Break The Haughty / Webcomics

Break the Haughty in webcomics.

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• 8-Bit Theater has Thief, a proud elf who somehow almost always can con anyone into anything using contracts to avoid repercussions. An attempt at this on a dragon has... different consequences.
• At the end of 95 Gallons, Tiger Barb is completely outwitted by his longtime rival, Black-Skirt Tetra. While the ending is left open, it is presumed that Tiger Barb either went into hiding or killed himself.
• The Adventures of Dr. McNinja: The closing arc in this series turns into one for Dr. McNinja himself.
• Drowtales:
  • Val'Sharess Diva'ratrika, who was never the nicest person, earns her Jerkass Woobie status in a big way after being set up and betrayed by her daughters and trapped for a year in her throne room with only a single slave for company. Eventually, she stops wearing clothes because they've gotten too dirty and deteriorates physically to the point that it's implied she starts hallucinating. It finally gets to the point that she effectively kills herself and transfers her aura to the slave, Ragini, so she can escape. This is how the Cloudcuckoo Lander Liriel came to be.
  • Chrys'tel Vel'Sharen at the end of her school years. Let's see... she gets outwitted and beaten by a "peasant". Captured, tortured, suspected of treason when she gets home. Most significantly, a declared traitor to the clan planted a seed of doubt on how her clan may not be as noble and honorable as she was taught to believe.
  • Chirinide Val'Kyorl'Solenurn once she starts to delve a bit more on her origins.
• Guilded Age: Payet. He was shocked and dismayed that the core group was shocked that he saved Byron and after a small confession, he decided to be a better ally and since he is supposed to find a basin that will tell him his destiny, this seems to be the flavor of the chapter. Then there's a much more significant breakdown after finding the basin and seeing his death.
• Hooky: At first Monica is haughty and rude, and alongside Nico, bullies Dorian. But after she gets trapped in a tower and needs to be rescued (by Dorian, no less) she is less full of herself and puts in an effort to be kind and friendly towards him.
• Alejandra Coldthorn from Las Lindas finally gets her break the haughty moment during the harvest festival. A classic example of the Rich Bitch, she gets brought down to earth thanks to Idward accidentally exposing her in front of a huge crowd.
• Magick Chicks is a series-long one for the Eerie Cuties character Melissa Hellrune.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • As the resident Insufferable Genius, wholly convinced that only sheer magical power can fix things, Vaarsuvius is still subjected to this twice. First, both figuratively and in a disturbingly literal way when they meet a black dragon who is more powerful than them. Next, after they gain the ultimate arcane power they always wanted, confronting Xykon alone. No surprise they failed. V is significantly less arrogant after that double-whammy, especially upon learning the full ramifications of those actions.
  • Miko, the haughty, self-righteous paladin who is thoroughly convinced that she is the infallible avatar of the gods. After killing Lord Shojo in a rage, she is stripped of her paladin status and loses all justification... only it doesn't take, as Miko soon convinces herself that it's all somehow both a evil scheme by the Order of the Stick and a divinely-approved Secret Test of Character, and thus she did nothing wrong. But later, her interference directly leads to the fall of Azure City, and Miko finally seems to realize she might've screwed up. A little too late, as she was just bisected; the ghost of Soon Kim bluntly tells her that she's proven unworthy of redemption, and she dies knowing she'll never be with the other paladins in the afterlife.
• Morita of Red String gets broken very harshly. She goes from the top of the school, wanted by all the boys and envied by all of the girls, to an outcast that no one will offer any help or friendship to and suffers constant humiliation from her former friends (including physical abuse). All this because she dared to turn her cruelty on someone more popular than she was.
• The main cast of Rumors of War gets booster shots of Break The Haughty to immunize them against a Humiliation Conga, though Nenshe may be setting himself up for a fall by skipping out.
• Kharisma from Something*Positive is an example of this; she starts out as a truly detestable vain, shallow, and selfish rich playgirl, but over the course of the series she loses all her money, receives disfiguring burns to the face and head, is framed (sort of) for murder and then sent to prison for it, where the local prison warder and the other inmates conspire to make her life a living hell until she's freed by a misguided admirer during a prison transfer and has to resort to life as a fugitive. If the point is to make the audience feel bad for wishing bad things on her, it would be about right for S* P. However, unlike Mike, who gets a similar Break The Haughty moment for being a pretentious rules-lawyering jerkass, Kharisma hasn't changed that much, other than gaining a little blue monster imaginary friend.
• Quentyn Quinn of Tales of the Questor isn't anywhere near haughty most of the time due to self-esteem issues, but he grows overconfident (or somewhat convinced of his success) when he's tasked with killing a dragon. His team members slowly leave him as they realize that Quentyn's going on a suicide mission, with no real plan whatsoever. Good news is, half of them come back! But then the "socks dragon" is revealed to be two dragons. Quentyn and his squad fight in terror and stress in an epic battle of legendary status... and win... and then the other dragon goes berserk, zooms off to the nearest village, and starts killing people in a fit of rage while Quentyn is forced to watch. Plus his pet horse died. In the end, the tragedy is that although Quentyn performed an act of glory, it turned out years later that things would have been better if he just negotiated with the green dragon instead of killing the red one. Quentyn himself declares the fair and epic kill of the dragon as 'the emptiest, most senseless, most destructive choice I've ever made, one that should have never been chosen'.
• Tapiseri Soujourn: Daedalus is so arrogant and dismissive of Soujourn that he is taken aback when she stabs and decapitates him.
• In Widdershins:
  • Harry Barber has a mild but memorable one courtesy of a giraffe and a pond, which leads her to reconsider her I Work Alone policy.
  • Dominik Voss, spiteful Jerkass extraordinaire, gets this treatment. He bargained with Envy to become rich and talented by stealing people's skills, then sets up business in Widdershins just to spite his Unknown Rival Wolfe. Not only is Wolfe happy for his success, his plan fails, Envy steals his body, he loses the talents he'd stolen, and Wolfe saves him. It triggers a Heel Realization.

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