Linking to a past Trope Repair Shop thread that dealt with this page: Page Action
, started by KSonik on Oct 28th 2010 at 11:54:43 PM
Previous Trope Repair Shop thread: Way Too Many Types, started by KSonik on Aug 12th 2011 at 5:41:50 PM
It kind of looks like I'm always policing this trope. Well, I like to come by and read the examples, and I have a pretty clear idea of what the alignment is supposed to mean.
Okay, this:
"Alongside Lawful Neutral and Chaotic Neutral all together, True Neutral personality wise, is harmonious, well mannered, fair, helpful, peaceful, indifferent, faithful, mature, highly amoral, and forgiving. However, Neutrality is the ultimate morality due to the fact it maintains balance between evil and good, especially when they bring peaceful ends to both sides and resolving conflicts. Though being impartial, means that Lawful Neutral, Chaotic Neutral, and True Neutral included, must never choose sides, or else it would may upset the balance. It should be noted, that characters of the three neutrality alignments can be respectful and supportive to both good and evil, and they could possibly have the utter capability or power to reform evil, much like certain benevolent characters, but to a higher extent, and also pacify good via peacemaking, facts and reasoning, questioning tragic pasts of factions and individuals, and helping them change their behaviors and personality traits for the better. True Neutral characters though, maintains balance in all angles around them, and they have the flexibility to do so, much like Neutral Good does when they often follow rules, but may rebel against them whenever characters like these comes to unpleasant situations that require either law or order, unless they have the flexibility."
This was added to the trope discussion, I removed it, but I'm open to discussion. (I mean, I'm pretty sure I'm right, but I'll state my reasons and listen to what others might have to say.)
Basically, this contradicts a lot of what is said in the rest of the description, and it seems like someone's personal idea of what "True Neutral" means. I don't think the traits described here are even typical of Neutral characters (nor real persons, if we were to start classifying them by alignment). But what's for certain is that none of this follows from the definition of True Neutral as "anyone who's not Good or Evil or Lawful or Chaotic". That doesn't make you wise and harmonious, etc. Also look at the different "types" of True Neutral on the Analysis page, or practically all the characterisations on the main page. It's just not talking about the same thing.
Edited by VVK
Member of the Wizard's Guard
Thoughts on this as a quote for the page?
- Adevarul: Are you disappointed by the political class?Ana Ularu: Which political class?! It's all just a barrage, a carnival. If I talk about politics I prefer to talk to Winston Churchill.—Adevarul, INTERVIEW Ana Ularu, actress: "I loved Stefan Iordache very much" (Translated from Romanian)
"Neutral Neutral" in the description keeps getting linked to Department of Redundancy Department. Using the same word twice to mean different things ("neither lawful nor chaotic" and "neither good nor evil") may be weird, but it's not redundant.
Edited by VVK
I don't agree with this (and removed it):
"Alternatively a True Neutral character could stay on the villains side. Being that in a way it preoccupies them and also at times evil feels good. Even if defeated by the heroes it still serves as entertainment away from the boring status quo."
Well, sure, that could happen too, I guess, but this doesn't sound like a very likely thing to happen to True Neutrals in general. How likely is Evil Feels Good to apply to non-evil characters? And being Neutral doesn't mean you're so bored you'll think being defeated is just good entertainment. This sounds like a specific and also far-fetched character concept rather than True Neutral in general.
"In a positive light, True Neutral characters are among the most open-minded people. Good and evil much like law and chaos shun one another too often, True Neutral's wouldn't mind making friends on either side, as long as said "friends" don't abuse them."
A True Neutral could be a total bigot or whatever — the alignment really doesn't say anything about that. But let's assume it only means tolerant in regards to alignments, and by this wording, it's specifically Good and Evil for some reason. Still a false generalisation. Would you expect the average passive citizen to be happy to make friends with obvious criminals? Being Neutral doesn't mean you like Evil. You might not like Good, either, though that's more likely. Again, this sounds like some specific character concept rather than True Neutral in general.
True Neutral is for everyone who's not strong enough on the alignment axes to count for any of them. You can't say these things based on that.
Edited by VVK
Removed the following:
- The Sandman fits the trope very well. So do a bunch of the other endless, such as Death, Destruction and Delight/Delirium. And how could I forget, Destiny. If he was any more neutral, he'd just sit there and do nothing... wait- He does.
- The rest of the endless are arguably also neutral, but Desire and Despair, if judged by human standards, might tend to sadism.
- Despair is neutral (if not very pleasant for others) as she only cares about her work and hoping the family will be nice (although she is easily swayed by Desire). The others tend to good (Death and Destruction) or evil (the actively malicious Desire).
- Destruction actually abandons his role as Destruction largely because he can no longer carry it out in a neutral fashion - his feelings get in the way.
- Despair is neutral (if not very pleasant for others) as she only cares about her work and hoping the family will be nice (although she is easily swayed by Desire). The others tend to good (Death and Destruction) or evil (the actively malicious Desire).
