Troperville
Editing Help
Tools
Toys
|
Clark Kent is how Superman views us. And what are the characteristics of Clark Kent? He's weak, he's unsure of himself, he's a coward. Clark Kent is Superman's critique on the whole human race.
Stewie: Well, what do you see?
Brian: I see a grown man enjoying cartoons.
In many shows, particularly comedies and children's programs, the protagonist is an ugly, incompetent, lazy, and near illiterate ditz. This is supposedly to allow the audience (e.g., you) to identify with the protagonist. Ergo, You Suck. This also allows for more room for character development, a lot of character development... or none at all. This makes it easier for writers to come up with the plot of the week. An alternate theory is that the protagonist is made so dumb so that you feel superior to them, no matter how dumb you are. Both of these could be true at the same time.
Note that this same person's friends are all clever, athletic, highly competent and, above all, cool. Why such an implausible situation? It's because, while the protagonist sucks just like you, at least he has friends that are just the kind of people you wish you knew. Which is supposed to make you identify with him even more. At least, that's what the network executives seem to think. As far as they're concerned, Viewers Are Morons.
The opposite of You Suck is the classically flawless Mary Sue (although You Suck is compatible with Mary Sue via Anti Sue).
Paradoxically, applying You Suck too accurately or too inaccurately can make the fandom riot to a far greater degree than anything you actually put in the storyline.
You Suck may lead to Good Is Dumb. A partial subtrope of Audience Surrogate. Not to be confused with Take That, when someone openly expresses their hatred for something in a witty manner.
Could lead to Fridge Logic when the protagonist wins and the enemies don't suck.
Note that this is a character trope—this isn't someone actually outright saying that the audience sucks. Also is rarely justified with a The Reason You Suck Speech, despite what you might think.
Examples:
open/close all folders
Advertising
- The basis for more commercials than can probably be counted. Ads based on the intended consumers of the company's product being drooling imbeciles are becoming more and more popular, to the point that it would be folly to point out all but the most egregious offenders here.
- Subway ran ads of Family Guy main character Peter Griffin gushing over Subway's subs and ending with him saying "Beat that, Jared!" Apparently, Subway's realized their customers would rather be like a stupid, fat, bumbling Jerkass than a guy who got up off his ass and lost a lot of weight.
- Ben Elton referred to the characters who performed this function in advertisements as "The Farty" or "Farties".
- Microsoft recently started a campaign to try to turn around some of the negative perceptions of Windows Vista (which has become The Scrappy of computer OS's). However, with slogans such as, "At one time, everybody thought the world was flat. Get the facts about Windows Vista," appearing in banner ads, many computer users have come to see the ads as personal attacks on them, calling them ignorant fools for having concerns about Vista's overhead, driver issues, and lack of return-on-investment.
- Comedy Central got in a bit of trouble with the fans with a Mystery Science Theater 3000 commercial showing a pair of redneck stereotypes nerding it up over the show, implying that the network saw the whole fanbase as such. They didn't help themselves by opening another commercial about the show's return after a long hiatus by literally saying "Quit your bellyaching!"
- Sony obviously feels this way about their customer base, considering their "All I Want For Christmas" marketing campaign.
- There's a Web advertisement that says, "Beach Bum makes $237,000 from Laptop! Click Here!" I wonder who they could be alluding to...
- Jack Link's has an advertising campaign entitled "Messin'
 With Sasquatch," which features a number of Jack Links-loving hikers playing various cruel jokes on Sasquatch, only to be beaten up by him. Because apparently people who eat Jack Link's Jerky are moronic little twits who take sadistic pleasure in tormenting someone who had done nothing to them, and who get the crap justifiably beaten out of them on a regular basis.
- The advertisement for Sakuracon 2009 caused much controversy amongst anime fans, many of which were offended by the depiction of their fandom. A discussion about the commercial can be read here.
Anime and Manga
- Pretty much any harem series about a complete spaz who through sheer perseverance earns the respect and love of the men/women he/she knows applies here.
- The title character of Ojamajo Doremi gets terrible grades, constantly screws up spells, is an athletic failure, is greedy and self-centered, and just is an all-around Ditz. So naturally the Queen entrusts her with the newborn next heir to the witch kingdom. In contrast, her five-year-old sister is prodigiously competent and mature, and her friends include a lovable, rich genius, an athletic prodigy, and an Idol Singer. (Although no...their names aren't Chibiusa, Ami, Makoto, and Minako.)
