How to have a character who crossed the MoralEventHorizon stay good

Exactly What It Says on the Tin.

If a heroic character has already knowingly crossed the event horizon, how do they stay heroic?

Uh... what.

That's like asking if water can stop being wet while still being water.

The Moral Event Horizon is the point at which it is no longer possible to sustain the appearance of heroism or morality or anything like that.

edited 8th May '15 8:25:25 AM by Night

What I mean here is if the hero/heroine considers something his/her moral event horizon (say, first-degree murder), and it actually is his/her MEH, but does it anyways because it's necessary (i.e. the victim is a Soul Jar for the villain and doesn't realize that status).

edited 8th May '15 8:45:21 AM by Bk-notburgerking

Well, you could simply cut off all their options for a better/more moral solution, leaving the "evil" choice as the only way out. And be sure to make it a desperate situation too, in which there is very little time to deliberate on a third option.

For example:

The protagonist of one of my stories was about to be run off the road by another driver because a group of villains was threatening her children by riding alongside of her car and pointing guns at them. The protagonist knew this but also knew he was very much in danger. So he did the most logical thing possible—he shot the driver of the other car and killed her, knowing that she was acting under duress but carrying out the act that would save his life.

He personally considers what he did an unforgivable act since he murdered an innocent person caught up in his battle, but he did it to save his own life, allowing him to somewhat rationalize it.

edited 8th May '15 10:13:22 AM by Swordofknowledge

That works

Hold on. So the kids are in the car with the woman who is doing the driving and are being threatened at gunpoint by villains in a third car and now the mother - the driver - is dead and the kids are in a car travelling at speed?

Personally, I'd be looking to Take a Third Option - especially since the villains' car is nearby.

Have the two cars collide?

It is not possible for anyone to cross a Moral Event Horizon and still stay heroic. Period. Full stop.

Point is, it is possible for someone to get into a situation when they are basically forced into making a choice that feels repugnant to them. This is what you mean. And this is covered by I Did What I Had to Do and Dirty Business, and a few other tropes as well.

Moral Event Horizon is the point where the character no longer feels those things repugnant, doesn't really care that they happen, and isn't heroic at all.

Here's an analogy, for easier understanding:

Let's say that you have the choice between explicitly sacrificing someone and risking (and the risk is unknown but high enough that you might even consider it a guarantee rather than just risk) that more people will die.

Not choosing at all is, in a way, the normal reaction.

Letting that person die is an I Did What I Had to Do thing.

Letting the person die and then killing the other group or groups of people (because "fuck, that annoyed you, having to choose made you sweat and now your shirt is ruined") is Moral Event Horizon.

You simply can't be considered a "good person" once you get to that point.

I mean the set-up - having to kill someone who is acting under duress is valid, but the mechanism is fraught with problems.

For a start, having the villains driving alongside her aiming guns at the kids is silly - all she has to do is jam on her brakes and the villains cease to be a problem: reaction time being what it is, and the speeds they're travelling at they wouldn't get a chance to shoot anyone in her car as they'd be in front and to the side of it before they realised what was happening.

She's already stopping/slowed and she can turn off before they react or - since the hero's aware of her plight, he can now help her.

Basically, she'd have to be as stupid as a Hollywood Scriptwriter or Director not to know that the best way to deal with a threat alongside you on the road is to hit the brakes.

Even if she didn't do that, if she's trying to run the hero off the road by the time-honoured Hollywank tactic of pulling alongside him and smashing into the side of his car, that means there are three cars side by side, one of which has armed goons trying to keep a bead on small targets inside a car that is weaving all over the place trying to hit another car (best of luck, guys).

All the hero has to do is hit the brakes, woman and villains go speeding past and the hero can then hit the accelerator and ram the arse of the villain's car - to really ruin their day.

You'd need a far more plausible set-up than that to have the woman acting under duress - e.g. kids are held hostage elsewhere and the woman is sent to kill the hero... but then how would the villains ensure she doesn't just go to the hero, explain the situation and let him deal with the villains and rescue her kids?

And again Kazeto nails it.

edited 8th May '15 12:53:43 PM by Wolf1066

You can't. You've missed the whole point of the Moral Event Horizon—it is the point of no return. The character can get worse from here on out, they can stay the same, but they can't come back. Ever.

Moral Event Horizon is one of the stupidest tropes. It's so subjective. What defines as point of no return? There isn't one. The trope pages might as well be labelled as "Villains Acting Like Villains".

Do you want to have an evil villain try to become a hero? Go for it. Don't let the parameters of some trope stop you.

I don't think that actually makes it stupid. Sure, its presence and thus also applicability to any specific case are ambiguous, but the concept itself is solid: it's the point where the character is simply no longer capable of coming across as sympathetic to what is supposed to be an average reader/viewer/player.

Darth Vader is a good example of this. He turned completely evil after he murdered his wife, but deep down there was still a teensy part of his heart that hadn't turned to frosty obsidian; and that was enough to redeem him in the end. Another example is from Dante's Inferno; where a Blood Knight was able to shed a Single Tear of remorse for his actions and ended up in Purgatory instead of the Plane of Wrath.

He was manipulated until he saw no other choice than to be evil, though, so he may or may not count.

