Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism/Web Original
 | This page needs visual enhancement. You can help All The Tropes by finding a high-quality image or video to illustrate the topic of this page. |
- It can be hard, a lot of the time, to figure out just where Survival of the Fittest is on the overall scale, but it appears to be more towards the cynical side due to the Downer Ending nature of the endings for the most part and the fact that fate itself seems to crack down on optimistic characters. Hero types usually get themselves killed, and even if they don't die right away they usually see all their friends die first. All escape attempts are brutally crushed, and even hacking the system and putting in a powerful computer virus that basically destroys all SOTF systems from the inside doesn't work until it's too late for anything to be done. By v2, all damage has been fixed, and the systems have been changed so they're literally impenetrable.
- In a strange bout of irony, the same virus comes back to bite the terrorists in the arse in V3 purely by accident, even worse than before.
- As quoted above, Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog shows us why, exactly, it's called the Sliding Scale of Idealism Vs. Cynicism by going back and forth between the two with reckless abandon. The most pronounced example may be the song "My Eyes" (also known as "On The Rise"), which is practically a duet between idealism and cynicism. (And yes, that is Neil Patrick Harris and Felicia Day with Nathan Fillion sitting in the background.)
- The SCP Foundation sits so far on the cynical side that it probably shares a spot with Warhammer 40,000.
- Urban Fantasy series Broken Saints eventually ends up on the Idealistic side, but it covers a lot of ground getting there.
- Encyclopedia Dramatica is what happens when the cynical side of the internet's Troll population creates a wiki.
- Sailor Nothing occupies an odd place -- it's far grimmer than its inspiration Sailor Moon, but ultimately has a core of idealism. The Power of Friendship plays an important role in keeping the heroine together, and the key to defeating the Big Bad ultimately turns out to be forgiveness.
- Chaos Fighters is extremely idealistic that everyone fighting at the good side is invincible heroes, having love interests and their mission is guaranteed a success no matter how hard it is. They can even destroy armies of demons or bandits by themselves.
- There Will Be Brawl takes the normally-idealistic universe of Nintendo franchises and slams it headlong into the cynical side. And then keeps going. So cynical that the most idealistic character gets blown up, for heavens sake!
- Red vs. Blue has a tendency to be rather cynical, considering how virtually everyone in Blood Gulch dislikes one another.
- Revelation ends on a surprisingly idealistic note. Sarge has finally learned to respect the Blues, and organizes them and the Reds into a Five-Man Band to save Tex and Church and take down the Meta. Washington is saved by the Blues, and is recruited into their ranks. Church willingly pursues Tex inside the Epsilon unit, but being trapped there himself, he decides to relive Alpha's memories of Blood Gulch, deeming them pleasing memories.
- Season 9, on the other hand, is much more cynical than Revelation. In the past timeline, virtually every Freelancer is out for themselves, as well as a poor team player in general. The UNSC-Insurrection war is full of Grey and Gray Morality, in that the Insurrection has legitimate beefs with the UNSC, and the Freelancers show almost no regard for civilian life. York somberly lampshades this by saying ("We're the good guys... right?") In the present timeline, Epsilon, actually experiencing Alpha's memories rather than simply remembering them, begins to develop his template's anger issues. When the Epsilon unit is about to fail, he realizes that the best way to be at peace is to let go of Tex's memory - and since this Tex is a memory, it amounts to killing her. And to top off the cake? The unit wasn't failing; the real Reds and Blues were breaking into the unit to rescue Epsilon, so he basically killed Tex for nothing!