Mugging the Monster/Literature

• Main
• Haiku
• Laconic
• Playing With
• Quotes
• All Subpages
  • Urban Legends
• Create New

Examples of Mugging the Monster in Literature include:

Discworld

• In Guards! Guards! , a crook tries to rob what turns out to be a fire-breathing dragon. It doesn't go well. This trope is also part of why Carrot Ironfoundersson had an uneventful 500-mile journey from the Copperhead Mountains to Ankh-Morpork.

People who are rather more than six feet tall and nearly as broad across the shoulders often have uneventful journeys. People jump out at them from behind a rock then say things like, "Oh. Sorry. I thought you were someone else."

• In Reaper Man, a gang tries to rob Windle Poons, who is not only an elderly wizard but one who has recently come back from the dead as a zombie.
• In Maskerade, some muggers target a pair of frail old ladies, one of is Granny Weatherwax.
• In Feet of Clay, a group of crooks tries to rob The Bucket, the local pub for coppers. They bust in only to find it full of off-duty police offers who don't take kindly to having their boozing interrupted. And then, to top it off, they take Angua hostage, under the (let's be fair, entirely understandable) belief that the small-ish woman would be a much better hostage than the six-foot-six wall of muscle (Carrot) or the grizzled old badass with such a fearsome reputation that even the Assassins' Guild refuses to go near him (Vimes). Unfortunately, no-one told them that Angua's a werewolf. The audience calmly ignored them (apart from a few who made quips to the effect of "Don't play with your food.").
  • Some jewel thieves later make the same mistake about Angua in Jingo—they end up confessing to any crime suggested (even in cases where they have to guess what was stolen or lie about their gender) while begging to be let out of the vault.
• And in Men at Arms, members of the Assassins' Guild gather in their courtyard to threaten the Watchmen, or possibly kill them "for trespassing" if Vimes won't back off and leave. Then they realize that one of the Watchmen is Detritus... and their elegantly-crafted stilettos and sophisticated poisons will do diddly-squat to a troll.
• In The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents, a Genre Savvy highwayman robbing the coach Keith, Maurice, and the rats are on goes through a sort of checklist to see if there are wizards, witches, trolls, werewolves, or vampires on the coach. Too bad he didn't check for Talking Animals...
• It happens twice in Lords and Ladies; first, Casanunda, the "World's Second Greatest Lover", attacks a coach full of wizards. After a display of octarine fire conrol, the dwarf joins them, whereupon they are attacked by a band of highwaymen—the leader of which is turned into a pumpkin for his trouble, retaining his hat in accordance with the Universal Laws of Humor.
• In Carpe Jugulum, a highwayman tries to rob the visiting Count and his family of vampires, and that doesn't end well. Then his ghost tries to rob Death. Death is more amused than anything, complimenting the man on his (relative) vitality in trying to stick to his guns post-mortem.
• The New Firm in The Truth end up on both sides of this trope—they're attempt-mugged by a member of the Thieves' Guild, which does not go well for the thief, and later walk the into Biers during business hours and openly try to intimidate a Werewolf to work for them, which does not go well for them.
• In the original past of Night Watch some thieves tried to rob John Keel; he made short work of them. In the modified past, Carcer claims that some thieves tried to attack HIM -- "at least, they had some money with them". He was among the thieves who attacked Keel and killed him.
• Andy Shank and company trying to beat up Nutt in Unseen Academicals.
• There's also a variation in Jingo, where the (relatively) good guys Colon and Nobby try to mug some Klatchians in an alleyway to get their clothes in order to go undercover, but the Klatchians get the better of them and they lose their own clothes instead.
• Happens between the Summoning Dark and Vimes in Thud!. A subversion, as Vimes unconsciously drives the anicient hate monster from his mind...In later books, it's his FRIEND!
• Yet another one in Hogfather where Susan Sto Helit stops for a drink in a bar popular among various kinds of supernatural monsters. A drunken bogeyman mistakes her for a human girl slumming among monsters for a thrill and makes increasingly scornful and lewd comments to her, despite the warnings of the bartender, who knows that Susan is only mostly human. The bogeyman gets an unpleasant surprise both in the bar and later when he hides under the beds of the children Susan is caring for as a governess. Perhaps the bartender should have told him whose granddaughter he was messing with.
  • Susan's father got subjected to this trope first in Mort. Lampshaded by the author: Three men had appeared behind him ... They had the heavy, stolid look of those thugs whose appearance in any narrative means that it's time for the hero to be menaced a bit, although not too much, because it's also obvious that they're going to be horribly surprised. They threaten to kill him. Mort is Death's apprentice. It goes about as well as you imagine.
• In Going Postal Moist von Lipwig is discussing a special mail coach to Genua. The danger of bandits is brought up, and one of the brothers operating the coaches points out that there aren't any bandits on that road any more, which is good. The other isn't so sure, since they never found out what wiped them out. This is the road through Überwald, no less.
• Chidder's father's ship in Pyramids is a small, richly decorated merchant vessel. It is also extremely fast, surprisingly manoeuvrable and equipped with a large ram below the water line, having been built for out-pirating pirates.

