Your pet peeve tropes

“Sorry; there’s just no right way to hit a woman.”

“Then do it the wrong way!”

"Asexual character fucks all genders as a manipulation tool because they have no feelings about sex" seems more common than i thought.

-rimshot-

Does anyone else have issues with Ambition Is Evil? Yes, there is such a thing as a toxic attitude towards ambition, but extending that to anyone who wants to change the status quo for any reason leaves a really bad taste in my mouth. As does the fact that, historically, it was often used as propaganda to maintain power imbalances.

Also, there's the irony of it. If you've written a book, or directed a film, or made a game, guess what? You're ambitious. When that Fridge Logic sets in, it becomes difficult to take the trope seriously.

You and me both. -high five-

Ambition used to be see more positively, I don't know what changed it.

my guess, ambitious people themselves, namely those that have already achived their ambition and wants to ensure no one else can take it away from them. After all, someone jealous of the local dictator is someone more willing to try to kill them.

That is my guess anyway.

People not wanting to rock the boat? When exactly did this shift start? Depending on when it did, perhaps it was done as a way of demonizing social mobility.

Edited by Kaiseror on Mar 18th 2024 at 9:49:31 AM

I'm curious about when it started as well. Was it a response to robber barons, unions, or something else?

Didn't it it start as a thing whenever someone's ambitions began hurting everyone else around them as "means to an end"?

Ambition is fine as it is when nobody gets hurt from it, but when someone does, that's when it turns into a bad thing.

I blame JK Rowling.

I don't know if Rowling is 100% responsible for the Ambition Is Evil trope existing considering ambitious villains were a thing since at least Shakespeare's time (i.e Lady Macbeth and Iago) and likely predates him (I went with Shakespeare villains as those are the earliest examples I could think of atm and I'm going through Shakespeare brainrot). Although, Rowling nominating the Hogwarts house where ambition is one of its main personality traits the Token Evil Teammate house probably helped normalize the Ambition Is Evil trope.

I do think the line between Ambition Is Evil and a more heroic type of ambition has to do with how far someone goes. Ambition can drive a character do absolutely evil things — which is where it becomes Ambition Is Evil. I don't like the idea that it's inherently bad, but very few stories actually seem to push the idea that having any sort of ambition is evil. It's more along the lines of not letting it impact your morality.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 18th 2024 at 8:16:32 AM

I just wrote the first celebrity that popped into my head. Could’ve blamed Rik Mayall instead…

Ambition has always been demonized, especially in the past where class society was even stricter. People thought god, some other supernatural force, or inherent superiority put the nobility at the top, so rising above your birth status was against nature/god/etc. bullshit.

(Guns and crossbows were also viewed as evil and against natural order because they were fast to learn and thus accessible to poor people, but able to kill knights with expensive armor and lifetime of training)

Edited by Nukeli on Mar 20th 2024 at 1:32:40 PM

When a married couple are depicted as clearly not loving or even liking each other, but the husband is the only one vilified, even though both spouses are clearly wrong.

"Ha ha, i hate my spouse!" is such a rampant trope that i'm starting to think straight people only marry for sex, or just marry the first available person because they're scared of not having company when they're old.

Edited by Nukeli on Mar 21st 2024 at 4:18:47 PM

...or it's a Boomer stereotype down to their own comedy that tends to play off of the taboo surrounding divorce from that time period. As well as the pressure people had to settle down and have a family.

The "marriage sucks / I hate my spouse" stuff is definitely annoying, but it's also from a specific type of people. The kind of people who don't believe in splitting up for cultural or religious reasons. Definitely not just a "straight people" thing.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 21st 2024 at 12:16:59 PM

That's not exactly true. Crossbows were banned, but the same ban, banned bows and arrows and fighting on certain days of the week. There was a religious and legal movement to control violence, but it was mostly about protecting the unarmed persons (such as clergy), from knights and other armed men (not all men at arms were noble). Violence usually went the one direction.

There wasn't the concern about crossbows allowing untrained peasants to kill knights. In general, that seems to have been true about the musket, and falsely applied to the crossbow. There doesn't seem to be that much concern with class revolt in the middle ages. (Although there were uprisings, they were rare, and unsuccessful). Actually, peasants were required to own weapons as well as craftsmen. Not every peasant, but a farm owner would have to provide an armed man. In Germany, there are still shooting clubs that date to the middle ages.

Source:https://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Crossbow-Weapon-Kill-King/dp/1526789531

Ambition isn't limited to rising above your social class. There were rich peasants and poor peasants. Craftsmen could be ambitious as well, as they were often small businessmen, but they could have quite large businesses.

If you think JK Rowling invented the idea that ambition is bad, read a book written before you were born.

I have noticed that ambition is often praised in young men wanting to make a career. George Bailey is ambitious, Horatio Hornblower is as well. That is the good ambition, the one that moved you to work hard in order to achieve recognition.

Those, "I hate my spouse" jokes, were called Old Married Couple Jokes, and shouldn't be taken literally. They are expressions of frustration, that are normal when you live with someone for a long time.

Edited by ry4n on Mar 21st 2024 at 9:48:52 AM

"Were" or "are"? Because the jokes are still made today and most of them seem to have genuine malice behind them, at least the ones you see online. It sure could be frustration but there's an entire stereotype about marriage being a trap where you get stuck with one person forever and are better off being single and free and happy. It's a trope for a reason. It's not wrong to say that media depicts marriage as being shitty, and there are tons of cases where this mindset boils down to an aversion to divorce where the clearly unhappy couple are stuck together permanently.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 21st 2024 at 12:54:22 PM

You mean stuff like Ray's father says on Everybody loves Raymond? I wouldn't assume that it only comes from people who are against divorce.

Do you know many people that find divorce taboo?

Of course I do. That's my entire point.

And I'm not talking about sitcom families necessarily, but yeah. Also internet "boomer memes" and various stand-up comics. Again, these are modern day examples I'm referring to.

Edited by WarJay77 on Mar 21st 2024 at 2:27:23 PM

I saw a stand up rountine where the comic talked about how he loves his wife, but sometimes he also hates her, but just sometimes. That kinda of joke can be really mean, but I don't think it is indicative of an unhealthy marriage. Life is about trade offs. One can't be single and married at the same time. Being married means tolerating your spouse always doing the same things that bug you.

Those aren't the jokes we're referring to, though. Yes, some of them aren't actually indicative of a flaw in the marriage. Others probably are, and that's all.

The only reason I posted about this to begin with was because the stereotype in media exists for reasons that are not just some random inherent issue with the straights.

Reminds me of the Bachelor Party of How I Met Your Mother. One of the attendees, Stuart, runs the “marriage sucks/marriage is prison” jokes so far into the ground, to the point that the others start asking if everything is okay with him and his wife.