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

I mean, honestly, my reaction to that is "screw 'em." We have a ban function for a reason.

I actually do not know what this trope should be and am going to have to think on that for a while, but crazy fans should never be allowed to paralyze the site.

Edited by nrjxll on Sep 23rd 2020 at 9:36:56 AM

crazysamaritan, I don't think that particular redefinition is a good idea. It's too different from the current "trope" to neatly take up its name. Most importantly, any trope that allows redemption would be ill-placed under the title Moral Event Horizon as the "event horizon" implies that redemption is no longer possible.

Start of Darkness is a trope about an episode that explains how someone became a villain. It can feature a Moral Event Horizon as a main point, but I don't think it has to. Evil All Along is a reveal trope, it doesn't have to involve a particular evil deed and it doesn't require the character to be irredeemable after the reveal.

See, my personal take on the irredeemable thing was that there were two ways it could work:

• The villain is irredeemable according to the narrative, or at least is never redeemed in the story

Or

• The villain might be redeemable according to the narrative, but the audience finds them irredeemable

If we go with the first option, it's a lot more objective and has less, if anything, to do with audience opinion. The second one makes for a standard YMMV or Audience Reaction trope. Either way, irredeemability has to be a factor, it just depends on if it's objective or subjective.

Edited by WarJay77 on Sep 24th 2020 at 3:47:54 PM

The second option sounds like it'd just be use to complain. Considering how audiences often blow characters' actions out of proportion (if complains about certain children's shows are indicative of anything), it might easily derail into "character does things fans don't like".

Also if the work treats a character as redeemable, while the audience disagree, there's Unintentionally Unsympathetic.

Edited by Adept on Sep 24th 2020 at 11:35:04 PM

I'd go with the first option. The work itself needs to show that there's no ambiguity that the character is permanently evil, and that they would not consider redeeming themselves.

I think rather than focusing on one specific act, the focus should be on the character themselves- that the combined weight of everything they've done shows that the character will always be a bad person.

Edited by Javertshark13 on Sep 24th 2020 at 9:27:38 AM

Yeah the first option seems more likely. You could basically say "Jar Jar Binks crossed the MEH by ruining Star Wars!" to name a bad example involving the second option. Also this trope should probably no longer be allowed on Dethroning Moment Of Suck as I feel it's used to complain about Protagonists who killed a villain you like/thought didn't deserve it. The question is, where would a character like Sephiroth who was originally good and had redeeming traits but went Jumping Off the Slippery Slope. I would assume unless somehow a FF 7 sequel is made that brings him back and redeems him, he's in the clear. I'm hoping this isn't exclusive to approved Complete Monsters or a heinous standard is brought up. Because that would basically mean a villain was not in any regard going to be redeemed but due to failling the HS, like CM they would be taken off. Which is why while he fails the HS, Ghetsis from Pokémon Black and White would have still crossed the MEH by abusing his son and disowning him disgusting the In-Universe Characters.

Edited by Klavice on Sep 24th 2020 at 8:20:02 AM

I concur that the trope should be based on redemption (or rather, the absence/irredeemability) in the story rather than the audience, but I definitively do not agree with making this a character focused trope. We don't need Complete Monster But Slightly Watered Down, and it too is a bad fit for the trope title and the current use of the trope.

Right, it should be about the action.

Sorry... my wording was a little awkward. I was against it being a character trope like CM. But I feel like it shouldn't be used to complain about protagonists you don't like.

Edited by Klavice on Sep 25th 2020 at 2:23:37 AM

FTR, I wasn't intending option two to be a bashing version, though I can see what people are saying when they bring that issue up.

Yeah, the problem with the YMMV version is that, without at least some in-universe acknowledgement, people will disagree on the exact "point of no return" and will resort to simply listing all the heinous deeds committed by the villain, and then we'll have examples of characters who apparently passes through ten event horizons, even though that technically shouldn't be.

Perhaps it would help to define the crossing as follows:

1. It has to be the most evil thing the character has done.
2. If there is more than one candidate for #1, the chronologically first one counts.

"Most evil deed" could also be subject to debate, I think.

If the Evil Overlord destroys a village of insurgents in one episode, then kidnaps and tortures the hero's Love Interest in the next, which would be the more Moral Event Horizon? The former caused more casualty and damage, but the latter is more clearly malicious.

Audiences might disagree over which of the two deeds are more "evil", so that doesn't really clear things up.

SeptimusHeap said on the former page that if the trope were made YMMV, one of the standards should be “The deed marks a change in the portrayal of the character”. So it’s not just the “most evil deed”, it’s the deed that’s significantly more evil than any of their previous deeds. Here’s an example from the wick check that I think shows a good instance of this:

Edited by jandn2014 on Sep 25th 2020 at 10:40:46 AM

Take note that it's not definitively agreed upon that a change in portrayal should be part of the trope.

One thing I've been wondering is whether the destruction of Alderaan in Star Wars would qualify as a Moral Event Horizon. From what I know the deed certainly qualifies as both "irredeemable" and "outstandingly evil" (it single handedly landed Tarkin on the Complete Monster list) but I am not so sure about "change in portrayal".

Anyhow, it seems like we have agreement that the trope should only apply to villains, yes?

Villains, but not always antagonists.

Villains sounds like a good idea. Someone the work portrays as being beyond redemption.

I think there's definitely gonna be some emphasis in the work on this. Not only will it leave a bad taste in the audience's mouth, but it'll be treated by the narrative itself as a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad thing.

I almost don't want to say this, I personally hate this sort of thread format, but, if this is an objective trope I can see us needing an EP format for it. Sometimes the line-crossing is kinda murky and sometimes there's different things that might count as "the most evil act", so an EP format might be required if this does become objective.

Seconded.

So villains, and not redeemed or considered for redemption in-story. And the deed needs to be outstandingly evil by the standards for the character? I think defining how evil the deed has to be is going to require some fine-tuning.

Well, for one it should be by the standards of the work itself and the standards of the character; for the same reason CM has a heinous standard that treats each work differently, MEH shouldn't be compared with other MEH, and should stand alone. A character committing murder might qualify in one work but might barely scratch the surface in another.

The "change in portrayal" would mean that before the act, the character was portrayed in-universe as potentially redeemable. After they've crossed it, they're no longer portrayed as such. It should probably be shown that the characters themselves agree that the villain is over the line.

Tarkin is actually a good example of how it doesn't have to be the worst thing the villain does. Given what he does in Rogue One, he was likely over the line long before Alderaan.

Edited by Javertshark13 on Sep 25th 2020 at 3:36:55 PM

"Change in portrayal" is a bit ambiguous, though, because it could open the door to bad examples like another one from the wick check, Tarquin from The Order of the Stick. The moment cited is when the audience discovered that he is irredeemably evil, but he was that way all along. The story didn't, in my opinion, portray him more positively before then; it just kept his true evil hidden until the moment the author intended to reveal it. But it would be easy to confuse where we intend to draw the line, unless the description is really clear.

Heh, Tarkin and Tarquin...

But yeah, the change in portrayal idea might not be the best route here.

Yeah, that would lead to examples being discarded because an Obviously Evil character didn't become "evil but worse."

My biggest problem with Septimus's proposal in post 2 is with the "redemption" aspect, as that will often just lead to arguments about whether e.g. Darth Vader truly redeemed himself or not. And a character who seeks redemption and is shot down because of their past actions should still be eligible.

On the topic of the in-universe criteria, the easiest way to define it is that the character must knowingly do something seen as evil by the standards of the setting; whether or not the act is evil to the viewers should not matter.

And afterward they shouldn't regret it or attempt to do better. They embrace it