But if something is true, why not just go find proof that it's true? And if you can't find that proof, then why not just acknowledge you're merely assuming the thing is true for the sake of getting things done?
It's the idea of knowing for sure without proof that doesn't compute for me. I have to know something is true because it actually is true. Nor do I feel whatever sensations you're supposed to feel any time I try praying or the like; I just feel like I'm, you know, sitting there talking to nothing.
I don't really understand a number of related concepts, either. One big one is how most people can deal with cognitive dissonance by smoothing over in their minds the areas where various ideas and experiences contradict each other or otherwise don't quite properly match up. While I mostly walk around going "but this doesn't make any sense!" in miserable annoyance to just about everything, since it feels like the more I know and learn the more none of it fits together (especially where people are involved).
I actually have no problems with the source of Fanatic's power; it's the framing around that power that I find disappointing. Usually when I listen to the character stuff on the podcast it's with a "wow I could never come up with something that cool myself" reaction, but this time around I feel like "there's more interesting ways this could have been done".
I wonder how much the label of "Angel" and "God" interfere with this discussion and with Fanatic's views. Let me see if I can explain what I mean.
Fanatic believes she is an Angel of God sent to the world to pass judgement on it, and cleanse it from evil.
What she actually is is a Spirit of Judgement whose job is to pass judgement on the world and (assuming that Judgement and Justice are naturally in sync and devoted to the betterment of the world) cleanse from evil. This spirit ended up in a mortal body on Earth.
Frankly. the difference is pretty minor. What is an Angel of the Lord, in the vein that Fanatic believes herself to be, if not a Spirit of Judgement? She is on the planet Earth, though whether she was sent by some even greater being or if was an accident is impossible to know. And even if it was an "Accident" if Fate and Destiny can be things which occur, then is an accident not still the work of "God"?
If you throw aside all the trappings, The Bible, the Church, the symbology... is Fanatic really wrong in how she views herself? Yes, her "natural" environment and previous state of existence did not include Catholocism or Christianity, but that does not mean that using that lens to describe herself invalidates her Truth?
I don't think it does. I may quibble over her use of terms, insist that defining spirits by the church teachings is innacurate or insufficient, but I can't really tell her she is completely wrong, she's just using a different framework to describe essentially the same thing. And that makes her story closer to that "How do I fit what I beleive and what I experience with the world and use it to protect people and make the world a better place"
If we go with the concept of Fanatic being a being of judgement, I'd rather an exploration where she openly embraces that and considers herself how mortal ideas like mercy and proportionality and rehabilitation might factor in rather than the "I'm on a mission from God so my decisions are always right" sort of attitude she tends to exhibit even after her Redeemer version. Take it from a religious-based thing to more of an exploration of ethics in general.
If we go with the concept of Fanatic being a Catholic character, I'd rather something a little bit closer to a D&D paladin that's actually being played properly, where her powers revolve more around how well she embodies being a Catholic including the ideas of protecting people and charity and affirming life. Essentially take a cue from Haka and show how a given cultural identity would shape a hero and how they go about heroing.
I would like to add that she doesn't know that she is a Host. Nobody does (except Apostate who is a liar). In fact, few know what the host is. The Idolator is using one, but to him it is dark magic that bound the spirit. The Seeker Soul his soul to the Devil(Domination) which is unclear if he knows about the host or Domination was just a powerful force.
Fanatic also changes so she does listen to other. May not process it in a healthy way but she listens. The beauty of this is that Spirit believes itself to be a human with the power form god. The spirit is trying to be human and learning that things do not work that way.
It sounds like, in the RPG timeline, she's more openly accepting the whole "being a spirit of the Host" thing? Or at least, on the path toward doing so.
Honestly associating religion with zealous judgment and the idea of having faith in lies over the truth is kinda problematic since those are two issues currently being struggled with in the real world to the detriment of a lot of people. Hence my suggestion that we either give a more secular angle to the judgment matter or we focus instead on the beneficial and heroic aspects of Christianity. Either one would help ameliorate the problematic areas.
Well, for me, it's because the way she's handled means she both embodies the negative aspects of religion as a heroic character and without the narrative doing much to address it as of yet, which isn't true of any other Sentinels hero I can think of. You generally either get heroes like Legacy who embody just the heroic aspects of a heritage that has mixed aspects, or you get characters like Expat where they have an arc of expressly addressing their anti-heroic aspects and getting past them.
