Moral Event Horizon cleanup

Sure I will take it there.

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

~Imperial Majesty XO, I cut the MEH pages after discussing every example individually on the cleanup threads. If you look at those discussions, you'll see that none of them count on the new criteria. Most of them barely counted under the old criteria.

The reason the Radar pages were archived is because we didn't really have another place to put the examples before we made Demographically Inappropriate Humour. Not sure if we have a similar situation with MEH, or if there's even enough work-specific subpages that we need to archive everything. Like, power to you to archive these, but also don't go nuts if we end up cutting things after discussion.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

From YMMV.My Hero Academia:

• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Shigaraki crossed the horizon during the USJ Arc when he tried to kill the U.A. students in an attempt to lure All Might out.
  • Stain crosses it in his introduction when he attacks Tensei Iida and permanently cripples him. Despite Stain's claims that he only went after heroes that don't adhere to All Might's ideals, several scenes reveal that Tensei was a Nice Guy.
  • Muscular already crossed it when he beat the hero team Water Hose, Kota's parents, to death for fun. And Muscular wants to do that to everybody he beats up. It's also implied that the villain tortured Water Hose before he killed them For the Evulz.
  • All For One crossed it when he killed Nana Shimura, All Might's predecessor, and then took her grandson to train him to be his successor.
  • Overhaul's horrifying treatment of Eri cements him as true evil: in order to produce his Quirk erasing bullets, he repeatedly used his Quirk to disintegrate her, extract her blood, then reassemble her, a process which is described as extremely painful and left Eri traumatized.
  • Skeptic of the Meta Liberation Army's attempt to "recruit" Twice, by to using his puppet-making Quirk to psychologically torture him over his severe issues from an incident where his own doubling powers went horribly wrong. His attempt comes down to creating puppets that look like Twice, having some of them hold him down and have others try to kill Toga in front of him, and breaking Twice's arms when he tries to stop them.

All of these were introduced as villains and don't undergo much of a change in portrayal, at least from what I remember (my memory is not the best, so maybe I'm wrong about some of them).

Well, I've built up to this long enough: YMMV.Bo Jack Horseman. Spoilers ahead!

Edited by mightymewtron on Jan 11th 2021 at 9:56:28 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

I've commented on the Tarkin of Star Wars example in the other thread.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Should President Shinra from Final Fantasy VII be cut under the new criteria as it says that it makes a change in the character and the next time you see Shinra, he's got Sephiroth's sword sticking out of him.

Personally I think none of the current examples sans Sephiroth fit because most of these characters die when you see them again. And the Turks? They're just hired goons doing dirty work.

Does anybody have feedback on my Bojack review from a few posts up?

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

I agree with all of it, especially the part of Beatrice and Butterscotch starting off as shitty people from the start (who lets their under 19 son smoke when it's clear it fucks up their minds?) and BoJack's MEH as well. I'll cap off the adult shows with Simpsons in a bit.

Edited by Klavice on Jan 15th 2021 at 3:51:43 AM

We may want to slow down a little bit. The whole "Change In Portrayal" rule is being contested again back at the TRS thread. Some things we remove here might not end up being misuse after all.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I will remove some of the definite ones though, like Princess Carolyn and Beatrice and Butterscotch. They fail the criteria that I think we're certain about (the former is mostly treated sympathetically and that particular act never even comes up again, and the latter isn't even an "act").

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Yeah, go ahead.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Time to be a Family Guy.

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Criteria that the ones in the Cut folder fail:

• The deed marks a change in the portrayal of the character. Almost none of their portrayals ever permanently changed.
• The deed is outstandingly evil by the standards of the story. Even the rapes fail this because there's 3 rape examples in the folder, and there's way more rape (attempts) in the show than the ones listed here.
• Those crossing the MEH need to retain presence / agency in the story long enough for the MEH to affect their portrayal. Only applicable to the first one.
• Only applies to individuals not groups (unless small enough to judge each member individually) as groups lack individual moral agency and its individuals can vary in it. Only applicable to the last 2.
• The deed must be played seriously and not comedically. Yeah, nearly all of them are Played for Laughs.
• Must be intentional by the narrative and only applies to intentional villains (if they weren't clearly intended as clear-cut villains before crossing they are afterward). With a show like Family Guy, I don't think any of these were intentional, except for maybe Jeff's.

