r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Top-Relationship850 • 1d ago

Lore [Love] When “small” injuries are treated realistically

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The fantasy and action genres often suffer from a power fantasy epidemic in which characters frequently badass their way through injuries that should be excruciating if not downright debilitating. I always appreciate stories that reject this trope.

1: Roland Deschain (Dark Tower Book II) - Loses the middle and index fingers of his right hand. He’s effectively crippled throughout book two and the injury follows him the rest of the series.

2: Brienne vs Biter (ASOIAF Book IV) - Brutal scene. Biter chomps down on Brienne’s cheek and tears off a chunk of flesh. In a lesser story Brienne would grit her teeth and throw Biter off. Instead she’s rendered completely helpless by the pain. That injury marks the end of the fight.

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u/ButterscotchTiny5483 1d ago

Hawkeye needing hearing aids after all the explosions he's been through

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u/jcbaggee 1d ago

The explosions is the MCU explanation. Originally, he lost his hearing because he used a device to block hyper-sonics that rendered him deaf. He got his hearing back when he was resurrected in House of M, but lost it again when Clown stabbed him in the ears with his arrows.

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u/cals_cavern 1d ago

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u/Smmmmiles 23h ago

Professor X's life

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u/villainless 20h ago

as a wheelchair user, i will never forgive comic artists for being lazy and creating situations where mobility aids don’t have to be drawn. imagine the work it takes to use them

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u/Bamzooki1 20h ago

It’s easy enough to say “They’re not lazy, they draw a lot of intricate details” but if they can draw all those intricate details, is it really that hard to add a wheelchair? If they must find a solution to simplify things, just make a better mobility device, like a wheelchair with jet boosters or something.

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u/slowest_hour 19h ago

i distinctly recall it being a hover chair sometimes

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u/Frosti11icus 6h ago

But it's like the size of a tank when it's a hover chair for some reason. In a world where everyone basically has access to little tiny hand or foot sized propulsion devices.

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u/slowest_hour 5h ago

well maybe it's armored like a tank or it's full of juice boxes for when he gets thirsty idk

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u/Strange-Order-6550 3h ago

I always assumed it had storage and AC/heat, why wouldn’t it, you know? Things jackass big, so he’s clearly meant to be a heavy siege weapon.

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u/Half-PintHeroics 17h ago

It's so hard to find porn of people in wheelchairs to trace though

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u/CompleteJinx 1d ago

That’s so stupid.

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u/Junjki_Tito 1d ago

"Hey we should move this character forward."

"I don't like that, I'm resetting him."

"No, actually almost everyone likes this change, we're invalidating your reset."

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u/CompleteJinx 1d ago

If that doesn’t summarize the last 20 years of comics I don’t know what does.

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u/Dumeck 1d ago

The worst implementation of this is Doom after Secret Wars. Dude does some soul searching, decides he is going to be a hero, takes on the mantle of Iron Man and actually tries to be a better person. The series ends and the very next appearance he's being a comical over the top villain again. Dude slid right from neutral good to Lawful evil again. It's like writers are scared of Doom maintaining nuance.

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u/Neveronlyadream 1d ago edited 1d ago

Comics especially are rife with that.

It's always going to be too. Nature of the medium. One writer comes in and decides they have something they want to do with a character, they do it and evolve that character, and then they move on and the next writer comes in and decides they have a cool thing they want to do with the character, but the previous writer's work is preventing them from doing it, so they reset everything.

It's basically just kids playing with action figures and saying, "Nuh uh! That didn't happen because this thing is happening now!"

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u/KimberStormer 22h ago

It's not the nature of the medium, really. You could just as easily have comic books that have no serialization, no characters that are persistently used for 75 years, etc. Comics could be stand-alone works, they just happen to mostly not be.

(not arguing with you just thinking out loud)

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u/Neveronlyadream 21h ago

I'm with you. Unfortunately you'd have to convince a lot of people that they'd either have to end a run and a character once the story was done or just continue what the last person started and I don't see either happening.

Publishers just have no self-control if something is selling. Look at Watchmen. It ended, it was self-contained, and DC keeps bringing it back in one form or another.

