#morality in literature

[fontana-reads]

Reading the introduction of Kate Chopin's "The Awakening" by Marilynne Robinson, and, yeah....things really haven't changed since Robinson wrote this in the 80s

[nicolenag2008]

Tolstoy vs Dostoevsky: Which Russian Author Prevails?

If you had to choose between Tolstoy and Dostoevsky, which would it be? This is a question that has divided readers for centuries. For some, Tolstoy’s sweeping epics and keen insights into society’s inner workings reign supreme. For others, Dostoevsky’s psychological depth and exploration of the human soul have no equal. Choosing between them feels almost like choosing between two different…

[joncronshawauthor]

The Intertwined Themes of Revenge and Morality in "Guild of Assassins"

As a writer, one of my primary goals is to create stories that not only entertain but also challenge readers to consider deeper questions about the human experience. In my upcoming dark fantasy novel, “Guild of Assassins,” I’ve woven a tapestry of themes that explore the complexities of vengeance, morality, and personal identity. At its core, “Guild of Assassins” is a story about the consuming…

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Morally Grey Characters

Morally grey characters - operate beyond the dichotomy of good versus evil.

These characters will usually make the choice to pursue their own ambitions over those of the greater good or evil.

Because their goals are removed from these qualities, they could be inherently good or bad, so long as they serve the character's ultimate purposes.

However, that’s not to say that morally grey characters don’t aim to make the world better (or worse) in some way.

They may have a larger goal that they’re striving to achieve.

Example: Immortality for all or taking down a corrupt government.

But this doesn’t necessarily mean morally grey characters won’t see others suffer, regardless of intent.

They are often described as being reserved and unfeeling—a dramatic outward expression for characters whose inner selves are anything but, yet appropriate to exemplify the secrets they keep locked away.

The beauty of morally grey characters is that they don't fit into a mold like many other character tropes, which makes them instantly feel more real.

Tips to Writing Morally Grey Characters

Your morally grey characters should still feel like a living, breathing person and not just a caricature of one. In order to realistically portray them, there are 4 important things to consider:

1. What is your morally grey character's life's mission?

This needs to become their guiding belief, their driving force.

These characters are very goal-oriented.

More than anything else, this is why they make the choices that they do, for better or worse.

2. How far are they willing to go to achieve their goals?

They are unique in that they are capable of making hard decisions that most of us might otherwise struggle with, and they often seem to do so with ease.

What matters is achieving their goals—not necessarily how they go about doing so.

3. They need to still have a system of core values to abide by.

Even morally grey characters have an internally consistent scale of, well, morality (albeit on their own terms).

Give your character a code to live by that even they wouldn’t break.

4. What is their role in your story?

Don’t create morally grey characters just for the sake of it.

Whether their storyline is part of the main plot, or whether they have subplots that influence the overall story, there needs to be a point to it all regardless.

Morally Grey Character or Villain?

What may differentiate a morally grey character from a true villain are the following 3 things.

Recognition: Your morally grey character should recognize that their choices can cause harm, intentionally or otherwise.

Remorse: Following that recognition, and often as a result of it, they must understand and experience remorse.

Redemption: Finally, when even they feel things have gone too far, your morally grey character must seek redemption however that manifests itself in your story.

Source ⚜ Writing Notes & References

[fanfictiondramione]

You were born bluer than a butterfly Beautiful and so deprived of oxygen Colder than your father's eyes He never learned to sympathize with anyone

I don't blame you But I can't change you Don't hate you But we can't save you

You were born reaching for your mother's hands Victim of your father's plans to rule the world Too afraid to step outside Paranoid and petrified of what you've heard

(But they could say the same 'bout me)

[Blue by Billie Eilish]

[flowersforfrancis]

[zombie-bait]

Highly recommend the 1872 novella Carmilla to all the wlw iwtv fans out there, it's about a gothic lesbian vampire-human romance and it lowkey changed my life. Like I cannot explain to you how shockingly gay and poetic this story that came out two decades before Dracula is. I'm a little devastated it took me this long to read it tbh

