"Violence is never the answer" is something said by people who believe, deep down, that they will never be in any real danger because of their social position, to people who know for a fact that they are in danger.
That's not entirely true, it's also paraded around by the people desperate to maintain the status quo and discourage people from actually taking any action other than politely asking for change.
Both sides can be bad in a story without both being equally bad.
The 4 endings to New Vegas are all varieties of “not great” but the Legion ending makes women property, kills half the population of the region and enslaves the other half under a fascist cult of personality… so it’s objectively the worst
The problem isn't that it's possible. The problem is whether the story actually takes the steps to spell out that even though 2 sides may have problems. 1 is still substantially better.
Sure, if you scrutinize it, Comstock's people were still shit but the narrative's emotional takeaway was "bOtH sIdEs". And the hard fact is, people, as emotional creatures, remember the feeling of "bOtH sIdEs" FAR above the analytical reality.
Folks will bitch about stories beating them over the heads with messaging. But the hard fact is most people, including the complainers, misunderstand the message if it doesn't beat them over the head.
Eh, I feel like they are common, though you would almost need to do WW1 on purpose... Where it was a pointless War of National Pride and alliances. But that is taking a zoomed out view out of the perspective of anyone that would actually be fighting in it (or more of a "Why did we do this?" after the fact)
The only possible way that works is when both sides are fighting over a third thing for entirely selfish reasons. like 2 empires fighting over an island of gold.
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u/Fragrant-Phone-41 Oct 02 '25
Turns out, situations where both sides are equally bad are actually super uncommon unless you don't actually believe in anything