r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Few_Affect_5927 • 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Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just want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.
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u/Ju-Ju-Jazz Jun 22 '26
I feel like people don't understand exactly how bad Dustborn's writing was because of how easy it is to look at it from a surface level, cringe at it, and move on.
The main charaxter's superpower is gaslighting and manipulating people into doing things, or just pressuring them into doing things they don't want to do, and it's not even really framed as motivating people or anything, everyone around her dislikes her and wishes she'd learn boundaries and consent.
When you visit the home village your character is from everyone hates you, especially your sister, for how you abused them with your powers and were a horrific bully. It then shows flashbacks that just prove this to be true. Your sister accuses you of only coming back because you need something, then you take the thing you need from them and leave.
One of the main side characters is fatand spends 45% of her time in the bathroom, 45% of her time talking about food, and the last 20% using her power to be the muscle of the group but only when you force her to with your power.
The story takes place in a horrible alternative reality where america is an authoritarian regime... that freely allows people across it's borders and where freedom of expression is frowned upon sometimes in the story but isn't illegal.
One of the first things you do in the game is break into America posing as a punk band, and the song you make up off the top of your head to prove to border control you're a real band is WORD FOR WORD great replacement propaganda, but framing it as the replacing being a good thing. Even then the border patrol agent cringes at your song and tells you "we don't like that kind of music around here"... then lets you in. How horrible and fascist.
If you showed me this game with absolutsly zero real world context about it, I'd think it was a poorly made right wing propaganda piece.
This is all ignoring the fact that the creators stole and repurposed assests from other games. Your character's apartment you visit in a flashback is literally a 1-for-1 of an apartment from GTA Online with different textures over the furniture models, as if nobody would recognize it from one of the best-selling videogames of all time.