"The Reason You Suck" Speech/Literature: Difference between revisions
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Revision as of 00:46, 31 March 2014
- In Nineteen Eighty-Four, once Winston has been imprisoned and tortured, O'Brien inflicts this endlessly on him.
- The White Witch gives one of these to Aslan in The Lion the Witch And The Wardrobe, just before killing him.
- Done very well by Galbatorix to Oromis in Brisingr. So convincing that the Hatedom cheers him on.
- Peter Waylock from John C Wright's War of the Dreaming dishes out one of these to Azrael after he tries a We Can Rule Together, pointing out what it means that Azrael is reduced to asking his prisoner for help. Later on, Prometheus does much the same, by showing Azrael that his Dark Messiah plan for "freeing" the world by killing large portions of it was a failure from the start--partly because he just isn't man enough to pull it off. Ouch.
- In Atlas Shrugged John Galt has a massive speech in which he reams everyone he hates; it lasts for three whole hours and around sixty pages.
- In The Fifth Elephant, after local watchman Captain Tantony tells Sam Vimes that his wife Sybil is in the clutches of one of the evil werewolves behind the whole evil plot, Vimes gives Tantony this:
- Actually, name one Discworld novel where this doesn't happen at some point.
- Special mention goes to Lords and Ladies, where the glamor projected by the Fair Folk is enough that it makes Magrat (who has just gotten a long-awaited boost of confidence) shrink, and wither, and feel worthless for having even thought of hurting the Fairy Queen. The Fairy Queen invokes this without a word.
- Granny Weatherwax loves these. Every time she has a major part in a novel you can bet that right around the climax she'll be all up in the villain's grill telling them exactly why that thing they were so sure they were justified in doing is wrong, and why the very reason they even thought it was justified in the first place is the same reason she's about to kick their ass.
- Going Postal has this from a golem to the Dirty Coward Moist von Lipwig. It's something of a kicking off point for his evolution into a better man.
- In the Harry Potter series, Voldemort has something of a talent for these. He gives one to Harry in The Chamber of Secrets, one to Harry and all of his Death Eaters in The Goblet of Fire, one to Dumbledore AND Bellatrix in Order of the Phoenix and one to pretty much everyone in The Deathly Hallows.
- Especially Ron. He gave Ron a "Reason You Suck Speech" pretty much everyday when he was wearing the horcrux. Then it kinda climaxed, into a ghostly image of Hermione not only telling him every reason he sucks, but every reason he's afraid he might suck.
- Dumbledore does this to Voldemort a little in Order of the Phoenix. Then Harry goes and tops it in Deathly Hallows.
- In the latter case, it's immediately on the heels of Voldemort's Reason You Suck Speech.
- Glaurung the father of dragons delivers a phenomenal one to Anti-Hero Turin Turambar in The Silmarillion by JRR Tolkien:
- These happen quite a lot in the Skulduggery Pleasant series. Nefarian Serpine enjoys giving them regularly to Skulduggery in the first book, Baron Vengeous gives a few to Skulduggery in Playing With Fire and gets two particularly savage ones for China Sorrows.
- Skulduggery himself lays a thoroughly satisfying one on Davina Marr in Dark Days while Dreylan Scarab gives one to Thurid Guild.
- Valentine Morgenstern gives Imogen Herondale a deservedly savage and scathing one that results in her almost having a nervous breakdown.
- Ender gives a very nice one to Bonzo Madrid in Ender's Game.
Ender: Bonzo, your father would be proud of you. He would love to see you now, come to fight a naked boy in a shower, smaller than you, and you brought six friends. He would say, Oh, what honor. Be proud, Bonito, pretty boy. You can go home and tell your father, Yes, I beat up Ender Wiggin, who was barely ten years old, and I was thirteen. And I had only six of my friends to help me, and somehow we managed to defeat him, even though he was naked and wet and alone - Ender Wiggin is so dangerous and terrifying it was all we could do not to bring two hundred. |
- The speech saves his life.
- In Dreaming of Amelia by Jaclyn Moriarty, one of the main characters, Emily, wants to do Law at university. For this she needs a signed form from her principal, but she hasn't got it back. She finally works up the courage to go see him...
- Emily protests that there is a ghost, and Mr Ludovico tells her that if she can prove it, he'll sign the form. Emily finds evidence and returns...
- During the climax of The Name of the Rose, William of Baskerville unleashes one of these on Jorge of Burgos following his Motive Rant against laughter.
You are the Devil. Yes. They lied to you. The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and in moving, he always returns whence he came. You are the Devil, and like the Devil, you live in darkness. If you wanted to convince me, you have failed. I hate you, Jorge, and if I could, I would lead you downstairs, across the grounds, naked, with feathers stuck in your asshole and your face painted like a juggler and a buffoon, so that the whole monastery would laugh at you and be afraid no longer. I would like to smear honey all over you and roll you in feathers and take you on a leash to fairs, to say to all: He was announcing the truth to you and telling you that the truth has the taste of death, and you believed not in his words but in his grimness. And now I say to you that in the infinite whirl of possible things, God allows you to imagine a world where the presumed interpreter of the truth is nothing more than a clumsy raven who repeats words learned long ago. |
- Pride and Prejudice gives us one from Elizabeth Bennet to Mr. Darcy. And boy does it burn.
- Elizabeth also recieves one from Lady Catherine. It's burn is...signifigantly less.
- The good guys get one in Lois McMaster Bujold's The Vor Game when Gregor finally tells off Cavilo, pointing out that she's been treating the Emperor of three worlds as a naive newbie.
Commander Cavilo, both my parents died violently in political intrigue before I was six years old. A fact you might have researched. Did you think you were dealing with an amateur? |
- Jesus in the Left Behind book Glorious Appearing delivers his own to Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet.
