Character Theory Character Alignment. The Bad Gone...Good?

[Simon_Hawk]

EDIT: Thanks in advance for the replies, I won't reply to everything as to not blow-up the notifs at this time.

I have been thinking about creating a bad/evil character that changes their ways and begins to fight along the side of good, which brings me to my question. How good can a previously bad guy become?
For my single-core processor brain to make sense of this, I have to rely on the good old D&D alignments

Spoiler: D&D Alignments

Alignment (Dungeons & Dragons) - Wikipedia

at the pre-planning stages to get an idea of what I'm working with. So, what do you think? Does lawful Evil become Chaotic Good or Neutral Good at the most? Your thoughts are appreciated.

 

[Lioness075]

If they were Lawful to begin with, I find it hard to believe they would ever become Chaotic. Neutral Good makes the most sense to me. Jumping from Lawful to Chaotic would be a complete 180 for anyone. It would be very hard to explain your reasoning for that kind of change in a character.

 

[Idea]

I mean, this would largely depend on the reason why they are a given alignment, in this case what makes them evil, why they are that way, and what exactly their character arc is supposed to be.

If a character is lawful evil because they uphold some code which turns out to be evil, then a character arc that says "the problem is in upholding a code so rigorously" could turn them neutral or even chaotic good. But if the character arc is about changing their code to a different, better one, then they would be lawful good at the end.

 

[nerdy tangents]

So “bad” is subjective usually. The important thing to note is that people rarely change their core motivation/character without some outside event.

So what usually happens is the “bad” person acts in a manner that they deem to be good and moral, they just learn to adjust their thinking to line up with OTHER people’s definition of the same.

Or the rest of the world learns to see their way as good/moral.

An example : A story about a man (Character A) whose loved one is killed by superheroes. He joins up with a team dedicated to hunting down the superheroes and bringing them to justice. He is obviously the hero (good) person in his story.

But let’s take a look from the other side,

A young superhero (Character B) joins a group only to have on of her coworkers mysteriously disappear (he dies at the hands of Character A). And as things progress more and more of her workers are attacked or incapacitated by a group of villains. from her perspective Character A is a bad guy.

How you can make him appear good is explaining his reasoning to Character A and have her challenge him on the morality of his quest.

tl:dr Most villains have some kind of justification of their actions, your job is to make that justification sympathetic and something they can take some pushback on.

 

[Crow]

With the right amount of plot-shifting and character arcs, they can land anywhere on the 9-fold alignment path. So to answer your question - yes.

Most media shows these villains as starting their development off with something or someone they're fond of, which works as a catalyst before expanding. That or the villain realises the value of more 'good' values through some means and begins to apply them.

 

[Simon_Hawk]

If they were Lawful to begin with, I find it hard to believe they would ever become Chaotic. Neutral Good makes the most sense to me. Jumping from Lawful to Chaotic would be a complete 180 for anyone. It would be very hard to explain your reasoning for that kind of change in a character.

After going back and reading the basic alignment descriptions I think you have a good point. If they were let's say Lawful or better yet Neutral Evil, then becoming Neutral Good probably makes the most sense on a very basic level. Obviously we're only comparing what's in that Alignment Wikipedia.

 

[Simon_Hawk]

With the right amount of plot-shifting and character arcs, they can land anywhere on the 9-fold alignment path. So to answer your question - yes.

Most media shows these villains as starting their development off with something or someone they're fond of, which works as a catalyst before expanding. That or the villain realises the value of more 'good' values through some means and begins to apply them.

For sure, a well thought out catalyst would be an important factor, thanks for the ideas!

 

[Simon_Hawk]

So “bad” is subjective usually. The important thing to note is that people rarely change their core motivation/character without some outside event.

So what usually happens is the “bad” person acts in a manner that they deem to be good and moral, they just learn to adjust their thinking to line up with OTHER people’s definition of the same.

Or the rest of the world learns to see their way as good/moral.

An example : A story about a man (Character A) whose loved one is killed by superheroes. He joins up with a team dedicated to hunting down the superheroes and bringing them to justice. He is obviously the hero (good) person in his story.

But let’s take a look from the other side,

A young superhero (Character B) joins a group only to have on of her coworkers mysteriously disappear (he dies at the hands of Character A). And as things progress more and more of her workers are attacked or incapacitated by a group of villains. from her perspective Character A is a bad guy.