Other works

• The Terrible Old Man by H.P. Lovecraft. Some burglars decided to go for an easy target. Oh! And who is this easy target? It’s The Terrible Old Man…. Yeah.
• In the first chapter of Artemis Fowl, A man tries to pickpocket Butler. Due to Butler being hugely strong, said pickpocket gets his fingers broken.
• A flashback in Billy & Howard features this. Three goons decide to pick on Billy's friend. Billy goes nuts (and more than a little racist) and brutalizes all three.
• Happens twice in Brent Weeks' The Night Angel Trilogy: first when Azoth's gang try to ambush Durzo Blint, the most accomplished wetboy (magical assassin) ever, and again in the third book when the next generation of child gangers try to ambush Kylar who has taken Durzo's place.
• In David Eddings' Polgara the Sorceress, the titular character is riding alone through a forest when two bandits attempt to rob/rape her. She calmly states that she is glad that she finally found some food and disguises herself and her horse as man-eating monsters with an illusion, sending the pair running.
  • Eddings averted this early in the Elenium. Some street thugs decide to mug that guy on the warhorse who just rode into town. Sparhawk tells them he's not interested in playing, as he throws back his cape to reveal armor and broadsword. The thugs decide to go elsewhere.
  • And then played it straight (but as a non-mugging example) in the sequel, the Tamuli. A character makes a not-quite-audible, but clearly offensive remark about Ehlana, Sparhawk's queen and also his wife. Another character calls for a moment of silence in memory of the loud-mouthed oaf who made the comment; the oaf doesn't get the hint until he's told just exactly who Sparhawk is.
• In Good Omens members of The Mafia would routinely comment on how Aziraphale has such a lovely bookstore... and then would never be seen or heard from again...
• Subverted in Lawrence Watt-Evans's Ethshar novel The Misenchanted Sword. The protagonist has a magical sword that won't let him die till he's killed 98 more people, and he wanders back alleys looking for trouble, acting like an old man, a big purse of gold on his hip, expecting this trope. He doesn't run into anyone.
  • Doubly subverted when he later runs into some thugs robbing an elderly lady. Also played straight with said elderly lady.
• Honor Harrington: The most memorable and sadistically amusing is when Pavel Young tries to rape Honor and ends up beaten to a pulp. Of course, given that Honor is taller than most men, visibly has the muscle definition of a pro boxer, is a genetically-engineered heavy-worlder, and was the Academy unarmed combat champion, one honestly wonders what Pavel Young was expecting.
  • On an international level when Haven attacks Manticore and when the Solarians attack the alliance.
  • Lampshaded by Captain Oversteegan in The Service of the Sword. A bully officer tries to use his rank and position to verbally abuse Midshipman Abigail Hearns. At which point the Captain clues in The Bully that he might come from a reasonably prominent family but Abigail's family are offworld royalty, even if she doesn't give herself airs about it. And as a bonus in case he missed that point, while Abigail is herself a patient and long-suffering woman her father is a living stereotype of Graysonian overprotective patriarchal wrath, and the bully's activities are rapidly approaching the threshold where her father might actually find out about them.
• In one of the Troubleshooters books, someone attempts to mug Jules Cassidy, who's short, gay, and looks like he could be in a boy band. Jules, however, is an FBI agent.
• Happens to Repairman Jack about once every book, starting in the first installment where he does it on purpose to draw out the mugger who stole a MacGuffin from his client.
  • A later novel reveals that Jack goes out and gets himself mugged in the park each year, to raise money for the Little League in the form of his would-be muggers' wallets and jewellery.
• In Mercedes Lackey's Children of the Night, a shapeshifting souleater vampire who leaves a group and comes back sated is said by the group's leader to have been "trolling for rapists" in the form of an attractive young woman. The doubting member of the group, who is repulsed and uncomfortable about basically murdering random people but needs to feed, thinks this sounds like a good idea, and so he wanders Central Park until a junkie attacks him and is killed.
