Needs Help (New Crowner 11 April 2021): Moral Event Horizon

Okay, now I think I get what you're saying. I think we're interpreting this whole thing differently and that's causing a bit of a kerfuffle. To me, if the character was just pretending to be a good guy and only later reveals their evil, calling it an MEH seems questionable because the character technically remained static. But to you, the mere fact that they proved their evil, even if they always were evil, is the change necessary to fulfill the requirement and prove they can't be redeemed.

Is that accurate?

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

we talked about this

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Yes.

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Yes, that's it. And as a "Holy Shit" reaction it made sense to be YMMV. We're working on rules that tell us how that reaction is generated, which gives the impression that it can be objective.

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(Multiple edits due to overlapping posting/editing.)

Edited by crazysamaritan on Jan 26th 2021 at 5:03:57 AM

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

I've been thinking of the change in terms of how the narrative treats the character than the character's personal morality, which is why I can see how Hidden Evil might count. (I feel like I've gone back and forth so much though. So confusing to put things into words. I just know when a MEH counts when I see it.)

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

I think I worded that too vaguely because I wasn't talking about what that other post was talking about, but more about the basic idea of "Commander Charlie is always presented as evil but nobody knows just how competent and serious he is until he decides to nuke Pluto". Not in terms of specific "the villain was sympathetic/incompetent/funny/etc beforehand" but more of the general "Holy Shit, they're really evil". Technically that could be a change in portrayal, but it might also be based more on audience perception than any in-universe shift, which is why I'm so curious about it.

And maybe this does mean I'm more interested in the "Unquestionably Evil" trope you keep mentioning. Maybe you're right. I'm really just trying to get to the bottom of what we mean by "change" and how broad the concept is, especially since there seems to be some confusion over if it's about morality changing or just portrayal changing.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 26th 2021 at 5:01:39 AM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I've made edits to my previous post, so you may want to reread, but to address one more point specifically:

I would prefer if the trope is about the change in portrayal instead of a change is morality because portrayal is more objective. I prefer objective tropes to subjectives.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Yeah, I get what you're saying now. Sorry for dragging back the old debate btw, I just had lingering concerns and none of the previous discussion had quite touched upon my actual issues. I figured I should get the discussion fully resolved before we moved on completely and I lost any chance at maybe getting the rule reconsidered or at least clarified.

I can see how my version might be more subjective than we're currently making it, though I still think it might be possible for the villain to just be portrayed as generally "more evil" than they were when they crossed the line, if only because the full extent of their evil is now more obvious, and that can be considered a change in portrayal- however, this is probably a case-by-case thing and if we have some sort of EP system installed on the cleanup thread, some of the examples I'm thinking of could exist happily with other examples, even if they might end up being "downplayed".

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

My two cents:

Moral Event Horizon is subjective because what qualifies as evil out of universe may vary. There are plenty of cultures who have considered anything up to Rape, Pillage, and Burn to not only not be bad, but even laudable things to do. Some people are just not going to find some acts as evil as the next person, which is why it was a subjective trope and should remain that way. We've already got plenty of objective tropes that deal with a being treated in universe by the narrative as being considered evil to varying degrees and to varying degrees of seriousness. And That's Terrible, This Is Unforgivable!, "Reason You Suck" Speech when directed at a villain, Kick the Dog... it keeps going. These objective tropes may be ME Hs as well, an MEH just doesn't necessarily have to be treated as ME Hs by the narrative.

Especially when a trope involves morality in some fashion there will always be people who will complain about it. We've got the tropes Rooting for the Empire and Draco in Leather Pants for a reason. Just because there are some people who do not agree that an act is evil enough to be listed as a MEH doesn't mean it isn't. However, people who complain about it to the extent of edit warring about it should be treated like anyone else who edit wars... discipline and eventually ban them.

Unintentionally Unsympathetic is also different, as that involved the narrative treating a character in a particular way that is at odds with the character's actual portrayal. The narrative is trying to get the audience to ignore or downplay the actions of a character and for some people it is failing. Unlike MEH, Unintentionally Unsympathetic also doesn't have to involve any particularly heinous act, it can be as little as a character acting like a a bit of a dick while the narrative treats them as a saint.

MEH also has nothing to do with continuity or character development. A work with Negative Continuity and heavy Status Quo Is God still can have characters who perform MEH, it's about the fact that the character has it in them to ever even perform the act, not whether a reset button is pushed at the end or if the events are ultimately ignored by the narrative, the trope has little if anything to do with the narrative at all.