- This is the entire point of Doraemon. Doraemon is sent back in time to change Nobita's life — namely, he turns out to be such a loser that his entire family tree is ruined because of it. Contrast with his good friend Shizuka, who is a smart and kind young girl; Takeshi, while a bully, never hesitates to help Nobita out when he's in trouble; and Suneo, who while overly proud of himself, is a genuinely talented artist and designer, as well as being fairly good at science. And then there's Dekisugi, who is really good at science (for his age) and is the future husband of Shizuka— if Time Travel isn't included in the equation.
- This is probably The Artifact of the extremely long series; Doraemon's antics were partly a commentary that Japanese people in the 1970s were becoming lazy and over-reliant on technology.
- It must be noted that while the nature of the "future" depicted changed from time to time, most often Nobita became a responsible blue collar worker and family man. He also managed to bag Shizuka somewhere along the line.
- The titular character in Sailor Moon is one of the more well known examples. This seems purely an effect of being the lead; Usagi is Minako's Expy, the latter which became much more capable when she wasn't the lead in a story anymore.
- Kinnikuman, and his son Mantaro Kinniku, from the manga Kinnikuman are extreme examples of this; at the beginning of their respective adventures, they are both impossibly stupid, hideous and pathetic in almost every way, only ever succeeding through dumb luck. However, due to Cerebus Syndrome this is slowly peeled away to reveal competent, yet silly, characters.
- Tsuna Sawada, protagonist of Katekyo Hitman Reborn, is regularly mocked by his peers for being a loser in just about every endeavor. He does get several moments of awesomeness, but only when he gets "touched" by Reborn's Magic Bullets. And then things begin to get weird. Of course, as the series goes on, he becomes less of a living incarnation of You Suck and more of a typical optimistic, naive Shonen hero.
- Yumi from Maria-sama Ga Miteru is described as being a plain, non-athletic girl of average intelligence, who berates herself constantly for being insignificant. Still, she has one of the most popular girls of her school chase after her and drag her into the Absurdly Powerful Student Council. She befriends most everyone there, which even culminates in a declaration of love of sorts from one of the coolest persons in the series. Later she is shown to have pretty good people skills, but that still doesn't convincingly explain why everybody chases her.
- This trope pops up a lot in Magical Girl shows where the protagonist is described as having been an ordinary girl prior to getting powers and is thus lazy, childish, selfish, etc.
- One thing that made Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha is probably the focus of her show; she is actually very intelligent and hardworking. We especially see this in the manga where her and Fate's real genius at math is highlighted and in the 3rd season as well as the manga for showing us how hard they train.
- Card Captor Sakura is also another subversion, in which Sakura's only major faults are a fear of ghosts and being bad at math.
- Ditto with Moemi Haneoka of Kaitou Saint Tail.
- Same in Princess Tutu. Duck is, well, a duck who becomes a girl. As such, she has odd quirks like clumsiness and a bubbly rambling nature. Still, she's never shown as anything less than competent when it comes to the main storyline, portraying her as capable and self-motivated, if somewhat ditzy.
- Epileptic Trees department: Lilie may be a You Suck for fandom, as what she likes most about Duck is her woobie moments, and thus actively encourages that aspect of her.
- Pokemon, with its Idiot Hero Ash. Initially, he's completely incompetent in basically every way, with most of his "victories" being the result of either dumb luck or his opponents having pity on him. Ash gets better eventually; now his wins (occasional Deus Ex Machina notwithstanding) are almost always legitimate (especially if there's another character to screw up instead) and sometimes even the result pretty clever tactics on his part. He does however regress noticeably at the start of each new region, though fortunately nowhere near as bad as when he started out.
- Although, to be honest, those pretty clever tactics are either something that everyone who played the game knows (like the fact that water beats fire) or something so complicated and obscure it could never work in the real world, or anywhere else for that matter.
- You cannot forget Dawn! She lost three contests in a row before she went out of it for a good 4 or 5 episodes.
- Naruto started off as an arrogant idiot, much like Ash Ketchum. His skills consisted almost entirely of having a lot of chakra and being Made Of Iron.
- Not quite true. He was a master of the Indy Ploy pretty much since the very beginning. Before Kakashi even commented upon it during the Wave Country Arc, in fact during the genin test, Kakashi was distinctly surprised by some of Naruto's tactics (his use of clones and hiding under the water).
- Fanon has it he's an untaught master, or they get sadistic to point out just how rough the canon would have been. His pranking is seen as a form of practice and effort to work out ninjitsu without anyone getting the chance to sabotage his work. Sexy no Jutsu would seem to back that up..
- Sakura and Rock Lee are rare non-main character examples, as Word Of God even stated that they were suppose to embody human weakness (at least pre-Time Skip). Oddly enough, Rock Lee is arguably a sucessful example, as he manages to be quite popular despite his general lack of success.
