r/TopCharacterTropes • u/FullBrother9300 • 14d ago

Hated Tropes (Hated trope) Remember all these stories and characters we followed for so long? Welp now it’s all reset.

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1: using another flashpoint to create the tomorrowverse (Justice League Dark: Apokolips war) after 80-90% of the cast is killed off and billions lives are fated to die Flash and Constantine hatch up a plan to kill baby Darkseid to prevent the entire story from happening which just leads to an entirely different universe being formed and even erasing some characters from existence.

2: Jim travelling to the beginning (Tales of Arcadia series) after multiple characters die including Toby Jim uses a magic gem to travel back to the very first episode but instead lets Toby find the amulet… this changes things how?

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273

u/Elonth 14d ago

IMO the end to Tales of Arcadia is so much worse.

Why? Because Jim GIVES the role of the troll hunter to Toby who is a colossal fuck up. Yes he lives up to the challange in the end and makes a self sacrificial play...but JIM throwing all of that away to gamble on Toby not screwing things up by making him the troll hunter throws a massive wrench into the entire time line. So much of it hinges on JIM being the troll hunter that the ripple in the story it can cause could make entire characters/arcs change to be completely unpredictable for him with his knowledge of the first time line. If he wanted a do over with his knowledge/skill as the troll hunter sure. But gambling it all on toby was absolutely stupid.

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u/KingPenguinPhoenix 14d ago edited 14d ago

The entire TOA series is all about choices and how those choices can lead to drastic consequences. Everything that happened in the main Trollhunters show was because of Jim's actions and we literally got a whole other episode that was focused on what would happen if he didn't become the Trollhunter.

By passing the torch to Toby, he's essentially creating a new timeline where worse things could happen. Right off the top of my head, it's very unlikely that Toby would survive any encounter he has with Bular, Strickler doesn't get redeemed and Aja's children never exist. No matter how much Jim tries to game the system, this timeline will suffer in one way or another.

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u/Elonth 14d ago

Thank you! I do remember that. The fact that the writers themselves showed it HAD to be jim the entire time and that merlin specifically set things in motion for it to be jim with his future sight on top of that....only for jim to just stupidly throw it all away after the writers showed it MUST be jim.

Jim was always the chosen one merlin had forseen. (merlin himself didn't even really know it was jim. Just that a vaguness of the things he had to put into place for the future to play out eons down the line. Just no one knew it until it all played out.

20

u/Orion_824 14d ago

Bear in mind that it was Merlin showing Jim wanted Merlin wanted him to see. Merlin was a scumbag who would lie and manipulate, so we can’t really take that vision at face value. That said, I think Merlin was 100% correct

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u/Orion_824 14d ago

So many characters who had their lives improved by Jim's actions will now have worse lives. The odds of Strickler ever becoming good are nothing with Tobes in charge. Jim basically consigned Tobes to death anyways, because that kid is NOT making it through the duel with Draal, he doesn't have the leg length for the kick

40

u/The_Redacted_Badger 14d ago

Heck I doubt Steve is getting his redemption with Tobes in that role

53

u/TediousTotoro 14d ago

Wasn’t there also an episode that was entirely about Toby being a bad choice for the troll hunter?

85

u/Prize-Fisherman-3157 14d ago

It wasn't about Toby specifically, it was about how Jim was the only one who could've been the Trollhunter. That episode even makes a point of showing an alternate timeline where it was Draal instead and everything went to shit at the first hurdle. Toby wouldn't even make it to the first hurdle though he'd trip over his cankles before he got there. What a god-awful ending

12

u/fake_user_34 14d ago

Yeah, fucking hated the ending for such a good series with side stories.

How do they fuck it up that bad?!

12

u/marialoveshugs 14d ago

Not to mention it entirely defeats the entire premise of him being the chosen one. I really loved the show and ignore that movies existence

4

u/Orion_824 14d ago

Bear in mind that it was Merlin showing Jim wanted Merlin wanted him to see. Merlin was a scumbag who would lie and manipulate, so we can’t really take that vision at face value. That said, I think Merlin was 100% correct

15

u/add___123 14d ago

Tales of Arcadia concluded with Wizards and there is no movie so I'm not what OP was even referencing

8

u/Siostra313 14d ago

Thb I dont like Wizards much. Not fan of its resolution, but at least they didnt make a movie to fuck it up even more!

1

u/slumpyslenkins 13d ago

Wizards was when it started going downhill, I think.

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u/CordlessJet 14d ago

God this ending pissed me off.

-2

u/sirtain1991 14d ago

There's no gamble though. Jim is Toby's best friend, so he's going to be involved no matter what and Jim is already pre-aware of every plot point, hidden device, and secret lore in the entire series. The only reason they ever had problems after Jim learned to fight was because they were unprepared for various things that are already in motion by the start of the series. Jim gets to be a wise mentor to his best friend instead of feeling like he bears a curse alone and he gets to save everyone he cared about, maybe even Angor Rot.

8

u/DieEnteGehtMoo 14d ago

No matter how you think of it, Toby would fail. Even if Jim knew all the “plot points” and secrets/lore, it really comes down to skill. Realistically, Toby just doesn’t have the skill to do half the things Jim did (even if he got the proper training). It’s not just that they were unprepared, but they had a time limit. Toby, with his restrictions and inevitable setbacks, would need way more time to prepare for almost everything Jim went through.

That being said, because Jim knows everything that’s gonna happen, he would know Toby wouldn’t be able to handle it. They’d be forced to take a different route and at that point, we’re just right at the beginning, where they have a whole different plot from Jim’s and they’re “unprepared” for what’s gonna happen next.

It’s true that even though Jim was almost always surrounded by friends, he felt like he “bared the curse alone”, if he constantly felt that way, why would he give that curse to his best friend? It feels out of character for Jim to essentially take the “easy route” by forcing his burden on Toby, and becoming a background character instead.

There’s so many things that wouldn’t happen in the show if Toby was the Trollhunter. And in the end, Toby wouldn’t be able to keep up. Many more people would die, and they wouldn’t have the relationships with the others possessing the technology to go back in time again. Jim doomed the world and the writers doomed Jim.

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u/Elonth 14d ago

You would be a laughably dangerous time traveler. If you cannot see how literally ever interaction changes things or even letting your allies know you know the chain of events you not only put them in a false sense of safety that can get them killed you outright "constantly being right." and intervening on earlier events against villians could change their entire courses of action throwing everything else out the window. Literally everything. Just doing this alone could cause claire to never even get her powres which were essential to stopping some events as an immediate off the top of my head.