By the way, some of these characters are also portrayed as good people after their misdeeds, showing that their evil wasn't permanent.

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Next things on my list are MoralEventHorizon.Game Of Thrones and MoralEventHorizon.Pokemon. Feel free to steal these topics from me if you want—the only thing that matters is the examples being reviewed, not who brings them up.

Deleted.

We've decided that groups can't cross it under the new criteria.

Edited by Kevjro7 on Jan 15th 2021 at 8:06:22 AM

One thing I can probably cut from the Pokemon folder is that it lists the unknown grunt that killed Marowak in the first game, which fails the agency criteria because we don't know which specific grunt it was. But it might mark the moment we take Team Rocket more seriously? IDK...

Edited by mightymewtron on Jan 15th 2021 at 10:57:35 AM

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

I'm not sure an entire group can collectively cross the MEH. With groups like that you get into issues like mob mentality, peer-pressure, and the hierarchy.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I removed the Marowak ghost example from the games section too, because it was already removed from the manga.

Also, the example on Cyrus doesn't really seem like a good example. It states his Evil Plan, but that's not an event per se. The last sentence starts to mention his irredeemable acts, but doesn't fully explain them. I'd expand that sentence and cut the rest.

The SIMPSOOOOOONS Cleanup.

• Sideshow Bob in all of his appearances tried to kill Bart, as well as committing other villainous acts such as in "Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming", when he tries to atom-bomb the entire city just so he can get rid of television. But he finally crosses the line in "Funeral for a Fiend" when he decides to get people to hate Bart while he's on trial, fake his death, and, with the help of his whole family, burn Bart alive in a coffin being pushed into a furnace. Fortunately, he is caught and is sentenced to 87 years in prison along with the rest of his family. Strangely, the earlier episode where he hypnotized Bart into being a suicide bomber had him sentenced to death at the end but the sentence wasn't carried out with no explanation why.
  • Even before that, he crossed it in his second appearance. While his first crime can be justified by his shabby treatment by Krusty being a mockery of everything he believed children's entertainment should be, his second appearance has him use Selma as a ticket out of prison and then cutting off the loose end by murdering her on their honeymoon. Unlike Krusty, Selma hadn't done a single thing wrong to him and was just a lonely, if abrasive, woman. And this was before he tried to kill Bart, who he at least had a reason to hold a grudge against.

Cut both. The second is invalid because Bob gets sympathetic traits later on, and the first... I'm sorry. I cannot in good faith keep a man who has a Black Comedy Death Montage in the episode where he kills Bart. Plus, Bob fails moral agency by being too batshit insane.

• The Preschool Teacher's treatment of Bart, as seen in "Lisa's Sax". SHE IS THE REASON why Bart is Bart today. What makes it worse is that Bart was just 5 years old and her actions made Bart actually consider suicide. The teacher basically wrote off Bart as a lost cause because he didn't catch on to things as quickly as the other kids:
  Bart: (singing) B-I-*clap*-*clap*-*clap*-O and Bingo was his name-o.
  Teacher: (writing on a clip board) Extra clap; not college material.
  • Case in point "I Married Marge" showed Bart setting fire to Homer's tie at only six minutes old, and "War of the Simpsons" had Bart try to run over his babysitter with the family car. On top of that, "Lisa the Simpson" reveals that Bart actually was a smart student until the Simpson gene made him dumb, and other episodes like "Bart Gets an F" and "A Test Before Trying" show that Bart can be smart when the plot calls for it). ^{Fortunately...} The kindergarten teacher who appeared on "Sideshow Bob Roberts" when Bart is forced to repeat kindergarten as per Sideshow Bob's mayoral order isn't the same one from "Lisa's Sax," meaning that the one from "Lisa's Sax" either quit her job, retired, was fired, or was let go due to the school's many budget cuts.

Mmm... Not feeling this either. For one, other episodes retcon this and make Bart a little hellion from Day one. And she is introduced this way.

• In "Separate Vocations", Snake tries to run over Bart when he's with Eddie and Lou in a ride along. In “Realty Bites,” meanwhile Snake attempts to brutally decapitate, and later simply snap the neck of Homer for the great crime of legally buying his repossessed convertible, Lil’ Bandit.

Snake is a Jerkass Woobie with redeeming traits, and the first was his Establishing Character Moment, while the second was played for laughs.

