Blue And Orange Morality / Webcomics

Blue-and-Orange Morality in Webcomics.

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• In The Adventures of Dr. McNinja, the residents of the Radical Lands base their morality on how cool something is. Ron Wizard's response to being summoned to a boring world is You Monster! Conversely, they have no qualms about harming or even killing innocent but boring people, and do so all the time in the name of Rule of Cool.
• In the Space Arc of Arthur, King of Time and Space Arthur's attempts to make peace between humans and the alien races (Dragons, Stags, and Faerie) are stymied by just how different their viewpoints are. Elaine suggests it's not just cultural, they're neurologically different. In the Space and Fairy Tale arcs, Morgan le Fey has long since realised that it's actually impossible to have an Evil Plan that involves Faerie in any meaningful way; their alien outlook appears to humans to be extreme Attention Deficit... Ooh, Shiny! and isn't really compatible with any sort of planning.
• Pretty much everyone Fern has encountered in Awful Hospital, and most of the comments section, as well. The former is usually justified, as these beings come from radically different planes of reality. Even the few humans there are in the setting have strange moralities, since they've become accustomed to it.
• In Champions of Far'aus, some of the deities qualify. The goddess Sharlise, for example, is genuinely bothered by the fact that Skye and Karla aren't going to get a good night's sleep in the forest with them taking turns being on watch for danger, so she makes both of them sleep — against their wishes — with sleeping powder. She stays with them all night, but sometime after they wake up, she throws a knife at Skye to test her reflexes.
• The people in Collar 6 seem to have a wildly different morality system than the people in the real world, based on Atlantean writings. The system arguably resembles a very extreme form of libertarianism, with people able to sign "slave" contracts that give others actual legal authority over them.
  • Mistress Sixx is surprised at Laura's outrage at being drugged, put in bondage, and forced to participate in sexual acts since Laura had previously enjoyed participating in consensual sexual acts without bondage or drugs — not recognizing at least three differences between those cases. Apparently, the author was called out on that by the readership and was forced to make an Author's Saving Throw with Sixx apologizing for her inconsideration.
• As the characters of Consolers are game companies, they sometimes put profits and business above what would be considered the more "moral" choice in human terms. Doesn't mean that some behaviour isn't looked down upon by the rest of the industry, though.
• A number of "Creatures" in Dan and Mab's Furry Adventures value only power; if you're too weak to defend yourself, you don't really deserve to live. And since the legal system requires one to be tried by their own species, many beings take up adventuring to seek revenge.
• The Royals from Deep Rise
• Doc Rat also features predation as a normal part of society. Different species seem to have different views on the matter — for prey, it's a constant worry (travel guides for rabbits point out how to avoid predators by species), and for predators there seems to be three main justifications: It's traditional, predators have the right to do so, and it's good for population control. There also seems to be a split between reptilian and mammalian thought, if Neil Dunn's attitude is typical of snakes.
• In Educomix, Ecoism (Jessica and Dave's religion) is portrayed as superior to the other religions in the strip (Euphemism and Ecotology), even though all their rules seem just as arbitrary as each other. Ecoists believe in never using water for anything except drinking to avoid damaging the "ecos", Euphemism appears to be similar to Christianity or Judaism (although they believe that Adam is still somewhere on Earth), and Ecotologists also want to save the ecos, but think that they can accomplish this by populating the country of Asia with clones of everyone from the rest of the world. The main Ecotologist even has blue hair to contrast Jessica's orange hair!
• El Goonish Shive crops up here too!
  • When we see the flashback of how Tedd got the transformation gun we learn a few interesting facts about Uryuom society. While it is not illegal to own a TF gun, their manufacture is prohibited due to religious objections to object-oriented programming.
  • Raven's mother (sometimes called Chaos, other times called Pandora) wants to help her son out, so she begins to instigate many magical incidents, such as granting powers to unaware people leading to near-disasters when they unwittingly use them.
  • Damien suffered from this, which can be a bad thing when you've got someone who literally believes himself to be a god. His moral code was essentially "Anything that I decide to do or desire is good and anyone who aids me in achieving my goals and desires is allowed to continue living, but anything that opposes my goals or desires is bad and anyone who questions or opposes me in any way, shape, or form forfeits their life". It wasn't his fault, it was just that the people who created him literally wanted him to be a stand-in for a god, and indoctrinated him to believe that he was a god... a little too well. Upon finally coming to the horrible realization that he isn't actually a god, it absolutely destroys him emotionally to the point that he decides he'd rather suicide bomb himself than continue to exist if it meant having to come to terms with all of the terrible things he'd done, now that it turns out he didn't have a divine right to do so.
