Moral Event Horizon cleanup

If someone can make a good case that a character's later act qualifies as a MEH I would be willing to list that instead but I would agree that generally, the first one is likely the one that should be listed.

Well in that EP, I ended up covering two of the other three listed MEH points for him. The only one I didn't cover is when he kills the Yotsuba Group, but I didn't mention it because a.) it doesn't stand out at all in this universe, b.) him burning his girlfriend to death is infinitely worse, and c.) the shift in story happened way before that point.

The other two were killing Lind L. Tailor and the FBI agents, which established his pettiness but didn't cause a narrative shift, and killing his girlfriend Takada, where I established that the shift had already occurred. I did it quietly, but that kinda shows how we could theoretically cover multiple potential MEH points at once.

So does it look like we're going with an EP plan?

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Apr 19th 2021 at 7:17:44 AM

Sounds like it.

I'll whip up mine in a minute.

I'm still a bit confused about something will we have this be like CM and MB where people need to come to this thread to list examples or not?

What is the work?

A 2016 dystopian novel called Flawed and the sequel, Perfect. The book is about a society where people live pretty comfortably and society is functioning smoothly...with a catch. In this society, being judged as "Flawed" is a literally punishable act, and turns people into second-class citizens with minimal rights and brands to identify them. Where they're branded is indicative of their flaw, and two brands isn't very uncommon.

The protagonist, Celestine, of course ends up being branded as Flawed- and by none other than her boyfriend's father, Bosco Crevan. His branding of Celestine is the act in question.

What is the act?

Relatively early in the book, Celestine helps a Flawed man on a bus and is taken into custody of Crevan's guild, who operate the whole "Flawed" system. Crevan initially tries to help her out and gives her instructions on what to say at her trial. When she goes off script, he goes ballistic- and announces that she's getting all 5 possible brands for being impossibly flawed.

Now, when she's taken to her branding chamber, Crevan overlooks the entire process. He coldly orders the branders to continue to give her multiple brands, even as the anesthesia is wearing off. Then he takes it a step further and insists they brand her on her spine- which is a place brands aren't even intended to be placed, after she already got five of them, and after she's able to feel pain again. When the branders refuse to go through with it, Crevan takes things into his own hands and brands her spine personally.

How was he portrayed before/after the act?

Before the act, Crevan was shown to be a pretty strict and powerful person, but he was humanized by Celestine's relationship with his son. He had some lines here and there revealing just how much he hated the Flawed and how cruel he could be, but he wasn't portrayed as an outright villain until the branding scene.

After that, he was cemented as the Big Bad of the series. Celestine was afraid of him, as well as several other characters. The footage of the branding is considered so horrific in-universe that he systemically gets rid of anyone who knows about her sixth brand or who saw the branding first-hand, and he's shown going out of his way to torment Celestine and the other Flawed characters. Though he has many moments of cruelty throughout the two books, this act is the one that kick-starts it all and sets him on the path to villainy. He goes from being a strict-but-human character to someone who wants nothing more than to utterly ruin Celestine's life.

That said, Crevan's not a Complete Monster by any stretch of the imagination. He's portrayed as being cruel and abusive and power-hungry, but he's still got his redeeming traits. The book doesn't end with him being redeemed, but he does accept his fall and arrest with some grace and gets scared when his son almost dies. But it's made clear that he's not redeemed in the eyes of the other characters (especially since he's sent to prison)- it's just that he's a rounded character and not a purely evil monster.

Does it stand out? Is it serious?

Hell yeah!

Beyond the impact this scene had out-of-universe (it's a very intense scene), in-universe, everyone treats the act as gravely serious as it is. Everyone who sees the footage is horrified by it, to the point of wanting to abolish the guild entirely because of how far Crevan took it.

Now, don't get me wrong. These books are dark. But everything that happens to Celestine follows from this act in the story, and it stands out to the characters in-universe and out. It's talked about repeatedly as something that disgusts and terrifies every other character, even other characters who hate Celestine, and it's the first time in the story where we really see just how horrible the guild system is- and how much of a bastard Crevan can be.

