Misused: Moral Dissonance

To-do list:

• Move wicks to a trope listed on the Moral Dissonance disambiguation page if they fit, and remove them if they don't. For reference purposes, here's the list of tropes on the disambiguation page:
  • Batman Grabs a Gun: A good guy makes an exception to their moral code treated as O.O.C. Is Serious Business.
  • Became Their Own Antithesis: A character embodies the very thing that their previous moral code stood against.
  • Broken Aesop: The work breaks their own moral message by having its narrative conflict resolved by the very thing it preaches against.
  • Designated Hero: The work portrays the character as a paragon of virtue when their actions are anything but heroic.
  • Designated Villain: The work portrays the character as reprehensible, even though they don't do anything that warrants that label.
  • Hypocrite: The character preaches one thing and acts in a way that contradicts it.
  • Jerkass Ball: Someone acts uncharacteristically cruel or selfish for the sake of enabling Conflict.
  • Out-of-Character Moment: A moment when character acts in a way contradictory to their usual morality.
  • Karma Houdini: When a character don't get punished for their reprehensible actions.
  • Moral Myopia: A character is portrayed as unsympathetic/morally wrong for not holding themselves to their own stated morality.
  • Protagonist-Centered Morality: The protagonist is subject to different moral standards than other characters.
  • Unintentionally Unsympathetic: When a character is intended to be seen as sympathetic but the audience doesn't think they are.
  • Values Dissonance: What is totally acceptable or even applauded for in a particular culture might be seen as reprehensible by other cultural standards.
  • What the Hell, Hero?: A good guy is called out by in-work characters for failing to live up to their moral code.

Edited by GastonRabbit on May 16th 2022 at 5:55:49 AM

Opening.

It seems many take this as a moral misalignment between the character's morals and the audience's. It may help to have "hypocrisy" somewhere in the trope name.

Btw, what's the difference between Moral Dissonance and Designated Hero? Is it in degree? Why is one a trope and the other YMMV?

Honestly, I think the current definition of Moral Dissonance is overly narrow and specific, and the name sounds too similar to Moral Myopia. The definition is also inherently negative (i.e. the character gets away with being a Hypocrite), which can attract complaining even if the specific events can be observed objectively.

I guess the difference is that in Moral Dissonance, the character doesn't have to be portrayed as The Hero, although MD has been used to shoehorn complaining about a character's moral failings when they cannot qualify for DH one way or another.

But yeah, the issue is that Moral Dissonance is when the characters break a moral code they themselves establish (e.g. Alice states that jaywalking is wrong, but later jaywalks while being in a hurry and is not called out for it), but since in fiction people don't always explicitly define their moral code, audience project their own moral code to the characters — especially if they're supposed to be heroic (e.g. the audience thinks that a hero must ascribe to the Thou Shalt Not Kill rule) — and go on a fit when the characters break that rule without being called out for it, even if the characters themselves never explicitly claim to be against, say, justified killing, in the first place.

Edited by Adept on Dec 9th 2021 at 4:58:01 PM

We tend to use dissonance in trope titles to refer to audience reactions; this trope is an exception, but it looks like people assume the dissonance is supposed to be between character and audience than between character's rhetoric and character's actions. I suggest it be renamed to something like Moral Inconsistency.

You know, I'm not sure this trope can be saved in a way that doesn't attract complaining. I'm not even arguing for a cut, some tropes just attract a lot of complaining and there's not much we can do.

Moral Inconsistency could be a good title. It would at least help with the misuse, which is the main reason this trope is TRS-worthy.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Dec 9th 2021 at 9:38:49 AM

How do you even trope something like this? Its taking alot of assumptions if theirs no established rule to break. Especially since alot of works have gray morality.

It's difficult to trope if part of it is "no one calls them on it" and looks like a weird cross between Karma Houdini, Designated Hero, Hypocrite, and maybe Became Their Own Antithesis.

...which is to say, I think we have a lot of tropes to cover this already.

Well if people want to cut it, here's the inbounds:

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Dec 9th 2021 at 10:02:12 AM

If we want to preserve inbounds maybe we can disambiguate it. It could include Designated Hero, Designated Villain, Hypocrite, Moral Myopia, and Moral Inconsistency if we have enough examples to spin a new trope about it.

