Trope Talk: Pure Of Heart
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- Опубликовано: 8 сен 2024
- Welcome to the new year! Let's kick off the 2022 Trope Talks by unpacking a surprisingly complicated trope that may or may not be meaningless depending on who you ask and how consistent the writers decided to be that week!
Who's your favorite pure of heart character and what's your favorite case of "how the heck is THAT guy pure of heart?!" Drop a comment and discuss!
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did somebody say "morality is complicated"
Cue the head bobbing!
hello hello future me!
Morality is simple! The good guys are always stalwart and true, the bad guys are easily distinguished by their pointy horns or black hats, and we always defeat them and save the day! No one ever dies, and everybody lives happily ever after.
Gandalf start vibing
Kia ora bro
Trolley problem: *Exists*
Pure of heart character: "Just stop the trolley. Derail it or something!"
What about the people inside that would be injured by derailing it?
@@romanrepublic1356 PoH Character: ... *SCREAMS*
Me an Ass : "Multi Track Drifting go brrrrrr"
There’s the one variation where if you jump in front of it, the trolley driver realizes and stops but that requires you to willingly sacrifice yourself. And well, realize that was even an option.
Use an RPG to eliminate the trolley.
Things get even more complicated when you realize "pure-hearted" doesn't have to mean pure *good.*
"My heart _is_ pure...pure, unadulterated badass."
"Yeah, more like pure, unadulterated ego."
Huh, I guess you're right.
Making me wanna write a small story about something like this
"I heard that Triclops!"
Yup. Figured it wouldn’t take long to find this
See vegeta wasn’t just bullshitting
There's a theory that Kid Buu was able to push back the Spirit Bomb because he has a 100% pure evil heart, since anyone with a pure heart can push it back.
I really wish innocence/pure of heart could escape “childlike innocence”
It shouldn’t just be children and idiots that are allowed to be hopeful and good. I’ve seen so many people tell someone else to “grow up” whenever they’ve expressed hope about something, and it’s honestly heartbreaking.
I would respond by saying: “I’m not the one who’s acting like they’re 17”
This is why I like characters like All Might. He's not an idiot, he's not a child. He's seen the worst the world can offer, but that just makes him fight harder, and he made a genuine and lasting impact.
Same. Another thing is that this implies that children are incapable of being evil. Like dude, have you ever met a real life kid?
It seems like maturity cones in a weird cycle for a lot of things. When you're young, you believe A; when you're an adolescent, you believe the opposite of A; if you mature, you realize that both can be true. When you're young, everything seems hopeful; as an emo teen, everything seems hopeless; mature people recognize that hope can be justified, if tempered.
Grow up is basically words used to try drag someone else to your level of restricted mindset(a relate to my more "realistic" ideals type) or "seen and experienced the worst the world can offer therefore I have grown up."
When what growing up should be is how you handle situations not how you merely managed to survive out of your hardship just because you went through your own hardships doesn't make you the best person of example someone can learn from, after all everybody has their own form of hardships and struggles that they have to figure out a way out of by their own terms.
“Today I learned morality is relative.” - Mabel Pines, after punching a Unicorn in the face.
Yes, I loved that!
Grunkle Stan: *runs in and grabs gold* MONEY
I didn’t like that episode. It was just another episode were Mabel doesn’t learn anything
@@ghchnrf2334 What should Mabel have learned in that episode anyway? That she should please a bitchy unicorn for decades with no result?
Stan mabel
Young Justice’s “They never said I had to be pure good” is probably one of my favourite twists
One of my favorite episodes, tbh. And the fact that it works is the really good part, and what the dude had to do to make his heart "pure evil".
Right!?
Same, it’s one of my favourite subversions of the trope.
Exactly!! Probably one of my top 3 episodes. I saw this video and my brain went right to this.
@@hannahdawg6829 and when he was confronted by his sister and so started regretting it, making his heart not pure. Beautiful
This trope caused 10 year old me to question my own morality.
I wanted to be pure of heart so I could go on an adventure and be a hero some day.
But then I wondered, if I want to be pure of heart to be a hero am I really pure of heart?
If I want to be pure for selfish reasons can I be pure?
That realization still haunts me 17 years later.
Damn.
Welcome to the conundrum that is life.
Your intent is either that you want to be a hero so as to be admired as one or to save lots of people. It's still about intent and if it's selfish or not.
I went through something similar. I wanted to be an empath but the fact is that I can’t pick up people’s aura of their true feelings so I made the irrational conclusion that I must be a narcissist. I had these thoughts for a long time when after a reality check, I realized most of the actions I do are for other people and that I care about people deeply. The point is that as long as you strive to be a better human being, you will always make progress.
So anyway, I then sat on my couch and browsed youtube
tbf, most pure of heart characters are also selfish if they refuse to give up their moral code at the expense of others.
You saying that being “Pure of Heart” often boils down to having good vibes made me realize that worthiness tests like Thor’s Hammer are basically just a vibe check.
A good thing to point out about Thor's hammer is that it's worthiness scale has a requisite of being able to kill for the greater good should there be no other option. This is what prevents some heroes from using it. For example, in a crossover event, superman was able to briefly wield the hammer but only for a duration of the fight. This implies that, in that moment, he was willing to kill at that time. However, wonder woman is more generally able to wield it because she's an amazonian warrior who would definitely be able to if required
@@loganricherson Thors hammer requirements, as any other details in comics, depends on the author that's writing the story.
For example in the most recent comics worthy is said to be "been a force of destruction" but in previous histories worthy is a "self-worth, self recognition" kinda thing, like when Nick Fury made Thor feel unworthy cause all that Gorr sh*t that happened even before that history, then we have MCU "worthiness that defines pure of heart as "humble or non-selfish"
In the comics, it's stated that Spider-Man can lift Thor's Hammer if he was willing to kill, some stories changed it by saying the reason he can't lift is that he still feels guilty about Uncle Ben's Death.
Thor: *placing his hammer on my chest* Vibe check!
Me: *crushed ribs noises*
Thor: Oooo, bad vibes.
@@chrisc9526 i need to hear Chris Hemsworth say this, word for word
The pure of heart trope really reminds me of the old saying: The path to hell is paved with good intentions.
I thought it was “the path OUT of hell is paved with good intentions. Lol. I just realized this is a subversion but both make sense now. 👍🏾
They never do mention what the path to heaven is paved with :(
"At least the road to hell is paved. New jersey could learn a thing or two"
-socrates
Definitely worth a trope talk.
@@ethangonzalez8904 Asphalt. Probably.
one of the coolest uses of the "pure of heart" trope is in my opinion the "terrifyingly innocent" character, which doubles down on the idea that kids *can* do some pretty messed up stuff. If an extremely naive character perceives killing as fun, you can create a perfectly normal-looking child who will torture his victims to death while technically remaining "pure".
like Darquesse... *shivers*. Argeddion's morality is so interesting though....
Gluttony from FMA is a good version of this. He's like a monstrously cannibal Winnie the Pooh who just doesn't understand the pain he causes by eating people.
He almost seems to grow as a person after feeling sadness for the first time after his best friend dies, but its too little too late by that point.
IE He's not litterally a child but he sure seems to talk, ask for permission, and act like one whenever he's not in direct confilct.
literally Gon, his friends are professional murders, he's so naive that killing, stealing or hurting someone is something new or kinda blank for him, being the protagonist the pure of heart and looking every nuance he has is really interesting
A weirdly accurate way to describe Anna from Shimoneta...
Or Majin Buu, who was pure of heart, being a killing machine simply because he was never taught it was wrong. When Hercule took him in and showed him the value of life and how it's wrong to take it from others, he became Good Buu.
Pure of heart: I won’t kill you that goes against everything I stand for, instead I will imprison you in this solitary prison of torture for 1,000 years.
Audience: wait isn’t that worse??
Oh, uh, but at least you can drop those points for good behavior and community service.
1000 is only 28 years in prison metrics.
There are fates worse than death.
There's also the good old' "differing moral framework"
antagonist : "You beat me in combat. Go on now and kill me"
Hero : "Nah, I don't do that."
antagonist: "What? But I am defeated, I have no reason to live."
Hero : "but killing is bad. I don't do that"
antagonist: "you monster! I live by the strict code of the warrior. To live on after being defeated is dishonorable, I'd much rather die."
Hero : "You're weird. Okay, gotta go. See you later!"
antagonist : "..."
Of course, in that kind of scenario, the antagonist pretty much always ends up rethinking his strict code and ends up becoming the hero's loyal lancer.
Even mundane prison in Real Life is oppressive and soul-crushing, not to mention typically contrary to the process of rehabilitation. One could argue that imprisoning someone in such an environment is 1) cruel in and of itself, and 2) only going to make them more evil (and better connected to other evil people).
Like, the Death Penalty is also not good, for a bunch of reasons. Really, the "justice" system seems really bad all around.
to me, death is removal of all future possibilities. if you are alive, no matter the 'fate' there is always the possibility of future change. Death means no possibility for anything.
OSP: "We might have some trouble concisely defining Pure Of Heart"
DBZAVegita: "My heart *_is_* pure. Pure, unadulterated, badass"
"More like pure, unadulterated ego."
@@Warrior_of_Fire "I HEARD THAT TRICLOPS!!"
@@MeecaAngel "Is that okay 😏"
what about objects made of pure heart
@@IndustrialParrot2816 Or the heart of darkness? Can't be called the heart of darkness, if you're not _pure_ darkness
Personal favorite version of the Pure of Heart trolley problem is Trigun. As the end message of the anime is not "You should never strive to not kill" or "There is always a third option". But rather "Even if we will not be able to always uphold these ideals, that does not mean they not worth pursuing and striving for".
Yes, I thought I was crazy that no one acknowledged that show! I loved how that show acknowledged the hardships of being a pacifist (and how it’s really hard to be one)
@@MatthewCSnow Yeah If remember correctly that how far you are willing to go to stay pacifist and if its worth it. I mean vash had an incredibally scarred body to stand for pacificm but when he was forced to kill that one character. It didnt made him a bad person.
@@ozzmen4494 basically yes. It points to the “no killing” as the ideal but it was willing to entertain arguments against it (like liability to future damage, being controlling of other peoples decisions, and it being straight up not easy to do in practice)
@@MatthewCSnow It being a manga/anime produced in a time period after ww2 and the end of japanese nationalism. It is one of the stories where a protagonist with exceptional prowess is presented and chooses to not use violance and teaching restraint, it should be it own trope to be honest. It always asks if its reasonable to ask for this self sacrifice or not with varying answers. But the moral of the story of these kinda animes are always kinda restraint in your own actions and thats kinda historic
Wow, now I want to watch that show.
I’m reminded of a TFS quote: “There you stand, the good man doing nothing. And while Evil triumphs, and your rigid pacifism crumbles into bloodstained dust, the only victory afforded to you is that you stuck true to your guns”
I love that quote! I think that's the first time I've ever seen "pure of heart" equate to "moral cowardice"
TFS?
