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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ruin Explorer" data-source="post: 9598430" data-attributes="member: 18">I mean in fiction that's quite often the job of people much like James Bond or indeed the crew at Slough House. Slough House averts a thinly-disguised Boris Johnson analogue's political ambitions, which he is furthering through cynical manipulation of far-right terror groups, for example. He even specifically gives a justification along the lines of what you proposed, which even the very-cynical-himself Jackson Lamb rejects. And in fact, Lamb, ultra-cynic, is still not amoral, not truly - he likes to act the part, but when push comes to shove, he consistently takes moral action rather than cynically folding like his "boss" at MI5, whose name is escaping me. She uses every excuse in the book to be amoral, cynical and frankly even a little lazy, and the position of the books (and TV show) is that this actually makes her bad at her job, despite her protestations, because she continually creates problems that didn't have to exist, or exacerbates existing problems by inserting herself and her amoral agents into situations. She's also really bad at negotiating because of this, because she cannot possibly be trusted unless you have insane leverage on her, so again her total amorality, lack of any shred of decency/honor/respect means situations get worse, because you can't trust her. And once people realize this, they have to treat her amoral, cynical ass as dangerous and continually look for leverage on her - to her disadvantage - this makes her less effective and more vulnerable.I think that contrast is actually a pretty good illustration of what audiences want - which is they don't want some completely amoral cynical jerk murdering people (that's more of a CIA thing) - they want a moral actor - now whether they want a Jackson Lamb or a River Cartright is another question, but obviously Cartright and Bond have a ton more in common.I was tempted to say:With a fwip-fwip here and a fwip-fwip thereHere a fwip, there a fwip, everywhere fwip-fwipBut I'm not sure fwip is still universally recognised as the noise of a silenced pistol.</blockquote>

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