Needs Help: Abuse Mistake

Note: This thread was proposed by Adept.

This page's problem is that it's basically two tropes in one, where: (1) something innocuous is mistaken as abuse, and (2) abuse is mistaken as something innocuous. Now this soft-split makes little sense because the two definitions are diametrically opposed to one another, and it's definitely not something that can be squared with Tropes Are Flexible. Not to mention, the trope name is inappropriate for the second definition. Someone who doesn't realize they're being abused and/or people not noticing the abuse is rarely ever an innocent misunderstanding than it is due to the abuser deliberately lying to others and/or gaslighting the victim to hide their abuse.

Results (wick check)

• Definition 1: 36/50 (72%)
• Definition 2: 2/50 (4%)
• Other use/misuse: 5/50 (10%)
• Unclear: 1/50 (2%)
• ZCE/Insufficient context/Potholes: 6/50 (12%)

Analysis:

The good news is, there's not a lot of misuse here, with 72% of the wicks using the trope correctly. However, the fact that the number of examples that use the second definition only make up 4% of the total seem to demonstrate that it's hindered by the name. Even the misuse/unclear/insufficient context wicks seem to lean towards the first definition.

Proposal:

Hard-split the trope. Keep the name for the first definition. And maybe create Hidden Abuse to split the second definition from.

Wick check for Abuse Mistake.

1. Sisters: Thanks to the suggestion planted by her therapist, Georgie recalls her father examining her as him molesting her
2. Big Windup!: In Season 2 Episode 5, Tajima calls Hanai out for bullying Mihashi, when Hanai was just trying to talk to the poor guy.
3. Safe, Sane, and Consensual: "BDSM is not abuse. It's about inflicting intense sensations in a manner that is Safe, Sane, and Consensual"
4. Dork Souls 3: When Matt finds father Ariandel and Elfriede, he notices that Ariandel is tied up, and there are empty bottles of alcohol lying around the room. He reaches the conclusion that Elfriede has been keeping Ariandel imprisoned and used him inappropriately.
5. The Adventures of Pinocchio: When Pinocchio escapes after being created, Geppetto is mistaken for an abusive dad, but he only wants to catch his son to scold him.
6. Engage Kiss: Some of Kisara's classmates notice a bandage on her arm from the injuries from her previous mission and assume Shu did it to her following an argument.
7. Woobie.Fan Works: Everything the doctors know about her points to her having suffered severe abuse throughout her childhood. Her bones and flesh appear fresh, which would indicate her having been repeatedly tortured and much of her body tissue thus been replaced via healing magic - for the sole sake of going through the same torture again. Not only that, but her apparent limited talking skills, lack of a cutie mark, and her downright marvel at her own supposedly natural ability to fly would imply developmental abnormalities. This inspires major worry and outright disgust in the doctors about who could've possibly done such things to a little filly. The truth of the matter, of course, is that she was born a different kind of creature from her current form. Her limited capabilities of walking and talking are the result of possessing a completely different physiology than what she has taken 14 years to get used to.
8. AscendanceOfABookworm.Tropes A To G: In protest to the events from the end of Part 4, Elvira, Rozemyne's public noble birth mother who is also a major Ferdinand Fangirl, writes a story based on the events of Ferdinand's life in which Ferdinand's counterpart is female. After the story is published, people notice that the story reads like a thinly-veiled version of what they know of Rozemyne's life. This notably gets the counterpart to Ferdinand's Wicked Stepmother mistaken for Rozemyne's noble adoptive mother, which is not helped by the fact that Rozemyne's adoptive parents are Ferdinand's half-brother and his sister-in-law, resulting in both women having the same title. This makes the book even more readable as a birth mother denouncing the bad treatment her daughter is getting from her adoptive family. Meanwhile, Rozemyne's Delicate and Sickly nature has resulted in her retainers and both her noble families being a little too used to seeing her suddenly faint in the eyes of her acquaintances from other duchies. Among said acquaintances from other duchies, there are men who have a crush on Rozemyne and have their minds very open to any information that will keep them from feeling bad about making her cancel her existing engagement in the process of making her their wife. Partially conflicting purposes cause Rozemyne's input to be summed up as "that character isn't based on me, she's based on someone else I know, whom I won't name." Cue all those facts pooling together to create a rumor that Rozemyne is being abused.