@@jameswest6232
Team Four Star, the guys behind Dragon Ball Z Abridged
Besides! My heart IS pure... Pure. Unadultered. Badass.
@@jameswest6232
TeamFourStar.
The people who made dragonball abridged and set the gold standard for abridged series on youtube. I highly recommend it even if you’ve never watched dragonball (like myself).
"I love peace. I don't care how many men women and children I have to kill to get it." - Peacemaker, The Suicide Squad 2021 has to be one of my favorite "pure of heart" villains.
I had a stroke reading that quote. I mean, I love how it sums up the entire belief system and motivation of the character, but it's so backwards XD
And Yoshikage Kira from Diamond is Unbreakable
@@eluziaaloinabarus1853
Nah, Kira enjoyed murder. He just wanted to live without being caught.
Perfect example: Luffy. He's extremely selfish and will do anything he wants at any cost, it just so happens that everything he wants are what the audience would consider to be morally correct.
did somebody say "morality is complicated"
Think my favorite "Pure of Heart" character is gonna have to be Theo Magath from AoT
I think that's still a very two dimensional analysis and character
I would argue that Luffy's actions are not entirely selfish since he feels obligated to help anyone in need, regardless of the risks involved. He may not weigh the risks and the morality of each situation as others do, but remains loyal to the ones that he is supporting, even when they tell him that he doesn't have to stay.
He may not be pure of heart, but he has his heart in the right place.
@@gorbachevspizzahut well I mean the story is about how luffy affects the world not how the world affects luffy, there are moments where the opposite is true but on the whole luffy is mostly a paradigm that influences other characters and changes the course of nature rather than him being affected by the events around him. That's not to say Luffy is not a complex character and my original comment is rather simple but it also only covers one aspect of his character
"Something to discuss over something alcoholic and fancy": shows picture of Socrates getting ready to knock back a fatal dose of hemlock.
Well they are both poison, and [I say] hemlock is just a fancy word for it. :3
Right. Fancy!
Socrates, moments after drinking hemlock: "You know guys, this thing actually tastes pretty good, I'd be drinking it on the regular if it didn- *dies"
"I was thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, 'I drank what?'"
@@ZekeRaiden "Quick, guys, think of a way to martyrize him!"
I've always liked how Ace Combat 4 used this trope: "No matter how heroic, to be pure of heart is to be inhuman."
It's been a bit since I played AC4, remind me the context of that line?
@@ZaKattacker Not a line but a theme throughout the whole PS2 trilogy. In AC4 specifically it is through the contrast between Mobius 1 and Yellow 13.
For those of you unfamilliar with Ace Combat (or just AC4), the fourth game is narrated by a man recounting his childhood in a village occupied by the enemy. The bar he works at ends up being taken over as the hangout by the enemy's elite Yellow Squadron, introducing him to their leader, Yellow 13. Through the boy's eyes we see Yellow 13's humanity, with all that implies. Kind and generous in some ways, blind and cruel in others, with mutual devotion to his comrades in Yellow Squadron.
Interspersed between the narrator's memories are the missions with Mobius 1, the player character. Mobius 1 is a silent protagonist, but the Ace Combat series tends to play with this concept in interesting ways. In contrast to Yellow 13, Mobius 1 has no connections, no wingmen, no doubts, no witnesses, nothing. Nothing beyond 'is Mobius 1'. This perfect, inhuman purity is hammered home in the final mission. Mobius 1 does their trench run alone, for where they go no human being can follow.
The game closes out with the assertation that heroes do exist, but that hero is inhuman. Pure and perfect, but nothing else.
The thematic line through the PS2 trilogy is, IMO, best experienced by playing the games in chronological order (0, 4, 5).
5 arguably has the most human and grounded protagonist of the lot, since it has connections, and comprehensible motivations.
Zero can get pretty crazy since you can choose to play Cipher as a Knight or as a Mercenary, and while the Mercenary is ironically more human because you can at least discern the motivation of profit, the Knight is just an entity that seems to fight for the sake of fighting - a mercenary that joined the losing side of a conflict just to fight a stronger foe.
And Mobius One has about the same level of humanity as the protagonist of AC3, arguably being the most terrifying of the lot.
@@ignacionadeo1306 Nemo... Yeah... Nemo is terrifying.
Definitely. Ace combat protagonists are terrifying
You know a topic that would make a cool video: "Sentient Weapons", I've always liked this concept in fiction. The character always has someone to interact with, and when the two have good chemistry, the relationship is always fun to watch.
I would love an episode on Fi
Iron Giant comes to mind
Xenoblade 2 has a whole world of sentient weapons, some of which are ancient superweapons.
Excalibur.. Excalibur.. 🎶
I really enjoy how they’ve handle sentient weapons so far in Doron Dororon
It would be so cool to see a “pure of heart” villain who is being deliberately kept in ignorance so they genuinely believe they are doing the right thing as they commit atrocities
Adora from the new She-Ra fits that pretty well in the beginning
Mamika from Re:creators is a great example of this.
Funny Valentine is more or less that. He's definitely a murderer and clearly is willing to do whatever it takes in the name of what he perceives as being good. Using magic to make the USA a country where no harm can befall any who inhabit it but the magic redirects that harm to everyone outside the US. Even in the final fight he's trying to kill the heroes to ensure his justice is maintained, he really doesn't care about Johnny beyond the threat he poses to his plan.
N from Pokémon
That's the whole point of Majin Buu
"Kids are cruel Jack... and I'm very in touch with my inner child"
Always loved that subversion from mgrr
Local man is fuckin invincible.
@@loadeddice4696 And fights a Cyborg Ninja Demigod with an Electric Sword and Anger Issues
Like the original Peter Pan
Ok real take though: As someone that got bullied my entire life: Kids aren't inherently anything: Cruel or kind. It really isn't that black or white. Little kids are usually reflections of their parents. (older kids are a different story) If you notice, most kids copy everything they see. You put your shoes on before your hat, they will probably do that too. That is still true of how you and they treat other people or even yourself. If you visibly display that you're upset about a 96% on a test, they will think that is something to be disappointed about. If you throw trash out your window for a service worker to pick up instead of just throwing it away yourself, they will think that's how you're supposed to treat them. If you thank the waiter every time they get something for you, your kid likely will too.
Alternatively, it's also a show of what parents allow of their kids. If a kid takes their anger out on their sibling for "taking all their parent's attention away" and the parent does nothing, the kid will think it's ok to take your anger out on people. However, if a parents discourages this by not teaching them that it's wrong but actively making the kid scared of them when they do it, the kid will learn that it's not ok to do that... when their parents are around.
The adaptation for culture starts really young. There really isn't much time where your kid isn't effected.
If we're going young young, (like infant) kids aren't malicious, but they're not exactly kind either. they do whatever they need to survive/satisfy their needs and sometimes, just what entertains them. Selfish but not necessarily bad or cruel. They live in their own little bubble that orbits around them. When they are cruel, it's usually because they aren't understanding consequences or their needs are being neglected.
Kids that are cruel are usually a sign of parents that allow them to be and unsatisfied needs making them act out.
This all smudges a lot when there is abuse involved.
*TL:DR:* Kids aren't inherently anything. They're usually a reflection of their parents/what their parents allow of them/how much their needs are being satisfied or how much their needs aren't being satisfied. Older kids are a different story tho
MGR is full of shock-value aversions of clichés or pop culture reference, most of which incidentally come from the mouth of Sundowner. "All we're saying is give war a chance!" "Kid are cruel, Jack, and I'm very in touch with my inner child." "Just like the good ol' days, after 9/11!" "Make America great again!" (the last one was a reference to REAGAN'S presidential campaign slogan, which Trump "borrowed"; the context is what makes it shocking, as though Reagan's early political career was marked by a very Armstrong-like attitude, when he ran for president he reinvented himself politically and became much more centrist and conservative, while Armstrong is an outright revolutionary)
My favourites, though, have to be the ones about memes. Monsoon's whole speech, but also when Armstrong says "Check the Internet lately?" and Raiden checks his news sites and says, in a hushed tone, "The memes..." They had to know what they were doing.
The issue with "pure of heart" in a nutshell: it ONLY measures a person by the goodness of their intentions.... But when put into practice, we all know what the road to hell is paved with.
Hitler was very pure... from a certain point of view.
@@georgethompson1460 Pure evil
@@thunderbird3304 Pure Extreme German Nationalist
In the end, actions speak louder than intentions.
I like the "brooding, edgy anti-hero" types when they act like decent, kind-hearted people, not just in the end, or after a change of heart, but all the time.
I also like the inversion: "anti-villains" who are well-spoken, and have good intentions, but who do truly evil acts with no remorse.
Reminds me of a Graham Green quote: "I would rather have blood on my hands than water like Pilate"
Thank goodness someone else sees that the "childlike innocence" trope is odd because kids CAN be pretty evil, even if they are totally unaware of it. I thought I was the only one.
I'd argue that it still makes sense because only children CAN be innocent. "Sins of the fathers" notwhitstanding a baby is born innocent and they do stay innocent for at least some time. No one get to adulthood whitout ever having done something at least a little bad.
As a child I agree people at my school have “game ended” themselves because of bullying
Kids are cruel. All people are by nature. They just lose touch with it as they get older. That's immoral! Warcrime this, code of conduct that, Bullshit!
-Sundowner
I think "child like innocence" is better described as "sheltered". Children in normal circumstances are sheltered from the horrors of the world so its an easy mistake to make, but being ignorant of the horrors of the world and being a hero saving people from the worst of humanity are mutually exclusive. If you have an innocent "sheltered" hero then they should have to face the dissonance between "everyone has some good in their hearts" and "drug dealers doing the unimaginable thats far worse than death".
Well, innocent doesn't always mean harmless.
Red: "It is interesting that people equate childhood with innocence as if children aren't capable of incredible malice and cruelty"
I think a good example of this is Hunter x Hunter's main character Gon, in which the creator purposely made all of his psychological traits as of the child that he is. This meaning that although he's innocent and kind, he is also very selfish, a huge hypocrite, completely apathetic of the people that he doesn't care about and surprisingly cruel to the people he holds animosity against.
Gon is an excellent pure of heart character for this reason. He's so naïve, like during the "quiz" before the Hunter exam proper when Kurapika realises it's a trick question, but Gon becomes stuck actually considering the morality of the matter. He's never had to consider making choices like that.
Which is why later on when he makes some quite terrible choices it makes sense. He's not really equipped to make these judgements, so he childishly assumes that whatever he wants to do must be the best choice
I came here to mention Gon from Hunter x Hunter, it's the best exploration case of this topic I know of, he is pure hearted in the sense "he doesn't judge" which means he instantly befriends the coolest assasin kid in class and along his journey ends up doing some really troublesome stuff, and it all feels absolutely natural, to the point something like that is foreshadowed like a hundred episodes earlier
The mangaka of HunterXHunter and Yu Yu Hakusho likes examining “pure of heart” characters. Sensui, who on paper was the perfect spirit detective, broke after seeing the evil of humanity. While the punk kid Yusuke was good enough to do the job, but gritty enough to roll with whatever life throws his way.
