Always Lawful Good/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: An entire race of creatures is good, down to every last member of the group.

  • Straight: There's a race of angelic beings who are all good in one way or another.
  • Exaggerated: From the moment they are born until the moment they die, every member of a humanoid angel race strives to be a living example of Incorruptible Pure Pureness.
  • Justified:
  • Inverted:
    • Exclusively Evil
    • Or, members of this race can be any alignment except Good alignments.
  • Subverted:
    • We see some angel race on the side of Good, but then it turns out there are just as many of them allied with the Big Bad's side, we just hadn't run into them yet.
    • Characters get to meet the Knight Templar side of the race.
    • Characters find a Good angel, but it wants to kill them and take their belonging.
    • The race isn't actually Good, but it is portrayed as such as a massive propaganda campaign by said race.
  • Double Subverted:
    • The 'Good angel race' turns out to not be entirely Good, since some are on the evil side, until the innate spark of Good-ness in their blood cause the evil angels to switch sides when the world start to fall apart.
    • The Knight Templars are right.
    • Of course, after all those homicides and robberies the characters do, it would only be right for an angel to kill the characters and bring back the belongings.
    • The propaganda campaign is carried out via word of mouth by people who see and experience the constant good deeds of the Good Race. Just because they're kind and altruistic doesn't mean they don't like tooting their own horns.
  • Parodied: A Moe Moe angel who is easily fooled/manipulated/bullied into doing Good things heroes are supposed to do, because, you know, angels are supposed to be Good.
  • Deconstructed:
    • The angel race are all Good... because they discarded their free wills and subjected themselves to Hive Mind dedicated to Good-ness. Eventually the Hive Mind is dismantled (for good), and they have a hard time deciding just what is Good on their own.
    • The presence of an Always Lawful Good race leads to discussions of moral relativism vs. moral absolutism and whether or not we can force our moral standards on a race.
    • Alternately, everyone assumes that a celestial race is all good... thus forcing an utopian sense of morality to celestials who, despite their great abilities, has very humane limitations.
    • Members of this race are prone to stress, insecurity, unjustified guilt, and messiah complexes. Their very nature drives them to be heroic in there every waking moment, but nobody's perfect. Whatever drives them to this altruism doesn't have an off switch, and they just can't manage to forgive their own failures and shortcomings, not when innocent lives may be at stake.
    • The Always Lawful Good race really is as completely pure and good and honest as they sound, to the extent that they are not only incapable of evil, but unable to even conceive of the concept or recognize evil behavior in others. When they encounter evil, they are incapable of defending themselves against it, and may not even realize that such defense is necessary until too late, and they are brutally slaughtered. A race with both good and evil impulses has no such difficulty, and can survive and fight back against the onslaught of a greater evil.
  • Reconstructed:
    • Since (at the very least, some) of their ideals of Good actually works, they continue to do Good despite now having no magical morality leash.
    • They cut the knot by stopping the discussion and deciding to be nice to each other. They help without being overly preachy.
    • The celestial race, as a whole, does their best to live up to expectations, and though they're not perfect, they're an example for everyone else.
    • While good, the members of the race recognize that they are imperfect beings, and have learned not to beat themselves up over every little mistake. You can't change the past, so the best you can do is admit you were wrong and try to do better next time, right?
    • The race are a Proud Warrior Race Culture of Martial Pacifists. They do their best to look for the good in others and give them the benefit of the doubt, but if they are attacked they respond in kind. They had a sister race with good and evil impluses but it bred so many Blood Knights they caused themselves more trouble than invaders.
  • Zig Zagged: The angels are seen performing apparently-evil actions against the heroes. The heroes start to view them as evil, until it turns out those evil actions really were necessary, and Good Is Not Nice after all. However, having got a taste of nastiness, some of the angels decide they like it and start doing unnecessary villainous acts For the Evulz. The remaining good angels confront them with a What the Hell, Hero? type speech, and the evil ones all simultaneously go into Villainous BSOD at the Heel Realization that they've become the bad guys.
  • Averted: There is no 'good angel race'. Good is made up of races that are also just as likely to be evil.
  • Enforced: The race come from Heaven itself- if we portrayed them as being unfriendly in any way on a popular show, the Moral Guardians might not be too happy with us.
  • Lampshaded: The heroes ask a member of the 'good angel race' why she's helping them, and she answers with "Haven't you seen? My whole race is Good!"
  • Invoked: A race of angelic creatures raise their children to act Good because enough of them are beautiful that they'll probably end up stereotyped as Good anyway, and they don't want the trouble of being a non-conforming person struggling against the views of others.
  • Exploited: Bullying the aforementioned Moe Moe angel. By Heavens, heroes, what are you doing?!
  • Defied:
  • Discussed:
    • "See, if this were a fantasy book, I wouldn't be able to beat the living crap out of you and take your belonging guys, since angels have to be Good and all. You guys are just plain unlucky!"
    • "I'm an angel; smiting evil and saving good is in my blood."
  • Conversed: "And of course, in those RPGs I play, there are both sweet, innocent angels along with seductive, sexy angels and a trash-talking and crude unicorn. Pretty cool, don't you think?"

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