Stupid Good

This article is about something that is considered by the overpowering majority of /tg/ to be fail. Expect huge amounts of derp and rage, punctuated by /tg/ extracting humor from it.

"Ignoring what he's done in the past. Blindly, stupidly disregarding the entire graveyards he's filled, the thousands who have suffered, the friends he's crippled."

– Jason Todd to Batman about Joker, nailing how Stupid Good characters actually end up causing massive harm for the sake of their own "morals".

"Now you see that evil will always triumph, because good is dumb."

– Dark Helmet, Spaceballs, having just casually disarmed Lone Starr with two tricks that even Ned Stark would have seen coming.

Stupid Good is a term derived from the Dungeons & Dragons alignment system, but can easily be applied to characters in any role-playing game. In fact, it can be applied to characters in any medium, for a specific way of playing a morally good character, usually a Paladin with a relatively even split between this and Lawful Stupid.

Definition

Okay, granted, Bender is FAR from the best example, but the meme fits the bill way too well.

A Stupid Good character takes actions with good intent, but without regard to long-term consequences and obeying one typically "good" principle while completely disregarding all other principles. This alignment is not at all selfish, just rigid to the point of insanity. For example, a character might refuse to lie (an action that, in a neutral context, is usually considered "bad") under any circumstances. If asked by a serial killer whether he'd seen a man running past, such a character might say that he did see that man running past, even though this would realistically lead to the man's entire family being tortured to death. A good rule of thumb is to ask whether any person in real life would consider this to be an ethical and reasonable course of action. If not, time to check for Stupid Good.

Batman's treatment of the Joker is probably the most famous example. By not only refusing to kill the evil clown, but often saving his life, Batman has enabled the murder of millions of people. When it comes to deciding which action is right, they pick one specific idea (don't kill the Joker) and make it the absolute cornerstone of their decisions on morality. This also highlights another aspect of a Stupid Good character — they can be shown to be intelligent in many other ways. A refusal to kill — or otherwise permanently neutralize (or at least, neutralize for a really long time — later they'll know what to do) — an enemy is probably the most common form of Stupid Good presented in media. This is usually applied selectively instead of generally, as a character who refuses to kill the villain may have just burned twenty of the villain's henchmen to death without a second thought. The villain is often spared simply because they are narratively important. From an in-universe perspective and outside view, it looks even worse («Only important individuals should be treated like people; unimportant individuals are second-class citizens/peasants/slaves/cannon fodder/scum, not people!»).

A common thought experiment in the field of ethics is the Trolley Problem, where you have a choice to directly cause the death of one innocent person and save ten people, or save one person and indirectly cause the death of ten others. This can be argued either way, but Stupid Good is a matter of extremes. A dead giveaway of Stupid Good is if that person would not kill the villain even if it would save the lives of a billion people the villain himself put in danger.

While crazy in the context of real life, Stupid Good characters are sometimes shown to be right within the context of their very contrived narrative. Stupid Good cartoon characters can seem to have made the "good" choice, but only in retrospect and only because they got lucky with a one-in-a-million matter of pure chance. A leader with responsibility to subordinates or subjects who acts in this way in real life would clearly be betraying their team in order to "uphold their morals".

In the vast majority of cases, however, a Stupid Good character will become That guy in a gaming group. The player's Disneyland version of what he thinks a really nice character would do is sure to get in the way of the plot and make it seem very stupid if he is allowed to influence the direction of the story. Amusingly common in terms of actual game mechanics in Dungeons & Dragons, along with Lawful Stupid. Paladins often suffer from some degree of MAD in various D&D editions, thus leading to intelligence being a dump stat, leading to characters who are literally lawful good and very, very stupid.

