The Reason You Suck Speech / Literature

Examples of "The Reason You Suck" Speech in literature.

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• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn:
  • Sherburn: "Then he says, slow and scornful, 'The idea of YOU lynching anybody! It's amusing. The idea of you thinking you had pluck enough to lynch a MAN!'"
  • Jim lays one a quietly crushing one down on Huck at the end of his "dream interpretation" after the two get separated in a fogbank:
    Jim: What do dey stan' for? I'se gwyne to tell you. When I got all wore out wid work, en wid de callin' for you, en went to sleep, my heart wuz mos' broke bekase you wuz los', en I didn' k'yer no' mo' what become er me en de raf'. En when I wake up en fine you back agin, all safe en soun', de tears come, en I could a got down on my knees en kiss yo' foot, I's so thankful. En all you wuz thinkin' 'bout wuz how you could make a fool uv ole Jim wid a lie. Dat truck dah is TRASH; en trash is what people is dat puts dirt on de head er dey fren's en makes 'em ashamed.
• The Alice Network: Charlie tells René why he's an idiot near the end.
  You thought you were so clever, starting a new life, and all it took to find you was a college girl making a few telephone calls. … This Baudelaire obsession of yours, it isn't just really, really boring, it makes you easy to find. You're not clever, you're predictable. If you hadn't named your restaurant after the same damn poem twice in a row, you'd still be sipping champagne over dinner right now, not packing a bag and running. For the third time in your miserable cliché of a life.
• Animorphs: Aftran does "the reason you humans as a whole suck" speech when she's talking to Cassie in "The Departure". She tells Cassie how humans suck because they don't appreciate the beauty of the world they live in and that they complain about the Yeerks enslaving them, but they do the same thing to their own livestock.
  • Earlier in the same book, after Cassie explained why she was leaving the team, Racheal had a few choice words for her.
  Cassie: Racheal, we can still be...
  Racheal: No, no we can't. See, you just told us the rest of the world can drop dead. So long as you, Cassie, don't end up turning into me.
• In The Villainous Daughter's Butler, I'll Crush the Destruction Flags, after an incident between his followers and the protagonists that happened during his date, Prince Alforth asks Cyril why Sophia was disappointed in him and how he should rectify the situation. As this isn't the first time Alforth's immaturity has cause problems, Cyril takes this opportunity.
  Alforth: It doesn't matter how harsh it is. Be honest with me, is Sophia angry with me? If so, what should I do? No, what should I do now?
  Cyril: ... then I'll be straight. Lady Sophia isn't angry with you, your highness. However, she's disappointed with how you left your followers unchecked.
  Cyril: Your highness, do you remember how I asked you if you were a member of the elitist faction before?
  Alforth: Of course I do, but didn't I deny those claims?
  Cyril: The important thing here is that you appeared that way, because you look like that to your surroundings, that was a roundabout way of me telling you to be mindful of your behaviour and actions.
  Alforth: ... Really? Why didn't you just tell me that directly?
  Cyril: It's because I couldn't. You are a prince, while I'm just a commoner butler.
  Alforth: But I thought status didn't matter at the school.
  Cyril: That's a policy in name-only. If the person in the higher position doesn't proclaim equality first, then there's no way those of lower status could act as their equals. However, your highness...
  Alforth: I let Jircliffe and Surge get away with their domineering behaviour. I see, there are a number of things that come to mind now that you mentioned that. It's no wonder Sophia is disappointed with me...
• In Atlas Shrugged John Galt has a massive speech in which he reams everyone he hates; it lasts for three whole hours and around sixty pages.
• The BattleTech Expanded Universe novel Warrior: Coupe features an incisive video message from Hanse Davion towards his much-despised foe Maximillian Liao. The contents of the message, combined with Davion's recent massive victory against Liao, pushes the latter into acutal derangement. It is later confirmed that Liao lapses into total psychosis and spends the rest of his life unable to tell reality from his delusions of ambition, a rare case of someone being so insulted that they lose their mind.
  Hanse Davion: (after having had his Liao-crafted body double spend several minutes smugly and sarcastically 'thanking' Liao for falling into Davion's traps) "You've wondered all along, haven't you, why I struck at you? He is the reason. Not because you tried to supplant me with him. No, tthat was an excellent strategem, and one that nearly worked. For that, I salute you. I went after you because you dared, in you attempt to get to me, to destroy him. You robbed him of his face, of his memories, of his life. If you could do that, if you could steal from a person all that makes him an individual — claiming it is for the good of the state — there is no tetlling what other inhuman acts you could justify in your mind. For that, I had to break your power, and that is what I have done. We will rebuild him and try tot make him whole again. We will do he same with those of your people we have liberated. But for you, and your dreams of being the First Lord of a New Star League, there is no cure. Good bye."
• Behind the Sandrat Hoax: Cathcart makes quite a few biting, critical, and spot-on speeches criticizing Baumgartner and Bancroff.
  Cathcart: By these measures, the governing bodies of the so-called Interscience Federation reveal themselves as composed largely of sycophants, obsequious to an administrator who, as I have demonstrated, does not know what science is. These people may, of course, take their stand with whoever they wish. I will stand with Galileo.
• When Brenish and Gareth finally have it out in Below, Brenish delivers a very brief but brutal one. Of course at that moment the rest of the party isn't too pleased with either one of them.
  Brenish: That is my honor, Gareth. Coward am I? I brought no shield here; you brought twelve.
• Mayuri gives one to Tokinada in Bleach: Cannot Fear Your Own World, where he calls him out on his poor planning and says he's the sole reason it all went wrong, and says if he was the one doing it, he would have actually succeeded. Then he proceeds to treat Tokinada like he's beneath his notice and calmly watches what ensues.
• Near the end of Brimstone, Captain Hayward delivers one to "Reverend" Buck.
  "Mr. Buck? If you don't mind, there's something personal I'd like to say to you... First of all, there's only one Jesus and you aren't Him. Another thing: I'm a Christian, and I try to be a good one, although I may not always succeed. You had no right to stand there when I was at the mercy of that crowd, point your finger at me, and pass judgement. You should take a good look at that passage in the Gospel of Matthew: Judge not, that ye be not judged... Thou hypocrite, first cast out the beam out of thine own eye; and then shalt thou see clearly to cast out the mote out of thy brother's eye.... I always liked the King James Version the best. Now, listen. You worry about yourself from now on, being a good citizen, keeping out of trouble, and obeying the law... If there's a Second Coming in the works, you sure as heck won't get advance notice - that much I do know... Farewell, Mr. Buck. Keep your nose clean."
• Casteel Series: The titular heroine of Heaven gives one to Kitty after all the abuse she suffered at the latter's hands:
  Heaven: "You're not my mother, Kitty Setterton Dennison! I don't have to call you Mother. Kitty is good enough. I've tried hard to love you, and forget all the awful things you've done to me, but I'm not trying anymore. You can't be human and nice for but a little while, can you? And I was stupid enough to plan a party, just to please you, and give you a reason for having all that china and crystal... but the storm is on, and so are you, because you just don't know how to act like a mother. Now it's ugly, mean time again. I can see it in your watery eyes that glow in the darkness of this room. No wonder God didn't allow you to have children, Kitty Dennison. God knew better."
• In the Chalet School series, Miss Annersley is very good at giving these. She has been known to reduce all but the most stoic of Chalet girls to tears and/or wishing the ground would swallow them up.
• In A Christmas Carol, the Ghost of Christmas Present gives Scrooge a furious butt-chewing for describing the poor as "surplus population". It sticks, largely because Scrooge has just seen Bob Cratchit's ill child, Tiny Tim, and has started feeling compassion for perhaps the first time in many years — and it's also worth noting that the Ghost has already thrown Scrooge's own words back in his face that the poor should die and "decrease the surplus population".
  "Man, if man you be in heart, not adamant, forbear that wicked cant until you have discovered What the surplus is, and Where it is. Will you decide what men shall live, what men shall die? It may be, that in the sight of Heaven, you are more worthless and less fit to live than millions like this poor man's child. Oh God! to hear the Insect on the leaf pronouncing on the too much life among his hungry brothers in the dust!"
• In one Cicada short story, the main character's parents on the brink of divorce are having an argument over the mother talking to her boyfriend while they were watching a Christmas special. After the mother berates the father for his "Catholic martyrdom" and expecting people who make mistakes to spend the rest of their lives on their knees, he responds with "You're stuck. You're going to wake up on the day you die and realize you hasn't changed one bit."
• In The Code of the Woosters, from the Jeeves and Wooster series, Bertie finds out Sir Roderick Spode's dark secret and delivers a serious verbal beatdown.
  "It is about time," I proceeded, "that some public-spirited person came along and told you where you got off. The trouble with you, Spode, is that just because you have succeeded in inducing a handful of half-wits to disfigure the London scene by going about in black shorts, you think you're someone. You hear them shouting 'Heil Spode!' and you imagine it is the Voice of the People. That is where you make the bloomer. What the Voice of the People is saying is: 'Look at that frightful ass Spode swanking about in footer bags! Did you ever in your puff see such a perisher?"
