r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Character_Growth_397 • 1h ago
miscellaneous Everyone went through rough stuff, that doesn't give you the right to be a dick
When characters call out the fact that having a sad or traumatic story doesn't give you the right to be a dick
Guardians of the Galaxy - Rocket Rackoon says to Drax "I don't care if it's mean. Everybody's got dead people! But it makes no excuse to letting everyone else around get killed along the way!", which he is correct
BoJack Horseman - Todd tells BoJack: "You are all the things that are wrong with you, it's not the drugs or the alcohol, or any of the things that happened in your career and childhood". While BoJack is shaped by his trauma, it's he who he keeps making awful decisions again and again, and trying to externalize it won't make things better
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u/Ridley_Himself 1h ago edited 1h ago
Scrubs:
Carla gives Katie this lecture after she tries to blame her behavior or her dad's death and her mom's alcoholism:
Heard it! Me: dead mom; JD: dead dad; Elliot: emotionally abusive parents; Dr. Cox: emotionally and physically abusive dead parents who he may have killed, no one's quite sure. Look, Katie, now that you're here it doesn't matter what crap you have in your past. All that matters is that you leave it there.
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u/AGQuaddit 50m ago
There's a really neat bit in Season 3 of the Orville where Captain Ed Mercer is talking to navigator Charly Burke. Previously, the ship that Burke had been assigned to was destroyed in the battle to defend Earth from the Kaylon, a race of technological beings intent on wiping all organic life from the galaxy in retribution for their prior servitude (and which crewmember Isaac is a member). During the evacuation of the ship, Charly's friend and romantic interest sacrifices her own life to allow Charly to escape. Charly survived, but held an intense grudge and propagated a campaign of hatred against Isaac.
At one point, Captain Mercer, tired of her attitude, pulls her aside and lectures her. I'm paraphrasing, but he says something to the effect of:
"But this thing you're doing, where you act as if you have a monopoly on grief, is starting to wear a little thin."
Captain Mercer was present in the battle and lost friends of his own. Everyone in the Union Fleet did, and though Charly is certainly entitled to her grief, her behavior was unbecoming of an officer and highly detrimental to the functioning of the Orville as a ship. It was a pretty cool scene and felt very much like Seth writing Star Trek
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u/The_Dragon346 35m ago
She managed to convince an artificial life form devoid of emotion or empathy to kill himself.
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u/SpecimenOfSauron 1h ago
man i wish jax got this treatment--
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u/Character_Growth_397 1h ago
To me a while for me to realize you weren't referring to Mortal Kombat Jax
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u/learnaboutnetworking 1h ago edited 1h ago
Brent Norwalk, the good place (Highest recommendation this show is amazing lol)
Brent is a racist, sexist, narcissistic millionaire CEO inheritor of a plastics company. In his portion of the story, He's chosen as part of an experiment to see if even the worst people are capable of improvement (Let a bad person into heaven and see if they can improve within an amount of time). He fails every ethical dilemma thrown at him and makes every other character loathe him. By the end of the experiment, there's only one person willing to even try at all with him, ethics professor Chidi Anagonye, who hates him but is too morally principled to abandon him. Just as the experiment is ending, in a twist it's revealed to Brent and Chidi that they're actually both due to go to the bad place. Still in denial that he's not perfect, Chidi finally breaks and tells it to him straight:
Brent Norwalk: Man, crazy twist, huh? It's like something out of a Chip Driver novel.
Chidi Anagonye: Leave me alone, Brent.
Brent Norwalk: I'm kind of freaking out over here, man. You're my only real friend.
Chidi Anagonye: No, I'm not your friend. I don't even like you.
Brent Norwalk: But you helped me.
Chidi Anagonye: Yeah, I did, because I have this stupid moral code that forces me to help everyone. But you have never helped anyone, because you don't care about other people. Which is the bare minimum that a person has to do, just care a little about the other people around you, and you can't do it.
Brent Norwalk: What are you trying to say here?
Chidi Anagonye: [slowly and deliberately] You are a bad person.
[long pause]
Brent Norwalk: No, I'm not.
[gets up and backs away from Chidi, eyes widening]
Brent Norwalk: I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not. I'm not a bad person. I'm not. I'm a good person!
[glances around the room in desperation]
Brent Norwalk: Oh, man... Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no... No, no...
[pause]
Brent Norwalk: Look, Chidi... whatever happens next, I, um... I need to say this to you, all right? I am... I am so, so sor...
[countdown clock reaches zero and the experiment freezes]
I realize after I typed this it's not exactly "everyone went through a rough patch, it doesn't justify being a dick", but it still clearly someone saying "you are a dick and it's unjustifiable"
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u/Terminus-99 1h ago
Kubera: One Last God.
Gandharva claims he has only been killing people recently for the sake of his daughter.
Leez doesn’t think that works as an excuse, and calls him an hypocrite.
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u/BlaxicanXIX 55m ago
BASED
Trauma is not your fault but it is your responsibility. So tired of people being shitty and then trying to defend their behavior by calling themselves a victim
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u/ThatExchange2717 1h ago
essentially the entire premise of this movie a woman turns invisible. no one can see her except one person
>! turns the reason she was “invisible “ was because she was grieving her mother’s death. She was self isolating and self loathin. thinkimg no one truly saw her or understood . Once she realized she wasn’t the only one who was hurting and grieving. she stops being an asshole and starts to talk to her family and open up to them then she is finally seen and heard!<
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u/Few-Improvement-5655 1h ago edited 52m ago
I think one thing I will say is... sometimes trauma hits people differently and specific traumas affect people more deeply and some people just end up broken.