Examples of Stupid Good

• The Autobots, particularly from the classic 80s cartoons. Almost incessantly "good" and stubborn in their refusals to do anything remotely bad. Seriously, in the whole run of the original series and the millions of years of war between them and the Decepticons, did they kill anyone?
  • Optimus Prime can also be equally described as Lawful Stupid, thanks to shit like the time he let himself get blown up as a consequence of a duel in which he knew the other guy cheated.
• The Organians from the original series of Star Trek are peace lovers to the extreme, to the point in intervening in the Federation/Klingon War and stopping all fighting across the galaxy. Particularly in the expanded content where they refuse to get involved in Q-Wars threatening multiple dimensions of existence.
• Batman, as mentioned above. Just… how many times did he let the Joker live or even went out of his way to save his life, fully knowing that he'd escape Arkham and kill many more innocents and starting the whole dance over again? Various reasons have been given, from "Killing the Joker means he wins" to "Batman is already unhinged and you want him to start killing people?", with different levels of merit. Yet, the core sentiment remains the same: the Joker is extremely dangerous, clearly incapable of trying rehabilitation to the point of simply being unable to, and not containable without drastic measures. Sending him back to Arkham is just kicking the can down the road and death is probably the most humane option at this point.
  • It should be added that this stupidity goes much deeper, way beyond only Batman's part in it. Given that many versions of the Joker have known kills numbering in the three, four, or sometimes even five digits, why hasn't he "broken his neck falling down the stairs" or "jumped out a tenth story window" while in Police custody? How did he avoid capital punishment when even pleading insanity has its legal limits? Certain versions of The Joker remaining alive is inexplicable in realistic terms, full stop. That's comic book logic for you.
• Ned Stark can both fit into Lawful Stupid and Stupid Good, as his penchant for mercy (he doesn't want Robert to murder Tommen and Myrcella in a fit of rage) ends up getting him executed and generally starting the major clusterfuck known as the War of the Five Kings.
  • The War would have likely happened anyway because Stannis and Renly were both gathering armies & planning their moves, plus Littlefinger was playing everybody to destroy the realm, with Ned already on Littlefinger's hitlist for being married to his crush. The real stupid things there were not getting more trustworthy allies and confronting Cersei privately about her crimes and expecting her to turn herself in. To be fair, Ned tried to get his kids out faster, but Sansa ruined that by ratting him out to Cersei because she wanted to stay.
  • Plus, Ned’s execution was both unexpected by most and virtually everyone thought it was a bad move. Tywin personally said it made no sense and was forced to fight Ned’s angry family as a result. Numerous others acknowledged that they just executed a highly valuable political hostage and pissed off powerful family members and vassals of Ned. Ned himself didn’t expect to be executed because he did his part and knew how valuable he was. Had things gone “normally” (fan theories include Joffrey being insane or Littlefinger whispering into his ear to cause this), Ned would have gotten out alive but still badly off.
• Samurai Jack from the series of the same name. He went out to slay villain Aku. Jack was on the verge of killing Aku before Aku opened up a time portal and sent Jack into the future where Aku had conquered Earth and countless other planets. Jack subsequently went on a quest to return to his own time and kill Aku, while fighting the evils Aku brought to the world wherever he went. Jack is kind and selfless to a fault. He will risk his life over any innocent people he sees and refuses to sacrifice innocent lives under any circumstances, which has cost him multiple chances to return to the past as well as a chance to kill Aku in the present. Luckily, Aku suffers from an equally bad case of Stupid Evil and can never just finish off Jack when he has the chance. Only after an intensely traumatic incident that led to him losing his sword does he start to change for the better, with his encounter with Ashi and her sisters, and him defeating his inner demons finally cleanses all the stupid out of him. True, it took him 50 years, but it did happen.
• Sonic the Hedgehog fell into a slump of this for a fair portion of his IDW comic book series. After the events of Sonic Forces, Sonic discovered his archenemy Dr. Robotnik had lost his memory and assumed a quiet life under the name "Mr. Tinker". Despite some initial skepticism, Sonic decided to spare Robotnik, reasoning it wouldn't be fair to punish him for things he didn't remember. While he was right that time, Sonic then decided to extend similar mercy to almost every other villain he met, even if they had tried to kill him immediately before. At the end of the first story arc, the bad doctor was returned to his evil senses by his favorite goon Metal Sonic… whom Sonic had allowed to leave without complaint that very same issue (to be fair, that wouldn't have happened if not for a delusional Eggman fanboy finding and capturing Tinker first for that very purpose). Despite his friends calling him out for all the trouble his mercy caused and his enemies gladly admitting they would never reform, Sonic insisted he wouldn't "sacrifice his principles out of fear". Fortunately, by issue #61, Sonic finally had enough, left Dr. Robotnik to die in his exploding lair, and began to take a more pragmatic approach in his future dealings with the bad guys.