- Shiro of Fate Stay Night is a very weak mage and doesn't just suffer for his Lawful Stupid and Stay In The Kitchen attitude, but literally everyone he fights with/against calls him stupid for it and they keep on doing it even as he is being beaten.
- Initial D's Itsuki, not the protagonist but his tolerated sidekick, is an uncontrollably emotional, self-aggrandizing, insecure, lustful, remarkably ugly Everyteen.
- Keitaro Urashima is a total loser, everyone in the series says so. For the clearest example of this, reference the way the other boarders refer to him when Ema first shows up in the epilogue.
- At first, definitely, though no cast member is really moving forward in their lives when we first meet them. Most do a better job than Keitaro at masking it, but the series shows various times where the masks crack. Still, in that same epilogue sequence, the ladies take pains to say why he is not a loser.
- Kaiji is an unemployed bum who spends his time drinking cheap beer, losing cheap gambling games, crying over the fact that he doesn't have any money, and slashing other people's tires and stealing car ornaments. To his credit, he gets it together once the events of the series kick him into action.
- Jiro "Roji" Kusano, half of the titular Muhyo And Roji, despite being assistant to genius executor Muhyo, starts out as a Second Clerk who failed his application exams to the Magical Law School, and is often unable to understand basic texts on Magical Law (he did not even know the difference between Magical Law and Magic). However, he has a large amount of tempering, and as time goes on, becomes very good at using magical seals in desperate situations.
- Shinji. Ikari.
- It may differ from person to person, but one of the percieved purposes of Evangelion was to basically be one great big You Suck to all Otakudom. Whether it's robots with a frightening truth to them, deconstruction of character archetypes and anime conventions, and flat out telling the audience to stop exclusively living in fantasy worlds...Evangelion was a series made to both pay homage...and ridicule anime and Otaku culture. Ironic, as the series' immense popularity became a catalyst for a whole new era of metaphysical insanity in anime.
- And of course, so many fans either didn't get or completely ignored the message ANYWAY that it semi-broke the creator. So I guess we ALL suck.
- This might just be a psychological reaction to the anime itself, blocking the 'messages' out for the sake of our sanity. Saying that show is fucked up is an understatement...
- Yuuto of Nogizaka Haruka No Himitsu is an average everyday dude with average aspects and almost zero personality, till he meets cute Otaku Haruka...
- The entire premise of Welcome To The NHK.
- Simon in Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann, as a mild version. Basically, in the world of AWESOME that the show is, Simon is initially the only normal person, who also happens to have backstory Wangst. This lasts, like what, half an episode? Rossiu is pretty close to this before the time skip as well.
- Manaka Junpei from Ichigo100% seems to be good for nothing. Low grades, not that athletic and he even fails at moviemaking once (which is his one passion). On the other hand, he is good at making girls fall for him. Panties first.
- Mayo Sakaki of the Fushigi Yuugi: Eikoden OVA. She was intended as a surrogate for fans who wanted to go into the Universe of the Four Gods, and therefore was designed as an ordinary girl with human weaknesses. Instead she became one of the most widely reviled characters in the FY universe, probably because she went way the hell beyond "human weaknesses," crossed the Moral Event Horizon, and went straight into unintended Villain Protagonist / Anti Sue territory. To the further fury of the fans, she pretty much got away with it all because all the other characters felt sorry for her.
- Katsuya Jounouchi/Joey Wheeler from Yu-Gi-Oh! is an arguable example of this. Book Dumb, Hot Blooded given the right (or wrong) kind of provocation, and inexperienced at Duel Monsters, though in his defense he also suffers from weak card access.
- Kenichi The Mightiest Disciple begins as this trope, being the proverbial "97 lb weakling" to take series's crash course in Charles Atlas Superpower. He doesn't stay this way for long.
- School Days: Makoto... Makoto... MAKOTO!
Comic Books
- Joe Quesada felt that readers wouldn't be able to relate to Spider-Man unless he was still single, living with his elderly aunt, and jobless at thirty, and rewrote the Marvel universe to accomplish this. Granted, Peter was previously married to a wealthy supermodel, which isn't exactly something everyone can relate to, but given how his new 'loser' status quo was trumpeted as a return to his 'everyman' ways, one can't help but be a little put-off - everymen can't have steady jobs or be married to their loved ones?
- The "supermodel" argument itself remains fairly dated, considering that Mary Jane started out as Peter's best friend who had looked out him for years before he realized he loved her, and later, did not have much of a problem living a relaxed, normal life despite the money she earned from acting or modeling. She and Peter were a perfectly relatable normal couple by any objective viewpoint...but try telling THAT to people who run a company with both fingers plugged into thier ears...
- The real knife in the wound is the fact that he's an open stereotype of Marvel comics' core audience... the fan as the basement-dwelling loser. Quesada even is on record saying that a "good" Spider-Man story would be about Peter Parker trying to download web porn without Aunt May finding out.
