While on the toilet: Characters alignment

[ConcubusBunny]

If everyone truly has a moral compass then why does the world have an attribute to what's considered good or evil? Is being good simply doing what the populos considers to be right? Just? Or something else? Is a moral compass something people in power put into the minds of the masses to control them from questioning their questionable moral decision if they say that they had the countries best intrest in my mind

Chaotic enby thinking on the toilet.

While on the toilet today I had a thought that bothered me for a while now, my characters alignment; whenever I drm up ccharacter for my stories I always make them neutral cause I can never decide to make them evil or good they always end up doing stuff that isn't neccessarily good or bad no matter people around them might think or the professions that they are doing which got me thinking if people who write hero/villain stories ever have this problem is there a threshold that they set for their characters that they wouldn't cross? should I give my haracters some sort of moral compassto guide their actions from being too good/bad? Shoul they feel accountable from being a filthy hero/villain or forced into situations where they had to make those decisions and regret it but know that they'll just have to o it over and over again so they really don't care at this point.
What is your haracters alignment and why are they retraigned by any moral compass, is there a reason behind their actions that you could explain but never really justify because saying that this action is justified by knowing the full context doesn't really make sense or are they just a ghost caosting through life without any chains to hold them back?

 

[CheertheDead]

From experience, the hardest thing you can create is a character that is absolute good or absolute evil. Those characters lacks any substance to feel like characters. They feel more like a puppet you, the author, created to commit disgusting or heartwarming act.

Every character has a history which you create. They have thing they want to do and thing they don't want to do because of their "history". They have a goal and they work hard to achieve it, or just too lazy to work on it, or not sure how to achieve that goal. Anyway, that's how us, Creators, make characters. Their history is what explains their motives and personalities.

I don't know what a moral compass is because I never bother with that vague thing.

 

[killwrites]

If everyone truly has a moral compass then why does the world have an attribute to what's considered good or evil? Is being good simply doing what the populos considers to be right? Just? Or something else? Is a moral compass something people in power put into the minds of the masses to control them from questioning their questionable moral decision if they say that they had the countries best intrest in my mind
View attachment 9855 Chaotic enby thinking on the toilet.

While on the toilet today I had a thought that bothered me for a while now, my characters alignment; whenever I drm up ccharacter for my stories I always make them neutral cause I can never decide to make them evil or good they always end up doing stuff that isn't neccessarily good or bad no matter people around them might think or the professions that they are doing which got me thinking if people who write hero/villain stories ever have this problem is there a threshold that they set for their characters that they wouldn't cross? should I give my haracters some sort of moral compassto guide their actions from being too good/bad? Shoul they feel accountable from being a filthy hero/villain or forced into situations where they had to make those decisions and regret it but know that they'll just have to o it over and over again so they really don't care at this point.
What is your haracters alignment and why are they retraigned by any moral compass, is there a reason behind their actions that you could explain but never really justify because saying that this action is justified by knowing the full context doesn't really make sense or are they just a ghost caosting through life without any chains to hold them back?

I don't really plan moral compasses/ alignments for my characters, but rather I just keep asking myself if their actions seem logical in the big picture based on their backstories. Feel like that makes my characters more human rather than having strict boundaries dictating what they will do in so-and-so situation.

Like the Joker says, when the chips are down, these uh... civilized people, they'll eat each other.

 

[gogo7966]

hello my fellow toilet thinker, as i am on the toilet right now i'm going to have a good think about this.
good and evil are fictional concepts and as an auther you have full control over what is good or evil or if you even want to include them in your story.
all people have a set of moral belifs of what to do or not do no matter how "bad" the person is and it is what guides our actions. this can cause drama when it comes in conflict with our peers, societies or self-persived morals which can cause us to revaluate what we belive in and why and mabey change or reinforce it

 

[ArcadiaBlade]

Moral Compass is like a scale to which one side is tilted upon the other, enforcing which side a character chooses. He can be good or he can be evil, it is the choices he made and the actions he pick, would the side he would stand on.

While there are no absolute, there will be choices one should pick given their roles in the world as not everyone is necessarily good or evil. Only their choice matters.

Good compasses the kind nature of humanity and what it stands for while evil tips into the chaos and madness humanity brought upon the world. The answers are only given to which sides to pick upon.

Okay, I might have wrote this late at night and is tired AF. Gonna sleep now.

 

[SakeVision]

I'm chaotic enby too, moood

but I don't think in terms of good and evil, morality is just like being non-binary, it's a spectrum not a straight line with two polar opposites on the sides. people are complex.

 

[Armored99]

get out of here with that moral subjectivity.

 

[gogo7966]

get out of here with that moral subjectivity.

never

 

[ConcubusBunny]

get out of here with that moral subjectivity.

It's the power of the emptiness you feel when you are alone, I can't help but think these things whilst on the toilet

 

[gogo7966]

It's the power of the emptiness you feel when you are alone, I can't help but think these things whilst on the toilet

speaking of thinking, what about thinking when you walk? i am in the same kinda think mode then as i am on the toilet

 

[ConcubusBunny]

speaking of thinking, what about thinking when you walk? i am in the same kinda think mode then as i am on the toilet

I think as I walk as well but it's more for plotting out interaction scenes on my head while the toilet is more for psychological thought processing.

 

[gogo7966]

I think as I walk as well but it's more for plotting out interaction scenes on my head while the toilet is more for psychological thought processing.

both are a big ball of politics, philosophy and media for me. identety crises is reserved for the bed though

 

[greyblob]

good and bad are subjective. put different characters in the same situation and see how they react.
if you're unsure what this character would do or can't justify their decision then something is not right.

 

[KoyukiMegumi]

There isn't such a thing as good or bad. All humans are neutral beings. Most who say they would not kill have never been in the position of life and death. Most who say they are good have never been challenged. Neutrality is the true nature of everyone. Until the choice is made and that is a subjective topic too. Kill or not to kill... Save or not to save... What is good and bad? Where is that line?

 

[trinitys_gadget]

Well, I guess we could rehash all of ethical theory, but if you want a good example of good, lawful, and evil aligned characters, look no further than Les Miserables. And for those of you too lazy to read the entire tome (yep, I'm in that catagory... do not do serial writing like Victor Hugo), the Broadway musical is excellent and covers all the salient points (though it does gloss over a large amount of exposition regarding the sewers of Paris and the slang of street urchins).

 

[PhillisCreziles]

There are two kinds of moral compasses. The first kind is the one that characters have for themselves, and the second kind is the one that characters have for others.

Morals for a character are mainly defined and influenced by their environments. If they live in a harsh world where living things die within a few days, characters in that world would definitely have more negative morals than positive ones. The morals of a character are also influenced by other characters as well, but at the same time, those other characters would have their morals also influenced by the environment or the past environment.

When I'm writing morals for my characters I would first list out the events that my characters have experienced, and then their relations with other characters in my stories. From there I can outline what they think and how they feel from those past events and how they will form relationships with new characters and contribute to relationships based on past relationships with other characters.
Soooo yeah.

 

[K5Rakitan]

everyone truly has a moral compass