9. Not Always Legal: Played with in this story — the OP's ex-husband was physically abusive, but she hadn't seen him for over a year when he was finally convinced not to contest the divorce. However, a couple weeks before the court date, she got a massive case of poison ivy exposure. She didn't realize until after the divorce decree was handed down that the judge had mistaken the remaining bruising from the poison ivy for "husband beat her up again", and fast-tracked her divorce to get her away from him.
10. Ranma ½: Kodachi and Densuke both drug Ranma to try to molest him. Nabiki sells (real and doctored) naked photos of Ranma without his permission (which was considered much more ridiculous in the pre-internet age). Ryoga at one point mistakenly believes Ranma had sexually abused Akane, and Ranma encourages his misunderstanding to make him angry.
11. Hyperbole and a Half: In "The Party", Allie's mother is trying to tell her that she can't attend a party because her sedation hasn't worn off...only to look up at the disapproving looks of the people nearby and realize they think she's depriving and verbally abusing her mentally handicapped daughter. She agrees to Allie's next plea to go to the party..
12. Untold Stories of the E.R.
    • As an example of something innocent, assumed to be abuse, in "Halloween in the ER" a boy came in with a undiagnosed mild case of Brittle Bone Disease. The number of old micro-fractures implied abuse to the doctors. The mother's defensive behaviour (even before the accusation), and both parents' response to the accusation — up to and including kidnapping the child from the ER — did not help matters.
    • Something else mistaken for abuse, in which a boy with unexplained bruising prompted suspicions of child abuse. It turned out instead to be a case of completely unintentional neglect: The boy had scurvy, because his parents were ignorant of proper nutrition, and thus fed him almost nothing but oatmeal because that was what he liked.
13. Protector of the Small: Kel goes to the public baths one day to enjoy soaking in the warm water after a session of jousting training with Raoul. When they see the state of her body, concerned women rush over to assure her that whoever he is, even if he's a noble, he'll be caught and tried and made to pay. She has to explain that she is a squire and those are normal injuries that one gets from combat training (and taking care of a baby griffin).
14. For His Own Sake
    • Naru sees a stranger teasing a woman he's walking with. Assuming the worst, she attacks. Turns out the guy was trying to convince his wife to play a fighting game at the arcade with him, and teasing her about how she wasn't good at them. It also turns out that attacking strangers just because you think they're doing something wrong is considered assault, and Naru is arrested. Making matters worse, the man was going to be her career adviser, but there's no way he's going to be doing that now, since she attacked him.
    • The story also goes after canon examples of this. The title refers to how Keitaro has wised up and left Hinata Inn because he realized that the Hinata girls were never going to stop making these mistakes (being too set in their violent mindset to actually stop and think "maybe this is a misunderstanding like the last dozen times"), and Keitaro's canon behavior was just enabling them to do so.
15. Break: When Jonah keeps turning up at school with broken bones, the teachers (unsurprisingly) conclude that he is being physically abused by his parents. Character's Self-Harm mistaken as abuse
16. Modesty Blaise: The punchline of "The Soo Girl Charity" - Modesty and Willy decide to inflict some karmic burglary on an unpleasant, sexist millionaire who sexually assaulted Modesty, and end up preventing his wife from killing herself and witnessing her killing him. After seeing various marks of violence on her body they assume that she was a battered wife doing the only things she could imagine that would free herself... until she finally confesses that the marks were from BDSM and the suicide attempt and murder were because he cheated on her and boasted about it. They still end up deciding to help her get away.
17. The Curse of La Llorona: The social services take Patricia's children into custody upon finding them locked up in the closet by their mother, mistakenly believing that she is abusive. She is actually preventing La Llorona from claiming them, which happens less than a day later. Later, Anna almost suffers the same fate when the social services notice Chris and Sam's hand scars that are caused by La Llorona, although she is quickly let go.
18. Misaligned Gemini: Invoked.Upon joining the Decepticons, Sunstreaker intentionally drags a visibly beaten Sideswipe around in public and later strangles him into unconsciousness in front of Autobot-sympathizer prisoners in order to paint himself as a monster while Sideswipe is blatantly shown to not be sympathetic to Decepticons. ^note Strangling a Cybertronian is one of the cruelest and most egregious ways to harm them because it takes conscious effort and malice to knock them unconscious that way. Sideswipe only realizes what Sunstreaker is trying to do after the latter incident and angrily tells Jazz and Moonracer that Sunstreaker did not abuse him when they imply it. Both are convinced but he knows others will not be.
19. Jessica Jones (2015): Ever since Kilgrave's first domination of Jessica, Trish is undergoing intensive Krav Maga self-defense training to make sure she can protect herself. This comes with a significant number of extremity bruises and bloody noses, and when Jessica sees the marks she fears that her mother has come back into her life.
20. Dragon Ball Z Abridged: Androids/Cell Saga: Cell then asks if Goku would really be happy with a ring out and Goku says that's how he's beaten Tien, Piccolo and his wife. The media sees this as Goku beating his wife which Goku doesn't understand and just makes it so much worse. Even Chi-Chi has to admit it sounds pretty bad.
21. Girlfight: Diana's father, unaware that she's secretly boxing, thinks her boyfriend struck her when she comes home with a black eye, and confronts him over it despite Diana saying it was just from another fight that she got into.