• Codex Alera: Two noteworthy cases are given in Captain's Fury.
  • The first is given by the Canim commander Nasaug when Tavi is trying to negotiate a peace deal between the Alerans and Canim. Notably, Tavi is briefly taken aback by Nasaug's vehemence and even silently admits that Nasaug isn't exactly wrong From a Certain Point of View.
    Nasaug: (gently) Captain [Tavi]. You are gadara. But not all Alerans are.
    Tavi: (frowns) "Gadara"? Enemy?
    Nasaug: (dismissively) Not the same. You have my respect. But you do not lead them. You do not speak in the voice of Gaius Sextus. And your people have proven to us, many times, that they are not worthy of respect.
    Tavi: (confused) How so?
    Nasaug: (stares at Tavi like he's an idiot) Because you are monsters. You are worse than starving beasts. You slaughter one another by the thousands over matters of leadership. Your people crush those without power and take whatsoever they wish from them for the simple reason that they can. (leans back and glares at Tavi with utter contempt) You betray, enslave, and brutalize your own kind, Aleran. Your own. If you treat your own folk this way, what fool could possibly believe you would act any differently toward mine?
  • The second one is given later on in the same novel by Lady Aquitaine Invidia to her failed Chessmaster of a puppet Senator Arnos, who has bitten off way more than he could chew and is desperately trying to get her aid in pulling him out of the hole he's dug himself into.
    Invidia: I believe I made a mistake in you, Arnos. I knew you were a pompous egotist with delusions of grandeur, but I did believe you were at least competent.
    Arnos: We had a deal!
    Invidia: We had an understanding. But you've broken faith with me. You told me you hadn't acquired any of your troops as mercenaries. But your extremely well-supplied and well-armed and well-paid cavalry seem to have taken it upon themselves to loot and pillage every human habitation they come across.
    Arnos: Their Tribunes are acting independently of my orders!
    Invidia: You're the commander of these Legions, dear. You're responsible for what they do. That's rather why one is able to attain glory and respect after a victory. Or don't they teach that at the Collegia?
    Arnos: How dare you lecture me on—
    Invidia: (glares at Arnos, immediately shutting him up) Don't make me raise my hand, Arnos. When I slap someone, he doesn't scurry away after.
    Arnos: You were willing enough to spill Aleran blood six weeks ago!
    Invidia: I'm willing to make sacrifices in pursuit of a greater goal. That's not the same as condoning the rape and murder of entire steadholts. There was no profit to those actions. No purpose. It's unprofessional. Idiotic. And I have difficulty tolerating idiots.
    Arnos: (scowls) Then you should agree that this conversation is unprofitable, given the circumstances. We need to focus on the matter at hand.
    Invidia: (raises an eyebrow) Oh?
    Arnos: (snorts) We're probably worried about nothing. Navaris is going to introduce our young captain to the crows, and that will solve the problems at hand.
    Invidia: Will it? I've made a decision about the problems at hand, Arnos.
    Arnos: What's that?
    Invidia: They're your problems. Solve them by yourself. If you manage to survive them, I may be willing to renegotiate our relationship. But until then, you're on your own. (saunters off, leaving Arnos fuming in rage)
• In A Confederacy of Dunces, Ignatius P. Reilly gets a good one from his mother towards the end:
  Mrs. Reilly: Claude can be kind to a person, and that's more than you can do with all your politics and all your graduating smart. For everything nice I ever done for you, I just get kicked around. I want to be treated nice by somebody before I die. You learnt everything, Ignatius, except how to be a human being.
• In Crazy Rich Asians, after Colette acts like a Bitch in Sheep's Clothing to Rachel after her assistant poisoned Rachel near-lethally (without Colette's orders, and partly by accident), Rachel yells at her.
  You know, this is beyond absurd. For a while there I actually felt bad for you, even though I was violently ill for a week because of your actions. But now I have nothing but pity for you. You're right, I will never be like you — thanks so much for the compliment! You're nothing more than a spoiled, entitled little shit. And unlike you, I'm proud of my roots — I'm not talking bout my birth father, I'm talking about the honest, hardworking mother who raised me, and the amazing family that supported her. We didn't make some crazy fortune overnight, and we won't ever need to hire some fancy butler to teach us manners. You don't live in the real world, you never have, so I'm not even going to try arguing with you - it's way below my pay grade to bother. You sit in your perfect little eco-luxury bubble, while your father's companies are the biggest polluters in China. You may have all the money in the world, but you are the most morally impoverished child I've ever met!
• In Friedrich Dürrenmatt's Der Verdacht, a sociopathic former nazi doctor delivers a devastating speech to his opponent, the Handicapped Badass Kommisär Bärlach. Bärlach isn't able to argue against his solipsistic reasoning on why he kills as he pleases.
• In the Discworld series this is a frequent happening in many of the books.
  • In The Fifth Elephant, after local watchman Captain Tantony tells Sam Vimes that his wife Sybil is in the clutches of one of the evil werewolves behind the whole evil plot, Vimes gives Tantony this:
    Vimes: You are standing there in your shiny breastplate and your silly helmet and your sword without a single notch in the blade and your stupid trousers and you are telling me that you let my wife be taken away by werewolves?
    Captain Tantony: It was the Baron—
    Vimes: And you don't argue with Barons. Right. You don't argue with anyone. Do you know what? I'm ashamed, ashamed to think that something like you is called a watchman. Now give me those keys.
  • In The Last Hero, Cohen delivers one to the gods, who are naturally rendered speechless by the crushing force of his logic. Only The Lady finds anything at all to say and Cohen promptly shuts her up as well with one more well-turned sentence.
  • Special mention goes to Lords and Ladies, where the glamor projected by the Fair Folk is enough that it makes Magrat (who has just gotten a long-awaited boost of confidence) shrink, and wither, and feel worthless for having even thought of hurting the Fairy Queen. The Fairy Queen invokes this without a word. Subverted, however, as it ends with the Queen exposing Magrat's deepest inner self ... and Magrat's deepest inner self punches her in the face.
  • Granny Weatherwax loves these. Every time she has a major part in a novel you can bet that right around the climax she'll be all up in the villain's grill telling them exactly why that thing they were so sure they were justified in doing is wrong, and why the very reason they even thought it was justified in the first place is the same reason she's about to kick their ass.
  • Going Postal stars Moist Von Lipwig, a Con Man forced to revive the near-defunct Ankh-Morpork post office. Moist fancies himself as a Loveable Rogue who only stole money from those who "deserved it", and has never personally hurt anyone. But after his parole officer, Mr. Pump the golem, nearly kills someone trying to protect Lipwig, he has this exchange with Mr. Pump, which both brings his past crimes into sharp relief and catalyzes his eventual path to becoming a better man:
    Moist: You can't just go around killing people!
    Mr. Pump: Why Not? You Do.
    Moist: What? I do not! Who told you that?
    Mr. Pump: I Worked It Out. You Have Killed Two Point Three Three Eight People.
    Moist: I have never laid a finger on anyone in my life, Mr Pump. I may be–– all the things you know I am, but I am not a killer! I have never so much as drawn a sword!
    Mr. Pump: No, You Have Not. But You Have Stolen, Embezzled, Defrauded And Swindled Without Discrimination, Mr. Lipvig. You Have Ruined Businesses And Destroyed Jobs. When Banks Fail, It Is Seldom Bankers Who Starve. Your Actions Have Taken Money From Those Who Had Little Enough To Begin With. In A Myriad Small Ways You Have Hastened The Deaths Of Many. You Do Not Know Them. You Did Not See Them Bleed. But You Snatched Bread From Their Mouths And Tore Clothes From Their Backs. For Sport, Mr Lipvig. For Sport. For The Joy Of The Game.
• In Divergent, Four gives a brutal but effective one to Peter when the latter complains about the unfairness of the fear trials, saying that of course it's unfair given Peter tried to murder Tris the night before and everyone knows that Peter is a coward.
• The Divine Comedy: Since corrupt priests especially disgust Dante, he has his Author Avatar preach to a damned Pope by asking how much treasure Jesus asked of Saint Peter before giving him the Keys to the Kingdom of Heaven. Since the answer is "no treasure," Dante happily requests the deceased Pope stay in the fires of Hell to make sure his ill-gotten money is well-protected, as befitting one who is the ideal evangelist for the red dragon of Hell and the worshipper of hundreds of gods of silver and treasure. Whether out of anger and despair, the speech causes the damned Pope to struggle more violently from within his pit, but Dante claims that he would condemn his greed even further if not for Dante's respect for the office the damned held in life. The speech is the centerpiece of the Canto and encapsulates Dante's thoughts on simony by putting it in the context of The Four Gospels, the Book of Revelation, Italian politics, and his respect for the Papacy.
