Talk:Finn Collins/@comment-24.99.67.19-20141205203432

When I think of war crimes, I don't think about someone suffering from PTSD. I think of someone like Hitler and his minions. Some people kill because they're down right evil. They hate other people because of their race, religion etc. They act deliberately and with malice of forethought. This is not Finn.

People seem to forget season one when Finn didn't have a violent bone in his idealistic, pacifist  "We can do better" body. He didn't go from that boy to a killer for no reason. You can't always judge everything in terms of black and white. Finn's either this or the other. There's a whole lot of grey area here.

We can get desensitized when it come to violence  because we see so much of it on TV, movies, & video games. Most of us probably have never even seen anyone die in real life. Can you imagine how traumatizing it would be to see a friend of yours get his throat slit, or get run through by a spear, or get hacked to pieces right in front of you? Can you imagine how it feels to constantly fear that you or someone you love could be next? These kinds of startling experiences have lasting mental effects.

Some people cope with stress better than others. It makes perfect sense that Finn would not be one to handle it so well. PTSD is a mental disorder. It IS sometimes taken into account in the courts. Finn didn't sign up for the horrors of war. He tried to avoid it. War happened to HIM. And even mature trained soldiers can't always handle it. This is a teenage boy. So Finn ended up doing something that he would never have done when he first set foot on planet earth. And the grounders (warriors) are as much to blame for that massacre as Finn. And Finn is as much a victim as those people he killed.

This is a special case, and we shouldn't just judge it on the surface. We have to dig a little deeper, peel back some layers and ask why a peaceful, descent human being becomes a killer. You're outraged by what Finn did. You want to see him punished. But there's no perfect answer. How do you punish someone whose suffering from  a mental disorder brought on by the violent aggression of another faction of the group targeted?

You know, I'm more disturbed that Murphy was pardoned than I am Finn. Murphy wantonly killed two people for revenge. He knew exactly what he was doing. That wasn't Finn.