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I made it clear I wasn't doing a faggoty contest theme."Good guys" is most definitely gay as shit, as good guys tend to be boring and uncomplicated. The morals of doing what's "right" and "just" are so over-played it's a waste of a protagonist. Could I write a good story with a morally upright and virtuous protagonist? Sure. But writing something I'd know would be sub-par to something else would be a waste of my time.

So all the typical and already predicted excuses then? To the surprise of absolutely no one.

Even weaker than your usual though.

Any competently written character is interesting and complicated, and 'good' is a choice, and usually the more difficult and less efficient one. There is countless room for complications and complexities for any writer worth their salt to explore with ANY character, if they're not stuck on the idea of generically evil characters being cool and edgy and those being the only personality traits that matter.

Coming from the girl who thinks utopias are suitable settings from stories, this means little to me. Good characters simply aren't as interesting as more ammoral or immoral ones. To paraphrase, good characters are good in the same way, but each bad character is bad in their own way. Characters being generically evil aren't really something I've tried for. I've attempted to move away from them, at least somewhat trying to make evil characters sympathetic. The military dictator is simply doing what's best for his people, even if that's anti-democracy. The evil necromancer is just trying to be utilitarian and might be a dictator, but that's because they think they know better than everyone else, which they seriously might. The supervillain wants revenge for all the damage caused by superheroes that's not addressed when they're given their medal.

That's what I enjoy doing and enjoy writing. Black vs white is such a boring narrative, and especially in a field like this, it's incredibly restrictive. "Do what's right this way, or do it that way, or fail at doing it" is hardly an interesting narrative. No, things are interesting when the moral boundaries are played with and toyed with, when the villain isn't evil and the hero isn't good. 

It's like I said, you've got very narrow and inherently limiting ideas about what can or can't be an 'interesting' story. You're a decent and prolific writer, but creatively an exceptionally lazy one who's never been willing to challenge yourself.

Your backpedaling and bitch-like excuses really just confirmed what I've been noticing for awhile. 'But but but black and white morality is boring! And it's not possible to have a decent and likeable protagonist without making a story 100% about black and white morality! I, the writer, creator of infinite worlds (all strangely similar), don't feel like thinking around this entirely self invented and self imposed restriction, so I'll just settle my ass down harder into this groove and not even try.'

Luckily, the comfortable rut you've carved is a trendy one with a certain age range, but eventually your audience will mature and desire more subtle and varied experiences.

Will you?

No, I simply understand what works and doesn't work. I could challenge myself and write a story about a goody two shoes dickwad, and I could make an interesting piece in every detail but that, but there's the question of why I'd limit myself by forcing myself to pick an inferior protagonist to what I could write. It's fairly obvious black vs white morality IS boring, as it kills all possibility of nuance. Protagonists who are good vs some evil villain are always just boring in contrast to more dubious figures. I always find that I route for the villain in such tales, because at least they tend to have some character, something to explain why they are, rather than the boring "Does what's right" thing. I couldn't give less of a shit what happened Batman to make him do the moral thing, I care about the intricacies of the Joker and what makes him tick. Sure, I could easily do black vs white morality, but it's just worse and killing what I find an essential part of writing.

Black and white don't shift or vary. They're sure as shit not subtle, quite the opposite in fact. No, it seems I've already been through the simple morality of good vs evil and moved onto how characters can mean different things and be good and evil to different people rather than the almost childish game of "Goodies and baddies" you'd like me to play. I've found it useful on a more primal level in horror stories where "Black" is simply the monster and "White" an innocent person trying to survive, but for actual characters, I see no real need. It seems silly you seem to think that black and white, colors that aren't exactly subtle in their contrast or varying, are such, and which all but the most immature or mind-numbing pieces of fiction have moved past.

Guys, what is the name for the trolling/bad argument technique where one person makes a ridiculous or false statement and then tries to control the rest of the conversation by locking it in as the main point (and flatly ignores it when they're corrected/redirected)?

I see strawmanning at work here, easy enough since that's Steve's bog standard trolling method, but I know there's terminology for the rest and I'm blanking out on what it's called.

Anyway Steve I'm not going to sit here and argue about 'black and white morality' since that's not the topic here and never was. It's simply the hill you've chosen to die on, about two counties over from the actual conflict.

Trying to reduce an argument by blowing it out of proportion is called reductio ad absurdem (my Latin might be a bit off, but who gives a shit about Latin anyway?) or Strawman.
EDIT: Oh, I just saw you put that down anyway! I'm not sure about the controlling thing then.
EDITx2: *Reductio ad absurdum

Reading up on that it doesn't seem quite the same as strawmanning, but I find a more thorough definition for the latter.

