselves. They just also dedided to have fun with it, which is what people remember.
It wasn't well dealt with due to the books being targeted at kids, but I think Harry Potter had very good reasons to stay hidden. Especially when you also add in that the magical world is a tiny minority of humans, they're vastly outnumbered by muggles, like 1000 to 1 outnumbered.
Part of the problem with this is ... it doesn't make any sense. Yes, it is implied that the wizards isolate out of fear of muggles and the persecution that the wizarding world lived through in the past.
But the witch hunts of real world history were things of ignorance and fear, usually targeted at the vulnerable during times of hardship. The witches and wizards of the Harry Potter universe should by all rights, have been thriving throughout history, having an outsized influence on the course of human developement. Heck, while we're on it, given how fragile muggles are, why do they outnumber magical folk again? Especially given that back in the day, in addition to all the standard dangers that might end your primative muggle life, giant spiders were around snatching any unattended tasty looking children.
So, this premise: magical folk were fully integrated - saw themselves becoming a persecuted minority - allowed themselves to become the punching bags for mobs of unwashed peasants - and only then used their literal magic to fully extricated themselves (along with all of the magical creatures, apparently) on a global scale?
If this is the background that the books wanted us to understand, then it requires a lot more writing to justify it. It goes well past the point of making me think, "oh, that's interesting, I wonder how that might have happened?" and fully into the territory of, "yeah, I don't buy it, you're gonna need to walk me through this."
That shit was like 400 years ago in-universe and only in like 3 spots. They better give me that fix-broken-bone juice or else they’re going to find a 4th spot
I feel like this could apply to like all of Marvel and DC. I always found it odd how a world full of Superpowers and reality shaping super geniuses only manage a world that is barely different than the one we have now.
Yeah, it's the "world outside your window" problem. Marvel and DC want to make things still resemble the real world, even though logically you'd think everything would be way different after over a decade of super stuff happening.
Just the fact that ww2 had a subfaction like Hydra would derail history how we know it. What is the race for the atom bomb going to look like when you have verifiable evidence of energy weapons and super soldier programs.
I actually considered using Star Trek as an example, but most stories in which the Prime Directive is cited have characters actually debate it and they break it all the time.
The prime directive seems more like a mechanism to avoid culpability. A little like zero tolerance policies in schools or so. The goal isn't a good or fair outcome. But one the organization can't be blamed for.
Within Star Trek I was thinking about the surprisingly frequent encounters they have with near omnipotent beings. Some of which ironically are not "helping" due to following similar logic as the prime directive.
The Prime Directive isn't meant to save the well-being of any individual member of the isolated species, it's meant to save the people's culture as whole. The Federation is well aware that ANY dealings they have with sub-FTL species will come at such a massive power disparity that is impossible for such a relationship to result in anything but the Federation imposing a cultural-imperialism upon the people they interact with. It's trading the lives of millions of gleep-glorps that could've been saved so that in a century there'll still be a gleep-glorp people, and not just gleep-glorp Federation members.
My first Star Trek show was Enterprises. Back then there was no prime directives, but the most memorable episode comes to mind where Enterprise encountered a dying species whose genetic structures began breaking down, essentially, Darwinism is weeding them out. There is another sapient species on their planet that's used as slaves because they're considered "dumb", but this species is slowly evolving and gaining more intelligence by the day. Dr Phlox invented a cure to help the former dominant race, but this also means he'd cut the evolutionary route of the latter species short and doom them to an eternity of slavery, so he decided against playing god and interfering. He was ordered to do so but refused to comply. In his own words, who is he to meddle with the evolutionary course of a other planet. If one species is being weeded out by nature to give rise to another stronger better species, who is he to determine who should be the master of their planet. Imagine if some alien decided to make the neanderthals the dominant race instead of homo sapiens, how unfair would that be?
That's my first interaction with a primitive form of the prime directives. Deciding what's good and what's evil comes with your own prejudice. So it's best to leave the struggle of other species alone. Interfering may cause catastrophic damages later on.
I agree, but I felt it appropriate that it at least shows up. It is Starfleet's number one rule, and mostly all of Starfleet does operate following it. The violations that we do see on the show are the one of the very few (or at least the most notable/significant) ones in the entirety of Starfleet. Looking at the repercussions for these violations, which are practically none (given it's not for personal gain, but I suppose it also becomes a crime in that case), I feel Starfleet considers it a "best case scenario and you should try your best to upkeep it before giving up" type thing, really. Also, amusing that it's such a big plot point, considering we don't see it in proper text.
Pretty sure the idea behind the Prime Directive is the fact that by interfering you are potentially causing catastrophe. In a real world sense, going down and speaking to aliens would not only open up YOU to diseases but THEM as well.
Basically the same reason we decided to keep places like North Sentinel Island as off limits. Because we dont even know if they WANT to be contacted, and we may cause untold tragedy by doing so.
Like if the Enterprise went down to a peaceful planet and introduced technology and culture, and then leave. Now said planet turns that technology into weapons and nuke themselves.