I'm in favor of a disambig into the above tropes (add Became Their Own Antithesis), minus a new one (Moral Inconsistency). I don't think a new trope needs to be spun out since the above seem to cover the range of variations well

Edited by amathieu13 on Dec 9th 2021 at 10:44:57 AM

Surely this trope should be YMMV only. I can't see any way for it to be objective

1. This is 100% YMMV
2. The current name is ripe for confusion with Moral Dissonance
3. I like the idea of disambiguating this one
4. If we decide to keep the idea, but rename it, maybe Fridge Hypocrisy, and In-Universe examples are Moral Myopia?

Edited by ANonagon9 on Dec 9th 2021 at 2:08:56 PM

I'm still not totally sure if this is YMMV. The trope of "the protagonist having a Double Standard the work fails to address" is something you can say objectively happens even if it's usually not intentional.

Just to be clear, but Soundtrack Dissonance also isn't YMMV, despite having "Dissonance" in the title (there it's between situations and music). I feel like this may also be objective, and I wouldn't be opposed to disambiguating.

Edited by Piterpicher on Dec 9th 2021 at 8:16:58 PM

I mean yeah let's remember that objective stuff isn't always intentional. For instance, humans don't intend to die (usually) but it is still something that objectively happens, or basically, with any mistake you can make.

I don't like the idea of moving to YMMV, because I think that might encourage even more complaining.

Hypocrite has some of the same issues. I vaguely recall some chatter that it could/should be restricted to cases where the hypocrisy is pointed out, an approach that might work here. If we decide this is at all keepworthy, a tightening and a rename to something like Against The Moral Code might help.

I also agree that without attention called to the dissonance by the narrative it seems like nitpicking or (as mentioned) Designated Hero judgement.

...Except that we're talking about fiction. Creators don't "accidentally" kill off characters.

And again, Ordeaux, let's please not bog this down in the "unintentional trope" debate before we even discuss that issue in detail. Right now that's just your opinion and one a lot of people disagree with, so you can't use it as any real argument as though it's objectively the "correct" answer. This is why I keep asking you to just make a thread about the concept so we can actually discuss in depth. Right now, whether or not a trope has to be done intentionally is controversial at best and from the ATT debate I remember that most people agreed they do have to be intentional.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 9th 2021 at 2:24:57 PM

Wouldn't the debate be important though as this is one of the tropes that kind of blurs the line between that? I do understand you not wanting that but I do feel it is important if people do think that tropes need to be intentional that is fine but my opinion remains the same. I wasn't trying to say that my opinion was objective I was saying things in real life can objectively happen well not being intentional which is true.

The issue is that you're conflating real life with storytelling. A creator can certainly do something by accident, but whether or not that thing is a trope has always been unclear. But if these things do count as tropes, then a bunch of YMMV concepts would beg to differ.

My issue is that if we discuss this elsewhere first we can come to consensus on the issue and apply it, instead of having this back and forth every time a trope like this is discussed. That's why I've been asking for a broader discussion since the ATT discussion.

To me, It's sort of like if we'd never actually decided that ZCE were bad, and then having to debate over the ZCE examples in every cleanup thread. At a certain point, we either just need to accept that there's no consensus and stop arguing about that one particular issue, or address it and figure out a rule everyone understands going forward.

Edited by WarJay77 on Dec 9th 2021 at 2:38:06 PM

Alright In that case I started a separate thread for that.

Sorry for the double post but I wanted to respond to this and nobody else is posting. When it comes to Sync's idea I can see where she is coming from but I am thinking that might make the trope too similar to Hypocrite.

Hypocrite itself might need TRS honestly. I was sure that the actions being called out in-universe was a requirement until someone pointed out that, no, it wasn't. So we need to talk about that separately some day.

If we get rid of this, disambiguating would be preferable over completely cutting it.

That said, I haven't decided how to vote yet. I'm just saying this because of what was discussed regarding inbounds and the concept possibly being covered elsewhere.

I'd still prefer it being YMMV with Hypocrite then being turned into the in-universe counterpart.