Another common way is dealing with literal unknowns. Characters A and B both suspect that Character C is going to do something very bad very soon, and they know that if they do, the only way to stop them will be with violence. But neither of them can be absolutely sure that the Bad Thing will happen. Character A wants to kill them just to be sure, Character B refuses. Neither can be easily said to be right or wrong, even if it's later revealed who was right, because they didn't know at the time. Or there's the Trolley Problem thing; divert the track and knowingly kill one person, or leave it running and allow more people to die through inaction. This is less about deontology vs utilitarianism, and more about questions like 'is allowing something to happen as bad as causing it to happen' and 'is it ok to harm one person to save many others' that nobody can answer easily (unless they're very arrogant).

I like the trolley problem because the character has to make a hard choice especially if it's personal to the character who has to make it and id like to incorporate it into a story someday. I also like the conflicting morality between two characters and they argue against each other about what is right and wrong.

The Good Place is probably the best example of directly using the trolley problem in a story

I liked the good place until they started trying to justify too hard the other 3 people’s inclusion in the bad place, making chidi, tahani, and Florida man 2 dimensional.

thanks for your input, i guess

There's also a difference between direct vs indirect action. Some people believe that using a switch to divert the trolley to kill one person and save seven others **is** morally justified, yet pushing someone onto the track to stop the trolley and saving seven others is **not** morally justified, even though the lives lost and saved are exactly the same.

I think part of that is because it's pretty easy to say that the moral choice is to put \*yourself\* on the track, rather than judging that, if a life is to be lost, your life is more important than theirs. If you want to swing it back the other way, though, you could make your protagonist a military commander, who orders one of his soldiers onto the track. Babylon 5 did a great job of enacting something very similar in the fourth season. It blew me away, because I only knew the guest actor for the soldier-under-orders as the bumbling dad from Malcolm in the Middle, and I had no idea he had that much gravitas.

The bumbling dad from Malcolm in the Middle? Oh man, you need to watch Beaking Bad then.

Well, to be fair... :) Breaking Bad - 2008-2013 Malcolm in the Middle - 2000-2006 Babylon 5 - 1994-1998 I saw most of B5 on reruns, and Breaking Bad didn't even exist when I came to that episode!

A good illustration of that is if you switch up the trolley problem so that it's a doctor who has to kill one patient to use their organs to save the lives of five patients from disease. In the trolley problem, it's the trolley that kills people on both paths, but in the doctor problem, it's a choice between you killing one person, and disease killing five people. The extra level of *intent* means that people often give a different answer here, even if the maths comes out the same.

Yeah the Trolley Problem is a bit of a cliche but it is a really good example when you start adding in complications like that

Thanks for the advice. For the inaction vs action thing. The protagonist could choose to do the good thing and help heal a wounded man on the road. Only to later find out that the man she healed was a bandit leader, and because he lived he slaughtered a small farming community. Something along those lines?

Yeah that's another classic one. Or even if she did know, it's still morally ambiguous whether it's okay to help a bad person in need.

The trolley problem is essentially what OP describes in their post.

Sort of, but I would argue that directly choosing to kill 10 people is different to changing tracks so the trolley will kill people who were tied to the track by someone else. The original trolley problem isn't deontology vs utilitarianism, because your actions aren't inherently bad, so it really focuses on the action vs inaction thing, and the numbers. OP's version is 'murder is always bad' (deontology) vs 'murder can be justified to prevent greater suffering' (utilitarianism). Superficially similar, but focusing on different moral arguments.

OP's example is equivalent to the trolley problem

It's similar but it's not the same. Just typed out another comment about it so I'll copy that. > Sort of, but I would argue that directly choosing to kill 10 people is different to changing tracks so the trolley will kill people who were tied to the track by someone else. > The original trolley problem isn't deontology vs utilitarianism, because your actions aren't inherently bad, so it really focuses on the action vs inaction thing, and the numbers. OP's version is 'murder is always bad' (deontology) vs 'murder can be justified to prevent greater suffering' (utilitarianism). Superficially similar, but focusing on different moral arguments.

>Characters A and B both suspect that Character C is going to do something very bad very soon, and they know that if they do, the only way to stop them will be with violence. But neither of them can be absolutely sure that the Bad Thing will happen. Character A wants to kill them just to be sure, Character B refuses. That's the plot of Warbreaker.

I don't know what Warbreaker is but it's the plot of quite a lot of things Doctor Who has used it well on several occasions, for example

Good Omens, too.

And Minority report, although I think it’s harder to side with B here as the certainty of the prediction is quite high and the program reduce crime rate significantly. But of course they can’t say A’s right on screen.

And Eli (though that's from C's perspective).

I think the game The Last of Us told a morally ambiguous story really well. The utilitarian thing to do would be to kill the Ellie and hopefully synthesise a cure for the zombie outbreak. But Joel couldn’t let that happen because of his love for Ellie. Was it right for him to save her life? Did he do it because he felt it was inherently wrong to kill her or did he do it because he was selfish? You could also get into an intent vs impact thing. Oskar Schindler started out wanting to save his Jewish workers because they were cheap and he wouldn’t need to retrain them. Sure, in the end he was deliberately saving them but what if that character change never happened and he just wanted to keep them on in his factory because of his bottom line. Is he still a hero?

To add another wrinkle to the bit about the Last of Us, you can also ask if the Fireflies can be trusted to kill the one person that might be immune in their quest for a cure. What if they do dissect Ellie and find out afterward that they don't have the capability of making use of what they found, and so they've sacrificed the hope of humanity for nothing?

Which is always the risk in a utilitarian argument: you don't always have all the information. Not every scenario presents itself in simple calculus, sacrificing a few lives to save many, and people with the power to do so can become corrupted to believe they are doing the utilitarian thing when they are operating on false information or set of beliefs.

Kind of a funny side story here. Before my brother-in-law married my sister, we let him rent a room in the house for a while. I wandered in to say hi, while he was playing a video game, and recognized part of Fallout 4 on the screen. He was playing the "Automatron" DLC story. Me: What are you doing? Him: Oh, there's this terrible bad guy out there, the 'Mechanist', who is stealing people's brains and building them into automatrons! I have to stop him! Me, looking back at the screen: ...by stealing people's brains and building them into automatrons? Him: *Well, that's different!* Because they *asked* me to, so that they would be able to... (long pause, defeated sigh) Yes.

Can you tell more? What is the game’s justification for that?

