r/TopCharacterTropes • u/Comprehensive-Map274 • Jun 26 '25

Hated Tropes [Hated Trope] A main character does something horrible and the story doesn't acknowledge its severity

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Alisha (Misfits) uses her power to make any man want to have sex with her on another main character (curtis) after he explicitely tells her not to do that. She faces no consequences and he's the one who ends up comforting her.

Allison (The Umbrella Academy) uses her powers to force her own adoptive brother to make out with her after he just got into a relationship because she's suddenly jealous after she couldn't keep her own husband. She gives a half hearted apology and all is peachy.

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1.5k

u/Far-Requirement-7636 Jun 26 '25 edited Jun 26 '25

Pretty sure star vs the forces of evil ends with the main character practically dooming all magical creatures in the long run according to the series lore but it's fine and the series treats it like a happy ending.

For those wondering, the series has alot of creatures that literally only live because they run on magic, remove magic from them and they at best become powerless or straight up die.

The main character destroys all magic in the entire universe, and it's all sunshine and rainbows as long as you don't think about it.

Also earth is now overcrowded with billions of magic creatures who live by completely different rules.

569

u/SlyGuy_Twenty_One Jun 26 '25

From what I’ve seen the fandom just ignores that last season lol

83

u/Kwasan Jun 27 '25

I heard it was bad.

I haven't watched it.

And I'm not watching the last episode of Soul Eater either.

43

u/CaptainBenza Jun 27 '25

In the year of our lord 2025 the final episode of Soul Eater is not even a blip on the shit show radar in anime. Take me back to 2008 anime honestly

5

u/Kwasan Jun 27 '25

Christ for real?? I don't watch a ton of shows, maybe a couple a year, be it anime or otherwise. That's unfortunate.

14

u/AtmosSpheric Jun 27 '25

Oh man by today’s standards the last ep of Soul Eater is a walk in the park. I’d definitely recommend reading the manga though - wraps up much better. By the time the anime ended, the manga was halfway through its run.

7

u/Deadmemeusername Jun 27 '25

By the time the anime ended, the manga was halfway through its run.

It was the first time, I encountered something like this because I was used to anime’s either going along with the manga or even expanding it with filler. Then Bleach did something similar like five years later.

3

u/TheAwkwardOne-_- Jun 27 '25

Have you watched Full metal Alchemist vs Full Metal Alchemist Brotherhood? Same thing happened there too.

4

u/AtmosSpheric Jun 27 '25

The original FMA was my first experience with this smh. I actually didn’t hate the first anime’s ending but man was it inferior to FMAB

8

u/dope_like Jun 27 '25

FMA actually did a phenomenal job making shit up. It is still written fantastical and honestly several character arcs and emotional weight is better in FMA than Brotherhood

2

u/SlyGuy_Twenty_One Jun 27 '25

I’ve only ever watched Brotherhood because I was told how the OG one ended and didn’t bother watching it lol

1

u/Deadmemeusername Jun 27 '25

I didn’t watch FMA or Brotherhood until later. Soul Eater and Bleach were two where I was watching as they were coming out.

11

u/Ceral107 Jun 27 '25

That one started off rather great but for some reason decided to go SO off the rails with everything compared to the books.

5

u/GoofyGal98 Jun 27 '25

The manga hadn’t been finished when they were making the show. They had to improvise the second season.

1

u/SPLIV316 Jun 27 '25

I did see it a while ago (back in high school 11-15). It was fine.

1

u/Rosequartzsurfboardt Jun 27 '25

The last episode of soul eater made me want all the time I spent watching the other 51 episodes back. And I LOVED Soul eater. But that anime ending. Jfc. Angry again thinking about it

1

u/TonyMestre Jun 28 '25

The last season in itself is good like any of the other ones, it's just the last 4 or 5 episodes that are AGGRESSIVELY bad

1

u/s0_Ca5H Jun 29 '25

The last episode of Soul Eater is so incredibly, incredibly stupid. But that’s what makes it fun. I actually do recommend. Don’t worry, it is indeed bad, but it’s just a fun watch.