The darker side of goodness

"You either die a hero, or live long enough to see yourself become a villain."

– Harvey Dent, The Dark Knight

On the flip side of Stupid Good, there are those who attempt to justify whatever it is that they do so long as their characters create good outcomes, or at least whatever it is that they consider to be good outcomes. In essence, as opposed to good actions "no matter the cost", the other side of Stupid Good is good consequences "no matter the cost". This is generally applicable to those who circumvent moral problems with clever use of ethics and is therefore more often associated with Chaotic Good on the alignment scale (though not exclusively).

This "ends justifies the means" approach is less like taking good actions to the point of situational absurdity and more like players using logic to create goodness out of absurd situations.

An example of a dilemma surrounding this phenomenon is: Is it morally good to do something evil, to result in an even Greater Good? Such as killing an innocent to save the king/country/world/universe?

The Book of Exalted Deeds says that the above example is most definitely not a Good act, no matter the intention of the PC, and treads the muddy Neutral ground at best; at worst, it can look like the reasoning and motivation of a particularly well-nuanced Big Bad Evil Guy that (at least in their mind) justifies all sorts of awful mayhem and shenanigans (see "Well-Intentioned Extremist" on TV Tropes). While not all RPGs use the D&D alignment system, any RPG that involves some mechanical tracker of morality may inevitably encounter a player action which causes an awkward collective intake of breath, followed by the question of "did you really just do that?".

This is dangerous ground for any potential GM and needs to be decided upon firmly when it arises. While there are many examples of real-world applications of this line of thought historically and politically, they are controversial almost without exception. In roleplaying games, the end justifies the means approach can certainly be seen as upholding the "moral good", but if a GM allows attitudes like this to take root, savvy players may eventually find reasons to do anything and have essentially just become Murderhobos with apparent moral authority, and it can force hard-alignment systems to lose their legitimacy.

If "Good" players start justifying why they are seeking out and slaying whole villages of Orcs "just BECAUSE they are evil" or if they are committing acts of terrorism against an oppressive state even when that state system is perfectly codified and functional, then a GM should probably think about dropping any alignment systems rather than attempt to enforce muddy and dubious decisions. Remember the old adage of the Blood War: to oppose Evil is not Goodness; Evil opposes itself all the time.

In the more extreme cases, you get the "Tautological Templar", who is utterly convinced that everything he does must be good in spite of all possible evidence to the contrary. At this point, it goes beyond Stupid and well into the territory of Batshit Insane, and any player who even tries to get away with this should be either talked to about it or be kicked out of the group at once if they don't get the message or made the leader as the entire party becomes a group of evil cackling skeletors. Funny to play/watch, though they are clearly not 'good' any more.

Examples of "Good" done Stupidly

• The Tau in 40k, though with particular reference to the harsher side of the Greater Good where they believe that people can be forcibly brought into harmony with one another. It's not terribly unreasonable given that pretty much everyone else in the setting is either insane, xenophobic, or flat-out evil (or all three), to the point where almost nobody gets along without a gun to their head. Their attempts to incorporate Genestealers into the Empire is more naïve than Stupid Good, but if they make that mistake again, they dun played it straight.
• Konrad Curze - VERY VERY much so; despite the fact that he brought crime and corruption on his world to near-zero, improving efficiency and bringing hope to his world, he was not a good person, no matter what he was attempting to argue.
• The Organians again; Though only in video games where they have given up the non-violent approach and decide to force everyone into peace by declaring war on them.
• Stannis Baratheon, from the show adaptation of A Song of Ice and Fire. He keeps on committing morally dubious and sometimes even downright villainous acts, such as sacrificing his own daughter to a fire god, in order to save Westeros from a bunch of evil elves, their zombie minions, and their Darth Maul lookalike leader; all at the behest of a crazed priestess who can't see that Stannis is not the chosen hero of yore, which she has fooled both herself and him into believing. In other words, he's a more well-intentioned Macbeth who ended up with the same fate. Jury is out on the book Stannis (assuming GRRM finishes the damn thing), but the odds are not good (pun intended).