@@coltonwilliams4153 Yusuke is also pretty great for this example
When people talk about innocence, I think they mean babies and small children and not older children
I absolutely LOVE seeing this trope get played with, just because of all the loopholes it leaves open for abuse. One plot point I really liked was a bit in one of the Kingdom Hearts games: the protagonist is one of those Incorruptible Pure Pureness types but is notable for 1)very specifically NOT being the chosen one in the story; it was meant to be his rival, who actually ends up joining and being corrupted by the villains for a while before getting pulled back from the brink, and 2) his pureness actually makes him a perfect candidate as a meat puppet for the villain because unlike his formerly corrupted friend, he has no natural defenses or coping mechanisms for dealing with dark powers and emotions. The rival ends up being the one to pass the character test and become the "master" after saving the protagonist. Even better being the hero doesn't resent this at all and celebrates it because he knows how much his friend has gone through to get to this point. It was ridiculously heartwarming.
Y’know once you get past all the stupid stuff Kingdom Hearts does genuinely have good writing at times.
but it does also have that Terranort cutscene in the Keyblade graveyard where everyone except Riku, Goofy, and Donald is now an Idiot, before going into plot spaghetti again.
The rival sounds a lot like Darth Vader.
@@BlitzkriegBryce I mean for all we know, Darth Vader could be a Disney princess now.
@@nellewoodruff6337 Oh god you're right
@@chickennugget6684 Nomura subsists on a diet of plot spaghetti, and I'm willing to admit that his ideas - when he's got people keeping him organized and reined in - do land a lot of the time. But that was definitely not one of those times.
13:17 "Does that mean the hero should have killed the villain? Not necessarily! Maybe the prison just needed some better f*ing locks, how about that?" THANK YOU! Someone pointed that out. I've seen so many times in fiction - and in real life! - people getting judged for mercy, even though they couldn't have known how the future would turn out.
Mercy is great, but you do need a follow-up plan to deal with the villain.
Especially over-the-top super evil fictional villains, who are even more dangerous than most real life jerks.
@@Healermain15 but that shouldn’t be Batman’s problem, he is doing everything correct and gets blamed for Arkham having revolving doors for jail bars
I think the issue is more that the Joker has gotten out with such ease, so many times that Batman no longer has any reasonable expectation that the future WON'T turn out exactly the way it has the last dozen times. I don't think anyone's giving him shit for sparing the Joker the first couple times.
Kinda like blaming a bounty hunter for bringing in the same target over and over again. His job is the capture and bring the target to the authorities for judgement. It's the authorities responsibility to pass the verdict and enforce it. I think this is why the eventual dead or alive clause was added.
On the other hand if you lock someone in a prison with shitty locks then you don't get to claim innocence when they break out.
"Purity of heart is more often a metaphysical assessment than a practical one."
*Laughs in Kingdom Hearts*
2 words: Tetsuya Nomura
Kingdom Hearts would make Red so mad, and I would kill to watch her play it.
Kingdom Hearts is fever dream gobbledeguk bullshit.
@@hairglowingkyle4572 He loves CHAOS
@@arghyaneedsleep that's a weird way to say that he's a terrible storyteller with the maturity of a child and was given so much power that no one can reign him in
I want to argue a little about Disney's Cinderella being a "pure of heart character"- at least her being a version of 'pure of heart' that's too 'good' to feel anger. Cinderella (And by extension, many trope ridden princess stories), once you look past the magic, is a story about an abuse victim escaping her abuser and finding a better life. In real life, when an abuse victim expresses anger, they get punished- any form of lashing out may be a death sentence.
With this context in mind, how can Cinderella in her disney iteration be considered angerless if she isn't allowed to be angry? Victims of abuse often can't get out without a massive helping hand, they're systematically depowered and hurt by their abusers- so methods of survival without lashing out are slim. I'd argue that in Cinderella, even going to the ball is a form of lashing out and rebellion- one of the few things she can do against her abusers for even a moment of freedom.
She first attempts to see this freedom by playing by her abusers rules and when that fails and she is punished for playing by those rules. Up until that point, Cinderella is a lawful character, only fighting against the abuse submissively by maintaining hope and refusing to break against the abuse. It's only when the fairy godmother comes- granting her what she desires for the ball (And what ultimately end up being tools to aid her escape) does Cinderella become active and rebel against her mother, which leads to her domino of meeting the prince, losing her shoe, and getting free. (Not to mention all the things with her animal friends and how they and Cinderella worked together)
I find that Cinderella is not entirely a 'pure of heart' story but a 'test of will/determination" story as well- she succeeds in escaping her abuse and getting her man not entirely by being pure, but partially through rebelling against her stepmother, remaining resilient in her kindness, and not giving up on her desires.
Idk, maybe I'm just miffed that everyone treats Disney princess stories at face value rather than try and explore what goes unspoken or any potentials of the implications of these stories.
Interesting analysis.
My only quibble is that Cinderella is still a “pure of heart” case study, specifically because of how the story frames itself as part of Cinderella’s characterization is she’s beautiful BECAUSE she’s pure of heart (in contrast with the wicked stepmother and stepsisters as ugly because they’re wicked and cruel to Cinderella - I mean, in the direct to video sequels where one of the sisters gets reframed as likeable also gets a little prettier)
@@phastinemoon That's a fair point when taking the sequels into account! I was mostly focusing on the first movie as a solo experience when writing this- totally forgot about the sequels.
Though Anastasia does became prettier, i don't think it's by very much, all she really does is change outfits and even then I remember it's only because she got dolled up. I'll need to watch the second and third movies again but I remember the second and third movies addressing how Cinderella has a sort of pretty privilege over her sisters that Anastasia calls her out on.
I’d disagree that she isn’t allowed to feel anger. There are plenty of private moments for her to vent any anger she might feel towards her abusers. Instead, the only feelings she does convey are sadness, hope, or kindness to her friends. Even when she escapes and finds herself in a position of power over her abusers (post marriage to prince/sequels) she doesn’t really feel hatred toward them for what they did to her, only pity and love for her stepsisters and righteous indignation for what her stepmother did to the people she loves. Just as it’s frustrating when people take too many things at face value, it’s just as misleading and frustrating when people dig for deeper content when it isn’t there.
@@phastinemoon u don't think Cinderella is a pure heart, instead she CHOSE to remain kind even though she is an abusive environment. It's clear she is not so innocent to not recognize her situation sucks and her step family is bad, still she rejected to be lead by resentment, bitterness etc...
I feel Cellspex would agree with you.
My favorite part of this trope is when a character realizes that “There is no Pure of Heart”, seen in areas like Shazam/DC’s Captain Marvel, Gravity Falls, and The Owl House. Rather than the Pure of Heart being a real thing, it’s instead just an unhealthy ideal, and the best version of “Pure of Heart” is doing the right thing to do, like no killing and helping anyone in need.
I don't know. In Gravity Falls it seemed like an excuse for Mabel to not realize her flaws and just ignore ANOTHER call on attention on her behaviour.
Morality is relative- Mabel Pines
@@ianr.navahuber2195 It's not that deep, it's basically Alex Hirsch parodying an old movie he saw with a really asshole-ish Unicorn and taking the piss out of it.
With the Owl House example are you thinking of Episode 2? I didn't figure that was to do with morality or being Pure of Heart so much as it was just about being a Chosen One. "If we all waited around to be chosen, we'd die waiting."
@@ianr.navahuber2195 No? That episode does not address Mabel's flaws, it addresses the unhealthy ideal of striving to be good.
"Something to discuss over something alcoholic and fancy" ah yes, pure of heart and impure of liver.
Liver is pure if you replace all of the water in its cells with alcohol.
@@blarg2429 would that be a 1:1 ratio or a 1:0 ratio, either way, I second that philosophy
@@thomasholdwick6744 A 1:0 ratio is mathematically impossible, since you can't divide by zero. So it would be a 1:1 ratio of water removed and alcohol added. Bottoms up!
@@lucheng1945 You can divide by zero if you're drunk enough.
@@lucheng1945 Extract the liver and you have a 1:0 ratio.
The biggest lie I was told by media was that children being pure of heart was the norm, and not the exception.
(depending on which definition of "pure of heart" you go by, of course)
Eh: depends on where the cutoff for "children" is. I dare you to find me a two month old baby that is actively malicious while not being the literal anti-christ.
@@MikeMozzaro Not evil, but when I was nearly a year old, my mom tried to hand me off to my grandma. As my mom held me out to her, I pointed a tiny curled finger at her, and said in a deep (for a baby) growl, _"Nooot. Yooou."_ All while glaring daggers at her. Again, I was less than one year old. Before that, I had a tendency to forcefully shove people's hands off my mom's shoulders and glare at them.
I would also get angry if someone walked in while I was practicing walking, and my mom caught me being frustrated at failing to do things perfectly on my first try. I was born with anger and frustration baked into my soul.
People are weird, even at day 1. I'm sure there's one, at least one, human in history who was born evil. Like, Jeffrey Dahmer. Probably him.
@@bluelfsuma this reminds of the time I chanted evil sutras while left alone at 2 months old. Memories 😌.
@@bluelfsuma I think it's widely accepted that babies/toddlers are really *really* selfish and amoral, and that the only reason they love mom and dad is because they can get stuff from them. It's only through socialization that they can ever consider helping others as an option.
Well, you know... Romanticism, Age of Accountability... and stuff. "Pure of Heart" is watered by a disparate variety of deep-rooted cultural traditions.
"maybe the prison just needed some better f*cking locks, how about that?"
really underrated and an angle more people should consider
maybe a shit prison shouldnt be an excuse to just commit murder
Tell that to batman and the countless victims Joker has caused after having escaped prison for the 100th time
@@kalodawg8297 that would still be the bad prisons fault, nor necessarily the hero's
@@kalodawg8297 for no other reason than the comic writers randomly make it so. Arkham was repeatedly replaced by other facilities, yet the bad guys always conveniently wind up escaping from there.
I do get your point though, what good would prison do against comic book superheroes, the X-Men, Jedi or their evil counterparts. How can prison be safe enough against real life organizations? When they can gas cities if arrested?
Though if you go too far and end up with something actually inescapable, like the Baumann Parahuman Containment Centre, then it raises the debate of whether that would actually constitute a fate worse than death.
