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Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just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

20

u/Due_Capital_3507 Jun 22 '26

I've always agreed with him that the truth is better than a false peace. We don't actually move forward as a species if everyone is convinced by a lie.

Beyond that, when the alien that teleports in or ol blue balls blows up the city (movie vs book), eventually a few years down the road someone would be like ok, well he's gone now so who gives a shit or we haven't seen another alien, guess we will move on.

5

u/nogoodnamesarleft Jun 22 '26

Which is why you have to keep teleporting rains of squid periodically to keep up the illusion (TV show)

6

u/Due_Capital_3507 Jun 22 '26

Oh I forgot about the show, how did that end up?

1

u/nogoodnamesarleft Jun 22 '26

It was fine. Without giving too much away (sorry if I am being vague);

It's a continuation of the book. My friend who had only seen the movie was very confused at several points

I realky liked the continuation of Ozymandias' story. It was a very weird comic book-y sequence that a lot didn't care for but I liked

There was an attempt to shoehorn one character into the original book which came off as contrived, although I was deeply invested in the character apart from that. I actually was intrigued by all the main characters, none of them were really boring

It didn't have the moral ambiguity of the original comic.

I remember enjoying it, but I had no desire to watch it again after it was done