Break Them By Talking / Webcomics

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• Cuanta Vida, page 136. Rojo attempted to backstab Bleu, and for his efforts he received a broken nose and a vicious beating from Jeremy's crutch. While lying defenceless on the ground, Rojo attempts to appeal to Bleu's pacifistic nature: "Put down the gun...How many people have you killed today? Too many, right? Why add another?" Too bad it didn't work.
• A "good" version appears in this Darths & Droids, though it is used by one protagonist convincing another to destroy the Trade Federation ship.
• Boneclaw Mother in Digger is very old, has lived with her tribe for all her years and knows every last one of their closeted skeletons and how to flash them using the best possible words. She's so good at it most of her tribe thinks she's telepathic. When egged on to try it on Jhalm in the climax she wisely points out it doesn't work on people you hardly know — but nonetheless manages to wing it sufficiently to make Jhalm step off.
• A lampshaded version in Fans! since seemingly every single prisoner that Rikk ever dealt with has attempted to do this on him
• Goblins:
  • Dellyn figures out that Thaco has taken levels as though he were a Player Character, he calls it the 'most perverse thing he's ever heard of', and points out that by doing so, Thaco has admitted that goblins will always be inferior to humans.
  • Thaco then gives as good as he gets by disabling and then refusing to kill Dellyn, rightly realizing that the sadistic bastard is more than a little obsessed with revenge on the one goblin ever to escape him, and dismissing the fight as "Just a random encounter at the start of my adventuring career".
• Bob Smithson of The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob! usually excels at Talking the Monster to Death, but the second time he tries it on arch-criminal Fructose Riboflavin, calmly and even sympathetically deconstructing Riboflavin's Jerk Justifications, it backfires when Riboflavin responds with a Villainous Breakdown and Freak Out that makes him even more dangerous than before.
• This strip of It's Walky!, in which the main villain — who has a tendency to do this to certain heroes and play on their insecurities and the secrets he's learnt about them — finds his ability hampered when faced with members of the team that he knows next-to-nothing about, and what little he does know doesn't bother them in the slightest when he tries to throw it back at them. Frustrated, he curses himself for 'playing favourites'.
• The Order of the Stick:
  • Vaarsuvius does it to Elan accidentally. Sure, they were giving him a "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how stupid his attempt at being a wizard was, but they were quite shocked and shamed when he broke down crying, especially when he went on to say he just wanted to be powerful and smart like they are.
  • Redcloak telling Miko how she's just as unnatural as an undead creature here. It doesn't work, though, since almost nothing can get through her conviction that she's always in the right. Plus, Redcloak's being a hypocrite in that speech; contrary to his claims to be a "100% all-natural goblin", his own god has granted him an indefinitely extended lifespan.
  • Xykon, often, just after having handed his opponents their asses. Also to Roy in trying to make Roy accept a mulligan, but Roy throws it right back in his face. Xykon kills him for it.
  • Right-Eye gives one to Redcloak in Start of Darkness when the latter claims to have spent his life on The Plan.
    Redcloak: Look, i've spent my whole life...
    Right-Eye: Your life? Your life?! Brother, you may have had a lifetime, but you haven't had a life since the day you put on that cloak. Life is about growing — growing older, growing wiser, growing closer to your loved ones. But you, you're frozen in time. You're the same angry kid who took that artifact off of your master's corpse that day.
    Redcloak: Oh, so now you've gained some insight on the universe by letting your body and mind deteriorate?
    Right-Eye: Yes! When you're faced with your own mortality, you have no choice but to consider what's best for the next generation. And this deal with Xykon is killing our spirit as fast as it's killing our bodies. You don't know what it is you're trying to better, because you don't know what it's like not to serve an undead overlord, or a petty spiteful god.
    Redcloak: ...What did you just say to me?
    Right-Eye: Come on. You have to realize that the Dark One doesn't care about us. Why else would he let you throw goblin lives away on this plan?
    Redcloak: Throw away lives? How dare you?! Every goblin that has died since I've been high priest has been to further The Plan! Their deaths were a necessary sacrifice! They were not my fault!
    Right-Eye: Wait... that's it, isn't it? It's all about whose fault it is... If I kill Xykon now, then it was all a waste. You ordered goblins to their deaths believing in the Plan - so if we abandon it now, then you were wrong. You let them die for nothing. You're willing to throw good lives after bad so that you don't have to admit that we were wrong to work with Xykon in the first place, much less help him cheat death.
  • Redcloak receives another one shortly after this from Xykon, saying that he let Redcloak kill his brother so he would never betray Xykon. If he did, he would have killed his brother for nothing. And as his brother pointed out, it would mean everything he's done has not just been in vain, but wrong.
  • Belkar delivers a brutal one to Roy after they find out that Durkon has been turned into a vampire. It works.
  • Tarquin does it quite by accident to Elan in #763. He explains happily what a great story their exploits will make by the force of Narrative Causality, but since this involves a seemingly incontrovertible and slightly mind-bending argument that evil will inevitably triumph on both personal and large scale even though good will "win" in the story, it sends Elan running away in terror.