Verdict

Yep. Crevan may not be 100% irredeemable, but he never goes back once he's done this- he's cemented from the branding scene onward. As long as these characters aren't expected to be completely, utterly evil with no redeemable traits, I'd say his act fits the bill.

Personally, I say no; I think we can focus on rooting out misuse and use the EP system when we want to be clear on what does and doesn't count. Not a requirement in all cases, and I definitely don't want to make this thread the end-all-be-all.

Yes to Crevan branding Celestine

Actually, going off of that and mew's concerns, how's this for a proposal as for how this'll work:

People are free to add examples without coming here, the pages don't have to be locked, no issue there.

Obvious misuse gets cut on sight, maybe gets reported here just in case we want to keep track of things.

If a character has multiple potential crossing points, that's when we break out the EP to discuss the multiple potentials and explain which one we think works best.

Like the Regime!Superman EP was a good starting point, but it's safe to say that crossing point is not in dispute - Light on the other hand has like four, and the other one that comes to my mind is Walter White having like 9. That's when we break out the EP and actually discuss things - only when there are multiple potentials and it's in dispute.

How's that sound?

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Apr 19th 2021 at 8:11:07 AM

Sounds good to me too.

There's some House of Anubis characters I'll want to discuss then, because of the whole "multiple points" thing. Maybe we should find a way to revise the EP format for a multiple-act-analysis?

TBH, the reason I was so eager to EP Crevan was because of the whole "not 100% evil" thing. As long as that's not a disqualifier, then great. My other discussion characters are both CM, so they're fine that department.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 19th 2021 at 8:14:20 AM

I probably should mention that the comics do give Regime!Superman some actions that have been considered MEH crossings though still in his case pretty much everyone agrees killing Shazam is his biggest one, but before multiple ones were allowed. I also do agree with your points.

Crevan branding Celestine

Honestly, I feel like it makes sense to stick it in the "does it stand out", cause it's discussing why it stands out among other acts - just take a moment to explain why it's that particular crossing point that stands out among other potentials. Like...

Does it stand out?

Yes in general, because blah blah blah.

Among their other crimes, it stands out because blah blah blah.

The moment we wanna tackle the multiple point beasts, I wanna get Walter White out of the way. I counted from the YMMV and various recap pages, and he has at least eight.

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Apr 19th 2021 at 8:22:12 AM

Well, we'll try some multiple-crossing-point EPs later and see how they work out. I won't stress it yet.

I'm referring more to characters who suffer from episodic troping and thus currently have multiple acts listed. BoJack Horseman being the biggest one in my mind.

Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 19th 2021 at 8:21:31 AM

On YMMV.Jojos Bizarre Adventure Phantom Blood, an example got expanded upon in a way which I'm not sure is necessary.

At first, the example was like this:

• Dio was pretty awful from as soon as we met him, but the moment that cements him as a remorseless psychopath is when he ties up Jonathan's beloved pet dog Danny in steel wire and puts him in a wooden box in the Joestar estate's incinerator, so that when the butler lights it up... all because Jonathan beat him in a fight. Even though he does far worse after his transformation into a vampire, horrifically killing an innocent dog for the sake of petty revenge is the first villainous act that's truly unforgivable.

It then got changed to this:

• Dio was pretty awful from as soon as we met him, but the moment that first cements him as a true bastard is when after learning of Jonathan's budding relationship with Erina, Dio attempts to ruin Jonathan's chance for love by forcefully taking Erina's first kiss. When a humiliated Erina washes her lips from water in a muddy puddle, Dio responds by slapping her in the face. As a result, Erina leaves Jonathan out of fear, without ever saying a word about her encounter with Dio... but Jonathan quickly figures it out and goes to confront him. Which leads to the moment that cements Dio as a remorseless psychopath. All because Jonathan managed to defy Dio's expectations and beat him in a fight (that resulted from his aformentioned forced kiss with Erina). Dio he ties up Jonathan's beloved pet dog Danny in steel wire and puts him in a wooden box in the Joestar estate's incinerator, so that when the butler lights it up... Well let's just say check out [1] for details. Even though he does far worse after his transformation into a vampire, stealing an innocent girl's Sacred First Kiss For the Evulz and then horrifically killing an innocent dog for the sake of petty revenge is the first of Dio's acts that's truly unforgivable.

