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Playing With / Rightly Self-Righteous

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Basic Trope: A character sees themselves as more moral than others because they are.

  • Straight: Alice shoves down her Holier Than Thou attitude towards everyone's throats, but she genuinely lives up to her expectations.
  • Exaggerated:
  • Downplayed:
    • Alice is a fairly level headed Straight Man, albeit sometimes a tad pushy and uptight in trying to keep others in line.
    • Alice doesn't consider herself good at all - just the only person she knows who approaches neutrality and calls the fact she is a relative moral standards-bearer pathetic. She also has very high standards.
  • Justified:
  • Inverted:
  • Subverted: Alice suffers a moment where she isn't as moral as she thought.
  • Double Subverted: But this didn't stop her from taunting others about admitting having flaws and working on herself to improve and get rid of said flaws, which others have hardly done.
  • Parodied:
    • Alice has done every good deed known to mankind and mocks everyone who doesn't. Because of this, she goes to Heaven while everyone else goes to Hell.
    • Alice is the most popular girl in school because of her perfect morality and bullying those who really are nowhere near as virtuous automatically counts as Laser-Guided Karma for the latter side.
  • Zig Zagged:
    • One day, Alice acts self-righteous, but then in other days, Alice remains polite and quiet, at least until she sees someone doing something wrong.
    • Alice's perpetual self righteousness is justified on some days, but unfounded on others.
  • Averted: Alice is morally upright without having a condescending attitude.
  • Enforced: "Let's create the perfect character that other character hates because they are right!"
  • Lampshaded:
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited: Alice acts self-righteous in order to make people moral like her.
  • Defied:
    • Alice may be morally superior towards everyone, but doesn't rationalize this as an excuse to mistreat the morally inferior people.
    • Bob tells her to shut it in her debut.
  • Discussed:
    Bob: What a self-righteous bitch!
    Lenny: But sadly, she's always right about everything.
  • Conversed: "I have a feeling that the author has created the ultimate Jerk Sue."
  • Deconstructed:
    Flash: Alice... I am SICK and TIRED of yer goddamn lectures. All this moral superiority? What, ya think ya can just back that shit up an' everyone's going to listen to ya, apologize, an' that's it? Is that what'cha think!? (In a Simpleton Voice) Oh, I'm a gangster, an' I do crimes like beat the shit out of someone or steal shit, an' yer doin' charity or whatever the fuck. (In normal voice) What other fuckin' option did'ja expect me to have?! I'm way too fuckin' broke to get even a ticket out of this fuckin' dump, an' there are no jobs to look for, an' if you dare say that I've wasted my life on crime, well guess what, bitch: MY LIFE WAS ALREADY WASTED WHEN MY MOM SHAT ME OUT! All y'ever did was treat the lot of us like fuckin' sub-humans, an' that's not morally superior! Ya think yer so goddamn high and mighty, actin' like The Paragon while in reality yer just belittlin' other people who you think are utterly irreformable? Well think again, fucko! This Is Reality, an' yer just a delusional bitch! WAKE THE FUCK UP, YA FUCKIN' LUNATIC!!!
  • Reconstructed:
    • Alice befriends other characters who do meet her standards of goodness and around them, she comes off as actually quite pleasant to be around and enjoyable. Additionally, when the audience see her former friends in contrast with her new ones, the dichotomy reveals that Alice's criticisms were completely valid all along.
    • Despite the criticisms in-universe and out regarding how blunt Alice is with her greater sense of morals and integrity, her very forward approach actually pays out to everyone's benefit in the long run since those that do listen to her in the end to benefit.
    • When confronted about whether her own pride in her morality actually compromises her in the first place, Alice responds by correcting them. It's not pride that's the sin, but hubris, which goes to people who's selfishness puts them above others and thus refuse to acknowledge limits or contribution of others. Alice has never fallen to any of these pit-traps, being fully willing to acknowledge her own imperfections and praising what the others have done. While she could be considered a show-off when it comes to her virtues, all of it is completely genuine; basically Awesome Ego applied to morality. As such, this makes her come off as more moral since she's not overtly prideful and she has the right to be confident in her strong suits like everyone else. She's confident in that she's a good person and not affected by others trying to tear her down.
    • Alice's behavior is in part a unique way of being The Paragon. She hopes that by being so explicit with her virtues and blunt in her approach, it would allow other people to do better and get the message across as straightly as possible.
    • Alice learns to be more subtle in her virtue superiority as not to potentially set off the others while in turn agreeing that the others work more on their vices.
    • Can't reconstruct 8. Flash is right, he literally can't do anything about his situation other than just crime. He can't just try and change at all, because the town he lives in is genuinely terrible and it wants to keep him in. So all he can really do now is just live out the rest of his days doing crime because he can't do anything else to get out of his terrible situation.
    • Alice is a Jerk with a Heart of Gold and can empathise with others' viewpoints enough to help effectively, even if she doesn't agree with them.

Any morally-inferior person who is so lazy and self-indulgent should ought to click on the more righteous main article.

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