22. King of the Hill S1 E1 "Pilot":
    • As Hank screams at Buckley at the Mega-Lo-Mart, the customers witnessing the conversation wonder if Hank was responsible for Bobby's black eye (which actually happened when Bobby got hit with a baseball during a game).
    • Later on, when Anthony investigates Hank and his home life, Anthony notices a bruise on Peggy's head and questions her about it (Bobby accidentally threw a baseball at Peggy's head earlier). After Peggy explains what had happened, Anthony becomes convinced that Hank not only hits Bobby, but also Peggy as well.
    • And in the end where Hank playfully punches Bobby, Anthony, on the bus ride back home, witnesses it and freaks out.
23. The Bone Palace: Savedra's arm is wounded by Phaedra's ravens during the excursion to Carnavas, when Varis later takes her by the arm and she flinches he jumps to the obvious, to him at least, conclusion.
24. Not Always Related: In this story, a Drama Queen notices that her brother's girlfriend has a broken wrist and bruises (which are actually from a ladder fall), and attempts to lead her into admitting he's been beating her. The girlfriend says that yes, he beats her all the time — at chess, Go, Rocket League, Overwatch, Mario Kart... Though in this case it's not so much a mistake as wanting it to be true so she could be the hero riding to the rescue.
25. Animal Planet Heroes
    • Occasionally the animal cops are called in on an animal which looks to be in deplorable condition/starved/what-have-you, but the animal is actually suffering from some sort of chronic illness and is under veterinary management. (Hyperthyroid cats are prime suspects for this; their overactive metabolisms mean that they are rail-thin and look as though they're not being fed, when in fact they are.) Unsurprisingly, though, most of these instances don't appear onscreen due to lack of drama potential, usually only showing up as a breather from particularly depressing cases just so viewers have something to feel better about at the end of the episode.
    • One such instance of it happening at the end was a cop called because a woman supposedly had a ton of dogs with skin conditions whose fur was falling out. They turned out to be healthy Chinese Crested dogs, who are naturally hairless except for their heads, feet, and tails.
    • Another instance was when they responded to a call about a skinny horse. The horse was a recent rescue from the ASPCA, and its previous owners were the reason it was so skinny. The horse was actually in better shape than when it was adopted, which investigators verified.
26. Robotech: Poor Rand. he stumbles upon the naked Ariel who is a blank slate, and turns around instantly, apologizes, and asks her to put clothes on (except Ariel is still learning what language is and dimly parrots what Rand says. Let alone what clothes and motor functions are). Rook comes in, and becomes enraged, thinking Rand had tried to rape her. It dawns on Rook things might not be as she thinks when Ariel just repeats her questions back to her, but doesn't give Rand any sort of apology. Both logically (but wrongly) conclude she must be suffering from emotional trauma.
27. Activist-Fundamentalist Antics: As a result of their constant Abuse Mistake, the would-be rescuers end up "freeing" slaves against their will, resulting in slaves escaping from "freedom" and running back to their master or mistress.
28. Dysfunctional Family: Mom and Dad are divorced after an incident of Domestic Abuse that turns out to be an Abuse Mistake caused by Punpun's dad punching his wife to stop her from committing murder-suicide.
29. Minimum Height Requirement: An argument that Bruce uses to convince Dick to not become a Kid Sidekick is that his inevitable injuries would be mistaken as Bruce physically abusing him.
30. One Year on Probation: Downplayed example. When Makoto sees Akira's attic room for the first time, she first asks if he has proper living necessities, bringing up stories of troubled youth in poor living conditions who are taken in by guardians being paid government money.
31. Mystery Diagnosis: Some parents are accused of being Abusive Parents because a child's condition involves heavy bruising or unusual birthmarks. One example is a little girl named Julia, who turned out to have a blood disorder called Glanzmann thrombasthenia, a rare genetic condition which can cause severe bleeding from even minor cuts.
32. Casual Kink: People playing with this trope do it Safe, Sane, and Consensual, and are likely to have a Safe Word. People who see a little bit of what they are doing, without getting the whole picture, might sometimes make the classic Abuse Mistake.
33. Superstore S 6 E 8: Jonah accidentally hits Tony with a box of beer while chewing him out for his incompetence. Sandra mistakes it for Jonah hitting Tony as punishment, and gets very upset.
34. Underground: The number of injuries and the various states of healing they are in, combined with Robyn's terrible excuses lead Dr. Alexander to believe she is being abused. It's only after realizing some of her injuries aren't defensive and Robyn telling him "you should see the other guy" that he realizes she's probably not being abused and is actually a street fighter. Turns out she is being abused by her bookie, but those injuries are usually disguised by the ones she gets in her fights. This one seems to fit both definitions.
35. The Yellow Handkerchief: A passerby mistakes Brett's attempt to give a distraught (and drunk) May a Cooldown Hug for Domestic Abuse, which is what leads to the Accidental Murder that sparks the whole plot.
36. MoringMark - TOH Comics: One comic features the Bat Queen assuming Ghost has been heartlessly abandoned when she finds her out in the boiling rain. The truth is that Ghost annoyed Odalia (her owner) who kicked her outside and Amity is absolutely frantic when she realizes it's raining and she's gone; the Bat Queen treats the young witch with suspicion and hostility but when Ghost goes to make sure Amity's okay, she sees how much they love each other and she lets her go home with her new chosen partner.

