Bullying a Dragon: Difference between revisions
m
clean up, replaced: [[Popeye| → [[Popeye (comic strip)|
m (clean up, replaced: [[Popeye| → [[Popeye (comic strip)|) |
|||
Line 212:
* Throughout ''[[The First Law]]'' trilogy by Joe Abercrombie, Bayaz, First of the Magi and Logen "The Bloody Nine" Ninefingers are underestimated, dismissed, or even insulted, threatened, or ignored as irrelevant, always to the sorrow of those who did so.
* People keep antagonizing [[Honor Harrington]]. They ''know'' her record. They ''know'' what she can do. They ''know'' her in-universe [[Fan Nickname]] is "The Salamander" because she survives - and ''wins'' - battles that can and have killed equally skilled officers. They ''know'' she has a living buzzsaw as a pet/partner, the ear of the Queen, the loyalty of virtually the entire Manticoran Navy and scores of scary people for whom this is a [[Berserk Button]]. But they keep doing it. Exceedingly unpleasant consequences (usually involving bleeding and/or death) follow. Especially for [[Upper Class Twit|Pavel]] [[Dirty Coward|Young]].
** Being fair, Honor's opponents largely fall into two
** The same goes- perhaps even moreso- for the ''[[Too Dumb to Live|utter fools]]'' who keep trying to hurt Anton Zilwicki's kids.
*** After the bodies stopped bouncing from that one, they shifted focus primarily from trying to kill his kids to trying to kill ''him''
** Averted when one of Luiz Rozsak's subordinates suggests having Lt. Thandi Palane, who is trying to quit their criminal conspiracy, killed to tie up the last loose end. Roszak quite reasonably points out that she is unlikely to testify against them as the people she is defecting to are allies that would still benefit from Roszak's success... and also points out that not only was Palane the deadliest person in their entire gang but that her new friends including the galaxy's most notorious terrorist, the deadliest assassin in known space save possibly Palane herself, and one of the greatest spymasters alive.
* Happens in the ''[[Mass Effect]]'' novel ''Ascension'' where one of the kids in the Ascension Project decides to pick on Gillian Grayson. To be fair to the kids picking on her it didn't seem that she had much power but boy was he mistaken.
Line 352:
** If you tell a couple of bandits that you are the Warden Commander in ''Awakening'', some of them immediately realise that its better to leave, while one actually ''jumps off of a cliff'' and likely to their death, just to avoid having to fight you.
** Arl Howe is probably the king of this trope, as well as [[Do Not Taunt Cthulhu]]. If you took the Human Noble origin, he brags to you about how he butchered your family. Is there a brain in his head ''at all?''
*** Being fair to Arl Howe, by this point there is absolutely nothing he could say or do that would convince you ''not'' to kill him, and he knows it. So he actually does have valid reasons to taunt
* In ''[[Dragon Age II]]'':
** Chantry zealots such as Petrice go out of their way to escalate hostilities against the hundreds of elite Qunari warriors who were shipwrecked in Kirkwall. The Qunari have done ''nothing'' against Kirkwall for years despite the Arishok's growing disgust with the [[Wretched Hive]] of a city {{spoiler|since they are busy looking for their sacred relic}}. They aren't even actively looking for converts to the Qun—people are joining them of their own free will. Near the end of Act II, {{spoiler|when Petrice murders Seamus Dumas after he joined the Qun}} the Arishok warns Hawke that the provocations the Qunari suffered have finally worked {{spoiler|and later launches a full invasion of the city.}}
Line 498:
* Porcupines and dogs. A golden retriever will yelp and run away after getting a few quills in its nose, having learned a valuable lesson. A pit bull will get pissed, grab and ''shake'' the porcupine, getting quills stuck in its mouth, in its eyes and all over its head and neck.
* Despite some rather obvious problems with this approach, some would-be thieves still try to [[Too Dumb to Live|rob a]] [[Ballistic Discount|gun store]], police station, or a jailhouse.
* A man by the name of Frank "Rocky" Fiegel who lived in Chester, Illinois was known throughout the town for being the local scrapper. One tale mentions that several young men took him out to the woods with the intent of ganging up on him and beating him up. He came back without a scratch while the men out in the woods needed medical attention. To further illustrate this man's fighting ability, he was the inspiration for [[Popeye (comic strip)|a certain cartoon character with a noted love for spinach]].
* Nikolai Valuev is a 7 foot tall, 320 pound professional boxer with a record of 53-2-1. Yet, a 61 year old man STILL decided to cuss out his wife over a parking spot. Needless to say, the first punch literally knocked him several feet through the air.
* The attack on Pearl Harbor in [[World War II]], as noted in the entry for ''[[Tora! Tora! Tora!]]'' above. Yamamoto may or may not have actually said the "sleeping giant" line, but we do know that he mentioned his misgivings regarding this to his superiors:
| |||