Interpretations of Moral Event Horizon

Moral Event Horizon

As someone who has been aware of this trope for a while, I was recently thinking; in what way are we supposed to interpret being irredeemable upon crossing it?

Does it mean that after crossing it, their moral standards cannot improve at any point in time? (ie. their morality is strictly decreasing over time for all points in time after the M.E.H.)

Or does it just mean that at any point in time after crossing it, they cannot be any more moral than they were before crossing it? (ie. maximum morality after M.E.H. is the morality they had upon crossing it)

I ask this because some things may apply to one interpretation and not another. For example, let's say after one Kick the Dog moment, a character's morality is always less than it was at that K.T.D. moment. However, their morality does go back and forth; it alternates between worsening and improving, but just never improves beyond the level of morality present at the K.T.D. moment. Would this kind of "improvement" preclude it from being a Moral Event Horizon?

edited 4th Nov '10 3:32:05 PM by neoYTPism

They can't cross back across it. They can't regain the moral position they had before they crossed it. They can vary up and down below it, but they can't ever cross back into "redeemable".

So if their morality improves, but not past the level it was at upon crossing the Moral Event Horizon, it can still count as one?

Yep.

Got it. Would clarification on that point be worth working into the article?

I think that would overcomplicate the article.

What if it were just VERY brief, perhaps just stating that this does not preclude their level of morality from going up or down so long as it does not exceed their morality prior to the Moral Event Horizon?

I think it's very straightforward as is: once you cross it, there's no going back. We aren't doing some kind of weird deal where we judge evil on a measured scale.

It is too subjective to be measured as such.

However, I want to emphasize that there is still wiggle room within the moral black hole, and that the moral standards of a character after M.E.H. have potential to increase, just not to levels they were at before crossing the M.E.H.

Neo, I love your commitment to improving the quality of tropes, but really we aren't doing a doctoral dissertation on tropology, nor are we inventing anything new; we're writing simple descriptions of existing concepts. Clear > concise > witty.

Look at it this way: If a character crosses the M-E-H, then the fanbase will start hating them, and still hate them even if they do get better. The Joker is an annoying, harmless clown in some takes on his character, but once you've read, say, The Killing Joke, that image stays with you forever.

I can't sustain hatred without a constant spark for it, which theoretically means that I could forgive anyone if they stopped doing the sort of things that made me hate them. Does this mean that for me the concept of a moral event horizon is meaningless?

I don't think that perception of evil is based entirely on hatred. For example, you might just not trust somebody who's crossed your MEH with anything important.

(I love the ironic acronym, btw.)

@feotakahari— technically speaking, once you cross the MEH, there's no such thing as every further action causing a spark; instead, the forest has been set on fire, and there's no way of getting the trees back after that.

save for a Retcon. or something.

(also, the MEH isn't meaningless, you just haven't yet found a meaningful enough example of it ).

as for the OP, basically a character can cross over the MEH by an inch, or they can cross it over by a mile, but they can't cross it back at all.

for example, a character does something horrible that constitutes crossing the MEH, but a few episodes later he starts having what in any other situation would resemble Pet the Dog moments. it may seem like he's going up on the moral scale, but for this particular character, there is just no erasing his previous horrible deed. it was that horrible. he'll Never Live It Down, and because of that there is no redemption for him, no matter how many puppies he huggles.