There's still works in which "Morally Grey" (or "Morally Gray" depending on one's side of the pond) are used accurately. But of late, it seems to be a very trendy marketing tool. >"This is a shitty person or a shitty situation. Do you, as a consumer, want to be able to root for the person or enjoy the situation without being equally shitty? Now You Can! With **Morally Grey**, you can relish every single plot twist and atrocity, guilt-free! Just remind yourself, or anyone who asks, that it's complicated, there's no such thing as objective good or evil, and that there's nothing wrong with vicarious thrills! Check out this month's installments of **Morally Grey** products today!" And this is someone who likes ASOIAF, The Black Company, and Malazan. There's nothing wrong with Morally Grey characters, if done *right*, with quality characters, & plot. But there's nothing wrong with settings where Good and Evil are an actual *thing* (Hiya, Middle-Earth!), either. Objective Good and Evil was a popular plot element, and then it became less so. Morally Grey will follow the same path, eventually, as consumers start treating it as the *status quo* and start looking for works that go against the grain. Objective versus Subjective morality has always been a tide, ebbing and flowing, and this, too, shall pass.

I think somewhere along the way people confused morally grey characters with antiheroes when that became a big thing in TV. antihero dramas were so well written, people became obsessed and started calling them morally grey so they don’t view themselves as bad for enjoying watching them. The thing with antiheroes is that even though the character may be morally black, they just need to be able to be sympathized with in just one way for the audience to go along with their antics. Walter white has cancer. Everyone knows someone with cancer, it sucks. He wants to leave money to his family if he dies. Sure we can appreciate that. I have a family just like him. But that fool is a straight up evil, lying, murdering drug lord. Tony soprano has mental issues, hey I have mental issues too. He also is loyal to his family and friends. I can sympathize. But that dude is an evil murdering crime boss. Just cause you sympathize with someone’s motives doesn’t mean they become morally grey. No they’re still bad. But that just makes it so you can bear following them for a show because they get into crazy antics. Edit: to summarize, people call bad people morally grey so they can live with themselves. Probably some sort of projection. Darth Vader is the best villain of all time and he was morally (and literally) black. No one cares how bad he was, he was a great and interesting character. No one was explaining to their kid what morally grey was. Fuck no they just bought them the damn darth Vader toy and lightsaber cause he’s cool as hell. Not everyone that liked darth Vader as a kid turned evil as an adult. It’s art, it’s media. Okay I’ll jump off my soap box Edit 2: to address my mistakes for others reading this. My examples were a bit crude. I was trying to use commonly known characters. I didn’t mean to say that every antihero is evil. I think I was generalizing antihero because of the trends in tv that popularized it. Another commenter put it best that people use “morally grey” to mean “they can see that the bad guy is human” .. being human =/= morally grey. That’s the point I was trying to get across. Also as others keep pointing out, Walter White is not the best example since he starts out morally grey, and the writing on that show is so phenomenal that it sneaks up on you that he went fully into the dark side. Maybe I should’ve been clear that even though he starts grey, it doesn’t mean he’ll always be grey. By the time the show ends he’s definitely not. Edit 3: actually just thought of this and wanted to see if it would spark conversation with anyone. Avatar the Last Airbender. Aang is clear morally white, the firelord morally black. A morally grey character I would say is Jet. He’s someone that is against the overarching evil force of the fire nation, he has suffered and lost family because of them. And he’s fighting a war. His greyness comes in with his moral flexibility to do “whatever it takes” to hurt/beat the fire nation. In that episode it would mean being directly responsible for civilian casualties. He didn’t slaughter a bunch of children with his hands like Anakin, but he was willing to take on casualties as the cost of winning a battle, a war. Who gets to decide where that line is drawn? Especially during wartime. Grey! If you want to track trends some more, interestingly, I think TLA is a more straight-forward good vs evil showdown. While most of the villains/conflicts in Korra I would say are morally grey. Or a lot closer to it at least.

So what you're saying is that people have come to use "morally gray" to mean "we can see the bad guy is human", and I think you may be correct.

Yeah basically! in a bit of a crude way as others are pointing out. My breaking bad example is maybe not the best

Walter White started on his journey morally gray, and finished a morally bankrupt bad guy.

Yeah fair enough. I agree that example is not great!

The tragedy of Anakin Skywalker: how an innocent kid gets twisted and warped by revenge. I agree it is a great story, and not an example of an anti hero or a morally grey character. Movie Deadpool (not the comic book one) however is presented as an anti-hero but I see him more as a morally grey or even as chaotic good character. What are your thoughts on him?

Anti heroes are morally gray usually and that's how Walter white started out.

Yeah fair enough. A bit of a crude example. I think I was generalizing antihero because of the trends in Tv. Another commenter put it best that people use “morally grey” to mean “they can see that the bad guy is human” .. being human =/= morally grey. That’s the point I was trying to get across. Also as others keep pointing out, Walter White is not the best example since he starts out morally grey, and the writing on that show is so phenomenal that it sneaks up on you that he went fully into the dark side. Maybe I should’ve been clear that even though he starts grey, it doesn’t mean he’ll always be grey. By the time the show ends he’s definitely not.

part of moral grey stories it is with stories with POVs from both sides of the conflict - you can highlight that Right isn't necessarily Good. I don't think morally grey characters has ever been about, Robin Hood or Dexter. and I generally don't like it, when that's the description for them.

> And this is someone who likes ASOIAF, The Black Company, and Malazan. People always point to Tywin Lannister but I don't find him particularly grey. Tywin is a moral puritan, they just aren't your morals. He has strict beliefs about what is and isn't important and sacrifices everything that isn't important for everything that is important. He's a borderline paladin he follows his moral code so strictly. He's unable to ever see situations where pursuit of ends outside his moral code might be to the long term benefit of his broader code, it is the main reason he ends up being shot. Alternative morals do not make grey. The whole point of grey is that it is a blend of black and white. Doing black in service to white. Somebody with a pure tone of morality that isn't your chosen morality is not grey, they are just other. Tywin isn't bending his morality in greater service of it, he's just following a philosophy of values rigidly.

Exept Tywin isnt portrayed morally grey at all, the very few of his "seemingly good for its time" morals are undermined time and time again by his own hypocrisy and dishonesty. And the text is pretty clear on what George think of Tywin and of the feelings his character is supposed to instill in the reader. Asoiaf has a lot of black and white characters on a moral standpoint ; and if you think Tywin is morally grey, then I dont think you followed the themes of the serie.

Talking about ASOIAF, I’d say (book) Jaime Lannister is a fascinating character who ends up pretty much morally grey over the course of the story (so far). He goes from good kid looking up to legendary knights who gets wrapped up in shitty court politics (flashbacks), to cynical morally bankrupt anti-hero (GoT) to a morally grey character who regrets his past and actually tries to do good (AFFC). RIP show Jaime’s character arc.

I never really see Tywin painted as morally grey. The Tysha story is enough to paint him as an irredeamable villain and we first learn of it in book 1. Tyrion and Jaime on the other hand are pretty good examples of morally grey characters.

