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The craziest idea ever: Reconstructing Black and White Morality.

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HandsomeRob Leader of the Holey Brotherhood from The land of broken records Since: Jan, 2015
Leader of the Holey Brotherhood
#1: Apr 11th 2012 at 7:46:18 PM

The title says it all. It really does.

Now, most of us consider this trope to be full of crap. No-one believes in Black-and-White Morality, stories that use it are usually kiddie fare, and characters that believe in it outside of said Kids stories are usually Wide-Eyed Idealist types who end up suffering from Black-and-White Insanity.

The best you can hope for is White-and-Grey Morality, and even then you'll end up with Black-and-Grey Morality.

But I was wondering, is it possible to play Black-and-White Morality straight outside of a kids story; Is it possible to Reconstruct this trope, and if so, how?

I just think it's an interesting idea, so Discuss.

edited 11th Apr '12 8:16:01 PM by HandsomeRob

One Strip! One Strip!
#2: Apr 11th 2012 at 8:13:01 PM

One of the few places you could make that work would be in stuff with religious themes, God vs Satan and such scenarios. Bring in too many other characters and it tends to fall apart.

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HandsomeRob Leader of the Holey Brotherhood from The land of broken records Since: Jan, 2015
Exelixi Lesbarian from Alchemist's workshop Since: Sep, 2011 Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Lesbarian
#4: Apr 11th 2012 at 8:19:38 PM

Maybe in a setting where evil- pure, unadulterated evil- is a natural (or supernatural) force, and morality is only defined by the wil to oppose evil.

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-
#5: Apr 11th 2012 at 8:24:33 PM

[up] The converse of that is basically Christian theology.

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TBeholder Our future is a madhouse from chthonic safety Since: Jan, 2001
Our future is a madhouse
#6: Apr 12th 2012 at 9:33:15 AM

Exelixi> Maybe in a setting where evil- pure, unadulterated evil- is a natural (or supernatural) force, and morality is only defined by the wil to oppose evil.

There already is such a thing. Not even counting HP Lovecraft and following.

I prefer to call it "Antisatanism". The main message tend to be that Catholic priests say Satanic prayers (which is, of course, reverse Catholic prayers) backwards to backmask them, or something equally amusing to the same end. evil grin E.g. Running Wild isn't far from this.

Optionally, add something astrally new-age'y. At least one Ancient Conspiracy seems to be a necessary accessory either way.

...And even I make no pretense Of having more than common sense - R.W.Wood
ThatOneGuyNamedX Since: Aug, 2011 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#7: Apr 12th 2012 at 9:42:23 AM

You'd have to indulge a whole lot into why a person would be wilfully evil, to the point of deciding that his actions are unforgivably evil and he's OK with that, without making him insane or zealous towards a cause, nor sympathetic.

The easiest way of doing this is by having said character be parasitically evil, as in, feeding off this sort of thing. Like Parallax in The DCU, only that Parallax pretty much depends on that. Then again, "needing" evil to survive would still make him somewhat justify his issues.

See, making a realistic portrayal of a truly evil character without making him bat shit crazy is tough. For it to be Black-and-White Morality, you'd need to be absolutely unable to sympathize with said character, at all, so mental illness, tragic pasts, or other such things are off the table.

The problem is, people don't wake up and morning and decided to burn cats For the Evulz, everyone had a motivation that you can relate to, even if that is insanity, you can say "well, he's a sick man. If he had help..." or something like that. Heck, even Adolf Hitler *

had a motive behind his goals. And most importantly, he thought he was doing good.

In any realistic setting, I don't see it working, at all. No matter how much of a monster a character is, normally he has some sort of trait he's working on.

The only real instance of a character doing things For the Evulz that wasn't inspired by tragedy or insanity I can think off right off the top of my head would be Terumi from the Blaz Blue games. Too bad that game is Black-and-Gray Morality.

edited 12th Apr '12 9:42:45 AM by ThatOneGuyNamedX

Xandriel Dark Magical Girl Since: Nov, 2010
#8: Apr 12th 2012 at 11:15:51 AM

Maybe it could be set in a dimension that only the "pure of heart" can enter - meaning either pure good or pure evil.

What's the point in giving up when you know you'll never stop anyway?
ThatOneGuyNamedX Since: Aug, 2011 Relationship Status: Drift compatible
#9: Apr 12th 2012 at 11:17:37 AM

That wouldn't quite work. No one is pure of heart. The idea of reconstructing it would be to make it believable, or at the very least, not child-like.