- Not to mention that they already have Ultimate Spider-Man to explore that version of Peter Parker. It does a very good job of working that particular angle...which only works because that Peter is 16. It doesn't work very well when he's over 30.
- Quesada later argued that if readers wanted a "natural Peter and MJ" (i.e, ones that grow older raising kids), they should read Spider Girl...a somewhat undervalued title which holds a record withExiles for "Marvel's Most Consistently Cancelled Title". His reason? "People don't read alternate universe stories that much"...I guess that's why nobody beyond a minority is reading Amazing Spider-Man anymore...
- This is even parodied in the first Great Lakes Avengers, where Squirrel Girl and Grasshopper appear in an offstage prologue. Grasshopper says "The only people reading comics now are overweight thirty-year-olds living in their mother's basement." Squirrel Girl's sidekick replies in an inset "Hey, fanboys, don't take that lying down! Write angry letters to Marvel today!"
- Marvel always tries to avoid the unrelatable Superman-type characters, and probably sometimes goes too far in the opposite direction. Every unambiguous good guy in the new Avengers, for instance, either has Joss Whedon levels of "issues" or is just a bit of a cock. Or both.
- Their own version of Superman, "The Sentry" (with the Power of a Million Exploding Suns!), despite apparently being the most powerful man on the planet, is pretty much incapable of doing anything without sitting in a corner rambling incoherently for at least 4 issues first.
- The series Wanted has Wesley Gibson, an Eminem look-a-like who is saddled with a dead end job, and an annoying, cheating girlfriend, bullied by assorted townfolk, and in general is shown to be practically spineless in regards to his life. Of course, afterward he breaks the fourth wall to tell you that you suck even more than he does.
- Captain Haddock of Tintin fame is an overly verbose, recovering alcoholic, amazingly clumsy disaster magnet. The Castafiore Emerald in particular seems to be Herge running through the many ways he can possibly torment him. More than anything, he represents how everyday people suck- and the readers love him for it.
- Superboy-Prime was always an unsubtle jab at fanboys and people who hate change, and because of it was a rather unique villain. His ultimate fate, however, was something of a kick in the balls as he ended up on Earth-Prime (our Earth), reduced to typing angry posts on the DC Comics forums from his parents' basement.
Film
- Idiocracy, another gem by Mike Judge that openly targets its audience.
- Watching the movie on TV recently, the commercials were somewhat difficult to tell from the movie.
- Ben Stiller in ANYTHING.
- Ditto Adam Sandler.
- Steve Carrell is moving on up.
- Jim Carrey sort of fit until he started doing more serious roles.
- Basically any early-middle-aged guy running around getting beat up and sucking at everything but winning the girl in the end fits this trope.
- Up to winning the girl, of course.
- Sam Witwicky, anyone?
Literature
- Alan Campbell's Scar Night: Dill is an angel, but a really pathetic angel who spends most of the book wangsting over his own uselessness. His incompetence even gets him killed. But he comes Back From The Dead.
- An alternative view is that Dill is an idealist who wants to live up to the heroism of his predecessors but is seen as nothing more than a propaganda tool by the church and thus has no training, real world experience or even the freedom to leave his temple, there really is nothing he can do except angst until he's given a chance.
- Averted in the sequels, though, when he winds up in Hell a second time and Takes A Level In Badass from Hasp.
- Dr Watson of Sherlock Holmes fame. Watson as originally depicted is really quite charming, far more human and likable than Holmes. If anyone's the audience identification figure, it's him. Unfortunately adaptations (and even, arguably, later stories in Canon) miss the point and make him out to be a complete doofus. Yes, Nigel Bruce, I'm looking at YOU.
- Watson was Doyle's Author Avatar, while Holmes was modeled after Doyle's meticulous mentor in real life. While Watson was no Gary Stu, he also wouldn't be a You Suck either; they were supposed to be a team.
- Many, many romance/chick-lit novels in the vein of Bridget Jones' Diary. Bad at their (dead end) jobs, klutzy, overweight (and cranky about it), ditzy, neurotic...All in the name of allowing the audience to identify. When overdone, it just makes the audience wonder what the hell the perfect hero sees in her.
- Bella, from Meyer's Twilight. She can't do anything at all without stupidly hurting herself. Luckily this allows her to explain being hospitalized by vampires as just her own normal clumsiness. Which isn't unintentionally reminiscent of cover-ups for anything else at all, no...
- Mildred Hubble, heroine of The Worst Witch, is gangly, funny looking- and no bloody good at anything. Even her cat, the imaginatively named Tabby, is a misfit. One can't help but wonder- if there's an entrance exam to Cackle's Academy, how did she manage to pass?
