From the lead: "Another candidate is the power of money or The Almighty Dollar."
Since it's understandable to value money as a way to reasonably care for yourself and others, I assume this is referring to the people who are trying to get as rich as possible for the sake of it. That doesn't seem very Blue and Orange to me, just power hungry and selfish. If they are willing to hurt others to get said money, it becomes evil.
By the way, would a meta-example of this be the player's actions in pretty much every RPG, from the perspective of the characters in said world? A character might heroically do every quest in a village, even saving the little girl's cat, only to slaughter all of them once they're done for some extra xp. They might say "Farewell" in the middle of a climactic conversation with the villain to save their game. They might drop a ring containing the power of a dead god on the floor because they don't like its stats and can't be bothered to walk 30 seconds to a merchant. They might ask to marry you just so they can complete a speedrun of Skyrim a couple minutes faster. I know the player has fairly good reasons, but the player-controlled character doesn't.
Edited by aartbastiaan Hide / Show Replies
The trope page of The Almighty Dollar refers to it as a wealth god or a god with power over money. So I think it's referring to these dieties as being blue and orange, not necessarily the people that worship them. Although a society that builds it's moral code based on putting the good of the economy or business over human lives might also qualify.
General
I guess the reason they call it "blue and orange" is because "blue and red" can be an alternative for black and white, because blue often represents good and red often represents evil.
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I have rarely seen blue represent good and red represent evil. If anything, blue is order and red is chaos.
What is this trope exactly? I've always seen it used as "character/group acts this way because their morals/priorities are different from the culture the work was made in", but I just read the article for the first time and it's not like that at all. Heck, the page quote isn't even an example. Plenty of people carry knives and guns for that exact reason.
It's not always Values Dissonance the way I see it used, Values Dissonance is when the culture the work was made in is different from the average troper's (right?), not the character's culture.
This trope's so insanely common I feel like we should address how people made a new trope and pasted it over the "real" one. Maybe split the two? Maybe I'm preaching to the choir, I don't know.
Edited by PlantdoesTV
A majority of the examples that I see linking to this page are not truly Blue And Oragne Morality, but rather something between this and Values Dissonance. Blue-and-Orange Morality is supposed to be specifically about alien morality, something that is so abstract from human thought that it's incomprehensible or at least hard to understand to the human mind. A lot of the values I see attributed to this are not outside of the human mind. I expect this trope to apply to aliens, robots, animals, and to some extent humans with mental illnesses. Instead I see it attributed to human cultures. Human cultures cannot be Blue-and-Orange Morality by definition, because it's supposed to be beyond human values. While many cultures have different attributes, there are still intrinsic aspects of human issues. Humans have a heavy system of values of right or wrong in regards to social norms, which can includes behavior towards others, the self, and other beings. Often are values include what objects are okay to have, how to use them, whether we can interact with another in a certain way (sex outside of an agreed bond, violence towards another, how one speaks to a superior or mother-in-law or a child). Justice, and what justice looks like, is very integral to human morality. In Norway justice is more like teaching criminals to, well, not be like that; while in America justice is often about punishing the criminal by putting them through non-direct torture through a hard prison system; in ye old Europe justice was often found through a quick death like hanging or the guillotine; and it wouldn't be too out of place if a fictional setting had people publicly tortured or humiliated (though I feel a Values Dissonance that makes me wonder if it really is human behavior, I know for a fact that it is).
All human behavior goes down to these social values. Yet I see Blue-and-Orange Morality continuously attributed to these sorts of values. Often it's a different species being attributed, but I definitely see other human cultures, fictional or otherwise, being placed with Blue-and-Orange Morality. I think that people really like the name Blue-and-Orange Morality over Values Dissonance. It's a cool name and one can see it as placing two different moralities to compare. I don't think that's the intention of the name, I think that it's supposed to be derived from White and Black morality, and is a comparison of that. White and Black is a human morality, as compared to blue and orange, which is a different spectrum entirely. It is white and black- for the aliens. Who have a completely different moral system.
But I don't think that's how people register this name in there heads. I think it gives them a chance to see two different sets of moralities and compare them side-by-side. By thinking of it like this, it allows them to associate it with Values Dissonance in a different way. So, in Values Dissonance, you have to recognize that you're the one with the problem. These other people have a value and you disagree with it. It places responsibility on you. But if you see Blue-and-Orange Morality as two different values compared side-by-side, it allows you to subtly respect the other side while still calling it weird. You can acknowledge it's difference without calling your own into question.
