Writing Blue and orange morality

[DiegoPalacios]

What is blue and orange morality?: is when a character has a morality framework that is completely alien to human experience, so is hard to point them as good, bad, lawful or chaotic.

They may be antagonists, a teammate or in some cases a main character, but they can be in any side as long as that side adhere to their moral framework.They can even become their own side too.

They are not chaotic neutral, but their acts can be seen as random from an outside perspective.

this is common on eldritch abominations, but not exclusive to them.

some examples:

1-Truth above all: some ancient eldritch beings believe that truth is ALL that matters. Making beings reach their true nature, no matter if it is heroic or wicked matters more than the actions of said individuals. They share dark knowledge that humans can`t handle just because it is the truth, and no matter the consequences, they believe truth must be shared around the multiverse. Lives (including their own) is a price so small is not even considered.

2-A crazy dude who guides himself by the rule of cool. "it doesnt matter if you win or lose as long as you look cool doing it". Lame bystanders deserve to die, even if they are kind, but a kickass badass, no matter their actions deserve to live as long as they do things with style, and if they die, the best death is a stylish one.

3-A sentient AI that puts their programming above all, including above the intent of said programming.

A simple way to write those morality frameworks is to focus on one or more qualities that are not considered values per se, and interpret them as core values for a morality system.

Personally, i find this trope interesting but tricky to write, guess that is why is not so common. It can make some sci fi, fantasy and cosmic horror stories stand out on their own. Gosh, it can even work for surreal comedies!. Of course, this may not fit every story, but is an interesting tool to consider.

Have you seen stories with characters guided by blue and orange morality?. did you make characters wih this mindset? and how was your experience writing those unusual moral frameworks?

[KRWright]

I definitely have characters with this morality. In The Mortician of Avalon, Henry definitely operates in this way. He has learned humanity. He does have an idea of what is right and wrong, but he doesn't have the same sense of this that the other characters do. Where human ideas on right or wrong are more based on mortality (and the length of such mortality), his version of it is far more about the specific impact of something on an almost molecular level. Henry is an eldritch abomination though, and Mortician is a cosmic horror romance haha

Other than that, I think the Fox from Freedom's Pyre also would fit in this. It only cares about Freedom, and only helps out with actions that lead to the idea of Freedom, even if those actions are morally reprehensible.

[OttoGruenwald]

That's my take on Stardust the Super Wizard to a T. He's from a universe of simple, transforming collectives where he functions like a white blood cell stopping individual beings from exerting too much influence over the whole. When he comes to Earth, he tries to apply that same kind of morality to "help" Earth and naturally disaster ensues.

The Power of Stardust | Tapas

[rajillustration]

Lol Seto Kaiba, guided completely by whether or not he can win a card game. Regularly has visions that he killed his own classmate in a previous life, but completely disregards it because "I have to play cards right now, I don't have time for this." Blew up his entire company's very successful weapon manufacturing island because "we make cards now." Probably caused world peace since he halted the creation of like 80% of the worlds weapons, but does not seem to realize it, because it has nothing to do with cards. Walks around in low-key dragon cosplay because it looks like this card he really likes. Had a vision that he has a tragic romantic relationship with the dragon card and is like "Y'all, I might be losing my entire mind, but this is a really good card!"

[DiegoPalacios]

Lol........seing Seto with that perspective makes him way more hillarious!!!!!!!

Well.....he made a school to teach people a specific card game in Yugioh-GX.......so him having a blue-orange morality perspective of duel-monsters makes sense.

Also, the fact that he stays scheptic about monsters being real makes his framework way weirder!!!

Seto Kaiba is too alien for us mortals......

[Darth_Biomech]

I think it is the hardest ever thing to write since what you need to do is to basically simulate a truly alien mind in your head. It is very hard to not slip into either "humans with weird beliefs" or "Lolz so random" pitfalls because it is almost impossible to picture a non-human logic (Since we have no other examples of logic besides a human logic). The surest way to escape that trap, I believe, is to never explain that alien logic to reader, at least not in any meaningful detail. Let them be unknowable. Characters can try to guess their thought process but ultimately will fail to do so, just like the reader.

[vothnthorvaldson]

I feel like I'm a less extreme version of your example n°1!

As I love stories that question the concept of what's good or bad, blue and orange morality is something I find particularily interesting, especially when it leads one or both parties to reconsider their own moral principles, or find common grounds.