- If I recall correctly she's there on a scholarship.
- Aristotle wrote that the hero of a comedy should be worse than the average and rise up so that makes this trope Older Than Dirt
Live Action TV
- In Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Xander wasn't bad-looking. However, he was a clumsy, awkward nerd whose only friends were the other misfits. No special powers, no incredibly high intelligence, and no ability to impress. Yes, they probably needed someone who wasn't a superhero to have a token human on the cast, but Xander, especially in the early seasons, seemed to exist only to either get in trouble and need to be rescued, or sit around wallowing in self-pity.
- Andrew takes this role from season six onward.
- Also Dawn from Season 5 onward (though she became moderately more useful in Season 7).
- Avoided, or possibly subverted, epically in Malcolm In The Middle. Malcolm, the viewpoint character, is a gifted child and does very well at school (when not distracted or lazy or too busy or when it's just needed to tell the story). But even in the episodes where nothing is made of his academic prowess beyond his nerdy friends, he usually acts as the Straight Man in the cast, and the voice of reason. His No Fourth Wall segments clearly mark him out as the viewpoint character. In the last two seasons, Character Derailment took him into pompous intellectual Jerkass territory - abandoning the friends who liked him for no reason, spending all his time moping about being alone, and trying to constantly prove he was the smartest person on the planet. The viewpoint slowly switched over to younger brother Dewey despite Malcolm's continued No Fourth Wall segments.
- Although it did have the effect of, across the series, telling any "gifted" viewers "Everyone Else Thinks You Suck, and They'll Eventually Be Proven Right".
- Married With Children's Al Bundy is probably the great-granddaddy of them all for this trope. Unless you've watched All in the Family and seen either Mike ("Meathead") or Archie.
- Archie is a conservative strawman, while Mike is the token liberal against him. However Al Bundy is more subverted by having a parasitic shrew of a wife, who dashed his dreams and took away all his hopes of a football-scholarship. However unlike the others, Al also is also revealed as always having had potential and oppoturnity in life, but just never having any real ambition.
- A few Kamen Rider heroes have been like this, including:
- Shinji Kido from Ryuki, to some extent.
- Kenzaki Kazuma from Blade, which actually broke 4th wall in terms of you suck.
- Asumu adachi from Hibiki.
- Arata Kagami from Kabuto, to some extent.
- Ryotaro Nogami from Den-O is perhaps the most egregious example. He is also the Butt Monkey.
- Subverted by the series end, or at least once Liner Form was obtained
- Dr Horrible is a likable nebbish who only wants to be a Card Carrying Villain to effect some vague "social change." However, he kills the girl he pines for and goes on to become "the most evil villain of all time" (though the last is reported in a biased newspaper within days of the incident).
- JD in Scrubs.
- Elliot, too, at least, before she went from annoyingly neurotic to slightly-neurotic, lovable, and pretty hot.
- Xena: Warrior Princess features a few episodes set in the present day, where the Xena series exists and is based on real events. It's really amazing how much the show gets away with portraying its own fans as the most cartoony nerd stereotypes imaginable in these episodes.
- Hercules: The Legendary Journeys did the same thing at least once, this time treating the shows creative staff and star in the same way.
- Thanks to mixed reincarnation, Modern Day Xena is a bumbling fool. Oops.
- Inverted in House MD: the main character is a brilliant diagnostician who points out to everyone else (including the three residents he works with, his boss, and his fatally ill patients) how worthless their lives are, usually as a means of obtaining information to assist him in curing them (though also because he is an extreme example of Dr Jerk).
- The lead character in Red Dwarf was Dave Lister, a crass, uneducated, unintelligent slob who was the lowest ranking crewman on the ship and whose highest ambition in life was to live in Fiji and own a hotdog stand.
- Fiji being covered in about three feet of water at the time. Real estate prices were low, you see.
- Ditto his hologram bunkmate Arnold J. Rimmer (BSC, SSC), second lowest ranking crewman, unable to achieve anything higher, no matter how bad he wants it.
- Jim and Pam on The Office (USA) spent a large part of the show acting as the audience surrogates, generally snarking about their situation or at the craziness around them. But beginning with season 5 and especially in season 6, they have been getting rather frequent Kick The Dog moments. It's telling that their UK Spiritual Predecessors, Tim and Dawn, did not have such moments.
Newspaper Comics
- Wonderfully done in Peanuts, where Charlie Brown's particular negative trait is indecisiveness. Although usually rejecting complaints he was cruel to Chuck, Charles Schulz admits properly balancing You Suck is difficult: "You feel sympathy, but you can imagine him being tiresome to other people."