Fluid Since: Jan, 2001
#10: Apr 12th 2012 at 11:19:00 AM

Having a reasonable motive doesn't necessarily exclude someone from being evil. Would require quite a bit of ethical calculus to make the idea work, though.

Also, I kinda liked the discussions in Kingdom Come on this subject. No justifications for complete black-and-white morality, but at the same time anti-heroes are often portrayed as morally lazy, not particularly bothering with doing (or finding out) what is fundamentally just.

edited 12th Apr '12 11:29:11 AM by Fluid

Carciofus Is that cake frosting? from Alpha Tucanae I Since: May, 2010
Is that cake frosting?
#11: Apr 12th 2012 at 12:36:07 PM

I could see this working in a science fiction setting. Let us suppose that people perfected biological immortality and the technology to modify human minds. Over the centuries, people have starting to tweak their own memories and attitudes — remove a bad memory here, weaken the ability to feel regret there, and so on.

Eventually, two groups developed:

The Big Goods, who tweaked themselves for maximum empathy, a total dislike for violence except in the most extreme of circumstances, and so on;

The Big Bads, who removed all of the human instincts geared towards empathy and so on in order to maximize their independence and ability to feel pleasure.

The two "groups" are more diverse than this, of course — two Big Goods can have very different psychological makeups, and so can two Big Bads — and due to the world being a post-scarcity place, there is no real reason for the two groups to enter in conflict most of the time.

That is, until all the technology which supports that insanely advanced civilization start failing for some unknown reason...

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
Exelixi Lesbarian from Alchemist's workshop Since: Sep, 2011 Relationship Status: Armed with the Power of Love
Lesbarian
#12: Apr 12th 2012 at 4:40:46 PM

[up]The bad guys would win, there.

Mura: -flips the bird to veterinary science with one hand and Euclidean geometry with the other-
Carciofus Is that cake frosting? from Alpha Tucanae I Since: May, 2010
Is that cake frosting?
#13: Apr 12th 2012 at 10:55:22 PM

Yes, they have a huge advantage.

But that's a common feature of Black-and-White Morality stories, I think: the bad guys are overwhelmingly more powerful, and should be able to win without much difficulty, but the good guys eventually triumph through a combination of The Power of Friendship, Evil Cannot Comprehend Good and sheer luck.

The Lord Of The Rings would be less interesting if at the beginning Gandalf had had an army and magical powers to match Sauron's, I think...

Hm, off the top of my mind, I cannot recall any Black-and-White Morality tale in which the bad guys win and all the good guys' actions are in vain. Nineteen Eighty Four, perhaps, but I don't know if I would describe it as "Black and White Morality"...

edited 12th Apr '12 10:56:55 PM by Carciofus

But they seem to know where they are going, the ones who walk away from Omelas.
feotakahari Fuzzy Orange Doomsayer from Looking out at the city Since: Sep, 2009
Fuzzy Orange Doomsayer
#14: Apr 13th 2012 at 4:39:25 PM

^ Frequently, when the bad guys win, it's through showing how bad the good guys really are. (Case in point: Overlord.)

On-topic, you can't do it. Even a setting with objective morality will have subjective morality that runs contrary to it. (For instance, if your setting has "evil" actions that damage the soul, you'll still have a few people committing those actions to prevent far worse evils. At worst, they'll just kill themselves afterwards to prevent their corruption from spreading.)

That's Feo . . . He's a disgusting, mysoginistic, paedophilic asshat who moonlights as a shitty writer—Something Awful
randomtropeloser Since: Jan, 2001
#15: Apr 13th 2012 at 4:58:39 PM

I think having a story with objective, clearly defined morality would be easy enough to do well, but having characters who make choices that completely align with either end of the spectrum would be unbelievable and boring.

doomsday524 (4 Score & 7 Years Ago) Relationship Status: Oh my word! I'm gay!
#16: Apr 17th 2012 at 1:27:16 PM

It's entirely plausible, yes. There are good, virtuous people, and there are some people that are absolutely vile. As a reference point, there's many an Author Tract that's supposedly aimed at adults where the 'heroes' are Incorruptible Pure Pureness and the target the author doesn't like (say, corporations or southern religious people) are pure evil. But on a more mature note than that, it's very easy to find real life examples of the Complete Monster. Take Adolf Hitler, Josef Fritzl, Joseph Stalin, Joseph Mengele, Charles Manson, or Osama Bin Laden. A lot of works aimed at adults have good guys that, even if not entirely idealistic, do the right thing and bad guys that are very evil. There's nothing "immature" about it.

I like a work that has characters that showcase the entire spectrum from very good to very evil.

edited 17th Apr '12 1:49:56 PM by doomsday524

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