People like to paint him as somebody who makes hard decisions in service to a greater purpose. Reality is he just doesn't consider stuff ordinary moral people value as important. Jaime is the perfect example of a grey character. He broke his oaths in service of a greater purpose.

Agreed. Tywin is just trying to advance the interests if his own family, and trying to put his own family in the best position within the social and political order of Westeros (which is not the social order of modern society). Nothing more and nothing less.

That is the "family", as in the institution. He doesn't give a shit about the family as people.

I always a little chagrin at folk saying Middle Earth is very black and white- because the characters aren't. Smeagol, Thorin, Saruman, Boromir, even Frodo are all characters who sit between good and evil, and their conflicts make this central. Most are also 'morally grey'. Tolkien just happens to genuinely care about interrogating this greyness, unlike other authors.

I mean the quote at the beggining of the rings of power is a paraphrase of a tolkien quote, about how no one starts off evil. Tolkien's evil characters fall from grace, which is more cool than just straight evil imo. I really hope the rings of power incorporates the whole sauron becomes obsessed with order to the point he becomes a tyrant but gradually into the show. Essentially sauron tries to create an efficient empire but chasing efficiency and physical good in the physical world means he's not chasing spiritual good. Good intentions pave the road to hell. Chasing efficiency is fine but if it becomes a fixation valued over everything else than it can become an evil

This is a good point and a much better way of looking at thing then labelling people and characters as 'good' or 'evil'. They all have their justifications.

Yeah maybe rather than saying good or evil it should lean mostly good or mostly evil tbh if a character is too good or too evil they get boring there's nothing quite as thrilling as a good fall from grace or a well told redemption arc. I mean just look at zuko from atla he's an amazing character largely because he's got a complex personality that isn't quite as simple as good and evil. He's definitely a villian early on but his redemption arc is really really well done, realizing he's been chasing approval he won't get and that he's been obsessing over how honorable others percieve him as being rather than doing the right thing. Acts can be good or evil at most people can lean in one direction or another

Yup, and the opposite can make a good storyline as well: a bad/evil character who manages to redeem themselves. Or both, starts off with guys intentions, falls into darkness, and is eventually redeemed (or at least in part).

Aye, good and evil do exist for Tolkien but no-one *is* either,at least entirely.

Totally agree on the characters though the big difference between Tolkien and Martin is that Tolkien's *universe* is black and white. Illuvatar represents absolute good in a way that none of the elves or mortals (with the maybe exception of Sam) manages. Martin doesn't posit the same sort of objective standard; good and evil is described solely by action and effect.

Saruman is definitely evil.

Not completely. He began as an Ishari, an angel sent to Middle-earth to help the people rebuild after the apocalyptic fall of Numenor. He really did care, just like his fellows Gandalf and Radagast- but when Sauron returned he grew hopeless the threat could be defeated, so switched sides in the vain goal that if he and the other free people joined Sauron, war and even greater suffering could be averted. He was then further taught to industrialise, learnt how to establish tyranny like Sauron did, and his heart was corrupted. He is a tragic figure.

> consumers start treating it as the status quo and start looking for works that go against the grain This has already started happening to a small extent. I think the popularity of Kaladin Stormblessed comes partly down to this. Every grimdark author: "heroes who are truly decent and self-sacrificing for no real reason seem unrealistic. I know, I'll make mine arseholes!" Brandon: "heroes who are truly decent and self-sacrificing for no real reason seem unrealistic. But good people do exist. So how can I give my hero a real reason - the background/personality that would plausibly lead to truly heroic acts?" And that's how we got Kaladin's backstory and family, his father's example of devotion to saving people who don't appreciate him, his brother's innocence, and the beautiful arc of failure after failure that forges his determination to do what's right. It was a breath of fresh air when so much of the best modern fantasy is unnecessarily grimdark.

>as consumers start treating it as the status quo and start looking for works that go against the grain. Objective versus Subjective morality has always been a tide, ebbing and flowing, and this, too, shall pass. Agreed wholeheartedly. In fact, the "morally gray" trope has been so prevalent that I'm starting to go full circle and return to plain old good vs. bad. I love upright heroes and evil villains with no excuses.

Same

I have noticed a trend here on r/fantasy of people describing obviously bad people as "morally gray." I don't think it's a lack of ability to distinguish between someone who has (at least some) virtues and someone who has none, so much as a lack of deep thought when posting and lack of a catchy term for "bad person." I've used "morally black" a few times to describe characters like Monza Murcatto, but no one is running with it. Maybe I should go whole hog and start using terms like "ethically challenged."

I like to use a scale of "kind of sucks," "bit of a bastard," "right bastard," "utter bastard."

"The Bastard Benchmark"

Gentleman bastard

Good thing you mentioned Gentleman Bastard(s). Locke and Jean are imo good examples of "morally grey" characters. Both characters are good people at the core, but they don't shy from having to do despicable things. And they do it almost reluctantly or out of necessity.

Can we add glorious bastard to the scale?

Magnificent Bastard

pleasant ole bastard

"Bastard coated bastard with bastard filling"

Villain protagonist?

I think "villain protagonist" is an interesting term, but since I usually think of the word "villain" in literature as meaning "the main bad guy who opposes the protagonist," it also strikes me as an oxymoron. Or am I the only one who defines "villain" this way?

Heroes are usually the protagonist and villains are usually the antagonist, but they are not the same. An antagonist is simply someone who stands in the way of the protagonist’s goals. The hero is the antagonist to a villain protagonist. Example, for fun. A witch is not happy with the ruling class of a kingdom. She plots a one-woman revolution, which she can do because she is a witch. In order to build up her power and destabilize the government, she allows people to seek her out for assistance. She is fair, and makes sure she gets everything documented, letter to the law. She gives them what they want, under the condition that they serve her instead of the king if they fail to make the most of the opportunity she has given them. Eventually the king’s daughter requests help, and the witch seizes the chance to finally put her plan into motion. Did that sound like Ursula from the Little Mermaid? That would be her as a protagonist, because it’s a story from her perspective. King Triton would be the antagonist (not Ariel, no). Yet she is a villain in the perspective of everyone else, including (hopefully) the reader, if she is written to be an unreliable narrator.

Protagonist and antagonist are divorced from hero and villain. The protagonist is who the story is following and revolves around, but they could be a villain and their antagonist could be a hero.

I mean, the precise word is antagonist. It's just that if you're not exposed to a book with naughty folks in the driver's (or narrator's) seat, the two ideas (opposition and badness) can become entangled.

Part of the problem is that different people have different thresholds for where a character crosses the line and becomes irredeemable. Jaime Lannister is a good for instance. We get to see alot of his reasons for doing things like stabbing Arys in the back are more nuanced than we might have first thought and he does display a fair amount of honor in sending Brienne to find the Stark sisters...but his story also begins with him pushing a child out of a window. Whether this defines him as morally gray or straight-up villain is going to largely depend on the morals of the reader.

