Are we allowed to state our own alignments on our troper pages?
Hide / Show Replies
As far as I know, I don't see why not. It's not like you're applying them to characters in a work or other Real Life people, and troper pages don't count for wicks.
Edited by Josef5678
The link to the Alignment chart with Batman in each position leads to a 404. Should we remove it, or possibly find the chart somewhere else?
I came to browse tropes and play TWEWY, and I'm all out of TWEWY data. (Seriously, my TWEWY data got deleted, I need a hug)
Oh hey look some sins
Wander over Yonder had it's Character Alignments deleted despite the entry containing an explanation that it was decided upon by the show staff and told to the fans through tumblr. I'm fairly certain that counts as canon grounds, right?
Peepers is the Watchdog Den Mother Hide / Show Replies
So you have never visited that page, have you?
Found a Youtube Channel with political stances you want to share? Hop on over to this page and add them.
I have a question - what counts as an alignment being "canonical"? Rarely outside of the RPG universe or creators influenced by it do people say "Yeah, this character is supposed to be Chaotic Good and this one is Neutral Evil" or whatever, but there are some characters where they basically fit the alignment to a tee without using the exact name. For example, D&D didn't exist when Victor Hugo wrote Les Miserables, but what we now call Lawful Neutral is pretty much Javert's entire character, and he makes it clear that's where he stands in other words. Also, his character is the Trope Namer for one of the various permutations of that alignment. So is his alignment "canonical"? There are other people who are also fairly clear examples of certain alignments, particularly within the various types of Neutral (Jack Sparrow is also a fairly textbook Chaotic Neutral, for example) but where do we draw the line?
Because right now, there is still plenty of alignmentwank, because people can't tell the difference between their personal analyses and authorial intent. (For example, I think I've seen Bellatrix Lestrange under just about every "Evil" alignment.) I don't think we should draw the line at "it has to be stated, in these exact words, by Word of God or in-canon" because then we'd have almost no examples outside of Tabletop Games, but it has to be drawn somewhere.
Edited by EmmaWoodhouse18 Hide / Show Replies
On the contrary, I think that because people can't tell the difference between their personal analyses and authorial intent, we shouldn't allow examples where the author didn't exactly say "this guy is Lawful Evil". Yes, it limits it to very few examples out of Tabletop Games, but that's the price to pay if we don't want to see pages full of natter and Edit Wars.
Yeah, but that does kind of defeat the purpose of having examples if the only way that you'd know them is if you're familiar with this very specific genre of fiction.
The page states: "He flaunts and outright ignores the rules when they don't suit him. He's wanted by police for his brand of vigilantism. He's unquestionably moral but the individual freedom to carry out his crusade seems far more important to him than mere laws. Okay, that's Chaotic Good."
Umm ...not necessary? A Lawful character (by D&D/Pathfinder's 9-alinement system. The 3- and 5-alignment systems function a bit differently.) is one that follows a strict code of conduct. This may be the laws of society or it may be their own. If it is the latter vigilantism and breaking of society's rules is a given when the law of the character is in conflict with those of said society. A Chaotic Good character, in contrast, is one that believes that such rigid rules are incompatible with true good or that simply have no such rules. A complete pragmatic. He will break the law, not because they are incompatible with his own rules, but because they do not agree with what the character feels is the right ting in this specific situation or just to show the flaws of having such laws. Batman may be like this sometimes, but the description doesn't show it. (And a Neutral Good character is one that may have rules, but are not completely dominated by them, or that actively tries to balance between rigid rules and pragmatic approaches.)
Edited by 95.34.47.192 Hide / Show Replies
Honestly, Batman just strikes me as a terrible example on the whole since he's been around for something like 80 years. Any character who's been passed around from writer to writer is going to vary heavily in characterization between them, whereas characters who have stuck to one writer through their history tend to be a lot less varying.
CelticWhisper
"Flaunts and outright ignores the rules" should read "Flouts and outright ignores the rules."
Siggy boogy doog. Hide / Show Replies
Wow, that typo has been here for almost three years after it was pointed out.
Fixed it now.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
Never Trust
A little bit of clarification? The Flame Bait page lists Character Alignment as one of those things that aren't even allowed on YMMV pages but the individual alignment pages say they are allowed on YMMV. Which is it?
Trump delenda est Hide / Show Replies
That YMMV message at the top of the character alignment pages is pretty much a cover-all sign saying that the trope is subjective. It's on every subjective trope page.
In this case, Character Alignment is only to be used when there are alignments in-universe — as said on this very page. So yes, they're not allowed on YMMV pages, but they're allowed on main pages as long as they're canonical.
A question: it says no Real Life people should be on this list, but what about when said Real Life people are tabletop RPG players and ascribe themselves to a particular character alignment?
This seems very specific and unlikely, but one example that springs to mind is an interview where Vin Diesel is asked whether he'd be a good or an evil Jedi, and he responds with, "Chaotic Neutral".
Hide / Show Replies
A central question for this: Is he referring to the character-type he plays/likes to play or to who he is himself in real life?
To put it in perspective, the type of character I intrinsically play in Fallout, inFAMOUS, and other such games is Chaotic Good. How else do you play a vampire ninja with a flaming sword? But in real life:
- I see myself as much more Lawful Evil than my characters.
