OP seems to have mixed a few things together in that chart. quality of writing (characterization, plot, whether they experience/research of what they're writing about) content of writing (good plot/coffeeshop/fluff and hc = good, id fic and squicks evil) consistency of writing (regularity and completion and long= good, short and incomplete = evil) intent of writing (conforming or trying to conform to characterization = lawful, stuff with own life as reference = neutral, fluff and idfic = chaotic)
The thing about alignments is that there should be upsides and downsides to all of them. Example: Lawful good = you obey the law and practice the virtues that are thought to be good (truthfulness, live thy neighbor, etc). Which sounds fine until you get a lawful good character in a situation where breaking the law would be advantageous..and you can't do it. Also you're going to see people who act out of self interest in a bad light. Nobody wants to play a lawful good character in DnD because it limits your character's options. So translating that into fanfic author terms, lawful good would be the one who updates on a schedule and always nicely answers reader comments, but they tend to overexplain everything in the fic to make sure that all the elements follow the rules for the world that the author has set up.
I feel like one instance of Lawful Evil would be the fanfic author who sends crit, but it's very harsh crit that's several paragraphs long and mostly meant as a way of telling new authors "I don't care if you're still in elementary school and this is a children's show-centric fandom. You are a failure of a writer and until you can write at a college MLA level with no mistakes, you should never write again and I will make sure to treat you the same next time I see your work with even longer crit". Basically, very oriented on grammar and the standards of netiquette for fanfiction and a strong concern for canon and characterization, but also weaponizing that to hurt others, and treating 'bad' (in their estimate, more like newbie, uneducated or chaotic-leaning) authors terribly to prop up their own wounded egos or just to feel like the Queen Bee of Pokemon fandom. Inversely, Lawful Good would also leave crit, but it'd be keeping in mind the writer's age, education level and experience and would follow concepts like "sandwich crit between two compliments" or "emphasis the good points and offer gentle suggestions". Lawful Good writers work on enhancing the fandom experience for everyone, as well as boosting writing skills for themselves and others. They'd leave long and thoughtful crits, but at the same time you'd be eager to receive them rather than thinking "oh shit, it's this bitch".
I feel like you could make an interesting alignment chart by mapping the lawful/chaotic axis to faithfulness to canon.
That's probably a closer approximation to the origin of the DnD alignment system (which cosmic principle you've been roped into helping) than most other options. With that axis, would Lawful Evil be people who are jerks to anyone who deviates from canon at all, up to and including "didn't write about canon ship"?
very specific gripe for a thing i otherwise love: Yes, I know nat is a abuse lawyer. YES I KNOW ABUSE VICTIMS GO BACK TO THEIR ABUSERS SOMETIMES AND GET KILLED THAT DOESN'T MAKE IT SOMEHOW ~deeper~ TO KILL THE ABUSE VICTIM FOR THE SAKE OF NAT ANGST
I actually would really like to see full alternate takes on that terrible writing alignment chart based on different axis, especially now that the post has uncritically come across my dash :/
Can I partly blame the alignment chart for my sudden urge to design a quadrant-like romance system for APH nations, since it put the idea of complicated charts into my head? That's a gripe. I want to do this but have no idea how.
I'm having some trouble with NG and N, but here's a starting point: Lawful Good: 200k words that could be a lost entry of canon. Except with more porn. Neutral Good: Chaotic Good: You're not sure why you're reading a space colonist AU of Watership Down, but god damn if you're not invested in Blackberry's character arc. Lawful Neutral: Fic that copies long swaths of dialogue word-for-word from canon. True Neutral: Chaotic Neutral: An endless spiral of AUs, the source material getting progressively more and more unrecognizable. Lawful Evil: "I found 27 inconsistencies with canon in this fic. 1) He has a girlfriend, so he can't be gay-" Neutral Evil: Plagiarism. Chaotic Evil: Untagged My Little Pony torture porn.
It was just suggested to me that by this metric, True Neutral is probably the kind of generic fluff/porn/coffeeshop AU where you can basically just paste in whatever names you want and it's indistinguishable.
(According to OP of the original chart, smut isn't allowed to be chaotic good. Therefore, smut should be part of an alternate chaotic good somehow because #vindictive) Spoiler: Mobile image
Fuck off, OP, if Dungeons and Dragons can have a Lawful Good God of Pleasure, Passion and Love (Lastai) who's temples are basically holy goodness brothels, I think we can allow for Chaotic Good fanfic dickings. Edit: I went a double-checked, and it turns out I was mistaken. Lastai is not Lawful Good, but Chaotic Good, and considering I'm pretty sure she's in the Book of Exalted Deeds, she's not just a standard CG God but a paragon goddess of Chaotic Good. She breaths, bleeds and shits chaos and goodness and therefore OP is wrong and good smut is the true definition of Chaotic Good fanfiction.
I think we have established that the OP did not have any coherent logic for what they labeled as what. (Personally, I was operating under the assumption that smut can be any alignment.)
I do like the concept that AUs are the inherently chaotic element more than the porn, tbh. Also, for neutral good, I'd say 'regularly updating longfic involving your favorite ship or character dynamic, not solidly canon compliant but has a good amount of charm and tries to be internally consistent' (good examples would be Walkabout in Digimon fandom? It's one I can think of that's really good but also relies on a moderately OOC premise that actually made sense considering fandom and canon at the time (a heavily bashed character was the main lead, and the first chapter was him walking in on his friends talking about all the reasons why he sucks as a leader and friend, leading him to take a journey of self-discovery and become a stronger person overall. Which inspires similar journeys along all of his friends, and a lot of character development the series was actually missing proper))
What would a lawful evil fanfic be? Decently canon compliant but kind of boring fic written with an explicit attitude of "Ugh, I guess I have to show you idiots how it's really done"?
Harry Potter and the methods of rationality strikes me as having the feel of lawful evilness, but it's very non canon compliant; I'd vote "internally consistent and decently written; would be passable if it hadn't been written just so the author could show how much better and smarter they are than the lowly masses, and how their ideas are so much better than canon."
Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality strikes me as being very Neutral Evil, as being an inverse on the "internally consistent and decently written, if not fully AU bonkers or 100% perfectly IC and canon compliant". It's got a veneer of trying to accept a lot of really skeevy shit on a basis of the writer like that shit and therefore it has to be rational and correct manners of being, as well as the pseudo-intellectual thing. So, a big thing that strikes me as NE-fic-y as well as plagiarism is "trying to sneak shitty life philosophy into works like a baby Ayn Rand."
Neutral Good, for me, follows characterization really well and has a solid grasp on development and theories, but all they write is "What If This Canon Thing Had Happened Differently", like a good "Harry potter the slytherin" fic.