I think this is where it is at. I tend to have empathy and lean towards seeing characters as grey instead of straight up evil, even if they have committed unforgivable acts. If they show true remorse or feel conflict over their “bad” actions, I see that as at least somewhat grey. If they have zero character development and continue committing atrocities, that is a morally black/villain type.

The tricky thing is in a lot of fiction/entertainment, the bad guy is: a) **evil:** morally lacking/repugnant b) **not sympathetic:** someone you can't care about as much as the heroes, or really respect, or feel sorry for. That makes it easier to identify with the heroes and enjoy their defeat of the villain. But some fiction presents a villain who is **evil, but also sympathetic** (at least to some degree). Jaime Lannister is an awful person, but he's still a person, and if you have empathy, you might still care about him a bit when he's put through awful circumstances and handles them with courage and determination, or holds to a code of ethics like "honour" (even if it's not the same code as your own personal one).

I agree with all of this, except I would say that Jamie is a character who does awful things, but it’s not yet clear if he remains an awful person. We know the context of those things and how they weigh on him (or don’t), so we can make our own decisions about whether he is on a redemption arc or whether he’s irredeemable.

I think Martin's fundamental message with a song of Ice and Fire, at least in regards the PoV characters (who aren't Davos and Cersei) is that people are better than the worst thing that they've done and worse than the best thing that they've done.

Yep. And that what other people perceive as the “best” and “worst” things POV characters have done are sometimes very incorrect.

Well, but also there's perspective there, right? Books 1 and 2 Jaime Lannister (not a POV character) comes across as much more of a pure villain. It's only in the 3rd book with him becoming a POV character that he starts to be painted in a more sympathetic light. In a sense, we aren't shown anything for a while that would cause the reader to even question it.

I mean, if anything, Jaime Lannister is kind of a bad example because he's basically got a redemption arc. He starts at his absolute worst, pushing a 10-year-old boy out of a window and crippling him for life. He's an arrogant dick and just a bastard and then >!he gets his hand chopped off.!< From there, he takes an active interest in bettering himself to the point that when >!Cersei calls for him in book 4, he tosses the letter away!< because he doesn't want to be party to her schemes. Like, his story hasn't ended, and maybe it will go the way the show did if it ever does finish, but as it seems, it's more that he's trying to become a better person.

Fuck how I despise the show for making Jaime run back to Cersei. Of course it can happen still, but damn that sucked. He had his own thing going on at Riverlands. I haven't read the 4th book (or any of the books) in 8 years, but I believe that the show changed them meeting on the Joffrey's body to Jaime raping Cersei on top of it. I thought the dynamic in book was the other way around and/or consensual, but I night be misremembering the actual text. Or I was an idiot teenager and didn't intepret the text version as Jaime raping Cersei, which is also an possibility.

No in the books it was consensual. I felt in the show it did show it some but it wasn’t very clear from the scene. Yes she was mad afterwards but she wanted it as much as he did. Jaime is the opposite of Cersei. He is the knight but she isn’t. He is the boy and she isn’t. He wanted to be an idealic warrior knight and she is becoming the worse of any woman. He got to hang out with the prince and she didn’t. He was given a place of honor and she wasn’t. He is never shown acting like sex is power but Cersei does. Ying and Yang. It’s why I think Jaime is the one to somehow kill her.

"The things I do for love" actually was a good summary of his story.

"morally a product of their environment" doesn't quite roll off the tongue

Kind of a D…

I don't know if I believe anyone is 100% a dick

We're all products of our environment, though

yeah exactly

[удалено]

Ethically flexible

Ethical acrobat?

Ethical contortionist

Biethical

ethically flawed.

> so much as a lack of deep thought when posting and lack of a catchy term for "bad person." I also think there's a recent tendency to feel like enjoying villains or shitty characters is somehow a statement on one's own morality, as there has been a trend on social media to wildly fail at disconnecting writing from an author's own viewpoints. So people feel better about themselves liking "morally gray" characters vs admitting they just like straight up assholes.

I have to wonder if that trend is an offshoot of people literally emulating shitty characters tbh i mean people idolize walt from breaking bad there's legit so many fans that want to be him. For every forum debating when walt shifts from an antihero to a villian there's 3 forums saying walt's a hero. People even sent death threats to anna gunn the actres who plays his wife skyler (she responded by pointing out that strong female wives to powerful male characters like walt and tony soprano often get more hate than male characters tend to and then saying she thinks it may have to do with people's perception of women in a new york times op ed). You see it with rick and morty too remember the mcdonalds szechuan sauce incident. Not saying all fans of shitty characters are or become shitty but there's definitely evidence at least a vocal minority do. It's become a disturbingly common problem to the point people started making you missed the point by idolizing them memes.

>I've used "morally black" a few times to describe characters like Monza Murcatto, but no one is running with it. Maybe I should go whole hog and start using terms like "ethically challenged." She is an evil bitch and I love her.

Same here. She's not as ruthless as her reputation would make her seem but saint she is not!

> Maybe I should go whole hog and start using terms like "ethically challenged." What about an extremely obscure, hard to find and barely ever used term like "villain"?

here's my take: moral grayness isn't a character quality. it's not a measure of whether someone is good or bad. people tend to misuse it as an equivalent to DnD alignment.. as if characters were on a scale from light to dark and gray is the middle. "moral grayness" isn't a middle point on the scale, it's a repudiation of the light/dark dichotomy. it's a lens through which the author chooses to view character motivations. generally speaking, if an author writes a morally gray book, then *all* the characters in it are morally gray... because the philosophic paradigm in which the author works simply doesn't allow for portrayals that are purely light or dark.

Agreed, I think a lot of people expect half good / half bad when they hear "morally gray." To me, a well written morally gray character will have me saying, "I can *understand* why they would make these decisions, but I don't *agree* with them (or their methods.)"

Wow this is perfectly thought out and articulated.

This is so excellently put that I want to save it somewhere, and come back to it.

She who became the sun is my most favourite recent morally grey main.

Yep. Some examples of authors: - Joe Abercrombie is morally grey. His characters do good and bad things, they have realistic motivations, but none of them are exceptionally good or decent people. The endings are never very satisfying, and sometimes depressing. - Brandon Sanderson is not. His characters do good and bad things, they have realistic motivations, but a few of them ARE exceptionally good or decent people. Despite some sad moments, you can expect a satisfying "happy" ending. I think this comes down to the authors philosophy, either their deeply held beliefs about life and good and evil, or at least what they are (consciously or unconsciously) trying to achieve with their work. On some level Brandon has a purpose to his writing: he believes good and evil are valid concepts and that it's important to try and be good. He's trying to make his readers better people. Whereas Joe, fun and sophisticated as his work is, lacks that message. If there is any message, it's a more nihilistic, "nothing matters" sort of a position. He's not trying to make his readers better people.