- Those who I volunteer with see me as either Lawful Good or Neutral Good.
- Those I am friends with see me as either Lawful Neutral or True Neutral.
- Those I am am explicitly not friends with see me as Chaotic Evil or Neutral Evil.
- A random person would probably pin me somewhere in the Chaotic Neutral field.
It's a little thing called "context": small details tilt the position of any particular point on the diamond by various amounts. And in fact, this is why alignment is tricky even in RP Gs. I mean, do you always play your Lawful Good character as always perfectly "lawful good"? Haven't you ever just wanted to punch the Chaotic Evil necromancer in the face, despite that action being more "lawful evil" than "lawful good"? How about that Lawful Neutral dragon protecting its treasure from thieves? However you dealt with it could be argued as not actually "lawful good."
Does this make sense?
Edited by 216.99.32.44
Very Manly Muppet
My Namesakes
Someone just deleted the Character Alignments from my Troper Works project. This page specifically says that Character Alignments should only apply to works where it is canon. Since I'm the creator of my Troper Works I'm saying that Character Alignments are canon by the creator, me.
Please do NOT delete the Character Alignments from my Troper Works: Chroniclesof Conflict.
"Think like a man of action, act like a man of thinking, and don't be a dumbass." Hide / Show Replies
I don't think Character Alignment tropes should be out right banned. I agree cases that are hotly disputed should be moved to a different page. Have a link indicating the alignment is hotly disputed/ debated and move the discussion there. However one or two differing opinions aren't that big a deal. YMMV/ Alternate character interpretation would be labeled/implied and then there's no problems.
The way things are now, alignment even gets deleted from YMMV, even though the actual Character Alignment trope SAYS its YMMV.
We DO however need some guidelines on it. I propose the following.
1. Majority Actions: With long running works, you're most CERTAINLY going to have events of Depending on the Writer. The majority actions clause helps alleviate this considerably. This is a situation where Adaptation Distillation really helps as it very accurately portrays the character under their original pre-texts and intentions.
2. Prerequisite understanding: The people handeling the alignment placements should actually have a deep understanding of how it works and is scored. Reading the Book of Exalted Deeds REALLY helps with this.
Using these and various personality tropes (which inherently swing a character towards law vs chaos), I believe I may have objectively solved The Great Character Alignment Debate as far as it pertains to Bat Man.
1. The Majority Actions clause and Adaptation Distillation places Bat Man as a type 3 (sometimes type 2) Anti-Hero. Type 3 antiheroes at their absolute WORST, are neutral (they're usually good) while type 2 are almost always good. This rules out the three evil alignments. For the purposes of Adaptation Distillation, we can all safely agree that DCAU, Bat Man Begins, Dark Knight (movie) and the Arkham Asylum games are very good representations of what Bat Man is supposed to be.
2. Bat Man is a poster child for Good Is Not Nice, being a dedicated guardian of the innocent who's also a big time ass. This explains how even good people have issues with dealing with Bat Man, as opposed to the Lawful Neutral Knight Templar descriptor on the trope page. Strike out the neutral alignments, including Neutral Good, since Good Is Not Nice is an extremely rare trait on Neutral Good characters. To my knowledge, the only example I can think of is season 3 Zuko.
3. In the Adaptation Distillation works mentioned above, Bat Man seems to act more like a "Shadow Ops" style vigilantee. This type of vigilantee indeed does work for/with the police but do so behind the shadows. Typically the leaders are aware of the alliance while the underlings are kept in the dark to the connections. "Shadow Ops" vigilantee work for this reason despite the face value appearance of Chaos is actually a trait associated with Law as the vigilantee is directly working with and cooperating with authority despite appearances to the contrary. In addition, Bat Man is guided by a very strict personal code of conduct and discipline, traits associated with law.
Conclusion: Despite the face value appearance of being Chaotic Good, Bat Man is actually Lawful Good. As further evidence, Wizards of The Coast also considers Bat Man to be Lawful Good, using him as an example of a Lawful Good Scoundrel in the Complete Scoundrel source book.
I think we should make a sub-page for arguing about Character Alignments same as we have a YMMV tab. Thoughts?
Hide / Show Replies
Or, if you're not down with that, have Character Alignments allowed for discussion on YMMV
Hellohh? Can anybody hear meee? Mike check: One, two, do you read me TV Tropes?
You might be dead already, but if you haven't realized it yet discussion pages don't get looked at frequently. Start a topic in the forums if you want lots of other tropers to discuss something, as opposed to one person who is wondering the same thing as you.
I actually rather like this idea. However, I think it should be restricted to pages where alignments make sense in the first place. With a show that follows Gray-and-Grey Morality (for example, Glee, which had a problem with an Alignment Wanker a few months back) or where the issue doesn't even come up, there is no constructive reason for alignment pages. But in series where it's relevant, it could provoke some interesting discussion.
Erda
I think it also needs to be pointed out that alignments only make sense for certain series where there is a neat sorting of good vs. evil (or law and order vs. anarchy), and for books, shows, movies etc. where the point is that good and evil are relative, or where it's never discussed at all, the alignment system just doesn't fit.
Edited by Erda Hide / Show Replies
Good point. I added it.
"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"
"Flounts" should say "flouts", but I can't edit the page.
Hide / Show Replies