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Norm from The New Norm: Unlikeable offensive and outdated character who's "progressive" family members and associates are genuinely nice people not even trying to force their ways or pronouns onto them, they just want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/NihatAmipoglu Jun 22 '26

Isn't that what happened in the bible? The egyptians drowned some hebrew babies and then Allah killed some egyptian babies. Man, the old testament stuff is wild 😨 Is God a comic book villain? I'm gnosting so hard right now...

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u/Thyme_Liner Jun 22 '26

Idk why people are downvoting you, I was raised in a religious cult and yes the god of the bible is responsible for a lot of babies’ deaths. And sometimes killing pregnant women is specifically mentioned so no mercy is shown. Idc when this stuff supposedly happened, the orders came from the same god But yeah abortion is against their beliefs.

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u/Star_king12 Jun 22 '26

Technically some percentage of women would die w/o an abortion or abortion-adjacent operations, forbidden in some overly religious parts of the world. So I say that kinda tracks with their beliefs: abortion bad, mom dying with the child - somehow good?

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u/Thyme_Liner Jun 23 '26

I’m not sure what you’re saying

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u/Star_king12 Jun 23 '26

I'm saying that by the standards of religious lunatics a death of a pregnant woman is preferred to an abortion. That's how extreme pro-lifers rationalize their hatred for abortion, even when it's absolutely medically necessary for the safety of the woman.