Characters can also have multiple MEH, because they can repeatedly top themselves in acts of evil or at the very least can do things that are evil enough it's hard to say which is the worst action they've done. That's another reason the trope should remain subjective, because what is the worst act a character has done is also going to be subjective. It's one thing to have a villain who tortures and kills one of the main characters while the audience has to watch, and quite another when they then later nuke a city as an afterthought. The former is something the audience has to see happening in a visceral and very personal manner, the latter is a thing that the bad guy did because X and tends not to carry the same impact with the audience, A Million Is a Statistic is a trope that covers that idea.

MEH also has nothing to do with a change in portrayal. A villain whose first on screen act might be to kill the protagonist's children in front of him crosses the MEH right away, that's not a change in portrayal, that's establishing the character as irredeemably evil right out of the gate. It's also entirely possible for a character to perform an MEH and then go back to more petty Kick the Dog style acts later on, or for the narrative to largely ignore it for the sake of their portrayal. A petty criminal who never did anything more serious than picking pockets could remorselessly kill their own wife and then go picking pockets again. The character has performed an MEH but their overall portrayal hasn't changed much if at all. It also doesn't have anything to do with villains. A hero is perfectly capable of pulling an MEH. It's about the act and the intention behind the act. It must be an intentional, significant, and malicious act on the part of the character.

MEH also has little if anything to do with redemption. A character who say performs an MEH and then becomes The Atoner over what they did doesn't mean they didn't perform an MEH, it's simply that they recognize that they performed an MEH and attempts to redeem themselves for it. They still did something that narratively or not is evil enough to be an MEH. In fact, it only enhances the MEH if the character themselves recognizes it.

Edited by immortalfrieza on Jan 31st 2021 at 9:50:37 AM

There's so much there to unpack and respond to and I'm on a 30 minute lunch break using mobile, so I can't personally respond, but...have you read the rest of the discussion up to this point?

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

You seem to be relying on the old definition. The reason we no longer want examples where the evil act goes unremarked upon by other characters is because it invited Ron the Death Eater garbage complaining about acts the audience interpreted as evil that were largely inconsequential to the character's development, often just one-off gags.

Also, "it's subjective because evil is subjective" is a bad metric. Not every morality trope is subjective because they refer to morality presented in the work. Values Dissonance is its own thing.

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

No, it did not invite Ron the Death Eater. Ron the Death Eater is about taking morally good characters and over-inflating or even making up bad things that the good character did, that is going to happen regardless. Characters don't have to comment that an act is monstrous for it to be considered a MEH, it just has to be monstrous. Not to mention that it throws out any examples where there's nobody there to witness it and thus comment on it, like a character killing somebody from behind while alone in an alley for instance. It also removes Black-and-Black Morality and Grey-and-Grey Morality works where nobody comments on the awfulness of what everybody else is doing because everybody is doing ME Hs against each other and have no right to say so or care to.

We've already got tropes for when characters and the work itself points out that a character does something heinous. "The trope is subjective because evil is subjective" is a very good metric for a trope which entire point is to denote that a character is evil by what they do, not what they say or how others react to it. MEH is about putting something a character does in front of the audience and making it clear and a Show, Don't Tell manner "yeah, this guy is completely evil." Not every moral trope is subjective because not every moral trope is treated by the work as subjective. Moral Event Horizon examples don't necessarily have to expressly pointed out, they just have to happen.

Really, my post was a long way of saying "this trope was good the way it was and should stay that way." I just wanted to back that up.

Edited by immortalfrieza on Jan 31st 2021 at 11:55:25 AM

If you read back you'll see that it most certainly couldn't stay the way it was since nobody could even agree on what it was.

This thread wasn't about changing the definition but giving it a definition in the first place, one much easier to keep track of.

My Wick Check alone proves that people were using this as an objective trope, FTR.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 31st 2021 at 3:02:00 PM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

I'm not going to respond to all of these points, just the ones I personally find noteworthy. Someone else will need to step in after me if they want the other points addressed in depth, or if they want to provide more elaboration for me.