  • In Mercedes Lackey's Brightly Burning, Lavan is cornered by a pack of school bullies who pin him down and beat him with a lash. His panic results in a violent breakthrough manifestation of his Firestarting gift that he's the only survivor of.
  • Lackey likes this trope. In The Last of the Season, what could be more helpless than a cute six year old girl holding a teddy bear?
• The Warlock has a couple street thugs attempt to mug Mars Ultor.
• Iron Fist starts with an attempt by Imperial elements to capture or kill the Wraiths; they send a cyborg to the bar where the Wraiths are enjoying themselves, have the cyborg start a fight, and then show up dressed as the local police to arrest everyone. But the Wraiths cotton on to the fact that something's not right. The roster at the time included Runt, Piggy, an expert in hand-to-hand combat, and Phanan, who promptly cut someone's throat with a laser scalpel.
• In Diane Duane's Spider-Man novel The Octopus Agenda, three punks try to assault Venom. With switchblades. Yeah, that doesn't go so well for them.
• In Tanya Huff's Blood Debt, an unfortunate car thief makes off with a van, moments before sundown... unaware that there's a vampire asleep in the back.
• In Jhereg, young Vlad turned out to be the Monster when accosted by a drunken old Dragaeran sailor. The belligerent Easterner-hater took a header off a cliff, as Vlad scored his first confirmed homicide.
  • Later, while on the run from the Jhereg, he gets his money robbing bandits. The beginning of Iorich suggests that this is usually a consequence of their failed attempts to rob him.
  • And in the Viscount of Adrilankha, Piro and company attempt to rob a merchant wagon that turns out to contain his dad and Pel, who'd set the whole thing up with the express intent of getting attacked.
• An Italian pickpocket is compelled by an unscrupulous police detective to stage a botched theft from a gentleman whose fingerprints the cop wants to collect covertly. The detective doesn't warn the soon-to-be-late filcher that the target is none other than Hannibal Lecter, with entirely predictable consequences.
• In a related variant, the house of Glen Cook's Garrett, P.I., is occasionally broken into, as it's situated in a bad neighborhood. Only out-of-town criminals do so lightly, however, due to the resident Dead Man's vast telekinetic powers and nasty sense of humor.
• The Six Sacred Stones. The team crash land in Darkest Africa, and run into a rape gang. Zoe decides to draw their attention while Wizard sneaks out the back with the kids. Did I mention she used to be called Bloody Mary in the Irish Army? Those poor souls didn't stand a chance.
• In Maximum Ride, Max takes a stand to protect a girl being threatened by several bigger boys, one of whom is carrying a gun. Max is a genetically engineered hybrid with superhuman strength and agility and has been trained for some time how to use it. The boys basically tell her to bugger off. Cue the buttkicking.
  • Although to be fair, she did end up getting shot by one of them later. Doesn't tend to work as well when someone has a gun.
• In Rainbow Six, three Spanish terrorists attempt to hijack a plane. A plane that has a former SEAL, former SAS major, and former Army Special Forces on board. The end result: three unconscious Spanish terrorists.
  • In an earlier Tom Clancy novel, Without Remorse, that same former SEAL is much younger and going about his Roaring Rampage of Revenge for his murdered Love Interest. He is staggering down the street disguised as a wino when a cop grabs him by the shoulder, thinking he might be the serial crook-killer they're looking for. Said cop finds himself pinned face down on the concrete before he can figure out what happened.
  • In an earlier scene in the same novel, a mugger is assaulting a woman when Kelly happens along and intervenes. In an excess of drug-fueled bravado, the mugger turns on him, only to find himself stone cold dead in a matter of seconds. Ironically, this good deed is what gives the cops a clue about Kelly's identity and modus operandi.
• Elminster in Myth Drannor:

Brigand: (stopping a lone rider) Get down or die. Elminster: (knocking down three men with a spell) I believe a more traditional greeting consists of the words "well met."