I think this is why I see Blue-and-Orange Morality so often misattributed, both inside and outside of TV Tropes. I think we should give up on the Black and White morality reference and create a new trope related to more human like morality. Perhaps something like Green and Yellow morality? And in that case, this article should have a major clean-up done.
This page quote is a really baffling run-on sentence full of double negatives and split clauses. I don't have a suggested replacement on hand, but there has got to be a better example than this.
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Take it to the Trope Description Improvement Drive?
Ultimately Black and White morality are defined in the eye of the beholder. Blue and Orange is simply a set of moral values that isn't understood, on an emotional level, by the viewer. Everyone who isn't you has a shade of blue and orange, all it takes is they do something that you would find offensive, or they don't understand why you care about something that is good/evil.
Just do a survey of opinions on animal testing and you will find a lot of disagreement.
In short, create a list of everything that people should do, and another list of things they shouldn't. The more someone (or something) disagrees with that list, they more shades of orange and blue they have.
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I think that Blue and Orange is more like a set of morality at a higher level of complexity.
Blue and Orange Morality is morality that comes from a basis that is entirely different from a human one. If one person has a morality set that values obedience, and another that values independent thinking, each would be Blue and Orange to the other.
I'm a Troper!!!
It could also be a basis which is simply unconventional- hence the bacon/necktie example. The dichotomy between enjoying your food vs. dressing for dinner is no big deal for most people- but to some eccentric out there it could be a huge deal. (Bacon being someone who enjoys consuming food, but can't be bothered with dressing up; necktie those who dress up and consider dinner more a social occasion but aren't foodies or into gluttony.)
There is no Planet B
The article has attracted lots of Natter and incorrect sorting of examples.
This was in Real Life with two or three bullets. It should be moved to Literature or Mythology — and written properly, without Word Cruft and Thread Mode.
- Eating in public was a major taboo in ancient Greece. It was probably the inspiration for similar taboos found in various Speculative Fiction works.
- Shakespeare in the Bush is a delicious account of trying to explain the plot of Hamlet to a tribe with very different mores; they have no concept of ghosts, the term which is their closest approximation to "scholar" (literally "person who knows things") is the same as one of their terms for "witch," they believe that a widow should remarry as soon as possible, and on top of that, a ruler is succeeded by his brother, who proceeds to marry the ex-chief's widows upon death. They wind up deciding, among other things, that Polonius's death was entirely due to his own mind-blowing stupidity regarding hunting etiquette and that Laertes was a witch who killed Ophelia to sell her body.
- This trope is the result of a lot of misinterpretations of the myth of Pandora's box - people now see the hope at the bottom as the manifestation of the one good thing that persists in spite of all bad things. But the ancient Greeks actually saw hope as a negative, because it was a delusion. That's why it was in the box Pandora wasn't supposed to open!
- Even the idea that Pandora wasn't supposed to open the box is an example, most likely from associations with Eve from The Bible; in the full version she was created, from the ground up, to be incapable of not opening the box. Her entire existence, and that of women in general, was a punishment for Humanity's patron Prometheus.
- According to at least some scholarship, the last evil, the one Pandora managed to keep in the jar, wasn't hope. It was the sure knowledge of the future's shape. Humankind still has hope because we do not know for certain just how bad things will be. The ancient Greeks weren't a very optimistic bunch.
I think it might be time for Portal entry pimps to stop acting like Valve invented the blue orange color scheme. We have a trope that explains why blue and orange are used together and that trope influenced Portal and others who use it. Following this logic, I might conclude that Valve was paying homage to the University of Florida Gators who have been using that color scheme for decades.
Removed:
- The Professional Wrestling business by and large seems to run on this trope, particularly when it comes to how the mainstream audience perceives it. What may seem amoral to an average American may be perfectly normal to Triple H, or The Undertaker, or Raven, or Ric Flair, or Jeff Hardy, and so on. Depending on the Writer, Undertaker will either, as he did in 1992, pull a Heel–Face Turn and stop Jake "The Snake" Roberts from hitting Elizabeth with a chair, or, as he did in 1999, attempt a "Black Wedding" with Stephanie McMahon during the feud between Taker's Ministry of Darkness and The Corporation, led by Stephanie's father, Vince McMahon.note
- "Stone Cold" Steve Austin seems to be the personification of this trope. It doesn't matter what his moral center of gravity is, he's still a Bad Ass fan favorite.