@@kalodawg8297 I've actually been thinking about this specific thing just the other day, and I've come to realize: "No, Bataman is not an asshole for letting Joker live". Joker shouldn't be the sole responsibility of one single person. It is Gotham's whole system that is not equiped to deal with Joker properly. You say : " Why doesn't Batman just kill the Joker, what an asshole, think of everyone who is dead because he didn't kill the Joker!" Ok, but why doesn't the City of Gotman give Joker the Electric chair? Why don't a fewl of the cops band togather and stage an accident, why doesn't Joker end up sharing cleaning duties in Arkham with someone who has a vandetta with him that would totally just stab him to death, while everyone pretends they didn't know that would be the outcome. The Problem isn't Batman, the problem is that we are supposed to believe that Gotham the city that is presented as one of the most corrupted Cities in the World, supposedly doesn't have crooked cops that would take it upon themselves to kill Joker. Because shit like that happens in real life all the time. That's how Jeffrey Dalhmer got killed in prison. Jeff Doucet a Pedophile and a kidnaper got shot by the father of his victim in broad daylight, in front of live cameras, all he got was 5 year probation and some community service. The point is, yes Batman could just break his neck and kill him, an in some stories and some versions he does, but at the same time that shouldn't be Batman's duty. Batman is not the law, he is not a representative of the system, he is not the will of the people, he is a traumatized rich dude in a bat costume redeeming his childhood trauma by acting as a vigilante. And the fact that he doesn't kill allows him to continue to operate as such, otherwise the police would be a lot more harder on him over the fact that he is esentially assuming authority to act as the law.
"magical vibe detector" now im imagining a gandalf-esque wizard wielding a staff like a baseball bat, vibe checking would-be-heroes by smacking them upside the head.
Oh, that's Ichiban Kasuga.
@@Duiker36 alright this made me laugh REALLY hard, so thank you for that.
Smack. Listen to the subject like a tuning fork. "Humph, that one sounds a little off". Smack. Listen. "This one has a much clearer ring to him".
I love it when "being pure of heart backfires" is pulled of well.
It's a good trope but it's been a long time since no saw it done well.
Hunter x Hunter? Aside from that or if not, what else?
I was thinking of Arcane act 1 as the most recent example.
Frieze fight
Like that one scene in supercrooks where Johnny bolt decides to be a superhero and it backfires tremendously
squeezing in the "hot of bod" joke with Krunk killed me
And "dumb of ass" 🤣
This reminds me of a CS Lewis quote. “Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.”
Wow. Good quote.
Wow... When was that quote written? because that's exactly what happened with witch trials. Which explains why Frollo is a great villain... Also Belos from The Owl House...
@@Tulipia5 1948
wow… i’m gonna have to sit down and ponder this for a while.
Pretty angsty.
Red: "It's sometimes good to have pure of heart characters struggle with this on screen and try to find a third option."
Me: Ending of AtLA in three, two, one...
Red: "And here's your bingo card freespace."
To be fair, the show deserves it praise for how good the writing was
@@samsmith4242 Definitely
@@samsmith4242 but it’s still not as great as Justice League Unlimited
@@uria3679 in terms of characters avatar has that beat, not so much in plot
Honestly kind of surprised she didn’t bring up that young justice episode where the villain can use the pure of heart only weapon because his heart is pure evil
What episode is this referring to, I would like to watch it?
@@haveagoodday2049 It's called Secrets, from way back in Season 1
@@haveagoodday2049 i hope you enjoy it.
After watching the himbo ranking stream, I feel compelled every time I hear “Pure of heart” to finish with “dumb of ass”
Same
Absolutely
Yup. Or indeed Indigo's catchphrase, "Dumb of heart, pure of ass"=P
@@ViveMeorLeti I was looking for this comment.
It troubles me that stories with scanners for "Pure of Heart" never take advantage of "Pure" not needing to be "Pure *Good"* and that "Pure *Evil"* can also pass the test; no questions asked.
“Harm is pure. The stories never said that the wielder of the sword needed to be pure good.”
that's a relatively new way of defining "pure." traditionally, for something to be pure means it's entirely composed of the single thing you want and nothing diluting that. thus a pure heart would be one with only virtue. By definition, evil is the things we don't want someone to be, so it can't be pure.
@@AlixL96 It is quite the paradox when what you want a heart to be composed entirely of, is only things that people /in general/ tend to not want.
@@Canido19 well, I phrased it as "want" but in general the idea of purity came with the idea that things SHOULD be a certain way. The idea of pure evil is more along the lines of imagining that evil is a substance that a heart could be made of, which is sort of a double entendre.
that reminded me of a character that briefly appears in young justice, i think its season one, where the sword he uses can only be wielded by someone whos pure, and when he steals the sword the guy he steals it from is like"you wont be able to wield that because you're not pure" and hes like "oh i am pure, just not pure good" and at that moment i was like woooo hes right. nothing actually worth talking much about but i wanted to mention it sksndhh
YJ Harm: "But it never said anything about needing to be good."
TFS Vegeta: "Oh, I am pure of heart. 100% pure BADASS!"
"yeah, more like pure, unadulterated ego"
@@arbiterprime2145 "I heard that triclopse!"
@@crazyscotsman9327
"hey vegeta...
nice shirt."
God I miss DBZA😞
@@crazyscotsman9327 "is that ok?"
11:52 And this is why, whenever someone says "Kirby is evil", I call them an idiot. Also, whenever any of Kirby's actions cause something bad to happen and he becomes aware of it, he FIXES IT!!
Kirby would probably fix it if it wasn't his fault to he simple creature but that why he good
Kirby's too dumb to be evil.
Kirby is just an adorable puffball that likes to do good things. He does defeat a bunch of universal eldritch beings but he's never evil. He's just really strong but not smart enough to realize it
Kirbo is a good christian boi!
and also kirby permanently gets rid of the problem instead of sealing it away
This reminds me of a story I read once as a kid.
Its basically about a prince who has an advisor who could see bad thoughts. The prince wants to marry, but not with someone with bad thoughts. After a very long time they finally find a princess without bad thoughts, but it is later revealed that that princess has no thoughts at all
wow "No thoughts, head empty" really saved the day
😂😂😂The twist
I am very curious of this story.
What, is she dead?
I think a very interesting “flawed” pure of heart character is Rose Quartz from SU. She faked her death thinking she could live on Earth with her friends and live a peaceful life together, not realizing that it would start a GIANT war, shattering and corrupting thousands of innocent gems and giving the handful of friends that she was able to save lifelong trauma. And thousands of years after that having a baby knowing she would never return, thinking her past could never possibly haunt him. She was never actively malicious, just INCREDIBLY naïve which is very frustrating
Given her upbringing, it's not a surprise.
She was naive, but in a very different way from most "innocent" characters you see in modern media. I really liked how much emphasis they placed on Rose Quartz's - PRIVILEGE, and on the way it colored all her actions. You go for so many seasons hearing about how kind and compassionate she was, how she was fascinated by Earth and its chaotic, short-lived, organisms...and then, as we get to see more and more of what she was actually like, it becomes clear that the reason she was so fascinated was very much because she COULD NOT RELATE, at all. She was a sheltered Princess who was never had to worry about being hurt, or killed, or controlled, though she did plenty of hurting and controlling other people herself. And she never told anyone about her true role in founding the Gem Empire, not even her closest friends. Once you know that, all that kindness and compassion can easily start to look a lot more like ignorance and condescension, the whims of the powerful which just happen to benefit those less fortunate than themselves. She was "pure of heart", but in a way that was extremely selfish, which I agree is really frustrating, and also interesting!
@@sabertoothkim Ohh I totally get where you’re coming from, although I don’t agree fully. Because Rose’s character development was quite literally shown backwards, it does seem like she’s always been like THAT, but shown in the backstories and snippets of her life (including the tapes) she genuinely seemed to have changed from ignorant, privileged princess to a loving, caring and protective person. Still naïve, but less… childish. Pretty sure that had to do with being on the Earth for so long, but meeting Greg was kinda like her final character development point since she learned a lot of stuff about truly being human from him.
@@sabertoothkim While Pink diamond was definitely privilege I think is weird to paint her as ignorant because from the moment she leaves homeworld her actions have consequences. Her family trying to escape her controlling family ends with a war that ends with almost everyone who ever followed her rendered insane, with any step off world risking a second war. And as someone who has had to lie you avoid certain conversations/truths because you have a pretty good understanding of the consequences and would rather not rock the boat. She was naive but that basically ended the moment she had to become a general because literally everything that happened was her fault its hard to be ignorant when your playing both sides.
The thing with Rose is that you never see her first-person perspective of things. You don't see her reaction to the Gem War, how she treated the surviving Gems after it, or even coming to the decision to giving up her life to have Steven. I loved this part of the series since it made viewers share the cast's frustration in how they never fully understood Rose. From how she interacted with Greg in the episode where he tried fusing with her, you do see the mask of confidence slip, so you can argue she hides some level of insecurity about her past and what she is.
My personal favourite subversion of this trope was from Gravity Falls, where the one judging the character’s goodness is revealed to be a scammer who uses the ‘pure of heart’ as a cover to not give up a resource that the character needs. The episode also ends with the character declaring that morality is relative, explicitly denying the trope by saying it’s impossible to be pure of heart.
Very true! It also acknowledges that one of the characters, i.e. Mable, isn't necessarily a pure good person but she's still a good person with some flaws
Aha! I was looking for this!
MONEY *breaking noise*
@@HappyBirddi An issue with that episode though was that it kinda ignored all the suss things she did and would do. Dipper had constant moral tests leading to recognisable character growth, while Mable stayed static and never got much push towards character growth.
@@georgethompson1460 Fair enough, though I think Mabel does have an arc even if it's not the same as Dipper. Hers is more focused on growing up, a big conflict of hers is towards the end. Plus I don't think she stays completely static as a character, there are differences from when the show starts to when it ends
Remember that time Monk Gyatso held off a very large portion of the invading comet enhanced Fire nation troops even though he was always portrayed as a kind, joking and generous individual? I do, and I'll always appreciate that grim but awesome detail
Yeah, that room was absolutely filled with Fire Nation dead.
Zaheer showed that air bending can be extremely lethal
I have said this before. I will say it again: Good is not _Nice,_ and Evil is not _Cruel._
@@anmolt3840051 humans need to breath to survive for even few minutes => people that take your air easily are extremely dangerous
God I wish we had seen that fight.
One of my favourite takes on the 'Pure of Heart' trope comes from Discworld, where you have the great contrast of Vimes and Carrot. Carrot is basically a fairy tale character, a pure-hearted, naive lost prince who returns to his rightful kingdom to bring law and justice to it... and promptly joins the night watch, rallies the alcoholic Vimes to become the leader he ought to, takes note of Vimes' firm anti-monarchy stance, and studiously avoids gaining any political power for the rest of the series. He's so pure of heart that he's the only person not tempted by the power of the gonne, but he has no qualms about killing the guy who tempted him with it. He's the innocent paragon whose clear moral righteousness means he feels no guilt about taking the gloves off. He's not stupid - a mistake multiple characters make - but he is incredibly straightforward.
