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Playing With / Brutal Honesty

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Basic Trope: The truth is blunt and hurtful to others.

  • Straight: Alice tells Bob how embarrassing he is in his performance at skateboarding, but she's damn right.
  • Exaggerated:
    • Everything Alice says to Bob is so harshly true that Bob breaks down into tears.
    • Alice says to Bob a truth so hurtful that Bob suddenly dies.
    • Awful Truth.
  • Downplayed:
    • Alice is completely honest, but the truth itself isn't that harsh.
    • Alice is like this to Bob because he is not easily shaken up.
  • Justified:
    • Alice thought that lying is always wrong and she wants to avoid being seen as a bad person.
    • Alice knows that if she always tells the truth, she will get rewarded.
    • Alice is an Honest Advisor; her entire purpose is to say true things others won't.
    • Alice isn't socially adept.
    • Alice believes that people are too self-centered when they want to hear something they want to hear.
    • Alice is a robot programmed to always tell the truth and with only minimal social knowledge.
    • Bob thinks he's more awesome than he really is, so Alice needs to give him a reality check.
    • Alice is a Principles Zealot in truth as she views it as necessary for societal and personal growth and refusal to acknowledge problems will only lead to their doom.
    • Alice has been mistreated and underestimated her entire life, and its her way of getting back at people and making sure to let others know she isn't a pushover.
  • Inverted: Alice tells Bob how great he is in skateboarding, but this was a lie to not discourage him from further practicing.
  • Subverted:
    • Alice then tells Bob that she was only joking around with him. She never meant what she said.
    • Alice insists that she says the "blunt truth", only to slip in a few subtle lies.
  • Double Subverted: "... oh, my God. Not only are you horrible at skating, but you're also either massively gullible or self-deluded." "I was being sarcastic!"
  • Parodied:
    • Every word out of Alice's mouth leaves someone in tears. In fact, her inner monologue causes herself to break out into sobs.
    • Alice's Brutal Honesty extends to her bedside manner.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice alternates between brutal and gentle honesty, or between brutal honesty and bald-faced lies.
  • Averted: The truth is pleasant and harmless.
  • Enforced: "We need to show the audience that Alice is a good person but doesn't worry about offending others."
  • Lampshaded:
    • "Damn. Uh, a little brutal, but in hindsight, I really am terrible at skating."
    • "You can tell she's honest by the nasty tone on her voice."
    • "When you say something like that, meaning it doesn't make you any less of a bitch."
    • "You are the most tactless person I've ever met!"
  • Invoked:
    • Said East German judge wants to be seen as honest but harsh, and emulates Alice.
    • Bob tells Alice to tell him the truth, no matter how awful it is.
  • Exploited:
    • Bob realizes Alice is too proud to actually lie, so he practices to the point she has nothing to criticize (or hides his mistakes expertly). He then goads her into giving grudging but actual (and not faint) praise.
    • Alice uses this trope to rationalize her abusive Jerkass behavior.
    • Alice is actually a Consummate Liar and a Gadfly. She finds it much easier for Bob to swallow her deliberately inflammatory statements by claiming how much more truthful being harsh is.
  • Defied:
    • Alice is always sensitive enough to realize when her honesty should be tempered, and is only brutally honest when Bob is being a Jerkass or dense.
    • "So what if I tell the blunt truth? That doesn't make me a good person."
  • Discussed:
    • "Why would Bob ever keep Alice as a friend who is brutally honest is beyond my understanding."
    • "So when Alice tells the hurtful truth, that automatically makes her a good person?"
  • Conversed: "Can Alice actually say anything that isn't blunt in the next episode for once in her life?"
  • Deconstructed:
    • Alice telling the uncomfortable truth has caused Bob to give her an uncomfortable truth of his own: she's is a jerk and doesn't deserve any friends because her truth has driven others away from her.
    • Alice tells the brutal truth so much that others are unwilling and unable to believe it.
    • Alice treats honesty as a hammer and every fault as a nail that needs to be stuck down. Her problem is that she refuses to acknowledge or doesn't realize that this kind of honesty has its time and place and that using it at every opportunity isn't the best thing to do.
    • Mistreatment-Induced Betrayal
    • Alice is just an extremely blunt idiot; she thinks she speaks "truth to power" when in reality she affixed herself to the belief that, as long as she says things she thinks are truth (without making any research) she can get away with not having any filter and calling other people any insult she can think of as "punching up the material".
    • There is such a thing as being too much "brutal" and not enough "honest".
    • Alice is blunt about people's faults and failings, but she has no sense of Constructive Criticism; as a result, she just ends up disparaging people without helping them overcome said faults.
    • Alice has trouble discerning between what's actual fact, and what are merely her own personal opinions, and delivering said opinions as if they are facts tends to make people annoyed with her rather than making them appreciate her input.
  • Reconstructed:
  • Played For Laughs: Alice has no filter and makes social situations incredibly awkward.
  • Played For Drama: Alice and Bob are a fledgling couple, and this particular trait of Alice's causes some friction between the two. Bob gets upset that Alice is so blunt and doesn't hold back on the criticism. Alice counters that maybe if the truth wasn't so awful, she wouldn't have to be the one to say it. They both storm out after this argument, angsting over it: Alice over whether her Will Not Tell a Lie policy will cost her Bob (and more to the point, if it's really worth it if it does), and Bob over Alice's "The Reason You Suck" Speech, whether it's actually true, and whether he's willing to face Alice again.
  • Played For Horror:

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