Could things have worked out with David?

[donut]

I'm not sure what the animorphs did compares to what David did.  The animorphs did cruel and hard things, but they did them to keep people alive and stop the yeerks from doing worse things.  Tobias did destroy a species, but he saved another by doing it.  Cassie erased someone from existance, but saved millions of people and the way of life of billions.  David did cruel things for his pleasure and comfort.



David:
They made me spend the night in a barn.  So I tried to kill them all, steal the cube, and raise a small army of thieves and thugs to do my bidding.

[AniDragon]

I think if things had been different, if there hadn't been a super important mission to distract them, if they had David staying with the Chee, etc... I think he might have still gone bad, it would have just taken longer. And that could have actually been really interesting. I think in poparena's review, he mentions the possibility of actually spreading out his storyline, and even maybe having a book in David's point of view, making you think he'd going to be permanent, before doing his betrayal arc.

Also, can you imagine the Animorphs introducing David to the Chee?

Erek: Do you like dogs?
David: Actually, I'm more of a cat person---
Marco: *stomps on David's foot* He LOVES dogs!
Erek: ......

[Chad32]

He might have eventually gone bad anyway. I think it would have been nicer if it was more spread out. I would have liked him to return as a more legitamate threat, and not just in one book where it was more about Crayak trying to tempt Rachel, and then not knowing if Rachel kills him or not.

I think I've seen those lines before.

[yunyun]

Yeah, it would have been really nice to get a bit more from him (I barely understood that book actually). Maybe it would have been interesting for the Animorphs to go visit him on the island? It's not like he can do much to them XP

Well, Erek asks Marco's dad 'do you like dogs' in #45...? XD

[AniDragon]

I've probably also posted that potential interaction in the past. It amuses me.

[Shenmue654]

Quote from: Chad30 on November 17, 2013, 09:40:50 AM

    There was something wrong with David, but it partly stemmed from not having any friends. If they had tried harder, he may have reformed.

Dangerous, dangerous way of thinking.  I hope you don't apply that train of thought to instances in real life.

Oddly....I'm on the fence with this one.

On the one hand, saying you can "reform" a genetic sociopath is sort of like saying you can teach a blind guy how to see. You're trying to tell someone how to do something they don't understand (And feel they're better off without) the principle of in the first place.

But on the other hand, that doesn't necessarily mean that David wouldn't have worked out. I've met plenty of people who were crazy as **** (And at least one sociopath, likely two) and I got them to like me enough to defend me ruthlessly and stick around for years on end.  It strikes me that if they acknowledged David's strengths and allowed him to be himself....there's a chance they wouldn't have had as many problems.

[Chad32]

I never considered David a sociopath. I'll agree you can't fix something that doesn't exist. The most you can do is teach them how to fake it, and obey laws on a pragmatic level. Empathy is pretty crucial to any social species.

[NothingFromSomething]

I don't know if I agree with you there, Nothing. David never necessarily screamed "pure evil" from the start.

Of course not.  Not in a Crayak, Emperor Palpatine, Red Skull type of way.  He was an aggressive, excuse-prone, "the world owes me so I'll find a way to get away with anything I want to" type.  It wouldn't really have mattered if Marco had been nicer to him initially at school, sooner or later someone would have said or done something that he'd see as his "excuse", his trigger, to go all ape-sh*t.  He was just the type.

Kind of the opposite of Rachel, in a way, which made their conflict so engaging.  She was the "stop whining, suck it up, other people go through bad crap all the time, take it like a man" type, self-assured and just against excuse-making on principle, while David was more like "this and this and this happened to me, it sucks, I can get away with taking it out on other people so why not?"

There's a lot of that in the world today, the woe-is-me stuff.  Horrible as it was for David, I'd throw it out there that none of the others would have dealt with it in that manner. 

[Shenmue654]

It wouldn't really have mattered if Marco had been nicer to him initially at school, sooner or later someone would have said or done something that he'd see as his "excuse", his trigger, to go all ape-sh*t.  He was just the type.

You might be right in the case of this kid (Given that he's a character designed to turn traitor by his own creator) but I still disagree with reasoning like that on principle. There is no "type" that does anything.

Kind of the opposite of Rachel, in a way, which made their conflict so engaging.  She was the "stop whining, suck it up, other people go through bad crap all the time, take it like a man" type, self-assured and just against excuse-making on principle, while David was more like "this and this and this happened to me, it sucks, I can get away with taking it out on other people so why not?"

There's a lot of that in the world today, the woe-is-me stuff.  Horrible as it was for David, I'd throw it out there that none of the others would have dealt with it in that manner.