Vimes, meanwhile, is a cynical alcoholic who has bad thoughts all the damn time, and NEVER gives into them, never takes a life, never lets himself off the leash. He knows exactly how bad he could be, and therefore keeps a vigilant eye on himself at all times, which allows him to resist eldritch corruption. This is something he has in common with Granny Weatherwax, who is very aware of what a wicked witch she could be if she let herself slip. Pratchett seemed pretty fond of this kind of character.
I loved that book.
Good choice of characters
"If you have to look along the shaft of an arrow from the wrong end, if a man has you at his mercy, then hope like hell that man is an evil man. Because the evil like power, power over people, and they want to see you in fear. They want you to know you are going to die. So they'll talk. They'll gloat. They'll watch you squirm. They'll put off the murder like another man will put off a good cigar. So hope like hell your captor is an evil man. A good man will kill you with hardly a word." The relevant quote from Men at Arms regarding Sir Pterry's take on the trope.
Hell, Vimes is so afraid that he'll cross the line, so afraid that he'll become the monster that he fears that when the primordial spirit of vengeance possesses him it gets stonewalled by Vimes' inner watchman, which he created not to keep the darkness out, but to keep it in. "Call me.... the Guarding Dark. Imagine how powerful I must be."
Chi
Just one quote that popped into my head when watching this:
"Always try to be nice but never fail to be kind." - The 12th doctor
it sounds neat and motivational but what does it mean? do nice and kind mean two separate things in this context? if so what is the difference? if not then it’s just a bit atupid
@@sylvy16 Nice is a behavior. Being nice is smiling and comforting. Niceness doesn't take into account the circumstances. The only way to be nice circumstantially is if you know when to *not* be nice. Being nice only takes into account the way you, or the person in question, is choosing to behave.
Being kind is more about doing what's best for someone according to their needs and the present situation. Sometimes, being kind means being nice. Maybe they need to be comforted and coddled right now. Maybe a nice pleasant pep talk or a loving heart to heart is what they've been missing.
Or sometimes, you have to be kind at the expense of niceness. If your child is about to be hit by a car, you don't softly tell them to move, you shout or push them because that's what's best in the situation. Maybe the person you're trying to help just doesn't respond to niceness. Or maybe they need pure honesty, which is frequently harsh. Kindness bends based on the needs of the people you're trying to be kind to, but being nice is more of just being generally pleasant regardless of the situation.
The doctor's quote means you should always try to be polite, but never at the expense of what's actually best for someone.
It's possible to be nice without being kind, such as by fixing someone's car while berating them for being so stupid as to let it break in the first place. It's also possible to be nice without being kind, such as by enabling someone.
The My Little Pony episode "It's Not Easy Being Breezies" did a good job of emphasizing this distinction. Fluttershy chose to host tiny fairy-like Breezies at her house, giving them plenty of food, beds and entertainment, but each minute they stayed meant the time they had to get home got shorter and shorter. Not to mention the Breezies were too small and delicate to survive for long outside of their home. It really showed that yes, sometimes you have to be firm with people sometimes if they're choosing to do something that harms them, or if you need to protect someone.
Morality is one of those things that's fascinating but also frustrating to think about 😅
It makes me think "why this thing is bad? Eventually you come in a loop because there are no answers.
I am thinking about dropping out of school to focus on my career as a star on RUclips. I already make a lot of money on RUclips. School bores me so much. I need more opinions and since I don't have any friends, I gotta ask you, je
And that's why I love stories centered around struggles with objective morality, because I am a chronic navel-gazer and it's nice to go "Hey, so it's not just me!"
@@AxxLAfriku As a stranger but someone with a few years on you, I'd strongly recommend the power of AND. Dropping out of school could have serious, long-term consequences depending on... life, many things. But you should also pursue RUclips if you're good at it and enjoy it, which it sounds like is the case. Trust me when I tell you, you have time for both. We all have exactly enough time for the things we truly believe are important.
Best of luck
We can't all be Desty Nova.
I like it when the "You must be pure of heart" weapon falls into the villains hands and the good guys go "HOW??" and the bad guy is just like "my heart is pure...PURE EEEEEEEEVIL muhahahahaha!"
I was going to post about that. Surprised she didn't mention that except halfway with the deluded Javert types
The Avatar example gets even better when you realize that for Ozai, rotting in prison, robbed of both his political power and fire bending is a fate worse than death. He would’ve much rather gone out fighting the avatar.
And just to rub salt in his wounds, the son he'd abused, scarred, and tossed aside as worthless was the one who took his place as the next Firelord (and was a very well liked one, if LoK was any indication).
The same thing goes for Harry Potter when he "spared" Peter Pettigrew's life just so he could leave him to the Dementors to suck out his soul, objectively a fate far worse than death.
What's even worse is that later on Pettigrew acts as if he ows Harry his life, is in his debt or something. And that's just so messed up.
Like NO, this does not prove that Harry is "pure of heart" or "the better man", just that Harry didn't want to get his hands dirty or feel any remorse.
I think Aang is a far better protagonist and example of "pure of heart" though
Yeah, I don't get it when people say that Aang should have killed Ozai. "The Firelord was killed by the Avatar" would just be seen by people as a heroic sacrifice. But "the Firelord got his bending taken away and is now rotting in prison while his son takes over the throne"? People would see Ozai as the failure he is.
But if Ozai actually thought that losing his bending and being imprisoned was a fate worse than death, wouldn't that mean that Aang didn't actually choose the morally correct choice?
@@LofferLogge I don't think Ozai even considered that possibility lol
I remember "Death Note" did a dark take on this. I remember the author said in an interview that it was because Light Yagami was so pure of heart that the power of the Death Note was able to corrupt him so completely.
if you have kindle unlimited i recommend Stuart Grosse. His protagonists are villains most of the time and the antagonists are good people. And still the so called "good guys" commit atrocities far greater than the "bad guys". Don't get me wrong there is a reason why in the description of most of his work is a trigger warning but it's really fascinating to read, especially the lewd dungeon series. in which several "good guys" fall from grace over time. still you should mind the trigger warning, cause there happens some really F*d up stuff in most of his books.
@@jonasscheftner8545 I’m surprised to see someone mention Grosse’s works. I think the single protagonist that can be classified as “good” is Kaori from Lich Returnee, and she left the world she was summoned to in a state where it was going to be destroyed by the monsters that she was raising to be released after she killed the demon lord and returned to Earth. They deserved it, of course, but still. Even when they’re sane, liches are ruthless.
@@coltonwilliams4153 and that's why i explicitly talked about the antagonists. and you've forgotten about the City of Champions series. but you are right, his protagonists are better suited for the Magnificent Bastard video
It's basically like a disease. Is it better to have never experienced disease or to have experienced it but overcome it. From a biological standpoint, the second one is better because you've obtained an immunity to it. So you are now immune to disease and can remain healthy even if exposed to it.
Likewise, the body that's never known disease is going to have virtually no defense if it does get infected which is like Light getting completely corrupted by the death note.
Ironically, if you've known evil but still chose good, you're functionally the purest type of heart because evil no longer appeals to you because you know the path your on is better (you chose it yourself after all) and are not tempted by the thought of the other path because you've already experienced it
@@jonasscheftner8545 I don’t think I’ve read City of Champions. He’s got a lot of stuff out, and I haven’t caught up with it all yet.
I love the Young Justice episode where a sword could only be unsheathed by one with pure heart... but it didn't matter if it was pure good or pure bad, just pure.
Does pure badass count like Vegeta said?
@@spritvio639... depends, the guy in the episode only said a pure heart so potentially.
I remember in Dark Souls that Artorias had no darkness in his heart, and so was more vulnerable to it when he entered it. The Chosen Undead was a being of darkness, and so could enter the darkness and defeat it.
Good Point in regards to the Trope, even tho "darkness" is a Bit of a complicated concept in Dark Souls and doesnt mean what it usually means
Dark Souls kinda tricks the player knowing they will equate darkness with evilness instictively. Darkness is equated with humanity in Dark Souls, the abyss being corrupted, malicious humanity. Artorias was a god and was driven mad by the Abyss because he wasn't human and couldn't understand. So at least in my opinion this is more about humanity being the only ones that can take care of their own problems.
@@royal9743 Learning that in DS2 scholar was actually my favorite moment from that game. Hearing Aldi’s roar “A LIE WILL REMAIN A LIE” never gets old to me.
@@royal9743 I've heard, and have not verified, that in the culture which produced Dark Souls, humanity is not considered a good thing the way it is in our culture. The basic idea seems to be that human is the opposite of divine, rather than being the opposite of monstrous. Then again, the divine beings in Dark Souls aren't pure good, so it's unlikely that the Dark Soul is pure evil, and there are also those dragons running around (well, not really anymore, but they're part of the worldbuilding and are neither light nor dark).
Yayyyyyy, another trope talk! How this warms my impure heart!
Always a highlight
This is my favorite series ^^
I _felt_ that, OP.
Tater Salads heart grew three times that day, he did not survive.
💜
My favorite “pure of heart” trope is that one Young Justice episode with Artemis and Zatanna. The villain wields magic that only works on those that are pure of heart. The villain killed his own sister because his love for her was holding him back from being pure of heart. The thing is that he’s not pure good, he’s pure evil and as far as the magic is concerned that counts too
Museum curator: "But the legend [of the Sword of Beowulf]- only the pure of heart should be able to summon that power!"
Harm: "The legend said the heart must be pure. It never said pure good."
I wanna see a pure of heart subversion where the rules for wielding a magical weapon are complete nonsense. The deity in charge of judging the main character just really likes the main character, and the “pure of heart” rules are just their excuse to avoid being accused of picking favorites.
So, Soul Eater Excalibur but played seriously?
I really like the Gravity Falls example of this. In the episode 'The Last Mabelcorn', the unicorn judges on 'pure of heart', but is ultimately revealed to be full of shit. 😂
Literally the first thought that comes to mind:
Other Heroes: But he's not pure of heart, why'd you pick him?
Deity: okay, but have you seen his ass? That's a heroic ass.
@@noukan42 Came here to say this!
that is like, basically my hero academia
Kinda surprised that the "pure of heart but pure evil" subversion never came up. One of my favorite worthiness test outcomes, and it has come up a few times in fiction.
I think the word "pure" has changed to mean 100% of something rather than something seen as morally and socially deemed positive. "Tarnished" or "corrupted" used to be the anti of pure. Now they just mean something that mixed with another.
My favorite variation of this trope is when pure of heart doesn't mean pure good, as pure evil also qualifies lol
Or pure badass/ego.
In DBZ Abridged, When Vegeta goes super saiyan he's questioned because the prophecy says you have to be 'pure of heart' to which he replies "well my heart _is_ pure, pure unadulterated badass" - which i find to be such a vegeta thing to say
Harm from Young Justice series is a perfect example.
@@Fafnd Still one of my favorite episodes in the entire show. Season 1 was so good you guys.