• In the first Dragonriders of Pern novel Dragonflight, Masterharper Robinton delivers a scathing one to the Lord Holders when they complain that Benden Weyr is asserting too much authority over them in the fight against Thread. Robinton reminds the Lord Holders that most of them treated Benden Weyr like crap for centuries and recently rode out to attack the Weyr because they thought there were no more Threads. Robinton then says that Benden has every right to leave the Holds to be eaten by Thread after all of that, and that the Lord Holders should shut up and do whatever the Weyrleader thinks is necessary to survive the return of the Threads. The speech makes F'lar very grateful that Masterharper Robinton is an ally of Benden Weyr and not an enemy.
  • Robinton delivers a few of these throughout the series. He considers it part of his job as Masterharper of Pern to let people know when they're being asses.
• In Dreaming of Amelia by Jaclyn Moriarty, one of the main characters, Emily, wants to do Law at university. For this, she needs a signed form from her principal but she hasn't gotten it back. She finally works up the courage to go see him...
  Mr Ludovico: Do you really think you have what it takes to be a lawyer? Lawyers are adults. Let's take a look about what it means to be an adult, shall we? Adults are independent. You, Emily, can't seem to take a step in any direction without Lydia and Cassie by your side. An adult would simply work hard to improve his marks. You, Emily, make foolish requests to have your marks altered. An adult is a rational being. You ran around last term obsessing over Amelia and Riley, and this term you're shouting to the world — including, I might add, on some childishly hysterical blogs— that there's a ghost living in the Art Rooms at this school! You are every inch a child, Emily, and I see no indications that you will ever grow up. Now, let me ask you this. Would I be doing my job — would I be carrying out my responsibilities as principal of this school — if I signed a form that allowed you to be a lawyer?
  • Emily protests that there is a ghost, and Mr Ludovico tells her that if she can prove it, he'll sign the form. Emily finds evidence and returns...
    Mr Ludovico: In the last few weeks, my school has been overrun with hysteria about your ghost. Students are refusing to enter the Art Rooms. Teachers can't get their students to concentrate. You have infected my entire student body with your childishness. There is no ghost, and yet, if I didn't sign this form, your parents would be in this office in an instant. Taking some kind of legal action, no doubt. Not letting me get away with it! Protecting their little girl! I always intended to sign it. Just thought I might try to teach you something about the real world first. Help you to grow up a little. But now I see you're a lost cause.
• A short and brutally effective one from David Gemmell's novel The King Beyond The Gate, after a former NCO brings orders to return to service to the man who was once his commander, and the commander responds by giving the various arguments why he shouldn't go.
  "I am not good with words, sir. I have ridden two hundred miles to deliver the message. I came seeking the man I served, but he is not here. I am sorry to have troubled you."
• The Dresden Files:
  • In Skin Game Harry gives one to Nicodemus regarding his daughter whom Nicodemus had to kill in order to get into Hades' vault to goad him into a fight. It works a little too well.
  • Earlier in the novel, Butters gives one to Harry in regards to how much more Fae-like he seems and unloading his worries that Harry is going dark side. While he does miss a few things, it's enough to shake Harry.
• Dungeon Crawler Carl: Donut gives a brutal speech to her former owner and Carl's former girlfriend, Beatrice and feels much better afterward. Actually, she gives two speeches, one in front of the camera, with sharp but calm words, then another with the camera turned off, where she really lets rip.
• In Elantris, Sarene gives a nasty one to Iadon that actually leaves the man as a blubbering wreck.
  Sarene: Defiance, Iadon? I think you'll feel differently when everyone knows the truth. You know they already think you a fool. They pretend to obey you, but you know— you know in that whispering part of your heart that they mock you with their obedience. You think they didn't hear about your lost ships? You think they weren't laughing to themselves at how their king would soon be as poor as a baron? Oh, they knew. How will you face them, Iadon, when they learn how you really survived? When I show them how I rescued your income, how I gave you the contracts in Teod, how I saved your crown. You are a fool, Iadon. I know it, your nobles know it, and the world knows it. You have taken a great nation and squashed it in your greedy hands. You have enslaved the people and you defiled Arelon's honor. And, despite it all your country grows poorer. Even you, the king, are so destitute that only a gift from Teod lets you keep your crown. How will it look, Iadon? How will it feel to have the entire court know you are indebted to a woman? A foolish girl at that? You would be revealed. Everyone would know what you are. Nothing more than an insecure, trivial, incapable invalid."
• An Elegy for the Still-living: Francis delivers one of these to himself near the end. He does not feel too cheerful afterward.
• Ender gives a very nice one to Bonzo Madrid in Ender's Game.
  Ender: Bonzo, your father would be proud of you. He would love to see you now, come to fight a naked boy in a shower, smaller than you, and you brought six friends. He would say, Oh, what honor. Be proud, Bonito, pretty boy. You can go home and tell your father, Yes, I beat up Ender Wiggin, who was barely ten years old, and I was thirteen. And I had only six of my friends to help me, and somehow we managed to defeat him, even though he was naked and wet and alone — Ender Wiggin is so dangerous and terrifying it was all we could do not to bring two hundred.
  • The speech saves his life.
• Everworld: Senna Wales dishes these out like they're going out of style. Jalil, The Smart Guy, recognises this, hangs a lampshade on it, and deconstructs one of her speeches point for point. He and Merlin the Magnificent team up to give Senna a joint The Reason You Suck Speech in Book 11.
• Family Skeleton Mysteries: Georgia's superior in the fifth book is disgusted when she discovers the string of art thefts going on in the school, but even more so when Georgia's coworkers are only concerned with covering it up so they don't lose their jobs or their chances at tenure. She calls them out for failing to do their duty to help the students like they're supposed to and declares if they're so worried about money to get another job.
• It isn't even intentional, but when Kiritsugu in Fate/Zero finally gets his hands on the magic seemingly omnipotent device he's entrusted with all his hopes, it points out that the inherent contradiction in his methods just causes massive loss of life but never solves the fundamental problems he struggles against. Yes, you can kill the few to save the many, but then you repeat that again and again and all you have to show for it is piles of bodies. Since Kiritsugu doesn't know of any other ways to do things, he's forced to confront that he destroyed everything and everyone he ever cared about for no reason. The grail can't just magic up a solution out of nowhere since it's simply a tool, meaning it can only do what Kiritsugu does on an even larger scale, meaning killing loads more people. The villain in question doesn't consider this a You Suck speech because it's actually kind of happy about this: It feels like their goals line up perfectly since it's cursed anyway.
• Francis from the original Felidae novel gives a very snarky one to Kong, saying that Kong likes bossing others around and being a great big bully.
• In Flatland, A. Square lashes out at the King of Lineland after he is proved incapable of comprehending the second dimension.
  "Besotted Being! You think yourself the perfection of existence, while you are in reality the most imperfect and imbecile. You profess to see, whereas you can see nothing but a Point! You plume yourself on inferring the existence of a Straight Line; but I can see Straight Lines, and infer the existence of Angles, Triangles, Squares, Pentagons, Hexagons, and even Circles. Why waste more words? Suffice it that I am the completion of your incomplete self. You are a Line, but I am a Line of Lines, called in my country a Square: and even I, infinitely superior though I am to you, am of little account among the great nobles of Flatland, whence I have come to visit you, in the hope of enlightening your ignorance."
• A Fly Went By:
  • When the boy meets the dog, he says, "Now stop! You are the one, who did all this! Why did you run? Why did you want to bite that cat? Oh, you are bad to be like that!".
  • When he meets the pig, he says, "So YOU are the one, in back of all this! Now, why do you run? Now, why would a pig bite a dog? And why are you mad? Are you out of your head?".
  • When he meets the fox, he says, "Oh, shame on you! Oh, shame, shame, shame for what you do! You want to kill the little cow! You stop or I will whip you— NOW!".
• Fox Demon Cultivation Manual: Song Ci tells Tu Shan Bi what he thinks of him during Rong Bai's wedding.
  Song Ci: Tu Shan Bi. You are not worthy to be a father, and even more so, a husband. I'll teach you a good lesson today. Consider it a memorial to the woman whose death you caused.
• In The Fox in the Chicken Coop by Ephraim Kishon. The Yes-Man finally snaps and calls the politician out on his incompetence, how he still doesn't leave politics to make room for someone else, and the stupid joke he always tells.
• In Frankenstein, after being created and abandoned, the Creature sets out to take vengeance on his creator by murdering Dr Frankenstein's younger brother (and causing a servant to be wrongfully executed for the murder), his best friend and eventually his bride. Frankenstein then pursues the Creature until he falls ill, tells a ship captain named Walton his life story, and dies. Walton then sees the Creature express regret for Frankenstein's death and responds as follows.
  "Your repentance is now superfluous. If you had listened to the voice of conscience and heeded the stings of remorse before you had urged your diabolical vengeance to this extremity, Frankenstein would yet have lived."
• In Franny and Zooey, Zooey rants at Franny for nine pages about religion, their family, and how she's going everything about the wrong way and isn't as enlightened as she thinks she is. The only thing that stops him is seeing Franny lying face-down on the couch and crying hysterically.
