You Bastard: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
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{{quote|''"Are you not entertained? Are you not entertained? Is this not why you are here?"''|'''Maximus''' (after killing another gladiator), ''[[Gladiator (film)|Gladiator]]'' }}
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So you're reading or playing, and enjoying away, and then [[Mood Whiplash|suddenly]] something happens to make you question how right you are to enjoy this socially unacceptable behavior. Perhaps the characters start musing about what kind of warped mindset would possibly enjoy this. Or maybe they just outright [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|smash through the fourth wall]] and tell you exactly what they think of you.
Or alternatively, maybe what you're watching/reading/playing has some kind of [[Author Tract|political message]]
And you're left to wonder in shame. Or, more likely, [[Mind Screw|confusion]].
This works especially well in video games, in which [[Shoot Everything That Moves|murder]] and [[Kleptomaniac Hero|theft]] is the generally accepted way to advance, without thought to moral consequences. If done well, it can be thought-provoking and unsettling, giving the reader/viewer/player pause to [[My God, What Have I Done?|consider the moral implications]] of what they may have previously considered just a bit of fun. It may prompt them to examine both their motivations in reading this and the motivations of the hero - who, if they engage in numerous acts that would be condemned if done by anyone else, [[Moral Dissonance|may look less and less heroic]]. If done not-so-well, however, it can be quite [[Narm
No less a luminary than [[Aristotle]] disagreed with this trope, proposing that [[Tragedy]] exists in order to [[wikipedia:Catharsis|cleanse]] the reader of negative emotions in a healthy way. Arguments against the [[Bowdlerise|censoring and removal of violence]] in video games also argue a similar point, their position being that it is ultimately healthier [[Video Game Cruelty Potential|to perform hideously violent acts upon computer pixels within the fictional realm of a video game]] rather than fulfill the same urges in [[Real Life]].
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* Done indirectly late in ''[[Earth X|Paradise X]]'', as Loki berates Odin for making him (and a large portion of the other Asgardians) evil. "We fought and died and were brought back to life over and over again for your damned comic book need for excitement!"
* [[Mark Millar]] likes this trope almost as much as he hates his readers, whom he's argued use comic-book violence as a substitute for the emptiness and meaninglessness of their lives. ''[[Wanted]]'' is particularly explicit about this.
* In ''[[Animal Man]]'', [[Grant Morrison]] essentially [[Welcome to The Real World|apologizes to the eponymous character]] for kowtowing to the Bastards. Towards
* In ''[[Empowered]]'', about once a volume, she will let the reader know how much she ''hates'' that someone is enjoying her bondage scenes.
* The [[Furry Fandom|furry]] comic ''The Wanderer'' by Krahnos is an adult fantasy comic which features a story arc where the hero gets raped by bandits. The rape is presented in such a way to appeal to the target audience, rather than be horrified by it. During the second act, the comic pulls a 180 and the hero's rape is presented as a [[Moral Event Horizon|horrible thing]], which would no doubt leave whomever was previously enjoying it feeling more than a little dirty.
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* In ''[[Blue Velvet]]'', after Jeffrey (and the audience) has covertly watched [[Complete Monster|Frank Booth]] rape Dorothy, Frank and his [[Mooks]] make Jeffrey go on a drive with them. Frank then turns to Jeffrey (and the camera) and says, "You're like me."
* In ''[[Last Action Hero]]'', the [[Character Title|title action hero]] Jack Slater doesn't particulary ''like'' being sucked into a new highly dangerous adventure <s>for reasons that are a complete mystery to him</s> each time the audience in the real world demands it. When he meets [[Arnold Schwarzenegger]] (the actor who plays him [[Show Within a Show|in the "in-universe" real world]] as well as in the ''real'' [[Real Life|real world]]) at the premiere of the newest ''Slater'' flick, the character accuses his actor of being responsible for his suffering.
* Mocked in [[Danny Boyle]]'s film adaptation of ''[[The Beach]].'' When Richard turns against his friends and retreats to the jungle, he envisions himself as the character in a video
* Subtely done in ''[[Scarface]]''. When you take Tony's words from the scene when he yells at the people in restaurant out of context, they turn into this.