- During his second heel run in 2003-2004, Kane sometimes played up a gimmick of believing that Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad, such as when he justified attacking his half-brother Undertaker by claiming that 'Taker "betrayed" his evil heritage. These days, though, Kane is a face who still does evil things sometimes, and the storylines simply ignore this dissonance.
This trope is about systems of morality that are beyond human understanding. None of these examples represent that. The first looks like inconsistent writing. The second is just an example of an Anti-Hero. The third is Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad, a different trope.
There is no Planet B
I removed this wick.
- The Autobiography of Jane Eyre has Jane. Who remains one of the most convincing modern day examples in this format since Lonely Girl 15.
Jane is a young woman based on Jane Eyre. She's very moral and very human, compassionate... This must be shoehorning or not understanding the trope at all.
The wick on the show's page is about Grace Poole, and also incorrect.
- Grace Poole's interests seem to revolve around her work and avoiding gluten.
Grace Poole is obsessed with gluten and she is a Granola Girl, but that hardly means she has foreign and incomprehensible system of moral values.
Pretty much everything in the Real Life section is just Values Dissonance and not this trope at all.
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It could be argued that Values Dissonance and this trope are not mutually exclusive, or this trope is simply an extreme form of the other.
Should the Real Life section even exist? I mean, this seems like one of those tropes that cannot exist in Real Life.
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The Real Life section can exist insofar as it is listing entities that are non-human in essence — bonobos, corporations, or 4chan, to name a few. (I tend to follow the Steinbeck theory of corporations — corporation nature will lead a corporation to do things no individual humans working for it would dare do on their own. No human at the bank enjoys kicking people out of their homes by foreclosing the housing, but the bank can't let those home loans go unpaid forever.)
Anything suggesting that a human being or a country has Blue-and-Orange Morality, however, has gotta go.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage — Paul McCartney
Left the historical example; cut the others. Yes, I know the Jack Chick variety of Christian (he's not that unique in his beliefs) may look like they have Blue-and-Orange Morality — but since they believe they have Black-and-White Morality, listing them is risky...
Blue-and-Orange Morality is tricky. If it's really Blue-and-Orange Morality, then normal people won't be able to comprehend it; and if normal people can't comprehend it, then they'll have trouble writing it.
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage — Paul McCartney
A little off topic, but this was my biggest stumbling block writing the original article. I had to keep reminding myself that I can't understand Blue And Orange morality so that I wouldn't flanderize it into Values Dissonance. Real B&O morality can only be recognized as a concept, not understood. I'm still kind of iffy on listing the Nietzchean superman as B&O, because of the potential for him having plain old Values Dissonance.
It could theoretically exist in real life if there were another sapient species which we never manage to understand. But there aren't... which may be a good thing.
I'm not sure that this whole trope really makes sense outside of fiction, and even there can't stand up to Fridge Logic. Any system of morality will have things to avoid - evil by another name - and things to strive towards - good by another name. That's the whole point of moral systems. An Eldritch Abomination that feeds on people simply doesn't consider that act to be evil; that's an example of Values Dissonance.
There's also the question of whether simply not caring about your actions being horrible makes you any less evil. In fact, it can be argued that the very definition of evil is not caring how your actions affect others. Simply because you claim to be following The Path of Orange shouldn't be a "Get Out of Jail Free" Card.
So no, I think that this can't exist in real life; all such cases are simply Values Dissonance.
I have a question about this statement of yours, Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: "Anything suggesting that a human being or a country has Blue And Orange Morality, however, has gotta go."
What if a person is completely human but is mentally insane so that he/she has some very unconventional beliefs? 'Normal' people would find this person's mindset to be alien-like.
Edited by nvtroper88
As an Aspie, I can attest that to some people my mores are blue and orange. To describe them would be counterproductive though.
Edited by ZombiezuRFER
Blue and Orange Morality is when two morality systems are different, not only in general, but in the very method of determining what is right or wrong. For example, capitalism and communism. One values freedom above all else, while the other values equality above all else. This is Blue-and-Orange Morality.
I'm a Troper!!!
Removed this from the Perdido Street Station example:
- The Garuda would also count to an extent. Their society values personal freedom and individuality above all else and has only one law: You must respect others' right to choose. Those who break this law are all guilty of choice-theft. While most human crime can be seen as theft of a choice (the choice of owning an item, the choice of continuing to live unharmed, etc), the converse does not hold, meaning that people who would be considered highly dangerous criminals in human society are be put on an equal footing with people who wouldn't be seen as criminals at all to humans. And some human crimes don't fit at all: to the Garuda, selling drugs would probably be legal and moral, while preventing the selling of drugs would be heinous.