Sure, he didn't seem very sympathetic back then, but in the end he did it to save Padme, and then later he was biding his time because he simply wasn't strong enough to defeat the one who got him into this mess. Which makes it hard to count him as irredeemably evil. Tragic, yes. A victim of his own feelings, yes. Monstrous, also yes.

So I don't count him as having crossed that particular horizon.

And that's really irrelevant to most people by the point he walks into Jedi school and starts lightsabering kids. By then few will care for his motives; nothing could justify this.

The Moral Event Horizon is the point where Hanlon's Razor and Ambar's Law collide; sufficiently advanced incompetence has become indistinguishable from malice and sufficiently advanced crazy has become indistinguishable from evil. It is at the point where "why?" has ceased to have relevance unless it's part of answering "how do we find this guy and make sure he stays locked up or dead?"

edited 21st May '15 7:04:25 AM by Night

That is true, many people won't care, but then again, it is a trope that deals with how people perceive something so it is very much subjective. And even then, simple incompetence that comes so close to being malice in appearance that people see it as such won't do. You can be incompetent or evil without crossing the Moral Event Horizon. It's the "why" of your actions that matters, not the "what".

Also, according to the "Playing With" thing, that particular case counts as a subversion. And it wouldn't be the first subversion to be seen as it having been played straight by many people, this trope or otherwise.

edited 21st May '15 7:37:47 AM by Kazeto

Bu that's it; the Moral Event Horizon is crossed when the "why" ceases to be a factor; when the reason (s)he did it can no longer mitigate or justify what they did. If "Why" can still afffect how sympathetic the character is, they haven't crossed the Moral Event Horizon.

Just difference in opinion, really. For me, the "why" matters. For you, it doesn't. There are people for whom it does, and people for whom it doesn't.

For me, a "why" that amounts to "he was fairly broken to begin with, and emotionally manipulated by the big bad into being evil via using his fear and insecurities, even though he never actually intended to be evil" is an acceptable "why". For some other people, that's still inexcusable.

Mind you, I am not saying that "oh, Vader was good and misunderstood and blah blah blah". I am well aware that he isn't without fault there and he is still very much an ass. But for me, for whom the intent, the "why" of it, matters, he is not a monster that he is to some others. A villain, yes, but a tragic one, and if he is irredeemable then it is because he became apathetic to any possibility of redeeming himself after realising how badly he broke things (a classic "I don't deserve redemption" case), which ultimately does mark him as someone who is not yet far enough gone to recognise that he is not a good person because of the bad things being done and feel bad about it. And that is a sign that he has yet to cross this line.

Others, of course, are free to disagree and interpret it however they want. But that's their interpretation that they will use. I am sticking to mine.

edited 21st May '15 9:31:31 AM by Kazeto

This forum should honestly be about "how to have a character who did something very bad stay good". Moral Event Horizon, as a trope, excludes the concept of a character becoming good again.

Yes.

I don't think your post addresses Madrugada's point.

It doesn't. The point that's sailing comfortably over your head, Kazeto, is that the Moral Event Horizion represents the action or even the intent of no return. It is the stage at which justification is no longer possible.

Your arguments that "why matters!" don't contradict the idea that there is a point where why matters only in the sense of giving a jury a plausible motive so they'll convict someone. It's not a question of why not mattering literally; it's a question of why not mattering in a moral sense, of there being no possible excuse or explanation that can absolve someone morally of the action.

edited 21st May '15 8:05:22 PM by Night

My argument over why the "why" matters is that there might be circumstances that effectively cause the character to do something very very bad but do not cause the person to cross the Moral Event Horizon. So I'm not the one over whose head the point flies.

Madrugada became that person by stating that it's when the "why" ceases to matter. Because the description of the trope itself and its "Playing With" sub-page and the examples, beg to differ with what he wrote.

If you prefer, I could instead reply with something along the lines of "the trope page says that what you say is bullshit, so either the trope page is incorrect and effing change it or shut up", but I am trying to be polite because I am aware that people tend to see the same thing differently. But what's on the page for that particular trope does support what I said, not what Madrugada said. So either do change the trope page and the examples that would get changed by that change, or reread it and pay attention to what is written there exactly.

Because, as some of you already wrote, this trope is "the point at which it is no longer possible to sustain the appearance of heroism or morality or anything like that", which is different from "the point where the character does something very bad", and though there might be overlap and more likely than not will be, there does not have to be.

edited 22nd May '15 7:09:08 AM by Kazeto

Parachuting to the end of the thread

MILD SPOILERS for Deep Space Nine: (if you don't want to be spoiled, skip to the next post)

To solve a problem with the Dominon War Arc, Capt. Ben Sisko has to do some morally questionable things to get it done.

He has sinned against the principles of The Federation and the monologue is his confession as much as it's the station log.

edited 8th Jun '15 10:15:25 PM by TairaMai

What was that all about?

• It's not the act, it's what comes after. A Moral Event Horizon isn't an explosion you just coolly walk away from. It should shake the character to her/his core.

• The act itself should be so repugnant that either: Bad Guys Do the Dirty Work or the hero(ine) should have lot's of doubt.
  • A Simple Plan: this is a good way to get the hero(ine) out of the comfort zone and into shady dealings in back alleys with guys named "Nikki the Stabby Knife Nut".

• The Goodie is going to be haunted by the Baddie's death. Again, this isn't something the hero(ine) is going to walk off. Nightmares, anxiety, being wracked with guilt over the brutal Cutting the Knot.