Talk:Good Is Not Nice

I just wanted to add a paragraph saying that the character in question is not necessarily the protagonist, and that there can be a Double Standard from the audience, in that a protagonist being this tends to be seen as primarily "good" whereas an antagonist is more often seen as just "not nice", ignoring their nobleness.

(This may even be done intentionally, if two such characters antagonize each other, and the audience initially is more forgiving of the protagonist's flaws before noticing that his enemy is Not So Different.)

Inspector Javert may be an exemplar sub-trope of a Good Is Not Nice antagonist.

Unfortunately, either the server or my network connection is somewhat unstable right now, and the site keeps hanging and crashing when I try to edit it. At least I don't seem to have such problems with websites outside ATT.

I understand the problems with calling real-life individuals this, first of all since "good" is usually subjective, and secondly because "not nice" is a Bitch In Sheep's Clothing way to call someone a Jerkass, and thus rude.

But what about non-personal and/or non-human examples?

For example, our home planet Earth could be seen as this: As the only planet known to harbor complex life, it is definitely "good" for us. However, it also brings life into danger regularly with earthquakes, volcanism, storms and so on, so it is not always "nice".

Same for many other aspects of life:

Many important micronutrients like selenium or vitamin A are outright toxic if overdosed, while some infamous poisons like hydrogen cyanide are used by our body in trace amounts as signalling molecules. This could also be interpreted as a case of "good is not nice".

Similarly with biological evolution: Without it, no life would exist. But thanks to it, a lot of (particularly animal) lives are unlucky to have the wrong combination of genes and thus are doomed to die senselessly. Also, evolution gives rise to parasitism, which leads to nasty stuff like viruses and, oftentimes, Jerkass behavior getting rewarded.

Then there is solar UV radiation, same thing: thought to be a necessary incredient to the development of complex life, yet also detrimental to it.

Not to forget things like pain perception or negative emotions like fear: They have the function to safe us from danger, but tend to do so in a decidedly "not nice" way.

Possible non-personal human examples include soldiers, when they are defending their country against an aggressor, and, frequently, parents from the perspective of their children. (The first thing could be argued to be Good Is Not Soft instead, or overlaps with it, while the second example may be more or less appropriate, dependent on personal experience.)

Whether or not it is okay to call someone this trope also depends on the exact meaning: It is variably used to mean "overall good but not always nice" or "an utter Jerkass who has a little bit of conscience left to do good things on occassion", or in other words, anything from Type II to Type IV on the Sliding Scale of Anti-Heroes. The first expression is rather flattering, while the second is quite offensive.

Yeah, I was going to use the sun as an example, but given the condition, I moved it to Good Is Not Soft

Speaking as a Troper, with my Mod hat off...

That does look like a good way to handle the issue, yes. As long as we remember that a country's army is invariably depicted in propaganda as "good" by its own country and "evil" by the opposing country - it takes an impartial outside observer, usually given the benefit of history, to tell who if anyone was actually good in an armed conflict.