* A less mean version in ''[[The Truman Show]]'', with 'audience' characters watching the show-within-the-show clearly also representing the film's viewers, who will be caught up in the events of someone else's life, claim to be deeply moved, then flip channels to see what else is on.
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* Almost everybody in ''Maggie'' by Stephen Crane is a [[Jerkass]], and what's more, most are convinced they're virtuous and everyone else is a jerkass. Naturally, most readers look down upon the characters, a fact that some critics think [[Not So Different|Crane anticipated and subtly mocked]]. Then again, others just think Crane was being holier-than-thou.
* The Norman Spinrad novel ''[[The Iron Dream]]'' is essentially a giant sword and sorcery tale, ostensibly written by sci-fi novelist Adolf Hitler. From the other wiki:" Spinrad seems intent on demonstrating just how close Joseph Campbell's Hero with a Thousand Faces -- and much science fiction and fantasy literature -- can be to the racist fantasies of Nazi Germany."
* ''Hook & Jill''
* Played for laughs in the ''[[Sesame Street]]'' children's book ''[[The Monster at the End of This Book]]'', in which the entire plot is Grover berating you for continuing to turn pages when the title makes it perfectly clear that there's a monster at the end of the book, and he's terrified of monsters. {{spoiler|The monster turns out to be [[Tomato in the Mirror|Grover]].}}
* ''[[Swordspoint]]'' does this, possibly by accident, in that many of the characters spend a significant amount of time pointing out how despicable they are.
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* [[Mick Foley|Mankind]] in [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34bT-dyfaBs this promo], which also highlights [[Vince McMahon]]'s [[Manipulative Bastard]] skills.
** [[Mick Foley]] in general has become famous for doing this. Take, for example, his [[Enemy Mine]] teamup with [[Edge]] against the revived ECW promotion in the spring of 2006. Foley declared that he hated ECW because it had literally forced him to shed blood for the company. Although he was technically lambasting Paul Heyman and not the fans, it was hard not to feel a little soiled if you were an ECW aficionado.
** Mick actually suggested the Mankind name expressly so he could ambiguously do
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* The John Tynes roleplaying metagame ''[http://johntynes.com/revland2000/rl_powerkill.html Power Kill]''. It's intended to point out to fantasy [[Tabletop RPG]] players that many or most of the actions their characters perform (entering other creature's homes, killing them and taking their belongings) [[Captain Obvious|would be considered heinous crimes]] if they occurred in the real world.
** This can occur even in non-fantasy games. Someone once pointed out in a long-ago review of the science fiction game ''[[Traveller]]'' that every adventure published up to that time required the adventurers to commit at least one crime in the course of the mission.
** Interestingly enough, the [[Urban Fantasy]] RPG ''[[Unknown Armies]]'', which John Tyne co-created, also features similar applications of this trope. Many times in the corebook and the supplements, there is a subtle ([[Anvilicious|or not so subtle]]) hint that [[Game Master
** Also several pictures in the game & its supplements feature a murdered body with the blood or some other item in the scene subtly spelling out "You did it."
* Somewhat similar to the Power Kill example above is ''[[wikipedia:Violence (role-playing game)|Violence: the Roleplaying Game of Egregious and Repulsive Bloodshed]]'' by Greg Costikyan, which explicitly states that it was designed to be a ''D&D''-style hack and slay game set in the modern world. The message is delivered pretty [[
** [http://www.costik.com/Violence%20RPG1.pdf Read it for free!]
* Some ''[[Paranoia]]'' missions are designed to set this up, where for once the [[Player Characters|PCs]] ''did'' have the knowledge and skills to do the right thing, but instead chose to screw things up for their own personal gain. In particular, two of the missions in ''WMD'' turn it [[Up to Eleven]], giving the PCs the opportunity to be promoted ''multiple'' clearance levels while most of the population {{spoiler|starves to death}} or {{spoiler|gets memory-wiped every few days}}.