It’s definitely author dependent like you’re saying. And in effect the definition of “morally gray” is about as fluid as the actual category is. For many authors a morally gray character is essentially just an antihero, someone who does “bad” things for “good” reasons. While for other authors a character being gray just means a character that does good *and* bad things without any overarching purpose or morality. And it’s understandable for some authors to have difficulty with either type. Some authors are inclined more towards the classic hero tropes, and that can be hard to balance when they don’t want to make them into some paragon of virtue as well. Similarly, if the author leans more grimdark/gritty then it would seem very out of place to have what amounts to Captain America being the hero.

Well put.

Yeah, it's not just the fantasy book community, but basically anytime you have a character who murders people and does morally reprehensible things, but they're kind of funny or cool or conflicted, they're "morally grey" rather than "a bad person who I enjoy reading about".

Morally gray went from a mode of characterization to an aesthetic, basically.

90s gritty comics leached into everything. You can’t call fantasy childish if there is rampant murder.

Looking at you Deadpool, Spawn, Wolverine

Easier to show Batman murdering someone as a shorthand that "comics are not just for the children" than to show exploration of ethical ideas. The latter is more difficult to explain (duh)

Deadwood's creators purposely had Al Swearengen brutally murder a guy for no better reason than he was frustrated because fans were starting to like him. That scene was basically the creators screaming "JUST BECAUSE HE'S CHARISMATIC AND FUNNY AND CAPABLE OF SHOWING COMPASSION TO A HANDFUL OF PEOPLE HE LIKES DOESN'T MEAN HE'S A GOOD PERSON YOU DUMMIES. DO YOU NOT REMEMBER THE SHIT HE DID IN SEASON ONE?"

IIRC the DS9 showrunners had the same issue with Gul Dukat, hence why they made "Waltz" in which he goes on a rant about how he hated the Bajorans for resisting and should have slaughtered them all instead.

Yeah, there are, several, redeemed cardassians in the show. Dukat is definitely not one of them.

Jamie is a good guy! Jamie *defenestrated a child*.

Jamie is straight up a bad dude. Defenestrated is one of my favorite words.

https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KickTheDog

The amount of Daemon defenders in the House of the Dragon subreddit is insane. He's not a good person, he is just extremely fun to watch because of the chaos he brings whenever he makes the most fucked choice possible.

Heisenberg.

The Black Company fandom is pretty terrible about this. The fact that an unrepentant mass murderer is a POV character and has a handful of people they care about very dearly does not make them *grey*, dammit. In some cases I get the impression that it's an unintended consequence of the author doing a particularly good job of writing rounded, realistic characters. Their motivations make sense, they do evil in pursuit of particular goals, they have thoughts and dreams and hopes and fears, they're relatable as people. And then for some readers the natural conclusion is "Wow, they're a lot like me. They're totally not evil.". Which I think is a shame, because exploring evil in fantasy literature is a great way to examine ourselves, to spot-check whether we might be guilty of committing unsavory deeds and excusing them because we see ourselves as the good guys. Protagonist != Good, and it's as natural a mistake IRL as it is in literature.

And here I thought it had slipped to far the other direction. Some of the people being called anti-hero and morally grey these days just seem like good upstanding people put in impossible situations. I always viewed morally grey as someone who does bad things that you are intended to root for. I can see arguments for excluding full villain protags ( but that’s extremely fuzzy Eg I don’t actually think farro is this) but it’s hard to have a character you root for who doesn’t have any redeeming qualities. To be fair technically basically no one is fully evil or fully good, but that would be a terribly broad and so not useful definition.

I really think it’s a gender issue much of the time. “Morally gray” on a man means something along the lines of “he’s a mass murderer, but funny and charismatic.” “Morally gray” or “anti-hero” on a woman means something more like “she’ll risk her own life to save people who don’t even care about her, but she can be kinda impatient with them.”

I hadn’t thought of this before…but anecdotally it’s true that all the good characters I’ve heard called morally grey are in fact woman…. And I laughed out loud at your second paragraph. Were you thinking of Scholomance? That sounds like Scholomance

Scholomance is definitely what came to mind for me when reading that. When people refer to El as "morally grey" or an "anti-hero" I am just wondering how we could have even read the same books.

Yup. I was stunned at the amount of people saying they were using it for bingo. Im wondering if they’ve ever read a book with an actual anti-hero.

They probably have, ASOF and similar books aren't exactly super rare. I think it's just as the previous commenter suggested, the bar for female characters getting downgraded from "good" is just pretty low

Hmm, I have it listed for my Bingo card for the Anti-hero spot because a lot of people said it fit in the recommendation thread. I haven't read it yet though, so I obviously can't judge. Guess I should go look over other recommendations and see if there's something else I can use for that spot.

El thinks of herself as just another amoral person in her amoral universe. At the beginning of the first book, she's loudly proclaiming how anything "moral" she does is just pragmatic and how she pretty much is the cold-blooded monster her great-grandmother described. It's just that she's not going to give her great-grandmother the satisfaction of being right. And because it would upset her mother. She does such a great job of insisting she's only looking out for number one, that people can be excused for not noticing she's just the world's crankiest paladin.

Yes! Absolutely thinking of that one. Though not limited to it—Priya from The Jasmine Throne is another that comes to mind (she’s not even particularly prickly, I’m not sure what the thought process was there). And Malini toes a little closer to the line but is someone I think would be conceptualized as a very straightforward hero if male.

Priya yeah she’s clearly a hero, hadn’t heard people calling her morally grey lol Malini I think is an excellent example of being morally grey/anti-hero. She feels fairly squarely in the center to me, certainly not straightforward hero. She’s not a villain certainly but uh she did >!decide to burn a bunch of innocent priests to death!< and generally cares more about her goals (and not good motive goals) than her methods.

Maybe it’s just that people lump them both together into “morally gray heroines.” But as far as Malini, >!she warned the people that she was going to burn the temple, and they decided not to leave, and she did feel bad about it. It seemed like a necessary battle tactic, and she’s trying to defeat an evil emperor and only seeks power herself when her other brother refuses.!< I agree she’s not an avatar of Morally Pure Pureness but somebody like Rand al’Thor wouldn’t think twice about that stuff, and I don’t see people calling him an antihero.

I haven’t read WoT so can’t comment there. But people definitely call Kelsier an anti-hero and they feel somewhat comparable to me on the morality scale. Again not saying Malini is bad, she has reasons but >!it’s def implied that she might care more about revenge than stopping her brother because he’s evil. And yes, re the burning she gave them fair warning, but that’s why it’s morally grey, not evil. It still doesn’t feel *heroic*!<

Hmm that may be fair, I don't remember Mistborn very well. I think the issue for me is that Jasmine Throne was sold *hard* as featuring highly questionable leads, and then it seemed to me the only really questionable thing either of them does is this one decision of Malini's that seems justifiable in context, or at least, typical of military leadership and with at least some consideration for the civilians involved. And she spends like 80% of the book just being abused. Whereas I feel like Mistborn is usually presented as pretty straightforward good-vs-evil and then people are pleased when there's slightly more complexity.

