Needs Help: Amoral Attorney

Although I see that the current image was chosen through a previous thread, I wanted to bring it up for discussion.

The issue as I see it is more to do with the caption. While there certainly can be/are amoral prosecutors, (unfairly IMO) an Amoral Attorney is most often a character that defends bad people for a high price to help them escape jail time and/or brings frivolous lawsuits to net their clients and themselves undeserved riches.

The problem is, is that the caption and the image give more of a sense of a Knight Templar Hanging Judge type that is at odds with the trope.

So, might I suggest something involving Saul Goodman of Breaking Bad, such as one of◊ these fictional advertisements?

There's also this cartoon◊, although I like the text far more than I like the image itself.

edited 1st Jan '14 4:48:38 PM by Hodor

Tropes Are Flexible. Amoral Attorney covers both corrupt defense attorneys and hanging prosecutors, so I don't see the problem here. Also, the suggestions don't really call my attention.

edited 1st Jan '14 5:03:32 PM by Elbruno

I agree that the trope is flexible, but almost all of the trope description and nearly all of the examples are about attorneys of the type I mentioned, rather than Hanging Judge prosecutors.

I don't think that's an accident- while a Hanging Judge type is definitely a bad person, they are in some respects the opposite of amoral- they are typically misguidedly overzealous.

I mean if a character is a prosecutor who deliberately convicts the innocent, they should be added to the page, but there's very few fictional examples of those- that's why I find the picture and caption ill suited to the page.

edited 1st Jan '14 5:13:17 PM by Hodor

Even if you aren't familiar with von Karma's character (that he's a hanging prosecutor vs a corrupt defense attorney), he still makes for a good image — he's a Man of Wealth and Taste, has an Obviously Evil face, and is in a courtroom. Much cleaner than the suggestions as well.

I suppose. Because of his style of dress, I get more of an evil aristocrat or corrupt judge vibe than I get Amoral Attorney.

Maybe there is some Values Dissonance here, as in the U.S., an Amoral Attorney is not going to be dressed like that- they'll either be wearing a tasteless suit (i.e. Saul Goodman) or will be very stylishly dressed (i.e. your typical "Evil Corporate Attorney")- they aren't going to look like a 19th century French aristocrat (i.e. the current page image).

The overall package makes this a strong Keep Until Better Image Suggested for me.

I'm on the same side of the fence. If the trope concerns both defence and prosecution, having one or the other as the page image doesn't really matter. If anything it's good to show that it can be the other side from what most seem to assume. Page images aren't about showing what you expect to see from a trope. It's much better to show what you don't expect, so you understand that Tropes Are Not Narrow.

I see absolutely nothing wrong with his style of dress, as far as the trope is concerned.

It definitely helps that von Karma always looked Obviously Evil, because this is skirting pretty close to JAFAAC; just on the side of Keep Until Better Image Suggested, but close.

I mean, yeah, it helps to know that he not only makes it his goal to have a perfect win record in court, putting all defendants in jail whether they deserve it or not, but (Ace Attorney 1 spoilers) in fact went out of his way to kill the defense attorney that caused von Karma's only penalty in his entire career, frame a bailiff who was trapped in an elevator with said defense attorney and his son (all unconscious from low air supply), raise the defense attorney's son as his own to become another prosecutor instead of a defense attorney, and then many years later, instructed the same bailiff, who was forced to plead insanity by his defense attorney, to murder that defense attorney, in such a way that he framed the earlier defense attorney's son - the one who's now a star prosecutor in this world - and then personally takes up prosecution of the case, knowing that even if the defendant (the son of the earlier defense attorney of the two) is found not guilty for the more recent murder and the true culprit (the bailiff) is found, the circumstances of the murder in that elevator so long ago have weighed heavily on the son's conscience and he'll try to confess for that murder, and either way everything will be neatly tied up for him... *pant* But you can't expect to convey all that in a single image any more than you can expect this picture of Sonic◊ to exemplify Super-Speed. The fact he's Obviously Evil and a Man of Wealth and Taste is good enough, at least, but I can see why others might be a little skeptical.

edited 3rd Jan '14 10:23:44 AM by ShadowHog

No, it would be more like having Sonic standing on a racetrack looking back on opponents running towards him.

He is standing in a courtroom. It's a lot different than that Sonic image.

Keep current. He's standing in a courtroom looking amoral and non-defendanty.

Strong Keep Until Better Image Suggested. He's in a courtroom and looks sinister, which means this is definitely not JAFAAC.

Keep, plainly. Getting your preferred result come hell or high water is what the trope is about, and the pose and facial expressions are strong as well.

Consensus is keep to Keep Until Better Image Suggested, so I think we can safely close this and move on.