• • At the beginning of Elminster's Daughter, a thief named Narnra Shalace again tries to rob Elminster. He easily fends her off and is about to knock her out when a weird magical interaction reveals that she's his daughter.
• In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine novel The Siege, a Psycho for Hire Shapeshifter Meta turns into a girl and befriends a Bajoran girl and her mother. At this point a Cardassian barges in and decides to rape them all, starting with Meta. The Cardassian is ripped apart. From the inside.
• The Clark Ashton Smith short story "Monsters in the Night" has a monster (a werewolf) mug another monster: a Terminator-esque robot.
• In Snow Crash, a white supremacist hick picks on the super-swordsman Hiro Protagonist. Hiro waits just long enough for the hick to threaten his life so he can decapitate him with just cause.
  • One reason Hiro prefers his swords is their tendency to avert this trope; skinheads aside, most lowlife types aren't dumb enough pick fights with someone who is obviously carrying a pair of swords. And even the skinhead might not have tried it without a roomful of buddies, not that they improved his life expectancy any.
    • Being fair to the skinhead, 'half a dozen guys with guns' is generally considered very good odds vs. 'one guy with swords'. The skinhead's error lay in getting drunk enough to forget that the entire point of having a gun is the ability to kill people from outside sword range.
  • The Japanese businessman who picks a virtual swordfight with Hiro is another example: while the businessman isn't nearly as good as he thinks, Hiro is awesome in real life and also wrote the code for swordfighting in the virtual world.
• Has bittersweet results for Lale in The Assassins of Tamurin. The sweet—she kills the guy. The bitter—the subsequent "My God, What Have I Done??"
• The first chapter of a novel bridging a film and its sequel has a Somali pirate attempting to plunder a ship with a black pickup truck and a light green emergency-crew Hummer on deck. Oh, did I mention the films this novel was bridging were the Transformers movies?
  • It specifically notes that one man who survived not only quit piracy, but, for the rest of his life, crossed the street whenever he encountered a pickup truck to maximize distance from it.
• In Raven's Gate, someone tries to mug the witch that goes to pick up Matt at the beginning. He appears to have committed suicide involuntarily.
• Either inverted or played straight in Oleg Divov's Night Watcher: a vampire decides to stalk a drunken cop, whom the readers already know to be a Badass Normal and The Big Guy. The cop mistakes the fruity vampire for a gay stalker and decides to teach him a lesson before he causes any trouble, preemptively attacking, beating him up and dragging him off to the station. Mind you, the vampire was mostly taken by surprise, and might have turned the tables later, if not for this cop encountering his colleague Captain Kotov along the way; Kotov quickly realizes what's going on and finishes the vampire off.
• In the Antony Horowitz novel Raven's Gate, someone tries to mug Mrs Deverill, who is basically an Eldritch Abomination. She mind rapes him into committing suicide with his knife. One inch at a time.
• Brotherhood of the Rose by David Morrell has a group of street thugs gang up on Saul—who unknown to them has been a CIA black ops assassin since he was a teenager. He then breaks their fingers, takes their wallets, and comes up with seventy dollars.
• Happens in the Star Wars book Shatterpoint. Corrupt police think they can steal Mace Windu's things while he is in customs because he is naked and unarmed. They soon learn that a Jedi Knight does not need clothes or a lightsaber to kick ass.
• In Jack Vance's The Demon Princes cycle, there's a brief description of the time a thirteen-year-old Kirth Gersen—who is being trained for his eventual Roaring Rampage of Revenge—and his grandfather -- who is doing the training—are attacked by a mugger. Gersen breaks a number of the man's bones, ending with his neck, while grandfather watches.
• In Wolfblade, a Warhammer 40K novel, while on Terra 3, Space Wolves are out at a pub having a quiet dinner. Some morons try to start a brawl with them. Note, said Wolves are Astartes, are about 8 or 9 feet tall, are superstrong and fast, and were wearing their power armor. Needless to say, the morons got their brawl.
