How to make truly evil female villains posted:

-female characters tend to be deprived of agency and assumed more innocent. hell, Females Are More Innocent is as trope here, which is all about the distinct lack of truly evil female villains.

in truth this is a bit hard for me as well. in one of my stories I have basically 3 Complete Monster s, with only one being a woman, and she's currently the only one lacking any motivation for her actions. the other two are a guy who genuinely finds joy in others suffering and his brother, who is an Empty Shell with most of his personality and actions basically being learned from his psycho brother.

for the chick, I do have her doing truly horrible, irredeemable things, but I want her to have some sort of understandable motivation, but I don't want it to be sympathetic one.

-That and female villains tend to be bad because a man screwed them over. Or worse.

-I have a slew of female villains, whose motivation runs the gamut from Woobie, Destroyer of Worlds to Well-Intentioned Extremist , to just straight up being sociopathic assholes.

Ratspeaker posted:

Took a peek at that link. Dude cares waaaay too much about us and is very insulted that we won't raid his blogspot in response to his bitching. But yeah, don't go there, it's just some boring spaz trying to start internet drama.

Content: Checking up on my favorite thread, "Favorite Lines from Your Own Writing":

quote:

I love how my style appears flat and no-nonsense, but is actually pretty witty and tongue-in-cheek:

quote:

He wore, of course, the latest in One Fifty-Four fashion: a plain white buttoned shirt, a pair of jeans, and a long thin metal tag bearing his ID number permanently punched through the lobe of his right ear.

[A One Fifty Four is basically a clone servant.]

Flesnolk posted:

That wouldn't be too bad if the troper weren't so up his own arse about it.

Ratspeaker posted:

Ratspeaker posted:

Moatman posted:

Do they not have an edit button or something?

Yes, that's what bothers me about that post.

Arcsquad12 posted:

That poo poo was funny. Anyways, back to the regularly scheduled mocking.

Ratspeaker posted:

TvTropes posted:

Blue and Orange Morality
Ye who walk with the Path of Bacon shall be given breakfast. Yet ye who follow the Way of Necktie shall be put in appropriate attire.

"We cannot do wrong; neither have we any disposition to do it, for we do not know what it is."
— The Mysterious Stranger

To say that questions of morality are thorny and filled with gray when they aren't being hammered between stark absolutes is putting it mildly. Because of this there can be great drama when characters who represent a wide range of moral viewpoints come together or into conflict.

The strangest of these characters are those who espouse Blue And Orange Morality. These characters have a moral framework that is so utterly alien and foreign to human experience that we can't peg them as good or evil. They aren't a Chaotic Neutral Unfettered, though they may seem to act terrifyingly randomly; nor are they necessarily a Lawful Neutral Fettered, because our and their understanding of 'law' as a concept may not even be equivalent. There might be a logic behind their actions, it's just that they operate with entirely different sets of values and premises with which to draw their conclusions. It's also worth noting that such cultures are just as likely to be something we'd find appalling, as they are to be something we'd find benign and/or weird. They may also find us appalling, benign, or weird even if we don't see them that way.

That doesn't make them bad. And although they are often likely to commit acts we would see as horrific, some are unusually benign. Either way they tend to act as if nothing were the matter. Because in their world/mind, that's just what they do. This trope is one of the trickier to pull off well, because Most Writers Are Human, and it's often hard to portray alien truly foreign.

Basically "Writing is hard."

This is similar to Values Dissonance, but the main difference is that societies with Values Dissonance can, at least on a basic level, generally measure one another by the same concepts of Good and Evil, or even Order and Chaos. With Blue and Orange Morality, the values are so foreign, that such concepts can no longer be applied. They may not even know what these things are, or even if they do, will often find them confusing. The concepts are not necessarily beyond their grasp, mind you, but are just not something which they'd place any importance on.

Conversely, they may have these concepts, but apply them in vastly different ways. Such as regarding motionlessness as the epitome of evil, or viewing exploration as an element of chaos.

