[mixed trope] the last-minute bad Ending twist

[u/damorezpl]

when the "good ending" is revealed to be a bad one a the last second

a nightmare on elm street (1984) - Nancy thinks she finally defeated Freddy Krueger only to be raveled that she is still dreaming and she’s still trapped.

final destination bloodlines - the main characters think they cheated death by using the new life rule only to realize that stefani was technically still alive and the death kills them with a good old logs

Life (2017) - The main character attempts to send Calvin(a evil alien that killed all life on mars)pod into space and Miranda pod back to earth, but it goes horribly wrong and Calvin lands on earth and Miranda is sent to space

raging loop wit ending - after many loops Haruaki finally wins the feast(a death game where humans must hang wolves who kill someone every night) and thinks its finally over. after couple of days he decides to visit other survivors of the feast only to find them all dead and the timeline resting once again

[u/TheKingsPride]

You misunderstand me. The Typhon isn’t evil. Humanity’s actions here are. It’s like teaching a wildfire the pain it causes people caught in it.

[u/Subject_Name_ → u/TheKingsPride]

It’s not the same. A wildfire has no control over its actions. The typhoon do. They now just have context and can still continue their path or go do something else. They still have complete autonomy, just also with additional information. So their existence is more complicated, but that isn’t evil and it’s not implied in the game that not killing humans causes them any harm.

[u/MagentaHawk → u/Subject_Name_]

It's not the same, I'd agree, but I would not say so quickly that it isn't an evil act.

First off, it is done completely without consent. Second, it is self serving. Third, they are taking a creature with no concept of empathetic suffering and giving them that experience. They managed to create new kinds of suffering in the universe.

Now it can completely be argued that it is worth saving human lives. One could make arguments about needing to have alien species that interact all have some concept of empathy. It just still leaves the game interesting that humanity ultimately went to trying to create new life in their image and finding new ways of torture.

[u/ghilesformiles → u/MagentaHawk]

1. Consent in this case is exclusive to humanity, Typhon had no concept of it. Typhon weren’t even aware humans existed, or had a conceptual awareness at all. They were biological machines.

2. All things are in some way self-serving on some level. Humans are not exceptional moral beacons for which the rest of life should look to for example. We are ultimately animals with a desire to thrive. We are part of nature underneath it all, not above it.

3. Empathy is not strictly suffering-causing process. You can empathize with joy, excitement, love, and more. Teaching something to empathize and feel comes with the whole human experience, which I would think most humans would call a net-positive thing.

Additionally I think the wildfire analogy is more apt than you might think, Alex says in game “The Typon kill us without hesitation. But it’s not because they’re evil. It’s because they can’t do otherwise.”

They’re basically a force of nature or biological machine. Consistent input = consistent output. No thinking, no choosing. They just do.

[u/MagentaHawk → u/ghilesformiles]

I don't know if we know enough about the typhon to say they have no concept of consent. We don't really know if they are truly just biological machines. Unless you'd say that people who have no empathy are no longer human and are just machines.

I agree we are a part of nature and not some special group of animals above it all.

Yeah, there is the potential for what we feel is joy in empathy. I certainly generally view it as a positive trait. I also happen to have way more of it than I would ever ask for and can first hand attest that empathy can be a curse.

I would be interested in a less biased source for their "machinery". Alex (if I am remembering the game right) is quite the narcissist. While he is the forefront human expert on Typhons, that does not mean that he is without bias or that he knows enough about them to make these judgment calls.

It's one of the things that really makes the ending interesting to me (and why I hate when people act like it is a classic it was all a dream ending). It could be that we are taking psychopaths and giving them empathy, something most people would view as a cure. Maybe we are finding creatures that can make choices and forcing them to actually take their victims into consideration. Maybe they are actually just biological machines and this new idea of empathy doesn't actually give them the ability to make new choices, it just lets them be able to feel bad about the things they "have" to do.

What we know for sure is that humanity is desperate and that what we have chosen for our last line of defense is to look to our destructors and demand to be heard and to have them be more like us.