- Oddly enough, Schulz seemed to get just as many complaints about Peppermint Patty's troubles. Schulz explained that was probably because she was a rather inoffensive character, but admits that removing these traits simply makes her not funny anymore.
- Pluggers, a Funny Animal comic about aging rural lower-class America, is a strange case, as the traits depicted are supplied by readers of the comic. It may be thought of, perhaps, as We Suck.
- It's more of a "working-class hero" comic, but one which (unintentionally) makes the "pluggers" look rather pathetic.
- Ruben Bolling parodies this with "Dinkle, the Unlovable Loser" strips in his comic, Tom The Dancing Bug.
- Compare to Ziggy, another "lovable loser," which falls flat at all times.
- Luann features this frequently, as the title character is depicted as lazy, sloppy, jealous, clingy, angry, vindictive and horribly insecure on a regular basis.
- Cathy is a post-adolescent, premenopausal Luann. (I'm surprised that nobody's done a parody strip from this idea.)
- Dilbert anyone? Average engineer, and his job defifnitely has something to do with slavery. Also, he’s fat and ugly, and women find him dull and disgusting.
Video Games
- In the MMO City Of Villains, one mission you can get is to kidnap a snitch named Joshua who saw you committing a crime from his apartment while he was "staying up late playing dOs". The Joshua NPC character model is fat, balding, frumpily dressed, and has a decidedly unintelligent-looking face.
- And to add injury to insult, his pathfinding sucks, which not only makes him really annoying during the mission, but making him look extra idiotic as every twenty feet you have to go back for him and find him standing there staring around as if he had no clue where you went.
- Final Fantasy VII starred Cloud, who started tough and independent but turned out to be the exact opposite of what you thought you were getting. When he was younger, he picked fights with the other kids to hide his insecurities and decided he would join SOLDIER in order to impress the girl he'd had a crush on for years but never had the courage to ask out. When this attempt failed due to his stated insecurities and mental fragility, his hometown burned down by the man he idolized and his best friend in the world- an actual member of SOLDIER- gunned down before his eyes he lost his mind and believed he was that best friend, with all his memories and triumphs. The Cloud we play as for most of the game is a shell of a man who believes he is a great hero because that's the only thing keeping his mind intact at all. Many people missed the point of this.
- The same people forget that Cloud pretty much started the stereotype of the angsty brooding hero.
- He does face his problems eventually and become the supreme Ascended Fanboy, capable of (sort of) taking Sephiroth one-on-one. It's a positive message overall. It's about admitting you suck and overcoming it to be awesome.
- Something similar has been said about Squall, who cynically put starts out as an antisocial geek.
- Final Fantasy X starred Tidus, designed so the players would have someone to identify with, and to allow the characters to explain the more unfamiliar aspects of their culture to someone who legitimately had no idea what was going on without the dialogue seeming forced. It was arguably taken too far, however, as Tidus seems unable to make any inferences about what is going on around him, is frequently shown to forget many of the things he has been told, and comes across as a huge wanker by doing things that nobody would think are good ideas, ignorance of the culture or not, such as barging into a sacred area of a temple only a very select few are allowed into, even after being specifically told this.
- Lester The Unlikely is the embodiment of this trope. He's a nerd who takes damage from falling off a small distance off a cliff and runs away scared near creatures, even a turtle! Undoubtedly gamers saw too much of themselves in him, which is probably why the game has so much hate. See for yourself.
- Then again, he slowly evolved into a tough hero towards the end of the game, losing his awkward stance, his fear of creatures, and he even got to use a sword!
- Metal Gear Solid's Raiden. While he is beautiful rather than ugly, this is a side-effect of him being made deliberately androgynous so that both sexes identify with him. While he is fairly book-smart, he lacks common sense and does everything extremely by-the-book. He is routinely humiliated, mocked, and has a great sense of smallness and lack of control against all the huge Government Conspiracy plot. The coolest man on the planet develops a liking for him, but, even so, hides information from him and says things deliberately to rile him up and humiliate him. His CO patronises him, his girlfriend nags him, and he experiences all manner of humiliating circumstance, such as slipping on bird droppings or getting urinated on by a guard. Word Of God has it that all this was designed to make the player identify more with him. Naturally, everyone hated him. One blogger even went so far as to call him Robo-Shinji.
- Also from Metal Gear Solid is Otacon, who, well... 1up.com says it better than us:
Otacon was named after the nutty computer in 2001 . He was seduced by his stepmother, which made his father kill himself. He accidentally designed Metal Gear Rex as a tool of the apocalypse. His stepsister died hating him. He named himself after an anime convention. He peed himself in terror when he first met Snake. He wondered aloud if love could bloom on the battlefield. Worst of all, Hideo Kojima designed Otacon as someone that you, the player, could relate to. You are the real loser.
