Moral Event Horizon cleanup

Basically with Ashfur, he's less "redeemed" and more Easily Forgiven in the fact he goes to StarClan instead of Hell. Which he takes full advantage of and blocks them from the living world and escapes to use his Demonic Possession on Brambles.

So I'd say his attempted murder of Firestar with Hawkfrost is his MEH crossing. But the characters don't know he's evil until Arc 3. So it depends.

Yes to Bojack. Are you doing Cartman too?

Edited by Klavice on Apr 20th 2021 at 8:53:27 AM

Oh I can do Cartman, as I actually believe that he still counts under the definition and it's easier to point to the single act. I need a bit of time though, as BoJack was annoying to write up.

When you say yes to BoJack, are you referring to the Penny act or the Sarah Lynn act? I'm debating both of them in my EP, but leaning towards the latter.

Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 20th 2021 at 12:09:45 PM

The Sarah Lynn act.

Sorry, but I cannot take the idea of a character who is Easily Forgiven as having a Moral Event Horizon event seriously. That's like a contradiction in terms and it reads like the sort of thing that will encourage shoehorning.

Regarding BoJack Horseman it seems like the event revealed in "Xerox of a Xerox" is the Moral Event Horizon. The Season 3 event (OK, revealed in 6 but actually happened during 3) more evil than the Season 2 event and from the way the characterization shifted it looks like Season 3 was the turning point.

The trouble with Ashfur is that we're not really sure what the writer's intended. It was well known that one of the writers really liked him and felt sorry for him, despite that he was a jealous yandere. So the act that set half the fanbase against him didn't get played very seriously in-universe, though one of the characters who were affected by it reacted with irritation when they saw him in heaven.

Him returning to villainy later, then, could be interpreted in one or two ways:

• His true MEH was one of the two murders he attempted before his death, however his true colors weren't cemented until later.
• His true MEH was the Bramblestar plot, because his other acts, while bad, weren't given enough weight and he wasn't treated like a true villain at the time.

I think I'll go with the second option, because back when he appeared in StarClan, it was more obvious that the characters forgave him...even if it was only because one of the writers sympathized with him. If the characters were acting rationally, then Ash would have been treated like a monster, but unfortunately they're subject to the will of a writer who didn't want him to be treated like a monster. If what he did before death was a true MEH, then nobody would've been able to justify it in-universe (maybe out-of-universe would be a different story, but eh). If the Bramblestar plot is what gets him really, truly cemented as being the villain he is, and that's what gets him sent to the Dark Forest, then that's his MEH.

Edited by WarJay77 on Apr 21st 2021 at 1:39:17 PM

If it would help you, mewtron, I can do the effortpost for Cartman later today - I assume the one incident is Scott Tenorman and it really is a super cut-and-dry MEH.

If it's really that cut-and-dry, we don't actually need an EP for it, do we? I think we need to get into the habit of reserving EPs for truly sticky cases, lest we become CM thread #3.

Yeah, an EP isn't really needed for Scott Tenorman. Even now the act is clearly his vilest and it was when Cartman became an outright sociopathic Villain Protagonist, so I really don't think it's in any doubt.

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Apr 21st 2021 at 1:57:20 PM

Yeah, when the creators outright say that's when he went straight off the deep end, there's not a whole lot of room for argument.

Apologies for stepping in on this and derailing a bit; not really sure how to enter existing cleanups yet.

Edited by LargoQuagmire on Apr 21st 2021 at 11:00:54 AM

Nah, you're just fine mate. If there's any characters you do feel you need clarity on, though, feel free to give an EP for one of them.

Sounds good. I enjoy helping with votes on effortpost-style threads so I'll stick around to help!

We did have a debate over whether the Tenorman act is taken seriously enough for Cartman to count, but that was when we were still fleshing out the redefinition. Plus I already cleaned up the South Park MEH section, so the entries listed under the item should all fit the new definition.

Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 21st 2021 at 2:30:05 PM

Yeah, I think the debate on the TRS thread was enough in this case.

To be honest, I don't feel anyone crosses the Moral Event Horizon in the Simpsons as redeemed and grey characters do worse. Take Cesar and Ugolin for example. They try to poison Bart with antifreeze which is nasty but Mr Burns regularly poisons entire parks using toxic waste in a later episode. Kindergarten Teacher turns Bart into the borderline psychopath he is today but Mr Burns AND Sideshow Bob tried to kill Bart regularly and Bob succeeds in a Treehouse of Horror. The only one I could see keeping is Russ Cargill as destroying Springfield seems unique enough for a villain, but it's debatable as Springfield is full of Asshole Victims.

Edited by Klavice on Apr 21st 2021 at 12:47:53 PM

I found this on Smile Pretty Cure!:

• Moral Event Horizon:
  • While he doesn't actually cross it by virtue of being Brainwashed and Crazy, Straw Nihilist Jerkass Wolfrun at the very least proves himself to be a Not-So-Harmless Villain in episode 40 when he tries to kill Miyuki as part of a vendetta against Akane and everything she cares about. Smashing the precious charm her friends made for her earlier in the episode was at worst a slightly extreme example of Kick the Dog even for him, but this is the first time a Cure has ever found herself in mortal peril.
  • Two episodes later, Majorina subverts it when she tries to kill Nao's siblings. That charm that Wolfrun smashed could be replaced, but those two kids couldn't. Turns out, Joker was responsible, seeing that she was under his control and brainwashed, rinsed and dried.