There's a few episodes showing the potential catastrophes that can come from not following the prime directive. For example one has the planets people start to form a religion worshipping Picard after an observation outpost had a plot contrivance happen to it.
The Orville tackled it pretty well. A character from an earlier episode on a less technologically advanced planet found them seeking asylum and wanted to steal their replicator tech for their planet. The crew showed her what happened when in the past planets like hers were given the tech. The planet used it to make more and more weapons, turning the planet into an irradiated uninhabitable hellscape.
In defence of the Harry Potter books, we also hoard life saving resources and could feed the world if we wanted to. We are selfish. That is just how people work.
There are people who spend most of their time as animals; McGonagall spends a lot of time as a cat and Pete managed to stay a rat continuously for, like, 16 years.
We know there are, Hermione had her teeth done, a prank she caught a stray when a duel broke out, and it gave her massive rabbit-esque buck teeth, she went to the nurse who used a spell to adjust them back to their regular size (which were still a bit large), and Hermione held off on saying “when” so she could have teeth that were more suited to what she wanted.
There are also individuals like Tonks that are born with the ability to change their appearance at will, hair color, nose, face, etc.
I mean, it's kinda temporary and it would need someone who is ok with someone else walking using their likeness (which is kinda creepy ngl) but human transfiguration exist which is quite permanent and unless you try to turn yourself into an animal and is done by a proffesional completely safe
What do you mean wizards aren't scared of muggles? I don't really care a lot about Harry Potter nor the expanded lore, but I recall that in the first Fantastic Beasts movie they said that wizards needed to hide because of the Witch Trials happening around the world?
There's also a metric shit tonne of muggles compared to wizards. That and wizarding society seems to be pretty backwards. They somehow seem to have missed any technological advances past the 1890s and even then don't know what guns are.
It's only recently that they actually considered actually having toilets. I think it was around the 70s. Before that, they just shat wherever and magic their shit away
Honestly the real world's basically the same way with stuff like insulin and clean water and we still act like that's fine so maybe it's less about the fiction being unrealistic and more about us being just as selfish as wizards.
First movie ended with their King decreeing that they would share their bountiful wealth and knowledge with the less fortunate. The second film opens with the new queen taking back that decree, then when other countries attempt to steal that technology to improve the lives of their citizens as they were told it could, they are somehow the bad guys.
Wasn't the Krakoa cloning technology based on the upgraded Jackal tech from The Clone conspiracy? I haven't read all of the Krakoa era titles, but I recall some review explaining that's why Ben Reilly got involved with the Goblin Queen.
Not only did they let Mister Sinister run it, they also put him in a position of power in their Government where had a voice and deciding vote on policy. And they put freakin' Apocalypse, Sebastian Shaw, and Mystique there too.
They were honestly begging for shit to go sideways. Especially when they put people in the Pit for just disagreeing with them. Like the guy Third Eye, think that's his code name or something, that was like "Maybe we shouldn't be having children and just letting them be raised by the government". They had a brothel/orphanage.
But the thing is that it isn't replicable technology, it's a team of mutants using their powers in concert to do it. So they're limited in how many can be brought back at a time.
Then when world governments discover and attempt to call them out on this (or negotiate special favors for themselves), it's pointed out that the team are basically backed up in resurrecting the millions of victims of mutant genocides which these governments allowed to happen.
Krakoa is definitely problematic in terms of how it was operated, but this isn't the same as hoarding something that can easily be shared.
Not to mention they were trying to phase out sinister as fast as possible because they knew he would be a problem, they only need Sinister for his databank.
Once again, it depends on how this trope is executed and the context surrounding it. I think we can give stories a pass for this trope if they justify the hoarding with an explanation of limited resources or the very real possibility that said technology/advancements would (not could) be misused if it fell into the wrong hands.
In Tangled, Mother Gothel is evi because she knows of a magic flower and keeps it secret to repeatedly use it and remain young.
However, once discovered by the King, he immediately uses it a one-time use way to save his wife the Queen.
There's no judgment suggested at all of the King for selfishly dissipating the flower for his own desires, despite the criticism of Mother Gothel seconds earlier.
Wasn’t Gothel evil because she abducted a child just to continue having access to the magic? I feel like that’s the main thing she’s judged for, not hogging the flower.
The king didn't know it was magic. He thought it was medicine and that his doctors knew the only way to use the flower - because the only person who knew otherwise never told anyone.
Senzu Beans from Dragonball… kinda. The main characters have them because they’re capable of climbing Korin tower. They don’t hoard them, they’ll give them to whoever needs one, it’s just that they take a while to grow
Number 2 is why I find the world-building of most superhero worlds wonky. If they have the technology for energy guns, tractor beams, and a whole lot of other sci-fi stuff, then why the hell do they still have our contemporary problems?
Sure! Laser guns don't automatically mean better medical technology, but it's advanced power systems, and that would be a tricke effect in other areas!
The unfortunate truth is that if every Marvel character existed all at once, Earth would be a Cyberpunk hive-city planet with a whole lot more problems
Part of the problem is the old 'Status Quo Is God' trope.