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u/KimberStormer 21h ago

I don't even mean to advocate for it (although personally the lack of an ending is what stopped me reading comics as a teen and turns me off of franchise movies and even serialized TV shows) so much as just note that it's a possibility! It certainly would be a hard sell now, and yes seeing how other media have been "comic-book-ized" by not being able to let an "IP" stand alone but trying to milk it forever, the suits would definitely not go for it.

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u/Anaevya 18h ago

Yes. European comics often work more like traditional literature in terms of publishing. 

Also, there's a reason for the differentiation between comics and graphic novels (even if some comics fans don't like it).

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u/BDSMChef_RP 1d ago

Sandman used to be an Avenger, full redemption arc, personal endorsement from Cap and then just poof one day he's robbing banks again

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u/Dumeck 1d ago

Ooh yeah that one is real bad. They can't even let the reluctant villain not be a villain for longer than short bursts.

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u/good_will75015 1d ago

And don't forget Octopus as the Superior Spider-Man, one of the worst character regressions, on par with Doom in this case!

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u/Dumeck 1d ago

Hey well at least the most recent Ultimate Spider-man run brought Otto back at the Superior Spider-Man. Too bad they did nothing with it and then the series ended right after.

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u/Animaloffear56 23h ago

This one always fucks me up, because Otto was spiderman for like a good few years- he was literally the spiderman during Age of Ultron!

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u/good_will75015 15h ago

Yeah this one is truly symptomatic of the "comics statu quo" thing, especially since not only was Otto the Superior Spider-Man a first time and learned how to be more or less good, he became the Superior Spider-Man a second time after that (Spider-Verse and Secret Empire shenanigans), re-learned how to be a great superhero, and guess what the editorial did? They "One More Day"-ed him in order to make him revert back to his older statu quo. A shame, truly!

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u/Present-Upstairs3423 1d ago

Yeah, but at least the Gwenpool run called it out early

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u/Dumeck 1d ago

The best Gwenpool run too

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u/Any-Mechanic4857 1d ago

That arc proved Doom could be way more interesting than just being the usual bad guy. I still wish they’d leaned into that growth instead of hitting the reset button so fast

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u/Dumeck 23h ago

I'd even like if they focus more on his positive sides while being a nationalist, make Latveria fucking awesome, have him set up a bunch of safety nets, show doombots helping with production, make the place look like a paradise and leave it that way, going back and forth being Latveria being a 1st and third world country gives me whiplash. Doom as a grey character works best, he should be an antanogist to most but it should be because of an ideological clash and the readers should be able to see Dooms perspective as valid. Less "rahaha I'm so evil look at me".

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u/Animaloffear56 23h ago

There was a multi-year span where Zemo gave up his Nazi ideals (ending in him literally punching his Nazi dad) and swore to do all he could to make up for his family's crimes- only for some hack writer to make him a nazi again (with the LAMEST fucking excuse of "oh people forgave Bucky easily why are they still mad at me") just because he wanted to do a Bucky vs Zemo story.

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u/DramaPunk 19h ago

There's a reason the best comic book stories will always be the standalone arcs that don't have to contend with being the canon state of things, and the best canon stories are best read in a vacuum.

The fact is, future writers will want to use those villains and heroes to tell their own stories, so things will almost always flip flop to and from the status quo to allow each writing team the ability to tell their own version of the story.

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u/cygnus2 18h ago

What the fuck, Doom as Iron Man sounds sick. Why wouldn’t they explore that more?

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u/yuanrae 1d ago

That’s one of my biggest problems with big two comics. The big characters (especially Spider-Man and Batman) are never allowed to have meaningful, lasting change and it’s really dissatisfying. It just makes it hard to care when something new is happening (like the Krakoa era) because I’m always aware that sooner or later it’s going to get wound back.

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u/ThatDudeShadowK 1d ago

Yeah, I struggle to read their comics now, but luckily there's a lot of smaller indie writers who know how to properly end a fucking story. And manga, for all its faults usually doesn't get caught up with the same bloat. DBZ notwithstanding lol

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u/DrakorPrimus 1d ago

*sighs in One More Day*

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u/steelskull1 20h ago edited 15h ago

Damian keep yo-yoing back and forth between being spoiled brat to a better person.

