Basic Trope: Teaching a nice and peaceful person to be assertive will always go wrong.
- Straight: Clark tries to teach Jake to be more assertive in dealing with people, but this made Jake into an extremely wrathful person that is hard to get along with.
- Exaggerated: Clark teaches Jake to take a level in badass by putting him through perilous obstacles, but this made him a psychotic Knight Templar.
- Downplayed: Clark merely gets Jake to stand up to one kind of exploitation.
- Justified:
- Clark invokes a non-romantic equivalent of Nice Guys Finish Last.
- Jake already had anger in his heart, which he'd kept buried. Clark's training removes that restraint.
- Clark is a naturally violent person and prefers the company of violent people, so he reshapes Jake into an aggressor.
- Clark wants people to be afraid of him, and Jake is a Gentle Giant, so Clark makes Jake into someone more intimidating.
- Clark's attempts at making Jake more assertive mostly boiled down to "be loud and aggressive and violent", and Jake, being rather ignorant and naive, takes it at face value instead of thinking critically about it.
- Inverted:
- Clark tries to teach Jake to be more polite and compassionate, but it doesn't go well, and Clark wishes him to revert to his insensitive behavior.
- Jake teaches the angry and aggressive Clark how to calm down and resolve issues through non-violent means.
- Subverted: Jake's other friends want him to be more assertive. Clark deceives them into thinking he is doing the job, when he really wants Jake to stay as is, and Jake knows it.
- Double Subverted: Clark sees an especially bad bout of bullying and realizes that turning the other cheek isn't going to work for Jake, and thus begins to teach him anger for real.
- Parodied: Both extremes are exaggerated: Jake is normally an Extreme Doormat of a man who goes into a Heroic BSoD if he blows away a fly (let alone kills one), and becomes a borderline-Omnicidal Maniac Barbaric Bully if he becomes assertive.
- Zig Zagged: Clark teaches Jake to be more assertive, but in the process, Jake's niceness starts rubbing off on Clark and he becomes more submissive and agreeable.
- Averted:
- Teaching someone to be assertive will always end in success.
- No one teaches anyone to be assertive.
- Enforced: The writer wants to make changes in Jake's poorly received doormat personality.
- Lampshaded: "Whoa, take it easy, man! I didn't say go overboard."
- Implied: Clark looks around at the remains of a Bar Brawl (that looks more like the set of a Hellraiser series film) in absolute horror while his friend Alice next to him snarks "nice work you did with Jake's anger!"
- Invoked: Jake is so Tired of Running that he begs Clark to help him get rid of his fear, no matter what.
- Exploited: Evulz sets up Clark and Jake, expecting Jake to Break the Motivational Speaker.
- Defied:
- Clark realizes that trying to toughen up Jake will end badly for him, so he decides not to.
- Clark makes it perfectly clear before any kind of procedure starts that what he wants of Jake is for him to be more assertive, not to become a psychopath, and that if Jake feels uncomfortable at any moment he can ask Clark to stop and walk away with no harm done.
- Jake makes clear that he does not wishes Clark to "teach him how to be angry" at all (ironically showcasing that he does not needs any lessons on being assertive).
- Discussed: "Why is it that every damn busybody 'round here thinks that we need to get pissed more often?"
- Conversed: "I suppose that this kind of plot is regular in sit-coms because the message needs to be said again and again: you don't really know a man's depths until you make him go berserk."
- Deconstructed:
- Despite his best intentions, Clark's actions backfire and only further weakens Jake's confidence and permanently damages his ability to trust other people. This starts to a cycle of Jake losing contact with his social support network leading to chronic self-isolation.
- Jake's assertive rage quickly becomes Suicidal Overconfidence and he decides to bully someone who will very quickly turn him back into a meek mouse as he desperately tries to backpedal and plead for a mercy he will not get.
- Jake feels hurt at the fact that Clark and everybody else he is near and dear to believe he is not assertive enough, and thus decides to show them he is… by becoming hostile to them.
- Jake's hidden rage is not a little issue he can turn into a constructive force, it's an actual medical condition that is impossible to control and always hurts too many people (ex. Intermittent Explosive Disorder). Clark thought otherwise. The upcoming bloodbath is on his hands.
- Reconstructed:
- Jake learns to trust people again, but is still upset with Clark for going about it the wrong way. Jake starts taking new lessons to ensure his anger doesn't hurt people without cause and meets new friends who do appreciate him despite his temper, because deep down, he's still a nice guy.
- One of the very first things Clark teaches (or at least tries to teach) Jake is that there is Always a Bigger Fish that no amount of assertiveness or rage can deal with and maybe it is best to just let that become water under the bridge and use said assertiveness in more constructive (and less suicidal) methods.
- After the initial bout of insults and speeches calling them out, Jake figures out that at least part of the blame is on him — he should have made more clear his assertiveness is not an Informed Ability around his loved ones, if not literally everybody else. So he decides to correct this.
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