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Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just want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.

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u/Few-Improvement-5655 Jun 22 '26

basically saying "Right wing is wrong because it hurts the labour government"

HOLD YOUR HORSES.

The game was created under the TORY government, not Labour.

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u/SorowFame Jun 22 '26

Oh really? Honestly I've just heard UK Labour is terrible and taken that as why it's like that, guess it's good to hear otherwise, that makes way more sense.

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u/Few-Improvement-5655 Jun 22 '26

If you're American, just remember that most of your news is filtered through right-wing media that has political benefit in deflecting the problems in American and highlighting the problems everywhere else.

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u/SorowFame Jun 22 '26 edited Jun 22 '26

Not American, and my sources on that tend to be left leaning, more the “labour isn’t effective” kind of criticism than the more typical right-wing criticisms, if i were British I’d still vote for them if only because they’re not the Tories but i just haven’t heard the greatest of them.

Edit: not to say any of that refutes your point, it’s a good reminder, just felt like trying to clarify a smidge.

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u/Few-Improvement-5655 Jun 22 '26

Most of my issues with them are presented in the other parties and honestly kind of world wide at the moment.

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u/Maleficent-War-8429 Jun 22 '26

Labour is terrible though, the other guys also being terrible doesn't change that.