Strawman Has a Point/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: The author sets up a strawman to demolish, but the strawman turns out to have a very good point about something... even if it's ignored.

  • Straight: Stacy is set up as completely wrong about her desire for a Super Registration Act and loses every argument to Heather, even though her reasoning makes perfect sense when examined.
  • Exaggerated: Stacy hates and fears Supers for personal reasons and her oppressive ideas for registration border on Pay Evil Unto Evil. However, this is a Crapsack World where Smug Supers freely abuse their powers and treat normal people like her as expendable playthings.
  • Justified: The work is meant to be ambiguous and make you examine how a Super Registration Act, if implemented, could work or backfire.
  • Inverted: Heather, our Designated Heroine, is revealed to have superpowers herself, and is a self-absorbed Jerkass or a supervillainess who was afraid of being regulated.
  • Subverted: Stacy's points seems perfectly fine at first glance, but later it's revealed that her most compelling argument is flat out wrong or misunderstood.
  • Double Subverted: ...However, closer examination and Fridge Logic enable the audience to see the matter from her point of view and realize that one of her lesser arguments was even more relevant than her primary one.
  • Parodied: Stacy is the Only Sane Woman, but because of Rule of Funny, she is shown as if she is plain wrong.
  • Deconstructed: The last act of the story reveals that it wanted the audience to react this way, and spends the rest of the movie showing the horrific consequences of agreeing with Stacy's point.
  • Reconstructed: ...But this scenario still turns out to be better, overall, than what would have happened otherwise.
  • Zig Zagged: Debate and Switch or Armed with Canon. In short, the creators can't make up their minds who is supposed to be "right" or "wrong".
  • Averted: Black and White Morality (where the bad guys are CLEARLY wrong), Grey and Gray Morality (where both are equal parts right and wrong), or Good Versus Good (where no one is wrong).
  • Enforced: The executives say, "People want to admire superheroes, not fear them. We HAVE to make Stacy wrong, even if the argument says otherwise."
  • Lampshaded: An extra, intended as comic relief, points out all of the benefits to the Super Registration Act.
  • Invoked: Stacy is brought in to argue in favor of the Super Registration Act because she knows all the perfectly reasonable motivations for it, despite the fact that those enacting it have twisted her words until her argument has Gone Horribly Wrong.
  • Defied: At one point, Heather says to Stacy: "Wait a minute. I don't agree with persecuting Supers, but you have a perfectly good point otherwise. Maybe it's time we discussed a third option?"
  • Discussed: An anti-Reg character states: "Don't you hate it when the bad guys make the most sense?"
  • Conversed: Two characters are discussing writing a plot about a Super Registration Act, but become discouraged when they realize there's no way to make the Pro-Reg side look wrong.
  • Played For Laughs: Super-Duper-Man is seen flying off with a bank vault, and the crowd applauds him while Stacy desperately tries to argue why Supers should be registered.
  • Played For Drama: Stacy becomes the Unwitting Pawn of the supervillains pulling the strings; she was the greatest advocate of the Pro-Reg cause. Without her, the argument will crumble and the supervillains will be free to execute their master plan without distraction.

If you look closely, there's a strong case for going back to Straw Man Has a Point.