• In The Giver, The Giver sums up The Community with one line: "They know nothing."
• In The Goldfish Boy, Matthew's ex-friend Jake offers to help him and Melody with their investigation into Teddy's disappearance. Matthew replies, "You? Help? When have you ever wanted to help anyone besides yourself?" Jake shouts at Matthew for not defending him when he was bullied by both classmates and teachers for having eczema and finishes with "Forget it. I wouldn't want a friend like you anyway."
• You can't read an Olivia Goldsmith book without this coming up at least once, usually when her scumbags get their well-deserved comeuppances. It happens to all three of the ex-husbands in The First Wives Club, one by his own son.
  • Occasionally, the heroine of the story has to have it given to her and uses it to fuel her rise back up and eventual victory.
• GONE series:
  • Half of Caine's storyline in FEAR is the characters giving him this endlessly. Even though most of it is factually correct, and he was a dick in the last book, by the end you can't help but kinda feel bad for him.
    Lana: Wow, you have to give the guy (Caine) some credit; he has a genius for doing the wrong thing. We actually need him to be the bad guy, and now he's being Mr. meek and mild.
    Quinn: You did just one good thing, Caine, one good thing in your entire life, when you helped Brianna save the town from bugs.
    Caine: Wait, I helped Brianna? She helped me!
    Caine: (hands in cement) Help me out of this.
    Quinn: Ain't that simple, Caine. You should know; you're the scumbag that invented cementing.
    Astrid: You got Diana pregnant. She says you're the father. I just thought it might make you think for something other than yourself for the first time in your whole life.
    Lana: God, Caine, it's your child, and you don't even care.
    • Even his mother lists reasons he put him up for adoption and reasons she thinks he's evil to her boyfriend. "He was manipulative. Cruel. Intelligent. I knew he was evil." This is her talking about Caine when he was a baby. Youch.
  • Howard likes giving these to everyone, from Sam to Astrid to Albert to Bette.
• In Harahpin, still suffering from the loss of her father, Desmodea gives a scathing one to Eyrco.
  • Thrym lashes out at Xepysa for denying him enough freedom to even feel pain, much to the planet soul's unsettlement.
• In the Harry Potter series, Voldemort has something of a talent for these. He gives one to Harry in The Chamber of Secrets, one to Harry and all of his Death Eaters in The Goblet of Fire, one to Dumbledore AND Bellatrix in Order of the Phoenix and one to pretty much everyone in The Deathly Hallows.
  • Especially Ron. He gave Ron a "Reason You Suck Speech" pretty much every day when he was wearing the horcrux. Then it climaxed, into a ghostly image of Hermione not only telling him every reason he sucks, but every reason he's afraid he might suck. And likewise, Ron rightfully gave one right back to Harry before he left as a result of the Horcrux's influence.
  • Dumbledore does this to Voldemort a little in Order of the Phoenix. Then Harry goes and tops it in Deathly Hallows.
  • In the latter case, it's immediately on the heels of Voldemort's "Reason You Suck" Speech. Voldemort's attempt is not nearly as effective.
  • Dumbledore gave a short, sharp one to Snape in the backstory when he finds out about Snape's Comforting the Widow scheme: "You disgust me. You do not care, then, about the deaths of her husband and child? They can die, as long as you have what you want?" It's notably the first time Harry ever heard outright contempt and disgust in Dumbledore's voice.
  • In Order of the Phoenix, we also see a memory of Lily giving one to James back when he was a pompous, bullying Jerk Jock.
  • Harry gives a pretty good one to Voldemort's memory in Chamber of Secrets, reminding him that he always has and still does cower before Dumbledore, and that his pursuit of power has left him a pathetic shell of a man forced to hide from the wizarding world.
• In Heart of a Dog by Mikhail Bulgakov, Professor Preobrazhensky delivers an epic one to Sharikov, a dog he turned into a human, but who clearly sees himself as pinnacle of mankind:
  Preobrazhensky: “You belong to the lowest possible stage of development... You are intellectually weak, all your actions are purely bestial. Yet you allow yourself in the presence of two university-educated men to offer advice, with quite intolerable familiarity, on a cosmic scale and of quite cosmic stupidity, about how to divide everything ... and at the same time you eat the tooth powder...your business is to keep quiet and listen to what you're told, to learn and try to become a reasonably acceptable member of the community."
• In pre-Islamic Arabic poetry, the poetic form of Hijaa', although called satire by more polite historians, is actually a kind of insult poetry directed at an enemy, explaining all the reasons why he was an awful, terrible, dishonorable, no-good human being. Like satire, Hijaa' is supposed to be funny to the general audience, but it was mostly supposed to be read or heard by its target, who would be gravely insulted. Essentially the world's first Diss Tracks.
• In Death: This has popped up from time to time. A pretty nice one is when Eve gets attacked by Isaac McQueen in New York To Dallas and Eve tells him that he should have just run and hid somewhere for a while after he broke out of prison. Instead, he decided to go after her. She concludes with "You're just fucking stupid!" He does not take that well.
• Done very well by Galbatorix to Oromis in Brisingr. So convincing that the Hatedom cheers him on.
• In Jane Eyre, right before Jane leaves for Lowood School, she gives one of these to her cruel aunt.
  “I am glad you are no relation of mine: I will never call you aunt again as long as I live. I will never come to see you when I am grown up; and if any one asks me how I liked you, and how you treated me, I will say the very thought of you makes me sick, and that you treated me with miserable cruelty.”
  “How dare you affirm that, Jane Eyre?”
  “How dare I, Mrs. Reed? How dare I? Because it is the truth. You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity. I shall remember how you thrust me back—roughly and violently thrust me back—into the red-room, and locked me up there, to my dying day; though I was in agony; though I cried out, while suffocating with distress, ‘Have mercy! Have mercy, Aunt Reed!’ And that punishment you made me suffer because your wicked boy struck me—knocked me down for nothing. I will tell anybody who asks me questions, this exact tale. People think you a good woman, but you are bad, hard-hearted. You are deceitful!”
• In the Kane Series story "Cold Light" Rehhaile (who is technically blind but also a kind of psychic) gives one to Alidore, lieutenant to Lord Gaethaa, who came to Sebbei to fight and kill Kane. While Alidore vehemently disagrees, her words grow on him.
  "Do you call me blind, Alidore! Gaethaa a great man! A Crusader battling the forces of evil! While Kane has lived here he has harmed no one. Since you came yesterday, your great man and your fellow soldiers have terrorized the town, raped me and threatened worse, demolished this tavern, bullied Gavein—and now you’re beating him to death to force the people of Sebbei to obey commands meaningless to them!"
• Kill time or die trying: Nathan Hillary specialises in these, delivering a memorable one when complaining that WARP has become dull
  "You’re a teenage choir boy, your standards for excitement are lower than Dylan’s IQ. I mean, look at these people. Look at Steve, it’s like God made him from leftovers. And not leftovers from making other humans. No no. We’re talking substandard meatloaf and candle-wax.
  "And Ari? I have seen bears less hairy. The guy has to shave his damn teeth. Kevin’s okay, I suppose, does what he’s told. But Kerry, every time I look at her I give Douw a coupon for the optometrist. And you! Dude, brushing your fringe over your forehead mole isn’t fooling anyone. A comb-over is no cure for cancer. And no-one does anything anymore, and every-one always wears pants. There are no WARP shenanigans, no kilts, no rave day. It’s boring."
• Jesus in the Left Behind book Glorious Appearing delivers his own to Satan, the Antichrist, and the False Prophet.
• Legacy of the Dragokin: After deciphering and exploiting the weakness in Abyss' fighting style, Lydia tells her opponent what this flaw says about them personally.
• The White Witch gives one of these to Aslan in The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe, just before killing him. He ends up getting the last laugh later on by killing her.
• In Little Women, Amy gives one to Laurie in Nice for how he's handling his heartbreak over being rejected by Jo. He eventually agrees with Amy's belief that he has changed for the worse by becoming Idle Rich. Although it comes from a place of love, Amy gives him a fairly brutal lecture about being lazy, overspending, smoking and not doing anything useful with himself.
• The Lord of Bembibre:
  • Don Álvaro tries to persuade the abbot of Carracedo to help him talk Don Alonso out of marrying his daughter to the Count of Lemos, but the abbot refuses to help someone with ties to the Templars. After their fruitless conversation, Don Álvaro tells the man: "You are a witness that you have shut all the ways of peaceful resolution. May it please God that you should not one day blame yourself for it!". And, indeed, the abbot would come to regret his decision before long.
  • After performing last rites for Doña Blanca and reluctantly marrying Beatriz to her unwanted suitor, the abbot of Carracedo blames Don Alonso for his wife and his daughter's misfortunes and foretells the ruin of his House, brought about by his own stupidity and rigidity.
