I'd like to add a Tropes Are Not Good note to the main page, as a lot of people seems to view this as inherently superior, when I can think of several cases where it isn't.
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I'm probably way overdue for this, but the fifth paragraph could end with:
"Properly written, this can make for some very interesting story-telling. Video Games in particular are a good medium for this, due to their interactive nature. Badly written, it can result in a conflict with no real side to root for and no stakes for the audience."
Does the conflit between James Potter and snape in Harry Potter counts as Grey-and-Gray Morality ?
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I probably wouldn't add it for the simple reason that we don't know enough about the conflict. We know they were both assholes and it started over the house quarrel, but that's pretty much it.
Thomas Flyswatter if he was a lime
Before clicking the trope and just seeing the name, I thought it was a trope for when the most important matters are tiny, insignificant things like spelling Grey vs Gray. (It's grey!) Turns out that could probably fit into Blue-and-Orange Morality.
Once upon a time, there was a Limey. He was not slimy, he was just finey!
Fire Emblem Fates shouldn't be here. Now that it's released, we know that Hoshido has no skeletons in its closet, while Nohr started every conflict, is full of evil people put into high positions of authority, and the closest thing to good people blindly follow a madman into terrorizing innocents.
The Infinitely Curious
Since their listed in both sections of this and Black and Grey, I think the works like Death Note, Dexter, and Assassin's Creed should be deleted.
Even Serial Killer Killers that are supposedly Anti Villains should be considered Black even if their supposedly A Lighter Shade of Black.
Killing is still killing, and I wouldn't really that to be grey or neutral.
"Hell exists not to punish sinners, but to ensure that nobody sins in the first place." - Eikishiki Yamaxanadu (Touhou) Hide / Show Replies
This is the first paragraph of Grey-and-Grey Morality:"In an all-grey conflict, neither side is totally good or completely evil. Both sides have a strong, justifiable reason for fighting, and contain a mixture of people of all kinds, from admirable, upstanding individuals to vicious, slimy scumbags."
Why do tropes concerned with morality gets added to the list of No Real Life Examples Please?
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We don't want to piss anyone off or start edit wars.
Edited by elmobn
Well, morality is considered rather subjective, isn't it? Even if some things should be clearly defined as beneficial or harmful, such as a doctor saving people's lives, a teacher giving students education, or a serial killer taking away people's lives.
Any good person could have ulterior motives outside their job though such as only doing it for the money and a serial killer could be doing it out of revenge against asshole victims that have wronged him/her.
Therefor, there isn't necessarily a case of this, although I have oddly seen it on the World War pages...
World War I was Grey-and-Gray Morality like this and World War II was Black-and-Gray Morality. Hmm...
"Hell exists not to punish sinners, but to ensure that nobody sins in the first place." - Eikishiki Yamaxanadu (Touhou)
"The film version of Let The Right One In - the two main characters are a murderous vampire and a kid who has strong and violent revenge fantasies. None of the other characters are more sympathetic than they are."
Deleting this. LTROI's characters are too morally diverse to categorize the story as a whole in any of the "X and Y Morality" tropes; for example, one of the central characters is a cop with no visible negative qualities, and then we've got a bully who has no redeeming qualities and even tries to gouge another boy's eye out.
Also, while having violent revenge fantasies is certainly dark, morality is about actions. The things a character fantasizes about don't really define where he falls morally.
There are way too many people confusing this trope with Anti-Hero and Anti-Villain, and basically adding anything where the heroes aren't unambiguously good and the villains have some redeeming qualities, even if the good guys are still way more sympathetic and the bad guys clearly wrong.
I don't think we need to clarify this - not sure how the description could be MORE clear on what the trope actually means - but the page could use a good examples scrub for things that don't fit the trope.
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Quite. I mean how in heck does His Dark Materials qualify? The fact that that the entry raises the question of an ultimate evil ,even if it has multiple contenders, should be a sign that it doesn't belong in this trope.
Edited by Zomric "Cynicism masquerades as wisdom, but it is the farthest thing from it." -Stephen Colbert
I can't agree with this enough. A large number of these listings seem more like "slightly obfuscated Black and White Morality". This page needs a huge scrub.
Is there a significance to the two different spellings ("grey" vs. "gray") in the trope name?
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I guess it indicates that there can be different shades of gray, though the only real difference between the words is American vs British. Some people (e.g. Madeline L'Engle), though, see "grey" as more silvery and "gray" as more sooty.
Edited by Telcontar That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.
Just to mention Lawful Evil isn't itself greyness anymore than Chaotic Evil is but a character of either alignment can be grey despite being by Dn D definition Evil.
Tarnizial
Who says the gnomes are chaotic? In lore they spend hours and hours going overbudget as a matter of course getting their inventions to work, as opposed to the goblins who... well... don't really care about user safety.
Still looking for a avatar. -.-
Can you invoke this trope with a morally ambiguous hero and morally ambiguous villain?
Edited by Retrobudz