While there are limits, if you're too quick to jump to this trope's way of thinking then you might be hurting your own ability to feel empathy.
Edit: I think the silent downvotes for empathy or maybe trying to have an interesting discussion says all that needs to be said for this maladjusted misanthropic sub.
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u/BlaxicanXIX 53m ago
It's never unempathetic to hold people accountable for their behavior. Infantilizing a person with trauma by treating them like they have no agency is more harmful to said person in the long term
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u/newX7 10m ago
But that's not what they're doing, they're aren't being empathetic by holding people accountable. They are equating everyone's traumas as being the same and then talking down to someone who may or may not have had a significantly more traumatic life.
Also, how is "holding a person accountable" by telling them to get over their trauma helping them in the long term?
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u/Few-Improvement-5655 49m ago
Fundamentally mental health issues rob people of their agency. It's not infantilising, it's caring enough about someone to actually help them.
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u/newX7 1h ago
I actually hate this trope because it implies everyone suffering is comparable. Imagine a person whose worst trauma is losing a sibling in a car accident saying this to a Holocaust survivor, comparing their experiences, and then telling them to get over the Holocaust the same way the person got over their sibling’s accident.
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u/BlaxicanXIX 53m ago
>it implies everyone suffering is comparable
No it doesn't lmao, it implies that there is no such thing as suffering so great that it allows you to be shitty to others
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u/newX7 47m ago edited 34m ago
By saying "We've all gone through rough stuff" you're automatically implying that your rough stuff is somehow comparable to someone else's trauma.
Let me put it this way. Imagine a Holocaust survivor is the villain of the story. Now imagine the hero of the story saying "Dude, get fuck over the Holocaust. It was years ago. When my grandpa died of pneumonia, I didn't let that trauma define me and turn me into a bad, bitter, and cruel person, so you have no excuse letting the Holocaust killing all your family members and loved ones doing that to you."
Would you clap and cheer for what the hero said, or would you think he's a dick for equating his grandpa dying of an illness to a person who was themselves, along with their entire family and community, a victim of the Holocaust?
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u/Character_Growth_397 51m ago
Are we powerscaling trauma now?? Your experiences aren't an excuse to be a cunt to others who had nothing to do with it, full stop
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u/newX7 41m ago edited 10m ago
Yes. "There's a huge difference between saying "You're past doesn't justify what you're doing now" (which is what Black Panther did with Kilmonger) and saying "We all went through bad stuff" as if though people's experiences are comparable.
If someone's worst experience is something like their grandpa dying peacefully in their sleep, and another person is having been imprisoned in Auschwitz and watching their entire family and loved ones be tortured, experimented on, and murdered during the Holocaust, I think that the former can't really equate their experiences to the latter, or say with certainty that if they lived through the Holocaust, they wouldn't turn out the same way, or worse.
Let me put it this way. Imagine a Holocaust survivor is the villain of the story. Now imagine the hero of the story saying "Dude, get fuck over the Holocaust. It was years ago. When my grandpa died of pneumonia, I didn't let that trauma define me and turn me into a bad, bitter, and cruel person, so you have no excuse letting the Holocaust killing all your family members and loved ones doing that to you. Stop being a pussy and get the fuck over it."
Would you clap and cheer for what the hero said, or would you think he's a dick for equating his grandpa dying of an illness to a person who was themselves, along with their entire family and community, a victim of the Holocaust?
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u/baconboy-957 54m ago
It's not though... It's not that their experiences are comparable but neither experience justifies being a dick
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u/newX7 46m ago
By saying "We've all gone through rough stuff" you're automatically implying that your rought stuff is somehow comparable to someone else's trauma.
Let me put it this way. Imagine a Holocaust survivor is the villain of the story. Now imagine the hero of the story saying "Dude, get fuck over the Holocaust. It was years ago. When my grandpa died of pneumonia, I didn't let that trauma define me and turn me into a bad, bitter, and cruel person, so you have no excuse letting the Holocaust killing all your family members and loved ones doing that to you."
Would you clap and cheer for what the the hero said, or would you think he's a dick for equating his grandpa dying of an illness to a person who was themselves, along with their entire family and community, a victim of the Holocaust?
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u/ticklemememe 1h ago
Doesn’t Todd mooch off of bojack? Makes sense he would say that
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u/NoOnesMike50 1h ago
Being a mooch is better than being whatever the fuck Bojack is
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u/ticklemememe 1h ago
Then why wouldn’t he find someone else to mooch off of if it’s a problem?
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u/Character_Growth_397 1h ago
I mean, when he got the chance to leave BoJack sabotaged it
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u/ticklemememe 1h ago
What does he tell bojack when he finally leaves?
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u/Character_Growth_397 1h ago
IDK, I haven't gotten to that part yet?
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u/ticklemememe 1h ago edited 1h ago
You can Google it. Regardless he does eventually leave, which is good! He takes responsibility and they both have a right to privacy.
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u/daevamar 1h ago
He definitely distances himself from Bojack after OP’s example and views Bojack as less of a friend throughout the rest of the show.
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u/Tauroctonos 1h ago
I mean, at this particular point he's running an incredibly successful business.
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u/Mysterious_Math_1204 1h ago edited 1h ago
Benjamin Tennyson scolds his boyfriend Kevin Ethan Levin for insulting Gwen for not finding a cure for his mutation by saying that she's been going through spellbook after spellbook to try and cure him and his mutation doesn't grant him the right to lash out at her
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u/Why-Notes5978 1h ago edited 1h ago
The great irony is that Rocket is projecting and needed to hear that himself.