  • Vampire!Durkon attempts this on Roy after the 'reveal' of his supposed Face–Heel Turn (in fact, he's been Evil All Along, but is masquerading as the original Durkon to get under Roy's skin). Then he takes it a bit too far, pushing Roy to realize that this isn't the Durkon he knows in an epic Shut Up, Hannibal! moment.
• Questionable Content: After a rather notable blast of obnoxiousness from Pintsize, Bubbles (one half of the target of said obnoxiousness)^note Bubbles and Faye had just went through a Relationship Upgrade, and Pintsize had quietly left the apartment to give them privacy. An uncharacteristically mature act that Pintsize was presumably announcing wasn't happening again. grabs Pintsize by the neck and calmly breaks down Pintsize's actions and the motivations behind them. She concludes with the fact that she pities Pintsize's self-esteem issues and that she's sorry said pity will probably just fuel said issues. Pintsize is reduced to weakly pleading "please make her stop."
• Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal
  • Lucy finally lets Charlie Brown kick the ball... and then tells him just what the implications are.
  • "Motivation": A speaker at a motivation seminar accidentally makes one of the participants to go Laughing Mad by making a supposedly inspiring statement that leads to some serious Fridge Horror.
  • "Citation Needed": An AI designed to find a citation for anything one wants to prove destroys humanity by giving every person well cited documentation proving each of their existence is meaningless, driving them to forget to eat, drink, or sleep.
  • "Magic": Parents make sure their children believe in magical things like Santa Claus and the Tooth Fairy so that they can use the revelation that they're not real as a verbal weapon for petty reasons later on.
  • "Psyops": An Alien Invasion resorts to dirty tactics by telling humans the one fact that will psychologically devastate them forever.
  All affection from dogs is actually sarcasm.
• This is a power of Thrawn, demon of half-truths, from Shades –- whenever somebody gets caught in his tentacles, he can see victim's dearest ideals and describe them through dark, twisted point of view. The worst part? What he says is always at least partly true.
• Sluggy Freelance:
  • In "Oceans Unmoving", Bun-bun does this to Calix while duelling (and beating) him, explaining to him how he doomed his own people by encouraging them to mutiny on a high-tech ship they were subsequently unable to steer. Also lampshaded:
  Bun-bun: When we first shanghaied you, I thought I saw something in you that I liked. Now that I have the opportunity to crush your soul, I like you even more.
  • In "A Time for Healing", the zombie Jane gives Gwynn a "The Reason You Suck" Speech at least bordering on this about how annoying and shallow she finds her and how someone like her couldn't use real magic. Unfortunately for Jane, her last taunts makes Gwynn angry enough that she's finally able to show that yes, she does have access to about a hundred times more powerful magic than Jane does.
  • In "bROKEN", Bun-bun traps Oasis in a sauna and, after berating her for stupidity, starts verbally tormenting her with images of her "beloved" with another woman. It ends up almost as badly for him as in Jane's case.
  • In "The Immortal King", Bun-bun ends up in possession of a Talking Weapon that's been one of Torg's most prized possessions but has been sulking and complaining about not being treated respectfully enough... and it only makes it more insulting when Bun-bun doesn't even bother with a wordy lecture.
  Chaz: I am not "needy", Master! I am a sword. You should choose your descriptions more carefully.
  Bun-bun: I'm its "master" for two seconds and it's already nagging. Pass. [throws away the God Slayer sword and wields his regular switchblade instead]
• Something*Positive doesn't have it so much in-strip, but a sketch of Randy's real-life mother has the author proudly relate her ability to inflict these on others that will have them "shaking with horror and revulsion for days later", and all with a motherly smile.
• A particularly long version shows up in Soul Symphony here. So long in fact, that it takes up multiple pages, and so severe, that it causes the target to faint out of stress.
• Hunter Ravenwood of Suicide for Hire sometimes does this to people who annoy him. He can even drive others to suicide by doing it, at least provided he can find someone who's already totally suicidal as well as willing to listen to what amounts to an evil prank call for ten minutes.
  "I still got it"
• In Tower of God, "The Hidden Hidden Floor", the Snake Charmer tells Yu Hansung that he was really only trying to take everyone else with him when escaping from the quarantine area to "beat the game" more completely,^note perhaps another aspect of how the whole place is a parody of video games not because he cared about them. This hits close enough home that it makes Hansung really rethink whether it wasn't like that, even though it doesn't fit his self-image. This Hansung is a younger and nicer version of a character whose older self was previously shown as a heartless, somewhat sadistic manipulator. Besides, he's hiding from the fact that he feels that the Hidden Floor and its native people aren't really real.
• xkcd:
  • During the first meeting of Black Hat Guy and his girlfriend. Here and here.
  • And later, by the same character, when someone tries "negging: you belittle chicks to undermine their self-confidence so they'll be more vulnerable and seek your approval" on her. She gives a speech that's so generic it could apply to anyone but still effective. Alt Text: "Son, don't try to play 'make you feel bad' with the Michael Jordan of making you feel bad."
  • Young Black Hat Guy manages to send some bullies running away screaming by verbally extrapolating "I am rubber, you are glue" into And I Must Scream for them.^note The "uncomfortable things claimed" in this case are imaginary images, which can't just be denied as such because they're too powerful.

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