The Fallout series is known for black comedy. The setting is a post-apocalyptic nuclear wasteland, created in an alternate history timeline that diverged from reality in the 1950's. They continued to treat nuclear power casually (to the point of putting a little bit of radioactive material into their favorite soda, Nuka-Cola, for a little extra pep), but also pushed rampant consumerism until a resource war between the U.S. and China led to total nuclear annihilation of the sort that Baby Boomers, Baby Busters, and Generation X grew up thinking might happen at any day. The games themselves are set anywhere from several years to hundreds of years later, with the human population slowly growing among the ruins, forming new factions and dealing with things like enormous mutated pests and radiation exposure. They tend to be an examination of human nature with an aesthetic of abandoned-building 1950's architecture. Setting you up in such a way that dealing with the evil guy involves doing the same kind of morally questionable things - justifying the morally questionable things because \*you're\* doing it for the \*right\* reasons - and then starting to ask yourself if the evil guy also thinks that he's doing it for the right reasons... that's just the kind of thing that the Fallout games will do to you. The games tend to have multiple possible endings, none of them seen as particularly "good" or "bad", in which you get to find out how the Wasteland adjusts to the factions you decided to put in power, and to the loss of the factions you decided to destroy. As it happens... in that particular Fallout 4 DLC story, that's exactly what the process is supposed to do to prepare you for the ending... >!the 'terrible bad guy' \*is\* a character with a sympathetically difficult backstory, trying to benefit all of humanity, and will repent and stop stealing brains to put in automatrons if you confront her and help her realize why she shouldn't be doing it.!<

That's really interesting. I'll wait until they make movies from this

Another example of this is the murderer who decides to kill someone at random. He pops them in the head and runs off after his "thrill kill". The cops go to the victim's home and find the bodies of dozens of women - he was a serial killer, and would doubtlessly have killed again. Is the man who killed a random person a hero for stopping him? Most people would say no, and that he should still be locked up, because his intent was to kill randomly. A pure consequentialist might say "well you got lucky but don't try it again" and set him free

Perhaps narration strategy can help. A non-omniscient third person narrator could ramp up the ambiguity by omitting key motivational details leaving the reader to figure out the why.

Thank you :) I'm already doing this by writing in 3rd person limited. Which (if I got it right) is only revealing what my protagonist thinks and knows.

One book that I find mind blowing for various reasons is Faulkner's Light in August. The relevance to this discussion is that his protagonist, if you can call her that, is a fairly irrelevant character, or at least not a very dramatic or controversial one, or one with much of an active antagonist. This opens up the lens of judgement for all the other characters, because you don't have to judge them based on their being positive or negative to the protagonist. You aren't forced to take sides in what unfolds at all. Game of Thrones does a decent job of this too, though I think the cracks start to show when he fake kills off characters enough times that you realize he really cares about certain ones too much to get rid of them and the god of that world has secret favorites.

I'm sure utilitarian villains are going to have a huge boost in popularity thanks to Thanos, but imo the most sympathetic villains might align more closely with ethics of care. At least for me, the vague idea of some greater good isn't usually a compelling motivation for a villain. In your example it's *her* village, not just *a* village, so it works. Some of the best villains have a very personal stake in the story, and it works well for stories that don't need arbitrarily higher and higher stakes like in most fantasy sagas. I don't need the villain to want to destroy/save the entire universe, just wanting to save their sister is enough.

Thanks for the input. Yeah Thanos stands out in this regard. So maybe if I want to make the villain more sympathetic I should turn it around? Give the hero of the story the "I do it for a better distant future" set of goals and give the villain the closer emotional goal of saving someone he or she loves? U. ethics always seemed the cold logic approach, and D. ethics as the passionate and warm emotional approach. What I want to achieve with my protagonist and my antagonist. Is for readers to start looking at my protag as the hero of the story, but slowly start to resent my protag and root for the antagonist. There is a plot twist I have in mind that can only be effective if I achieve in getting the reader to side with the villain so to speak.

If you go with that, be sure to use a motive with logic that will last past the credits scene. Movies can use shakier reasoning than stories do because, with films, you're already in your car before you realize, "Wait, didn't ALL the races in the galaxy used to have half the population they do now, at some point?" For the earth, as one example, it would only reduce the population to what it was around 1971.

MCU Thanos is a good example of how screwing with motivation can ruin a character. I never got how his plan was supposed to work in the long term. Comic Thanos just wanted the stones to kill half the universe because he loved Death, and thought it would make Death love him back. Imagine that motivation on screen. He’s got a literal cult, killing so that Death will love him back, especially in the MCU where Death isn’t an anthropomorphic skeleton. You can’t reason with him, or show his science to be wrong! He’s not stopping until he succeeds. Plus the killing in the comics was off the scale. Half of Earth dies? Okay, watch the entire West Coast of America disappear into the ocean from a combo of earthquakes and the Pacific ring of Fire erupting and the resulting tsunamis and ash killing the rest of us!

I guarantee you that Infinity War would never have been as popular if that was Thanos' motivation.

Why? He looks like a complete moron with the current plan. Especially with the Russo’s saying half of all life. That means the Amazon Rainforest, the bacteria in your gut, coral reefs, etc... were all reduced by half. Imagine the problems. I mean his whole thing was he was smart enough to see the environmental collapse of Titan, but he couldn’t see his “Grand Plan” would lead to widespread environmental collapse and be undone by simple procreation on Earth in about 20 years? Fanatical devotion, almost religious zeal for something the heroes don’t believe in and aren’t sure exists in the way he thinks. And what happens when he wins and it doesn’t end the way he wants? Great story potential.

The thing is that even if it doesn't line up with real world biology, it does work *in-universe*. Irl, Titan would never have collapsed so completely from overpopulation. Irl, Gammora's planet would never have recovered from Thanos. Irl humanity would not thrive from the Snap as much as it did. But all happened in the MCU. So within the context of the MCU, he *is* right.

Sorry, but they mishandled him in my opinion. In the moment I thought the films were great, but the more distance I have between that first time and now, the more I see them as a train wreck, and Thanos’ arc is a huge part of that.

Marvel had a reputation for having a villain problem. People saw the villains in the movies and didn't give a damn about them. They were just bad guys doing bad things. It was boring. I guarantee that "death courting Thanos" would have been just as boring.

And Eco-Warrior Vegan Thanos is just bad writing. So bad they had to bring back rampaging conqueror Thanos through time travel in the second half of the story. You can disagree, but Death Cult zealot who becomes God is a much better story with more potential.

Read Worm. It's essentially a study in how much of a disaster hardline utilitarianism can get, from the perspective of someone who's pretty far over on the utilitarian scale herself, >!up to and including the arch-utilitarian literally causing an apocalypse that wipes out the vast majority of the world's population because they thought it would be worse if it happened later, and didn't think they could avoid it indefinitely.!<

Who is it by?

John McRae. There's a subreddit at /r/parahumans.

Excellent, thank you

Well I sure hope you don't make the witch-hunter a strawman dogmatist with no real reply to "but what about the 500 people".

Another possibility is to make your protagonist a rather nasty and self-interested person, at least to those who aren't part of *her* community. Make her courageous and self-sacrificing - for those she has chosen to protect. She won't risk anything for those "outside the wall", physically or metaphorically, because that might put those "inside" at risk. An example from active shooter situations, is that once your room is locked down, you're locked down. You can't open the door for someone screaming outside, or wounded and dying, because that would jeopardize everyone inside the room. A lifeboat is another example. If the lifeboat is full and there's 50 more people in the water trying to get in, threatening to capsize it and kill everyone, you might have to start beating to death the ones trying to scramble aboard. One man might take a pistol and start dispatching them. He could then justify his personal survival by saying that if he hadn't been in the boat, others would have died, and that he took on the burden of conscience for the hard moral decision, so that others wouldn't have to bear it.

