r/TopCharacterTropes • u/DiveSideways • Aug 30 '26
Lore [Rare Trope] A story element that popularized a concept is actually the polar opposite of that concept
Some franchises start off a bit specialized and evolve into something else later. Some stories get warped by pop culture and burdened with misconceptions. Some stories just don't make sense, or send the wrong message on accident.
Not these!
No, these examples are very clear (and not retconned) and yet pop culture has done a complete 180-degree turn on understanding them.
Romeo and Juliet routinely gets alluded to as though it's a classic love story. In fact it is an intensely melodramatic tragedy all the way through, everyone is shallow and exploitative and desperate--and they die for it. Even the opening of the play self-indulgently advertises how dire the whole situation is.
The One Ring from The Lord of The Rings isn't exactly meant to be a cursed item that corrupts the greedy or weak-minded. Geeky discourse loves to offer up examples of characters "strong enough" or "pure enough" to resist it, but The One Ring turns that trope on its head. The One Ring is an amplifier for power but lesser beings can't make full use of it. Being strong and noble and pure makes you more corruptible, you can bear a heavier load of its dark essence.
Keyzer Soze from The Usual Suspects is one of the most famous examples of a villain who fooled everyone and got away with his plotting scot-free. However, the whole huge convoluted mess of a scheme was intended to kill off the last living enemy capable of ID'ing him. Not only did Soze accidentally leave a new witness alive who then cooperated with the police and their sketch artist, he also got himself closely inspected by a whole police station (who now know his true identity.) Yes, it was a good twist and yes, Soze escaped police custody, but his efforts to tie off one loose end resulted in high-quality images of his real face for the FBI Most Wanted list. In most ways this was truly an epic failure for him.
137
u/Quantum_redneck Aug 30 '26
Some theologians have speculated that the enlivening fire of God's glory in heaven, the purifying fire of purgatory, and the painful punishing fire of hell are in fact all the same undiluted fire of God's being - the difference being in the soul's disposition towards it.
However, this is pure theological speculation, and not established doctrine. There's very little we can say with much precision about the matter, because there's not much that's been revealed to us. And given that, at least until the final judgement, these are non-corporeal realities, our minds at present have a great deal of trouble imagining what it might really be like.