Subject: The PPC's role.
Author:
Posted on: 2010-06-03 06:09:00 UTC
I know we're not evil nor good but what is exactly the PPC's alignment in the good and evil spectrum?
Also, did some agents volunteer in testing stuff such as using jetpacks?
... have a tendancy to come out as Chaotic Good or Chaotic Neutral. While the PPC as a whole can probably be classed as Lawful, the individuals within it are highly Chaotic. At least, so it seems to me.
hS
As in we're good guys using Chainsaws.
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ChainsawGood
In some of the more extreme cases we find Omnicidal Neutral
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/OmnicidalNeutral
Yeah, TV Tropes is great for this.
In my opinion, alignment is very dependent on one's perspective. Some people may think they're doing good, but are actually causing more harm, and likewise an "evil" character might actually be doing more good than bad. It all depends on how you see yourself, and how others see you, as well as your actions, which are even more important. If you end up killing a bunch of (insert sentient species here), of course they're going to think you're evil, you just slaughtered them! Likewise, if you help them out instead, they're going to like you more and percieve you as "good".
That's my two (insert fictional currency here) on the thought.
D&D, where alignments started, uses an absolute morality system--that is, if someone's evil, they're always evil, no matter on who is looking at them. That has an interesting social impact, especially with the reality of afterlives in the picture (evil people are basically hoping to end up on top of the heap). Motivations do play into alignment; but alignment isn't a matter of perspective.
Now, you can create a world in which alignments are relative; but then you'd have to re-define "evil" as "something I don't like" and "good" as "something I like", which is an altogether different thing from the concepts of good or evil themselves; so in those worlds you'd be better off saying that good and evil simply don't exist than tangling yourself up in semantics.
An alignment is simply a label you can put onto a character after you have created him and evaluated him. It does not determine his behavior; his personality determines his behavior. It can change as the character changes. And its only purpose, other than being shorthand for describing a character's code of ethics (or lack thereof), is to determine how spells affect him, which afterlife he goes to, and whether or not he shows up on the Detect Alignment radar.
This has been a public service message from the Committee for the Prevention of D&D Cliches. Thank you for your time.
:P
Just from what I've seen so far, I'd qualify the PPC organization as more Lawful Neutral than anything else. While the agents themselves may do a lot of chaotic things from time to time, they are doing it in order to preserve literary order. Whether a Sue is good or evil doesn't matter into it; they are disturbing the stability of reality and so must be removed.
Individual agents are probably all over the spectrum, except maybe for Chaotic Evil. Maybe.
Since the stated goals of the PPC as an organization are to preserve the status quo in a specific way by fairly specific means, that makes it Lawful Neutral.
Individual agents, on the other hand, are driven by their own unique motives. My Agent Supernumerary may be one of the few whose alignment is the same as the organization, since I'd hardly call him Evil, Good, or Chaotic. He's basically Doing What Needs Doing because It Needs To Be Done and Someone Has To Do It. His partner Ilraen, on the other hand, is definitely Good, since he wants to help people as much as possible. I don't think he's quite settled on the Law-Chaos scale yet, though. As he becomes a more independent person, we'll see.
Agent Derik is firmly Lawful Good. He truly believes he is eradicating a deadly parasite from the multiverse, protecting the lives of countless people. Agent Earwig is a kender, which makes him Chaotic by definition. Since he's basically along because he likes Derik and wants to be helpful (in addition to racking up the Frequent Flier Miles), I guess that makes him Chaotic Good.
Nurse Jenni tries very hard to be True Neutral, preserving the balance in any way necessary, but she has very strong Good tendencies. For instance, she has and will never kill anyone, even a Sue (though she doesn't mind letting it happen), and prefers to avoid negative physical contact of any kind at all.
Evil comes from acting without regard for others, so anyone who's in it just because they like killing things is probably Evil. Whether they're Lawful or Neutral (I agree that the dangerous Chaotic ones probably get kicked out pretty quickly) depends on whether they're doing it because they think they're serving a purpose or just themselves. To me, Evil is always selfish. That's why it's so easy for Good and Neutral to slip if they forget whose interests they're supposed to be serving.
~Neshomeh
It depends who - the more bloodthirsty Agents would be different to the peaceful ones, for example.
Probably closer to Good than Evil, but we're hardly saints and no one's going to pretend otherwise.
Volunteering... probably not, considering that perfectly well-tested jetpacks exist in various continua and can just be swiped. In general - I don't think there's much in the way of 'volunteering' done, but if a particular agent is interested in developing gadgets, maybe. Why do you ask?
Laburnum and Foxglove, for example, I'd peg as Chaotic Neutral and smart enough to realise it, so they joined an organisation which could direct their less Good urges to a useful cause.
I'd guess Skyfire started out in VQ as Lawful Neutral, then switched to Lawful Good after she discovered exactly how far Longclaws was willing to go on the Evil spectrum. Now she's the Morality Chain for the rest of my gang.
Stormsong ... hard to say, but I'd peg him as True Neutral. He didn't really seem to object to what the Nighthunt were doing until they started doing it to HIM, and now he's mostly a decent guy but was willing to Cruciate a Sue (who admittedly had just made him spend two days transformed into a woman).
Molly is probably too young to tell the difference between Evil and Neutral, but she's undeniably Chaotic.
While, yeah, we're trying to preserve order in the various continua, we're Chaotic something-or-other. Neutral, probably.
Because according to TVTropes, "Chaotic Neutral characters do whatever the hell they like and damn the consequences". We're random, and we're often unpredictable. Yes, we've got kind hearts, but...
Some people want to be PPC Agents just so they can protect their Lust Objects. Now, I'm not saying everyone is, but I know part of the reason I want permission is to go in and beat the stuffing out of the Sue if she even dares bash mine. Or kiss him.
Some are Heroic Sociopaths, others are Cloud Cuckoolanders, and still others are...dunno, but it's not easy to classify a whole bunch of PPC-ers by TVTropes.
So there you have it. Building upon the previous essay.
Another TV Troper! Although I expect most PPCers at least visit there.
Just as long as badfic writers do. Genre Savvy Sues scare me.
It's a matter of self-preservation on the part of the Flowers. They're trying to stop the multiverse from going kablooie because it happens to be where they live. That's something anybody would do. However, rather than just nuking everything from orbit (which would accomplish the same purpose by destroying the plot holes and the continuums along with them, preserving World One), the PPC goes in and takes out the Sue specifically, which means they're taking pains not to destroy things if they don't have to (evil wouldn't care).
Apparently they used to just blow things up, but they don't now; so you can make an argument that the PPC used to be evil but has gradually moved away from using self-preservation to justify genocide. Over the years, things have changed so that CAFs are sometimes rescued, ex-Sues can become agents, and mpreg babies and Suespawn are saved. It's gone from wholesale destruction to surgical strikes against the Sue, and only when the Sue can't be redeemed.
In a very real way, the agents are protecting the continua from the Flowers, since without the agents the Flowers would still be blowing stuff up... but as it is, there's a balance.
Of course, individual agents (and individual Flowers, for that matter) can have different motivations. There have definitely been good and evil individuals in both groups. Agents tend to be recruited more often from the antagonist side than the protagonist's, because Sues are often the protagonist and the antagonist already doesn't mind killing her; but antagonist doesn't equal evil.
Of course, ask an Agent who just got bleepfic on their Console, and you'll get an answer of "EVIL!" every time...