- The main character of No More Heroes is, in the words of Yahtzee, "a hopeless pop-culture-obsessed social reject who spends most of his time whining, getting strung along by women, and being a generally unlikeable fuckbend. So at least you can't fault it for understanding its audience (predictable joke)."
- In the Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney series, the character you're playing as is always incredibly clueless, even when certain details or contradictions should be completely obvious. Miles Edgeworth notes that there must be a "kick me" sign attached to the defense's bench. Insult is added to injury when, in the fourth game, a new player-character takes over and Phoenix himself becomes a Magnificent Bastard.
- There are moments when the protagonist knows what to do before the player, but this can end up being even more irritating because they won't tell you.
- The exception to the rule is found when you play as Edgeworth himself for half a case... the simple fact that detectives and witnesses respect and attempt to help him makes Phoenix appear so more of a Butt Monkey.
- And then there's Apollo Justice in his first case, where he's a complete nervous wreck at first. His first two objections end embarrassingly, the second resulting in The Judge and his mentor Kristoph scolding him for "excess yelling." So much for his "Chords of Steel" workouts.
- Apollo is also subjected to mockery by Klavier Gavin AND the Judge; almost every time Apollo gets a penalty, one of them will openly insult him on his mistake. The most humiliating one:
Judge: Prosecutor Gavin, if you would.
Klavier plays an air guitar riff, Apollo receives his penalty
Apollo: ...I'll just take the penalty, thanks.
- Phoenix isn't just subjected to mockery from almost every living being on the face of the Earth, but he also gets physically injured or almost close to it in every single game! He gets punched by some people, almost gets killed by the mafia, gets electrocuted from a tazer, almost gets mauled by a lion, gets whipped, gets MANY cups of coffee hurled at him, gets slapped very hard by a little girl and falls into a river and gets a nasty cold. Even in Apollo Justice where Phoenix is not a lawyer anymore, he gets run over by a car! Luckily, he only suffers a bruise.
- Despite being a Heroic Mime, Link from The Legend Of Zelda semi-qualifies in The Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass due to how the games cutscene-humor tends to abuse him. (At least until he gets Badass ). This trooper is actually picturing him scoring 10% on a maths test, despite being able to take on the most complicated dungeons and puzzles known to man. His often very, very clueless expressions really don't help.
- Lose enough units to get enough replacement characters in Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon, and eventually you'll get ones with insulting names. Note that to get the best secret characters, you have to keep your army small, and there will be some times where picking up replacement characters (which happens automatically) will put you over the desired army size.
[[folder: Web Comics ]]
- Lampshaded in Not Quite Daily Comic's Magical Girlfriend Story Arc.
- Ethan from Shortpacked seems to be shaping up to this. The comic establishes that while he has a moral and up-right character, he's a hopeless nerd trapped in a dead-end job who devotes his life to what's portrayed out as pointless hobbies. When the strip makes it look like he'll pull out of it (by getting a boyfriend, pursuing his dreams) or he has a realization about his life, it's just ignored and he goes on as he always had been.
- Another Ethan is said to be a portrayal/caricature of gamers. Apparently gamers are violently antisocial and misogynistic man-children.
- The last panel of this Original Life strip is apparently the main character. Even ignoring the obvious, the one bit of personalization we can see in his room is a Halo poster, whereas the girls have a map and trophies.
- Garfield Minus Garfield takes Garfield strips and removes all the main characters except Jon, making him seem even more pathetic and weird. Often he'll just talk to himself and nothing will happen. Maybe no-one is actually saying people are supposed to identify with such a hopeless loser apparently struggling with depression, but apparently people find their lives resemble his anyway. (This editor is really grateful he can't say that for himself.)
Web Animation
Web Original
Western Animation
- Homer Simpson of The Simpsons, Peter Griffin of Family Guy, and Fry of Futurama.
- Frank Grimes was also intended to be an 'ordinary person' in order to demonstrate that an ordinary person would be unable to survive in The Simpsons universe without going crazy. Given that Grimes' backstory defines Deus Angst Machina, and even taking it into account he's still a humourless jerk who openly and rudely rejects Homer's initial attempts at making friends even before he learns what an incredibly lucky bozo he is, this doesn't exactly reflect well on 'ordinary' people.
- To be fair, Homer makes a mess of Frank's desk, tries to steal his things, actually does steal his things, is lazy and offensive, and is directly responsible for a decrease in workplace security. He learns most of this before Homer attempts to befriend him, and then Homer only wants to be friends because he doesn't like the thought of having an enemy.
- I think the idea was that real people work hard in life for fairly little, while Homer succeeds in getting everything despite being a complete idiot — which just doesn't make sense.
