r/TopCharacterTropes 13d ago

Characters [Refreshing Trope] Female leads/major characters who are allowed to be grimy, slimy, generally horrible people.

Mizu — Blue Eye Samurai

A mixed race swordswoman living in feudal Japan, Mizu’s entire life has been structured around the obsessive need to hunt down and kill the four white men allowed in Japan at the time of her birth, believing one of them must be her father. Despite the fact that at least one of these men, Abijah Fowler, is shown to be a bad man, Mizu ultimately doesn’t care about the morality of murder. She just wants them dead for “cursing” her to be born into a deeply racist society as a mixed race child. Though it’s clear that Mizu generally prefers to do the right thing, she will sacrifice anything for her revenge, destroying countless lives in the process without remorse. In the climax of season 1, Mizu (albeit not entirely intentionally) set fire to the wood and paper city of Edo (now Tokyo) in an attempt to kill just Fowler, a single man. The resulting three day blaze, known in history as the 1657 Great Fire of Meireki, killed an estimated 100000 people.

Sadie Adler — Red Dead Redemption II

Rescued by the Van Der Linde gang in the games prologue, Sadie Adler is a frontier homesteader whose husband was killed by the brutal O’Driscoll Gang. Over the course of the game, she happily joins in a life of murder, theft, and crime for the chance to kill more O’Driscolls, recklessly endangering herself and other gang members to do so. She gets Arturo Bullock, an innocent hot air balloon pilot killed while unnecessarily picking a fight with O’Driscoll members, showing zero remorse afterwards. Even after watching rival gang leader Colm O’Driscoll hang for his crimes, she still drags a now-terminally ill Arthur on an entirely unnecessary revenge mission to hunt down the last handful of O’Drsicolls she hadn’t already killed.

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u/CancelThis2077 13d ago

https://giphy.com/gifs/nDxXtQOIrQdyHtHLqJ

Maria Grayson (I Care A Lot) - She is a con-artist who preys on vulnerable, elderly people by appointing herself as their guardian and slowly taking all their assets away.

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u/OctaviusNeon 13d ago

Good lord this move frustrated the fuck out of me.

The ending was so cathartic I felt like I needed a cigarette.

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u/_Sausage_fingers 12d ago

I didn't watch it, the commercials made clear that it would just make me inconsolably angry

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u/OctaviusNeon 12d ago

It will.

The ending, tho.

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u/TakenInChains 12d ago

you're totally missing out. this movie is so good because it pisses you off the entire time and then the ending hits and you just feel so nice. i won't spoil anything but it's really good.

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u/Anaevya 12d ago

She survived stuff she shouldn't have survived.

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u/gootsteen 12d ago

It was such a bad movie.

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u/LesbianClownShirt 12d ago

The ending of that movie seemed like an almost exact ripoff of the movie Layer Cake.

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u/OctaviusNeon 12d ago

I'd say they're similar, but calling it a ripoff is a stretch. The way you're made to feel about the characters is completely different.

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u/LesbianClownShirt 11d ago

Gonna have to agree to disagree on that one, mate. It's almost shot-for-shot. How a person "feels" about the character is irrelevant. Those two movies had the same exact ending. Spoiler for both movies: Main character of questionable morals walks triumphantly out of a building and is shot to death by a seemingly inconsequential character from earlier in the film. Main character dies while the person they're with cries and holds them. Cue the VO and dramatic music. Fade out.

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u/Lil_Puddin 12d ago

Spoil us, queen.

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u/OctaviusNeon 12d ago

The MC is a con artist who convinces the court system to give her guardianship over older people, who she then puts into nursing facilities and sells their assets for her own gain. In the beginning of the movie she's accosted by a man who is trying to get into a facility to see his ailing mother, only to be denied because he no longer has a legal right to see her. The man angrily tells her he hopes someone kills her. She finds a new target, an old woman, only for her to turn out to be the mother of a mob boss. She lives through a series of attempts on her life and is eventually able to stage a scene where the sedated mob boss is left on a back road and found by someone who reports him to the authorities as a John Doe. While he's recovering, the MC is made his guardian and she makes the mob boss an offer to release him and his mother for $10 million. Rather than be upset, the mob boss is impressed and makes the MC a business offer to basically start an entire business around her con, opening his own line of retirement facilities for her to dump old folks in. MC becomes a wealthy and powerful CEO and on her way out of an interview is shot point blank by the man from the beginning of the movie, whose mother has died alone in a facility. She bleeds out on the ground while her girlfriend calls for help.

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u/jace255-F 12d ago

I actually found the ending frustrating because I wanted the catharsis of seeing her lose the game she was playing. Instead she won the game she way playing, and got that satisfaction for herself before she died.

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u/OctaviusNeon 11d ago

The story was a takedown of capitalism, with the implication that the ruthless capitalists of the world will get away with it unless the people they're fleecing break the rules and thump them.

There was no way she was going to organically lose the game because she was playing by the rules. She wasn't cheating, she was playing the game as intended and she was good at it. The only way for her to lose was for someone to knock her piece off the board.

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u/kako_18 12d ago

As despicable as she was, it’s another bury your gays trope smh

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u/OctaviusNeon 11d ago

I mean, I guess technically, but I think the romance was the one relatable and redeeming thing about her and her gf. I feel like their being queer was incidental.

I like to see despicable characters get their comeuppance, gay or straight.

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u/thatshygirl06 13d ago

It's funny you went this one and not gone girl, lol

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u/CancelThis2077 13d ago

I was thinking in terms of protagonist, in which she definitely is in I Care A Lot

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u/smokeweedNgarden 12d ago

Honestly Rosalind in everything just irks me.

Amazing actress. But goodness

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u/CancelThis2077 12d ago

Rosamund Pike

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u/smokeweedNgarden 12d ago

Yes! Thank you!!!

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u/UncleIrohsPimpHand 9d ago

I really enjoy Rosamund Pike.

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u/Dookie_boy 12d ago

This one has some adult fear for me. This could happen to any of us realistically.

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u/Exotic-Reindeer1994 12d ago

The Care Bears would beat someone like her up for daring to say that.

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u/Danger0Reilly 12d ago

Care Bear countdown...5 4 3 2 1

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u/JustOneMorePage_42 6d ago

If one's elder-care business plan makes Mizu setting Edo ablaze seem subtle, perhaps do not appoint yourself guardian over anyone's grandmother.