CN archetypes

JoeGKushner said:
Guts from Berserk.

He's content to work for Griffith only because Griffith did the one thing that impressed him, beat him at swordplay. Outside of that, his morale base isn't very high, as he's willing to do quite a lot of things ranging from assassinating nobles to killing rogues hired by his boss. Only his quest to improve his swordskills gives him any sense of 'order' and even then, it's just to find stronger foes even at the cost of his life.
No, Guts is evil. Slaying an innocent child tips those scales. There are people who are much more evil in the series than him, but that does not get Mr. Girderblade off the hook.

Whats with all these evil characters getting called chaotic?

Riddick is Evil, that is slowly redeeming to neutral, there is little chaos in his behavior.

Yeagar and Kevin might get away with N with evil tendencies.
 

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frankthedm said:
No, Guts is evil. Slaying an innocent child tips those scales. There are people who are much more evil in the series than him, but that does not get Mr. Girderblade off the hook.

Whats with all these evil characters getting called chaotic?

Riddick is Evil, that is slowly redeeming to neutral, there is little chaos in his behavior.

Yeagar and Kevin might get away with N with evil tendencies.

But at the same time...

He endangers himself to save Caska on numerous occassions. He gets shot several times helping her out. Goes over a cliff with her. etc...

He doesn't go out of his way to kill those he's testing his sword skills against (during the tournament for example or after it.)

He saves Puck on several occassions. This includes when he's in his 'Dark Swordsman' mode.

Killing one innocent to me doesn't completely tip the scales. As a matter of fact, looking over the manga, at first he really doesn't realize what he's done. Same is true of the anime. One of the problems with trying to use 'alignment' in such situations I suppose.
 

I would say Falstaff from Shakespeare would be CN. He's a fun-loving, cowardly, treacherous lout, and he doesn't care who knows it. He's quite upfront about it, in fact.

On that note, I would say that a character's perceptions of how he relates to society make him lawful or chaotic more than his actual deeds. Both a lawful character and a chaotic character might use loopholes and corruption to get what they want. A lawful character would make that his primary plan, though, and then try to weasel out if things went wrong. While a chaotic would have no problem stabbing their enemies on the street if that whole "cunning" thing didn't work out.

CN would also encompass the anti-social type, I think. Especially classic movie gangsters like Scarface and Little Caesar. They're not evil in the "destroy the world" sense, but they know what they want and they're going to get it, and if laws or innocent people get in their way, that's too bad. Again, they're willing to use the law if it suits them, but their first impulse will be to simply ignore it and rely on themselves.

Samuel Fuller did a film noir called "Pickup on South Street" and he had an interesting note in an interview. He said that criminals were the most broad-minded people he'd ever met: they all had a racket, and knew everyone around them had a racket, and just figured that everyone needed to make money. Tell them the worst things about yourself you can, and the only thing that'll interest them is how they can profit from it. The lack of judgement is what keeps many of them neutral, I think.
 

I've always felt a better word for the concept of a lawful alignment is an "orderly" alignment. It's not the outside influence of laws (and ignoring or not ignoring them) that makes the difference, but an internal way of thinking and approaching a problem. Calling it lawful just seems to attach a whole lot of extra meaning to the alignment that I'm not sure was meant to be there.

Movie gangsters for example are *quite* lawful (orderly) within their own codes and self imposed rules. They don't commit their crimes randomly or without a legitimate (if distinctly icky) reason. They don't go overboard in their actions if it's not called for.

Like how chaos==evil, I believe lawful==rule-abiding may not be the best way to look at things.
 

delericho said:
Whether Jayne is Neutral or Evil is a question of a few degrees.

One could argue that, at the beginning of the Firefly series, he was closer to CE. Events over the course of the series (and, particularly, the movie) may have, arguably, moved him closer to CN. I think the fact that he actually had (for once in his life) crewmates who weren't willing to sell him out may have changed his worldview a bit. Then again, maybe he's just hiding it well. :D
 




CF said:
One word: Nyarlathotep
... *blink* Nyarlathotep? The Crawling Chaos of a Thousand Masks? He's openly manipulative and corrupting, there's no 'N' in there. That's C to the E.

Azathoth, or Abhoth, or even Shub would be more CN I'd think.
 

How about Mal himself? He's not very into helping people he doesn't care about, and shoots quite a few people without remorse.

I think he was mentioned as CN with good tendencies in a thread awhile back.
 

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