(And if you're looking for a good retelling that embraces the gay further I recommend Carmilla and Laura by S.D. Simper. It's not as poetic but it focuses on internalized homophobia, religion and has a happier ending)

[can-of-w0rmz]

THOSE Frankenstein fans when both Victor and the Creature have positive and negative qualities, and the story is a tragedy where both characters involved are flawed and it’s not a morality battle between who’s the innocent one and who’s the Bad Guy™️ (and then get pissed at anyone likes one of those characters and labels them as problematic like we’re in the fucking 2020 Danganronpa fandom):

Just while we’re at it, Frankenstein is not a weak whiny bitch and the Creature doesn’t have no moral compass and didn’t emerge from the operating table murderous

Frankenstein IS vastly immature and incapable of communicating his emotions and considering the consequences of his actions bar a few instances and the Creature is basically an incel serial killer

Now shut the fuck up with the “who’s the victim, Victor or the Creature?” bullshit arguments and agree they’re both pathetic morally flawed babygirls and collectively up the fan content for our best girl who deserved so much better Elizabeth Lavenza my beloved wife

[fullcolorfright]

Guy who sucks

[thirdity]

What gives literature its preeminence is its heavy burden of “content,” both reportage and moral judgment. (This makes it possible for most English and American literary critics to use literary works mainly as texts, or even pretexts, for social and cultural diagnosis — rather than concentrating on the properties of, say, a given novel or a play, as an art work.) But the model arts of our time are actually those with much less content, and a much cooler mode of moral judgment — like music, films, dance, architecture, painting, sculpture. The practice of these arts — all of which draw profusely, naturally, and without embarrassment, upon science and technology — are the locus of the new sensibility.

Susan Sontag, "One Culture and the New Sensibility"

[theoutcastrogue]

"The knife is a weapon of the Other"

"The emerging martial art of Bartitsu, appearing in middle-class magazines during the Boer War, was the encapsulation of British civilian gallantry. Yet Bartitsu would have slid into obscurity had it not been for its curious appearance in the Sherlock Holmes canon. The final showdown of the ‘duel’ between Holmes and Moriarty is a wrestling match between two Victorian masterminds. When Holmes returns to London he tells Watson that he and Moriarty went to battle at the Reichenbach Falls unarmed. Holmes managed to ‘slip through’ Moriarty’s grip as he possessed ‘some knowledge’ of ‘baritsu, or the Japanese system of wrestling’, adding that the art had on occasion been useful to him.

Founded in the 1890s by an Anglo-Scottish engineer, Edward William Barton-Wright (1860–1951), Bartitsu was a synthesis of British boxing, French la savate (kickboxing) and Japanese jujitsu. Barton-Wright tapped into the need for a bourgeois form of self-defence, something which he could promote as being British and yet was also exotic and refined.

The principal aim of Bartitsu’s promoters was ‘to provide a means whereby the higher classes of society may protect themselves from the attacks of hooligans and their like all over the world’. These urban gangs were a new form of folk devil, descendants of the mid-Victorian-era garotter. While they were armed with clubs, knuckles, iron bars and leather belts, it is doubtful that they carried firearms. Nevertheless, the press did represent the hooligan as a threatening presence.

Perhaps the scares promoted the growth of a burgeoning culture of ‘British’ self-defence which avoided the aggressive and increasingly unmanly action of using a firearm against a ruffianly lower-class opponent equipped only with basic weapons.

