Vox Felicitas XI — The Exquisite Art of Writing Good

On last week’s episode of Vox Felicitas, I brought you another creative writing-related piece. Specifically, a guide on how to create and write as evil characters and deal with evil alignments, within the context of tabletop RPG Dungeons & Dragons (which previous readers should be more than familiar with at this stage). I also introduced everybody to Pyros, a mean-tempered red dragon with a predilection for incinerating his enemies with blasts of nuclear fire. I swear he’s a nice fellow.

Anyway, tea with dragons aside for the time being, today I bring you last week’s episode’s nicer, more benign counterpart: a guide on how to write fundamental good well. Grab your popcorn of benevolence and your soda of righteousness, and take a seat upon the gilded chair of munificence…

First things first: I want to elaborate upon something that bothers me about depictions of both good and evil. Both often written as something that is objective. There are many different cultural conceptions and contexts of what is ‘good’ and what is ‘evil’. In Islamic society, for example, the consumption of alcohol is regarded as evil, since it clouds one’s judgement and leads them away from God, the ultimate conception of good. In English football culture, by contrast, having a pint down at the pub is a sacred rite in and of itself.

So for the purposes of this article, I will be using my alignment chart (see the previous episode), which specifies that acts of good are committed for the sake of benefiting others over yourself, and evil is the opposite. I feel as though the chart is sufficiently broad in its scope as to encompass all major cultures of the world, and at least most of the minor ones. More idiosyncratic concepts of good (see the alcohol comparison above) will be examined from a neutral perspective, accounting for their intention and implementation of said intention.

Now, without further ado…

The first character to fall onto the vivisection table of analysis is Grexes Steadfast. For those of you who haven’t the slightest clue who this charming individual is, Grexes is one of the player-led protagonists in my Theros D&D campaign, The Draconomachy. He is a leonin — a lionlike humanoid — who is described, in the backstory I asked his player to compose for him, as one “with honour in his heart and fire in his eyes, willing to throw himself in danger to protect those who can’t defend themselves in the harsh land of Theros. Grexes got the title of Steadfast, for he is unwavering and rises to any challenge for glory”.

Grexes is chaotic good. Such an alignment suggests that his most direct opponents are tyrants who abuse law and order to oppress the ordinary population — the most famous adherents of the chaotic good alignment are Robin Hood and Spider Man. In many regards, this remains true, as the mighty dragons he and his party go up against epitomise tyranny like few other creatures can hope to match. Chaotic good characters are different to the more common archetype of lawful good in that, while most works with lawful good protagonists typically present order and government as an ultimately positive force, works with chaotic good ones tend to showcase its evils, and thus tend to explore the deepest flaws of society and civilisation. Thus depending on how they are handled, chaotic good characters often have the best chance of being more relatable to the audience, as many of their problems with the runnings of society are experienced by the character(s) involved.

I have yet to make such a showcase of Theran societies in The Draconomachy, the campaign still being relatively early on in its proceedings, so I can’t say for certain whether Grexes will become Meletis’ friendly neighbourhood leonin. I can say with certainty, however, that Grexes does showcase one side of chaotic good that deploys the use of disorder and the unexpected as a force for righteousness. The best example of this so far transpired in my most recent D&D session (as of the writing of this article), during a raid on the arc villain’s encampment. The plan was for Grexes to create a distraction while another hero, Deniz Maron, set the camp afire. That distraction came in the form of loudly, boisterously challenging the strongest warrior in the camp … which turned out to be an adult blue dragon.

That Grexes and the party managed to defeat a dragon four times their power level in such a duel (to my complete shock) is a matter of both luck, on-the-fly planning, and circumstance. Namely, the camp was in total chaos, being mostly on fire, with the soldiers scurrying around in panic before being incinerated. It is a showcase of how chaotic good characters use the unexpected against their foes. Nobody would be stupid enough to challenge a dragon — even one freshly wounded from a previous encounter — to a duel, surely? Then again, nobody expects a leonin to effortlessly tank the dragon’s lightning breath and emerge completely unscathed (this moment was exactly as awesome as you think it sounds).

Chaotic characters in general, both good and evil, are masters of deploying the irrational and arguably insane in a dangerous situation, and then proceeding to succeed with style. Chaotic good characters deploy this force of nature against tyrants who are most comfortable in dealing with established tactics and strategy — as Derriphan the Blue Dragon (lawful evil) discovered in the worst possible way— but the greatest potential for storytelling with chaotic good characters comes from pitching chaos against chaos.