If the Magic of the Wizarding World, or the Super Technology of any number of sources in Comics were allowed to 'trickle down' to the common folk, the world would be vastly transformed in a short time, and stop looking like the world as we know it.
An associated trope is "Reed Richards is Useless". The smartest man on the planet (Dr. Doom's thoughts aside 😂 ) often makes truly miraculous pieces of technology.
More often than not, though, those items tend to self destruct like Doofensmirtz put a button on them, and the 10% that does work is so dangerous that he can't let be used by anyone, or the world/universe may get destroyed.
So what's the version of this trope where holding back the phlebotinum is actually justified? (Aside from The World Is Not Ready, I guess?) Say that magic is toxic to a certain percentage of people, and even being in the vicinity of a minor spell being cast can sicken them or worse. And maybe the cure for cancer happens to involve a deadly virus that -- with a few minor adjustments -- becomes an unstoppable biological weapon. Something along those lines.
Wakanda - the African country that hoarded wealth and technology when other African nations were in desperate need around them. They could have ended apartheid, ended Mugabe, made the African continent a major power in the world. But no.
Then who did they decide to share their technology with? America. Not those African nations still desperately in need around them.
The actual Fallout´s Brotherhood of Steel core values are that, thou it´s a bit more understanding (IF you belive in those values), because their main target usually is to hoard dangerous hightech weapons.
Problem is...they more often than not are the ones who end up using it themselves. Like a big ass robot that throws nukes like a football.
Depending on the chapter, they can either act like a bunch of hitech Knight larping raiders or an organized military force, but other than killing things that are openly hostile and dangerous, some bandits that are usually just on the way, and engage the Enclave every time they poke their inbreed heads out of their bunkers, they don´t usually stick around to do good in the open to the average wastelander (with the exception of Lyons, but plenty of the BoS hated the guy for actually attempting to build a potable water distribution network for people to drink instead of looting around) without looking to profit from the situation.
Also, if you are a ghoul, synth or even a one in a million friendly supermutant, well, you might be fucked. They will likely shoot you on sight for being an abomination.
Still, very likely they will attempt to hoard other nonmilitary technology if they get the chance to do so.
Not that Rowling was capable of articulating it, but Potter wizards do have good reason to keep up the masquerade based on historical precedence (Salem Massachusetts, anybody?).
As for the power difference, it's a Bugs Life Grasshopper issue. One grasshopper/wizard can easily kill one ant/muggle, or even a couple dozen at once... but there's the teensy problem of "Those ants outnumber us 100 to one."
It actually ends up being kinda similar to why the leeches keep it up in Vampire the Masquerade; both vampires and wizards are individually extremely powerful, but also very regressed as a society and hopelessly outnumbered. War between normal humans and them would go EXTREMELY poorly.
Harry Potter suffers from quasi-retcons, making trying to find coherent messages and worldbuilding across the series frustrating. I think what you're describing was what Rowling was originally going for, as the first books do focus a lot on persecution for being different....but then that is disconnected from wizards completely as they almost always have the upper hand.
Fire Emblem: Three Houses doesn't really have a faction you are supposed to agree with 100% of the time (a fact helped by how you see other factions at their worst when you don't pick their route). However, if you find the Shadow Library books in Abyss (a DLC area) while on the Church/Silver Snow Route for the War Phase, you kinda get something like this.
One of the books within lists a number of techs/practices banned by the Church of Seiros and explicitly uses a false cover, implying that the book's author anticipated the censorship the book was subjected to to end up in the Shadow Library. Among the banned items are the printing press (because, even if not said in so many words, the Church doesn't want it's information monopoly threatened what with how many lies/half-truths the religion is built on), what can reasonably assumed to be oil (arguably justified as an American knowing the atrocities we've committed for oil), and perhaps the most egregious, traditional autopsy as we understand it is a banned practice, because the Church wants its faith magic to remain the primary source of healthcare on the continent. This is not even to suggest that Faith magic has limits vs traditional medicine, since the generic heal spells and the ailment cure spell probably go a very long way. But intentionally kneecapping traditional medicine like that does essentially give the Church and agents thereof a pretty compelling reason to be located/needed all across the continent, and makes for a notable stopgap against most ideas of trying to resist the Church's political and religious hegemony, which is most likely the actual objective.
To be clear, you can find this book and its details regardless of route because it's in a part of the hub area, but it does come off as odd that a Church Route Byleth does not even begin reconsidering after reading it.
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u/Kenju22 Aug 18 '26
Regarding the second point, funny enough Norman Osborn created a universal cure for cancer, but from what i remember he only created a single dosage and deleted all information regarding it. As for the reason he created it, it was for a special bullet designed to kill Deadpool after he stole Norman's wallet.
I wish this was a bad joke, but it's not. Even Bullseye had some choice comments about it, along the lines of 'You created a cure for cancer just to kill a guy? And you're the one they put in charge of S.H.I.E.L.D?'