Moral Sociopathy overlaps strongly with this trope for obvious reasons, though this is not always the case. A Nominal Hero may have this motivation as well. An individual human (or single members of any species whose majority falls into darker morality) who operates on this is the Übermensch of Nietzschean philosophy (a human being who has developed their own Blue/Orange set of morals). Another candidate is the power of money or The Almighty Dollar. 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/or incapable of emotion The Anti-God and God via Time Abyss and Above Good and Evil.
If, say, such a race of aliens really do exist, and really did come to believe killing is okay as a side effect of the reasons above, but don't apply this to their thought processes when killing, and thus, think just as little of killing mortals who don't respawn, then this trope can still apply. This is not to say that trope can't still apply if the culture remains this way with no grasp of the reasons behind it. In this case, they may be working by comprehensible moral standards and just gravely mistaken about the implications of their actions. 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.
Such as regarding motionlessness as the epitome of evil, or viewing exploration as an element of chaos. The concepts are not necessarily beyond their grasp, mind you, but just aren't something which they'd place any importance on.Ĭonversely, they may have these concepts, but apply them in vastly different ways. They may not even know what these things are, or even if they do, will often find them confusing. With Blue and Orange Morality, the values are so foreign, that such concepts can no longer be applied. 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. Audiences must remember that these characters are meant to be Morally Ambiguous. Because of this, it's not uncommon for audience members to label these characters as Designated Heroes or villains due to human audiences often lacking the experience or knowledge that these fictional characters have. This trope is one of the trickier to pull off well, because Most Writers Are Human, and it's often hard to portray alien and truly foreign. Because in their world/mind, that's just what they do. Either way they tend to act as if nothing were the matter. They may also find us appalling, benign, or weird even if we don't see them that way.Īnd although they are often likely to commit acts we would see as horrific, some are unusually benign. 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. There might be a logic behind their actions, it's just that they operate with entirely different sets of values and premises from which to draw their conclusions. 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.
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". The strangest of these characters are those who espouse Blue and Orange Morality. Because of this there can be great drama when characters who represent a wide range of moral viewpoints come together or into conflict. 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.
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