No. It's subjective because people couldn't agree on when the line was crossed. But thanks to the new criteria, the works will be deciding that instead of the audience, and agreeing on when the line was crossed is now much easier.It does under the new criteria. Those are Audience Reactions, but Moral Event Horizon is an actual trope. And Rooting for the Empire is about rooting for the bad guys while acknowledging that they're the bad guys, not denying their evilness. It does under the new criteria. This is a misunderstanding of what MEH is. It's about a deed that makes it clear that the character is going to be evil forever, not just any deed that viewers find very evil. Again, MEH is about a deed that marks a character permanently evil. It's not about the worst thing they've done, and it's possible for them to commit worse acts after crossing the horizon. It does under the new criteria. This is an argument explaining why Establishing Character Moment is incompatible with MEH because of the new criteria, particularly the "change in portrayal" criteria. Thank you. Even without the new criteria, this is completely wrong. A character who has a Moral Event Horizon can't be redeemed. The current description mentions the word "irredeemably" twice. By that logic, Villain Protagonist should be YMMV. First of all, it's not about them being a Complete Monster, just that there's no chance of them not being evil ever again. Evil characters can still have redeeming qualities and even be sympathetic at times. Second of all, you saidThis is a contradiction. If it was good the way it was, this thread wouldn't exist.

Edited by Kevjro7 on Jan 31st 2021 at 4:41:13 AM

The Moral Event Horizon becoming an objective trope is honestly the only way to handle the examples since I've seen too many subversions of the trope where it seems like the villain has become purely irredeemable... only to have a last minute redeeming moment or Heel–Face Turn near the end of the story... (Looking at Darth Vader, Kylo Ren,Megatron, Master Xehanort, The Joker, etc.).

Should we split the trope into an objective, in-narrative version and a subjective, fan opinion based, version? I believe that’s a happy compromise.

Why waste time when you can see the last sunset last?

I'm not sure how that'd work out. I predict the subjective version suffering from the same issues the trope currently is- complaining, misuse, general confusion at what counts and what doesn't count, etc. It'd basically make everything we're trying to do here pointless, since people who don't care about our work and don't agree with the "new" trope can just continue to misuse MEH to their heart's content.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Yeah good point.

Why waste time when you can see the last sunset last?

In any case, the crowner is currently at 20:10 or 2:1; we should get more attention. Anyone want to make an ATT post?

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Done.

You are welcome. I think ignorance of the new criteria is why people would vote to keep it subjective, and I wanted to avoid that by informing everyone.

Edited by Kevjro7 on Feb 1st 2021 at 2:13:42 AM

Thanks for making the criteria so clear. A lot of the downvotes might be people who aren't even aware that there's new criteria now.

Or, you know, people who just disagree with it in general. Don't want to assume too much.

Edited by WarJay77 on Feb 1st 2021 at 4:09:26 AM

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

Looking at the crowner, it first asks whether the trope should remain subjective, and says "Vote up for yes, down for no", but below that it says to vote up to make it objective. That may have caused some confusion.

Edited by Javertshark13 on Feb 1st 2021 at 6:24:54 AM

Yeah, that's confusing. I suggest changing it to "Should it be reworked to be an objective trope?" instead.

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

"reworked to be" can be taken out since we've kind already done that, but the rest seems fine to me.

Huh, yeah, that's confusing now that I think of it.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness

That's the nature of subjective tropes. There's always going to be people who complain about examples or don't agree what does and doesn't count, that's the meaning of the word subjective. The only way people can "misuse" a subjective trope is either by adding examples that are clearly far removed from the trope's description, or by removing examples that qualify but they don't agree with. Examples of subjective tropes by their very nature are based on the opinion of the person placing those examples and thus cannot be invalidated unless they are very blatantly off base from the trope's description. Like:

• Jack donated to charity, therefore he is irredeemable!

This is clearly not an MEH.

• Jack murdered 26 puppies, therefore he is irredeemable!

This is clearly a MEH.

• Jack kicked a puppy for fun, therefore he is irredeemable!

That will be enough for some people and others won't care enough to call it a MEH, therefore it is subjective. Someone disagreeing that Jack kicking a puppy isn't enough to qualify as a MEH is fine, someone erasing the example of Jack kicking a puppy because they don't agree it is enough is a misuse.

You can't bow to anyone who decides they're going to be a dick about their editing or just can't get what the trope is actually about.

Like me, who disagrees with changing the trope in any way, especially in the ways that the new criteria does and effectively destroys the trope. It makes the trope no longer a trope anymore by turning it into a list of items so specific as to render the trope impotent at best and besides which any one of those items is covered by other tropes already, particularly if it becomes objective.

Edited by immortalfrieza on Feb 1st 2021 at 7:11:50 AM

Did you check out the wick check, linked in the OP? You'll see what I mean.

Current Project: Incorruptible Pure Pureness