- While it mostly doesn't make sense, there is a certain zen quality to it. Ignoring exaggerations a moment, Homer could also be seen as succeeding because he's not an astronomical stick in the mud. He just does things.
- Except that he doesn't do things, except usually to make things worse, followed by his attempts to return things to the Status Quo. Remove Homer from the equation and you'll invariably increase efficiency.
- Ironically, while Homer's life seems incredible to Grimes...it's portrayed as endlessly faulted throughout the rest of the series.
- The satire behind Homer's Enemy is more complex than people give credit for. Although Grimes was meant to represent a "real life" sentiment into the world of the Simpsons, he was also simultaneously meant to lampoon viewers who took every little exaggeration and "that would never happen in real life!" moment too seriously, even the smaller stuff. Basically, people with no sense of humor. In a sense...saying You Suck in two completely different ways all in one character!
- And, of course, Comic Book Guy represents the hyper-critical Simpsons fan that obsesses about continuity or whines about when the show Jumped The Shark.
- American Dragon Jake Long had its share of You Suck moments. Jake's annoying Jive Turkey talk didn't help either. Many episodes actually featured problems that were a direct result of (or related to) Jake (or on occasion Spud or Trixie) being sucky teenagers.
- Animaniacs poked fun at some of its overzealous fans a few times, like a Parody Commercial for the "Please, Please, Please Get A Life Foundation".
- Beavis And Butthead. Misanthropic bastard supreme Mike Judge's magnum opus was a particularly ruthless deconstruction of the lifestyle of its own target audience.
- Jay Sherman of The Critic hosts a TV show that gets really low ratings and is always on the verge of being canceled, with his looks modeled after a fat version of Jon Lovitz, who provides his voice. His parents are wealthy, and they adopted Jay at a young age. His friend Jeremy is basically the show's version of Mel Gibson, and his son goes to United Nations Middle School.
- This is somewhat subverted by the fact that Jay has a six-figure salary and has won multiple awards, including an Emmy, two Pulitzer Prizes, five Golden Globes, a People's Choice award, a PhD in film, a B'nai B'rith award, and an America's Cup. Not that any of this makes him any more popular with the ladies, of course...
- Most people think he's gay, except for Alice.
- Danny in Danny Phantom, to move the plot, almost all time prior to learning his Aesop at the end of an episode (only to forget it by the next), serves to show how much teenagers suck, i.e. blowing off his homework, stuffing his face with corndogs, calling everything lame or crud, playing mindless video games, acting like a jerk, wanting to make-out with The Paolo, perpetually being a C-student, etc.
- Timmy from Fairly Odd Parents. However, Sucking does not prevent him from defeating multiple enemies with or without Functional Magic.
- Ron Stoppable is pretty much this in Kim Possible, in various actions including fighting, picking up girly signals from girls who actually like him, his schoolwork, his parents. The times he isn't sucky usually ends up with him having to give up whatever he doesn't suck at (e.g. his job at Bueno Nacho). The titular Miss Possible is occasionally this, usually in relation to boys, and dating.
- Given how amazingly prevalent it is in children's entertainment, it's worth noting that it's averted in the Static Shock animated series. Virgil was generally portrayed as intelligent and a good student—one relatively early episode involved him getting into a program for gifted students, and it wasn't in the "Main Character is the dark horse" way—while his friend Richie eventually gains super-intelligence as a superpower. Even despite still being an open comic book geek, Virgil almost virtually never acted the way stereotypical geek would, instead expressing a impressive amount of street smarts on a regular basis.
- Hell, in one episode he was mocked by Sharon because a speech he had prepared was too tedious and morose.
- W.I.T.C.H.'s Will Vandom, like Doremi, is often shown getting terrible grades as well. To make matters worse, the writers of the television series have taken away Will's energy powers, the main perk of her being the Guardians' leader; though it was instead given to her later.
- Dethklok's "Fan Song" is a massive, scathing You Suck towards their very fans. Surprisingly (or unsurprisingly, considering how hardcore their fans are), they loved it.
- GWAR had a similar song, "Bohab". In fact, 'bohab' is an insult the band invented to describe stereotypical basement dwelling, unhygienic metal fans. (The word comes from a guy named Bob who allegedly pronounced his name that way).
- King Of The Hill largely subverts this. Hank has his flaws, but is a decent, hard-working human being and the Only Sane Man. However, there was an episode where Peggy, Mihn, and Dale decided to play the stock market, and who did they research to find out what the American public wanted? Bill. Fat, bald, ugly, lonely, unlovable Bill, with the overall implication that the things that Bill likes are the things the American populace overall would want. It's an... interesting choice on their part.
|
|