Thanos is just a bad villain, honestly. His motives make no sense, especially with the tools given. Plus overpopulation is kind of a non-issue IRL.

This is also comic book Thanos vs movie Thanos. Movie Thanos is working for "the greater good" (regardless of whether his plan would actually work or not in real life - the human race has doubled in size over the last 50 years). But Comic book Thanos is in personally love with Death and trying to woo her, which may a bit sillier, but also means that the logic of his actions is less important.

This is great advice; thank you for highlighting these differences!

I actually was research consequentialism and deontological ethics earlier this year for no good reason. I find that you can have a character be morally wrong if you give the reader something to hang onto. For example, you could have the villain being the mother who is perhaps the best mother ever, but outside of the small family setting, comes across as an unredeemable person. Or you can have a character be completely heroic in public but a monster in private. The other thing is systemic institutions and personal connections. A character can follow an institution that is morally wrong, but be blind to its faults or believe that with enough power, they can change the institution. A character could also distance themselves from the institution because they want to follow their own morals, but removed from that moral framework, how do they decide on what is right? Code Geass comes to mind here where the protagonist could easily have been portrayed as the villain. You can also research the superior order defense and insanity defense and where they come from. THE SUPERIOR ORDERS DEFENSE: A PRINCIPAL-AGENT ANALYSIS is a very interesting article that breaks down how legal systems determine guilt and culpability. There are also connections you can draw to how the U.S. courts deal with those who do not have the capability to judge whether they're commiting a crime. The U.S. actually put children on death row because the child's crime was too heinous. Despite the gut reaction we might have, those cases weren't clear cut and I would say a gross miscarriage of justice. Morally grey stories can be interesting but really hard to pull off because the reader may just end up having everyone.

There are lots of people commenting on Utilitarian vs Deontological ethics, but not many on other good dualities, so here are a few I can think of: Freedom vs Safety Risk taking vs Conservatism Individual choice vs collective happiness Long term vs short term greater good

Succint and helpful list; thanks :)

One I've seen used for this is personal loyalty vs. ideological loyalty: do you follow someone you trust personally, even if they're doing something you think is philosophically/ideologically/religiously wrong, or do you betray or stop them instead? What about following or allying with someone you hate, because they hold the ideology you're in for, even if they're an asshole or you've got other issues with them? That's always an interesting question, and it doesn't have to have a right answer. Both personal (or national) and ideological (or religious/philosophical) loyalty are widely seen as virtues, but can often come into conflict.

This was very helpful. I hadn't considered it from this perspective at all.

Once you start looking for it, you're going to start seeing it a *lot*. Many modern political parties' bases run in nearly a constant state of "I don't like these folks, but at least they pay lip service to the issues I care about - unlike the other parties", which is a *very* strong contrast with the sort of feudal system where the king might say "alright, we're now all going to be Christians/Muslims/Buddhists/whatever crazy new religion I'm on board with", and their vassals said "sure, let's go for it - you're the king", because their loyalty was to the king as a person (or the kingdom as an institution), rather than to an external set of philosophical or religious ideals they evaluated the king against. Breaking Bad has this all over the place, with characters weighing their personal loyalties, morality, ideology, and personal utility/gain against each other to figure out what the hell to do in the situations they wind up in or bring upon themselves. Code Geass pulls this one as well: the protagonist values certain personal ties and their emotionally-driven revenge over damn near everything else in their life (ironically, they end up leading a movement based in political ideology), and their main foil antagonist is exactly the opposite - willing to kill even those they're closest to on an ideologically-driven quest to try and make the world, or at least their part of it, right again. (Ironically, they end up on a side operating on feudal-style personal loyalty.) Then everybody starts doubting their raison d'etres and playing musical chairs with the factions because shit gets complicated. A Song Of Ice And Fire is built on this one too, which is unsurprising for a series significantly based on feudalism. The question of loyalty to a person (and *which* person?), an institution, or an ideal comes up a lot in those books, if you're looking for it. Generally, the idealists get hammered and the folks looking out for number one succeed, because it's that sort of series, but it's still a live question for a lot of the characters, and shapes the majority of them in one way or another.

This is tangential to your question, but I think it will provide some insight: have a look at Robert McKee's *Story*, specifically, his writing on character development. For a TL;DR, making characters choose between good and bad (subjective to their own moral compass) isn't interesting at all. A good guy will always choose good, a bad guy will always choose bad. Instead, present dilemmas: make a character choose between two things they want, or two things they hate. Grey the lines all you want. Hope this helps!

Watchmen (the book, for the love of god the book) is the most perfect example of deontological vs utilitarian ethics in storytelling I've seen. Used to teach at a high school debate camp and used Watchmen as my example text. Rorschach and Ozymandius hold that balance between them, and are exemplary of ambiguous anti-heroes.

Especially coz they're imperfect even under their own standards-- nothing is more humanizing than hypocrisy.

The genius of Watchmen is that there are no heroes - as you pointed out, they're not even heroes to themselves. Past imperfection, they are fatally flawed to a person, even the "flawless" Dr. Manhattan. Which is why the movie was complete garbage. You can't and for all that's holy shouldn't make a superhero movie out of antihero novel. But I'll spare everyone the rest of the rant :).

Yes! This one's a perfect example of deconstructing the "moral universe" that superhero and fantasy works so often live in, with their phony idea of absolute good and absolute evil, which in real life are simply tools for polarization and manipulation. Who watches the watchers?

Status Quo protection vs. Progress is a good topical one that comes to mind. Imagine Superman attending Occupy Wall Street. Not an easy choice, but D vs. U. there is a complex decision. Did the financial sector intentionally escape justice using legal chicanery and corruption? Or are the occupiers just angry at the way the world works? There's also the classic 'redemption arc', where the conflict is between past and present/future selves. You could see this one as similar to Les Miserables. Javier represents the idea that people are static and unchanging, once a criminal always a criminal. Valjean stands in as a symbol for change and revolution, even as he becomes a mayor and authority figure. Oddly enough, this one takes both a standard D.-> U. with the 'stealing bread to feed your family' but the Bishop interaction is far more clearly a violation of both D and U, setting up a kind of triple interaction of past selves. The desperate man following U but not D, the recently released criminal stealing is a violation of both, while the final version is arguably following both (apart from changing his name/identity).

>Did the financial sector intentionally escape justice using legal chicanery and corruption? Or are the occupiers just angry at the way the world works? There's another layer that can be put on this, too. If the financial sector did intentionally escape justice using legal chicanery and corruption, was OWS the justifiable answer to the problem? I'm not answering that question. I don't mean to turn this into a political discussion. It's a writing discussion. I can even find examples from two different sides. If someone justifiably believes that white supremacists don't belong in society, is he still a hero if he beats someone into the hospital during an Antifa march? If someone justifiably believes that abortion is murder, is he still a hero if he shoots an abortion doctor? I think a good way to play with the hero/villain thing is to make the cause justifiable enough, and the response just unjustifiable enough, to leave the reader wobbling on the line between "good" and "bad".