I'm less interested (usually) when both parties remain entirely antagonistic because it easily feel lazy, and possibly even a bit unhealthy (I'm not too fond of the idea that if you are too different to understand each other you have to fight).
But if it's done well it can be excellent too. For example, the total lack of understanding of the enemy can set the right atmosphere for a great psychological horror story.

[DiegoPalacios]

He would be just the biggest predator of the ecosystem. Maybe if he had his own unusual criteria to choose which planets deserve to be eaten and which don`t he may fit the trope.

[DiegoPalacios]

Oh, yeah, that fits. The fact that he blindly follows the heralds as the judges who chose what he eats and acts as a tool of judgement makes his mindset alien enough.

(didn't know too much about galactus aside from the fact that he eats planets)

[Rhonder]

Best thing I've read all week

[indagold]

My character Yuna from Castle by the Beach kinda falls into that. She's not a hero, an anti hero, villain...she's just emotionally broken by what could be magic or isolation and all she wants to do is be a princess of a dead kingdom and will go to any lengths to isolate herself from human contact to fulfill this. I found it interesting to write as someone who has delusions myself but doesn't act on it and I wanted to imagine what it would be like if they formed your entire identity. You feel persecuted and alone, but only to you, you are the sane one.

[TAMAnnoying]

The best version of this idea of blue and orange morality is spirits within the table top World of Darkness. They are incredibly alien in nature of how people would deal with situations

A lower spirit of addiction for example only has the one mindset of “existing” and will continue to enforce and encourage the human host to indulge in its additions no matter if these additions are beneficial or harmful to the host. The idea of “what are the possible consequences these actions will have for the host?” Is never a question that comes to mind of the spirit, simply that it is both their duty and their life source to inflict this condition onto the host. Trying to explain to the spirit that “being careful of how often to force the host to indulge of the addition” or “havjng The host be addicted to something “positive”” isn’t something a spirit can comprehend, they need the host to preform the actions and conditions of being addicted, to do anything else would go against their own existence. And to go against it’s existence would just be foolish and suicidal. Even IF these points of advance WOULD benefit the spirit by keeping its host alive longer- it... just can’t comprehend this idea of being less of what it is.

[dawgofdawgness]

Does... GLaDOS count? I'm not deep enough into the Portal lore but from the surface I think she's basically some sort of control-panel overseer AI kind of thing. But throughout the game (especially Portal 2) she starts showing some human emotion and teams up with the protag to defeat a new antagonist. It's a pretty interesting take on the AI character since in the story GLaDOS was built on the memories of a human.

---

Similar characters in my story...

I've written Renee to be kind of a character with blue and orange morality I guess. She's meant to be kind of a comic relief/ break from all the character drama and angst. The theme that binds all the characters is them wanting to "be seen". Frances wants to be seen by the world, Azzi wants to be seen by no one, Seymour wants to be seen by his family, Anton wants to be seen by the media (social media in particular), and Renee, being sort of an outlier, simply doesn't care. She does her and wears really freaky outfits/does her hair however she wants, shows up whenever she feels like it. The bottom line is that She doesn't care what other people think of her. Oh I guess she is more of a chaotic neutral actually. I'm not really sure..

[Darth_Biomech]

Now to think about it, my setting has A LOT of blue and orange morality in it... I certainly have gone from the deep end.
Take the Azinarsi for example. They're aliens that uploaded themselves into digital form centuries ago. This had profoundly warped their mentality. They don't have most of "earthly" values and needs anymore, even most of the most basics of them, like the fear of death for instance. The most universal thing there's to exist, right? They don't care about death, because the nature of their environment is such that there's always at least a few million instances of their personalities floating around in their cyberspace, so the only thing that's really being lost is the information gathered by the instance that "died". The ability to effortlessly split a fork of yourself or to merge with anybody willing at any given time without any problems also erased the value of... well, how do I define that, the value of "self" exclusivity? consciousness? You remember that old debate about Star Trek teleporters, that what it essentially is doing is annihilating the original and creating a copy at the other side? Azinarsi do not understand why it is a problem - both the original and a copy is the same person, so what does it matter which instance lives or dies, especially if they are identical? There is no "copy" and "original" does not have any inherited importance.
Then there are more esoteric species still, like the inorganic smi'tar, that go the other way around - the only thing they have in common with the rest of the civilizations is only the most basic stuff like needs to eat, to procreate and for safety, and everything else built on top of these desires shared by anything qualified to be called a life form, is a completely incoherent mess due to their radically different chemistry, anatomy, environment, and therefore - psychology. I still don't have even a smudge of an idea about how to write them, so most likely they'll remain a passing mention somewhere in the story, at most.