A heart of pure, unrelenting hatred that renders one incorruptible to outside forces - aka the motherfucking doom guy/doom slayer. I believe it is called the righteous avenger trope, a good person who has been completely consumed by hatred for what is evil in their setting/universe, they will never stop until they or it is destroyed.
This reminded me of the essay "Creating the Innocent Killer: Ender's Game, Intention, and Morality" by John Kessel where he talks about how the narrator can tell you someone is pure of heart, and insist that everything they do is justified, even when the character does some objectively cruel things...leading to the issue you mentioned of pure of heart villains.
Fun fact: when I first read Ender's Game as a kid in middle school, all of Orson Scott Card's attempts to make me believe his protagonist was good & heroic went COMPLETELY OVER MY HEAD. I happened to like anti-heroes a lot (still do), so at the time I just thought that the whole thing was meant to be a cautionary tale about a well-intentioned anti-hero who could rationalize any cruelty (including, at the climax, genocide) as long as he thought it was part of a "game." This worked especially well because I never read any of the sequels. Years later, when a friend finally explained the unfortunate truth to me, and pointed to both interviews with the author and summaries of the sequels as proof, it BLEW MY MIND.
@@sabertoothkim Aight, I really need to stop sleeping on that book.
My favorite example of the “pure of heart” trope is in “The Last Mabelcorn” in Gravity Falls. Basically, Mabel and the Gal squad need to go find unicorn hair to ward the Mystery Shack against Bill Cipher, but the unicorn says she will only give it to someone who’s pure of heart. This drives Mabel absolutely nuts, doing good deeds all day only for the unicorn to inevitably say it’s not enough. This thoroughly annoys Wendy who sees that this whole pure of heart thing is dumb and the unicorn has no right to judge who is and isn’t inherently a good person, and even if she was, good is subjective and compromising who you are for the sake of some stupid morality test is pointless.
Surprise, they find out that the pure of heart thing is just a scam and they wind up fighting the unicorn and getting the hair that way. Really uplifting spin on the concept and it’s one of my favorite episodes.
"Today I learned that morality is relative!" - Mabel Pines' life lesson of the episode.
I'm so glad someone finally pointed out that instead of killing villains we can lock em up better, no one ever seems to consider that possibility.
Also thank you for finally getting me to like Energybending
What did you have against energybending?
@@deirvindavis5093 a lot of people saw it as a cheap cop-out of the moral dilemma
@@maddie9602 I didn't see it that way, but good lord, Aang proved to be a cold-hearted bastard to take Ozai's greatest talent away. Necessary, but wow.
@@lysanamcmillan7972 Was it cold-hearted? If someone's greatest talent was writing, like absolutely phenomenal, better than Shakespeare and uh...whatever other great writer you can think of combined, but they used that talent to write propaganda that discriminated against people, you'd probably think banning them from doing that was fair. It is non-lethal and not even painful. Energybending is like that. A non-lethal and painful way to ban Ozai from using his talent to hurt others. There wouldn't be a prison system strong enough to contain him otherwise, so this is the safest and moral option.
I understand why Batman or Aang won't kill but I fail to see why the justice systems don't execute most of those villains. Ignoring wrongful convictions for the moment (since that is not a concern with repeat offenders like Joker) what is the difference between life sentence and execution? Especially when your dealing with criminally connected villains that will have allies bust the locks.
Or to pose the question another way. Why should society have hundreds of guards lock up the fire lord, when you can have a trial, execution, then a hundred more trades men that will increase the standard of living for everyone else?
Dragon Ball has a secondary example of a twist on the “pure of heart” thing, too: no one ever said “pure *what,*” exactly. The Super Saiyan is a product of pure rage, which is why Vegeta was able to unlock it. And Future Trunks and Future Gohan felt pure despair out of losing the most important people in their lives.
and goten and trunks was just pure lazyness
and then you got the universe 6 saiyans
@@Lazyguy143 they had a pure itchy back
Besides! My heart IS pure... Pure. Unadultered. Badass.
@@hughsmith7504 Psh. More like pure, unadulterated ego.
To quote everyone's favorite subversive fairy tale: "You're so nice. You're not good; you're not bad; you're just nice. I'm not good. I'm not nice. I'm just right."
I live under a rock, what fairy tale?
@@tonyhakston536 It's from the Witch in Into the Woods. (Broadway performance)
The line may also be in the movie version, but I don't care to see it because I LOVE the way they did the play.
@@tonyhakston536 Like mentioned above, its Into the Woods. The exact song is “Last Midnight”. I think Meryl Streep in the film version does a great job, if you search for it on RUclips just make sure you get the complete clip of the song.
Red: "...by never indulging in anger or lashing out or fighting back"
*Shows a clip of Cinderella where Cinderella is arguing back*
Yeah… Cinderella in the original got frustrated when jerks made her life harder and even broke down at her low point. She only held her tongue most of the time because she knew that talking back would get her punished.
Is there gonna be a himbo talk one of these days for “pure of heart, dumb of ass”?
I believe she's done himbos before, sadly we won't ve getting that title
@@yoda2495 She did the himbo tier list but nothing else on it
Character with the never tempted type pure of heart are often very dumb and naive to the point they never understand what corruption is. If they aren't dumb, they usually aren't human. Like Kikaider a robot didn't have evil programmed into him which caused him to held back against his enemies until the villain program evil into him-> now he can lie to trick the villain into believing that he switched side & most importantly it let him kill; ironically he finally become a complete human(with both good and evil within) something he's always dreamt of but is horrified with the result
@@sluttyMapleSyrup I saw the tier list and I have some objections, because many of them wheren't atractive in the first place.
@@nidohime6233 You don't have to personally find them attractive for them to be himbos, it just helps.
One of my favorite twists on this trope is in a Marvel short series "DoomWar"
Perennial bad guy Dr Doom encounters a magic door which only allows in the pure of heart- which all the heroes assume will stop him.
Except Doom does have a pure heart- in that he believes with all his heart that what he is doing is right, and his desires are 1000% pure.
Another wonderful video. Thanks Red.
When given to the right writers, Dr. Doom is an immensely fascinating character.
Gon from Hunter x Hunter is an extremely interesting example of this trope, he’s completely innocent and pure of heart, but he constantly does horrible stuff because he doesn’t think about it as bad
I was looking through the comments for so long trying to find someone bringing up Gon!
The story also sets up a really interesting subversion of that aspect of his character at the end of the chimera ant arc. Pitou is consistently shown to be an extremely dangerous and often malicious character with little sense of empathy, so we would expect Gon's victory to be a pure "good triumphs over evil" moment. Instead, even though Gon's final confrontation with Pitou is technically a victory, it doesn't really feel that way to the audience, since we witness Gon's surrender to his darker emotions and his fall from his position as the pure-of-heart character that he had been up to that point.
Also, Pitou shows that she has a good side when she protects Komugi, while Gon threatens to kill both of them in his anger, not caring about the innocent life that would be lost
I really enjoy it when a characters purity is tested against their own self, when they have some VERY evil parts of themself they supresse cause they know its wrong but that spark of goodness at the center of their self shines throught their morally dubious to evil shell.
First example of this for me was actually Yoda in Clone Wars season 6. In a Force vision he was confronted by his own Dark Side and it was such a wild turn because we all know and expect Yoda to he the perfect Jedi. The very fact that he HAS a potential for the Dark Side inside of him is unexpected to us. But it shows that it's a conscious effort to remain in the light, you don't just earn it by being cute and green.
I love how by now Red adds "check it off your bingo cards" every time she mentions Avatar😂
*Hides bingo marker behind back*
Unfortunately, for my OSP bingo card, I have "Red says something good about the MCU" right here in the middle square.
It's gonna be awhile...
The Good Place goes into some very interesting directions with this, ending up with the case that because humanity is so interconnected, there are NO actions without negative consequences for someone. It's astonishingly great for a show that deals so heavily with moral philosophy.
Define the "negative consequence" of a child giving their mother a hug.
Interrupting them as they try to get shit done, spreading germs.
@@BetaJackMaxis there ya go
@@BetaJackMaxis don't forget expending mental and physical capability of the maternal figure, if the kid need to be lifted as well, as well as being generally a selfish act.
@@minhkhangtran6948 then there's the whole thing about the butterfly effect, i.e. the idea that a seemingly innocuous action can indirectly determine the outcome of a seemingly unrelated, but much more important event
In the Mahabharata, Yudhishtira is offered a ride into heaven on Indra's chariot but he has to leave his dog behind. Yudhishtira refuses and this turns out to be the mystic vibe detector that proves that he is truly Pure of Heart. Because all doggos should go to heaven.
Funnily enough, this is what makes DC Comics' Red Hood such a cool character. Jason is pure hearted, despite what many in universe characters want to believe. During his training with Talia al Ghūl, Jason is taught a technique that can strip someone of their immortality, but it can only be performed by someone with a pure heart, which is why she's never gotten it to work. Later on, Jason has to fight Ra's al Ghūl and he uses the technique and it actually works. he defeats Ra's and more or less wins the day (the arc isn't quite over yet at that point). Even later than that he's confronted on a yacht by Essence with the Blood Blade, a magical sword that traps your soul within if it manages to draw blood. She straight up stabs Jason and nothing happens. She remarks that the only way that could be possible is if you were pure of heart. Jason disarms her, traps her in the sword and delivers the one-liner "I'm not pure good, or pure evil. I'm just practical as hell"
Jason is a character who has always been known to do things on the... shall we say murdery side, but these were really cool moments that outline Jason's actual character. Someone who does bad things (killing people), is fully aware of it, but is not motivated by any sort of negative drive. he's not a killer because he likes it. he kills people because that's what needs to happen for the bad thing to stop. and jason doesn't always kill people either, sometimes he sends a strong enough message that people will just give up.
Red Hood is my favorite comic book character, and this is a big reason why.
He's pure Practical
This is why I prefer the Hooded Hoodlum over the Caped Crusader.
That definitely fits New 52+ Red Hood (2011 to present) but before that he was just mostly hateful and rebellious. Even trying to murder other Robins so that he could be the only one to become Batman.
New 52 Jason is far more of a hero than he was. Although Jason having a sidekick before the New 52 was pretty cool.
Thor calling Mjolnir and discovering that despite being at rock bottom and full of traumas he is still Worthy is always one of my favorite moments involving the concept of "Pure" and "Worthy"
The way he says, "I'm still worthy..." still gives me chills.
"Morality is complicated" is perhaps the greatest understatement ever uttered on RUclips, and I stan it.
"Religion is complicated"
_Deus Vult, infidel!!!!!_
Granted, there's a lot of overlap in the two concepts.
There is nothing complicated about human nature
If you're one of the people who genuinely supports the actions of a messed-up antagonist and want to date them, then you lose the ability to say that.
@@kyleward7417 Only people to simple to understand human nature say that.
"Pure of heart is not the same as pure of action."
Imma steal that line for my paper.
