Reading Advice
Okay I have not slept in *checks notes* some ungodly amount of time? Because my connective tissue was designed by Satan on a fucking bender and apparently sleeping is for people whose joints don't try to pop in half like a goddamn roast chicken when they lay down.
So let me tell you A Story about why you really, REALLY should not try to make the good guys infallible, and it goes with my favorite show, Power Rangers.
See, Power Rangers starts off with a premise: An alien sage\mystic\something caught in a time warp needs five teenagers to help save the world from The Forces of Evil.
"Now wait a minute," you might be thinking, "The Forces of Evil is actually an alien queen who's been missing from her kingdom for a couple thousand years due to her OWN time warp and there's apparently a couple dozen cultures involved in this 'evil' bit, plus Zordon, the alien sage, recruits TEENAGERS as SOLDIERS. Possibly Zordon is either 1) not the brightest bulb in the package, 2) slightly insane because he didn't talk to anyone but his robot pal for a couple thousand years, or 3) very weirdly religious?"
And these are good questions! And in the final season, when we see that 'the Forces of Evil' are actually a really vast empire, implied to be a very real nation-state compromised of many smaller planet-nations, we should be getting answers!
So instead the writers say this:
"But no, Zordon and the Power Rangers are Good, and their enemies are Evil. To prove it, we will save the day by having Zordon heroically sacrifice himself, which creates a wave of magic that saves anyone 'good' and turns everyone 'evil' into dust!"
And thus Zordon commits fucking genocide.
Seriously, he just straight-up warps a bunch of people--real, sapient beings--into dust piles. People who are...well, 'evil'? Eh. Paid minions, mostly. Elgar, for example, is a dumbfuck who couldn't pour piss out of a boot with instructions on the heel, but probably not 'evil' so much as 'works for his pirate aunt because he loves his family'. Goldar is a loyal henchman, who mostly fights out of cultural loyalty (and in the comics, they note that it's VERY cultural, and VERY loyalty-based). Ecliptor is an android dad who raised one of the main characters very lovingly, to the point where his love actually convinced her she was fighting on the wrong side.
They all just die.
So it's worth considering here--Do you really want a story with an infallible good guy, who is never questioned? Because when your good guy is never questioned, and can never make mistakes, this is what happens.
Or do you want a good guy who can fail, apologize, and try again? Because the Power Rangers do that, repeatedly. And they actually save the world, just before Zordon does his damndest to kill off an entire civilization.
You only get one.