Note that cases involving solely a misapprehension of facts and consequences do not count here no matter how alien the reasons; if, for example, a race of aliens thinks killing is okay because its own members respawn within a day with no harm done, and mistake humans as working the same way, that doesn't mean they wouldn't balk at killing if they realized the degree of harm it causes to other creatures. In this case, they may be working by comprehensible moral standards and just gravely mistaken about the implications of their actions.

Likely candidates for Blue and Orange Morality include The Fair Folk, who follow rules of their own making; Eldritch Abominations that are beyond comprehension; the more exotic Starfish Aliens; AIs and robots, especially when super smart and incapable of emotion. An individual human (or single members of any species whose majority is using the greyscale morality) who operates on this is the Übermensch of Nietzschean philosophy (a human being who has developed their own Blue/Orange set of morals). A Nominal Hero may have this motivation as well. Moral Sociopathy overlaps strongly with this trope for obvious reasons, though this is not always the case.

Compare Xenofiction, Humans Are Cthulhu, Humanity Is Infectious (all often involving this), Non-Malicious Monster (sometimes requires this), Above Good and Evil, Affably Evil / Faux Affably Evil (they sometimes can come across as this), Even Evil Has Standards (when handled poorly or bizarrely), and Evil Cannot Comprehend Good (less elaborate forms that resemble this in practice). When two sides go to war and nothing will stop them except total annihilation, that's Guilt-Free Extermination War.

Has nothing to do with the following: Bucknell University, The University of Illinois, The University of Virginia, The University of Florida, Auburn University, Syracuse University, Hope College, Gettysburg College, Boise State University or the flag of Ukraine (the colors of all of which are blue and orange, albeit different shades in each case). Nor the Denver Broncos, Chicago Bears, New York Knicks, New York Mets, or Mango Sentinels. Or the City of New York, for that matter. Furthermore, do not confuse with Blue and Orange Movies. Also has nothing to do with the Karma Meter in Mass Effect nor the Aperture Science Hand Held Portal Device or even the light scheme in TRON and its universe.

This entire paragraph is stupid. Because you use loving colors rather than just using a different term you literally believe that others would be confused about places that use blue and orange with your dumb article.

Annointed posted:

Why can't they say "Characters with morality incomprehensible to our own"?

Soulcleaver posted:

Note: I have prefered pronouns, if you're going to reference me, please say either Shub/Shubm/Shubs/Shubself in place of male pronouns.

Annointed posted:

Why can't they say "Characters with morality incomprehensible to our own"?

quote:

Why can't they say "Characters with morality incomprehensible to our own"?

Penny Paper posted:

quote:

I have to vent.

Someone on another website thought it would be oh so clever to post an image that informed viewers that misandry exists and sexism can harm both men and women.... in the "funny images" thread. It's clear they only did so under the pretense of "lol male tears".

You want to know what social justice is? I'll tell you what social justice is.

Social justice is about eliminating unfair treatment of people based on who they are.

Social justice is about recognizing privilege and devoting yourself to helping those with less of it become accepted.

Social justice is about being as charitable a person as you can be.

Social justice is not about putting any given group - women, POC, gays, lesbians, trans*, anyone - on a pedestal, then slinging mockery and prejudice at anyone who disagrees with that decision. (I hate to bring Godwin into this, but this is exactly the kind of thinking that led to the worst of Nazi Germany.)

The sooner we all realize this, the easier life will be.

Morkyz posted:

I have to vent.

Someone on another website thought it would be oh so clever to post an image that informed viewers that misandry exists and sexism can harm both men and women.... in the "funny images" thread. It's clear they only did so under the pretense of "lol male tears".

You want to know what social justice is? I'll tell you what social justice is.

Social justice is about eliminating unfair treatment of people based on who they are.

Social justice is about recognizing privilege and devoting yourself to helping those with less of it become accepted.

Social justice is about being as charitable a person as you can be.

Social justice is not about putting any given group - women, POC, gays, lesbians, trans*, anyone - on a pedestal, then slinging mockery and prejudice at anyone who disagrees with that decision. (I hate to bring Godwin into this, but this is exactly the kind of thinking that led to the worst of Nazi Germany.)