- In one Cicada short story, the main character's parents on the brink of divorce are having an argument over the mother talking to her boyfriend while they were watching a Christmas special. After the mother berates the father for his "Catholic martyrdom" and expecting people who make mistakes to spend the rest of their lives on their knees, he responds with "You're stuck. You're going to wake up on the day you die and realize you hasn't changed one bit."
- In the X Wing Series, Wedge Antilles is comfortably on the border between Sergeant Rock, The Heart, and the Reasonable Authority Figure. He really chews out some of his pilots when he sees the need. Kell Tainer, someone with a marked tendency to fold when he's needed, once asks for Permission to Speak Freely, and when it's granted says "Every time I hear one of your 'motivational speeches' I want to beat you to death."
- In The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn , Sherburn plays this trope HARD. "Then he says, slow and scournful, 'The idea of YOU lynching anybody! Itβs amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a MAN!'" etc.
- In Elantris Sarene gives a nasty one to to Iadon.
- In A Confederacy of Dunces, Ignatius P. Reilly gets a good one from his mother towards the end:
Mrs. Reilly: You learnt everything, Ignatius, except how to be a human being. |
- In Death: This has popped up from time to time. A pretty nice one is when Eve gets attacked by Complete Monster Isaac McQueen in New York To Dallas and Eve tells him that he should have just run and hid somewhere for awhile after he broke out of prison. Instead, he decided to go after her. She concludes with "You're just fucking stupid!" He does not take that well.
- Everworld: Senna Wales dishes these out like they're going out of style. Jalil, The Smart Guy, recognises this, Hangs a Lampshade on it, and deconstructs one of her speeches point for point. He and Merlin the Magnificent team up to give Senna a joint The Reason You Suck Speech in Book 11.
- An Elegy for The Still Living: Francis delivers one of these to himself near the end. He does not feel too cheerful afterward.
- The Remains of the Day: At the end of the book, Stevens at last can articulate the truth in a The Reason We Suck Speech for Lord Darlington and himself. Lord Darlington played Head-in-The-Sand Management for the Nazis, and at the end of the day, he can say he was wrong and take the responsibility like a man. Stevens never did anything for himself, and he cannot say even that.
- In The Fox in the Chicken Coop by Ephraim Kishon. The Yes-Man finally snaps and calls the politician out on his incompetence, how he still doesn't leave politics to make room for someone else, and the stupid joke he always tells.
- In Warrior Cats, after her sister Ivypool pushes one too many of her Berserk Buttons, Dovewing tells Ivypool exactly why she thinks Ivypool is a terrible cat who deserves to rot in the deepest corners of the Dark Forest for all eternity.
- Squirrelflight also gives one to Jayfeather in Faded Echoes after he treats her and Leafpool like crap for two books straight.
- Leafstar gives one "The Reason You Suck" Speech of her own to Sol in After The Flood when he steals her kits just so he could become a warrior.
- In the first Dragonriders of Pern novel Dragonflight, Masterharper Robinton delivers a scathing one to the Lord Holders when they complain that Benden Weyr is asserting too much authority over them in the fight against Thread. Robinton reminds the Lord Holders that most of them treated Benden Weyr like crap for centuries and recently rode out to attack the Weyr because they thought there were no more Threads. Robinton then says that Benden has every right to leave the Holds to be eaten by Thread after all of that, and that the Lord Holders should shut up and do whatever the Weyrleader thinks is necessary to survive the return of the Threads. The speech makes F'lar very grateful that Masterharper Robinton is an ally of Benden Weyr and not an enemy.
- Aftran does "the reason you humans as a whole suck" speech in Animorphs, when she's talking to Cassie in "The Departure". She tells Cassie how humans suck because they don't appreciate the beauty of the world they live in and that they complain about the Yeerks enslaving them, but they do the same thing to their own livestock.
- Admiral Ackbar gives a memorable one to an Obstructive Bureaucrat and his supervisor during The Black Fleet Crisis.
Ackbar: Bureaucratic nonsense. Whatever happened to taking the measure of a man's courage, his honor--the fight in him, and the reasons in his heart. Do they all have to be as stamped-and-pressed alike as stormtroopers to get your approval? Get out." |
- In The Well of Loneliness, Anna delivers a blistering one of these to her daughter Stephen when she founds out that she's a lesbian and was in a relationship with someone.. Stephen awesomely then gives one right back, saying that she truly loved the woman she was briefly with and is a good person who deserves better treatment. This leads to a lifelong estrangement.
- A Song of Ice and Fire has many, unsurprising considering its Loads and Loads of Characters, most of whom deserve a bollocking at some point or another due to the Thirty Gambit Pileup Gray and Gray Morality setting.
- Sandor "The Hound" Clegane's numerous put-downs of Sansa's ideas about Knights in Shining Armour certainly count as this trope. These speeches, though harsh and contemptuous, are actually very good advice for the Crapsack World they live in, and the fact that he even bothers to insult her is one of the earliest signs that she's his Morality Pet.
- Tywin Lannister gives a particularly vicious one to his dwarf son Tyrion. This is an unusual example of this trope, because rather than telling hard truths, it is totally undeserved and reveals more about Tywin's Selective Obliviousness than it does about Tyrion.
- Tyrion himself doles out many, to various characters, and in contrast to his father, his observations are painfully accurate for the victim.
- A serious mistake by Edmure Tully results in him being given this by several different characters at the same time.
- Theon is given several before and during his poorly planned capture of Winterfell, but he's too much of a Smug Snake at the time to pay any attention to them.
- Cersei receives a truly excellent one from her uncle Kevan with regards to her many failings as a ruler and a mother. She throws wine in his face, orders him to leave, and thinks to herself that he's a traitor rather than face the truth of his accusations.