Shattered Kingdoms

Actually it did, when Tari failed to murder me in Nerina. Get your info straight, buttercup!

Tari tried to bash your face in response to you questioning her honor. I was there when the truce to the Talons was dropped though, as was Callie, and Tari. It had nothing to do with with your stupid god damn character. Thanks for trying to be an attention [REDACTED] though.

Peacekeepers and Talons were droped to truce before I took a run at Genjis in Nerina, and it had [REDACTED] and all to do with Genjis. Genjis was a failure of a character, and anyone that says otherwise is high on crack or heroin, or brain damaged, but his [REDACTED] had nothing to do with Talons v Peacekeepers, only Reinald's failure as a character had to do with that.

I'm seriously lol'ing at Muktar just making stuff up for funsies. Talons and Keepers haven't been allied in a loooong time.

Yeah. That was the turning point of a few plots in the show: The fact that to his enemies he usually acts like a crazy psychopath who is willing to murder anyone in his way, but he's almost always just making a show of force to try and get information from them. Jack Bauer racks up an obscene body count, but it's always justified in the eyes of the show and he always avoids killing what the show would consider the "good" characters, even if those characters are making stupid decisions that are causing him or others harm. Sure, there are a lot of situations where has to tie up some "good" guy who is screwing things up, but he never murders a "good" character just for being obstinate.

The only parts of the show where he begins to move towards the darker side of scrupulous side are usually in the finales, and still never against the "good" characters: For example, in the end of the first season finale, he catches up to the big bad guy who had been in prison the entire season yet had still managed to muster the resources to repeatedly try to kill Jack and his family: The bad guy throws away his weapon, puts up his arms and says "I surrender! Take me back to prison!" At which point Jack just looks him in the eye and then shoots him dead. That seems like a textbook example of scrupulous to me.

Right, because those that would rather spare even what society deems evil (just because they surrendered) fall under the category "principled".

And, as for "uneasy feeling" there are several instances where he's shown great remorse. He, like those of scrupulous alignment, has done what he felt is necessary to bring down evil, even at his own regrets. Not regrets over doing what had to be done (he stated that clearly) but he has shown remorse for the innocents who get harmed on the way. But because the goal, his goal, was always to bring about "justice" (read: the triumph of good over evil), he aggressively sought out evil, even at the expense of law or the safety of a few of the good. To a Principled (what MOST of us IRL are), that just seems anarchist and sometimes barbaric.

My impression of SK's version of scrupulous has always been that: unlike principled (who are like doctors whenever possible -- do no harm), scrupulous individuals will do whatever they must in order to bring down evil and spare the greatest number of good. But always toward the ideal of stamping out evil, and hating every moment that evil gets away with anything. Also, the needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

Scrupulous, to my understanding, has a little bit of variance. The darker end of scrup is Bauer. More towards the lighter end is, say, John McClane.

I think your understanding of the principled alignment is flawed.



Principled characters are not against lethal force, it's just not their first option. In your Big Bad example from 24, it would be pretty easy to say that after being captured and given the opportunity to reform the dude was still bent on being a bad guy and a principled character would have as much justification in shooting him dead as unrepentant evil.

I guess that a principled character -could- do the same in extreme circumstances, but I guess the other things I left out were that the cops were literally minutes behind, and all the other bad guys were dead. I would think that the principled character resorts to the handcuffs there, not the double-tap.

In that Jack Bauer example, the minute the bad guy threw down the gun, Bauer's only correct response was to cuff him. When Bauer shot him dead, Bauer committed murder. No principled person would do that. Can a principled person kill? Absolutely. Can a person kill a defenseless man? Absolutely. It's called execution after a proper trial.

As to the claim that most people IRL are principled, that's hogwash. At best, 1 in 1000 people are principled. There are far more scrupulous people than there are principled, and there are far more dogmatic people than there are scrupulous. But most people fall into the non-dogmatic selfish category, and most political leaders fall into the miscreant category. There are always exceptions, but for the most part, the above is true.

I don't think that the alignments of SK carry over too well into real life.

Thread derail incoming!