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Moral Ambiguity (Grey Vs Grey) Vs Black Vs White Morality
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Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Adamsm
But again, in 75% of the cases where the insanity comes from an outside source, it's way too easy to solve in a comic; like I said with Starman, as soon as he went back to his own time, his mental illnesses vanished as if they'd never existed.
Post by
Orranis
But again, in 75% of the cases where the insanity comes from an outside source, it's way too easy to solve in a comic; like I said with Starman, as soon as he went back to his own time, his mental illnesses vanished as if they'd never existed.
As I said, the actual behavior is dramatically over/underplayed, as removing the harmful stimuli should decrease the severity of the disorder, though not always, and definitely not in a 'snap the fingers' way (Though who knows, we've never witnessed someone cross timelines), but that doesn't remove the possibility or even probability of it happening sometimes. I'm not arguing the realism of the insane characters actions, but I am saying that the characters fit the medical definition of insane.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Adamsm
On Watchmen, what I hated about that story was it was massively anti-climactic. It was a true moral relativism ending, which I hate. Because of that, the ending wound up being anti-climatic for the sake of "moral relativism". Ugg.
That was the whole point of the story though....
Edit: Though, the comic still has the better ending then the movie even then.
Post by
Orranis
What about the Majora from Legend of Zelda: Majora's mask? That thing repeatedly did evil ^&*!ed up things that had absolutely no rational or clear motivation to them, such as turn kafei into a child just 3 days before his wedding, turning the goron homeland into a frozen wasteland so that they'd slowly freeze to death, trying to pull the freaking moon from outspace to crash it into termina.
Majora was a pyscopath if anything, which fully attributed to his evil. It's made clear throughout the game that the entity in the mask is clearly disturbed and insane. I'd say he's black moral wise. But a creepy and mysterious villain, definatly one of my favorite fictional villains of all time.
The whole point is that if someone is a 'psychopath,' they have a mental illness that is no fault of their own and the blame for their actions cannot be placed solely on themselves. The most evil people are amoral people, and you could make a case for them too. On Watchmen, what I hated about that story was it was massively anti-climactic. It was a true moral relativism ending, which I hate. Because of that, the ending wound up being anti-climatic for the sake of "moral relativism". Ugg.
Yeah, all of this buildup and it turns out the last guy you would've expected to be the villain has blown up half of New York and killed more than a million people. And they couldn't even beat him up for it! How anticlimactic. I mean, if the good guys are going to lose I expect at least an apocalypse. /sarcasm
Seriously, in spoilers, explain how the ending of Watchmen was 'anti-climactic.' It was a great plot twist, and one of the defining moments that set one of the greatest comics of all time (No Kanye jokes) apart from the usual Superhero movies.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
pezz
On Watchmen:
It isn't moral relativism. It's Greek tragedy. The main characters, at the end, are faced with a terrible choice or another, equally terrible choice. You don't have to say that there's no such thing as the good to say that your characters have no good options.
Not sure how necessary it was to have that all in spoiler tags, but I just thought I'd be safe.
Post by
Adamsm
That's the problem. Is that what all moral ambiguity stories are like tho? Anti-climactic? I mean probably since, you know, without a true hero to root for I can't imagine such a story having anything but an anti-climactic ending.
Every book is different depending on the writer; read any comic by the creator of Watchmen, and you'll see that happen a lot; it's rarely if ever pure black and white.
Post by
Orranis
What's your definition of climactic? The climactic scene is the scene that everything's built up for, the final confrontation. There
is
a final confrontation and there
is
a definite winner. It's just not in the conventional way. I find Watchmen on the contrary, a much
more
climactic story, simply because it doesn't take the predictable root.
Post by
Jubilee
I don't think Watchmen is a morally ambiguous ending at all. The moral that I got out of the story is that superheroes don't exist in real life. They are all just men and women like us, who have to deal with the same issues we have to deal with, just on a bigger scale.
Post by
588688
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Adamsm
I'd suggest the Y: The Last Man
; good example of a gray vs gray book, as while there is a 'villain', they aren't the driving focus.
Post by
Orranis
What's your definition of climactic? The climactic scene is the scene that everything's built up for, the final confrontation. There
is
a final confrontation and there
is
a definite winner. It's just not in the conventional way. I find Watchmen on the contrary, a much
more
climactic story, simply because it doesn't take the predictable root.
Endings where the protagonists and antagonists have a huge buildup to a climax then they either have a short fight or no fight, then agree to a truce and walk away is what I call anti-climactic.
There is a fight though, a rather long one. It starts out with violence and slowly evolves into reasoning and philosophy. Just because nobody stabbed anyone doesn't mean it's anti-climactic, I mean, there was an investigation that slowly lead up to the battle, that took place and had a clear winner. The book would not have been proved by simply having Ozzy kick them to death. And one of 'protagonists,' now a staple anti-hero, did literally explode. It's like the ending of the last book of Twilight series.
No you didn't. You did not. That is a literary war-crime. That is the Godwin's Law of literature.
I don't think Watchmen is a morally ambiguous ending at all. The moral that I got out of the story is that superheroes don't exist in real life. They are all just men and women like us, who have to deal with the same issues we have to deal with, just on a bigger scale.
I do think that this is one of the points of the book, but I also think it's about Moral Relativism and exploring concepts of philosophy like consequentialism vs. fundamentalism in Ozy vs. Rorschach.
Post by
Adamsm
As usual, Wheadon can sum it up well.
Post by
gamerunknown
the blame for their actions cannot be placed solely on themselves.
Our actions, normal or abnormal, are the result of the list of things I've already delineated. By the way, do you think people can be socialised into psychopathy? I tend to think it's genetic, either wholly or expressed under the right environmental conditions.
That said, one can reproduce psychopathic behaviour in "normal" individuals with a few simple steps, the primary one being deindividuation. Perhaps the Joker is afflicted with that?
Also, check out a few of the "Our x is different" articles on TvTropes. Themes may emerge that use words that change depending on context. Insanity has different meanings for a layman than to a psychiatrist and has different themes within comics than in a strictly academic discussion of abnormal behaviour.
Anyway, onto Watchmen:
I suppose one could say that the ending was reminiscent of a Greek tragedy. However, the character of Ozymandias was a direct foil to Rorschach's objectivist conception - he was even based on Mr. A. While I am a big fan of Mill and Utilitarianism/Consequentialism in general, two important concepts emerge about governing a society based on its principles. The first is consent, as society would break down should an individual's consent be violated to further some higher good. Politically, this branches off into the theory of social contract. The second is an issue of knowledge. Dr. Manhattan could have made the objective argument that, given all the variables (since he could literally see into the future), that said course of action would lead to less human suffering. Ozymandias was not omniscient and thus was not in a position to make that decision.
Anyway, that being said, Alan Moore probably intended to spark discussion by pitting opposites against each other as he did. The continued debate is proof he was successful.
Post by
Adamsm
Lol, it's
Post by
gamerunknown
Got it, didn't think caps made a difference first time.
Post by
KingdomKnight
Moral Ambiguity. I've always thought that the reasons behind peoples actions were just as important, if not more important, than the actions themselves. Right and Wrong are never as simple as some stories, and people, like to make them out to be.
I love Code Geass as an example of Moral Ambiguity.
Post by
367020
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
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