The typical format of their declaration is usually along the lines of "I may be Y, but I am/am not an X Y!" (as seen in the picture) The trope title is frequently spouted by the Noble Demon, in order to justify his evil self-identification. In older works, or historical fiction with authentic moral attitudes, common examples are breaches of Sacred Hospitality, treachery against one's leader, or general breaches of oaths. If your story takes place in a Mob War where one side is slightly better than the other, it's most likely because the " good" side has standards. Common gangster-story examples are to have the Neighbourhood-Friendly Gangsters, by contrast with the Ruthless Foreign Gangsters, refuse to sell illegal drugs or to be disrespectful and abusive in their treatment of the women who they pimp. The most common taboos of this type in contemporary Western works involve sexual violence or ill-treatment of children.
It is particularly ironic when two characters display this and their different understanding of morality by objecting to each other's crossing. Also to show how complex human beings can be, what is acceptable for them and what drives them to make different choices in different scenarios.
#UTOPIA MEME FORMAT SERIAL#
Why, after all, should a criminal think shooting a particular single orphan be worse than killing every single orphan in the Throwaway Country, or a serial killer be upset by petty theft, or.? This might be deliberate, however, in order to show the Moral Myopia of the villains and make the viewers question what is right, what is wrong, and if there even is such a thing as “more wrong”.
This can be strange if handled badly, with one character objecting to someone's crossing a line even if they have crossed many, many others, leading to confusion and possibly an unintentional edge into Blue-and-Orange Morality. It may be specifically invoked to prove that it's OK for our hero to work with villains who have standards when the need is great enough.
Another way that it's used is to keep a villain safely on the "still sympathetic" side of the Moral Event Horizon give him something that he simply will not do. It's often to show that a new villain is really bad if even Doctor Annihilation is appalled by them. One of the easiest ways to highlight just how bad something or someone evil is: have an otherwise-remorseless villain reject it.
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