Basic Trope: A character becomes more cynical throughout the series due to horrible things happening to them and those around them.
- Straight: Jade starts as a Knight in Shining Armor, but during her adventures through the Crapsack World she lives in, she becomes much more cynical.
- Exaggerated: Jade starts out as The Pollyanna, but then something goes wrong and immediately becomes The Snark Knight or a Straw Nihilist.
- Downplayed: Jade becomes a Knight in Sour Armor; no longer nice but still hanging onto core idealism.
- Justified:
- Jade has no idea what she's getting herself into at the beginning, so when she sees the horrible things she has to do and have happen to her and those around her, she becomes hardened.
- Jade becomes a Stepford Snarker as a defense mechanism, but she internalizes this and it becomes depression. She can't take the glasses off if she wants to.
- Inverted: Jade starts off as a Sour Supporter but as time goes on she accepts that the world is far more idealistic than she gave it credit for.
- Subverted: Jade remains idealistic despite the things she must do and must see.
- Double Subverted: ...But, deep down, she's a Knight in Sour Armor.
- Parodied: As Jade becomes more jaded and cynical, the glasses she wears become greener and greener.
- Zig Zagged: Every episode sees Jade shifting from one end of the scale to the other. The Team calls her a Mood-Swinger.
- Averted: Jade remains a Wide-Eyed Idealist throughout and/or the world gives her no reason to become cynical.
- Enforced: True Art Is Angsty, Character Development.
- Lampshaded:Alice: What happened to the young, idealistic girl I knew?
Jade: She grew up. - Invoked: Ruby takes Jade along on her adventures in the first place to show her the harshness of the real world.
- Exploited: Knowing what she's been through, Raven gives Jade a Breaking Speech on how humans are bastards and thus not worth saving. His goal is to provoke a Heroic BSoD or Face–Heel Turn.
- Defied: Jade refuses to give up her idealism, regardless of the horrors she must deal with.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed: Jade's newfound cynicism ultimately make her think her world is not worth saving, causing her to leave it to its fate.
- Reconstructed:
- Jade fights evil so long she loses faith that she will ever win but an idealistic Morality Chain reminds her that there are indeed reasons to try to save her world.
- Jade's newly acquired cynicism doesn't change her ideals. Instead, it allows her to see her previously naive ways, and how they limited her. She becomes a Pragmatic Hero and pulls out all the evils around her by the roots, with any means necessary. In the end, her actions change the world around her, allowing for idealism to flourish.
Back to Jade-Colored Glasses.