    Abbot: "Poor and angelic lady, your blind solicitude and extreme tenderness have wrought the misfortune of your only daughter. Peace be upon your remains! But you, you have wounded the tree at the root! And its branches will not shelter your house, nor will you sit in its shade, nor will you see its branches green with leaves and flowering with blossom. Loneliness will surround you in the hour of your death, and the dreams that now fascinate you will be your most painful torments."
• In the graphic novel Marzi: A Memoir, Bozena the strict ballet teacher refuses to accept any girl into her dance class who isn't thin enough for her liking, including Marzi's friend Monika. When Monika's mother, Stasia, gets wind of the situation, she wastes no time brutally tearing into Bozena, calling her irresponsible and unfit to work with children.
  Stasia: What did you say to my daughter? That she's fat?! What's wrong with you? She's a young girl! She's refusing to eat because of you!
  Bozena: But you don't understand...
  Stasia: No! You're the one who doesn't understand! You should not be working with children. I'm going to let it be known, don't you worry. You're completely irresponsible!!
  Bozena: She could come back, you know, and join us...
  Stasia: Come back?? To be humiliated!?! One of your students told me about your methods!! Monika isn't the only one who won't be back, you're out of here! Trust me!
• In The Mental State, Zack unleashes a torrent of abuse towards the prison rapists after manipulating them and tricking them into getting brutally beaten up. In stark contrast to his usually calm demeanour, he expresses his complete and utter contempt for this particular kind of criminal and informs them how foolish they all were to have ever trusted him.
• The Mortal Instruments:
  • Valentine Morgenstern gives Imogen Herondale a deservedly savage and scathing one that results in her almost having a nervous breakdown.
  • Jace gives Clary one in the beginning of City of Glass.
  • Alec gives a very scathing one to Jace after learning about Jace's speech to Clary (Shown above) and refusing to heal him when he's injured. He lashes out at Jace, knowing that his speech to Clary wasn't really about his anger at her coming to Idris, when he didn't want her to in the first place, but because he can't stand the fact that she can't be his girlfriend due to Valentine's lie about he and Clary being siblings, and his anger towards her stems from how he can't stand the thought of her with another man (It takes Jocelyn reviving herself from her coma and telling Clary everything that stops him)
• There are also some in Cityof Fallen Angels
  • Luke gives a mild one to Simon during their talk about Camille; He admonishes Simon for neglecting who he is as a vampire and his powers as a daylighter (A vampire who can walk in sunlight) while he understands that Simon never wanted to be a vampire, ignoring his vampire and daylighter powers won't just not make them go away, but they'll also draw the attention of those who seek to use and abuse them for their own personal gain; basically, he wants Simon to embrace and use his powers carefully, not hide from them.
  • Clary gives one to Isabelle while the latter heals Clary from an injury; in it, Clary berates Isabelle, who now hates Simon after learning of him accidentally 'dating' both her and Maia, for having pretended to date Simon during their 'relationship', and her belief that she would feel nothing for breaking up with him; this all has a positive effect down the road in helping Isabelle realize that she likes Simon and that he likes her back.
  • Clary gives a scathing one towards Jace for being distant from her throughout much of the book, and for annoying Simon instead; acting like Simon needs a bodyguard so that Clary would be happy. It takes her outburst to get him to reveal the truth about his genuine reasons for his distance. (He's been having dreams about him killing Clary, and worries that they would happen in real life whenever he's with her)
  • Isabelle gives one to Simon after he defeats Lilith and saves Clary; she chews him out over why he, Clary or Jace didn't signal her and Alex, and Simon claims he didn't, due to his belief that she still hated him. She responds by sputtering angrily, and hugging him tightly.
• During the climax of The Name of the Rose, William of Baskerville unleashes one of these on Jorge of Burgos following his Motive Rant against laughter.
  You are the Devil. Yes. They lied to you. The Devil is not the Prince of Matter; the Devil is the arrogance of the spirit, faith without smile, truth that is never seized by doubt. The Devil is grim because he knows where he is going, and in moving, he always returns whence he came. You are the Devil, and like the Devil, you live in darkness. If you wanted to convince me, you have failed. I hate you, Jorge, and if I could, I would lead you downstairs, across the grounds, naked, with feathers stuck in your asshole and your face painted like a juggler and a buffoon, so that the whole monastery would laugh at you and be afraid no longer. I would like to smear honey all over you and roll you in feathers and take you on a leash to fairs, to say to all: He was announcing the truth to you and telling you that the truth has the taste of death, and you believed not in his words but in his grimness. And now I say to you that in the infinite whirl of possible things, God allows you to imagine a world where the presumed interpreter of the truth is nothing more than a clumsy raven who repeats words learned long ago.
• In Nineteen Eighty-Four, once Winston has been imprisoned and tortured, O'Brien inflicts this endlessly on him.
  "We have beaten you, Winston. We have broken you up. You have seen what your body is like. Your mind is in the same state. I do not think there can be much pride left in you. You have been kicked and flogged and insulted, you have screamed with pain, you have rolled around the floor in your own blood and vomit. You have whimpered for mercy, you have betrayed everybody and everything. Can you think of a single degradation that has not happened to you?"
• In the Percy Jackson's Greek Gods, Apollo gives one to Marsyas the satyr before skinning him.
  Apollo: See, Marsyas, you may think you're special, but you're a fad. I'll be famous forever. I'm immortal. You? All glitter, no gold. Scratch the surface, and you're just another mortal satyr...flesh and blood.
• Ilke in Phenomena gives one to a slavedealer after freeing all the slaves in his tent.
• In the Poetic Edda, The Flyting of Loki is all about him delivering one of these to the assembled company of Valhalla, collectively and individually — Thor is a braggart, Freja is a ho, Odin is kinky, etc. For context, it should be noted that flyting is a Norse tradition that is basically a formalized exchange of "reason you suck" speeches, so this sort of thing happens a lot in Norse Mythology.
• Pride and Prejudice gives us one from Elizabeth Bennet to Mr. Darcy. And boy does it burn.
  • Elizabeth also receives one from Lady Catherine. Its burn is... significantly less.
• Lilly delivers a brutal one to Mia in The Princess Diaries, chastising her for throwing away her values by eating meat, something she hasn't done since she was small, simply because Michael temporarily moved to Japan. Though some of her arguments make sense, it's also obvious that her rage is fueled by the fact that J.P dumped her for Mia.
• Project Tau:
  • Kata delivers quite a few of these about the Projects' treatment and the scientists' hypocrisy, usually to Dennison.
  • Renfield gives one himself to both Dennison and Mason when he finds out what they did to Kalin.
  • Tau gets one in at Kata towards the end of the book.
  Tau: "I'm not your fucking tool, Kata! You can't just use me!"
• Proud Pink Sky has a couple of these:
  • Kenneth Luvvie's radio broadcasts are this to the straight world and its relentless persecution of gay people:
  "Yet to those homophobes I say: you can never win. Even when we were arrested for loving one another, you didn’t win ... You didn’t win because you never stopped it. You never stopped us. Despite the laws and sermons, despite the mobs and police and prisons and death camps, you could never stop us from loving one another. The whole force of your churches and your states could never stop fruits from coming together. That is how weak you are. That is how strong we are."
  • After Gareth's very sudden death, William returns to their apartment and tearfully says everything he never got to say while Gareth was alive – not all of which is flattering.
• Gaithim of Quest Of The Unaligned gives an epic one to Prince Alaric, augmented by Gaithim's hoshek Charm Person powers.
• Rabbit, Run: Near the end of the book, Ruth calls out Rabbit on his insistence on having it both ways.
• Reaper (2016): Michael, as Hawk, delivers an epic one of these to the inhabitants of the VR world Game. When word gets out that he left Game to investigate the bombing, and was injured, people respond by turning on the newest players despite knowing they can't possibly be involved; they're simply the closest they can get to the people they assume to be responsible (teenagers, angry about the Leebrook-Ashton Bill). Hawk calls them out on this.
• The Remains of the Day: At the end of the book, Stevens at last can articulate the truth in a The Reason We Suck Speech for Lord Darlington and himself. Lord Darlington played Head-in-the-Sand Management for the Nazis, and at the end of the day, he can say he was wrong and take the responsibility like a man. Stevens never did anything for himself, and he cannot say even that.
• The Reynard Cycle: This series features more than a few, and all of them are leveled at Reynard, usually once people wise up and realize that he's not as lovable a Lovable Rogue as people seem to think he is. Hermeline's are, by far, the most blistering.
• The Rifter: Laurie accuses John of being controlling toward "his kingdom" that he’s the god of. This is something that John tends to worry about himself. It’s true that there’s danger in a country depending on a single ruler — an immortal one at that! — however well-intentioned (and John is something like a paragon of liberal American values and environmental responsibility). John tries to be as non-interventionary as possible, sets up democratic institutions, and forbids people from worshipping him, but they do anyway... Laurie was John's oldest friend, and now that she's his greatest enemy she’s very good at getting past his defenses saying things that remind him of his weaknesses.