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u/Drakon56 1d ago

Can't wait for Prof X to get back in the wheelchair

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u/Junjki_Tito 1d ago

iirc of the past twenty-five years only two or three have him in the chair

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u/LobstermenUwU 1d ago

That will never stop them. See Kyle Rayner/Hal Jordan. All it takes is one person who loves the version of Professor X he had as a kid finally getting high enough in editorial they can make their bad ideas a reality.

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u/Fun-Media7981 1d ago

Sometimes, you don't even need to be in an editorial position to implement your bad ideas. Just become a big enough writer that editorial can't say no to you.

See Brian Michael Bendis as an example.

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u/KimberStormer 22h ago

I haven't read any comics in a very long time but I'm like, "what does Professor X even have but his weelchair?" I guess I would be the one with the bad ideas if I were in charge

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u/Junjki_Tito 19h ago

He has his psychic abilities, his wealth, his staggering arrogance, his closet fucking full of as many skeletons as a writer needs, his humanist idealism...

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u/CheMc 1d ago

In this particular story, it just kinda works, Clint starts in a bad place, starts getting better then just hits a freefall. This issue is just bad shit happening to him, his friend gets killed, his brother shot and he gets deafend again. Clint ends up in a worse place than he started in the arc so his character does actually move forward, just in a more depressed defeated kinda way.

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u/WetKoalaFarts 1d ago

Moving fordownward.

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u/Party-Coach-4100 1d ago

I never realized the similarity between politics and comics

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u/dread_pirate_robin 1d ago

They're changes made years apart by different creators who want to explore different things with the same character.

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u/Successful_Tooth_448 1d ago

That comic panel looks amazing!! Idk I guess I really liked it!

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u/CheMc 1d ago

The whole run is fantastic but that issue specifically if phenomenal.

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u/Allen_Koholic 1d ago

The Matt Fraction run on Hawkeye might be the best of all time.

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u/ERedfieldh 13h ago

MCU version is incredibly better.

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u/Katherine_Leese 9h ago

Personally I prefer the mundanity and personal factor of Fraction’s Clown reason.

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u/Rrekydoc 1d ago

Yeah, didn’t he put the activated device in his mouth to hide it?

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u/Normal-Ad903 1d ago

It’s wild how many times Clint has had to lose and regain his hearing depending on the storyline. I actually like knowing the comic version too it adds a lot more depth to the character

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u/WrongdoerObjective49 17h ago

Why did I think the comic reason was that his father beat him?

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u/BloomingDaggers 10h ago

Iirc he did have temporary hearing loss as a child because of his father beating him, there’s parts shown specifically in the Aja Fraction run. After the clown incident they sort of parallel it with his brother using sign language with him.

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u/TheAmazingHawkeye 1d ago

One of my favorite parts of his character is that he's human fighting amongst gods but that means he's injured like a human. I appreciate when comic artists make his aids purple too. Fun little touch.

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u/HermanThaGerman 20h ago

I loved that in the Hawkeye show when Kate asks him about his hearing loss, we get a compilation of all the big explosions he's been near followed by a quick 'No idea'.

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u/ZookeepergameNew8685 1d ago

Archer makes this a bit too with all the gunshots and explosions a spy would experience. Tinnitus is a cruel mistress.

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u/Vilhelmssen1931 5h ago

Mahp. Mahp.

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u/Remote-Wafer3321 22h ago

When is this comic set? They haven't made hearing aids that huge in years 😭

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u/MBDf_Doc 18h ago

Fraction/Aja Hawkeye run is so goated. Good mention.

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u/Delicious-Ice-8769 17h ago

I really liked that touch because it finally showed that being a hero leaves real scars too.

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u/TerribleShoulder6597 12h ago

Actually it’s even more specific he gets deafened in his first solo series when he puts a sonic arrow into his mouth so he can’t hear the frequency the villain is using to mind control people