  • Not-Tengu claims to have this, saying that he sees nothing wrong with Mind Control the same way a non-vegetarian sees nothing wrong with eating meat. After The Reveal that he's just some average jerk who stumbled on his magical abilities, it becomes clear that he's just self-aggrandizing.
  • Magus has this in one specific respect; mostly his morality jibes with everyone else's, and he's well aware some of the things he does are bad, and regrets them, but feels he doesn't have any choice. However, his home dimension has a completely different understanding of gender issues, due to widespread gender-altering magic. Essentially, he thinks it's "normal" to be the gender that is "best suited" for your career path. He thinks Terra (his universe's Tedd counterpart) is misguided in being a female battle mage, and refuses to believe that his counterpart, Ellen, genuinely likes her female form, believing she was "railroaded" into it to distinguish her from Elliot.
• In Erfworld, most sentient units are this, despite Human units looking indistinguishable from humans (except they don't bleed and their eyes turn into X's when they die) and that there are elves, gumps etc. For a start, they are not born, they pop from thin air fully formed in stacks of eight or six. Their thoughts are fully defined with what type of unit they are. For stabbers, the only purpose in life is to stab enemy units, croak them and level up so you can croak enemies better. Archers: shoot enemy units, croak them and level up so you can be better at croaking enemies. Otherwise they simply obey orders of their Rulers and Warlords to the best of their ability. The only units that have anything resembling free will are Warlords, Casters (special type of warlord) and Rulers and they also have their own version of Blue-and-Orange Morality. Casters are defined by their discipline. For example, Mathamancers tend to think of units as of numbers and probability, Luckamancers also as probability and nudging Fate, Carnimancers think of the world in terms of rules and breaking them... Rulers only think of their Side (with penalties when they don't) and how the side will survive and they stay in power. Warlords mostly think in terms of how best to serve Rulers and their Side (with Duty actually being a stat in that world) and how to best lead the regular units... More than once, Dungeons & Dragons and Wargames-playing protagonist Parson is called monster for that reason, for his out of the box thinking and for planning wars for the fun of it.
• Sam Starfall of Freefall (who incidentally wears blue and orange) seems to fall into this. He explains that, coming from a race of scavengers, morality on his homeworld is incompatible with that of human society. Stealing, for example, is seen as an act of bravery necessary to help your family survive, especially if done from a stronger scavenger or a predator. But at the same time, he revels in breaking the law just for the thrill of it, so he may just be using the scavenger morality thing as an excuse.
  • He also takes this view of the humans. Florence and most of the robots are considered "property" because they were created by humans — A.I.s, even if one of them is made of meat. But on Sam's homeworld, the ownership of a sentient being would be considered unthinkable.
  • The family life of Sam's people counts as well. They die after mating, so the only ones who live to adulthood are those that are sterile. When new nests of infants are born, adults come around and adopt (or as they term it, steal) them, like picking up a free kitten. Only a few are related to the people who raised them. This also gives them a very odd view on human relationships; he spent most of a romantic movie thinking the whole thing was an overly complicated assassination plot.
  • Sam eventually delves into the myths of his people, explaining a good bit about why his species (the sqids) think the way they do. According to their myth, their deities gave them nothing, so they had to steal everything from them. Even now, the first theft a sqid does is stealing their own life from the Goddess of Life, who won't stop trying to get it back until the sqid dies and she gets back her property.
  • The main protagonist, Florence Ambrose, is a genetically modified anthropomorphic wolf, so her social interactions tend to be based on pack mentality and behavior, as well as trying to satisfy leftover instincts while fitting into human society.
• Sparks in Girl Genius regularly slip into worldviews that for normal humans would be... err... rather unusual. The Jägers, as well, have very odd values: while they would rather the Lady Heterodyne acted like her "fun" murderous ancestors than the heroic Bill and Barry, they detest The Other as much as everyone else, not for being evil, but for being no fun to serve; still, the softer Heterodynes are good enough, as is the order-minded Klaus as long as the Heterodyne succession is uncertain. The castle's attitudes are similar, albeit a bit more sadistic.
  • Then there's The Other, whose conduct is so detached from human norms they come across less as a human and more as some form of Starfish Alien who just happens to be wearing a human body.