• In the Stephen King short story "Popsy", Sheridan, who has been abducting and selling children to pay off his gambling debts, kidnaps a young boy from a shopping mall. Unfortunately for him, the boy is a vampire and manages to break his restraints and turn the tables on his kidnapper just in time for his grandfather, the eponymous Popsy, to come pick him up. The two vampires exsanguinate Sheridan.
• Thieves' World book 3 Shadows of Sanctuary, story "Looking for Satan". Wess, a naive young woman just arrived in Sanctuary, goes out for a walk at night. She is attacked by Bauchle Mayne (a criminal her group had run into earlier) and his accomplice. After she knees Bauchle Mayne in the groin and slashes the accomplice with a knife, the accomplice drags Bauchle Mayne away as fast as they can go.
• Happens somewhat early on in Jack Higgins's On Dangerous Ground when a Neo-Nazi thug grabs a woman. She responds by kissing him, turning out to be a distraction ploy for her to grab her flick knife tucked up her skirt, which she later uses to cut his face. It is revealed later on that she is a former member of a loyalist paramilitary force in Northern Ireland.
• In A Night in the Lonesome October by Roger Zelazny, a few chaps threatened to carve up a scrawny "pretty boy". Then Jack got "funny light" in the eyes, pulled out of his pocket a big knife gleaming with starlight—indoors—and grinned...
• "The Last Defender of Camelot" by Roger Zelazny begins with a trio of muggers picking on a harmless-looking old man who turns out to be the last surviving Knight of the Round Table—and not just any knight, but Sir Lancelot du Lac, who never lost a fight in his entire life.
• Happens a few times to Fleming in The Vampire Files series, both in the city and when he's jumped by tramps on his parents' unoccupied farm. A Vegetarian Vampire, he doesn't actually hurt such attackers, just scares the living shit out of 'em.
• In The Visitor, the second book in the Animorphs series, a young man attempts to persuade Rachel to get into his car. When the creep doesn't take no for an answer, she scares the living daylights out of him by morphing halfway into an elephant. Considering that she could have completed the morph and stomped him flat or just gone grizzly bear on him, the jerk got off easy.
• Happens on a species level in many science-fiction stories, a noteworthy one being Turtledove's "The Road Not Taken". Aliens, who note that humans are so primitive they don't even have antigravity or FTL (which is so easy to discover that on some planeets hunter-gatherers have stumbled onto it) figure it will be a routine invasion. So they march out of their landing ships, arrange themselves in rows, and raise their blackpowder muskets. On 21st century Earth. It is a very short invasion.
• In Skulduggery Pleasant: Death Bringer',' a group of thieves try to rob everyone at the Requiem Ball. Said Ball contains all sorts of magic-users whose abilities range from wielding various elements to other fancy abilities such as Shapeshifting and 'Sensitivity' (precognition). An arse-kicking ensues.
• 1632: Doesn't it sound like a nice recreation for overworked sixteenth-century mercenaries to Rape, Pillage and Burn around this small peaceful town in which everybody just happens to own and know how to use twentieth-century firearms?
• Happens several times in Belisarius Series. The most interesting is when the bad guys hire ally thugs to assassinate Bellisarius' wife, only for her to duck into a butcher shop, throw a very sticky cauldron of hot stew on them and while they are recovering fall to hacking them with a knife(which there are plenty to hand in a butcher shop) until help arrives in the form of one of her husband's soldiers armed to the teeth and as capable of killing alley thugs as of killing flies.
• In one of the Judge Dredd novels, bad things happen whenever Dredd tries to take a bath including one incident when some thieves attempted to burgle his apartment. Needless to say they ended up serving long sentences.
• Curse of the Wolfgirl has a couple of rather yobbish Alpha Bitches relentlessly bully Agrivex, a young fire-demon currently pretending to be human to attend college, which surprisingly works out all right for them since 'Vex is a sweet natured girl who really doesn't understand nastiness or is prepared to hurt people. Then they try it on 'Vex's friend Kalix. Kalix is a werewolf with anger issues. This works out substantially less well for them.
• In Septimus Heap, Ruper Gringe shouts at Simon Heap when the latter is attacking the Dragon Boat Rupert is on, taunting him to fight "like a man". Only being thrown into the water by Nicko Heap saves him from being incinerated by Simon's subsequent ThunderFlash.

---

Back to Mugging the Monster