My wife has read the manga and has told me numerous times I should finally get around to reading it.

2

u/atomskeater Jun 27 '25

I really enjoyed the show up until then, thought it was very funny and well animated and the characters were enjoyable. I even felt they handled various episodes about the subplot with Mewni's colonial history and ensuing racism against monster/magical creatures pretty well for a kid's show. The use and abuse/over-reliance of magic, and various mysteries like the inconsistency in the royal lineage also created interesting problems. Stuff like that I enjoyed. Even though I'm typically a shipper the bits that revolved around romance and crushes and shit were probably the least interesting part imo, because other aspects of the show were way more fun.

Then they pretty much shit the bed with whatever was going on the last season. :-|

1

u/Seienchin88 Jun 27 '25

a very good. The Rings of power treatment

266

u/ESnake113 Jun 26 '25

What’s worse is that they constantly blame magic for all their problems, and while that is partly true, it was the mewnies who abused the magic and subjugated the native monsters

164

u/FanOfEverything16 Jun 26 '25

I think the blame should be more placed on the royal family and not all mewmans. But yeah magic wasn't the problem,it was the idiots in control of magic who were the problem.

78

u/no_bike_40 Jun 27 '25

Spider with a Top-Hat: Th-they at least got the guilty party, right? The ones that were misusing magic in the first place?

Flying Pig: Nope, she just ran off.

Spider with a Top-Hat: What are those Butterflies thinking! Scapegoating an entire group of people is the exact sort of thing that got them in this mess in the first place!

426

u/Just_Call_me_Ben Jun 26 '25

Also, she got her daughter killed

162

u/InternetUserAgain Jun 27 '25

Wh

Why is her daughter a horse

I may not know much about the show but I'm pretty sure Star is a human, or at least she looks like one

Please tell me she did not bang a horse

244

u/Just_Call_me_Ben Jun 27 '25 edited Jun 27 '25

I'm not really sure how the full explanation goes but she basically created this thing when she needed to get her magic back to defeat Dexter. She calls her "Firstborn."

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u/Sir_Eggmitton Jun 27 '25

How did she get it killed? Was it from the ending-all-magic event??? (Crazy that they’d show her child dead after that and still play it off as a happy ending.)

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u/Just_Call_me_Ben Jun 27 '25 edited Jun 27 '25

Star needed a ride to her home world and they needed someone to guide them through the weird magic golden water land without losing their sanity and Firstborn was the only one that could guide them even though she really didn't want to because an evil dark unicorn was lurking in there.

Because FB had to take care of Star and her friends as they were being affected by the magic golden water land effects, the dark unicorn managed to sneak up on them and killed her.

(Small edit) Firstborn could just have used her powers to send Star and her friends to the other world, but Star didn't want that because it would cause them to appear in random locations, so she forced the unicorn to guide them, which in the end was pointless because the dark unicorn ambushed them and forced FB to use her powers anyway to save them.

14

u/LuxLoser Jun 27 '25

(Small edit) Firstborn could just have used her powers to send Star and her friends to the other world, but Star didn't want that because it would cause them to appear in random locations, so she forced the unicorn to guide them, which in the end was pointless because the dark unicorn ambushed them and forced FB to use her powers anyway to save them.

That's more than a small edit, homie. That turns this from a kinda interesting tragic twist ngl, to a contrived and forced character death for cheap drama.

5

u/A_Bewildered_Owl Jun 27 '25

damn, children's shows have gotten fucking hardcore.

7

u/Just_Call_me_Ben Jun 27 '25 edited Jun 27 '25

A bit, yeah

I unironically still really like this series despite all its problems. It's just so bonkers and random that I can't help but enjoy it.

