It's not like Frodo getting a lightsaber would change anything, given who Sauron is. Like, seriously, Sauron, lore-wise, would be more powerful than any Death Star.
22.2 axis
More or less how James Bond is written. To some extent, a lot of the great men of history (Alexander the Great, Julius Caesar, Genghis Khan) were like this. One can't blame amateur writers for wanting to be like these men. The power fantasy is always, "If I could do whatever I wanted and get away with it, and I can never lose a fight". The difference is always how convincing the writer can make it, whether he did any research or knows anything about how power works, or if he's just a kid in a sandbox arguing about how his powers beat your powers times infinity.
Would be fine if he wasn't Lawful Good but was instead Lawful Evil. People these days have a hard time separating good from evil, and often they default to: "It's good when I do it, and it's evil when someone I don't like does it". Or they just go by whether the guy wears white or wears black. That's because being a Lawful Good Chad is actually very difficult, and there are not many examples out there to follow. It takes a lot of self-discipline and empathy for how other people think. It's much easier to just be a selfish hedonist.
Goes back to the god emperors of the bronze age, who destroyed cities and slaughtered men, women, and children in great numbers, and had thousands of slaves singing their praises because they knew what would happen to them if they didn't. Power fantasies tap into ancient motivations long repressed by moral frameworks that were designed to prevent the destruction of cities and the great slaughter of men, women, and children.
Sometimes all a guy needs is the right opportunities, and to get out from under modern society's thumb ^_^
Yep. If a writer doesn't know how to write an MC who is not a shitbag, it's also likely that he doesn't know how to write women either, or really anyone who isn't himself.
The Bechdel test was invented for this exact reason.
The millennial canon. Much as the Greeks had Homer's epics to frame their world view, and medieval Europeans had the Bible and Aristotle, modern millennials have these cartoon shows.
More to the point for a thread like this, it's harder to write a "lawful good" character, at least well. It means you have to write with concern for the other characters, come up with reasonable solutions to problems and not just smash everything in your way. And since it is harder most writers end up either writing an amoral or evil character and calling them "good", or twist the plot so the protagonist is always right without ever having to actually worry about anyone else.
But James Bond doesn't pretend to be a moral paragon. He's a British intelligence agent. Women jump into his bed because he's courting them. Women don't just see his body and decide they want his penis. No, they interact, he jokes, finds a way to connect with these women, and ultimately wins.
I don't think it's that hard to write LG characters in general, but they are usually not seen as Chads because they put justice above personal power, so they lack the sort of ruthlessness that propels people into power and builds harems from the ground up. The more common sort of LG Chad is just a family man, maybe holds a position of influence and respect in a community, and is willing to lead men into battle if absolutely forced to... but would much prefer to live in peace. I'm thinking perhaps of someone like Faramir, who is quite virtuous, but not a Chad like his big brother Boromir, who is more corruptible. Though Aragorn seems to be both good and a Chad. No harem for any of them though.
I was referring only to the sociopath part, not the rest of it. Bond is a Chad and a sociopath, that's all.
Yeah. The issue isn't really writing a male character with a "harem" or a Casanova type like Bond. The issue is writing those men in a way where people just don't buy that women would be interested in him in the first place. That requires good character writing, rather than just turning the female characters into effectively sex dolls.
Late response, but I'm honestly less bothered by the opposite trope (Ron the Death Eater) than by this trope. The reason being is that there are plenty of examples of characters in fiction going from villain to anti-hero (or even straight up hero in some cases). Examples that come to mind are Godzilla, Kong, Vegeta, Venom, the Gotham Sirens (Catwoman, Poison Ivy and Harley Quinn), Black Cat, Emma Frost, Boba Fett, Shadow, etc). Even in the world of public domain we've had classic monsters like Dracula and Frankenstein being made into lovable goofballs in stuff like Hotel Transylvania or sympathetic portrayals of the Lucifer in stuff like Good Omens, Sandman and Hazbin Hotel.
It's not bad but it is often misused or misunderstood, usually by taking it way too literally. It just means you need to maintain stakes and dramatic tension when you alter the characters, and one of the best ways to do that is to alter the story to provide more and better challenges for them.
Karamon Majere is indeed Chad. Like.
It's also hard to portray an LG character in a way most people can agree on. To go to the source of the whole alignment thing, in DnD, Bytopia and Arcadia are both planes containing Lawful-Good inhabitants, but they are fundamentally different from each other, and in turn are different from the people going to the "pure" LG plane, Mount Celestia. When do they prioritize law, when good? What if those ideals clash?
This is something the Slutlife fork sorta fixes in the lore there the company is not the only multiversal force hell they're not even a very strong one they canonically got their ass beat before by the forces of good and the only reason they're still around is cus they inforce their own rules now and there are worse companies out there the forces of good are focusing on.
The only exception being Re:Zero but even they streach my patience with how much they try to pull at the heartstrings.
Yup first before you make a lawful good character you have to define what good is. As outside the story you can debate, but as the author you can declare something as morally good or evil.
It's my belief that you actually can't. You can try, but you will run into a logical bind at some point. The reason is because our concept of good and evil is rooted in observations over millions of years of patterns that perpetuate and expand life and patterns that corrupt and destroy life. This results in there being only one truly good pattern that is universal, and all other patterns are subordinate to that. Though there are many different ways to be evil, there is only one way to be good. Thus, a story that defines good as something that is not this universal pattern will at some point run into an internal contradiction and fall apart. It may, of course, define numerous types of evil (as taboos), because of the Anna Karenina principle (happy families are all alike, while unhappy families are each unhappy for a different reason). But attempting to define other types of good besides the highest good, these would only become false idols.
You can disagree but you are wrong biology and evolution do not tell us what is good or evil only what is beneficial for a person or group. You run into the is ought destinction. Yes me raping you is bad for you but it's good for me I gain pleasure and can pass on my DNA, again why should I prioritize you or society as opposed to myself, and passing on my genes.
Perhaps, but that has the prerequisite of "survival of the species is the highest good", as that's what this "good" would be aiming to do. After all, that is the evolutionary directive, on the simple basis that those species who did not have that as the highest good are simply not around anymore. Whether that's true or not is a different discussion. After all, unrestrained growth in itself is, ultimately, simply a cancer.
If people can debate it then it's not a moral fact.
Why this sounds stupid?
Wrong.
But that doesn't make sense, isn't the cat its own observer?