Barton-Wright follows a literary tradition when he presents his martial art as a British form of self-defence. Pierce Egan’s well-known self-defence manual was supplemented with a word on the ‘Englishness’ of physical heroism, arguing that ‘Englishmen need no other weapons in personal contests than those which nature has so amply supplied them with’. In 1910 the former lightweight boxing champion Andrew J. Newton said in his manual Boxing that ‘the native of Southern Europe flies to his knife’, whereas the ‘Britisher […] is handy with his fists in an emergency’. Elsewhere it was maintained that the ‘Italian, Greek, Portuguese, or South American’ ‘give preference to the knife’ while the Englishman extols boxing. For Barton-Wright, British boxers ‘scorn taking advantages of another man when he is down’, while a foreigner might ‘use a chair, or a beer bottle, or a knife’ or, ‘when a weapon is available’, he might employ ‘underhanded means’. The views of these articles reappear in a later self-defence manual of 1914, where it is argued that Britons ‘live in a country where knife and revolver are not much in evidence’. This statement about the low number of firearms and edged weapons can be read as an attempt to extol British virtues and is not necessarily representative of reality. The knife is a weapon of the Other. Barton-Wright’s view that English practitioners of Bartitsu are principled men is reflected in the Sherlock Holmes canon, where Holmes never uses a knife, although his enemies, whether foreign or British, do so at times."

— Emelyne Godfrey, Masculinity, Crime and Self-Defence in Victorian Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2013) (very abridged)

[sundewhasaudhd]

Hi Tumblr :D 👋

My name is Sundew, I’m a MINOR (high school age) I’m acespec, pan, trigender, xenogender, ambiamorous, and use all pronouns

I’m an artist, actor, script writer, theatre kid, and AuDHD haver

Current hyperfixations: DSMP, Hatchetverse, The Skinjacker Trilogy reincarnation AU, my OC's

Special Interests: DSMP, musical theatre, casinos, Tumblr history, and some others that I can’t think of off the top of my head

Current fandoms: DSMP, musical theatre (especially Hatchetverse), Trolls, Frankenstein or the Modern Prometheus, Amphibia, TOH, DDLC, The Skinjacker Trilogy, ROTTMNT, Ramshackle (kind of), QSMP (kind of), Gravity Falls, Steven Universe Nimona, Mitchel’s vs the Machines Chikn Nugget (that counts as a fandom right?), Bluey, SheRa, Ducktales, Adventure Time, Vocaloid, Tangled the Series, DHMIS, Descendants, Moral Orel, and probably more tbh

I'm currently working on 5 different DSMP AU's/ animated fanfics, and one day I would like to make 'DSMP the Animated Series' and my high fantasy OC's cartoon, both of which would be indie animated and available on YouTube (but we'll cross those bridges when we get there)

This blog does not support cc!Wilbur or his actions, cc!Wilbur supporters DNI

Speaking of DNI, here’s my DNI list: queerphobes in ANY way (and that includes hating on xenogender people and people who use neopronouns), racists, sexist/misogynists, zionists, antisemitic/neo-nazis, islamophobes, anti therian and anti furry people, cc!Wilbur Soot/William Gold supporters, cc!Dream Team supporters, Robert Manion supporters

I post very sporadically because of school (and by post I mean post creative works, like fanart and scripts), but when I do post, it’ll mainly be DSMP stuff (especially my own AU’s), but I will also post stuff for other fandoms, especially Hatchetverse

I’m absolutely obsessed with c!TNT duo and with take pretty much any opportunity I can get to draw/talk about them. Same with Wilbur Cross and the Lords in Black (and Webby)

Like I said earlier, I don’t not support cc!Wilbur in any way shape or form. That being said I really really super like c!Wilbur (o!Wilbur and q!Wilbur are neat too) and most of my AU’s have him as a big role

Feel free to ask me about my DSMP headcanons (or headcanons for any other fandom listed above), just know I might not always answer immediately because of school and shit like that

Also, I have a few side blogs:

@csundewsaysfuckitwebawl my DSMP OC role play blog

@yousummonusonceyousummonustwice my Lords in Black and Queen in White ask blog

@just-a-lil-theatre-guy my Hatchetverse OC

Double also, say hello to my Tumblr siblings:

@rxccoonboo @homosexual-tommyinnit-deactivat (rip his Tumblr account 😔😔😔)/ @cotableats (which is his friends account that they sometimes let him use) @a-sociopath-do-your-research @rae-unbeloved @loneycorner

Triple also, finally updated my pronouns

Anyway, I hope you all have a nice day and enjoy my Tumblr :D

[thepersonalwords]

Morality without kindness is the most dangerous weapon.