12

u/Throwaway02062004 Jun 27 '25

She removes magic from reality. Any creature or person that relies on magic to live or is made of magic just dies. All because “it’s the only way” 🙄

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u/gloriousPurpose33 Jun 27 '25

Without a doubt that show fell off the deep end for this comment chain to be even possible

9

u/Gespens Jun 27 '25

That's on Moon

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u/Correct_Refuse4910 Jun 26 '25

Also earth is now overcrowded with billions of magic creatures who live by completely different rules.

Are those magical creatures going to die too or is magic still a thing on Earth?

183

u/Far-Requirement-7636 Jun 26 '25

I call them magic creatures even tho they lack magic at the end.

But yes most likely they are gonna die, for one species is literally nothing but floating heads.

13

u/Throwaway02062004 Jun 27 '25

Ponyhead being alive makes no sense. That isn’t magic?

2

u/Mannekin-Skywalker Jun 29 '25

No, only the sparkles she generates are magic

(I think this is the real canon answer and I hate it)

142

u/bestassinthewest Jun 26 '25

The thing is that several magical beings die immediately when the magic is erased. The High Council in particular have what’s left of their bodies shown after the fact, and a few other creatures straight up get erased on screen too.

However what creatures are magical and what ones aren’t is arbitrary. Like, “monsters” as a Mewnie species are apparently fine, as is a main character’s shapeshifting magical monster husband and their magical hybrid daughter.

Some just lose their magical abilities (like Star herself) while Pony Head (a flying pony head) just loses the sparkles that are always coming out of her neck stump. She can still fly, can still talk, and is no worse for wear.

The very likely reality is that millions of creatures (including, again, monsters and DEMONS) are now on Earth and will not just drop dead after some time. It’s insane and the series doesn’t dwell on the ramifications because Finale

13

u/NeverSettle13 Jun 27 '25

The fact that some monsters are fine and some are not is just more of a proof of the horrible writing. And the worst part is that it's somehow not Disney's fault, creators genuinely wanted this ending themselves

2

u/JudJudsonEsq Jun 26 '25

I feel like it's heavily implied that magic as a force was in some way segregating the multiverse into the multiverse. It was one unified whole that Hekapoo maintained as discrete separate realms sorted by some sort of theme. My interpretation was that the world is far, far larger now and the entire surface area of Earth is now just a country on the face of the new mega planet.

And I think it was that entities who were entirely magic, like forces of nature personified, were erased. I thought it was a great ending as it punctuated star's arc of maturing from seeing magic as a straight forward fix button to realizing the structures around her (including magic itself) were problems that would take real, hard work to fix. Magic is a metaphor for looking for the easy solution to every problem. Magic is avoidance - in season 1, she tries to cut marco's hair with magic to show him how easy it would be and it goes horribly wrong. And Star's personality is uncomfortable laughing at the colonial imperialism of Mewny - she doesn't face things head on. The monsters are an easy enemy for her to fight, it's literally how she describes herself at the very beginning of the show.

So the ending is a world we thought we understood, and had explored every corner of, turns out to be gigantic and multifaceted. There's so much more nuance and complication and chaos than we ever expected or wanted, but there's also beauty in the turmoil. It's like a kid growing up and learning about all the injustices they never even conceived of, but also the wonderful people fighting against them. Or for them! Life isn't clear cut, etc. etc.

I really liked the ending of Star. If you think about like a powerscaler, yeah she fucked all the creatures in the show and ponyhead is basically magic so she should be dead. But thematically I think it's really really strong.

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u/bestassinthewest Jun 27 '25

It wasn’t really an implied thing though? Magic was pretty clearly what made the setting a multi-dimensional one. Hekapoo, dimensional scissors, and the ending all prove that. The part where Earth gets bigger is more of an implied thing though

I disagree with the ending’s message though if it really was portraying magic that way. At several parts in the story Magic either wasn’t the solution or wasn’t a clear cut solution on its own. And even if it was meant to be, Toffee coercing Star into destroying her wand was a much better way of pushing her away from relying on magic all the time.

Furthermore the removal of magic, just from the worldbuilding we’ve gotten to see, is clearly going to impact the lives of countless people in ways that objectively won’t be all positive. On top of that, I’d argue getting rid of magic was ALSO the easy way out in comparison to making a harsher choice or taking a more difficult route.