Imagine the rebellious hero finds his insurrection against a tyrannous dictator hijacked by a ruthless sociopath who is less interested in reforming society as he is in destroying it utterly — or becoming the next tyrant. Better still, the chaotic evil sociopath was once the hero’s friend pre-hideous trauma that changed him for the worse. A great chaotic good story will see the hero’s views of rebellion challenged by the forces of savagery that threaten to be unleashed if he succeeds in toppling the evil dictator. To take down the sociopath’s threat, the hero might even team up with the dictator, putting him at odds both with his good alignment and those who follow him.

A spectacle akin to this one occurs when Marvel Comics’ Venom goes up against Carnage, a deranged serial killer merged with a symbiote more powerful than Venom’s own. To pacify the threat of Carnage, the chaotic neutral Venom often teams up with his long-time rival Spider Man, with the two setting aside their differences to crush their mutual foe. While not as profound as the hero plus dictator example given above, it shows that chaotic good characters aren’t often bogged down by rules and hierarchy, and are savvy enough to recognise the greater evil in a conflict.

Such a recognition is rarer in lawful good characters, who usually stick to their codes of conduct and to upholding order like superglue. Those of a lawful good bent are more predictable and easier for dangerously chaotic characters to subvert and defeat. That said, lawful good characters do have their immense strengths that give them a powerful edge against chaos.

The example I will invoke here is Victor Golovkin, a character of my own creation from the now-defunct Alternative Canon of the Frencoverse. Though grossly underpowered compared to his chaotic evil archenemy, renegade judicator Alain, Victor is dependable and stands his ground against the forces of villainy without a hint of fear. Whenever he commits himself to the cause of good, the only obstacle that will stop him is death — and even that prospect doesn’t faze him, which he demonstrates when he risks his recovery from injuries sustained in a ferocious battle to guide an ally through complicated surgery that only he knows. Victor’s unswerving dedication to good gives him a potent mental edge over more chaotic foes he faces, who are more likely to cut their losses when facing defeat and flee the battlefield, compromising their cause. That said, such dedication does not come without hurdles — particularly when his romantic interest, a certain Elena Trotskaya whose more recent incarnation had an entire episode of VF dedicated to her, deems it more prudent to dispose of a compromised ally who Victor swore to take care of than to take a chance.

Lawful good characters are opposed to the savagery of chaotic evil, the nihilistic ruthlessness of neutral evil, and the tyranny of lawful evil, however. When facing off against the latter in a narrative, it becomes a battle of how to implement order. A lawful evil character views it as a tool to exploit for their own self benefit — a ruthless banker, for example. Others might operate under an entirely different system of rules that stands in stark opposition to the cause of good — for instance, a Mafia boss in crime fiction, or a Gestapo officer in stories about the Second World War. Whatever their calibre, the lawful good protagonist will usually seek to uphold the cause of righteousness in the face of, and/or as an alternative to, the tyranny that comes with lawful evil. They often represent positive aspects of governance and conduct along with stoicism, and are excellent for stories that showcase the importance of determination in the face of overwhelming odds. For these reasons, lawful good is the most common classical interpretation of good in the creative arts — and certainly one of the oldest, which held civilisation among the highest of virtues.

I’ll wrap up this already mighty piece (which has taken many hours to write) with the conclusion that good (and indeed evil) is to be treated as a matter from the protagonist’s point of view. For a chaotic good protagonist, good lies in the overturning of unjust law and tyranny so that the repressed may prosper. Lawful good protagonists, on the other hand, often seek to guard the tenets of just order from the depredations of those who would exploit it or seek to destroy it.

But remember what I said last week about villains being the heroes of their own stories? Perhaps a lawful ‘evil’ character might have been turned away from what the protagonist(s) views as good by an injustice within the system — as Anakin Skywalker was turned away from the Jedi Order by such factors as having to hide his marriage to Padme and unfavourable treatment by the Jedi Council? Even a chaotic evil character can have a backstory that puts them into a (more) favourable light: Joaquin Phoenix’ Joker was a failed comedian upon whom society had turned its back, cutting his mental health treatment while leaving him at threat of destitution.

But that will be a matter for future episodes of Vox Felicitas to elaborate on.

Thank you for reading, and I will see you all again next week.

~ Harry