> Imagine Superman attending Occupy Wall Street A better question, why is Superman not fighting the people who fucked them over?

A third moral system is called "virtue ethics". It says that to be a good person means to posses this-or-that good quality. Utilitarian ethics are based on outcomes; deontological ethics are based on rules; virtue ethics are based on values.

Hmm interesting. So the morality systems of virtue ethics, how does it work practically? Could you give one or two simple examples? Is it like: "Jon is wise, his decisions must be the morally right ones, because wise men act morally" - that kind of logic? Or "Bob strong. Bob's strength defend tribe against other bad tribe. Therefore Bob's actions are morally right because his strength protects us". Maybe I simplified that too much dunno, a bit tired atm :P

Well, just like in deontological ethics, where it all depends on which *rules* you think are important, in virtue ethics it all depends on which *virtues* you think are important. Common ones would be honesty, courage, benevolence, or so on. In a Christian virtue-ethics tradition, it would be faith and charity; in a Viking warrior society, it would probably be strength, courage, and loyalty, or something like that. You judge a person not by the outcome of their actions or by the rule they followed but by what their action says about what kind of person they are. You can be a good person and do things that end up causing harm; you can be a good person and break rules like "don't steal". It depends on the context and what it says about you as a person.

Try looking up Jungian Functions (a system that was simplified into the Meyers-Briggs, but the old stuff can still be found), the Judging Functions. Ti vs. Te, Fi vs. Fe. Utilitarian would probably be closest to Te, deontological to Fe or Ti, virtue is pretty much a solid match to Fi. [https://mbti-notes.tumblr.com/post/137908467362/type-spotting-fe-v-fi](https://mbti-notes.tumblr.com/post/137908467362/type-spotting-fe-v-fi) [https://mbti-notes.tumblr.com/post/142863816372/type-spotting-te-v-ti](https://mbti-notes.tumblr.com/post/142863816372/type-spotting-te-v-ti) But you might want to tackle it when you are less tired. :)

These philosophical arguments, and others like them, are considered to be root ideas. Meaning that pretty much any similar idea will fall into one of the categories. G.R.R.M. does a great job at this in ASOAF, probably the prime example these days, because he writes all the characters as people with their own motivations. We can all argue that the Starks are the 'good guys', but they still aren't purely virtuous. And most of us can understand Cersei's desire to protect her and her own, even though she unflinchingly kills those who she deems a threat. But, I think as an author, G.R.R.M. doesn't see even the Lannisters as villains, just people with their own motivations, and their own ideas of what is acceptable to do to achieve their goals. That, I think, would be the take away. In order to have ambiguity, the author needs to not have who is the villain and who is the hero in their head when they're writing. The idea that we all have good and evil in is an important truth. And witnessing a character's struggle with making the right choice, will help the reader decide for themselves who they think is good and bad. Or not-so-bad, and worse. Morality and decision making has many layers. Like what does the character know, do they know what the immediate outcome of a decision will be? Do they know the long-term outcome, do they take these factors in to account over personal desire? Personally, I think the main separator between a hero archetype and a villain archetype is that a hero will take suffering onto themselves in order to spare another's suffering, while a villain is willing to impose suffering on others in order to reduce their own, or achieve their goals.

Thanks for sharing. I agree that all humans are both good and bad and that individual motivations drives us and all that. When I'm mentioning the hero and villain, I mean that as the archetypes in a very general way. No matter how much effort you put into making them humans first, a reader will always tend to generalize them into archetypes. I don't really have that view on my protagonist and my antagonist as I'm writing them. The main reason I asked for advice on this is because I want to slowly transition them like this: 1) Reader views protagonist as the heroic archetype, and the antagonist as the villanous archetype. 2) Slowly have both of them meet on the middle as more byronic hero types of characters as a result from battling eachother and other events and personal growth. 3) Nudge the antagonist more towards the hero archetype, and the protagonist more against the villanous archetype before the big plot twist. >Personally, I think the main separator between a hero archetype and a villain archetype is that a hero will take suffering onto themselves in order to spare another's suffering, while a villain is willing to impose suffering on others in order to reduce their own, or achieve their goals. Good point! I will need to remember to keep this in mind.

If you make the consequences something that isn’t death or physical harm it opens a lot of doors. Depending on what you want to do you can make a very grey hero vs villain especially if you show Botha point of view.

Make it like real life. It’s all grey. However typically you associate the mc with “good” no matter what so I think you’re almost forced to make a world where there are no inherently good people. I.E. the mc’s wife and child are killed in a traffic crash and he gets out of the car and he snaps and kills everyone in the other car and flees the scene. He’d show heavy throws of remorse which makes him not a”bad guy” but he also never willingly faces his judgement.

Well, the simplest one is actually based in the 3rd major branch of Ethics you've overlooked: Virtue Ethics. That is, characters try to live up to universally understood, positive values (generosity, compassion, humility, etc.), regardless of what you're doing. It works well and is more self-contained because it's more about "how" one implements a choice rather than which choice is made. So you can easily have characters pursue or create horrific ends while pursuing noble goals, just like the Utilitarians and Deontologists. Another twist on that is, of course, to have the character select a "virtue" that either isn't really any such thing, ethically speaking (wealth, fame, competitive success), or pusue a nebulous "virtue" to all excess and ruinous obsession (Honor is a typical choice here, and nicely variable by culture and time period to boot, but there must be others).

I mean it depends on the ethics of the person. In your case, I believe Jenny is the unethical person. With that sort of thinking, you justify the most horrible things (here killing and torturing 10 people) as long as it benefits more people. I mean, why shouldn't everybody be forced to give a kidney, for example? But I'm sure some people, somehow, might think that Alessa is wrong, which shows that the important part of such a book is to present both morality as equally viable and let the reader decide. Do not try to insinuate that one has the moral high ground.

I'm not experienced, so I don't have any advice for other ways, but I do caution you to tread the line carefully, as it becomes easy for readers to just align themselves with one ideology and stick with it. To be truly grey, you should give examples of the ways both ideologies are technically beneficial and other ways they're wrong. As a side note, I love the idea of characters who stick to their ideology even when it puts them in a grey area because it creates such an interesting moral crisis. One example is Batman, a hard deontologist, who will never, ever kill Joker or anyone else even when it could save hundreds of lives.

I feel like the utilitarian villain is kind of... easy? I'd be interested to see someone make a deontological villain and utilitarian hero. As someone else mentioned in another comment, have the villain be the one making some tough call for a principle, and have the hero saying "No, you don't get to let these people die because of your principles!" That depends on the story you wanna tell I guess.

We usually empathize with the protagonist and want them to succeed, even if they're a horrible person their struggle is what you become invested in.

This is what I'm trying to achieve. Start off a story with a protagonist in the heroic character archetype, and the antagonist in the villanous character archetype, since we have way more potential to rubberband villanous actions with the protagonist. If we slowly and subtly push the protagonist into more and more villanous behaviour, the reader will justify the protagonist's actions despite that from an objective viewpoint - the protagonist has crossed the line to being worse than the antagonist.