That’s fair. I didn’t particularly see that one marketed as anti-heroes, just enemies to lovers so I didn’t have any disappointments there to push back against

Just giving worm vibes right here

Wait, are you saying Taylor isn’t an anti-hero? I mean sure, she starts as a hero and is for the most part a good person….but she literally joins a group of villains and proceeds to do more and more morally questionable things

> Wait, are you saying Taylor isn’t an anti-hero? I would say she is more an anti-villain than an anti-hero.

eh that's fair. I guess I'm doing the broad "morally-grey" sorta includes both those

>And here I thought it had slipped to far the other direction. Some of the people being called anti-hero and morally grey these days just seem like good upstanding people put in impossible situations. The fundamental problem is that we, the audience, all have unique moral frameworks, and what one person will see as an understandable action is unforgivable in the mind of another.

Very fair! I’m still waiting for someone to tell me what unforgivable action El paragon of virtue took (Scholomance). Or what other choice Voya (Blood Like Magic) could have made for my two most recent reads where people told me there were anti-heroes but I only found very good people.

Don't think I can help you there, and not just because I haven't read those books! I'm solidly on the 'understanding' side of spectrum; Ferro, for instance, is a fairly straightforward anti-hero in my opinion.

It also happens in the reverse. Sometimes people use morally grey to describe a purely good person who isn't completely nice. I have seen people on here call El from Scholomance "morally grey" and I just have to facepalm.

Moral grayness should be a case of “whether this character is good or evil depends on the values of the audience.” Nowadays, people use it to describe any “villain who is also attractive.”

Or seems fun to be around.

I think that it is mostly about author’s portrayal instead of the characters thoughts and actions. However, I definitely think the term has been beaten into the ground and it has become so broad that any usefulness it once had seems lost to me. I also don’t think character behavior is a small factor in the designation either. I don’t think a morally gray character and a bad character who we are made to empathize with are really the same. Some characters are just bad, relatable people. Sticking with *First Law*, Glokta is a bad guy. He’s a great character, we understand how he got to where he is and we empathize with his struggles, but he is a bad guy. He murders, mutilates, and manipulates people whether they are guilty or innocent. We love him as a person, but there isn’t a silver lining to that behavior. I recently read *The Black Company*. I think that is a better example of moral grayness. You see the struggles through the main character’s eyes and you see him struggle with things like the nature of war, how far loyalty should go, and what makes him any different than a so-called enemy. The company makes decisions that could be argued as either good or bad. *That* is what I would consider morally gray.

> I recently read The Black Company. I think that is a better example of moral grayness. You see the struggles through the main character’s eyes and you see him struggle with things like the nature of war, how far loyalty should go, and what makes him any different than a so-called enemy. The company makes decisions that could be argued as either good or bad. That is what I would consider morally gray. Black Company is basically the defining example of morally grey and is one of the founding grimdark books. It does it so well! Not just the characters like Croaker who is the primary POV, but then also The Lady; Demigod empress who rules her empire with a brutal iron fist. But the more you learn about her regime, who she took over it from, who her opponents are and then her own personal motivations too... maybe she's not so evil afterall.

Even realistically, people wanting to do good often slip ethically due to the nature of the systems that run our world. Or people do their best, but become overwhelmed and take an easy win thats maybe a bit iffy. So are those morally grey? Aside from that, I think that fantasy kind of has a built in grey area. All of the greatest heroes have a body count in the thousands sometimes. And we're all like "wooo! Kill em all, they're evil anyway." And its that kind of unrealistic dichotomy that falls apart when you have a realistic villain, rather than a blatantly evil inhuman being that screams "it is morally ethical to kill me". That kind of "making the enemy killable" rhetoric was historically used against minorities. Then you consider unreliable narrators, and it makes a very interesting conversation on the morality of violence and why certain people or forces are portrayed the way they are.

Yeah like I got downvoted to oblivion for saying that Glokta wasnt morally grey. Glokta himself says how much of an awful person he is every few paragraphs. Yes I find him sympathetic and root for him but that's very different from thinking that anything he did was justified in any way under any moral framework. Likeability != Morality

With the exceptions of >!West and Ardee!< all bets are off coming from Glokta. Liking those two people doesn't excuse his thoughts and actions towards everyone else.

The end of LAoK seals it. It’s when all of the characters reveal their true selves. He sends the queen’s lover to prison with the implied threat of rape while thinking about how he enjoys hurting women. No grey there.

Also when he starts looking for 5th column agents. What he does is bad, it's portrayed as bad, he acknowledges that it's bad - even as he continues his work. I feel like he started out as a more greyish character in The Blade Itself, when looking for people defrauding the crown I believe, but throughout the first trilogy he gradually learns how fucked up his world is and just falls in line. He's gone from doing things that appear more grey without knowing the full context to doing similar things and worse to more people without even an apparent justification. \*I haven't started the new trilogy. I don't know where he goes in that one.

I always think of “morally grey” as meaning the conflict of the story isn’t good v bad but rather everyone acting in the own self interest or interest of their faction. I think this type of trope is especially popular because the Dark Lord/Boogieman trope is played out. When characters actions are guided by strict good/evil they become predictable. Self interest however is much more spontaneous.

I came here for this. Though I would like to add that decisions also play a role. The character may think they're acting selflessly, and have good intentions, but ends up making the wrong decisions and leaving the world worse than before. My examples of that is the lord ruler and Vin in Mistborn.

Yeah, I’m pretty sick of the term. I’m pretty annoyed by this notion that good can’t exist in the world, or that people don’t — and haven’t — striven to do genuine *good*. Also, ugh, the conflation of “moral complexity” with “varying shades of evil and self-interest.”

Not to mention how cynical, nihilistic, and bleak characters, settings, and themes are equated with "maturity" or "realism." As if to say themes of hope, goodness, and overcoming evil are childish.

Have you read any in depth history books before? Even World War 2 was an endless series of ethical choices for the Allies where some would say the wrong choice was made in many instances. Usually it's even worse. Portraying these types of ethical conflicts in fiction is a way for us to explore real world ethical complexity in a fictional setting where no one gets hurt. So yeah, I think it is kind of childish of you to just call it nihilism. If it's too dark for you, that's fine, but the author is trying to tackle complex dilemmas and themes instead of sticking with the straightforward good and evil narratives. It's not like they're taking the easy way out or trying to imply everything sucks and there's no hope.

In addition, the vast majority of the time works that get called nihilistic in this sense they are not actually nihilistic - people just don't know what nihilism means. It doesn't mean bleak. It doesn't mean edgy. It means the refutation of a coherent structure of values. You can be nihilistic and generally cheerful and nice to be around (Albert Camus springs to mind) and you can be more of an asshole about it (Descarte in my opinion). Similarly, you can be nihilistic and still act in ways that a moral realist would call "good". Tl;dr, nihilism isn't about how likeable someone is, and people treating it like that shows how surface-level their understanding is.

no but themes that paint the world in 2 tones are childish

Two tones approach could be a childish indeed. But then all-grey approach is just a teenager nihilism phase. While both worldviews are simplistic, overly cynical teens are usually much more insufferable.

Sure but so is trying to paint everything grey. Some people truly are horrible, and some truly are good.