• Zhuge Liang in Romance of the Three Kingdoms can kill a man just by delivering one of these.
  • Specifically, there are two. Zhuge Liang caused the death of Wang Lang via speech and Cao Zhen via a letter.
• Sano Ichiro: It takes seventeen books, but after being abused, manipulated, and unappreciated by the shogun, Sano not only calls the shogun directly by name, he bawls him out in a very public setting for his childishness, irresponsible ways, and passive-aggressive manner, then outright calls him a coward unworthy of bearing the Tokugawa name. Much to his and everyone else's absolute shock, the shogun agrees with Sano.
• The Secret Garden: Mary hands a big one to Colin when he's throwing a tantrum—at age ten, no less.
• Shadow of the Conqueror:
  • When Gaidan tries to follow Daylen, the latter verbally hammers him for his Farmboy ambitions before sending him home to his parents.
  • Daylen delivers another to Blackheart before unleashing all of his power and butchering him.
  • When fighting Daylen, Ahrek and Lyrah both take the opportunity to tell him exactly why he deserves to die in the most violent manner possible, with copious amounts of You Monster!.
• The Silerian Trilogy: Elerar gives one to Borell after he rapes her when she's found out as a spy, revealing how much information he unwittingly gave her and all her true hatred of him.
• In the second novel in the Spider-Man: Sinister Six Trilogy, Revenge of the Sinister Six, Mary Jane gives one to the Chameleon out on his choice of location for the Day of Terror; the Sinister Six are returning to locations where Spider-Man failed to save lives, which sees the Vulture take hostages at the jewelry store where Spider-Man first publically failed to save a life, Doctor Octopus returns to the place where George Stacy died, Electro (really Mysterio in disguise) is holding the George Washington Bridge prisoner... and the Chameleon has taken a class of students prisoner at a football field where Spider-Man failed to save a scientist from a bomb. Mary Jane bluntly asks the Chameleon if this unimaginative scenario was the best he could come up with, or if he deliberately chose such an obscure example of Spider-Man's failures, and only acted when Spider-Man was publically occupied on the Bridge because the villain knows he'd never stand a chance if he was forced to face the wall-crawler directly.
• These happen quite a lot in the Skulduggery Pleasant series. Nefarian Serpine enjoys giving them regularly to Skulduggery in the first book, Baron Vengeous gives a few to Skulduggery in Playing With Fire and gets two particularly savage ones for China Sorrows.
  • Skulduggery himself lays a thoroughly satisfying one on Davina Marr in Dark Days while Dreylan Scarab gives one to Thurid Guild.
  • Death Bringer has Fletcher Renn give one to Valkyrie Cain after she cheats on him and then breaks up him when he calls her out on it (rightly so):
    Fletcher: You're as emotionally inept as Skulduggery, and he's dead. Well done Val, you have the emotional range of a dead man.
• A Song of Ice and Fire has many, unsurprising considering its boatload of characters, most of whom deserve a bollocking at some point or another due to the Gambit Pileup Grey-and-Gray Morality setting.
  • Sandor "The Hound" Clegane's seemingly unfair numerous put-downs of Sansa's ideas about Knights in Shining Armor certainly count as this trope. These speeches, though harsh and contemptuous, are actually very good advice for the Crapsack World they live in, and in turn she starts to see that he is correct in how terrible the world actually is, and is a big part of her character development in becoming a more learned and much less naive person.
  • Tywin Lannister gives a particularly vicious one to his dwarf son Tyrion. This is an unusual example of this trope because rather than telling hard truths, it is totally undeserved and reveals more about Tywin's Selective Obliviousness than it does about Tyrion.
  • Tyrion himself doles out many, to various characters, and in contrast to his father, his observations are painfully accurate for the victim.
  • A serious mistake by Edmure Tully results in him being given this by several different characters at the same time.
  • Theon is given several before and during his poorly planned capture of Winterfell, but he's too much of a Smug Snake at the time to pay any attention to them.
  • At the end of A Storm of Swords, Merrett Frey gets one from his father Walder Frey. Merrett finally had one thing in his life go right— namely, securing a marriage alliance with House Bolton by marrying his daughter Walda off to Roose Bolton— but Walder reminds him that Roose got his bride's weight in silver as a dowry and Walda is the fattest woman in House Frey.
    Walder Frey: You think Bolton gave a mummer's fart that she was your whelp? Think he sat about thinking, 'Heh, Merrett Muttonhead, that's the very man I need for a good-father'? Your Walda's a sow in silk, that's why he picked her, and I'm not like to thank you for it. We'd have had the same alliance at half the price if your little porkling put down her spoon from time to time.
  • Cersei receives one from her uncle Kevan with regards to her many failings as a ruler and a mother. She throws wine in his face, orders him to leave, and thinks to herself that he's a traitor rather than face the truth of his accusations.
    • She gets another from Margaery Tyrell, when Cersei visits her in her cell, showing that she's seen through approximately 100% of Cersei's bullshit and calling her out as a paranoid and utterly deflating her pretensions to Magnificent Bastardry.
  • The Blackfish, Brynden Tully, delivers a truly devastating one to Jaime Lannister in A Feast for Crows. Best of all, he apparently attended parley mainly to deliver it, since he acknowledges he has no intention of accepting any terms offered and is there simply because a siege is a dull affair.
  • In Fire & Blood, a novel chronicling the history of the Targaryen dynasty, Ser Criston Cole gets one after being struck down in a hail of arrows, rather than in a duel, since his enemies blame him for starting the Dance of Dragons civil war.
    Ser Pate of Longleaf: I'll have no songs about how brave you died, Kingmaker. There's tens o' thousands dead on your account.
• In Space Marine Battles, Big Bad of Wrath of Iron gives one to the Iron Hands, throwing in their faces the fact that after their Primarch's death, they've became nothing beyond revenge-obsessed machinophiles. Ironically enough, the recipient of the speech doesn't pay attention, as he's busy calculating the Big Bad's weak point.
• In Speak, Melinda gives a very mild version of the fourth type to her False Friend Heather.
• In The Spirit Thief, upon reaching his Rage Breaking Point, Eli tells the Physical Goddess Benehime right to her face every problem he has with her abusive behaviour, treatment of spirits, her behaviour towards people and her general jerkassery. It's probably the most serious - and the most furious - he is throughout all five books, and she's so stunned, for a few minutes she just stares at him in shock.
• Star Wars Legends:
  • X-Wing Series:
    • Wedge Antilles is comfortably on the border between Sergeant Rock, The Heart, and the Reasonable Authority Figure. He really chews out some of his pilots when he sees the need. Kell Tainer, someone with a marked tendency to fold when he's needed, once asks for Permission to Speak Freely, and when it's granted says "Every time I hear one of your 'motivational speeches' I want to beat you to death."
    • In The Bacta War, after Wedge pays off one of Ysanne Isard's ship captains into leaving, he makes sure to send a resignation hologram that makes it clear to Isard that he views her as a blundering incompetent who couldn't run the hundred meters, let alone the Empire.
  • I, Jedi: When confronting the ghost of long-dead Sith Lord Exar Kun, Mara Jade gives a dismissive speech about how poorly he compares to Emperor Palpatine and Darth Vader, the Sith Lords she used to serve personally before her Heel–Face Turn. Particularly pointing out that they succeeded in destroying the Jedi, a task Kun had attempted and utterly failed at in life. When Kun weakly retorts that the Emperor and Vader are dead, Mara's comrade Corran Horn reminds Kun that so is he, what with being a ghost and all.
  • Admiral Ackbar gives a memorable one to an Obstructive Bureaucrat and his supervisor during The Black Fleet Crisis regarding an application by a refugee from an Imperial Remnant planet genocided by the Yevetha to join the New Republic military.
    Ackbar: Bureaucratic nonsense. Whatever happened to taking the measure of a man's courage, his honor—the fight in him, and the reasons in his heart. Do they all have to be as stamped-and-pressed alike as stormtroopers to get your approval? Get out.
    [bureaucrat flees]
    Supervisor: Admiral, we could certainly reconsider the application if you could just give us the context for your concern—
    Ackbar: The context. It's not enough that a man is willing to put on a uniform and fight alongside people he's never met, just because he shares an ideal with them—no, his offer must come from the right context, and his school papers must be in order, and his arms not too long, and his blood type stocked in the combat medivacs. How things have changed. I can remember when we were glad for anyone willing to fight beside us.
    Supervisor: Admiral—there have to be standards—
    Ackbar: Major, ask yourself how many of the everyday heroes of the Rebellion—not just the names everyone knows—would have qualified to fight for their freedom under your rules. And then ask yourself if that answer doesn't make you look just a bit like a dewback's cloaca.
  • In Dark Lord—The Rise of Darth Vader, Vader spends most of the book depressed after his Emergency Transformation and the loss of Padmé. Darth Sidious tears him a new one after he tries to deflect blame over the loss of some fugitive Jedi to his powerful, but slow Powered Armor and his outdated starfighter.