I'm definitely onboard with the Pure of Heart test looking at the character's thought process instead of which button they chose to press. You could even have a funny moment where the guy who up til then has been presented as a cheerful, all-loving boy scout is soundly rejected because he follows the Goku archetype to a T and "purity of heart" includes understanding and owning the consequences of your actions
I prefer it when we instead get the moment when the pure of heart person realizes the consequences, done right it can be cathartic for the audience to see them realize their stupidity in not realizing the downsides to their actions, and then you can have them grow as characters into the more nuanced versions. Basically I like it best when you get a deconstruction and then a reconstruction of the trope. Another good case is when someone idealizing the pure of heart aspect gets screwed over by either their champion failing because they are too innocent to actually fix the problem, ie they lack the knowledge and understanding to do so, and an "impure" character fixes things or the champion has to grow up a bit, or when a pure of heart test is discredited by circumstances, like in Shazam- the whole mess in that film is because the wizard screwed this sort of test up with unrealistic standards.
I love the "it didn't say pure good" inverse version of this trope.
What you say makes no sense
Purity just means that something is homogeneous in substance
You can’t be pure healthy and thus you can’t be pure sick
But gold can be pure
And silver can be pure
But if you mix both neither is a contamination
The universe isn’t purely good
Or not good by default
And the word pure doesn’t hinge on an assessment of good
Or a default state of good
@@arcahmwinters70 I think it's Weird to presume that the natural state is purity when the trope is there to show how special a person is. of course there is an argument for the childlike but that is only one version and as the video say it's really hard to determine what it actually mean so maybe it's closer than you think. and many times I have seen this deployed it's by scanning of magical object maybe it care about semantics?
@@arcahmwinters70 - The idea of "pure goodness" is implied by the word pure.
No, it is not. It is merely an assumption. For example, in eastern philosophies "pure" means "freed from delusions". And categorical thinking in terms of "good" and "bad" is a delusion. One of the many.
My favourite take on this is in Red vs Blue, where only a 'true warrior' can unlock the weapon/key, someone who feels no doubt or hesitation or fear. The main cast complain about this, pointing out that *everybody* feels those emotions, and the only way to get someone who doesn't is to have someone who doesn't even think *at all*. Then they all pause, and slowly turn and look at Caboose.
The best part is, it works. Then the alien AI who judges these things expresses extreme doubt over whether it was meant to work like this, but technically Caboose meets the qualifications it was set to watch for, so it has to unlock the weapon/key for him.
"I see you, Crusader fanboys. Get a hobby." The auditory venom in the delivery here is just *chef's kiss,* perfect!
Simulateously splitting hairs and missing the point with this one, mate.
@@NikkiLayne welcome to the internet! that's what we do here in lieu of talking!
More like pretentious hypocrites Islam do more jihad than crusades
And yet crusaders are labeled bad ones
100% theres something sus about that crusader shit resurfacing suddenly. holy purity in the eyes of god, heavy cross symbolism and iconography, or idk, europeans purging semites for some greater purpose? like idk guys maybe you just have some potentially racist biases to reexamine
Tbh it's a great point of view if your only exposure or knowledge of the crusades and medieval history is from the shitshow that is kingdom of heaven, but the first crusades were a justified and long overdue response to years of Islamic extreme aggression in southern Spain
There's one thing I'm surprised you didn't bring up here, the fact that in reality it is extremely rare for us to have full knowledge of the consequences of our actions. Nearly everyone makes the decisions they think are for the best. Their priorities of what counts as the best can vary significantly; people can be selfish and think the best is what will benefit them the most, they can be self centered and think of what benefits their loved ones as the best, they can be utterly selfless and there's a lot of variety within that of every they can value, but people will almost always make significant decisions with the idea of what they think is best as their guide, that doesn't really change from person to person, what does change is that it is rare to have good information, and impossible to have perfect information on the consequences. Even if you're informed of potential consequences, they will rarely be accurate. If you're told that pushing a button will give someone a lethal electric shock, and it doesn't, does that make the decision to do so any more moral? If you're told that by pulling this lever you save ten people tied to the tracks, but kill two on the train when it derails, but unbeknownst to you there are actually a hundred people in the train, does that make the decision any worse? Judging from consequences isn't insignificant, but intent has to matter too, the eternal debate has been over how much each should be weighed, and I honestly believe there is no answer to that question.
That's because in fiction, characters are almost always [or at least very extremely commonly] written with either complete knowledge or no knowledge.
@@MrInternetHermit well plenty of stories have the characters only know half of the context and them actively trying to learn more
@@SergioBocanegra That's why I said either almost or extremely common instead of always. Those stories do exist, but they are definitely not the majority.
Moreso, nothing, even forces of nature might not have full knowledge on a decision's outcomes. In my opinion, morality discussions are all bottlenecked by the idea of "mistakes" or "accidents". A spontaneous, unintentional change in event that may not be predicted nor attributed to any responsible cause. Which completely invalidate the agency of whatever topic is discussed, even when precautions are a part of that discussion. The nature of mistakes dictates that the accidental event must be unintentional, by any agent.
The late seasons of "The Good Place" discuss goodness in the face of your argument in depth. It's really fascinating stuff.
A fun one that I like to use with this is "pure... period" where it's essentially your heart has no mixed feelings. Pure good, pure evil, pure neutrality, pure anger, those kinds of things.
For a literary example, the book version of Tinkerbell, because fairies in that book are so small they can only hold one feeling at a time.
Pure anger?
RIP AND TEAR
@@Christopher-eq1rn And now I'm picturing Tinkerbell doing that to tiny, tiny demons.
@@Sorain1 Well in the book, she was filled with anger, and tried tricking the lost boys into killing Wendy... Because jealousy. The Disney-version at least shows her being so consumed with anger in one scene that she burns a Tinkerbelle-shaped hole through some leafs.
"The character's actions might realistically matter more than their intentions."
"Even an act of kindness may have more severe repercussions than you know or can see. [...] And that is my lesson to you. Be careful with charity and kindness, lest you do more harm with open hands than with a clenched fist." - Kreia, KotOR 2
While Kreia is a great character and her philosophy is interesting, her motives are not benevolent and she is a pretty manipulative villain, so I would take her advice with a grain of salt. In most cases you cant predict the future to know if your act of kindness will lead to a negative outcome, and many more times I'd wager, it will lead to positive, even if its only letting that person feel cared about for a few minutes. If you do know the consequences, well maybe thats different. You don't need to be kind and helpful to people you know will use that to harm others. But in most cases you don't know, so its better to be a decent person because in the end of the day being kind and charitable is going to do more good more often than bad
@@michaelwells529
Being decent does not mean being kind nor charitable, and the latter two have caused far more problems than all the wars in the world throughout history (partly because they've allowed or caused half of those wars by enabling others to cause such things, be those users malicious or well-intentioned).
Being decent means knowing when to be kind & when to be harsh, when to be charitable & when to be miserly. And its often better to refrain from any involvement if you aren't sure what the right answer is.
If only KOTOR II had had a decent reward system for making "smarter" or "more advantageous for the Exile" decisions.
@@hayleybartek8643
That's the major issue in most games with any form of morality system (though KotOR is the worst I think, outside of maybe Fable 3). There's no reason to be evil - it has literally no benefit. You don't need the money, it doesn't get you more power or influence, and it overall just slows the game down (because the evil stuff often ends up harder to do). Why do more for less reward? That's the opposite of what 'evil' is supposed to get you!
“Many who live deserve death. Some who die deserve life. Can you give it to them, Frodo? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgement. Even the very wise cannot see all ends.”
To quote TFS:
"I thought you had to be pure of heart to be a super saiyan!"
"But my heart _is_ pure. Pure. Unadulterated. Badass."
"Morelikepureunadulteratedego."
13:21 And that brings up my issue with morality surrounding the trolley problem. Taking it literally, it wouldn't be your fault for killing someone, it would be the fault of the person who decided not to put in working emergency breaks!
Yeah the discussion around the trolley problem really struggles to frame it in a way that makes sense as an ethical question. The idea is meant to basically be “is it better to take action that causes harm or to allow greater harm through inaction”, but people always jump to like math problems or saying it isn’t your fault what happens and so on. The nuance of responsibility, and whether or not you can be held responsible for a situation outside of your control, usually seems to be forgotten
Reminds me of The Cold Equations, where despite the attempt to frame it as "The Universe is a cold, uncaring place", but the sheer number of failures in safety oversight undermined the issue.
@Ulises Leon Oops! That person you killed was the only one who knew the codes to deactivate the nuclear bomb that's about to blow up the city; and now millions of people are going to die, thanks to you! Any last words, math genius?
To be fair, that's not important in the trolley problem. Either way, someone will blame you for switching the leaver or not. And even then, wouldn't most people feel guilt no matter what because the solution is literally impossible
This trope can lead into the "break the cutie" trope if the character DOES find out about what happened as a result of their actions.
In RvB there is a ‘warrior test’ that exposes you to your greatest fear, the only one to Pass is Caboose, the local simpleton, who then gain the assistance of the test’s guardian. . . . who immediately wants to talk with the rest of the team so he can have an actual conversation
See it’s interesting that the “pure of heart” trope is usually accompanied by the pure of heart character not having struggles with what they’re supposed to do.
Even Jesus in the Bible spent a whole night begging God to not be killed
Hey, red! Trope talk suggestion for you; "The noodle incident" or "Noodle incidents" are a literary tool of a trope that gives more literary weight (funniness, scaryness, impact on the audience) to an event or noun than a description would, mostly by context and the reader's imagination.
Named because of a short series of Calvin and Hobbes comics wherein everyone at school gives the eternally frustrated 6-year-old grief about something he did in the past that is now known only as "The noodle incident." It is hinted at vaguely many times, but the writer ultimately leaves it up to your imagination; which is a strength because whatever the audience dreams up will be way more literarily impactful (in this case funny) than anything he could write down. And that's not even the only time that comic uses a noodle incident, see, there's this kids book calvin always wants read called "Hampster Hewwy and the Gooey Kablooey" and Now I'm ranting. Point is; by leaving the event, place, person or item, open to interpretation, it has more literary weight than the creator could have possibly written. The Legendary Super Saiyan may have looked a lot cooler in your head than just goku+blonde+power.
Another instance this trope is used is in an S.C.P. story wherein a certain slime MUST NEVER come into contact with a human corpse. Why? That's classified. A foundation researcher files the suggestion to test the slime on a human corpse because it's never listed what happens, only that it is a V E R Y bad idea, and the researcher is curious. He gets demoted and heavily scolded by an O-5, who states "Just don't." That one of the 0-5's, who have seen untold horrible horrible things, REALLY doesb't want this to happen, forces the reader to come up with something even the 0-5's fear, and is therefore even more terrifying than anything the writer could have written down.
A "Noodle Incident" is a rare trope that involves telling the audience that something exists or happened, but not telling them what it was, in order to give the plot point more narrative weight than a description would give it, partly because of the imaginations of the audience. It is a great trope that I think you should cover.
i haven't felt this humiliated since that jockstrap incident
@@elizabethmcwhorter3445 Exactly, the jockstrap incident in DBZA is one.