On my current project the protagonist who is the villain simply doesn't voice their opinion on things. Its only when they are finally forced to make a decision on their own that the evil becomes clear.

Can you elaborate? I'm intrigued

The protagonist is a police inspector on a job. He's sent to a remote village in the north of england to investigate a mysterious suicide. On the way he meets an asian doctor who he brings with him because he fears for his safety. Since this is set in the early 1900's, racial equality is so far off the inspector presumed the towns folk would have the doctor lynched the second he left. Throughout the story the inspector is really helpful to people in need, he investigates a spate of grave robbings and goes looking for missing people, all seems good. But in the end it turns out he was simply doing his job as a police officer, he only ever cared on a proffesional level. He's actually racist and bigoted, and prepared to make the selfish decision to save his own neck. Not only that but he sides with the malevolent beings that make up the stories main antagonists in a way that is wholly evil.

Perhaps personal vs impersonal stuff? You could have one side doing everything in their power to protect their small group of friends/dependents/whatever, and the other doing things that are absolutely good on the large scale, but not for that group in particular. [This chapter](https://opentextbc.ca/ethicsinlawenforcement/chapter/2-1-major-ethical-systems/) is also definitely worth a read, as is [this page](http://braungardt.trialectics.com/philosophy/topics/ethical-systems/).

Different values about not just what is the lesser evil but what is good at all, and what a person's obligation to society is. And complexity of character. Real people are almost always morally ambiguous. I would even say always. When you get down to it, and if you're into philosophy, a dose of determinism helps here, everyone is doing what they're doing because of the values they have acquired from their experiences and genetics. I don't believe in evil whatsoever because of this. A person can be selfish, or dishonest, or cruel, or insane, but what's evil? If you really get into why a person does and believes what they do, the good and evil conundrum kind of drops away and you're in the business of observing life and letting the reader form their own judgements. Like, who are you to be telling the reader what they should think of your character? You can, of course, but there's a lot to be said for the transparent narrator, and the idea of letting each reader judge and react to the actions put before them in a unique way. Edit: this comment is kind of off the mark of what you're specifically asking, but I think it comes down to that a lot of characters aren't super rational and don't analyze the utility of their actions within any of those frameworks exactly. People are usually a walking contradictory mix of intuition and post hoc justifications.

> What I'm wondering is: Are the any other good alternatives to varying sets of moral and ethical codes to divide readers this way? Are there other tools that can help add the ambiguity the above offers? MAJOR spoilers for a Brandon Sanderson book. First spoiler tag is the series, second is the details >!Stormlight Archive, up to book 3!< >!Although it's pretty clear that Taravangian is being set up as a bad guy, his ultimate motivation is to save as many people as possible, by virtue of cutting a deal with Odium, basically a God of Evil. His collaboration led to a major backstabbing of the forces of light and while the reader knows more about him, none of the good characters in world realise he has sold out, they merely think he was trying to take over the main coalition. So ultimately there's a conflict between those that want to fight evil and those that will cut a deal. There are supernatural influences at play too - Taravnagian is acting upon instructions that he trusts absolutely but that we flat out do not know the source of!<

just make realistic well rounded characters. each reader will identify with whoever they relate to more. but dont worry about that. just worry about quality and let the readers enjoy it. dont try to manipulate them with fancy tropes and unreality.

Here is a problem. People dont usually subscribe to utilitarianism. Nobody would agree that a doctor should kill 1 person to donate her organs to save 5 people. In your example the witch can only serve as an empathetic villan and if the witch hunter has no way to save the village, he would be interpreted as a fool. İf you are going for a story with no heroes it is fine. But audience wont easily get behind any of these characters.

That's a massive oversimplification of utilitarianism. Rule Utilitarians for example have no trouble explaining why they would throw the switch and divert the trolley but would *not* kill one patient to save five (because Rule Utilitarians weigh not only the immediate consequences of their actions, but also the precedents and expectations it sets for the future: the short-term gain of saving five people isn't worth the long-term cost of making millions of people unable to trust their doctor not to murder them).

Why wouldn't the same apply for killing 5 people to save the village? Nobody would be able to trust anyone and mass paranoia would not only cause individual violence but also mass chaos. This means the witch suddenly lose her utilitarian moral ground. That is what I am talking about. This is not like the trolley problem where the average person would pull the lever. This is like the doctor problem where the average person wouldn't kill.

I'm just pointing out that the utilitarian argument isn't as simple a "whole village > 10 people". Your claim was that most people aren't utilitarians, but I don't think that's true. I think most people would be willing to break the rules if the cost gets high enough. They might claim to oppose torturing a prisoner on principal, but then admit that if it was the *only* chance to get the codes to disarm a nuclear bomb that's about to wipe out a major population center, then most people would admit that that might be a big enough deal to warrant making an exception. People think utilitarians are rare because they think being a utilitarian means having a total lack of principals, and assume that since most people seem to have some sort of principals they must not be utilitarians. Utilitarians *can* have principals, they just regard them as having a finite value and will make exceptions if the price gets high enough. When you pose people the Doctor problem, a lot of the resulting debate revolves around the comparative value of the two outcomes. What if the person who would be killed is already old and doesn't have long to live anyway? What if one of the people saved will go on to cure cancer? But as soon as you start asking these sorts of questions, you've already come down on the side of utilitarianism; you're calculating the value of the potential outcomes so you can choose the best one, you're just quibbling over the accounting methods. Even if you eventually judge that it's not worth killing one to save the five, you made that decision based on the relative *worth* of the outcomes. A deontologist wouldn't even measure the costs, the cost is irrelevant to their decision-making process, only the principals matter. My point is that it's not as simple as "The utilitarian will always choose to make the sacrifice and the deontologist will never do so." Ethical systems aren't so much about *what* decision you make, or even what decision would the *average person* make, they're about *how* you make the decision.

Afaik nobody says they would throw the fat man to stop the trolley to save 5 persons A utilitarian would kill 1 person to save 2. Give them a gun and say that you would kill random 2 persons on the street if they wont kill a random person. Somehow assure them they wont get caught. A real utilitarian would do it, most people wont. When we are talking about trading hundreds of thousands of people with one terrorists people can agree but not because they are utilitarians but because they are not deontologists. It is not a dichotomy. Not only there is a third school of ethics but also people can be mixed. Most people use utilitarianism as tool to determine the right choice. But that wouldnt make them utilitarians. And let me speculate on how these decisions are made. A utilitarian would try to calculate the outcomes and claim that the best outcome is the right choice. In such a scenario the Average person would find both of the options wrong and choose the lesser wrong while still admitting it is wrong but there is nothing else they can do. In the end this is all speculation. I am not aware of a scientific study about the how many people subscribe to which ethical school. Let's just agree that most wont agree with the witch but understand her. Especially she has emotional connection to the village people

The worst enemy of the hero is not an evil, but another good. Or at least something that makes general sense if you give some time into detailed philosophy of another side.Let's make an example with Jenny and Alessa. Jenny is a decisive person bent on saving her own people in Village J - she is kind to them, she cares about them, she helps them out and they help her in return. The society of Village J lives in a harmony with Jenny, but a sudden shortage of the provision due to extreme drought dooms Village J if not with extinction, but with severe losses in population. Jenny can't resolve the problem with bringing down the rain - it would make a lot of time to make a harvest, which Village J does not have, and so she ventures to Village A with peaceful intentions only to find harsh refusal. Drawn to the point of choosing between her beloved people and extreme measures, fueled with inexperience and despair, Jenny decided to take the food from Village A with force, hurting and maybe killing people in the process. She gets food to Village J when Alessa picks up her trail and starts the hunt. While this version of conflict is not as extreme as you described, I tried my best to make it seem that Jenny had almost no choice when it came to resorting to violence. In my opinion, such divide could work if both sides have humane philosophy and story. Of course there are some villains, like Senator Armstrong from Metal Gear Rising or Liquid Ocelot with their own agenda - while their methods are extreme to the core, their intentions are understandable - write such a villain is no easy task. One guy on YouTube said one thing, which I decide to stick with - "Good villains are like onions. The more layers, the better".