- More alien are the feelings of one Garuda as she talks about being raped... she seems to bear no more ill-will to the rapist, so long as his punishment continues, and becomes quite irritated when a human considers her a victim worthy of pity; she refuses to be anthropomorphized.
- Although given the lengths she goes to to make sure her rapist continues to be punished (not unlike a victim appearing before a criminal's parole board), she might not be as untraumatized as she pretends.
- The Garuda would also count to an extent. Their society values personal freedom and individuality above all else and has only one law: You must respect others' right to choose. Those who break this law are all guilty of choice-theft. While most human crime can be seen as theft of a choice (the choice of owning an item, the choice of continuing to live unharmed, etc), the converse does not hold, meaning that people who would be considered highly dangerous criminals in human society are be put on an equal footing with people who wouldn't be seen as criminals at all to humans. And some human crimes don't fit at all: to the Garuda, selling drugs would probably be legal and moral, while preventing the selling of drugs would be heinous.
This doesn't seem to be an example. The Garuda might have slightly different values, but they make sense to humans and coincide with basic human morals. Rape is considered a horrible action and the victim clearly suffered emotional damage. Just because a morality and judicial system are different and phrased a different way doesn't make it this trope.
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Also, a lot of people (myself included) don't consider selling drugs immoral. Actually, isn't this philosophy basically the philosophy of the Libertarian Party?
I'm a Troper!!!
It's a (decent) snowclone to the common, pre-existing Black-and-White Morality-type terms.
Mm. If you excuse me, I must go set my own city on fire. Count Selvan, Radiant Historia
Sorcerer in training
"The Martians in Mars Attacks! declare war, apparently, because they see a bird, laugh, cry and get angry for reasons incomprehensible to humans, cut off someone's head and keep it alive for no apparent reason, put another person's head on a chihuahua's body, again for no apparent reason and their entire language consists of the word "Ack!""
And the Martians originally approached the US, which have a bird on the State Seal -but one is later seen spazzing out when eavesdropping on a Presidential statement/broadcast when the Seal comes up. (???)
About the only thing consistent with the guys is that they reallllllly hate birds. One gave up a perfect hostage situation to shoot a caged bird!
Edited by Candi Coming back to where you started is not the same as never leaving. -Terry Pratchett
I don't dare to touch or even look too closely at the Ender's Game examples, but it seems to me they should mostly be removed in light of the considerations raised by the definition of the trope which I just made a note of in the main text. (Summary: misunderstanding the implications of your actions doesn't mean you're acting by alien moral rules.)
Edited by VVK Hide / Show Replies
I came here to say the same thing. I suspect it's a question of the community just sighing and admitting that you'd have to camp out 24/7 to stop people posting it. The only semi-solution I can see is to make it even more explicit at the top - "This means the Buggers don't fit this trope, do not post" - but people would still do it.
This page needs a lot of cleanup. Half of the examples don't fit, although it's hard to wrap one's mind around examples of morality that go beyond human comprehension.
There's a lot of examples of "Cultural/Biological differences inform morality differences" on the page. The Ender's Game ones just seemed the most obvious.
Example of a blue/orange morality that ARE understandable by us are ones in which some quantifiable concept is held as the good/evil axis, by definition a concept we consider arbitrary, insignificant, or without morality. Some common examples are aesthetics, sensation, the color red, or height. You can grasp how the morality might work, even if you can't put yourself in the mindset. With the Ender's Game example, you CAN put yourself in the mindset, so it's not blue/orange.
Edited by LordQwert
I have to agree with Zabeus, alot of the examples on this trope fail to work.
I’m tired of the sexist garbage going on this site. I’m leaving, this site now just trash.
Chopped this from World of Warcraft on General Principle:
- What Malygos and his Blue dragons conveniently forget is that it was one of the own that used dragon magic to become one of the worst monsters in Azeroth. It was also a human mage who helped the dragons defeat him.
- Interestingly, quite a lot of pre-release information suggested the war would have been more along the lines of Grey-and-Gray Morality. Then a considerable portion of the player base decided they'd rather support the blue dragons as the pre-release information made them sound right. It's unclear whether Blizzard changed the blue dragon's actions to be more along the lines of Knight Templar Well-Intentioned Extremist in response to what they saw as Draco in Leather Pants, or if it was always going to be like that and the pre-release information just gave a very incomplete picture of it.