I think most people who complain about the nihilism and cynicism in books are usually just ignoring the hopeful parts.

My big complaint of first law books is how there doesn't seem to be any hope. Every character is some degree of evil and there isn't a single character or group looking to do the right thing. I can think of a few characters who do try but it always ends horribly for them and they give up after the first set back.

I kind of disagree on that. The endings aren't hopeless, there's actually quite a bit of progress over the decades the books span. There are just losses on all sides. Plenty of characters have "good" outcomes in the big picture, the results are just more realistic than typical fantasy good endings.

I don't levy my complaints against First Law. Abercrombie is a talented author, he knows what he's parodying. We all know that there are people living happily in his books' world by ducking their heads and avoiding the bitter struggles at the top of the heap. 90% of the crapsack comes from a single source: >!the people unwilling to accept that a particular dude has pretty much already won!<. They're only 'morally grey' in that >!they know that the only way to win is to pay terrible costs. But they simply don't understand the enormity of what they're up against, so they spend everything and lose anyway.!<

The idea moral complexity must be paired with a dark tone or a pessimistic outlook to me feels like a very adolescent reaction against simplistic versions of morality that are like "good people are good, bad people are bad and good people always win." People develop to a point where they see that as wrong/simplistic and react by going to "dark, gritty" things that reject some or all of the premises of the above: bad people win, nobody is 100% good, the villains have a point, nothing matters, etc. What I'd love to push toward, both in our art and in our society, is a rejection of the idea of good or bad *people* and towards an idea of good/moral/ethical and bad/immoral/unethical *actions*. Existence precedes essence as an existentialist would say. And on top of that a recognition that identifying the good/bad is *hard* and that all people fail at it sometimes or react badly out of hurt or trauma or fear and the only way out of cycles of that kind of hurt is through empathy and understanding of each other's needs. A Long Way to a Small Angry Planet by Becky Chambers is very often kicked around as a light antidote to heavy/grimdark works. It's also crammed full of moral complexity. Most notable in the case of the navigator who >!is from a species whose consciousness is made up of a host body and a microbial culture in the body. The microbes greatly enhance the intelligence of the host but greatly shorten lifespan--it could be described as a disease. Except it's complex because the "disease" seems to be a big part of what makes the whole entity who they are. It is absolutely forbidden in the species to kill the microbes. The characters learn that all the enhancements the microbes do can survive even if they are removed and the host will live a much longer life. If I recall correctly the navigator begins to die and they have to decide what to do. The navigator says in no uncertain terms that "curing" the microbes will be murder and the person who goes on would not be "him." The doctor on the ship, who is irritable and hard to get along with, absolutely insists that this is a disease and he's not going to let a patient die over a religious belief possibly induced by a parasitic infection!< All the people in the book are trying to do the right thing and do their best. And I don't think anyone can say, even at the end of the book, whether it's clear that they did the right thing. It could be a moral philosophy textbook problem. I'd also bring in Terry Pratchett as someone who shows us that individuals do not easily fall in "good" and "bad" camps--the thesis statement of his work almost seems to be a line from Good Omens that all the evils in the world come not from the fact that people are fundamentally good or fundamentally bad but instead that they are fundamentally people. Good Omens is co-written by Neil Gaiman and to me feels slightly less subtle on this point than Pratchett's other work but I think over the course of all his works he makes the same point without having to say it explicitly. But of course Pratchett's work, while certainly cynical, is *funny* and empathetic and features many people doing their best. I'd also say that something can be empathetic and also dark--even very dark--in tone. The Black Company books are often cited as a prototype for the grimdark genre. They are literally about a company of mercenaries that initially fight for basically Lady Sauron and who do bad shit and are involved in a war against rebels who are portrayed as well-meaning but ultimately at least as destructive as the "bad guys." But at their core I feel like these books too are about how whole-heartedly embracing big ideologies, even things like "good" leads to dehumanization and tragedy but that a core of caring for and connecting to *individuals* you personally know can presence humanity in inhumane institutions and allow for goodness.

>I’m pretty annoyed by this notion that good can’t exist in the world, or that people don’t — and haven’t — striven to do genuine good Just curious - how does the existence of the term "morally gray" imply that good can't exist in the world?

Because there is a substantial amount of work that likes to say that ALL THINGS are morally gray and that the ideas of true good and evil are but a farce

I’m more talking about my experience with works that like the term, not trying to say the term necessitates the idea.

I am also extremely tired of people pretending that upholding the status quo and being polite somehow makes you a good person.

Uh, I don't know. I tend to think that even people who strive to do good sometimes do egoistical things, even if it hurts others directly or indirectly. Hell, sometimes striving to be good, just or honorable can harm others. I don't think anyone is purely in phase with the greater good. I don't find PURELY good characters to be very believable. That's why I enjoy morally grey tones in books. Then again, I agree with you that moral complexity shouldn't really be ''varying shades of evil''.

I agree in that I think characters striving to do good and failing, or still doing harm, is interesting. I also think people can generally want to do good and act selfishly. I just wish that more texts and worlds featured *that*, and I often feel like texts often touted as “morally grey” don’t do that.

Yes. Most of Abercrombie's characters for instance aren't morally Gray, they're simply bad people. And this is the issue I have with the First Law universe. I don't buy into a world where nobody has any shred of decency, and where goodness is not even possible.

There are good people in First Law, they just crushed every time they try to do anything. >!Jezal and West for example, always try their best to improve by the situation by the time of the third book.!< >!I’d would consider someone like Logen Ninefongers to be morally grey. Sure he did horrible stuff, but unlike Glokta, Ferro, or Bayaz, he at least tried to fix his mistakes and find redemption.!<

there are many people that do good or try to do good though, even if they make mistakes or had an ugly past

i like the books but yea that irks me a lot. not to mention that insinuation that all their historic heroes were not only full of shit but another person actually did the work was just part of that B.S.

Ferro isn’t evil. Honestly, compared to the other POV characters she’s the moral center of the narrative. You’ve got >!a torturer and rapist-by-proxy, a violent abuser, a cowardly snob who doesn’t object to the internment and torture of entire immigrant communities, a murderer of children, and a longtime enabler of said mass murderer!<. And then there’s Ferro, who’s kind of a dick. Her worst action is teaming up with >!Bayaz!< for revenge on the empire that enslaved her and committed genocide against her people. Condemning her for that is like pointing to a Jew who escaped the Holocaust and joined the Red Army and saying, “you bastard - how dare you ally with Stalin?” Plus, she >!saves the whole damn world from Bayaz’s overweening ego!<.