I'd throw it out there that had Cassie's parents been less functional, she would have dealt with it just like David. She wasn't exactly the "Suck it up" type.

[donut]

You might be right in the case of this kid (Given that he's a character designed to turn traitor by his own creator) but I still disagree with reasoning like that on principle. There is no "type" that does anything.

Maybe, but I've met 2 people like that who stand out to me in particular.  They always had an attitude that they were God's gift to the world, and if anything didn't go exactly right it was someone else's fault.  You expected them to screw up majorly, then blame someone else for it.  They never disappointed.  One of them even ended up committing assault then she bragged on her facebook page about being able to get away with it when she was put on probation.  I certainly wouldn't trust either of them with anything.

I'd throw it out there that had Cassie's parents been less functional, she would have dealt with it just like David. She wasn't exactly the "Suck it up" type.

Now you wouldn't be saying she was the type to do that, would you?   

Points for the joke.  I missed it the first time I read through your post.

[NothingFromSomething]

   Of course there are "types" of people.  You can't just classify everyone down to the nth-degree, sure, but there are broad archetypes of personality and behavior.  There are more than enough subtleties dropped throughout those three books to say David was pretty self-righteous and with a penchant for cruelty.  Put someone like that in a crappy situation, they're going to cave under pressure.

[Astarte]

We're all forgetting one very important point. David was a CHILD. Sure, he wasn't a little kid, but he still hadn't reached maturity yet. Like I bring up to people when discussing Elfen Lied, should Kaede be held accountable for murdering Kouta's family despite her being a little girl? Getting back to the topic at hand, it's possible David might have grown out of it. I do agree he would have turned traitor eventually, but I feel that the Animorphs, Marco particularly, are never willing to admit that they messed David up. If they'd committed to him 100%, then they would be less accountable than they are now, with Marco condescending down to him and making him sleep in a freaking barn. I would say David is 75% responsible and the Animorphs are 25% responsible, or somewhere closer to 50-50. Though I do like the twist in the fanfic One Least Likely where David grows a crush on Cassie, and that keeps him from crossing over to the dark side.

To address donut's point, it doesn't matter. Even if they were stopping the Yeerks, those acts were still atrocious. And David hadn't really done anything that evil until he dropped Saddler down the elevator. It was dark and morally ambiguous, but until he took Saddler out, you could argue he really viewed it as him defending himself from the people he hated because, remember, they didn't treat him all that great, again, Marco in particular. Besides, in the case of Cassie, she had the freaking TIME MATRIX! She could have traveled to the exact moment before Visser Four came upon the Time Matrix and stopped him then, even killing him, which is a much better fate than what is essentially destroying his soul. To quote poparena: "Stupid, stupid Cassie!"

[NothingFromSomething]

Yeah, I'm completely in the minority on this I'm sure, but the way I see the world, you know right from wrong at 12.  A decent 12 year old doesn't make calls like "yeah, but I can murder you 'cause you're in an animals body", or even feel it's cool to murder an animal in cold blood for fun anyway.

The "child" stuff doesn't fly.  Jake was a child, look at all the stuff he made it through.

[donut]

Even if they were stopping the Yeerks, those acts were still atrocious.

I want to clarify what you're saying here, intentions and what happened because of the acts don't matter?  Killing 25,000 (or however many it was) is killing 25,000 and wrong even if it wins the war or was because they were trying to save people?

I would say David is 75% responsible and the Animorphs are 25% responsible, or somewhere closer to 50-50.

See, this I don't buy.  You're still responsible for what you do.  They might be responsible for not making him as comfortable as possible, but they aren't responsible for David trying to kill them.  David's responsible for that.  The animorphs were the same age too.  David can't be excused by that with the animorphs being held accountable.

And I might be a little more callous to this than most people, but if sleeping in a barn and Marco talking down to him caused him to flip his lid, then he was going to go nuts no matter what.  How was he gonna to handle combat if he can't handle someone saying something mean or having to sleep on hay? And you're right, most people don't have to put up with that stuff.  But we know he was going to have to fight.  If something small like that crossed his threshold, then he wasn't gonna make it anyway.

[Astarte]

I've always hated when people use the words "necessary sacrifice." They can use it to justify anything. I'm reminded of what Ax said in #17. That you have to become a little dirty to win a war, but the question is HOW far into savagery do you go? You probably would condone murdering 25,000 people to end a war, innocent people to boot. By saying their intentions are all that matter, you can literally say it's okay to do almost ANYTHING. Intentions and actions BOTH matter, neither one is more important than the other, and to think otherwise is to delude yourself. You need to balance both.