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Old 2009-11-18, 14:31   Link #22100
Sol Falling
Senior Member
 
 
Join Date: Oct 2007
Age: 35
Shirley being uninvolved in the political/military struggle is no reason to condemn her. (For being a high school student, I think being the first one to try to welcome an 'eleven' into their heretofore Britannian-exclusive school is enough to qualify as support for 'change'). As for what Shirley discouraged specifically, it was more Lelouch's destructive and self-damaging tendencies than his desire to change the world.

As for my disagreements on Suzaku: I don't think he was wrong from a moral standpoint, because government is something society constructed. National identity is not something I consider fundamental to human life. Regardless of the legitimacy of the Britannian occupation, the ultimate goal of change should simply be whether the people there can be happy. As the system did allow participation by conquered peoples, trying to encourage it and improve conditions instead of destroying it wasn't morally wrong.

As for Suzaku's stance being an 'excuse' to enact his death wish, this isn't true. Suzaku's death wish is in addition to his desire to help the Japanese people. And once he met Euphie, he began to abandon the self-punishment entirely. You can level the same illegitimacy of motivation at Kallen, who was fighting Britannia at the start of the series only to lash out for the death of her brother (she had no 'hope' for achieving anything). Only in meeting Zero did her destructive impulse begin to turn into a positive one (hope for actually liberating Japan). In fact, by the time Suzaku lost Euphie, he had lost any desire for self-punishment, instead focusing almost entirely (aside from helping the people his way) on getting revenge on Zero. Suzaku's deathwish doesn't even factor again until after he blows up Tokyo.
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