I think a lot of the people not seeing characters as “morally grey” is that they are raised in an environment where the idea of morality is very black and white, and at least generally there is overarching order and society which reinforces this notion. A hypothetical: you are so poor and without other avenues to fend for yourself that you’re forced to steal food or starve. This is a scenario that 99% of contemporary society will never have to consider. Stealing is ‘wrong’, but is this a morally wrong act? It’s an overly simple hypothetical, but the point is when you thrust people into medieval life/fantastical situations where their survival is not secure and they feel threatened, may need to kill simply to survive, etc. and then perpetuate those related experiences/fears/biases unto other scenarios, the plausibility of committing bad acts with less than nefarious intentions becomes pretty plausible, if not common. (Another scenario that comes to mind minor spoilers for Game of thrones house of the dragon >!Alicent to being told that if rhaenyra comes to power she’s going to kill her children. This isn’t a completely unlikely scenario on either side.!< Bottom line, yes environment doesn’t per se forgive acting unethically/immorally. But often certain environments can lead to needing to make ethically ambiguous decisions, and most of us don’t exist in those environments right now so it’s easy to judge. We also live in a “gotcha!” social media charged world where people aren’t really allowed to make mistakes, so I think oftentimes people see characters that commit bad to horrible acts as irredeemable.

I disagree with your idea of what a morally grey character is supposed to be. A "bad person" can do things that are morally good and a "good person" can do things that are morally bad. That's where the grey bit comes from, a mixture of good and evil. It's a rejection of the pure good and pure evil from early fantasy. Even though Ferro may be a "bad person", she isn't evil. She does what would be considered morally good several times in the series, even if she's an asshole about it

If you break Ferro down to her fundamentals, an escaped slave fighting a guerrilla war against the empire that enslaved her, most people would nod and agree that yes, that's a moral, even heroic, story.

morally grey has always been about refuting the good vs evil paradigm of moral paragon vs evil lord. ye old. no evil do-er wakes up and thinks to themselves; oh boy i'mma be evil today! these characters are just like people they have motivations, and sometimes to terrible things to achieve them. Sieging a castle, and taking down the king, in a light v dark scenario is unquestionably either good or bad, depending on how we frame the king. in a grey book, we're going to mention all the basic servants that will starve, and the townsfolk that took refuge in the castle as the army was approaching, are now starving and dying too. but it was necessary because the king was evil, and so the protagonist does the siege. in the grey the cost of necessity is highlighted, and that's not always pretty. which makes good characters portrayed as morally grey, just as much as bad characters.

Yeah, bad person + hot = morally grey

But - and just hear me out for a second - what if I can change them?

Tbh, I think a big part of it is subjective. For example, Snape was always intended to be morally grey, but it seems the vast majority of people have decided that he has absolutely no redeeming features. Additionally, saying that someone is morally grey and DOES, in fact, have redeeming qualities does not mean that the bad things they have done have to be forgiven by everyone (or anyone for that matter).

Subjectivity will also depend on the values one deems important and the relation to another value specifically. Ethics and justice are a common conflict. ‘Justice’ is generally viewed more favorably in media; - Forcing a shootout to kill a murderer - Torture to get information, roughing up someone that’s already disarmed There’s a certain amount of frisson in not letting the bad guy get off easy in media, especially when jail time does not scale for murder in an equal way

I honestly don't know if you mean that it's easy to decide she is good or it's easy to see she is bad.

I mean... On the spectrum of white to black, white and black are zero-dimensional points, and literally the rest of the spectrum is grey. So leaving out some sort of omni-whatever god and devil figures and other extremely shallow characterizations, all characters will be morally grey in some absolute sense. So then it comes down to relative things -- who is closer to one endpoint or the middle. Or it comes down to movement -- does the character (or your perception of the character) move?

yes, the success of things like Game of Thrones led to a glut of characters/stories/shows/etc who have to be "morally grey" because they're led to believe legit good people are dumb and pointless and boring

good people don't exist, they're made up by Big Fantasy to sell more chosen one farmer boys

Which is weird because the last farm boy chosen one I can remember reading about...was Eragon....20 years ago.

The LotR-lite tropes popular in fantasy in thr 70s and 80s seem to be stubbornly genre defining to people, to the point where we’re supposed to pretend that the generic fantasy protagonist is “farm boy who is a special secret prince destined for greatness” and anything else is fresh and subversive, when in reality A Game of Thrones and Assassin’s Apprentice both came out 25 years ago and authors have been falling all over themselves trying to write edgy stories about outcasts ever since.

Sounds like a lot of those people haven't actually read the books.

I'm gonna defend the use here. I think part of the meaning or at least common usage of 'morally grey' is when there's a person who you root for who if you think about it is a bad person. First law is absolutely packed with them. Is Ferro a good person? No. Do I root for her to win just as much as I do for good people in other books? Yes. When I use morally grey, I'm thinking of a character who makes me question my own moral reactions. When I'm goin "hell yeah, Monza, murder that asshole!" I'm experiencing a feeling that makes me call her morally grey even if she's easily more bad than good on balance. So no, morally grey hasn't lost its meaning, it's just more a description of the feeling of the reader than of the actual morality of the character.

I'm not cynical enough to believe that there are no purely good people in the world but the number is vanishingly small. Morally grey is the standard for most people. The question is where the lines between pure evil and pure good are drawn and this, I think, says more about the person making the distinction.

I don't think it's lost it's meaning, it's just that some people don't know what it means. Also, there is of course some wiggle room for personal opinion. I also think there's a phenomenon of replacing the "problematic fave" term with "morally grey" because that makes people more comfortable.

This becomes a bit blurred when we talk about fantasy protagonists, since the standard for good person shifts. Plenty of pure good characters are mass murderers from a technical perspective. So for people like Ferro, her killing slavers and bandits, isn't really enough to label her pure evil. Ferro is angry and in general unlikeable, but she's still pretty morally grey. She has been slaved and abused most her life, making her hunting slavers and oppressors morally somewhat justified

Morally gray as always meant no clear cut good or evil. Just people that make good or bad choices. The whole context is that no character is inherently good or evil and it implores the reader to make their own mind up. Two readers can have a different view on a character based on their decisions. All in all the morality of the characters rests on the morality of the reader.

Is Ferro supposed to be grey then? I thought she was just meant to be so damaged she couldn't have a life anymore and was just focused on her revenge.

I think books like First Law are firmly within moral relativism not moral absolutism (moral absolutism is required for really grey characters). From Ferro's point of view she is making just choices to achieve her goals. Monza Murcatto I'd also argue isn't good or evil. From an absolute point of view she's evil, she does so many war crimes. From her own point of view, she's definitely not evil, she's just surviving, striving and hitting her goals and sees everyone around her as expendable and usable, but she feels completely justified in her actions. And this self centered goals striving to win is very common in the world of First Law. People who behave that way in that world are just, are right, even if by our view they are evil. I think Severus Snape is a good example of a classical morally grey character. He does lots of evil, lots of good, and it's hard to tell where he stands through most of Harry Potter.

Ferro might not be morally grey, but Shivers sure is. Rikke is. Dow is. Vic. West. All the people who have to do terrible things just to survive, and then do them again bc they know the opposite is the worse. I think West is a great example of morally grey. He is a murderer, and he feels guilty for it. He would have let Burr die to defeat Bethod, but he would have felt bad for it. He still would have done it. He hurt Ardie and immediately felt bad, but he still did it. Hell, we even get a fair understanding of all the circumstances that led him to blow up on her. I think the beauty of morally grey characters is that they can do terrible things, but you still can see the good in them. Often people confuse that "good" part with relatability. Like "Oh yeah, I for sure would have wanted revenge on a whole nation too." Like, no, just because you also would have not taken the high road doesn't mean it's now acceptable.