Apart from the examples saying they were subverted, which shouldn't be done for YMMV tropes, it also points out how they were Brainwashed and Crazy and not in control of their actions. Plus, they were already antagonists in the show, as these two were a part of a Terrible Trio.

I think one question regarding the South Park example is whether it's played seriously enough and whether the character might be redeemable if they tried. This trope isn't just about whether a character is actually redeemed or not but also about whether redemption would be possible, hypothetically.

The Smile PreCure! examples - apparently that's the title of the work - above are shoehorns and need to be cut.

It's one of the few moments to get a serious callback later on (in the Banned Episode "201," there's a mostly-serious subplot about a now-insane Scott confronting Cartman about the chili incident) and Cartman is set up to never be permanently redeemable, an aspect of his characterization that wasn't really set in stone until that episode.

Um ... I don't think that't enough to answer the redeemability question. Are there other characters who commit similar deeds? Any murderers? Do any get redeemed or not?

One big hang-up in the TRS thread was that sometimes a work does not explicitly say whether a character is redeemable or not. In that case the audience has to infer from the deeds and the moral standard of the work whether redemption is still possible. That's why the trope is still YMMV.

I don't know if we need to compare it to other characters' behavior. This isn't CM. It's about the deed more than the character. Multiple characters can be irredeemable.

As for Cartman, the show has repeatedly made it clear that he is incapable of redeeming himself — Kyle even outright says that Cartman will never change in "Doubling Down." And while other characters have committed heinous acts, at the time of the episode, I think Cartman was the only one who had deliberately gotten somebody killed (not counting Kenny's deaths, which held no weight and were always played strictly for comedy at this point), and the first time when the series played it for drama as well as black comedy. I also struggle to think of many characters who pulled a Batman Gambit as twisted as this particular one.

Edited by mightymewtron on Apr 24th 2021 at 3:02:24 PM

Let's get one thing clear here about Cartman's deed: murder isn't the MEH. The MEH is feeding Scott Tenorman his own parents, and I can't think of anything in South Park similar to that. The scene is portrayed seriously by having the characters in-universe react to the deed with horror,^note Scott breaks down in tears when he realizes what he ate, Stan reacts to the deed with "Jesus Christ dude," he and Kyle agree to never piss Cartman off again, and the background characters give horrified looks. and ominous music plays when Cartman licks up Scott's tears that are on the table. You can watch the scene here.

Cartman wasn't even the one who killed Scott's parents. I also watched the scene and wow that is something, wondering if that would make a good video for the trope.

The latter scene used to be the page image for Jerkass (the one of Cartman licking Tenorman's tears).

I'm pretty sure this entire tree from The Falcon and the Winter Soldier is misuse. Thoughts?

• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Karli Morgenthau arguably crosses hers in "Power Broker" when she car-bombs a building where GRC staff were tied up as hostages, casually justifying it as "sending a message" when her compatriot Dovich reacts with horror. Then she continues Jumping Off the Slippery Slope up to and including the series finale.
  • John Walker crosses this by murdering an unarmed, surrendering Flag-Smasher in "The Whole World is Watching". Fortunately, he's not a Karma Houdini, as a whole crowd surrounding him are live-streaming his misdeeds and he faces severe consequences in the next episode. On the upside, Walker does at least attempt redemption in "One World, One People" (the finale) by abandoning his Roaring Rampage of Revenge on the Flag-Smashers to rescue the occupants of a hijacked vehicle from certain doom.
  • If Sharon Carter hadn't crossed hers already offscreen as the Power Broker for any number of criminal deeds in Madripoor, she also goes well over it in "One World, One People" by giving a Flag-Smasher a Cruel and Unusual Death and murdering both Batroc and Karli, the latter two simply because they knew too much about her identity as the Power Broker. Unlike Walker or Karli, though, Carter does get away a Karma Houdini, unless it turns out to be a Sequel Hook.
    • It's even worse when contrasted with her late aunt, Peggy Carter, who remained a heroic figure throughout her life and played a vital role in the formation and development of S.H.I.E.L.D. as a protective force for the world. Sharon is decidedly not a case of Generation Xerox.

The Karli example might qualify since it is when she goes from just a Well Intentioned protester to an outright terrorist, the other two though are misuse under the new definition.

Cut Sharon's sub-bullet and Walker's entry - he comes back from the edge in the final episode, so he can't count. I think Karli's is correct but needs rewording to get rid of the "and then she gets WORSE" part, and I'm unsure on Sharon - I'm not sure she meets the irredeemable quality quite yet, even if she was Evil All Along.

Edited by STARCRUSHER99 on Apr 25th 2021 at 11:17:16 AM