Basic Trope: A villain doesn't believe in good or evil, and uses this to defend their actions.
- Straight: When confronted by Alice and about to be punished for torturing innocents to death, Drake claims he's doing nothing wrong on the grounds that morality is subjective, hence Alice has no right to judge him.
- Exaggerated: Drake routinely destroys entire universes for fun, yet it never once crosses his mind that he could be doing something wrong.
- Downplayed: Drake is The Anti-Nihilist, believing that even though the universe has no inherent morality, values are worthwhile anyway.
- Justified:
- Drake grew up under an oppressive regime based on Black-and-White Insanity, and rebelled against it by going too far in the other direction.
- Drake is one of The Fair Folk, and conventional morality is alien to him.
- Alice's moral compass is skewed; she cares nothing about all the innocents she slaughtered in her Roaring Rampage of Revenge after Drake killed her brother Bob, and thinks she's entirely in the right. Drake points out her hypocrisy.
- Drake is a Well-Intentioned Extremist Anti-Villain, so his morality really isn't clear cut.
- Drake's actions are considered acceptable in his culture, which he uses to his advantage.
- Inverted: Alice brushes off praise for her heroic actions, claiming she did nothing good because good is just a viewpoint.
- Subverted:
- Turns out Drake is lying to save his ass. He does think his actions are immoral, but doesn't care.
- Drake's rant was only meaningless trite; he was actually Holding the Floor. Now, even if he were to surrender, it's too late for Alice to defuse that bomb and save her friends, and his elite troops are quickly closing in on her location.
- He's asking about the word, not the concept… English is not his first language, you see.
- Double Subverted: He becomes the mask and stops caring about morality entirely.
- Parodied: Drake goes on an hour long filibuster on the subjective and relativistic nature of morality.
- Averted: This question never comes up.
- Lampshaded: "You serial killers love to play the moral nihilism card."
- Enforced:
- The author is a moral philosopher who often ponders this question.
- The author wants to show that taking Grey-and-Grey Morality to extremes can be just as dangerous as doing the same with its opposite.
- Invoked:
- Defied:
- Armed with a new perspective on life, Alice tries her very best to remain objectively morally superior to Drake.
- Alternatively, Drake suddenly realizes that he isn't evil enough, because, by his logic, he's morally neutral. And so, he makes it his goal to rectify it.
- Alice says this:
Alice: Don't gimme that bullshit, Drake. You torture innocents and destroy universes for fun; THAT is evil. - Discussed:Drake: "The transcendental concepts of good and evil are measured according to an impossible and frankly quixotic system of standards designed, by society, to control us. Look at yourself. You would know this best. And so in real life they are of little application, hence, I have cast aside the need for such discussion.Alice: "So... what you saying is that, because you don't believe good and evil, that automatically absolves you of responsibility for mass murder and torture?
- Conversed:
- Deconstructed:
- Drake pulls the moral relativism card, claiming Alice is being arrogant and oppressive for holding him to her standards and trying to stop him. Alice responds that by his logic, her actions aren't inherently wrong either.
- Alice points out that even if morality is subjective, harm and suffering aren't. Drake wouldn't go "eh, they're entitled to their beliefs" if someone tortured him for fun, so he can't expect others to just accept his worldview when he does it to them.
- Drake finds himself in a stereotypically anarchic Crapsack World full of sociopaths who think like him, doing what they want with no regard for the wants, needs or rights of others. It's a living hell that quickly tears itself apart, forcing Drake to recognise the necessity of some kind of moral system even if things aren't always clear cut.
- Reconstructed: Still, it gets Alice to think before she goes labelling people evil with little justification.
- Played for Laughs:
- Played for Drama: This forces Alice to question everything she thought she believed in. She stops trying to do good, because she believes there's no such thing, and Drake gets away with his crimes.
Back to What Is Evil?, although why anyone would care about such an absurd concept is beyond me...
