I was writing a fantasy novel and in it, the captain and his troops were ordered to massacre a village (of fictional creatures); after the massacre the captain quit his position in anger and disgust; the captain had also smuggled a child out of the village.
When I mentioned this on a writing forum I was on, people got upset and everyone rebuked the idea that the captain would quit his position and defy orders because......it takes a long time and a lot of effort to become a captain.
This was supposed to be a positive reflection on the character, that he would be disgusted at being ordered to commit a genocide (it wasn't JUST a massacre; absolutely no one from the village was to be allowed to live, including kids), but posters got upset because....it takes a long time and a lot of effort to reach such a rank and no one would quit their positions or disobey orders, that it was unrealistic; people were genuinely upset; PEOPLE WERE GENUINELY UPSET.
My conclusion? A rewrite of the character so he's not a military dog, but someone else who would've been in the area and ignored. My novel has anti-colonial themes although they weren't that central to the story; if the military are supposed to be jackbooted thugs then that's how they're going to be portrayed going forward.
I genuinely can't believe people would actually be upset at this point when it's supposed to reflect well on the character; this post was also an old one, as in around 2016-2018, so before the Gaza genocide or the Russian SMO. Absolutely disgusting bootlicking individuals.
Yep it happens a lot! And a lot of these dynasties are non-aligned to anyone, other than themselves and whoever lets them dominate over others.
Like here in the Baltiks a lot of the far-right have ties tracing back to Russian/Germanic empires. Something not mentioned often, look how they will also destroy monuments dedicated to USSR, they will erase history, even when the worker being honored is someone who is of local ethnicity and spoke their local language, but won't touch the foreign Kaiser/Tsar buildings. They won't rename the streets named after pro-imperial Russians, they are okay with using the names of Aristocratic German families.
These actions make no sense and I think it's why people get so emotional, over being exposed to these contradictions. I myself am kind of a contradiction and I'm already getting off track so to cut it short, my parents were arguing about me from the moment I was born, because I was going to have a rather common Russian sounding name, until paternal grandparents found out and they lost their shit, threatened to take away all property if they don't change it. Yes, they also had ties to Aristocrats...
Anyways learning about Marxism made a lot of things click into places.