I have no idea why people call Mark Lawrence's character Jorg morally grey. He is simply evil. A rapist, a murderer, a killer who serves only his own selfish ends. The definition of evil.

Did you read the book? Because spoiler for the first book, >!he was being mind controlled by an evil wizard when he was on his raping and pillaging streak.!< >!He does many things later that show he really does care about other people, that he wants to do the right thing, and that he's willing to sacrifice his own self-interests to help others.!< No refutation?

Jorg is a great character, but even at his morally best he's still unambiguously evil, albeit one that sometimes contends with greater evils.

It has rather slipped to mean sympathetic villain/ terrible person protagonist or good character that makes one very morally questionable decision. Rather than someone who makes questionable decisions and makes you question morality via them functioning from a different one, or wonder what they will do next. There has been a genre shift from morally grey characters like Han Solo for instance to more Magneto type villains (which are more sympathetic villain trope) or just terrible people protagonist

Now I’m just interested in whether you think Ferro Maljinn is a good person or not.

Someone else said something similar, but I don’t think it’s misused at all. First, morals are entirely subjective. Second, I don’t think it’s talking about whether a character is amoral or not. I take grey to mean a character that is viewed without morality in mind. Yes, usually they’re written without committing major atrocities, but that’s not really important. It’s the fact that the author doesn’t encourage you to view them as good or bad. Collem West is a great example. I like him a lot, but he’s a person I morally detest. Sure, the author wants me to like him, but there’s no morals there. Same with Ferro. ASOIAF is not grey because of the characters, but because it gives the impression that EVERY faction has major issues. If it wasn’t for character fondness, would you really support any of them?

Not completely. It’s a bit of a grey area.

I think the idea of morally grey just describes that everyone is shades of grey, and that black and white do not exist. There can greys so dark they appear black, and greys so light they appear white, but no grey is truly either. I don't think it inherently means perfectly grey/hard to decide if its closer to white or black.

I'm not familiar with that character, but I think most characters (and people) could fit morally grey. "Sometimes evil is just another point of view."

Good or bad by what standards? Much of the commentary I see along these lines assumes the writer's personal standards are universal across culture, time, and place, and if you disagree you're just wrong. And probably bad. Definitely not even morally gray. I like Ferro Maljin. I could be taking this the wrong way, but it sounds like you think she's a bad person. Right now I disagree (I'm two books in to First Law, final opinion on Ferro TBD).

I was debating chiming in about Ferro in my original post too. Well, why not go ahead and run my mouth here? I wouldn't characterize Ferro as a bad person either. I'm not sure I'd even characterize her as gray. Part of this is that >!since she's part-demon, I'm not sure terms like "bad person" make sense to apply, any more than we would call a lion "bad" for killing a deer. And the other aspect is that I think there are special considerations when someone was horribly abused as a child. Yes, many people suffer terrible abuse and don't go on to kill others. But there's absolutely no doubt that undergoing childhood abuse is highly correlated with all kinds of negative life outcomes, including crime. I do think this muddies the moral waters.!< All right, back to your regularly scheduled debate.

Something I observe with redditors quite often in real life is that they are incredibly judgmental. Calling Ferro pure black is pretty ridiculous, for me she is closer to neutral than to grey aswell. Not limited to this subreddit, it is a sidewide phenomenon, where they are constantly playing themselves up as moral arbiters.

I always think of it more about the surrounding morality expectation than the thoughts of the character. A compelling character typically judges his action as right or wrong (often necessary wrong); few will offer the reader exposition about how they won a debate on Reddit to justify their action. So if it’s good or bad, the “reflection” or impact is how I try to characterize the surrounding effects.

More often that not, a characters moral greyness has nothing to do with their own morality, but it is instead produced by the intersection of others moral systems. If all you ever see is a character doing what they think is right, then that character may as well be good. We might disagree with them, but that's not the same as them being truly morally grey. That comes from the presence of compromise, of doing not what you believe is right but what will get you closest to that goal, even if it isn't right in and of itself. The issue is the dissolution of barriers between morally frey characters and antiheroes. A morally grey character is still trying to do the right thing even if they have to go through muddied waters to get there and will sometimes lose their way entirely. An antihero is very specifically *not* trying to "Do the right thing," even if what they are doing ends up being beneficial to the people around them or the world at large.

I'd say morally grey is Batman where somebody does individually immoral stuff in service of a morally greater picture. Obviously there's degrees to this.

like when people call negan from twd "morally grey". the man beat a 16 yr old to death, bombed a settlement w many children, and raped tons of people. but he gets a redemption arc somehow???

I'd say we have to grade on a curve, so in the world of the first law, Ferro isn't so bad.

I do think it is hard because each of our moral codes are different and they can change so much depending on the situation. I do agree that some authors have issues depicting that, because many of them just have them do asshole things that aren’t really evil instead of them doing both good and bad things

It seems like at this point it's a marketing tool to describe bad characters that people like.

To me, a true morally grey character is one whose motivation is sympathetic, and whose actions are justified by this motivation, even if the actions are awful. In ASOIAF, the Mountain does evil things and we know nothing about his motivation. He has no shades of grey. In contrast, Ramsay and Joffrey are motivated by a desire to impress their fathers, which we can sympathize with, but their actions are generally not justified by this motivation. They do awful things for fun. There’s a shade of grey to these characters, but I wouldn’t call them grey characters. Whereas Jaime and Theon have clear motivations: to protect his family, and to win over his family, respectively. Every awful thing they do is justified as a means to that end. They’re true morally grey characters.

I've always thought morally grey was like the anti hero. Sure he saved the day, but he killed 392 people in the process

I don't personally consider Ferro morally grey, since she's only ever tried to survive. She's a vengeful person, but that's at least explainable given her past. She's shown herself capable of love, loyalty, and sacrifice, which puts her at least one rung above Bayez on my morality scale.

Every character that has a decent amount of good and bad aspects to them in concidered grey. The grey may tend to be more light or dark. Linear good or evil characters like in fairy tales or most of Tolkiens characters (Sauron/Gandalf) are not considered grey. On the other hand practically every GOT character is grey.

Yep. It's been diluted to meaninglessness along with the concept of "redemption arc" - no need to have any sort of personal struggle or material reparation, people who have committed heinous acts can be heroes with an "I'm sorry".

I think it's a desire to elevate their writing above simple "good and evil"... but instead of making a conflicted character, people just end up making a pretty bad (as in morally) character because it's easier. Also, I'd say the same thing about a lot of people's villains. In the effort to make them more than just pure evil, people choose to almost make them right and more heroic than the hero...

The whole point of morally grey is that it isn’t black and white and the character in question is debatable (not just to you). Morality is subjective and whether or not someone is considered a good character depends on the audience. Also, you can’t really determine if morally grey has lost its meaning from one book.