I'm not sure whether stealing the Sacred First Kiss is totally relevant, since setting up a dog to be burned alive immediately afterwards far eclipses this. Even if it is notable, I think it might be going into way too much irrelevant detail, describing aspects of the scene I don't think are necessary for the context of the trope, as well as having clunkier wording in some parts. I'm especially not a fan of the "Well let's just say check out [1] for details" part.

to Light and Crevan.

Also, since it was recommended that I bring them up here, here's the MEH examples I deleted earlier today from YMMV.Dark 2017:

• Moral Event Horizon:
  • It is hard to say when Hannah crosses it. She had already accused Ulrich of raping Katharina when they were young because of her envy. But as an adult she definitely crosses it when she travels back in time to 1954 to visit Ulrich at the police station, where she HAD the chance to save Ulrich and bring him back to their present time, only to torment him further for not loving her and decides to leave him in that year to live in solitary for the rest of his life. While Ulrich wasn’t exactly a saint himself, it was only done out of her selfish reasons.
  • Adam A.K.A Jonas crosses it by murdering his own mother Hannah for thinking that her presence would eventually sabotage his plan to end the time knot. This was probably done to show what lengths Adam was willing to go to ensure his plan.

I believe both of these fail the "irredeemable" part. Hannah sucks, but she ultimately has a Jerkass Realization and apologizes to Jonas, feeling guilt over her actions. And Adam is too much of an Anti-Villain to have a MEH moment.

Edited by jandn2014 on Apr 19th 2021 at 10:40:18 AM

Hannah would definitely need to go but not sure about the other guy we did establish that MEHers could still have some redeeming qualities as long as they are treated as irredeemable, but if the narrative treats him as enough of an Anti-Villain it means he is not irredeemable then that would need to be cut as well.

Edited by Ordeaux26 on Apr 19th 2021 at 8:11:11 AM

Adam is definitely not presented as irredeemable; he even ends up being partially right in his goals at the end.

Let's give this a shot for my least favourite antagonist of all time. Just kidding! He's actually an antagonist I liked who Took a Level in Badass.

What's the work?

Warrior Cats is a long running series of books that began in 2003, and hasn't lost steam yet. With about 104 main series books, 50 spinoffs and several manga, this is one series about talking cats that likely won't be going anywhere any time soon.

Despite the target audience being kids, it like Pokemon, has plenty of mature themes including G-Rated Sex and one-night stands. Oh, and blood. Lots of it.

The act in question, is Ashfur's reign of terror as Bramblestar (formerly Brambleclaw)'s imposter.

What is the act?

During the start of the seventh arc, Bramblestar, successor to Firestar and leader of ThunderClan is about to lose a life, and through the words of who he believes is a StarClan cat, Shadowsight the Shadow Clan medicine cat apprentice, places him on the cold moor in the icy winter. Naturally, this expels Bramblestar's spirit out of his body, and allows Ashfur to take over. I could list three other acts Ashfur did before this that were horrible, but given the series chose to redeem him by sending him to Star Clan (cat heaven) at least before they decided he was better as a villain, I feel this is what sealed Ashfur as irredeemable. Basically, as a result, he loses trust in ThunderClan, exiles cats for simply disagreeing with him, including elders who were around his age while he was alive, and forces Mistyfoot, now Mistystar, to exile Mothwing for her heritage, and Icewing Harelight and later even more cats for the act of speaking against their leader in the fact they might be Codebreakers. This is besides the fact Mistystar was a product of codebreaking herself, but anyone who brought that up was promptly exiled.