The sooner we all realize this, the easier life will be.

http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=kgpuujtb2vdxu4qdniq6mjto&page=2451#61253

Ninjasaurus posted:

Not pictured: a My Little Pony avatar.

Annointed posted:

You spoke too soon. Either way I find it hilarious that he hasn't considered all problems of Misandry resulted from the self imposed restrictions of the patriarchy. Basically it's the guys' fault for their own darn problems but nope, got to blame it on the women.

sweeperbravo posted:

It's because people hear "patriarchy" and interpret it as "each individual man/boy/male has made an equal horrible contribution to the lovely state of things and all must feel ashamed and be punished therefor" (which from their point of view would be a reasonable thing to get kind of defensive about/take personally) when it really just means "men have been in charge of the public/political sphere for literally centuries if not millenia in the most influential nations and states of the world and therefore in general people of that gender have had a disproportionate effect on the lovely state of things"

But yeah, it is pretty hilarious and short-sighted. (Sorry for the gross effort post )

Little Blackfly posted:

I don't know, I've always felt that attributing it to simple misinterpretation is too easy an answer, especially since I'm sure he's had this pointed out. I've always figured it was a form of identity protective cognition, because deep down they identify with the heterosexual masculine ideal and feel threatened by attacks on it as a class. My old boss was a self-admitted MRA, and I spent some time quizzing him and digging into it, and at one point he told me that he resented how women could be proud of childbirth, but men didn't have anything because the provider role was being taken away. The resentment is that masculinity as a concept is being attacked, combined with their own sense of inadequacy in their masculinity.

sweeperbravo posted:

Interesting. I've known some folks who definitely fell under my definition though. Had a lengthy discussion with one semi-recently and weirdly we came to kind of an understanding of one another. It was doubly weird because the whole conversation took place in facebook comments on someone else's post. In his case it was because he'd been abused as a child by a female relative and resented that male victims are often overlooked and that women are assumed to be the victims, and the rest of us in the discussion tried to explain why that tends to happen (we weren't trying to justify it by any means, just explaining the reasons why it's even a thing that happens). But before that all came to the surface we had a patriarchy discussion where I had to lay it out like "You, individual dude, are not the patriarchy. You are not responsible for the behaviors, bad or good, of anyone but yourself, regardless of shared junk." I think he appreciated that because honestly "patriarchy" is a word that gets thrown around a lot in sexism discussion and I'm never quite sure who is using it right or wrong and who is hearing it right or wrong, so sometimes it's basically useless.

Gimnbo posted:

The terms patriarchy, privilege, and feminism are all victims of the social media telephone game. That's how you go from the environment in which men dominate the social and political discourse to "everything bad in the world is the fault of penis-havers."

sweeperbravo posted:

Re: Actual tropers, the "favorite lines from your own writing" thread is my absolute favorite thread there. It's such a perfect distillation of the things I can laugh about that are on that site.

quote:

"Oh, and before anyone tries anything... do not, I repeat, do not mention Indiana Jones in this class. Ever. We may study magical artifacts here in arcanoarchaeology, but he and I are like apples and oranges. Moreover, and this is the important part, you are not being clever. No matter how obscure you think you're getting, I've heard it all and I'm drat sick of it. I don't even want you to think about him unless you can tell me who Dorian Belecamus is."

(Dorian Belecamus is Indy's love interest in the novel Indiana Jones and the Peril at Delphi.)

The Vosgian Beast posted:

Indiana Jones tie-in novels are a level of nerdy I didn't know existed.

Penny Paper posted:

Just when you think you've hit rock-bottom, TVTropes throws you a shovel and orders you to keep digging.

bucketmouse posted:

Might want to rehost that. Amazing find though even for tvtropes.

Annointed posted:

You spoke too soon. Either way I find it hilarious that he hasn't considered all problems of Misandry resulted from the self imposed restrictions of the patriarchy. Basically it's the guys' fault for their own darn problems but nope, got to blame it on the women.

Suspicious Dish posted:

http://dayd.wikia.com/wiki/DAYDverse_Wiki

HapiMerchant posted:

isn't this the one written by a cult leader?