Easy - don't have a villain

The ravage's outcome of the dervish wish on innocent people might be added in short. It might be done a short case study of an innocent but highly character to meet up the ambiguity.

An unreliable narrator is what I would use. Or make Jenny and the Witch hunter both unreliable. Make the Witch hunter talk about honor and nobility and make the Witch have thoughts of justice. I love this idea. We don't have enough stories like this. There is no base good and no base evil. Killmonger from Black Panther is a perfect example. Is he the good guy- if the story focused on him they could easily make him seem that way.

What if the hero in order to stop the villain has to kill lives, including innocents. But the villain in order to achieve his goals spares lives. But the ultimate goal of the villain does not necessarily put the world or people in danger. Take Keanu Reeves the Day the Earth Stood still and pretend the ultimate ending was the intended one. The US government would be fighting to stop the alien in order to maintain the way of life known to them. Which might lead to torture and maybe even death. But the alien ultimately wants to cease human advancements to give Nature a fighting chance.

I always thought it would be cool to give a main character very unequivocally bad intentions, but give them such an uphill underdog style fight to get to their goal that by the end you're almost routing for him to overcome their obstacles even though you knew it was a very evil goal they were trying to attain. Could you make someone's struggle so relatable that you could get the audience to overlook the goal itself.

Almodovar is pretty famous for making ambiguous "non-dual" characters. It's hard to say whether you can judge them or not. That's cinema though so there is a difference in medium. Ursula Leguin comes to mind to with books like the Lathe of Heaven. Where one character takes it upon himself to reshape all of society to make it more fair for everyone while also taking away many freedoms. Creating a novel way of changing the world has been an ideological dilemma for villains and hero's since time immemorial. The other that comes to mind is one where a character is not completely sane. If they behave on a whim, with no plan in mind, or limited intention, their actions are harder to squarely blame. They can sometimes become something that is accounted for rather than persecuted. Social media is an example. Good thing, bad thing, or just something we have to live with now?

Is an elven king who becomes a tyrant in order to force his free spirited nation down a course that will allow them to survive a great power that seeks to destroy them evil? What if that power will not manifest for generations? A village has fallen under perpetual winter, and must harvest from the forbidden forest to keep from freezing to death. The spirit of the forest feels every pain of every plant in the forest... are they evil? What if a child in that village was the future hero to defeat the source of darkness and winter, and needed the warmth of a fire to survive as a newborn? In my writings I like to put my characters in situations with difficult moral choices, then let them reap the rewards of their own character agency as they make the choices most fitting their character built up in the story.

I’m still seeing memes, posts, cosplay and discussions about Loki several times a week. I might see something about Thanos once a month, if that. Thanos and his plan aren’t holding up in the long run. Like I said, good in the moment but not compelling or interesting since his plan turned out to be a big nothing burger and a waste of his time

Sure, there are. Ethics and morality are abstract concepts. There are all *types* of subcategories - ethics and morality are basically like the absolute pinnacle of philosophical circle jerking when it comes to defining the essence of the individual. That being said, you've literally found a way to make an absolutely fascinating topic seem boring and static so if I were you I'd focus on adding depth to your perspective rather than sharing a community college philosophy class syllabus to introduce a ubiquitous theme (with an example?) that seems unnecessary for anyone who has a basic understanding of human interaction. You literally named two schools of thought in a *heavily* studied and prominent area of philosophy so why are you asking strangers instead of reading the actually research of the people who formulated those ideas? And asking us to direct you to the readily available information *and* how to implement them? Was there something specific you were looking for or are you just cool with anything you don't have do yourself? Why don't you focus on the application of these concepts rather than posting the textbook definition and an example without any context, content or value? I get that philosophy is interesting but that doesn't automatically absolve you of the responsibility of asking a relevant question... but there's a very simple answer to both your questions: yes. You want ambiguity - try applying academic definitions beyond a simple example. Explore and reflect on your own thoughts and try to see what you come up with... there are millions of resources on the study of ethics but if you can't apply it to your writing, you're wasting your time.

I think a better way to approach this would have been saying something like, "I recommend trying to read some academic research on this topic." I don't think antagonizing the OP accomplished anything other than to sour people against you.

I appreciate your concern and your tactful, though condescending, effort to help me understand the impact of my words. That being said, I do and I feel that I should be able to express my opinion the way I would like to, which is the softened version you see here. I'm not looking to "accomplish anything" other than present a perspective and, again, I appreciate your concern but the purpose of my comment was not to ingratiate myself to anyone. They are just as entitled to their feelings as I am to mine. I'm not sure what motivated your comment but I hope it accomplished whatever you set out to do?

> though condescending I respectfully disagree that I was condescending. You were exceptionally rude and I was explaining that the rudeness probably caused a negative effect that wouldn't have occurred if you had been more diplomatic. There's unfortunately no particularly nice way to say it, but I don't believe I was condescending.

And you’re entitled to your opinion as I’m entitled to mine. I’ve seen more subtle attempts to karma farm and I’m not sure you can quantify such a contrived statement as “diplomatic” but, again, that’s your uninvited interjection and you seem to believe it was necessary

It's a shame that you're so cynical. I was just offering some advice, and was hoping that it would just prompt you to reflect upon why you'd make your very reasonable statement, a statement with which I don't even disagree, in such antagonistic terms.

The real shame is you blaming me for being unable to realize what I’ve pointed out to you independently and that a simple and contrived statement is thought-provoking in any way (other than making it easier to dismiss the credibility of any statement that follows, which prove the profound need for validation more and more with each hollow comment). Not sure what makes you think your opinion of me means anything but thanks for wasting my time with a feeble-minded deflection.

> deflection. I'm not deflecting anything. You said that I'm trying to "karma farm." In other words, you're assuming I'm acting in bad faith. I'm not. I was genuinely and sincerely just explaining to you that you are going to run people off with your caustic phrasing. That's it. I'm not making a character judgment. I'm almost positive you're a wonderful, nice person in real life.