How you can make him appear good is explaining his reasoning to Character A and have her challenge him on the morality of his quest.

tl:dr Most villains have some kind of justification of their actions, your job is to make that justification sympathetic and something they can take some pushback on.

Thank you!

 

[Grey]

Are we coming at this idealistically or materially? Which is to say, assuming good and evil are absolutes and/or motivating drives, or that they're descriptors for behaviour driven by material causes?

 

[Simon_Hawk]

Are we coming at this idealistically or materially? Which is to say, assuming good and evil are absolutes and/or motivating drives, or that they're descriptors for behaviour driven by material causes?

Whoa, I'm just a "Stupid American." No idea what you just said means . My apologies.

 

[Grey]

Well, some people are of the opinion that good and evil exist in the universe in some way (it's apt you bring up D&D where some characters and creatures are evil by nature, always evil). Following on from that you can get the cartoonish idea that a character is motivated by being evil. And some characters are motivated by being good, but often it's painted as avoiding evil and there are wages of sin somewhere. You're either avoiding punishment or chasing paradise.

From the materialist perspective, evil is something you do not something you are. The motivating factors, like most things here, are informed by context - depending on your definition of evil, most people would do evil as a result of external pressures and either accept or rationalize it.
So you have the character who is doing awful things but justifying it as necessary - it has to be done to, say, save their people. Or the one doing terrible things who convinces themselves it doesn't count. Or the one who doesn't even understand the negative consequences of their actions. Or the one who accepts they're doing evil, but they don't care because they get what they want.
Generally a person will only change if they have to reckon with the consequences of their actions (telling someone what they're doing is wrong normally just makes them justify it harder) or if they're not longer incentivized to do it.

So ask yourself:
What is the behaviour that makes this person bad?
What harm are they doing?
Why are they doing it?
Do they even think of themselves as bad?
How do they justify their actions to themselves?
What would it take to convince them what they're doing is wrong?

 

[Crayons]

I tried to reply yesterday but my brain shut down halfway through so here goes:

I don't think alignments are very helpful if you are trying to make a character. A character, as opposed to a collection of stats that hits things. Like others have said, moral relativism is a thing. Not many "evil" people would consider themselves evil. I don't think "good" is a particularly useful word to use either, as what is good depends a lot on your culture/religion/inner conscience etc. and I don't think it's possible to apply "good" and "evil" as descriptors to people except in extreme circumstances.

However, they are pretty fun as long as you don't take them too seriously, and I love retro-fitting alignments onto characters! So I'm going to give you some examples of alignment changes...

This is my friend's character from an RP. (I love this character to absolute death he is amazing. Even though he did really horrible things to my character or perhaps because of that.) Started off as a complete bastard who killed, stole identities, kidnapped people etc. Then as he interacted with the other, slightly more moral characters, and felt the Power of Friendship blossoming, began to see that sometimes you could commit good acts for other people and that it felt nice when people liked you for that. Then ... eventually ... he began to slide towards being a good guy, but still not giving af for law and order or fighting fair or honour or any of that shizzle.

His alignment arc went from chaotic evil > chaotic neutral > (maybe) chaotic good.

One of my characters in an RP started out as a member of a street gang, living from hand to mouth, having a bit of a rough time of it and doing whatever it took to survive. Then he joined the forces of order to try to infiltrate them from the inside and find out why there was such inequality and generally crappiness in society then take it down and make something better! But as he did more and saw more as part of the order, he began to see that sometimes society was the way it was for a reason, that laws existed for a reason, and sometimes they were useful. (And he got Power of Friendshipped pretty hard as well, lol)

His alignment arc went from chaotic neutral > chaotic good > neutral good.

And no, he's never going to get to lawful good so lets shut that down right now! XDDDD

So I guess to sum it up, alignments are fun as heck but I certainly wouldn't go basing a character's entire personality or moral code around one.

 

[Quiddles]

Grey already raised the point with different phrasing: in the setting are Good and Evil external things (forces, deities, planes of existence) that actively act to manipulate the world? Or are they moral and social constructs defined by the people living in the world?