Rereading his post, strawmanning basically is all that's at work there. A dull method for a dull troll.

What's it called when you fallaciously think an insult is a refutation of an argument again?

It's called being completely bored with the same utterly predictable methods you trot out for every argument I've ever seen you make. You pat yourself on the back for being such a masterful debater when really it's as uncreative and lazy as most of your other writing.

You disgust me, Steve.

No, that's not it. There's a term for it, Latin, I think.

I hope thinking of it is a comfort to you later when you realize you've passed up what's likely your one and only chance to get Berka's trophy, and thus, eventually one of your own.

No matter how many feeble excuses you make about the prompt (which will be easily disproven by other entrants running with it and creating good and interesting stories) all your complaints are meaningless when you were too pathetically lazy even to try.

Congrats on being the guy who whined that everything looked too hard and then went home without trying, I guess? Unfortunately that's not worthy of a trophy.

I never said this prompt couldn't lead to good and interesting stories. I said it led to inferior stories. There's a difference there. Anyhow, its not too hard, but its like if the prompt asked for a story with a boring protagonist. Could that still be a good story? Sure. But what's the point of purposefully writing something worse? I'm sure I'll snag BZ's trophy at his next contest, whatever that might be. If not, no biggie.

lol, so you're saying good people are boring?

If there's no nuance and question of who's in the right, yeah, you've a fucked up protagonist, antagonist or both. So yeah, I suppose, abso-fucking-lutely.

There's always a question of who's in the right. Because there will always be someone who disagrees with your methods, your morality, your choices. Even the best people have people who hates them, who disagrees with them.

Yeah sure, everything's relative, but when people say something's good, they tend to be judging by the generalized societal view of that thing. BZ's asked for good, thus I'll presume unless told otherwise he means such. I can argue that fucking a kid is good for whatever reason, but that's hardly going to be allowed for the protagonist. It's write someone whose good in these societal standards, not "Might be good, depending on your general viewpoint".

And yet the masses are always changing their minds. What might be seemingly 'good' today, might not be good tomorrow. So if 'good' is always changing, is 'good' always 'good'? Is 'good' good as long as most people think it's good? Does it lose its value when people change their minds?

Take slavery for example. Back in the days, it was perfectly acceptable.
Now a days, not so much.

So if people are constantly changing their definitions on whats good or bad...always agreeing and disagreeing with each other...if it's constantly changing...evolving...then really, the only one who can possibly decide for them self, whether somethings good or bad, is the person them self.

If you believe that you're doing the right thing, even when most people disagrees with you, then it's the right thing to do, even if it's wrong. Of course, later you might change your mind, and decided that it wasn't the right to do after all. But that's the thing with people. We all change our minds, sooner or latter.

Yeah yeah, I've heard the moral relativist argument a thousand times, I've heard you, I don't give a shit. Yes, what the masses say is utterly relativistic and changes. So what? You're not charting new territory here, the earliest thinkers knew this. When we say "Good", we tend to refer to current social views on good, which we both know. Yes, it changes, but so what? That's what we tend to mean when we say that, and I'm almost sure that's what BZ's referring to, or he hasn't made a contest with any limiting factors as anything could be a good protagonist to someone. This isn't the first class of a philosophy course, it's the way we use language.

So it's quite pointless to give definition to somethings that always changes.

Besides. No one's outright good or evil.
Everyone starts out innocent and carefree. It's their choices, or lack off, that drives them into morality or there lack off. So as long as the main character gets to make the best choices that he can possibly make under the circumstances he is given, he has the potential to be 'good'.

It's the players who picks whether the main character picks those choices or not. So really, the limits aren't really that limiting at all.

No,it isn't. Between now and two months times, the standard of what's good on a general societal view isn't going to change so rapidly that a character has gone from good to not so. If Will11 was caught murdering and fucking puppies, we would all say on the forums he's evil. We wouldn't say "In my personal opinion he's evil" because that's not the way we use that language, just as BZ didn't specify on a generalized cultural level. 

The story's not about a character who has the potential to be good, its about a good character. If you're able to play a necrophilliac dog fucker, it's not a good character, even if you could've played a good one. That's not what the contest is.

Well, really, it would depends on Will11's reasons for his actions.

For all we know, he could just be doing it to save a bunch of people's life. Or he could just be doing it because it gets him off. But enough about Will11.

And besides...a necrophilliac dog fucker as a main character? Really? That's the kind of main character you want to write with?

Sexual pleasure. Then, we'd say he's evil. We wouldn't specify in our opinion, because that's not how we use language.