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* ''[[God of War (series)|God of War]]'''s Kratos. The series he is in is based on Greek Mythology, which means you end up with [[Protagonist Centred Morality]] a lot of the time. The player has to do completely heartless things like smash a person's head on an altar, which the player drags him to while he is screaming "no!no! get away from me!" (this is from the second game). There is no way he could have resisted. In the first game, Kratos is a champion of the Gods, In the second, he is a champion of the Titans, who eventually {{spoiler|kills the fates, which gives him the ability of time travel.}} This may sound fine, but the level of bloody violence is so much so it was ''mentioned on the back cover''. Then again, at that time morality was different, and they are not afraid to show some of it. Also, as noted above, Kratos commits an act of treachery at the beginning of the second game. The entire plot revolves around being a [[Complete Monster]]. Just look at the page mentioned above for more examples.
** However, in the third game several characters (most notably Hermes) tell him how much of a bastard he is, as well as him gaining a [[Morality Pet]] in Pandora. It actually affects him enough that he makes a slight [[Heel Face Turn]] towards the end.
* In ''[[Ninja Gaiden|Ninja Gaiden 3]]'' this happens very often, though [[Your Mileage May Vary|mileage varies very wildly]] on whether they are effective [[Player Punch
* In a lot of H-Games where your character is not a [[Complete Monster]] from the get go (and is shown to have some shred of human decency or morality), you -the player- are given the option (at least once, and there is always a more moral option as well) at some point to pick a totally amoral choice and cross the [[Moral Event Horizon]] at worst, or just become a total [[Jerkass]] at best. The
** One to note was ''Itazura Gokuaku'', which is about a serial train molester and a handful of his victims. The themes [[Victim Falls For Rapist]] and [["It's Not Rape If You Enjoyed It"]] are present, so it's possible for him to form actual intimate relationships with any or all of the girls. To get a good ending, the player must choose for the protagonist to turn himself in and reform. But if you take the provided options to exploit the girl any further, the protagonist will be shoved before an incoming train by a vengeful girl, to reflect on what a prick he is in his final moments before being mangled to death.
** Perhaps more bizarre is ''[[Saya no Uta]]'' where {{spoiler|agreeing to part ways with Saya}}, the route that causes the least amount of death and insanity, comes across as more of a [[Bad End]].
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** Liquid accuses Snake of 'enjoying all the killing' at the end of ''[[Metal Gear Solid]]''. The game gives you opportunities to, among other things, strangle and break the neck of a guard while peeing in a urinal. It's your own fault if it rings true.
*** This is then called back to in MGS4. If you kill fifty mooks in one area, a soundbite of Liquid saying "You enjoy all the killing" will play, and Snake will vomit in self-disgust. It happens with every fiftieth mook dispatched thereafter, too.
** More subtle example from the
* At the end of ''[[Contact (video game)|Contact]]'', the main character inflicts this on the player, in a truly magnificent example of the [[Player Punch]].
* ''[[The Witcher]]'', thanks to having the consequences of your choices come back an hour later to bite you in the ass, ends up doing this in a sort of way. For instance, you end up as a sort of surrogate father for an orphan, and he occasionally asks you questions regarding your own moral compass and various views on destiny and the world in general. {{spoiler|He later turns out to be the [[Big Bad]], thanks to some accidental time travel, and he spits back your own philosophy as a justification for genocide and the creation of twisted mutants.}}
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** Done well earlier on too. If you give equipment to the terrorists, which they insist they need for the medical supplies included, they will later use weapons also included to kill one of your friends. Definitely a [[Player Punch]].
*** Eh, let's put that into the [[Gray and Grey Morality|"gray and grey" context]] it's really presented in. The victim is a criminal bottom-feeder and definitely no "friend" of Geralt's; the terrorist's justification was that he was exploiting their people through drug-peddling. However, it's pointed out that a murder is still a murder, and this is one that the player's choice facilitated.
* Done with subtlety and elegance in ''[[Shadow of the Colossus]]'': arguably the whole idea behind the game's minimalistic structure and almost complete lack of dialogue is to silently stress the fact that you are slaying mostly docile creatures that are unique, majestic and beautiful.
** During the credits you get shown the remains of every single colossus, which have returned to earth and rocks, still lying in the same position as they collapsed.
* ''[[Fallout 3]]'' pulls one of these, very nearly breaking the fourth wall to do so: If you choose to put a dying man out of his misery, a message pops up to tell you that you're a bastard for killing him.