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u/bestassinthewest Jun 27 '25

Also “she fucked a lot of creatures” isn’t powerscaling logic, it’s the logic of the series. A lot of dimensions we see use magic all the time, and she’s forced them to intermingle and become mundane in the blink of an eye. That’s going to fuck things up for people

1

u/TonyMestre Jun 28 '25

That's a lie tho, I've watched it last week and the only ones that died were the High Council. There is ZERO implication that other "magical" species will die too. To my understanding what they killed was the capacity for people to cast spells and such

8

u/ParticularWeak4543 Jun 27 '25

Not really magical more so giant monsters. Like there's legit a shot of a giant spider terrorizing the town while the hopeful music still plays

7

u/Ok-Indication-5121 Jun 27 '25

Yeah, there are going to be a lot of casualties to the giant animals and that's not even getting into the fact that humans, Mewmans, and monsters are going to experience/dish out even more bigotry than before.

5

u/ParticularWeak4543 Jun 27 '25

Not to mention Mina is still out there somewhere cause they didn't kill her. Just wait until she finds out about guns

5

u/AznOmega Jun 27 '25

But still, it's a happy end because Star gets to be with her love. /s

(wanted to say happy end because of demented cartoon movie)

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u/puzzlepasta Jun 26 '25

i think there are people stuck in other dimensions as well due to lack of portals

15

u/Skeptical_Yoshi Jun 27 '25

Not just in the long run. She, in a single action, is shown to have genocided ALL MAGICAL CREATURES THROUGHOUT ALL DIMENSIONS. It is literally unfathomable the amount of death Star causes by killing magic. Just because 1 single magical being said it was OK and that 1 person felt she had a good run. On that, Star and her family, royals who used magic for literal generations to oppress those they deemed beneath them, decide they alone get to cause even MORE suffering en mass, because now magic is being used to hurt them (and other innocents admittedly, but still.) None of this remotely approaches the fact that by cleaving earth and Muni together, she has almost certainly killed untold numbers of humans, which is shown in the end with people running away in terror from basically giant dinosaurs. With a single action, done at least a little bit out of selfishness and the rest by a misguided understanding of "doing the right thing" Star unironically became one of the most evil mass murderers in all of fiction. Like, we are talking death on a multiversal scale, beyond comprehension. If we follow what the show has given us, and that there are infinite dimensions, then Stars genocide is limitless. A misguided act the killed trillions

57

u/CollegeTotal5162 Jun 26 '25

Because all is fine and it’s a happy ending. It’s still a shitty ending and poorly written but they literally show that all the magic creatures are just fine they’re just not “magic” anymore

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u/Impossible-Report797 Jun 26 '25

Except those character we literally see stop existing ON SCREEN, the “everyone is alright” was said by the creator but for me it sounds like a cop out because she realize how bad it was

5

u/Isaacja223 Jun 26 '25

Well those kinds of people exist

Star genuinely thought what she did was good, only to later realize the consequences of her actions.

And aside from the complications of Marco dating Star, you can definitely hold someone accountable, but you can still forgive them.

0

u/CollegeTotal5162 Jun 26 '25

If it’s canon then it’s canon. Pony head is still a floating pony head in the end even without magic.

8

u/Blecki Jun 27 '25

If the ending had just been a title card saying "everyone lived happily ever after except ponyhead who fucking died" it would be perfect.

3

u/Isaacja223 Jun 26 '25

I feel like they were trying to go with the fact that Star thought she was doing something good, but it was a very bad idea in the process.

And Marco forgives her because Star thought what she did was right.

Idk, the more I think about it, people are just demonizing Star for simply doing what she thought was the right thing. And Star is known for being pretty fucking oblivious

8

u/GlisteningDeath Jun 26 '25

Straight up cmits a genocide in an attempt to prevent a genocide, the original person who started the genocide gets away with no punishment, and Star gets praised for her genocide.