It was an example, dipshit, not something I actually want to write with. Look at things I've actually written to see the characters I like to write with. You're not writing about a character who can be good, you're writing about a character who is good.

Well, you're saying that writing good characters are boring, implying that you would rather write stories with evil characters. And, since a necrophiliac dog fucker is unacceptable on a "generalized cultural level", making them evil characters AND with you managing to use it as a counter example as well, well you put 2 and 2 together, and you get "Steve24833 likes writing stories with main characters such as necrophiliac dog fuckers". Really, you shouldn't be surprised.

Not all evil characters are interesting. I enjoy meat, and babies are made of meat. That doesn't make me a baby eater.

Oh. So you're saying that as long as the evil main character is interesting, it's irrelevant whether they're "necrophiliac dog fuckers" or not? Or are you saying that "necrophiliac dog fuckers" are uninteresting?

I mean, I don't know much about necrophilliac dog-fucking. I wouldn't be entirely opposed to writing about it if I thought of a concept that was interesting enough for it, but as of now it doesn't seem interesting.

Oh, so you don't know know much about it, but just some, right?

Are you sure you're not just equating good to boring, and evil to interesting? That seems to be your entire case of arguments. Good people are boring, blah blah blah, good main characters even more so. Evil people are interesting, blah blah blah, evil main characters even more so.

I know it involves sex with dead dogs.

No, as if you paid attention, I said not all evil characters are interesting. Pay attention.

Well if you paid attention to what you said earlier, you would've noticed that you also said that good main characters are boring. Implying that evil main characters are interesting. I think it matters little whether you used the word "all" or not here. We all know what you mean, and we all know that you prefer writing evil main characters to good ones. Why? Because "good characters are boring, and evil characters are interesting". You have literally said it yourself. Multiple times.

No, not at all. The statement "All cops who shoot kids are bad" doesn't imply that all cops who don't shoot kids are good. 

No, but cops who don't shoot kids are generally more preferable to cops who do shoot kids.

In your case, evil main characters who are evil, are generally more preferable to you, than good main characters who are good. Why? Because, "good people are boring, and evil people less so, which makes evil people more interesting when compared to good people".

Not always. Cops who rape kids to death aren't preferable to ones who shoot them.

Not always, which is something you don't seem to be grasping. Sometimes they can be even more bland. Sure, generally perhaps, which I've said. So what?

And why are we comparing cops who rapes kids to death, to cops who shoot them, again? Your example literally has nothing to do with what you were saying earlier.

We were comparing evil to good, yes? Not evil to eviler.

In your case, you were literally equating good to boring, and evil to interesting, or at least more interesting than good, in most cases. Do you deny that?

The statement "Good guys are boring" doesn't mean that all bad guys are less boring. Some evil dudes are more boring. We're not comparing cops who shoot kids to those who rape them, we're comparing cops who shoot kids to those who don't, the latter group which includes cops who rape kids to death.

It's an analogy, dipshit. Preferable in regards to cops in analogous to interesting in regards to characters.

Again no, you're not paying attention. I said evil doesn't meant interesting. You keep trying to argue that point, as if you're going to tell me what I believe. If you're talking in most cases, I don't know. Personally, in cases of good fiction, the villain is always more interesting, while in bad, the good guy tends to be more interesting in comparison because people make shitty excuses for villains.

Sure, but there are always exceptions in life. A few rotten apples in a tree, doesn't make the whole tree bad. What matters here is the majority. Sure, all cops who don't shoot kids doesn't have to be good. But the majority of them are definitely better than the cops who do shoot kids. Do you deny that? Obviously it's an analogy. In your case though, your analogy is definitely working against your arguments. I'm not telling you what you believe in. I'm telling you what you're arguing for. And your arguing for evil characters being generally more interesting than good ones. But if it makes you feel any better, you can go ahead and keep denying it.

The ratio of cops raping kids to cops that don't rape kids isn't the bit that's analogous to evil characters being interesting, dumbass. You can continue to misunderstand, but as at this point its taking away from my writing and you've become boring, I see no need to continue with it.

Somehow, I don't think BerkaZerka was trying to make a statement about metaethics or quantary ethics. A story about a hero is probably supposed to be something like what you'd see in a Marvel film or something! You're probably both overthinking this.

Yeah, AzBaz said it far more simply than me. Ironically, I overthought my response.

Ad hominem. That one I actually do know!

I was being pretentious, Az.

Oh yeah, I just looked it up. Nevermind then!

Not doing that, or strawmanning here. Having to have a good protagonist does force black and white morality. Sure, you could argue for white vs grey, but then it's just a less gritty version of black vs white, and since the contrast is easy to see and there's no real argument to be had, it's just more boring.