Your Approval Fills Me with Shame/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A villain applauds a hero for an unheroic action, either mockingly or genuinely impressed, which makes the hero mortified and ashamed.

  • Straight: Griever applauds Derek for leaving his friends behind on his quest. Derek feels instant shame.
  • Exaggerated: Griever applauds Derek for accidentally causing a nuclear war, killing the president of The United States, and downloading porn into a planetwide network. Derek is immediately devastated by utter shame.
  • Downplayed: Griever applauds Derek for leaving his friends behind on his quest. Derek feels shameful and went back to look for his friends.
  • Justified: Griever wants to get Derek off his back.
    • Griever knows Derek's allies are the most valuable resource to him and without their support, he can destroy him completely in no time.
    • Griever thinks Bad Is Good and Good Is Bad and thus is excited to see potential in Derek.
  • Inverted: Derek praises Griever for an unintended good deed, which makes Griever shiver in shame.
    • Griever applauds Derek for leaving his friends behind on his quest. Derek feels proud of himself.
  • Subverted: Derek isn't ashamed in the least.
    • Derek actually thanks Griever for his praise.
  • Double Subverted: At least at first, he cracks after a moment.
    • Except he transforms his shame into rage while keeping his game face on and him thanking Griever is just a disarming confusion tactic.
  • Parodied: Alex appluads Derrik for peeping into a woman's bathroom, bringing him into shame.
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted: Griever never even brings it up.
    • Derek just chooses to casually go on like he didn't even hear what Griever said.
  • Enforced: ???
  • Lampshaded: ???
  • Invoked: Griever attempts to trick Derek into doing something he's sure the latter will be ashamed of to get the pesky hero off his back. Or Griever seeks out discriminating or discrediting information about Derek.
  • Exploited: Griever wants Derek to let his guard down for a split second, so he taunts him with the information he's learned.
  • Defied: Refusing to give in to shame, Derek states: You're right and I thank you for telling how I can do better. Unfortunately that doesn't prevent me from stopping you.
    • Before Griever has time to fling rhetorics to Derek, the latter calmly states he's aware of what he's done and that he simply takes care of higher priorities at the moment.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

This page's approval fills me with shame of not checking out the main page.

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