1. Endless World: Of the second type, combined with Internalized Categorism, and used by the rapist against his victim in combination with A Man Is Always Eager, Double Standard: Rape, Male on Male, and the application of the "Not If They Enjoyed It" Rationalization. Ryuu, as a result, does not understand that what Toshimitsu did to him was actually rape until he's discussing it with Ikki well after the fact.

2. Teenage Worrier: In an example of passing off abuse as something innocent, Letty describes an incident where a man who attacked Hazel got away with it by convincing a bystander "She's my girlfriend; we're just having a row" (fighting.)

1. Springhole: Syera notes in the start of the article on writing predatory people, that any type of person can be a predator. However, Syera advises not to accuse normal people of being predators just because of sharing a few superficial traits with them, as it can lead to the accused being unfairly ostracized and targeted by well-meaning but ignorant vigilantes and actual predators. Context is talking more about traits of a possible abuser, rather than signs of abuse itself
2. Infinity Train: Seeker of Crocus: Pokémon World: Played for Drama. Gloria's ingenious analogy for Chloe's situation at the Cerise Institute is to try and paint it as an abusive household, despite the fact she's heard enough about the situation to know it's not as black and white as it is. Is it any wonder this results in an Analogy Backfire? Character intentionally painting a situation as worse than it is by comparing it to abuse, but there doesn't seem to be any actual abuse involved.
3. Tintin: Destination Moon: Just as the two heroes enter the office Calculus is in, there is a man with a hammer about to crush his head, leading them to think he was in danger. But it turns out he was testing the helmet on his head. No abuse involved.
4. Outlander S 4 E 9 The Birds And The Bees: After Brianna's rape, Lizzie sees bruises on Brianna's back, blood coming from Brianna's nose, and blood on Brianna's petticoat. Lizzie incorrectly assumes it was Roger because he was the only man she saw with Brianna. The character has been abused. People are just mistaken on the identity of the culprit.
5. Pokémon SS3 "We're No Angels!": Type 2 with Team Rocket. They enact acquisitive plots and don't shy away from the fact that they're criminals; but, even so, the villagers are steadfastly convinced they're heroes. Type 1 with the robots' inventor, Professor Brown. The villagers believe he sends robots to destroy their fields, but he actually wishes to help during harvest season and befriend them. Not abuse. This fits better in Villain with Good Publicity and Hero with Bad Publicity.

1. Ruby Sparks: Calvin is rather clueless. It is a good thing that his brother looks out for him. Or would have been a good thing, if it wasn't for the brother being rather clueless himself - not realize that the advice he's giving amounts to inciting supernatural methods for Domestic Abuse. Write-up is very vague on the situation. Rather than a mistake about whether or not someone is being abused, it seems to be about someone accidentally giving advice that leads to abuse?

1. Too Controversial
2. Outlander S 2 E 5 Untimely Resurrection: Alex is held in jail on charges of rape. No context on whether or not he did commit the crime.
3. Afraid of Doctors: Some vets will call an assistant to hold the pet, or even ask you to leave the room, during particularly scary-looking procedures so you don't extend this fear to your pet (and also because trained staff can hold a pet safely in ways that won't scare or hurt them, which most owners don't know how to do).
4. AllTakeAndNoGive.Fan Works: While Keitaro is willing to forgive Naru for every slight, insult and violent assault, always offering her the benefit of the doubt, she never returns the favor, always assuming the worst and 'punishing' him while refusing to acknowledge any of her misjudgments. The story proper begins when Keitaro decides he's had enough and breaks things off with her.
5. Mistaken for Pedophile: Trope mentioned in the comparison section with no further context.
6. You Just Ruined the Shot: Trope mentioned in the comparison section with no further context.