The fact that they even have a parallel storyline in the Celestial Tribunal where unthinking judgment is explicitly set up as antagonistic/villainous just makes the handling of Fanatic feel even more out of place.
See, I don't think she is supposed to have or even represent "unthinking judgement"
The one and only time we see her or hear about her denying the truth (sort of) is in the context of denying the truth about herself (Sort of) which was being presented by Apostate, the literal incarnation of Deception. In fact, because we know Apostate is Deception I can guarentee he lied about some of what he was telling Fanatic, the only reason he includes any Truth at all is because it is a more effective lie if some of it is true. That way she has to question how much of what he said is true.
And, let's dig into the situation a bit. We've got an entity of lies, summoning demons and causing havoc. He's told her enough truth to make it possible that everything he is saying is truth. And so, she is left with three potential options. Deny that he is telling the truth, believe everything he says, or try and seperate truth from lie.
The third one sounds like the best, but who would she turn to to help figure out what is true and what is not. We can say the Host, but it isn't like Apostate is going to tell her how to contact them, and he might not have even explained what the Host truly is. We know he would not have told her she is a spirit of Judgement, because he wants her working for him to take over the world. It doesn't help that cause to admit they are opposed when he wants her to believe they are allies. Also, doubt cripples her powers, so even if she wanted to figure something out she is too weak, and finally, Apostate doesn't just let her run away and he stands there waiting for her, he's busy wrecking the world, which means she can't really go on a long quest for the Truth, there won't be a world or a people left to protect if she does.
So, she has to decide, on her own, is Apostate truly her ally and creator, or is he a liar and her enemy. Has he told her the complete truth or has he only told her enough of the truth to confound her.
She spends three days struggling with this. Three days of meditation and prayer and trying to figure out the best path, while Apostate sets about harming innocents and trying to destroy the world.
Her eventual decision isn't a perfect answer, nor do I think is it supposed to be. It's supposed to be a little desperate, she takes a leap of faith. She resolves to trust that she is a force for good in the world and that Apostate is a force for evil, and that he did not create her and that instead it is her duty to defeat him. She recognizes that this is "Blind Faith" but for her, there aren't many other options. She has to stop him before more lives are lost.
And, I'm sure that this question of her origins doesn't end their. Prime Wardens Fanatic's bio mentions she is looking to understand her place in the world. She hasn't forgotten or ignored everything he said. She may be seeking answers up until Oblivaeon or beyond, but she does not have the luxury of doubting that her mission is a just one, or that her purpose is to protect the innocent from evil. She is blind in that respect, because not believing in that core means that she must assume those she saved were instead meant to die, that instead of doing good and spreading light she is instead allowing or even empowering evil in the world.
I know this isn't everyone's headspace, that perhaps her actions still seem too extreme or not thought out enough, but I can see this being the way she approaches everything.
And, think about how her fighting style fits with all this. She is reckless only in terms of her own health and safety. She will bring herself to the brink of death to protect civilians from threats, and generally the threats she fights are evili wizards, spirits, undead, demons, alien monsters. The moral questions she gets faced with in those sorts of fights are not the type of "what is the place of faith in a modern society" but more the "are you any less of a monster than I am?" type of questions. And that is a struggle for Fanatic because she knows she is not human. I'll bet, mostly because of Idolater, that another big question for her is "do I expose this evil and disrupt the community or do I allow this evil to continue and the community to continue in this relatively positive manner". These kinds of decisions are difficult and important, and I feel like she gets into a lot of stuff.
TL;DR She does question, it is just a matter of what answers she comes up with for those questions.
Only because the heroes take steps to keep her deliberately aimed at those types of threats, not because she's learned how to moderate herself when dealing with lesser evils.
I feel like Jean-Marc's question and Christopher's answer was aimed primarily at her status as a religious character, when I have no particular problems with a heavily religious character per se; I just dislike that Fanatic is a negative example of religion of the sort that causes real harm in real life when people behave that way, and only escapes being that bad in Sentinels because everyone aims her at "acceptable targets" and not because her flaws are ever really addressed by the narrative.
And even that might not be so remarkable if Sentinels didn't have an express pattern of making sure its heroes are genuinely heroic via addressing their anti-heroic traits at one point or another.