Debasish Mridha

[anneangel]

Javert is as tragic as the title of the book suggests, a miserable.

He may even be the main antagonist, in the sense of opposing the centric character (Jean Valjean), but he is certainly not a villain.

He is obsessed with fulfilling his duty and in a tireless pursuit of justice. He does not believe in Jean Valjean's redemption and his obsession with persecuting him is related to his rigid worldview based on his personal experience and inflexible principles, related to his past, where he was born into a dysfunctional family. He firmly believes in the idea that a bad person is bad forever. He sees his role as Inspector as a fight against crime and injustice.

He doesn't pursue Jean Valjean because he's a villain, he pursues him because he believes Jean is a criminal, who violated his parole, and therefore deserves to be sent back to the prison system.

He was just a man who believed he was doing the right thing, following the law. He believed that people chose to be miserable and that they got what they deserved for choosing to be "vagabonds." He looked at himself and took pleasure in thinking; I came from a dysfunctional home and I still do what is right, so if others don't do it, it's because they don't want to and will never change.

But then he finds himself at a crossroads after Jean Valjean spares his life: "the law says I must arrest this man. But my conscience says I owe him a life debt."

For the first time he contemplates that "law" and "justice" do not always go together. It would be "legal under the law" to arrest Jean, but it would not be "morally just". It's a conflict between legality versus morality.

So poor Javert still faces the deconstruction of his beliefs: “he thought that good and evil were very different things and that an ex-convict could only be bad while a police officer could only be good”, when he realizes that reality not obeys that extreme and that a prisoner can be good (or that it is possible to change and become good), just as a law enforcement officer can become corrupt.

Faced with so many things that he firmly believed falling apart, showing erroneous beliefs of live, he chooses to kill himself rather than live with such unrest. So, basically he commits suicide because he was saved by Jean Valjean, and he couldn't stand that fact.

It really must have been scary to discover that he has spent his life following beliefs that suddenly deteriorate in front of him. It's sad that in the face of this "scare" he chose to kill himself.

The character promotes a very pertinent reflection, and leads us to reconsider the way we look at people who are typically stigmatized by society. Victor Hugo is never trying to say that bad people are good deep down, nothing like that; After all, there is the character Mr. Thénardier to prove this. What he is saying is that we cannot make it an absolute rule that all people who commit crimes were and will be bad forever. Because by establishing that they are, a stigma is created that can be unfair for those who, like Jean, tried to change their lives.

It is also necessary to remember that at no point does Hugo say that Jean Valjen was right in stealing the bread, but rather that the penalty imposed on him was disproportionate to the crime committed. In the end, we read that Javert kills himself because he cannot bear the idea that Jean, an ex-prisoner, can go from darkness to light. While he, by following the law, committed an injustice.

He thinks that Jean, even though he was a former prisoner, managed to go to a place above him morally, while he, who was such an inflexible agent of the law, saw himself as someone tough who didn't understand the factor of redemption as an element capable of rescue the soul of someone who once made a mistake.

Honestly, I like the character and understand the powerful reflection he brings to us. But at the same time, I'm sad that he killed himself. He could have chosen other paths, but ultimately he was so desolate that he saw no other options.

[pikahlua]

Dying is the best option sometimes bc that way ppl dont need to see shit abt how disliking bnhas ending is fascistic logic holy shit

I genuinely can't tell if you're trying to tell me to kill myself or if there are some words missing here, but if you actually read what I wrote and got out of it, "Disliking MHA is fascist," holy shit get your eyes checked and touch grass. I'm saying "Disliking MHA is okay, trying to justify your dislike by turning death in literature into moral commentary on who 'deserves' to live and die is dangerous puritanical black-and-white thinking that makes one susceptible to ideologies that promote book-banning and thought-policing." Stay mad.

[legendstrauma]

Just a remix of that one pride and prejudice meme.