The words Lawful Goid conjure distinct images in everyone’s mind. Some think of the white knight paladin while others gravitate towards a certain red and blue spandex covered alien. That’s right Martian Man Hunter! Despite his name he is still lawful good. But are people lawful good and deeper than that are believable characters solely lawful good? Does the Chaotic Evil character never do anything good? I believe people and characters are messier than one alignment will allow them to be.
Other than D&D characters the best example of complicated alignment in a character come from Dr. Octopus in “Spiderman 2”. Through out the movie Doc Ock is portrayed generally as CE. He is blinded by rage and only wants to do what he wants no matter the cost to others. That is until he *SPOILERS* sacrifices himself and his experiment to save NY. It shows that he is still human deep down. So while he may have been CE on paper he saw through that and did a LG act.
Alignment is heavily debated at D&D tables and in some fantasy circles. But, if you think about the characters as humans and not just figments of your imagination you’ll see they too can be a bit complicated and have a complicated alignment.
Grayson C. Beane 