Story Moral Value is about how far a story can go in making what a hero and villain legitimately admirable or heinous within the setting of the story and plot. As it would go, if a story goes too far with its innocence or exploitive nature, then the admirable/heroic and heinous/villainous value wouldn't mean for the actions of the character to do anything with. The example can go into these two moral ways:
- If the good guy has little to nothing bad happening in the story, he's in, then chances are he can't really do much beyond standard good because the story makes it too easy for him to be good, and not seriously challenged enough to stand out as a remarkable hero. (E.G. Barney the Dinosaur, Blues Clues, Teletubbies)
- The same can be said for villains where good is destined to fail to them in every way, meaning the villain is practically free of story consequences that pose a true threat to their motives and goals, and have no real good foundation for them to sabotage out of their dangerous or selfish intent. (E.G. August Underground)
How a story must operate within the positive and negative value challenging each other in some way, is how the value of both morals must be used properly in not being dominated by the other in a safe or chaotic imbalance, otherwise it would be impossible for the hero or villain to stand out without doing something that is challenging them to do, and while it is possible for an admirable or heinous standard to be stronger than the other, it cannot be dominating where the hero will never have any chance in foiling the villain's villainy or the villain is irrelevant in being a threat to the hero, therefore the balance can never be tipped to a full 180. Although these heroes and villains would be by literal definition purely good, they wouldn't be by the heroic and villainous criteria of a Pure Good, Near Pure Good, and Inconsistently Admirable Hero or Pure Evil, Near Pure Evil or Inconsistently Heinous Villain in the story.