I mean, I think you're not correct that her goal is to save the innnocent from evil; her goal is to judge and smite what she sees as evil, with her secondary goal being merely to avoid causing collateral damage to innocent people rather than specifically saving innocent people.
And it's not as if there's any particular shortage of heroes in the Sentinelsverse who are versed in magic or mentoring.
Hence why I made the two suggestions I would have rather seen: Either go with the idea of being a "spirit of judgment" just divorced from the problematic religious connotations, or go with the idea of being a religious character who plays up the more heroic and benign aspects of religion (especially since ironically that's not very hard to pull off with a Catholic character specifically).
I associate her with Crusaders rather than any modern Christians epesically since her equipment was created from Templar gear who were crusaders. I also find it unlikely outside of seeing an Angelic figure that most of those in universe knew much or cared about her religion.
I wonder if she willed that armour and sword into being in the first place, made it unconsciously too big for her when she found it. That would explain why the cross is too big and why there was Templar armour in Peru in the first place ( A country that to my knowledge had no contact with Europeans until 200 yrs after the Templars were disbanded) Fanatic probably wanted to find armour so she did.
A being with that kind of power is going to be extremely hard to convince that she is wrong,. Considering herself an angel, she probably thinks she's above reproach in everything she does and she cannot make a mistake. If you think about it ,we're lucky Fanatic thinks she's an angel, how much more powerful would she be if she thought she was the avatar of the Incan god of justice/judgement ?
I think it is less that the other heroes "aim" her at more appropriate targets and more that she seeks (and because the writers want her to she finds) greater evils to fight.
Fanatic's stated goal is to protect humanity, that holds true for her no matter what else we may say. And so, she looks for threats that are big. She doesn't bother looking for bank robbers, sure she'll get involved if she sees one (and then is promptly stymied by the other heroes when her reaction is more extreme than they find acceptable) but she's in town looking for the source of the demons popping up and causing havoc, so she'll let the lesser evil continue and focus on the threat to the entire city.
And yeah, the writers tended to not have her address this tendency of hers to pass harsh judgement for more minor offenses, but that puts her squarley in anti-hero zones which isn't a bad thing. Especially since she isn't built for dealing with the kind of minor threats that require a lighter hand or turning people into the police. She can wreck landscapes having her deal with the mob is kind of a waste.
And, I don;t think she feels she is above reproach or unable to make a mistake. If that were true Apostate couldn't instill her with doubt and make her insecure about her place in the world.
She's made mistakes, she knows she has, and people have suffered because of it or the fight has gotten worse because of it. She isn't a character who never questions her place in the world, but she is a character who changes slowly. She's questioned herself and her mission a few times we know of and probably more that we don't know of, but in the end she chose her faith and her role as a guardian of humanity against the forces of darkness every time.
What I meant by my distinction between "protecting humanity" and "just making sure she doesn't do collateral damage" was, to give an example: If it was a choice between staying behind to protect people from some threat not caused by the heroes or evildoers and pursuing after an evildoer, what would the hero choose?
Someone like Legacy would stay to protect the people no question. Haka would likely be initially tempted to chase after but then stay. But I think Fanatic would simply take off after the evildoer without hesitation.
Which is my point, really. She never really learns to moderate herself, just to go after threats where she wouldn't need to moderate.
It is an unusual thing for Sentinels, though. Sentinels tends more towards a White and Grey Morality sort of setting to borrow TV Tropes terms, where the heroes are definitely heroic and the grey comes instead from the villains sometimes having redeeming qualities. Fanatic being an anti-hero in a way that's never really addressed sticks out like a sore thumb as a result.
Plus sticking a very Protestant-like emphasis on faith in a Catholic character when Catholicism has more of an emphasis on "good is what you do, not what you are", still feels weird to me.
(I'm now reminded of Avacyn from Magic: the Gathering, who has a way way way darker version of some of Fanatic's arc. "An angel is made of goodness… but is goodness made of an angel's acts?")
From the base set I’d say Absolute Zero, Ra, and Visionary all have portions where they are an anti hero. Based on the backstory for Ra it was definitely ambiguous at the start whether he was a hero or villain really. Absolute Zero especially early on seems quite ruthless as he doesn’t want to be there and most of his arc deals with him accepting a mantle of being a hero. Visionary could have been a villain during her Dark Visionary time and some her actions even before that are a bit sketchy like lobotomizing Citizen Dawn. Writhe has some creepy qualities that make his methods questionable and in Tactics turns into a villain. Parse outright kills a villlain because she knows Wraith wouldn’t and it makes me wonder other decisions she may have made because she thought it was a bigger risk for them to remain. It’s a bit ambiguous about what lengths the Naturalist might go to stop pollution from his company and others. KNYFE is willing to kill and is rather zealous in hunting down the head of Progeny to almost the exclusion of anything else.