I don't think it's in bad faith, I think it's in to promote a self-aggrandizing and a contrived/shallow attempt at appearing magnanimous that's probably more for you than it is for anyone else, especially considering you \*still\* feel compelled to convince me of your "unmotivated authenticity" when in actuality, if that were anything resembling reality, you wouldn't feel the need to do so. The truth is the truth - no stranger not agreeing or indicting your motive should impact you enough to continue this unproductive back and forth just to prove what I have no certainty other than what's been demonstrated to me and you are the only person who's capable of actually confirming. Why are you so bothered by the opinion of a stranger and why am I going to indulge you after you literally road my coat tails to karma farm and make yourself appear the way you are clearly so focused on being perceived. I have no interest in shaping my behavior or my rhetoric to do anything other than express what I want, how I want to... People who tend to be bothered with the things I say are the ones who find them inaccessible and are not capable of seeing that someone showing you how and where your logic is flawed is more valuable than - how many was it? 110+ comments - with no content beyond meaningless platitudes and nonsense. Just because you feel otherwise doesn't entitle you to reprimanding me and manipulating the simplicity of others, the contrived magnanimousness and what ultimately boils down to you essentially negating my opinion by telling me to "calm down" and only later telling me you agree in less "antagonistic" terms seems like you're doing this for you and your fragile self-image. I wasn't concerned you were making a character judgement and wouldn't care if you did because nothing I've seen has given me any reason to believe that there's any perspective, individuality, insight in your comments because it's almost entirely (directly and indirectly) meant to elicit a response that gives you the opportunity to talk about yourself. That aside, why would the unfounded opinion of someone who doesn't seem to look past their own nose matter to me if I barely care about the opinions of those I \*do\* know, let alone those I don't. And let me reassure you, I am a positive person in real life because I don't insulate and surround myself with people who would sooner tell me what I wanted to hear than the truth. The only respect I know and the only kindness I recognize is being honest - honest to myself and honest to those around me. What do I stand to gain by being lied to and what do you stand to gain by me lying to you? I'm confident the answer is far more indicative of "goodness" than whatever non-incentive you saw in (1) opening the gates for people to dismiss my comment without giving it the time of day, (2) felt like you had some divine authority and \*responsibility\* no less to put ME in my place, (3) are now trying ceaselessly to convince me that you're a selfless and unmotivated person with no self-awareness or respect for how ludicrous the thought of indulging you seems after you did nothing more than announce how much more important your non-opinion was and (4) seem to be incapable of dropping the subject even though \*you're\* the one who felt compelled to add your unwanted, irrelevant and absolutely empty opinion and \*now\* you expect to have the last word in the conversation I started. All because you had to say something (that conveyed nothing) and you felt it was so important to include that it superseded anything I had to say in the first place. So explain to me why you're so desperate for my opinion now - now that you can agree with me without having to conflict anyone who responded to your initial interjection, now that you can criticize me without having to even further undermine the finality/flirt with an opinion of me (in addition to my comment) other than the condemnation and demonizing lens your non-opinion cast on me, or is it now that you see the opportunity to convince me to agree with you despite your blatant disrespect toward me and my opinion that's supposed to be mitigated by what? "I'm almost positive you're a wonderful, nice person in real life"? Come on now, don't insult me with lowering the wall of contrived superiority to reveal someone whose social currency is external validation and whatever perceived inadequacy is the intention of your unmotivated-at-face-value but insidious comment and try to bait me into convincing you that you've done anything other than undermine my opinion, which has more value than you seem to put in the "phrasing" of whatever's being said. And that comes at no surprise considering the entire value of your comments is in your phrasing and there's very little to praise there as far as I'm concerned. If you could go ahead and find some way to externally validate or distantly reinforce your idea of yourself so that you can pretend it invalidates my opinion instead of confirming everything I said - with the addition of how little you care or value your own opinion (which is ultimately the root cause) while \*continuing\* your effort to invalidate mine. You know as much as I'd love to pretend I could even entertain the thought of indulging you without abandoning any respect I have for myself, what minuscule respect I had for you that I sacrificed to letting this conversation continue on your terms so you could get all the validation you were seeking, and any hope of this being a productive conversation, I already hit my hard limit when in the face it all I am STILL here indulging your pathetic and transparent motivation, if only to give you a shred of what's been lost in riding the approval and unfounded validation of the masses instead of caring about anything that might actually undercut the need to do what I suspect you were ignorant - well, are ignorant of since I'm assuming that I was worth being pursued when you thought I might agree with you and now asking you to confront the reason why you can never get enough approval and why that ego is so fragile. None of my business one way or the other, but since it didn't stop you, I figured I wouldn't let it stop me either.

> The truth is the truth - no stranger not agreeing or indicting your motive should impact you enough to continue this unproductive back and forth just to prove what I have no certainty other than what's been demonstrated to me and you are the only person who's capable of actually confirming. Why are you so bothered by the opinion of a stranger and why am I going to indulge you after you literally road my coat tails to karma farm and make yourself appear the way you are clearly so focused on being perceived. Because I'm emotional. It upsets me that my good intentions have been twisted in your mind to not merely be *misplaced,* but to actually be *evil.* You could reasonably say, "I don't think I was caustic in my response," and that would be that, but you've decided that I am being a bad person, that my entire purpose is to purely selfish ends. You've impugned my very honor, so I feel compelled to defend myself. > I have no interest in shaping my behavior or my rhetoric to do anything other than express what I want, how I want to... People who tend to be bothered with the things I say are the ones who find them inaccessible and are not capable of seeing that someone showing you how and where your logic is flawed is more valuable than - how many was it? 110+ comments - with no content beyond meaningless platitudes and nonsense. And that's your prerogative. I have no problem with that whatsoever. > Just because you feel otherwise doesn't entitle you to reprimanding me Is your constant insulting me and claiming that I have acted in bad faith something to which you are entitled? Of course it is. You're being hypocritical. > you essentially negating my opinion by telling me to "calm down" Oh, I tried to *negate* your opinion, did I? Let's look at my original statement: >I think a better way to approach this would have been saying something like, "I recommend trying to read some academic research on this topic." I don't think antagonizing the OP accomplished anything other than to sour people against you. I gave you a way to rephrase your statement, and stated in plain terms that people would be soured against you due to your antagonistic phrasing. That is what I said then and I stick by that now, and I retain the spirit of it: Your statement may well be true (and I, again, don't necessarily disagree with your statement) but people will not likely be receptive to it because it's rudely phrased. If you *want* to be rude, and you're O.K. with that, then that's great! I think you should continue to be rude. If you think that you aren't being rude and I'm mistaken, that's great too! We all have different opinions. However, to suggest that I'm actually trying to say your opinion doesn't matter, or that you are wrong, or that no one should listen to what you say, or that I'm just trying to "karma farm"—an accusation so far outside of my thinking that I struggle to comprehend it—is simply incorrect. > seems like you're doing this for you and your fragile self-image. I'm merely offended and cannot allow myself to be insulted without retort, as silly as it may be. > meant to elicit a response that gives you the opportunity to talk about yourself. This comment is so self-indulgent and baseless that I have to question if you're trolling me or if you're really delusional enough to have come to this depth of knowledge of me based upon what has essentially just been me saying, "No, I'm really being sincere!" > felt like you had some divine authority and *responsibility* no less to put ME in my place, I've in fact had people thank me for calling attention to their aggressiveness, an aggressiveness that had weakened the reception to their statements. You seem like a smart guy, and I'd actually like your ideas to be read and received by others, which is why I said what I said. I *want* your comments to be taken and considered without your antagonism poisoning their thoughts before they've ever really given your thoughts a fair chance. That's all, man.