• In "The Crepes of Wrath", Bart is treated like a slave by two mean winemakers in France. At first, this is amusing, as we see Bart get what's coming to him for his brattiness. However, it fades when you see Bart sleeping with nothing but a blanket after reading a letter from his mother as the abuse he is suffering begins to sink in. When the winemakers finally force Bart to drink wine doctored with antifreeze, putting him in real danger of being killed or blinded, the winemakers cross the line and all your sympathy goes to Bart, which makes his eventual escape and revenge all so sweet.

As much as it pains me to do this, cut. Their ECM is forcing Bart to drink the antifreeze and they are one shots.

• Cecil Terwilliger absolutely crosses this in his first appearance, "Brother from Another Series". He conned his way into building a dam, cut back on the building materials to embezzle the funds, and then tried to kill Bart, Lisa, and his own brother in an attempt to blow up the dam, and the dam floods the town anyway because of the lackluster construction. The only reason no one was killed was because the universe dips into cartoon physics at that point. Cecil doesn't even try to hide behind a Freudian Excuse. When Bob confronts him for Bob's role in stealing Cecil's dream of being Krusty's sidekick, Cecil makes an offhand remark how that might factor into it, but proudly declares he did it for the money.

This is a maybe. Do we keep people who are clearly insane?

• Joe LaBoot from "The Boys of Bummer" crosses the line when he starts to encourage the rest of the people to harass Bart into the Despair Event Horizon (after pretending to be sympathetic towards Bart so he would tell his side of the story). Worse still, not only is LaBoot a massive hypocrite who made the same mistake that Bart did, but it is implied that other children were also attacked before with similar results, giving LaBoot a body count.

Offstage Villainy does not count see also when he tries to catch Bart when Bart tries to kill himself.

• In The Simpsons Movie, Russ Cargill crosses it when he tricks President Schwarzenegger into authorizing the fiery destruction and total obliteration of Springfield. Cargill knew damn well what the options were that he gave the President, and even manipulated him into choosing the Nuke 'em option.

One Shot, and Cargill is a disturbing but actual Well-Intentioned Extremist.

Edited by Klavice on Jan 16th 2021 at 1:04:31 AM

I don't think we disqualify insanity, do we? If somebody's insane, that doesn't mean they're by default prone to redemption, as opposed to a temporary state like Brainwashed and Crazy.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Regarding Cesar and Ugolin, the part where they force Bart to drink wine laced with antifreeze happens in the third act of the episode, so it's not really an Establishing Character Moment.

They're also not really one-shots, since they had a prominent role in at least one other episode. I haven't seen that episode, so I don't know if that depiction carries over with them.

Well, over on the CM cleanup thread, we only disqualify insane characters if they're considered too crazy to have agency. Not sure if we should apply similar restrictions here, considering this is about the character's actions rather than the character themselves.

Yes, I've said before I do not want this to become Complete Monster. The character can be crazy but what matters is they chose to do a certain horrible action.

I do some cleanup and then I enjoy shows you probably think are cringe.

Well, we did establish the criteria that they must have moral agency. The issue with insanity is that it can blur moral agency- the character might legitimately not know they crossed a line.

Currently Working On: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Alright then, we can probably cut the page and move Cesar and Ugolin, Sideshow Bob (at least the Funeral for a Fiend moment, as he is no longer sympathetic then, if we keep Cartman we might as well keep Bob as both have similar issues only Eric is arguably worse), and Cecil Terwilliger to YMMV.The Simpsons.

If anyone is wondering, Mr. Burns' character is too inconsistent to count. One minute he's a vile hate filled dog kicker, and another he's Affably Evil at worst and a misguided anti villain at best.

Edited by Klavice on Jan 19th 2021 at 5:37:59 AM

~~Klavice, Russ Cargill is not a One-Shot character as he appeared in the movie adaptation if we were to say that he was a One-Shot character than we would need to remove every entry from a villain who has only appeared in one movie. Also when was it decided that One-Shot characters were not allowed I can't find it in the new criteria or any of the discussions. As for the Well-Intentioned Extremist stuff it was said that MEH crosses can still have sympathetic traits.

CM Sandboxes, MB Sandboxes

Alright. We can keep Cargill.

So that's 4 for the Simpsons. Unless anyone else has input on the Preschool Teacher and Joe.

It's been a week. Can someone please give me some feedback here for the examples in the "Uncertain" folder?