A vengeful character who was betrayed by a Chaotic Evil god might join a Lawful Good religion to take revenge. The character has not fundamentally changed in nature, but their 'alignment' and choices are externally imposed (by their religion/deity).

Where Good and Evil are defined by the people and not some higher power, the situation is more subtle and variable.

A change from Evil to Good could be a case of a character who has grown up in a different culture. This culture is, by other cultures, perceived as 'Evil,' although those within it would see themselves as 'Good'. You only have to look at current real-world debates on things like abortion to see how those on each side of an argument can both see themselves as being good, moral and in the right and the other side as wrong and evil; multiply that up to entire cultures. The character moves from one culture to another, for whatever reason. Their 'alignment shift' is the extent to which they assimilate into the new culture.

A change from Evil to Good could instead be something internally driven as the character sees reasons to make fundamental changes to their moral code. Perhaps they lose a loved one as a result of their own actions, find out they are a parent and realise how crappy the world will be for their child if they don't make changes, or lose everything and discover how different the world is for people at the bottom of the heap. Their initial personality will indicate their initial alignment, and their experiences will shape their new one- although their personality will affect how they react to those experiences. For example, Lawful Evil -> Chaotic Good if they decide the World is a Thoroughly Bad Place and the rules are keeping it that way so need to be torn up, Lawful Evil -> Lawful Good if they decide that the world would be a better place if EVERYONE had to keep to the rules including the privileged few who try to flaunt it.

 

[M.J. Saulnier]

Aside from all the garden variety "but what if the setting is a universe where only gelatinous tardigrades exist? What then? What would the question posed by the OP mean then??" stuff that I just cannot get into today, it's a tough sell not to mention a long sell.

It's difficult to take any good character and just swap them from face to heel or vice versa. In order for the change itself to be significant and have the desired impact and relevance, you have to take a large portion of time and dedicate it to making that OC at home in their initial alignment. Don't half-ass it and reveal constant forerunners into a disposition toward a readiness for change in beliefs or thinking. It defeats the purpose before you've even begun. You need to sell them as what they are to the point that they become a good bad guy. They have to leave their mark as an antagonist entity prior to making the jump because this is where all of the juice is.

It's not a favorable type of character to play in the middle of this transition, unless you straight up glory whore it and power write their transition using plot or personal leverage to dull the bitter sting of scrutiny. Initially the protags would hate you, mistrust you, mistreat you, and part of the greatness in the journey to the other side, is building the character through the humility. It's not compelling or rewarding for the reader when no one seems to care that you were team antag up until three days ago. No one seems to remember the shit you pulled, things you said, or people you've hurt and killed. It's the juiciest when you fall from grace as a villain and are reduced to nothing (this is the best way to begin a reshaping of an OC alignment that you've been working up to because the character is stripped down to nothing but their alignment), and then rebuilds themselves slowly into a protagonist the reader can trust, and actually get behind.

That last bit is so key, and so slippery. This is where actual story telling prowess and character arc skill comes into play. If you don't do his arcs properly, you won't be able to bring it back once the transition has been made. If you can't justify or vindicate their past actions somehow, it won't work as well and you'll have to really go the extra mile with them as a protag, and you don't wanna get attention whoreish with them, I'm assuming.

It's doable, Simon. It's just a tricky animal. If you want to execute it well, it will require time and some finesse.

 

[M.J. Saulnier]

Simon_Hawk One more thing I forgot to add:

I'm not going to try to dictate your creative choices here, it's not like that, more of a friendly recommendation/just some food for thought going forward on this.

I would avoid the "the antags betrayed my trust and used me, so now I'm fighting for you guys" schtick. It's some of the worst possible ground to make this transition on. No matter how they may have manipulated you, or how much the betrayal hurt or destroyed you, it's still a change of heart derived from self-centered events and emotions. There are far better arcs to cause a slow change in thinking.

I always like the loyal, fierce subject who serves his masters without hesitation or question, but reserves secret philosophical questions they dare not utter aloud. The ones who slowly have the veil lifted from over their eyes, and begin to lean against the grain more and more. As they do, their masters begin to show them less and less favor and restraint. This of course leads to a one-man uprising that challenges the antag order, and said OC is then betrayed, somehow survives their retribution, and builds themselves up opposite the antag order from nothing.

That is a good heel - face transition, however over-done.