Attempted to tidy the Dragon Age examples: There's some good info in there, but it's mixed up and in Thread Form, rather than seperate point. Someone who knows the series might do better.
Don't ask me, I just fix wicks.
Kimblee from Fullmetal Alchemist (at least his manga/Brotherhood adaptation) seems to me like more of an odd variant of Lawful Neutral. Granted, it's his ethics that fall under this trope, but they basically boil down to the idea that a person's state in life dictates that they adhere to the "rules"/expectations that come with it. ie: Being critical of soldiers not killing innocent civilians, but commending the Rockbells for treating the same civilians (soldiers are killers, doctors are healers). Or better yet, if you're an Artificial Human by the name of Pride, then trying to pull a Grand Theft Me on a "lower being" is going against your own principals.
Azereaux Duskwing
Just a suggestion: couldn't this be considered a subtrope of "Values Dissonance" in the same way "And I Must Scream" is a subtrope of "Fate Worse than Death"?
Reasoning: Assuming I'm not misinterpreting one or both tropes, Blue & Orange Morality would be the most extreme version of Values Dissonance, where the sets of values presented are not only different from the "standard" set, but are incomprehensible. More than likely, the two sets are mutually incomprehensible.
Just a thought.
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That does sound logical...
I think we do need to determine where to draw the line. First, determine whether we have Blue-and-Orange Morality compared to people who were grown-ups in The '50s. If we don't, then we had better trim the Real Life section again. If we do, then things will get very interesting....
There is a fine line between recklessness and courage — Paul McCartney
Do a barrel roll!
Could the characters of Seinfeld be considered practitioners of Blue and Orange Morality? Not just the four main characters, but just about any character on the show. At the least they're very quirky, and at the most they might as well be aliens from another planet.
Flora is the most beautiful member of the Winx Club. :)
Removed the example about the Jedi from the Prequel Trilogy. They may fit under Values Dissonance or Protagonist-Centered Morality, or we might just say that they're written inconsistently but they do stand for some kind of discernible good. Its clear that George Lucas meant for them to be good guys being manipulated by bad guys into making some bad decisions. He just handled it poorly.
Inconsistently written morality is not the same as Blue And Orange.
Dunkies addict
There is way too much Natter in the Religion section, especially from apologists trying to pretend the scriptures don't say what they say. I've removed much of it, although it's so bad I'd have left it alone but for the "wives and progenie" statement (he never lost his wife, that's a common misconception for some reason).
My posts make considerably more sense read in the voice of John Ratzenberger. Hide / Show Replies
Okay, I've made an overhaul, since it was just getting ridiculous.
My posts make considerably more sense read in the voice of John Ratzenberger.
Could/Should we add Loki in here somewhere? Under religion I guess? (And I'm talking about the Nordic Loki - not the one reimagined for Christian purposes. And, obviously, not the Marvel one since he was based off of the reimagined Christian one.)
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The problem is that that doesn't really exist. The Norse gods aren't like the Greek gods, for whom we have loads of documents by worshippers; pretty much all we have are various Christian reimaginings, and it's hard to sort out tradition from fancy.
My posts make considerably more sense read in the voice of John Ratzenberger.
Never Trust
Wouldn't the Bilical examples be better off put in either Values Dissonance and/or Protagonist-Centered Morality?
Trump delenda est
Are this many redirects necessary? No offense if they're genuine. but I'm reminded of ED's trolling suggestions regarding possible redirects to Blue Eyes. I haven't even come across people using most of them.
At least over on the Order of the Stick forums (the unofficial TV Tropes discussion board), I've seen people using "Blue and Orange Morality" to indicate a system in which there are two moral poles which have contents and rules different from the contemporary American/European black and white. By this definition, for example, a Proud Warrior Race Guy would be Blue and Orange, because he doesn't believe that killing is always wrong.
This gives the trope a definition which a human being is capable of interacting with, while also setting up a clear contrast with Values Dissonance — where both parties agree on what's right and wrong in general, but disagree on the particulars. Would it be possible to redefine the trope to mean this?
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Could Narcissists, Sociopaths, and Pyschopaths fall under this category or maybe be humans who are the closest to falling under this category?
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Can we add a sub page to this trope towards content with many different species that have different at best, insane at worst inhuman values, like Trek alien races. Vulcans practice logic to maintain their dangerous and different chemical emotional balances, other times to viewers, these dicks think they are the Borg without the cybernetics and with Psyker-magic!
When an idea is formed and practiced, learn NOT from the creators but the reputation the public invest in. Website fine, idiot admins bad!