Basic Trope: A character criticizes others, but cares deeply about them.
- Straight: Alice is often critical of other's flaws, but she does mean well in doing it.
- Exaggerated: Alice criticizes everyone exactly like a Drill Sergeant Nasty, but it does make everyone better.
- Downplayed: Alice points out the flaws of others, but isn't harsh or blunt about it.
- Justified:
- Alice believes that complimenting them on their pros will make them ignore their cons, and not telling them about their cons will not perfect them.
- Alice is just looking for an excuse to be mean, but her soft side shows up enough that this makes her less so.
- Alice believes that encouraging others isn't effective enough and that being completely negative is the only way for them to take things seriously and improve themselves.
- Inverted: Alice praises others for the sake of bringing them down.
- Subverted: Alice then starts praising others once they've improved their flaws.
- Double Subverted: Only to immediately point out there are other flaws they have to improve now.
- Parodied: Alice brutally dissects a three-year-old's finger painting, then admonishes him for crying. "This is for your own good!"
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: Alice helps others improve without being critical about it.
- Enforced: "Critics are seen as jerks. Let's create a critic who has good intentions."
- Lampshaded: "Alice may be blunt, but I'm telling you. She does want the best for us."
- Invoked: To make sure that her friends don't get angry at her, Alice gives them a reason for her critical attitude.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- "So what if you want to see us succeed? That doesn't give you the right to be mean about it."
- Alice doesn't want to be one of those blunt critics, so she betters people by focusing on their strengths.
- Discussed: "Oh, it always has to be those people who act hard on me in order to better me that I run into. Just once I'd like to hear some actual encouragement."
- Conversed: "Why does it seem that in fiction that critics are portrayed as altruistic?"
- Deconstructed:
- The more that Alice points out her friends' flaws, the more they resent her and ignore her good-hearted intentions.
- Alice points out her friends' flaws in such a rude and tactless way that she loses their friendship.
- While Alice might have good points about her intended targets, her inability to recognize the flaws in her own perspective and criticism means that her critiques are at best deeply biased or built on faulty logic, or at worst using her supposed "compassion" as something to hide behind to avoid any serious scrutiny. Anyone who does take a closer look end up realizing that she's either a complete Know-Nothing Know-It-All, or so self-righteous in her "compassionate criticism" that her advice is utterly useless in anything except to tear people down.
- Reconstructed: But the more they resent Alice's criticism, the better they become. After that, they thank Alice and continue enjoying their success.
- Played For Laughs: Alice is a judge for a singing contest who gives contestants long drawn out lectures about their poor performances all before saying in a sad, tearful tone "because I care!"
- Played For Drama: Alice is genuinely well-intentioned, but she doesn't seem to know how to give a compliment, leading her to lament that she can't show her affection the normal way.
- Implied: Alice harshly criticizes Bob's book, but once he publishes it, she's first in line to buy it.
Back to Compassionate Critic. Sure, this page is pretty flawed, there are still some optional items (and even some non-optional items!) that haven't been filled out yet, but that's okay. It can improve.