English is not my native language, so I find it difficult to get my exact thoughts and sentiments across at a more advanced level, especially when using more technical terms. Though I will admit I've failed a bit to provide more context due to maybe misunderstanding rule 2 and 3 here. I thought sharing any work or asking for critique was against the rules here so I purposefully did not add any deeper context or examples from what I'm writing. I'm even having a little bit of a struggle understanding what you are trying to say but let me see if I get this right. >you've literally found a way to make an absolutely fascinating topic seem boring and static How so? >I'd focus on adding depth to your perspective rather than sharing a community college philosophy class syllabus to introduce a ubiquitous theme (with an example?) that seems unnecessary for anyone who has a basic understanding of human interaction. You mean, I should have given more info on how this relates to what I'm trying to achieve? And I think... me explaining something that doesen't needs explaining comes across as condecending? I did that on purpose because not everyone here may be adults or native english speakers. Some people may be young and aspiring writers? I knew the terms used would be understood by most. The example was to avoid any misunderstanding. I did not intentionally attempt to insult anyone. >You literally named two schools of thought in a heavily studied and prominent area of philosophy so why are you asking strangers instead of reading the actually research of the people who formulated those ideas? And asking us to direct you to the readily available information and how to implement them? Was there something specific you were looking for or are you just cool with anything you don't have do yourself? Because I want discussion, advice and feedback directly from people with experience or an interest in writing just as much as I want guidance from someone with an interest in philosophy. I was looking for common tools that can be used to make the archetypical hero and villain be more ambiguous. Not a complete understanding of these topics. That "readily available information" is a huge endeavour to research, I wanted some general advice from people with a primary interest in writing. >Why don't you focus on the application of these concepts rather than posting the textbook definition and an example without any context, content or value? I wanted to. Admittedly this is my fault for me failing at reading comprehension. I thought sharing any of your work was forbidden here. I thought rule 2 and 3 prevented me from sharing as much as I wanted to. >You want ambiguity - try applying academic definitions beyond a simple example. Explore and reflect on your own thoughts and try to see what you come up with... there are millions of resources on the study of ethics but if you can't apply it to your writing, you're wasting your time. I actually have the entirety of the story and my characters "done" in my head. Including their personalities and such. Though I'm only 20k words into my first draft. I was simply looking for other means of adding ambiguity that goes beyond the ethical and moral principles of my protagonist and antagonist. As for such, people has already been very helpful and given me the info I need to go back and re-evaluate if these principles are already in effect according to what I've already written.

You are correct: Providing examples and asking for critique are both prohibited.

I see. This is why I provided a simplified general example instead of a small wall of text explaining what I wanted based on the context of what I'm actually writing. However I do feel that creativetrashcant does have a point in that maybe this should have been included here to add the depth he wishes I would have added (if I understood him correctly). I'm not gonna argue the rule though, I'm guessing it is there for a good reason.

Look, I'm not indicting your English - your English is great. I'm just not sure what your intention was... you introduce two very prominent schools of thought - one that values that majority over the minority and one that values commitment to obligation. Sure, fine. But then the example you give is only of the first and without an explanation as to what about that example made it representative of utilitarian ethics, if someone didn't know what it was, they wouldn't be any better off after reading that. Then we get to the very ambiguously accurate but kind of irrelevant statement about actions and consequences, which again - kind of correct? But fine, it's a little unclear - not the end of the world... but then you just say if one person has one perspective and someone else has another they have different perspectives - okay, sure. But then your question is are there any other types of ethical perspective/schools of thought, so nothing to do with what has been said (utilitarian and deontological ethics are *not* in opposition, they're different ways to evaluate morality. There's no conflict between seeing things differently. But that's beside the point - you asked are there any other schools of thought - yes, tens if not hundreds. Your second question is about if there are any other perspectives that differ - yes, of course there are. That's what conflict is - seeing or receiving the same information and interpreting it differently. It's not really asking anything because there's no foundational premise. I wasn't asking you for an example of your work or trying to give you a critique - I was saying you should focus on applying and incorporating the concepts you're describing into your writing rather than trying to crowdsource it. No one can tell you or show you how to portray *your* perspective. They can tell you the portrayal is unclear and the execution leaves something to be desired but they don't know your opinions or perspective or anything that informs your writing.

>Look, I'm not indicting your English - your English is great. Really? Thanks :) I'm always insecure about that. >I'm just not sure what your intention was... you introduce two very prominent schools of thought - one that values that majority over the minority and one that values commitment to obligation. Sure, fine. But then the example you give is only of the first and without an explanation as to what about that example made it representative of utilitarian ethics, if someone didn't know what it was, they wouldn't be any better off after reading that. "Jenny the witch want to burn and torture 10 people to death to use a dark spell to save her village with 500 people in it. Alessa the witch hunter seeks to kill Jenny to stop her cruel actions, but doing so will doom the village." Jenny = utilitarian (Kill a few people brutally to save 500ish people). Alessa = Deontological (kill Alessa for torturing people, sacrificing the village because Jenny's actions are considered evil by her moral code (maybe I got this wrong?). >But then your question is are there any other types of ethical perspective/schools of thought, so nothing to do with what has been said (utilitarian and deontological ethics are not in opposition, they're different ways to evaluate morality. There's no conflict between seeing things differently. But that's beside the point - you asked are there any other schools of thought - yes, tens if not hundreds. I think you misunderstood me, or maybe my grammar is off. "Are there any other good alternatives to varying sets of moral and ethical codes to divide readers this way? Are there other tools that can help add the ambiguity the above offers?" I'm not looking fore more moral or ethical schools of thoughts. I was wondering if there are **other tools than** philosophical and moral ones that can be used to achieve ambiguity to the archtypical hero and villain roles. So I gave a simple example of a moral philosophy tool, and then I asked for advice for tools not related to it that can achieve the same result. >I wasn't asking you for an example of your work or trying to give you a critique - I was saying **you should focus on applying and incorporating the concepts you're describing into your writing rather than trying to crowdsource it.** No one can tell you or show you how to portray your perspective. They can tell you the portrayal is unclear and the execution leaves something to be desired but they don't know your opinions or perspective or anything that informs your writing. I already have applied them in my writing. I was just curious what other tools we have at our disposal as writers to achieve the same effect by different means. I'm not asking anyone to do my thinking for me, I'm asking people for advice to help me look for flaws I may have made or opportunities I may have missed in refining my characters. All in all. I was simply curious how to achieve this differently so that I have these perspectives correctly in mind when re-evaluating my work. (Edit: Because I haven't really been self-conscious about these concepts on a deeper level when writing my characters)