So anyway, the exiles join Shadow Clan the only Clan to be ruled by someone who is not following Ashfur's insane orders and form La Resistence. Ashfur, being the utterly loathsome Yandere he is, who decided "If he can't have Squirrelflight, nobody deserves to live!" and thus he starts a war among the Clans causing many deaths. Most of the cats who died didn't even get proper funerals, nor did they reach StarClan or the [[Hell Dark Forest]]. As if there was any doubt Ashfur wasn't going to remain a villain, in the very next book, he drags Squirrelflight, his ex mate, and Bramblestar's mate, down to the Dark Forest with him, simply out of spite.

How was he portrayed before the act?

Before coming back as Bramblestar's imposter, Ashfur was portrayed as a Nice Guy and hard worker, and the Betty to Bramblestar's Veronica, at least until the end of the second series, when Squirrelflight dumps him for Bramblestar, which makes him swear vengeance on ThunderClan, and thus, he traps Firestar in a fox trap, which forces Brambles to make a difficult decision. Kill Firestar and become leader immediately, or wait until Firestar dies in the 4th arc and honourably succeed him. He chooses 2 and kills Hawkfrost, who was in cahoots with Ashfur and his own half-brother. Even when Ashfur is killed in the next series very few cats knew the truth about his death at Hollyleaf's paws and chose to remember him as a Nice Guy who helped his Clan aside from Squirrelflight, and Lionblaze, Jayfeather, and Hollyleaf who knew the truth that he tried to burn them alive in a burning forest and threatened to reveal the former Three cats secret that they were born from non married Leafpool and Crowfeather. Two cats from different Clans which was not only taboo because of that, but one was a medicine cat/healer and due to a vow of celibacy (that actually gets explained in a prequel arc) are forbidden from having children.

In the next arc, Jayfeather sees Ashfur in StarClan which is handwaved with "His only fault was loving too much." Yeah right...

He is absent from the following two arcs but returns in the seventh arc to take his vengeance. So yeah, he became a bigoted murderous Yandere simply because he got dumped and Lionblaze and Jayfeather were able to live happy lives, while he was stuck in Star Clan. Petty, eh?

Does it stand out? Is it serious?

Every arc has a villain who is a mass murderer to some degree, but none have quite the pettiness that Ashfur does. Even Scourge's excuse, flimsy and definitely not meant to excuse his actions, makes a bit more sense. Ashfur brings out the terror and racist nature of Tigerstar, the bloodthirstiness of Scourge, and the gaslighting nature of Brokenstar. Yeah I'd say so. It doesn't help that his victims in his first act which would be considered a MEH were barely teenagers (in cat years).

I'd say he passes with flying colours, especially since his has a layer of pettiness and cruelty (particularly to senior citizens, who other villains didn't really care about, but most villains have some sort of thing that makes them who they are) Ashfur's is literally "I was dumped by the girl of my dreams, who happens to be my niece so I'm going to mass murder these teenagers, expose their secret, and rule with an iron fist the Clans in my ex's husband's body."

Like the above Flawed, these are very dark books, especially for books that are seemingly child friendly, about as child friendly as Watership Down to quote someone. And someone dies in almost every single book, I can count the books where nobody dies on one finger, or at least the casualties are minimal.

Verdict?

What do you think? I figured this was his most heinous deed AND the deed he that said "Yep, there's no way this guy is getting redeemed."

Edited by Klavice on Apr 20th 2021 at 1:11:29 AM

Good analysis.

Like I said back at TRS, I would personally call Ashfur irredeemable the second he tried to kill Firestar way back in New Prophecy...but that's not what the books believed, and by going to StarClan, he did have a chance at being better. In-Universe, he wasn't seen as beyond redemption, even after all the shit he pulled before his death. His actions weren't taken seriously enough; he wasn't portrayed as the villain he was.

So yeah, I can see how his whole "fake Bramblestar" scheme would be the MEH in this case. I'm not thrilled with it personally, but there ya go.