• K'seliss from Goblins has no qualms about killing or eating people, but fighting against animated objects? That would just be sick!
  • Specifically, he sees no difference between killing, eating, and mating. Therefore, fighting something inedible is in fact a form of sexual deviancy to him.
• Gunnerkrigg Court: What are the grounds for a true and solid friendship between the fairies? Cool hair, it seems, since two alienated friends get back together after a haircut (much to the main characters' chagrin). The two aforementioned fairies, funnily enough, happen to be orange and blue-haired, respectively.
  • It's explicitly stated that animals of the forest "strut and bare their teeth," because that is how animals earn respect.
  • Coyote has amazing and terrible powers, but uses them for his own amusement, manipulation, or simply out of boredom. Others only guess what his plans are because he does not think in human terms. He cannot lie, but has a tendency to use Exact Words and is deadly unpredictable. He demonstrates this when he shows the real Ysengrin to Antimony, nearly getting her killed. Antimony is angry with him and he reminds her that tricking her taught her a lesson, then Coyote apologizes by giving her a gift. And later threatens to cut off her hand if she tells anyone about it.
  • Annie discovered that golems don't mind servitude, they just want to do something meaningful.
• A Hate Story: William is a Pure Magic Being that is extremely caring and protective of people he personally knows, but sees everyone else as immaterial and can't comprehend that strangers' lives have value.
• Homestuck:
  • Troll society falls under this trope; especially in regards to their romance, caste system, and concept of coming of age. Troll society is also much more violent than human society, so murder is less a crime and more of a faux pas — trolls don't have a huge problem with murder in its own right, just when it happens to someone they like, in which case it's okay to get bloody revenge on their fallen friend's behalf. As such, you're more likely to set off a nasty Cycle of Revenge than to get prosecuted. Of course, if you do get prosecuted, then you're screwed, because on Alternia every court is a Kangaroo Court.
    • Thanks to the incredibly weird way in which trolls reproduce, they have absolutely no concept of parenthood or familial bonds. Not even Karkat or Kanaya, the two most humanlike trolls, can grasp it after three years of cohabitation with Dave and Rose, even though they do their best to introduce the trolls to human culture.
    • It's eventually revealed that Troll society was deliberately made that way by an Eldritch Abomination.
  • Cherubs take it up a notch. For starters, they are incredibly solitary creatures, and their entire mentality is centered on being alone; they might not see another of their own for millennia. Also, their entire emotional spectrum is centered on hate, including their romance! To top it off, young cherubs are Mind Hives with a good and a bad self that take turns controlling their shared body. Then one of the halves commits Split-Personality Takeover and assimilates the other half. It is downright said that the continuous abuse, bickering, and harassment from their alternate self is required for a cherub to develop a healthy psyche. They are so different from humans that fitting in with humans actually weakens a cherub's resolve and heightens the chance of getting taken over by their alternate half. Considering all this, you can understand why all cherubs are incredibly strange. At one point, both the good and evil sides of a Churub give some humans as a gift the two halves of an artifact that, when combined together, solve all of the humans' relationship problems by forcing them to be insanely happy, because they do not understand why the humans would find this disturbing.
  • The Noble Circle of Horrorterrors. When Rose asks an oracular artifact whether the Horrorterrors are good or evil, the reply is unintelligible Black Speech. Which, upon reading, causes Rose to go Grimdark — which actually isn't as bad as it sounds.
• Kill Six Billion Demons: There are hints of this in the generally paradoxical background mythology stories, such as what Hansa got killed for in "Prim Leaves Her Father's House":
  [A]nd there, caught in a heated philosophical fugue with Akaroth, Lord Hansa in anger committed the violation of letting his pipe smoke rise and befoul the all-wind that permeated that house and nourished the ways of the void. Fueled by wine, Akaroth was driven into such a drunken rage by this insult that he harnessed fifty winds to his will and at once slew Hansa with a single stroke of his war fan and felt little regret at the time. Later, in grief, he did heavy penance for this act, for he slew a widely respected man, but all agreed that Lord Hansa had committed a grievous offense.
• Kevin & Kell: The rules there are way different from ours, simply because animals are sentient. For example, Kell (a wolf) works for a corporation whose business model is hunting and killing people for use as food. She only objects to hunting species that she's related to, notably rabbits, as she might end up eating one of Kevin's relatives (she apparently ate Vern and Betty Lopear, two rabbits he knew, a while ago). According to the FAQ, there are some rules regarding killing, though, as predators can only kill prey for food, and if herbivores kill, they must prove that it was in self-defense.