  • Mara delivers a mild one to Luke in the Hand of Thrawn novels, pointing out that Luke should have really thought twice about taking on students while still under the influence of the dark side, or not dealing more firmly with Kyp Durron as he began his slide into the dark side of the force.
  • Freedon Nadd gives one to Jedi Master Matta Tremayne in the Tales of the Jedi companion.
  Nadd: Secrets! You- all of you - hide behind these secrets. You don't want us to learn them. No, that would take away your power, your place in the Force. I am a Jedi! It doesn't matter what you say. I don't need your permission.
• The Stormlight Archive:
  • In Rhythm of War, Wit (Hoid) delivers a scathing one to Highprince Ruthar when the latter begins complaining about the recent changes in Alethi culture, particularly the new lack of sexism. Although Wit is known for insulting everything that moves (it's in the job description), in this case most of his insults are completely accurate.
    Wit: "I see you're envious of those more skilled in the masculine arts than you, Ruthar. I agree, you could use lessons on how to be a man-but those in this room would teach lessons far too advanced. Let me call in a eunuch to instruct you, and once you've reached his level, we'll talk further."
    Wit: "You speak of honor, Ruthar, though you've never known it. You'll never find it though. You see, I hid your honor in a place you could never find it: in the arms of someone who truly loves you."
    Wit: "I've been speaking to your children, Ruthar. No, this part isn't a joke. Relis, Ivanar. Yes, I know them. I know a lot of things. Would you like to explain to the queen where Ivanar's broken arm last month truly came from? Tell me, do you beat your children because you're a sadist, or because you're a coward and they are the only ones who won't dare fight back? Or... oh, silly Wit. It's both, isn't it?"
    Ruthar: "How dare you! I demand trial by sword! Me versus you, stupid fool. Or me against your champion, if you're too much of a coward to face me!"
    [Ruthar ends up refusing to fight Wit's champion because she's female, almost dies, and is then stripped of his title]
    Wit: How remarkable. If your spend your life knocking people down, you eventually find they won't stand up for you. There's poetry in that, don't you think, you storming personification of a cancerous anal discharge?
  • Adolin later gives one to the honorspren while they put him on trial, pointing out that they only follow the letter of their own laws, and are no better than humans regardless of what they claim. They certainly don't have much honor.
• Survivor Dogs:
  • In Darkness Falls, Alpha gives Lucky one for his "wavering" loyalty to the wild pack.
    Alpha: "I'm impressed that you think so highly of the Pack. But the truth is, a dog never changes. I've been around long enough to know that. Look at you - you're a Lone Dog; it's in your blood. Your Lone Dog nature will always get the better of you. First you joined the Leashed Dogs, then the Wild Pack. Now you have taken it upon yourself to foster the Fierce Dogs. I doubt your commitment will last. I'll wake up one morning to discover you've deserted the Pack, including your precious Fierce Dogs. We'll be left to pick up the pieces."
  • Fiery gives Alpha one in The Broken Path for his leadership skills. Believe it or not, he compliments Alpha first before laying one on him.
    Fiery: "I respect Alpha. He has led us well and kept us together, in good times and bad. But I believe the Big Growl changed things. Our world has turned upside down, and I don't think Alpha can cope anymore. He has been hesitant; he has failed to make decisions. And his attitude to the Leashed Dogs is not helping. He scorns them instead of valuing the skills they do have, and he makes no attempt to hide his dislike for Lick. His attitude is beginning to cause conflict in the Pack. While I know and respect what he has done as our Alpha, I believe I would be the better leader now-the stronger leader. That's why I challenge him."
  • Lucky finally gives one to Alpha in "The Endless Lake" for betraying the Wild Pack and joining the Fierce Dogs, dogs he had said he hated with a burning passion.
    Lucky: "You disgust me! You despicable traitor. You turned on your own Pack after they mourned for you, taking you for dead! Dishonorable beast! Even now, you show contempt for the laws of the Spirit Dogs! Blade promised that Storm could go free if she passed the Trial, that she would not be harmed!"
• In the fifth volume of Sword Art Online Alternative: Gun Gale Online, David, leader of Team MMTM, had a falling out with Pito in the past over her mental instability, so the two aren't on the best terms when, in Squad Jam 3, they, along with one member from all the other remaining teams, are forced to form a new team, Team Betrayers, and fight against their old allies. David finally loses his temper when Pito steers the ship that they're on to kill Team T-S, which had been stranded on top of a skyscraper, then kills Ervin (the former member of T-S who'd joined Team BTRY.
  “Pitohui…I knew that you were a completely irredeemable piece of shit, but I thought you at least took the game seriously. It’s one thing to beat your enemies. But involuntary arrangement or not, I didn’t think you’d plot to kill your own teammates. I’ve lost any respect I had for you.”
• Captain Ia gives an epic one in Theirs Not to Reason Why, as she explains to a disobedient subordinate how, by continuing to fire after she ordered him to stop, he doomed the entire galaxy. How only through one of his comrades giving up everything he ever could have been to take over a dead man's life was the total annihilation of every sapient who would ever live in the Milky Way averted. And how, because of his actions,despite all she could do to fix the situation, 720,593 people who otherwise could have been saved will die horribly.
  "You will be given a list of these names to contemplate in your spare time. You are free to ignore it if you wish, but understand that I cannot. "
• Nathan McCall's Them has a scene where Barlowe Reed and Sandy Gilmore basically trade these after someone sets fire to the Gilmores' mailbox.
  Barlowe: "These people been out here toilin' most a dey lives. You came here on a fuggin' whim. So what don't you understand? Far as I can see, you just a silly white girl looking for somethin interestin' to do."
  Sandy: "You know, I actually feel sorry for you. You're so wounded that you may no longer be capable of seeing the good in others."
  • This is not the first TRYSS Barlowe receives. After Nell bails him out of jail, leading to breaking up with him:
    Nell: "Yeah, well, your li'l crusade cost me time and money. I ain't got money for that...And I definitely don't have time to be goin down there, minglin with ghetto folk. You too cozy, Barlowe; you too laid-back for me. You go to work and lay round a house that ain't even yours. It wouldn't bother you none if things stayed that way. All I can go by is what I see. I been waitin a long time for you to show me somethin. But you ain't showin me nothin I can use...Barlowe, I wont things..."
• These Words Are True and Faithful: In the last chapter, Sam calls out Ernie on Ernie's refusal to think through the consequences of his actions:
  Yes, I know that the heart has its reasons of which reason knows nothing, but they should at least be on speaking terms.
• Tolkien's Legendarium:
  • Beren and Lúthien: Downplayed, but when Thingol tells he will only allow Beren to marry his daughter if he brings one Silmaril from the Dark Lord's crown, Beren laughs and retorts: "Are you seriously telling that Elven kings trade their daughters for shiny stones?"
  • The Silmarillion, Glaurung, the father of dragons delivers one to Anti-Hero Túrin:
    Glaurung: Evil have been thy ways, son of Húrin. Thankless fosterling, outlaw, slayer of thy friend, thief of love, usurper of Nargothrond, captain foolhardy and deserter of thy kin. As thralls thy mother and sister live in Dor-lomin, in misery and want. Thou art arrayed as prince, but they go in rags; and for thee they yearn, but thou carest not for that. Glad may thy father be to learn that he hath such a son; as learn he shall.
  • In The Children of Húrin, Morgoth tries to trick, torture and blackmail the location of Gondolin out of Húrin, but the Human warrior laughs his threats off.
    Húrin answered: 'Do you forget to whom you speak? Such things you spoke long ago to our fathers; but we escaped from your shadow. And now we have knowledge of you, for we have looked on the faces that have seen the Light, and heard the voices that have spoken with Manwë. Before Arda you were, but others also; and you did not make it. Neither are you the most mighty; for you have spent your strength upon yourself and wasted it in your own emptiness. No more are you now than an escaped thrall of the Valar, and their chain still awaits you.'
    Morgoth: 'You have learned the lessons of your masters by rote. But such childish lore will not help you, now they are all fled away.'
    Húrin: 'This last then I will say to you, thrall Morgoth, and it comes not from the lore of the Eldar, but is put into my heart in this hour. You are not the Lord of Men, and shall not be, though all Arda and Menel fall in your dominion. Beyond the Circles of the World you shall not pursue those who refuse you.'
• Treasure Island: Long John Silver delivers one to his crew when they try to depose him.
  Long John Silver: Why, I give you my word, I'm sick to speak to you. You've neither sense nor memory, and I leave it to fancy where your mothers was that let you come to sea. Sea! Gentlemen o' fortune! I reckon tailors is your trade.
• Under Heaven: In a meeting involving Prime Minister Wen Zhou, his main advisor (Shen Liu), and Prince Shinzu, Shinzu eventually lets the two other men know that he thinks they're making several mistakes in how An Li (in charge of several divisions of the army, and in charge of the royal stables) is treated, to the point he thinks they have a firm grasp of the Idiot Ball. (Wen Zhou's actions end up convincing An Li to leave the city- where he's separated from his armies- but the prince thinks he should have been distracted with Bread and Circuses, and award ceremonies, until he dies from diabetes.)