- The rest of the endless are arguably also neutral, but Desire and Despair, if judged by human standards, might tend to sadism.
...because it's a duplicate (and far more natter-y) version of the line below:
- The Sandman; Death, Desire and Despair are True Neutral.
...Except now it's a Zero Context Example. Unfortunately, I don't know enough to rewrite this, and there's not enough information here. If anyone who does know happens to pass by, they could write it up.
Edited by VVK
Many examples refer to "Type X" (where x is some number). I'm guessing that at one point there was an enumerated list of types. The list over in Analysis doesn't appear to be the exact list being referred to. These should probably be dereferenced by people who are familiar with the examples.
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Yep, such "type X" entries are useless.
"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman
The Infinitely Curious
I don't know if it's important to state in the descriptions, but further cementing the Touhou fairies status as True Neutral is this statement from Perfect Memento in Strict Sense.
"Fairies are beings that can't harm nor benefit humans."
Naturally, benefit is good whole harm is evil, so since their neither they should be neutral. :p
Besides, True Neutral are represented by nature spirits in Shin Megami Tensei and is even a class. XD
"Hell exists not to punish sinners, but to ensure that nobody sins in the first place." - Eikishiki Yamaxanadu (Touhou)
Isn't Wikipedia true neutral? That's a fair real life example, I think.
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We can't use real life examples. Ever. This just invites an Edit War. Sure you could argue that Wikipedia is True Neutral, but at the same time, someone else could just as easily argue that Wikipedia is Lawful Good or Neutral Good (dedicated to preserving and archiving knowledge; the search for knowledge is good) or Lawful Neutral (very formal in nature, often lapses into Sesquipedalian Loquaciousness, requires excessive citation to the point of Lawful Stupid etc...).
It's super effective.
Someone explain to me the Jack Harkness example better?
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He's True Neutral not in the I-don't-give-a-damn sense, but True Neutral in the sense of his Good, Evil, Chaotic and Lawful traits all balancing out. Just like James Bond or Lelouch.
Edited by CrazyDawg
Sephiroth in Dissidia and Kingdom Hearts: While I haven't played those games, I will say that ignoring the grand battle of Good vs. Evil doesn't automatically make you True Neutral, especially if you're doing so to torment your nemesis, which isn't very nice. It goes perfectly with Neutral Evil, which he is elsewhere (not counting before the Nibelheim incident; back then he might actually have been True Neutral, but I'm not sure about that). Any objections to removing that example?
Edited by VVK
(he/him)
How is this trope subjective? The other alignment tropes definitely are, but the way this is formatted seems pretty objective, especially since there are a number of types True Neutral characters can be narrowed down to.
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Ah, I see. I don't always keep up to date on the latest updates and decisions of the hivemind, my apologies.
Wizzard
Actually, I've been looking at the Types and it seems to me that there's too many. Aren't the following basically the same?
1. Cowards and compromisers; 6. Don't care about anything; 7. Fence-Riding Bastards; 9. Focused on own goals; 10. Trend-followers; and 12. Want to be left alone. All basically characters who think taking a side is more trouble than it's worth. (Possibly 13, although the description is a little confused: they "aren't dedicated to either side", but they "aren't neutral in the sense of not taking a side". In fact, 13 is probably Chaotic Neutral.)
2. Above Good and Evil; 5. Completely amoral force of nature.
3. Animals; 11. Robots. Characters who simply don't have the ability to make moral choices (possibly also 8. Characters with low intelligence, although I'm not sure it belongs here at all; a stupid character can want to do good [or evil] even if he doesn't know how.)
It seems to me that there's a different category for every reason to be True Neutral, rather than just every way True Neutral people might act.
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Adding onto this.
4. Is a Lawful Neutral opinion. They are trying to 'Balance' Good and Evil. Thats Lawful on a cosmic scale.
Edited by StephanReiken
Wizzard
While I'm thinking about it, how is Discworld Death (who literally cannot disobey the rules, and when he bends them, does it for the side of Good) "sometimes" True Neutral? And especially how is he Type 3: Animals?
Wizzard
From the Futurama section:
- In addition, most of the main cast aside from Bender (Chaotic Evil), Farnsworth (Chaotic Neutral), Fry (Neutral Good), Leela (Lawful Good) and Hermes (Lawful Neutral) can be placed into here.
Isn't that just a very long way of saying "Amy"? And I'd say she was more Neutral Good as well.
Edited by DaibhidC
Yesterday I added Jules from Pulp Fiction to this page because I've always considered him to be THE textbook example of a True Neutral character, but it has since been removed. Any reason?
Removed the following from the description:
"An interesting fact explains that us humans are born into this alignment as babies at first. Rather we change sides within our lifetime is entirely up to our decisions and feelings, regardless if a persons culture follows one of the other alignments."
Besides the grammar being confused, this is a kind of substantial philosophical plus psychological plus sociological claim about the real world that we can't possibly prove right or wrong on this site but that could be questioned.
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