Preventions involving their corrupting, redeeming qualities, sympathy background, moral agency, or player's choice.
The List
The corrupting and redeeming preventions
- Negative Prevention Free: The character has no corrupting preventions whatsoever.
- Minor Negative Prevention: The character has a couple or one minor corrupting factors
- Nasty Prevention: The character has lot of corrupting factors or a few severe ones.
- Atrocious Prevention: The character has committed vile acts.
- Questionable: The character is a neutral character with both negative and positive traits. Note that this is not for jerkish neutral characters with a couple of positive characteristics or nice neutral characters with minor negative traits.
- Noble Prevention: The character has been a great hero.
- Clean Prevention: The character has many redeeming qualities or a few severe ones.
- Minor Positive Prevention: The character has a couple or one minor redeeming qualities.
- Positive Prevention Free: The character has no redeeming qualities.
The sympathy preventions
None
Has no sympathy factor even fake tragic for that matter.
The character has a sort of tragedy or Freudian Excuse, but it doesn’t count as a genuine one for a few possible reasons.
The character’s actions may be disproportionate compared to their tragedy, they may commit crimes that can’t be explained by their Freudian Excuse or they may have turned to a life of crime over something petty and trivial like being denied a candy in their childhood.
Another possibility is that the character was already an evil individual even before experiencing any traumatic event.
These characters can be 1- since their tragedy is not genuine, as long as they don’t have redeeming qualities or other mitigating factors.
Examples of characters falling under Sadden are Syndrome from The Incredibles and King Arthur from Tales of Arcadia.
The character has a tragedy that truly affects them. Their sympathy is a genuine prevention from being a current 1 -, but not enough to disqualify them from being currently 2 -.
To count as Ruined the character’s tragedy needs to be minor or not be brought up many times. If a tragedy is a major part of them or they’re given constant sympathy they won’t fall under Ruined.
If the work makes clear that the character is an awful person despite their tragedy it could make easier for them to not be too tragic, although this doesn’t always minimize a tragedy, since there are cases where the tragedy is so awful that even with their work emphasizing their evilness they would still be too tragic.
Examples of characters falling under Ruined are Simon Laurent from Infinity Train and Charles F. Muntz from Up.
The character has suffered immense traumas that shaped and greatly affects them.
These characters may have tragedies so terrible that it can’t be downplayed by their actions or their tragedies may be given a big focus in their work. In some cases, the character may start of as Ruined but fall later under Living Hell after their tragedy gets played for too much sympathy.
This prevents a villain from having a current 2 - and 1 - ranking.
Examples of characters under Living Hell are Koba from The Planet of Apes remake film series and Azula from Avatar: the Last Airbender.
Moral Agency
Main article: Moral Agency
Player's Choice
Status unaffected
Characters whose moral ranking doesn't depend on player choices throughout the story.
Small extent
Characters whose moral ranking changes by small amounts depending on player choices throughout the story (i.e. a character who is Pure Good on one route but has a minor prevention on another route).
Drastic degree
Characters whose moral ranking changes massively depending on player choices throughout the story (i.e. a character who is unarguably heroic on one route but unarguably villainous on another route).