Communities

Writing
Writing
Codidact Meta
Codidact Meta
The Great Outdoors
The Great Outdoors
Photography & Video
Photography & Video
Scientific Speculation
Scientific Speculation
Cooking
Cooking
Electrical Engineering
Electrical Engineering
Judaism
Judaism
Languages & Linguistics
Languages & Linguistics
Software Development
Software Development
Mathematics
Mathematics
Christianity
Christianity
Code Golf
Code Golf
Music
Music
Physics
Physics
Linux Systems
Linux Systems
Power Users
Power Users
Tabletop RPGs
Tabletop RPGs
Community Proposals
Community Proposals
tag:snake search within a tag
answers:0 unanswered questions
user:xxxx search by author id
score:0.5 posts with 0.5+ score
"snake oil" exact phrase
votes:4 posts with 4+ votes
created:<1w created < 1 week ago
post_type:xxxx type of post
Search help
Notifications
Mark all as read See all your notifications »
Q&A

Post History

66%
+2 −0
Q&A Is a lawful good "antagonist" effective?

Yes, you can have both. In the Fugitive 1993 film Tommy Lee Jones is a Federal Marshall pursuing wrongly-convicted Harrison Ford, and Tommy Lee is pulling out every legal trick he can to catch Harr...

posted 4y ago by Amadeus‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Amadeus‭ · 2020-01-12T20:48:44Z (over 4 years ago)
Yes, you can have both. In the Fugitive 1993 film Tommy Lee Jones is a Federal Marshall pursuing wrongly-convicted Harrison Ford, and Tommy Lee is pulling out every legal trick he can to catch Harrison and return him to prison.

Harrison is innocent, the audience saw that and knows that. He was framed, convicted, and sent to prison, and then unintentionally (on his part) freed due to a prison break during his transport to another prison. The bus crashed, guards were killed. He runs, further breaking the law, intent on finding the real murderer, with whom he fought, a one-armed man. 

Tommy Lee doesn't know that Harrison is innocent. At one point, they have a confrontation, Tommy Lee has been disarmed. Harrison's only path of escape is to leap into a river, about a ten story dive. Harrison tries to explain to Tommy Lee that he is innocent, he was framed. Tommy Lee's response is basically (from memory): **"I don't care. That's not my job. You are a fugitive, escaped from custody, and it is my job and duty to bring you in. That's the law."**

Then Harrison jumps, and Tommy Lee goes and looks over the edge, then turns around to go continue his pursuit. 

Tommy Lee is lawful good; it is illegal to escape custody, the only legal option Harrison had was to wait for law enforcement to arrive, or turn himself in, or surrender to the first officer he found. Harrison is a good guy, but he ran, he stole clothing, I think maybe he stole a car, etc, but is also risking his life to pursue justice, to find the real killer and bring him to justice. Tommy Lee is not vindictive, or cruel, but he is relentless and if there is any legal route to catching Harrison he is going to take it, even though he has sympathy for Harrison and believes he might have been framed, he believes 100% that if the law is not obeyed by law enforcement, that will result in a lawless society. If the law makes some mistakes and convicts the innocent, those mistakes, as terrible as they are, are the price to pay for a lawful society, and the lesser evil compared to a lawless society.

**So for your story,** what you want is a protagonist (like Harrison) that truly thinks the greater good is more important than following the law, that good is good regardless of what the law says. Your antagonist (like Tommy Lee) is lawful Good, emphasis on "Lawful", and believes that following the law is more important than their own individual, or any individual's, opinion of what is right or wrong. That it is up to society as a whole to come to a consensus, through the law, as to what is permitted or prohibited behavior. So when your protagonist acts extra-legally, your antagonist considers that an affront *no matter what the motive may be*. Because the law is the law, it isn't **up** to the individual, it isn't a matter of opinion or choice to follow the law.

For example, recently I read a story where a man, a year after his 15-year old sister was raped and murdered, went to the police and confessed to the crime, saying he raped and murdered his sister.

He did that because the police had refused to process the DNA collected by the medical examiner in the autopsy of his sister. By confessing, he forced them to test if the match to the sperm collected during her autopsy was his. It was not. But by forcing the sequencing of that DNA, it convicted a prisoner, recently released from prison, of the rape and murder of his sister. He broke the law by confessing to the murder, he gave knowingly false information to the police. But he did that for the greater good, to get justice for his sister. A lawful good antagonist might very well prosecute him and convict him anyway, even if there was no other recourse to getting justice.

The same thing would be true for a vigilante. Remember the TV Series 24, with Jack Bauer? That guy commits burglary, fraud, murder, he tortures and kidnaps criminals and bad guys all over the place. The show is always careful to ensure WE know all his victims are indeed vile criminals plotting mass murders, bit Bauer doesn't always know, and obviously Bauer is acting far outside the law. We root for him, he is unlawful good, but a lawful good antagonist could easily stand in his way and try to thwart him and bring him to justice for the crimes he is committing left and right.