  "That is what you do, First Minister Wen, if you are thinking about the empire and not a private war between two men who hate and fear each other. Private wars, Wen Zhou, can become more than that."
• In Vampirocracy, Leon drops one of these on ex-girlfriend Dierdre.
• Victoria contains an absolute behemoth of an Author Filibuster speech, given to a group of professors. William S. Lind may not be as bad as Ayn Rand in regard to long speeches, but he still has the tendency. For brevity's sake, here's just the end of the speech:
  “I have visited, through history, the fetid holes where your cultural Marxism grew. I have read Gramsci, the Italian Communist who pioneered the translation of Marxism from economics into culture as early as the 1920s. I know Adorno, and his Frankfurt School that in the 1930s crossed Marx with Freud. I have studied ‘Critical Theory,’ the product of that school that carried the bacillus into American universities. I know the whole, sordid story of your sorry ancestry among the exiled refuse of European Marxism, the story of how failed intellectuals worked for what is now almost a century to stab our culture in the back.”
  “But as I said at the outset, I too am a revolutionary. My revolution – our revolution, here in the Northern Confederation – is against you. Marxist revolutionaries of every yellow stripe, wherever they obtained power, brought ‘revolutionary justice.’ Anyone or anything that furthered their revolution was just, anyone or anything that opposed it was unjust. And the unjust were liquidated, by the millions.”
  “Now, by your own standard let you be judged. You have opposed our revolution, so you stand condemned.”
  “You are condemned, let me hasten to add, not by me alone, nor merely by those who live today in our Confederation. Your jury is every man and woman who for three thousand years has labored and fought and died for Western culture, the culture you sought to sacrifice to your own pathetic egos.”
  “And that jury’s sentence is death.”
• Villains by Necessity: After Blackmail reveals his true identity as Sir Pryse, he launches into one at Mizzamir, pointing out that his self-righteous attempt to change the world to fit his image has only endangered it, and that light and virtue are meaningless if one doesn't have the ability to choose it for themselves.
• In the Vorkosigan Saga novel The Vor Game:
  • The good guys get one when Gregor finally tells off Cavilo, pointing out that she's been treating the Emperor of three worlds as a naive newbie.
    Gregor: Commander Cavilo, both my parents died violently in political intrigue before I was six years old. A fact you might have researched. Did you think you were dealing with an amateur?
  • Miles also gets one in the same scene.
    Miles: You should have stuck to your first contract. Or your second plan. Or your third. You should, in fact, have stuck to something. Anything. Your total self-interest didn't make you strong, it made you a rag in the wind, anybody's to pick up.
• Alfkaell the Aesling from C.L. Werner's Warhammer novel; Blood for the Blood God gives an epic one to the Kurgan chieftains when they try to scramble to save themselves from the Skulltaker (not that Skulltaker). This is after he kills one of them for blaspheming against Khorne, also. He's so badass that they wait after he's gone before they curse him.
  "Such brotherhood and trust among the blood of Teiyogtei! Such unity of purpose! Such lofty vision! Even when the wolf prowls in the tent, still you argue over who gets the warmest blanket: the heirs of Teiyogtei, the men chosen by the great king to inherit his domain and guard it against the gods! Better he had bent his knee to the Blood God and begged his mercy rather than leave his legacy in the hands of such fools. Even united, do you think you could possibly stand against the Skulltaker? He will kill you all and set your skulls before the Skull Throne! Khorne will consume the land Teiyogtei promised to him; the domain he tried to cheat from a god! *Evil Laugh* Scatter or stand, it makes no difference. You're all going to die."
• In probably one of the most epic things anybody in Warhammer 40,000 has ever done, the end of the short story The Last Church sees the last Christian priest Uriah giving a stern final speech to the God-Emperor himself, pointing out (with what turns out to be perfect accuracy) his madness and hypocrisy before stating he wants no part in his plans for humanity and walking into the burning ruins of his church.
• Peter Waylock from John C. Wright's War of the Dreaming dishes out one of these to Azrael after he tries a We Can Rule Together, pointing out what it means that Azrael is reduced to asking his prisoner for help. Later on, Prometheus does much the same, by showing Azrael that his Dark Messiah plan for "freeing" the world by killing large portions of it was a failure from the start—partly because he just isn't man enough to pull it off. Ouch.
• In The War of the Worlds, the Artilleryman, a working-class soldier who is the sole survivor of his unit, really gives it to the formerly comfortable middle-class Narrator - with both barrels loaded with shrapnel. Free from the military hierarchy and the social norms of Victorian England, he is finally free to say what he thinks.
  “All these—the sort of people that lived in these houses, and all those damn little clerks that used to live down that way—they’d be no good. They haven’t any spirit in them—no proud dreams and no proud lusts; and a man who hasn’t one or the other—Lord! what is he but funk and precautions? They just used to skedaddle off to work—I've seen hundreds of ’em, bit of breakfast in hand, running wild and shining to catch their little season-ticket train, for fear they’d get dismissed if they didn’t; working at businesses they were afraid to take the trouble to understand; skedaddling back for fear they wouldn’t be in time for dinner; keeping indoors after dinner for fear of the back-streets, and sleeping with the wives they married, not because they wanted them, but because they had a bit of money that would make for safety in their one little miserable skedaddle through the world. Lives insured and a bit invested for fear of accidents. And on Sundays—fear of the hereafter. As if hell was built for rabbits! Well, the Martians will just be a godsend to these. Nice roomy cages, fattening food, careful breeding, no worry. After a week of chasing about the fields and lands on empty stomachs, they’ll come and be caught cheerful. They’ll be quite glad after a bit. They’ll wonder what people did before there were Martians to take care of them.”
• Warrior Cats:
  • After her sister Ivypool pushes one too many of her Berserk Buttons, Dovewing tells Ivypool exactly why she thinks Ivypool is a terrible cat who deserves to rot in the deepest corners of the Dark Forest for all eternity.
  • Squirrelflight also gives one to Jayfeather in Faded Echoes after he treats her and Leafpool like crap for two books straight.
  • Leafstar gives one of her own to Sol in After The Flood when he steals her kits just so he could become a warrior.
    Sol: I'm always overlooked! Never made leader of a patrol...always scorned because I used to be a kittypet! I can be a warrior!
    Leafstar: No. You can't. You have no understanding of the warrior code at all. What you've done here proves it. You've risked the lives of young kits...by leaving them alone here. Anything could have happened to them. They could have been lost. They could have died. My kits could have died. But you didn't just betray me. You betrayed the entire Clan. You did all this...and you never considered how it would make any of us feel. The Clan is a family, Sol. A community. And you're incapable of thinking about anyone but yourself. I banish you from SkyClan. You've betrayed my trust, betrayed the warrior code...betrayed everything I thought you believed in.
  • Sol himself gives one to Billystorm about being a daylight warrior only for Billystorm to retort that he's moving into the gorge from now on with his Clan. So Sol gives this speech to SkyClan.
    Sol: Those rogues were right. You are pathetic! You think the warrior code will keep you safe? What if there's another flood? More rats? Twolegs? You'll only ever be as strong as your weakest kit or oldest elder! I curse all Clans for their foolishness!
  • Redwillow gives on to Blackstar, sneering that he's just old and should die. Blackstar shuts him up by calling him a traitor and killing him.
  • Clear Sky gives Jagged Peak a cruel and unprovoked one in Thunder Rising, calling him selfish and lazy. Gray Wing, however, is quick to defend their little brother, and Jagged Peak gives Clear Sky one for kicking him out of the forest.
• The Witch of Knightcharm: Imogene gives one to Emily very early in the story, telling her that even though Emily fantasized about being a great hero and talked a great game about using her magic to save people, she didn't really want to fight evil or else she would have trained for combat harder and not done so badly during her first field mission. She argues that Emily is functionally a dilettante who is more interested in thinking of herself as a hero than in actually putting in the work to become one. This in turns drives Emily to take the drastic step of running off and infiltrating the evil magic school on her own to undermine it and thus redeem herself by proving that she really can fight evil.
• In The Well of Loneliness, Anna delivers a blistering one of these to her daughter Stephen when she founds out that she's a lesbian and was in a relationship with someone.. Stephen then gives one right back, saying that she truly loved the woman she was briefly with and is a good person who deserves better treatment. This leads to a lifelong estrangement.
• In The Witchlands, after putting up with Merik's Excessive Mourning for a long time, Cam finally has enough and tells the prince to his face that he's being a jerkass who refuses to see what's inconvenient to his mindset, then leaves him.
• In The Wolf Of The North by Duncan M. Hamilton, Wulfric gives one of these to one of the story's two main antagonists, laying into how he's nothing but a coward who knows nothing about weapons after finding out about the plot to murder him.

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