So while heroes are mostly Heroic their are ones besides Fanatic who make questionable choices in my mind that aren’t really addressed because it was for the greater good.
Indeed there are anti-heroic characters, but their anti-heroism is always actually addressed over the course of the narratives to make them more strictly heroic (even KNYFE does, since her questioning the morality of killing an alien who's clearly both sapient and not evil is what makes her go rogue agent in the first place), and Christopher often stops to emphasize in their podcast how in Sentinels their heroes are really heroes. Also Visionary and Writhe were called out as being actively possessed somehow when they started being evil. The Crimson Conductor is another situation where a hero being actually definitely evil is still attributed to some kind of possession or corrupting influence.
Hence, you know, the " in a way that's never really addressed " part of my post regards Fanatic.
So you don’t consider Visionary while under her own control lobotomizing Citizen Dawn questionable? Also, what about KNYFE impaling Choke and leaving her for dead? The Ra early outings just taking out monsters or other freaks is never fully explained as to why that was Heroic.
Visionary lobotomized Bugbear while under Dark Vis's control, not Citizen Dawn.
Also, what part of "it's eventually addressed" was not sufficiently clear enough for you? I've stated over and over again that my argument is that the narrative specifically addresses what awful things various previously anti-heroic characters have done and it's the fact that that doesn't happen with Fanatic that sticks out, so you attempting a "gotcha" at me by ignoring that deliberate context to pretend I'm instead acting like there's no heroic characters who've ever done anything at all bad is really irritating.
You have had a persistent tendency ever since I first started posting here and on Reddit to do that in general via ignoring what I carefully said to attempt some sort of "gotcha" at me that I actually already addressed in what you ignored, and I find it frustrating and disingenous every single time you do it. Stop doing it.
(And I don't want any complaints about my tone. I have a right to ask someone who's regularly debating me in bad faith to stop doing so.)
We don't even have to go that far. There are plenty of places in the bible that are pretty aweful. There are several examples of Angels destroying whole cities. Sodom and Gamora were "Scoured from the Earth" by fire and brimstone. Every first born son of egypt.
" He sent upon them His burning anger, Fury and indignation and trouble, A band of destroying angels." Psalms 78:49
That's why we can't just focus on her as a "spirit of judgement" because like any child, her upbringing and early life context has changed her. Those bible passages which refer to judging angels as Wrathful, refer to them slaughtering the enemies of God. There are Tons of them. There is a reason that every Angelic Messenger and every New Testament Angel begins its communication with "Be Not Afraid." That's because up until that point, in the scriptures, Angels had given people very ready and poingiant reasons to be afraid when one shows up.
It's alo very possible that the opposite is true. I put forward the possibilty that her Chatholocism could make her more unyielding. What about the other way, What if we do get one of the magic users left over (of which there aren't many) who discovers how the Host works & realizes what Fanatic is. They convince her she is a Spirit of Judgement and the spirit remembering what it was abandons all human concepts like "Mercy" or "Forgiveness" or "Moderation" because there are other Host spirits for that stuff and what she does is judge things.
That's why we can't just take one part or the other and debate it. the Whole that she is at the moment has changed her. She isn't the same spirit, she is, indellibly marked if you will…
Sorry, i thought the Revelations pun was funny.
I think we need more detail about the host spirits and how the Host veiw the world, are they embodyments of emotions which gives them a direct human tie to how those are viewed? Or are the spirits more alien. Do they have human like motivations or given the lack of need for any kind of similar self preservation instinct do they have entirely different reasons for her actions. Also if they are mutable how do the determine their personality and shape, are the destinct with their own wants or desires, or are the mutable like fade spirits from Dragon Age, reflecting what the observer expects to find.
That's why i love this character so much. Even with a big shell like the Host reveal there is so much to unpack. And we didn't even get into the little nuanced parts of her character like we did with Haka.
You might review the Citizen Dawn episode again. As to the rest of your post you do similar to me. At this point I’m done on this conversation because it’s going nowhere.