Even though I was a huge nerd growing up, the one thing I didn’t do was play Dungeons & Dragons. I’m pretty sure that’s because none of my friends were playing it at the time, but I’ll admit there’s a possibility that I just wasn’t invited.
So now that I’m older with children, I’ve been given the opportunity to jump into the strange world of Tabletop RPGs. I’ve learned a few things, most of them not totally applicable to real life. Like not to touch the statute since it’ll probably come to life and kill you. While I’m sure many museum curators would love to imbue their collection with such a security feature, it just hasn’t happened. Yet.
One thing is has helped me in real life is the concept of alignment, at least in terms of discovering a new way of categorizing people (and of course we all need new and innovative ways to put people into boxes).
Here’s the overview without getting too nerdcore. Your character is either good, neutral, or evil. Then you add to that lawful, neutral, or chaotic. So a lawful good person is your upright citizen that freaks out about doing things wrong. The other side would be lawful evil, meaning they’re following a set of rules, they just happen to be Hitler’s set of rules. Chaotic good would be doing the right thing but in a screwed up way, like The Punisher. And neutral is just like, whatever man.
So with that background, we were finally watching Doctor Strange this last weekend. I wanted to see it earlier, but we weren’t able to get a babysitter and weren’t sure if taking the kids to it would make us look bad. Or be bad for them, I guess. Whatever, man.
About midway through this Marvel origin story, while Doctor Strange is trying to figure out everything about magic, he sees the Eye of Agamotto on a pedestal and decides to give it a test run. At this scene Kella yells, “Turn off this movie! I don’t want to watch it!”
“Why not?” I asked, since we weren’t even to the part where people were being violently murdered.
“He’s stealing that necklace!”
So there’s our little lawful good girl, mad that a character is doing the wrong thing, even if it ends up being for the right reason.
She takes after me in that regard. What I hate most about horror movies is that the characters always go into a house uninvited. “Don’t go in the house,” that little voice in my head screams, “it’s against the law! Oh, and I guess you’ll probably be murdered, but whatever about that.” And the only I can get through an episode of Seinfeld is by constantly reminding myself that it’s only a show.
As for Finley, despite all his hitting and punching and cussing and overall chaotic behavior, there are certain lines he will freak out about because it’s illegal. I’d still stick him on the Chaotic Good part of the spectrum, but there’s little bits of Paladin in him yet.