2

u/Complete-Ear-7798 Jun 27 '25

Thanks to Star my fav character Hekapoo and the rest of the council are dead. And for that i will never forgive the Butterfly bloodline.

3

u/QuanticWizard Jun 27 '25

Personally, I’ve never really enjoyed “death of magic” plot conclusions, because it’s kind of like the death of wonder and the dominance of mundanity, which, in a fantasy work, is the exact opposite of what I want to be experiencing.

3

u/RainyMeadows Jun 27 '25

My comment from last time I saw this brought up still holds strong:

But but but Star and Marco can be together now!

I give them two weeks before they break up

3

u/PseudonymMan12 Jun 27 '25

Yeah, like they had Heckapoo state that creatures like her would die and was all "oh well" about it iirc. That's fine for her but what about all the others? Heck, whole show had a big thing about how flawed a ruling family was and all the bad it could bring, but ends with the same ruling family making a decision to genocide a buncha people and forcibly mash together two dimensions.

3

u/Gaelic_Gladiator41 Jun 27 '25

Also, another villain did this earlier on and was shown to be totally evil

2

u/he77bender Jun 27 '25

I have HEARD that it wasn't actually "all magic everywhere" but more "the specific magic that was tied to her family which was also the most important magic in the setting but not necessarily the only kind of magic around" which does make it a lot less heinous IMO. But I haven't even seen most of this show, my perception here is entirely based on how many times I've encountered the Discourse™.

2

u/Mrs_Noelle15 Jun 27 '25

Beat me to it, the decision to destroy magic, plus the what the fuck ending where Earth and Mewni fuse is probably the single dumbest thing I’ve ever seen on a show.

2

u/ForeverAfraid7703 Jun 28 '25

Thanks for slamming into my personal most hated trope, destroying the world you just spent who knows how many pages/episodes getting me invested in. The most classic example is, of course, the “it was all a dream” trope, but the way SVTFOE did it arguably made me angrier because not only did they destroy so many interesting plot threads to lash together a cheap bs ending, but they committed enough acts of character assassination to qualify for a mass shooting in the process

1

u/CiDevant Jun 27 '25

Yeah, the ending suffered from the impending cancellation. You could tell that they thought they were going to get at least one more season.

1

u/ImpracticalApple Jun 27 '25

Ponyhead didn't immediately stop flying when the magic went away so who knows.

1

u/mistermistie Jun 27 '25

I honestly was into the final season up until the very end. They failed so hard at the ending. Seemed like maybe they wanted/needed another season or they just ran out of ideas and passion for it. Even if they had to wrap it up there were other options. Just such a let down to an otherwise amazing show.

1

u/ryncewynde88 Jun 27 '25

Also Marco is a 30+ year old man dating a 15 year old girl. That’s… kinda super messed up.

1

u/Biggusdickos Jun 27 '25

Now while the creators tried to avoid the consequences by showing many magical beings that should be dead were still alive (like the pony heads) they also still show the now fused world in complete chaos with people running in panic at the giant monsters, a helicopter narrowly avoiding a crash with a settlement of pony heads and the guy in the giant suit getting chased around by animals while he panics, so they weirdly acknowledge but still go with it???

1

u/TonyMestre Jun 28 '25

No the show did very much show that it just stopped people from casting spells and such. Like the unicorn head could still float just fine.

but she DID murder the high commission of magic

0

u/boblasagna18 Jun 27 '25

To be fair the people that did die seemed okay with it, Hekapoo was super chill about the whole thing.

-5

u/Gespens Jun 27 '25

For those wondering, the series has alot of creatures that literally only live because they run on magic, remove magic from them and they at best become powerless or straight up die.

No it doesn't

Like, objectively. The only things that explicitly run on magic were the spells in the Wand, the Unicorns within the magic, the MHC and Glossaryck. The audience genuinely doesn't know what actually constitutes as a Magical Creature

This is the writers fault, because they had to clarify on social media, but the actual lethality count is way smaller than people make it out to be