Good Is Not Nice/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character is heroic but unpleasant.

  • Straight: Amazing Girl routinely saves the people of Trope City from the actions of Emperor Evulz. However, she doesn't like interacting with people.
  • Exaggerated:
  • Justified:
    • Amazing Girl doesn't view politeness or civility as part of her job description.
    • Amazing Girl can save lives or sign autographs and opts for the first.
    • Amazing Girl is only a superheroine because she feels that she's obligated to use her powers for good. She doesn't enjoy it at all, and wishes she had a normal life, but it's not like she can see a burning building and just ignore the people trapped inside it.
  • Inverted:
  • Subverted:
    • Amazing Girl seems like she'll be the type of person to be heroic yet antisocial. However, after stopping Evulz's plans, she sticks around to sign autographs and chat with people, and arrange counselling for Emperor Evulz's wife, children, and the minions who loved him.
    • Amazing Girl was a case of this trope but she realized that her personality issues were causing a lot of problems in her life. After all, just because she hasn't really done a Heel Face Turn doesn't mean that what she is doing is okay, so she tries to stop her personality problems before things get worse.
  • Double Subverted: That was a one-time thing. Most of the time, she's as antisocial as they come.
  • Parodied:
    • It becomes clear that Amazing Girl is only acting this way to cultivate a "brooding loner" image.
    • Amazing Girl: I have done a good deed once! Therefore I can abuse people as much as I want!
  • Deconstructed:
    • Amazing Girl's lack of desire to be around people eventually comes to a head and she decides to stop saving people - she's done with the gig.
    • Amazing Girl's negative attributes seem to be a lot more apparent than her good ones up to a point where the idea of her being good is really losing any sense of credibility.
  • Reconstructed:
    • She eventually gets over it and starts rescuing people again.
    • She's not really asocial/anti-social so much as very mean to people who deserve it.
    • The story tries really hard to justify Amazing Girl's more negative aspects.
    • The story does understand that Amazing Girl's more negative attributes are not exactly justified but does plead that it would be immoral to ignore her more heroic aspects as well.
  • Zig Zagged: Her attitude is dependent on her mood. If she's having a good day, she'll stop and chat with you as if you were old friends. If she's in a bad mood, she'll be antisocial.
  • Averted: Good is nice.
  • Enforced: "Alright, we need this new hero to have a flaw. Let's make her a real jerk!"
  • Lampshaded: "Just because I'm the good guy doesn't mean I'm a nice person."
  • Invoked: Amazing Girl, when starting out, is nice to people and that puts them in harm's way. So...
  • Defied:
    • "You know what? I don't care if I have to save them. They're still my friends."
    • Well at least Amazing Girl is not a Complete Monster... So what? She is still not a good person!
  • Discussed: "That Amazing Girl is such a great hero. Do you think she's a jerk? It happens all the time in comics."
  • Conversed: "Why's the Amazing Girl so mean in this comic?"

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