This whole thing really encapsulates why I gave up on the series. It went from a cool, interesting story about feral cats, into...well, whatever the hell this plotline is. But that's another topic for another time.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 19th 2021 at 1:05:59 PM

I highly recommend the fifth arc honestly. It's basically the first arc but a prequel. If you compare Warrior Cats to Star Wars, the prequels and Disney sequels are Arcs 6 and 7, the Original trilogy is 1 and 2 while The Mandalorian is Arc 5.

Eh, if we're going to discuss I'd rather take it to PM, but from what I've heard of it, the prequel series was good, but I still don't have the heart or the interest to get back into the series. The Dark Forest nonsense kind of killed it for me, and I had a lot more fun roleplaying and debating with other fans than actually reading the books myself.

Fun fact, for a while, Ashfur was my favorite villain. Not because I actually liked him, but because I thought he was a fascinatingly realistic and unique villain who could've been so much cooler if they let him. I guess this Bramblestar thing shows that the Erins agreed with me...which is really weird.

But yeah, point is, I think the analysis was good and I'm coming to terms with the Bramblestar thing being his true MEH.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 20th 2021 at 3:58:23 PM

Regarding characters with multiple Moral Event Horizon crossing candidates, I am sure I have suggested this before but I think we need to consider "first come first served". If there is more than one deed that could make a character irredeemable, the first one is the actual Moral Event Horizon even if a later deed is more evil. The later deed is just another evil act by someone already beyond redemption.

Regarding "redeeming qualities", I suggest we be careful about the word choice. Positive qualities do not necessarily rule someone out from Moral Event Horizon like they do with Complete Monster; an irredeemable villain can still have the one or other positive trait. An actually redeeming quality - as in, a positive quality that makes redemption at least possible or plausible - on the other hand rules out Moral Event Horizon for that character.

Regarding Adam of Dark2017, I think the operative question is "if this guy seeked redemption, would it stand a chance of being accepted?". Given the Alas, Poor Villain entry on the character page it looks like he might stand a chance. And that would mean that he cannot have crossed the Moral Event Horizon.

In that case, I'll elaborate a little more. Crevan, for all his faults, is fundamentally human. He loves his son, and when he's defeated, he accepts the punishment and even tells his most Ax-Crazy follower to give it up. It's made clear that he's not some evil POS, but just a person who was very convinced by his own rules and standards, and a person who was drunk on his own power and wanted to conserve it. But the book also never actually attempts to redeem him; unless you count the fact that he accepts his fate of going to prison, but that's played more like Crevan himself realizing he'd crossed the line and couldn't erase it, no matter how many people he got rid of and how desperately he pursued Celestine. Even then, there's a scene where he attempts to cut a deal with Celestine and put everything behind him, and then he drugs her and drags her off to a Nightmare Fuel hospital scene immediately after anyway, so there's never a moment where he actually attempts or intends to change his ways. He just accepts his karma when he's defeated.

So yeah, I think it's more a case of him having positive qualities than being a redeemable character.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 20th 2021 at 4:28:05 AM

Seems like a borderline case, then - from that description it looks like if he sought redemption, it might or might not be accepted.

Definitely not by the people in the story. The mere footage of the branding was enough to not only bring him to immediate justice, but to also convince the entire population to do away with the Guild system in it's entirety.

Any point where it seems like he might regret it, he doesn't seem genuinely sorry or empathetic for what he put Celestine through; it seems more like he's realized he's fucked up and that it could cost him everything. He acknowledges his mistake, but because he knows what can happen if other people know about it, not because he realizes what he did was wrong. And thus, him excepting defeat seems more like him coming to terms with the consequences of his actions, rather than him actually feeling bad for it.

So, safe to say, I think Crevan passes the test.

Alright, since I've based my entire argument for this trope with this show in mind, might as well try BoJack Horseman. However, I am stuck between two acts, so I will use this effort post both of them.

It's very long.

Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 20th 2021 at 11:57:17 AM