dumbledorably:

dumbledorably:

as long as my list of favorite literary devices is getting notes, i want to talk about that other thing i like, which seems to annoy quite a lot of people nowadays: heroes with no-kill rules!

i love this kind of character! i don’t care if their morality seems naive or self-righteous! honestly deciding not to take lives while you dedicate your time to saving them seems intuitive to me, anyway. and for a character it can come from so many different places

like you’ve got characters who clearly have the power to kill but choose not to, because they find goodness in humanity — because they’re courageous and refuse to take the easy way of defeating their enemies — because they’re deliberately choosing not to set themselves above the rest of the world by playing executioner (like superman, like the justice league’s policy as a whole)

and you’ve got heroes who refuse to kill for the sake of their own mental health, as they deal with their own trauma re: killing, and who strive to be a symbol of hope despite their dark circumstances (like batman)

there are heroes who don’t kill because of faith, which isn’t always in the ~goodness of humanity, but in the possibility of redemption; a faith that says human life should be sacred and murder is wrong for that reason (like daredevil or the doctor, selectively speaking — i think at their best that’s what these characters want to be)

the reason that seems to garner the most ridicule is when a hero poses the question “does killing x make me as bad as x?” fandom tends to respond with a resounding ‘no’ and get bored of it quickly, and i don’t think it’s a horse that needs to get beaten in the ground. but i think it’s perfectly legitimate for a hero to struggle with all that, especially when trauma is involved, and it can create really interesting conflicts when it’s done well (like batman’s ideology versus jason todd’s)

i believe the human conscience is precious. i believe that characters who have no-kill mandates don’t deserve to be pushed out of that or mocked — and i refuse to believe that when someone decides life is the one thing they should never take into their own hands, except to save it, they should eventually deny it and find murder the necessary or better option. by all means complicate their morality, let them struggle with the opposite point of view, show them being holier-than-thou and then show how they’re fallible, but, please — don’t cheer someone on toward losing the part of them that doesn’t want to kill.

also if the hero is an actual child they always 100% get free access to this trope