Above Good and Evil: Difference between revisions

 

(Not to be confused with ''[[Beyond Good & Evil (video game)|Beyond Good and Evil]]'' the game or the book by [[Friedrich Nietzsche]].<ref>While he did speak of going "beyond good and evil", his conception of what that meant is quite different from what we usually see; to put it quite bluntly, the way "beyond good and evil" has been taken in wider culture is at best [[The Theme Park Version]].</ref>)

 

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

* Huey Laforet from ''[[Baccano!]]'' is this trope via his several-hundred-year [[For Science!]] ambition. Everyone and everything in this world, including his own daughter, is nothing more than components of a grand experiment- ethics be damned. Even amongst his peers he is considered the creepiest of the lot. Go look at the show's and character entries to see [[Fridge Horror|just what that means.]]

* In [[C. S. Lewis|CS Lewis]]'s ''[[Narnia|The Magician's Nephew]]'', when Diggory scorns Uncle Andrew for breaking a [[Last Request|deathbed]] [[The Promise|promise]], Uncle Andrew scorns such things as fitting for boys but not him. Jadis talks in the same language about using the [[Doomsday Device|Deplorable]] [[Apocalypse How|Word]]:

{{quote|''Men like me who possess hidden wisdom, are freed from common rules just as we are cut off from common pleasures. Ours, my boy, is a [[Lonely at the Top|high and lonely]] destiny.''}}

{{quote|''Lord Voldemort showed me the truth. There is no good and evil, there is only power, and those too weak to seek it.''}}

* In [[James Swallow]]'s ''[[Warhammer 40,000]] [[Blood Angels]]'' novel ''Deus Sanguinius'', the triumph of the Chaos forces in {{spoiler|Arkio}} is shown when he declares

** [http://starwars.wikia.com/wiki/Gray_Jedi Gray Jedi] are a milder example. They don't necessarily believe that good and evil don't exist, but Gray Jedi of varying backgrounds and species do reject the Jedi Council's dogmatic view of the force and explore both the dark and light side.

* ''[[Discworld]]''

{{quote|''Vimes had heard that good and evil were just two ways of looking at the same thing - or, at least, so said people traditionally considered under the category of "evil".''}}

* In Susan Kay's ''Phantom'', Erik loses all sense of good and evil after realizing how easy it was to kill his Gypsy captor, and regards murder as just another art to master.

* The ''[[Children of the Lamp]]'' series features the Tree of Logic, proximity to which will eliminate all senses of good and evil from a djinn (possibly a [[Muggle]], but it's never fully explained). It's used in order to judge better, but it also eliminates all kindness, making the affected person a jerk.

** Another argument that might have held more weight with Wan Shi Tong would be to point out that his own beloved library would be among the things a victorious Fire Nation would have destroyed.

** It wasn't that Sokka wanted to take and use information, it's that he wanted to take and use information ''to fight a war''. The owl was fine with them looking around, and didn't seem to mind Sokka nicking things too much, until he heard Sokka say candidly that they were going to destroy the Fire Nation when they're at their weakest.

* "The Mysterious Stranger" from ''[[The Adventures of Mark Twain]]'' has [[Satan|the eponymous Stranger]] say, "I can do no wrong, for I do not know what it is."

* A mad scientist supervillain in ''[[Mighty Max]]''. He turns his [[Devolution Device|de/evolutionary ray gun]] on himself to increase his [[Evolutionary Levels|evolutionary level]]. The first time, he turned into a large brained psychic. When he returns for another episode, he turns it on himself again and turns into a multicolored orb of "pure thought". He uses it a third time and starts babbling about "ultimate knowledge" and "[[Medium Awareness|hearing the music]]" before flying off. Wise fowl-man Virgil proclaims that he has "evolved towards the infinite, far beyond such primitive concepts like good and evil", which is funny considering Virgil is firmly on the "good" side.

 

{{reflist}}

[[Category:Goodness Tropes]]

[[Category:Evil Tropes]]

[[Category:Characterization Tropes]]

[[Category:Cosmic Horror Tropes]]