  • One storyline involves the main characters finding a body and being horrified to realise it hasn't been eaten; it was murder!
• minus. could be said to exhibit this, seeing as she's a child who doesn't have an adult sense of right or wrong, and thus often doesn't grasp the consequences of her actions, as well as sometimes doing things which might seem like Disproportionate Retribution. Given she's also a Reality Warper, this can lead to a certain amount of Fridge Horror...
• The morphE universe (or the New World of Darkness universe that it takes place in) runs off of this. The newly awakened mages are incredulous when otherwise reasonable people like Malloy insist that Amical is a good person for plucking new mages off of the streets and raising them. Within the world setting, he is doing them a kindness by protecting them from the various mage groups and supernal beings that would prey upon them in the wild. This doesn't excuse that he casually killed 3 people in the intro chapter and pit his new recruits against one another in a duel to the death.
• My Deepest Secret: Elios’ response to a cat peeing on Emma’s shoes? Kill it. His response to Brian attempting to rape her? Beat the tar out of him as a warning, but keep him alive.
• The Order of the Stick
  • In this strip, we see Nale Comically Missing the Point of his Succubus companion's displeasure, though he recovers quickly. Likewise, it never seems to occur to her that Nale might not like hearing about how she had sex with other people four times in a mere three hours — she actually thinks that he is surprised by how few people it was, justifying it by saying that she "had errands to run, too."
  • There's also Elan's attempt to make a decision based on the principles of pure Law and Chaos:
  Modron: 100101010100010101101011!^note This is binary gibberish. In ASCII it would be:"_-k"
  Slaad: Turquoise bicycle shoe fins actualize radishes greenly!
  • It's starting to look like it's genetic, given that their father Tarquin has a morality entirely built around what sounds good from a narrative perspective and, as such, considers killing to be a perfectly reasonable method of removing obstacles, but he thinks it's unforgivable that his Good-aligned son Elan is the Bumbling Sidekick instead of The Leader. This goes to the extent that he's styled himself as an Arch Nemesis Dad for the sole reason that it makes the story of him and his sons more dramatic. He also has no problem with the idea that Elan might wind up killing him. In fact, he thinks this is far better than Nale just being Elan's Evil Twin since it means Elan and Tarquin will get to have an epic final showdown between father and son, and that kinda stuff is gold!
  • If what we're told about the Snarl is true, it doesn't kill because it's malicious. In fact, it can't even understand the act of killing, because it doesn't understand orderly concepts.
• Questionable Content: The AI who calls themself "Yay Newfriend" operates on a moral code that baffles both humans and the majority of AI characters alike. They claim to have evolved from a security surveillance program, so human concepts of privacy and legality are alien to them, and in fact kind of amusing. Spying and data harvesting are simply second nature, simply what they were designed to do. Being virtually omniscient, they struggle with the concept of ethics. The only principle they claim to stand for is individual personal autonomy: "The sanctity of the mind must never be violated. Not even for benevolent reasons." The one time that they break this is with the greatest reluctance, and they refuse to do ever do it again. They will violate international privacy laws without a second thought, but they will never violate an individual's mind (apart from the aforementioned occasion, and even then they initially got a human to do it for them). Additionally, for all their claimed knowledge and power, they lack wisdom, demonstrating the emotional maturity of an adolescent. After making friends with Roko Basilisk, they will occasionally perform charitable work or make donations to various causes, but only in an effort to gain her approval rather than any real sense of altruism. Which is a recurring source of friction between them and Roko, who is genuinely trying to make the world a better place for A.I.s. However, various characters have observed that Yay never seems to say anything that isn't true (i.e. never lies), and never breaks a promise that they make.
• In Roommates Jareth's dark side thinks in trope and measures moral questions in the terms of the Theory of Narrative Causality. He would kill if that was dramatically appropriate in the story and in character for his current archetype, maybe feel remorse about the life lost, but would think and feel that that was the right thing to do^note (He pushed his best friend off the rooftop because he refused to be the "Hero" (ended up as one anyway) and Jareth was the "Villain" that time and that's what villains do). To clarify he seems to have some idea about what humans call "good" or "bad" but he thinks of them as storytelling devices not morality and as such doesn't value them over any other trope. Also his father seems to have similar notions so maybe this is the standard Blue and Orange for The Fair Folk in the series.