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** Perhaps done even earlier in the Burning Crusade expansion: one mission requires you to sneak into an enemy camp to investigate certain people. During which you can talk to most of the neutral-via-your-disguise enemy NPC's and hear them talk about going into a nearby town and having drinks or starting a 'leatherball' game. Upon completing this quest, the quest giver orders for you to go back into the camp and kill X no of the enemy characters. Yes, they ARE an evil cult...but still...
* ''[[Deus Ex]]'' starts you off as a government agent going after terrorists. It looks like a classic FPS at first, but going on a killing spree on your first mission will earn you the disapproval of several characters. Not only that, but you later find out that you're working for the Bad Guys and join up with the "terrorists" you may have been killing off previously.
** The [[Faceless Mooks]] of the terrorist organizations, government, and shadowy conspiracies all have conversations which {{anvilicious}}ly remind you of how human (or synthetic humanoid) they are, and how much of a vicious bastard you are for killing them when you could be using your cyborg super spy skills to sneak by or temporarily incapacitate them.
** One part of the game has you talk to the parents of a MJ12 trooper. The father, has resigned himself that his son is no longer a boy, will give you his son's user name and password for a console, and is accepting that he may be killed by the player (somewhat, he'll curtly say to the player, "I have helped you kill my son, isn't that enough?" if you attempt to talk to him again) The mother on the other hand, will beg you to spare him, and berate her husband for "letting politics get in front of his duties as a father." Continue to kill MJ12 troopers if you like, but you can't help but wonder if you just killed the couple's son.
** It's easy to get a [[NPC]] innkeeper killed in the second missions and not even realize it; then you meet his grieving daughter being forced to prostitute herself a few missions later.
*** Inadvertently evil, JC himself can kill the innkeeper himself, in front of his daughter, and respond to her mourning with the now-memetic phrase, (and, in this context, sarcastic) "What a shame."
** At least, unlike a lot of these examples, ''[[Deus Ex]]'' does give you the ''option'' of not killing everyone, even if it makes the game much harder.
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* 3DO pseudo-porn [[Visual Novel]] game ''[[Plumbers Don't Wear Ties]]'' has a surprising instance of this, where the heroine is pleading for a job. You get the option of turning the situation into a classic "I'd do ANYTHING to get this job!" porn movie scenario, but if you do the decision blows up in your face as the scene quickly turns dark and wrong, the boss turning into a [[Complete Monster]] and the heroine turning sad and pitiful. Then the narrator chimes in with "What kind of sick, perverted monster are you!?" Because really, what the hell were you thinking choosing the porn option IN A PORN GAME!?
* {{spoiler|The Escape Ending}} in ''[[Devil Survivor]]'' goes out of its way to ensure you feel terrible for the decisions you made.
* In ''[[Mass Effect]]'', some characters react strongly if the player chooses a more morally ambiguous option, or just one that character disagrees with ("Do you ''enjoy'' committing genocide, Commander?!"). The Turian Councillor is especially notable for having
** {{spoiler|"Depends on the species, ''Turian''."}}
** -Disconnect
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* ''[[Prototype (video game)|Prototype]]'' has this in spades. You can tap into enemy communications - and hear their cries of agony as you, or the infected, go on murderous rampages. Helicopter pilots in particular give out hellish, despairing screams as they plummet towards the ground. This troper had to turn off the voice volume in order to continue playing.
* Travis in ''[[No More Heroes]]'' actually calls out the player for enjoying watching him and his fellow assassins fight to the death towards the end of the second game. Well, technically he calls out Sylvia and the UAA, but [[Breaking the Fourth Wall|the way he does it certainly causes the player to pause and say, "Wait, is he talking to me?"]]
** The whole game is a subtle
* The Hell Lord Arc of ''[[Legend of Mana]]''. It's made abundantly clear that Draconis is evil, and though he blackmails you into doing his bidding saying no to him has no permanent effect on the plot or gameplay, so going along with his quest to {{spoiler|kill the other dragons and steal their Mana Crystals}} means you get [[What the Hell, Hero?]] thrown at you quite a bit.
* The cliffhanger ending of the second ''[[Simon the Sorcerer]]'' game has Simon criticize the player for enjoying the situation he's ended up in ({{spoiler|stuck in Sordid's body and at the receiving end of much humiliation by the citizens while Sordid romps around in ''his'' body in the real world}}), and throws in a bit of [[Paranoia Fuel]] to drive the point home.
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