Also a good method on making torture scenes worse, we tend to get more disturbed by the outcome or small snippets rather than the whole ordeal.
That money was just resting in my account!
You misunderstood the trope. It doesn't give anything weight, it's just a trope to annoy the readers, and instantly remove all their immersion through a single sentence. It also doesn't make us think up something more funny or anything, as all we attribute it is "something bad/awesome happened, ok, now I just wish the author would stop referencing that as I just wasted half an hour googling for what I had missed/forgotten after I was told I had already read about it, when it hasn't happened. Let's just deal with this annoyance by classifying this entire conversation as non-canon.".
On the note of scp though, I wouldn't call it noodle trope, but yeah the classified stuff works there. On the other hand, it really does fit the presentation of the story, and it doesn't say that we were present and should remember this event, so it isn't breaking our immersion by its mere existence. Add to that how it only references each event once or twice, and it doesn't become too annoying either (we don't need to know what happened, just that something did). The fact that scp is often horror themed, also makes it work. As nebulous monsters are always better than explicit ones.
*_"Someone can have self-centered or malicious motives and still only do good things."_*
This is what I try to explain to people when I'm arguing why an Evil-aligned character can work in a Good D&D party. Even if someone is technically "Evil", that doesn't mean they want the town/nation/world to be destroyed. It doesn't mean that they can't get something out of helping people. Really, the difference between the purely Good character and everyone else could be seen to come down to how much they are weighing self-interest into their decisions. An "Evil" person does good deeds solely in order to reap the benefits from having done them, a normal person wants to do good things but must weigh the benefits against the cost, while the "Pure of Heart" character does them simply _because_ they are good things.
you're right, scenarios where nobody (from the party's side) has to lose for the party (or the party's side) to win fit naturally with any well thought evil pc.
This is not the reason why these are often banned though. You can have an evil character who does good, but a player bringing evil jackass to a table of goods is always a sign that some sort of fuckery is afoot. Best case scenario, this character will bicker ceaselessly with them. Worst case, thieving murder hobo. Selfishness is a gradient. When push comes to shove, evil character will put his benefit over wellbeing of a common man, good character will chose to sacrifice (and neutral would avoid actively hurting people over his goals yet will prioritise them over helping someone but thats not important). Having evil guy in a group of suicidally good people can be tricky. One just has to be a veteran of the group and if group thinks that you can handle being evil without being a buzz kill, its quite straightforward to run most of the time.
@@primetyrant2891 Asshole is a quality that comes from the player, not the alignment. Give that same player a Paladin, and they will play a jerkass Paladin.
@@KefkeWren Jerkass paladin who will not murder hobo without losing paladin levels. Thats why one needs to be a group veteran, so that players know that one isnt going to play everything like an asshole.
At least good aligned characters tend to mitigate the damage somewhat. And if the person cant stay within the bounds of good alignment (like, generally, not story points), then you know you cant trust them with evil.
The good character saves the village because there is a village to be saved, the evil character saves the village because there is a reward at the end and/or it will gain them favour that can be used to meet their own goals later
I love how this is always framed as such a simple trope with such childish ideals but if we take just a few minutes to dissect the implications of the trope it becomes this wonderful philosophical discussion.
Turns out, existence is complicated. If you have a simple concept or framework, you can bet the implications get tangled up fast! It takes a very clever, and often complicated, paradigm to result in a simple application. The less true that is, the more elegant your system, which is also a fun bit.
14:42 Ah yes, Light Yagami, the pure-hearted protagonist who just wanted to create a better world.
I think a pure of heart utilitarianist could be Hella interesting. "You can't do only good. So you do the best you can."
Kyubey from Madoka Magika.
@@Henry258654 Oh yeah, I was thinking of that one while I was writing.
I killed 1 million people to bring about my utopia, in the long run i'm the good guy... right?
@@georgethompson1460 Depends, did you honestly believe that those 1 million dying was the _only_ way? If you had an alternative, even if it wasn't a sure win, then no, you are not the good guy here.
@@Sorain1 Thank you for this! That's something people always seem to get wrong about consequentialist ethics, and as a consequentialist, it drives me up the wall. The results being more positive than negative doesn't make an action right if you had another way that had less negatives.
There's also the more rare "I didn't say pure what" trope where someone purely evil is also able to use the choosey magical artifact or pass the test because they are so entirely evil.
I can't remember what attack it was or what villain it was used on, but I swear I remember hearing something like that in Dragon Ball. Goku learning an extremely powerful attack that is so deadly that only someone who's pure of heart could survive it. And when Goku uses sid attack on the opponent, they survived because their heart was pure evil
Pure unadulterated badassery... insert DBZA joke
Like that one villain from young justice
Gilgamesh from Fate/Stay Night is like that. He is "pure of heart" because he is purely self centered.
I think stories should branch out tbh. Rather than good or evil, what about a moment when someone who's, you know, they're okay, is *so fucking angry* that they can do the magic thing? Or, which I don't think I've never seen, so scared, or so sad, or so tired? I'd love to see more stories that set something up as a Morality Test that turns out to not be that at all.
11:56
I love how the pure-hearted character keeps clicking the button and the other is like “dude you’re killing people”
I want a "never an evil thought" pure of heart test to be a tool team evil uses to find pupils for their evil mentorship.
The "unintended consequences" trope gets ruthlessly deconstructed in "The Good Place", where we find out no one has gotten into heaven in the last five hundred years because of the afterlife's antiquated and simplistic points system.
Oh, and thank you for referencing "Symbionic Titan", a brilliant series royally screwed by Cartoon Network and mostly forgotten.
I really enjoyed The Good Place, it is probably one of the best written TV shows out there and got me interested in reading philosophy.
Thank for mentioning the Good Place, I honestly much prefer the later seasons because of this exploration, and even the concept that hey, morality-based systems need an overhaul sometimes.
I really liked Symbionic Titan, it's too bad what happened to it :(
"PARALLELOGRAM!"
And the actual solution would actually be abolishing capitalism so tomatoes aren't evil.
There's one aspect of this trope, especially when it comes to the naïve variant, that I think causes a lot of problems for both writers and readers: being pure does not equal to being immune from corruption, just the absence of it. As Red mention, a lot of pure character tend to be mentally simple, in part because if they had to consider certain aspects of the world such as on going consequences or that bad things can just happen for no reason, they would likely break. It's like never being sick because you've never been exposed to germs, impressive but you are left supper vulnerable.
to me pure of heart is not some kind of purely innocent state, rather that the motives that drives your actions are sound and wholesome.
@@maxion5109 Exactly. I can't buy the "ignorant and naive" version of pure of heart, because they aren't really Good, just uninformed. I can believe in both the "I am tempted to do evil, but I choose not to" and the "I didn't even stop to think about the possibility of doing the evil thing because my brain immediately crossed it off the list of possible options while the brainstorming session was still going on" versions of the paragon, but the version that simply doesn't acknowledge that there even is such a thing as evil doesn't work for me. Mind you part of that is my view on children--I don't think of them as innocent; rather I think that they start out as purely selfish and have to learn and develop socialization, awareness that others have valid existences, and so on; that's why the "terrible twos" ARE terrible.
Sam in Mordor with the ring falls under the 'practically pure' category.
And also the hilarious category.
The Ring: *THIS WASTELAND COULD BE A GARDEN*
Sam: Too big. I could never tend a garden that big.
Ring: *???*
@@nathancarter8239 I know it probably wasn't Tolkien's intention, but I always found that scene kinda hilarious.
Ring: okay, what do we have to work with here? What can I tempt you with?
Sam: I don't know, man, I'm just a gardener
Ring: oooookkkaaayyy then. Gardening, gardening, what can I do with gardening? Uh, you could make Mordor the world's biggest garden?
Sam: no thanks, that seems like a lot to manage.
And that there is why hobbits make such good Ringbearers. How do you corrupt a person who doesn't have any great ambitions, who's happy as long as they have a warm bed and a full belly?
I would agree that during the events of the story, Sam was practically pure and not corrupted to evil, but it is explicit that if he had carried the Ring any longer than it would have taken him to find Frodo, he would eventually succumb to its influence. While it is narratively possible to think of Sam as a practically pure character, the symbolic intentions of the novel were that no being could resist temptation indefinitely while under its influence. It's incredibly important to the morality Tolkien intended that the act which destroyed the Ring (Gollum and Frodo wrestling for their Precious) was not one of Good, but of Evil, because Evil will always destroy itself. Sam is the closest Tolkien has to a Pure of Heart character, but not even he could let the Ring be destroyed.
@@CharlieQuartz I mean, you're not wrong, but I don't think anybody is disagreeing with you. Note that I just specified "Sam in Mordor with the Ring" and not "Sam in Lord of the Rings". Because yes, after-all, no one is pure enough to ultimately resist the temptation of raw power.
But for that isolated scene, the Ring attempted to corrupt Sam, and looked into his heart and (with a great deal of confusion I imagine) promised Sam the power to become the Greatest Gardener in the world, ruling over Mordor and turning it green.
which Sam mulls over for a moment before deciding that that was way too much Garden for him, and turns the offer down.
Even if Sam might have failed -eventually, or at the Cracks of Doom almost certainly, at that moment he was given his test of 'purity' and passed.
@@Xylos144 I suppose we're just approaching the idea from different perspectives. You can see Sam's momentary resistance to temptation as an instantaneous check of his purity, but I see the definition of "practically pure" as total. It's not that giving in to temptation after many resistances means the character is no longer Pure of Heart, it means they never were incorruptible. Therefore, the fact that Sam could be manipulated by the Ring at some point somehow means that even in the moment where he resists, he is not pure, merely strong. Edit: order wrong word
2:54 should be noted - that “pure of heart test” Goku goes through is immediately after he just got through mowing over an army base, blowing up buildings and very likely causing the deaths of hundreds of soldiers.
His ultimate end goal was to bring an innocent man back to life, but it’s interesting how the story qualifies “purity” in that context.
also he actually killed people himself by hand slamming their skulls against walls or driving his fists into their skulls with the force of a truck. DB's concept of pure good is really weird because Goku does so much villainous shit. He threatens allies into compliance(Oolong), he contemplates eating good guys(turtle), he eats his enemies, he takes joy in killing, and generally Goku as a kid was a nightmare. He didn't naturally spare his foes. He had to learn to do that because of how much he killed people.
@@saiyanfang1047 Goku is "pure of heart" basically because the author said so. Everything he does is so shitty from a moral point of view - remember when he saved Cell, so he kinda aided in dooming earth? And then died so he had to force his son to fight him?
A lot of manga authors call their protagonists "pure of heart" but it's just BS because their actions don't fit the description
Goku is "pure" because he is honest. It was said he has no mean thought in his head as a baby or Animal. He isn't sly or scheming and such.