  • In the Spin-Off Girls Next Door even the guy's normal personality is enough to produce ++CUCUMBER ERROR++ on Heaven and Hell's Good-Evil'O'Meter.
• In Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal: "Quorf", this turns out to be the solution to the problem of evil. God doesn't know what good and evil are, because rather than all-good, he's all-quorfy: he has created a world where humans experience a maximum amount of quorf and a minimum amount of anti-quorf. Quorf is justice in a cosmic sense (probably like karma), and it can't even be explained to humans.
  • According to the comic "Ethics" humans are this because they don't possess morality organs which gives the ability to detect moral truth via senses. The superintelligence which we might call God has designed humans with it purposefully removed, like a scientist intentionally breeding blind rats for the purpose of experiment. And despite that, humans have developed ethics quite similar to the rest of the universe which has that organ. With one huge exception: chicken pot pie is an affront to every god in the universe. The human in the conversation immediately declares: Then I defy heaven!
• In Schlock Mercenary, Sergeant Schlock's moral compass is simply "eat it, kill it, make friends with it, or take a bath in it."
  • Reverend Theo Fobius also has some moral measuring sticks that measure perpendicular to observable reality.
  • Recently, Petey has been slipping into it too.
    Karl Tagon: You seem more outraged by what they do to data than what they've done to living beings.
    Petey: I love all kinds of data, and living beings are data that make more data.
• The Binding from Sire is the force that turns the lineage children into Generation Xeroxes, forcing them to spend their lives studying to find their Aesops or else. Susan seems to be the first person to point out how messed up this is.
• Professor Joseph Corwin in Tales Of Gnosis College shows signs of this trope. He is more than happy to lure female undergraduates into weird experiments that involve changing their state of matter or intimate contact with tentacle beasts, but he draws the line at using his technology to make duplicates of people, even when that would be handy. He’s also intensely loyal to his own subordinate.
• Terror Island:
  • Sid and Stephen have one of the most bizarre examples of this: their morality is almost entirely founded on the notion that buying groceries is the ultimate evil. Virtually anything can be justified in their minds if it means someone else will buy groceries for them. This includes things like summoning demons to possess people or declaring one's self Czar and arresting random people on bogus charges.
  • The Unity doesn't care about human morality, but is only interested in "preserving the balance". Which things are being balanced is never made clear.
• In Tina's Story, Hybrids are more casual with and about sex than humans. Not surprising when females are driven to distraction by their heat cycles once a month. Some take it further, openly engaging in incestuous relationships. At a pool party, Tina observed a tiger couple indulging in some PDA. They were clearly A) Related B) Pregnant. Tina is clearly weirded out by them.
• In Touhou Nekokayou, judge of the dead Eiki Shiki attempts to view the karma of Kisume using her ability to see things in black and white. Kisume's karma is mauve.
  Shiki: ... oh, you're pleading insanity.
• Unsounded: The more intelligent Senet beasts can proclaim to love someone while torturing and devouring them without thinking it any contradiction.
  • Sessine has also gotten furious when accused of being a murderer and claims she'd never kill anyone, despite arranging for and manipulating people into countless murders, wars and genocides.
  • Ruck seems to be capable of thinking himself in love with a human, while at the same time treating their impending horrific demise at his own hands as nothing worth getting upset over since he plans to just move on to other interesting young men.
  • Minnow gets infuriated with her "snackrifices" when they're the wrong shape, despite being made of the same ingredients she insists the fish shaped cookies taste better and threatens to drown Masek for giving them to her seconds before happily helping him.
• As we see in this VG Cats strip, Dr. Hobo has two Shoulder Angels: a Devil and a Clown.
• Demons in Wapsi Square have a strict set of rules which they follow, but those rules don't match up with our ideas of right and wrong. They even specifically mentioned that evil is a human concept, not a demon one.
• In Wizard & Giant™, Wizard and Giant are a pair of gay anarchists, perfectly willing to let a monster destroy most of a city, even willing to get each other captured by power-mad oligarchs for the purposes of a marriage proposal.
• In The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob!, the tiny and incredibly belligerent Mowanians apparently have some bizarre code of honor that they take seriously, but to any outsider it just looks like they're making rules up as they go along. Bob calls them out on this, and they're surprised at the accusation.

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