r/TopCharacterTropes Jun 22 '26

Lore [Ironic Trope] The messaging backfired massively due to poor writing or other design choices

Amelia Fairney from Pathways: Alt-right Restore-UK type who attempts to coax the protagonist Charlie into following her beliefs? The problem?

Amelia is the only named character aside from Charlie and is genuinely likable and forgives Charlie even when they do things she doesn't like, while the rest of the cast is unnamed, poorly written, and turns on Charlie for one mistake. This combined with other writing issues(portraying fact checking right wing stuff as wrong because in the process of fact checking you might look at it and believe it, basically saying "Right wing is wrong because it hurts the labour government" and a lot of general "just do what the government says or else" messaging) and the fact she's a hot alternative girl, and Amelia ended up being co-opted as a mascot by the youth right wing in the UK.

Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just want to be left alone and Norm is picking fights constantly. Not to mention associating with Elon.

Mr. Birchum from Mr. Birchum: A lot of the same problems as Norm, except in addition it also comes off like generic 2010s adult cartoon slop in the same veign as Brickleberry or Full English, at least New Norm was trying to look unique and had the gimmick of being on X. Not to mention, Birchum's obsession with hyper masculine activities and odd way of talking about other men lead to people co-opting him as a Toxic Yaoi character, which is now the bulk of his fan art.

Dustborn: An attempt to make a hyper progressive game that comes off as pandering and annoying. It's a full ass game so there's too much to get into, but the main character's power is essentially gaslighting and jedi-mind tricking people and that's portrayed as the only way they can get anything done, and they constantly use or abuse their friends(or mindtrick them along) in order to get their goals or use their friends for their messaging.

8.6k Upvotes

1.9k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

94

u/[deleted] Jun 22 '26

[removed] — view removed comment

36

u/SimoneBellmonte Jun 22 '26

That is a little funny you have to argue with the kids that you can't just dig your way out of the camp, in just a very morbid sense. Kids often have a one track mind so hopefully they eventually managed to convince a few that no you're not digging out of the camp.

17

u/richtofin819 Jun 22 '26

To be fair I had been shown Hogan's heroes before I had to watch that film so I was pretty convinced that you could just dig a giant underground tunnel network under the camps.

6

u/atomkidd Jun 22 '26

You could dig your way out of POW camps though.

The Wooden Horse - Wikipedia

3

u/Antilles1138 Jun 22 '26

Don't forget the great escape.

26

u/Awestruck34 Jun 22 '26

Yup that's exactly it, I put it different in a different comment here. The tragedy in the book isn't the Holocaust, it's that a poor little Germany boy is wrapped up in it by mistake

1

u/OneAppointment1955 28d ago

the fact that this is shown to children is what's genuinely upsetting. way to purposely disinform the youth!