Basic Trope: The philosophy that not choosing a side is the same as being against it.
- Straight: Alice and Bob are in the middle of a fight. She forces Charlie to join her, and if he rejects, then Alice considers him an enemy.
- Exaggerated: Alice and Bob are in the middle of a fight. She forces Charlie to join her, and if he rejects, Alice and Bob will put aside their differences and kill Charlie.
- Downplayed: Alice and Bob are in the middle of a fight. She tells Charlie to join her, and if he rejects, then Alice goes around complaining about it.
- Justified:
- Alice believes that if Charlie remains neutral, then he's unintentionally helping Bob to win the battle, and she may be right or wrong.
- Alice has a twisted perspective of what's right and wrong.
- Alice is being bullied by Bob at school, and Charlie is their teacher, so he's in a position where he can do something about it. He knows about the bullying but chooses to remain neutral. This upsets Alice, who points out that by remaining neutral, he's letting Bob keep bullying her.
- Alice and Charlie are friends, and she believes that he should side with her just because they are friends, regardless of who's in the right.
- Alice has a persecution complex.
- The conflict is relatively uncomplicated, morally speaking. It's pretty hard to justify not supporting Allice's position, so neutral parties look cowardly at best and apathetic at worse.
- The neutral parties are actively looking to preserve the status quo, while Alice and her enemies both seek to change it. Naturally, both will find themselves at odds with the neutrals, and Alice would rather take care tof them now rather than later.
- Inverted:
- Alice knows that Charlie favors Bob, so she encourages him to remain neutral.Alice: Charlie, if you're for me, then you're my enemy.
- Alice forces Charlie to not take Bob's side. As long as he turns Bob down, he is a friend to Alice.
- Alice knows that Charlie favors Bob, so she encourages him to remain neutral.
- Subverted: Alice and Bob are fighting, and Charlie remains neutral. Alice accuses Charlie of being her enemy but then thinks better of it.
- Double Subverted: Alice changes her mind a second time.
- Parodied: Alice and Bob are both robots. Charlie's declaration of a refusal to pick a side is a Logic Bomb to Alice and Bob and they both explode.
- Zig Zagged:
- Alice changes her mind about Charlie being as good as an enemy to her at least three times.
- Alice accuses Charlie and Emily of being as good as enemies to her for being neutral, but not Dan or Frieda.
- Averted: Choosing neither side doesn't make Charlie an enemy to either side.
- Enforced: "We need to make Alice feel hostile, even to the people who aren't doing anything."
- Lampshaded:
- "You guys love moral objectivism, don't you?"
- "You both dare declare me an enemy? Then both of you die!"
- "So you both hate me? Well, then, you have that in common!"
- Invoked: Alice thinks this is the best way to gain support for her cause.
- Exploited:
- Bob makes sure their fights happen in places with reasonable numbers of neutral fighters around. As none of them helps Alice, she now sees all of them as her enemies.
- Charlie was on Bob's side the whole time. The whole "I choose to be neutral and she threatened me" was an excuse to work with Bob.
- Defied: Alice knows that even though Charlie didn't choose to join her, this wasn't his fight, to begin with.
- Discussed: "Do we really need to add everyone neutral to our list of enemies? We have enough as it is!"
- Conversed: "Someone has been reading a lot of Ayn Rand."
- Implied: A nation refuses to take sides in the conflict. Later, in The War Room, Alice and her generals are looking over a map, and said nation is shown to have been conquered and occupied.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice's idea that you are either on her side or against it results in her gaining a ridiculous number of enemies, and eventually she gets in a fight she can't win.
- Alice's hostility toward technically neutral parties causes her to alienate those sympathetic of her cause and thus deny her potential allies or drives any allies she already has to go AWOL on her.
- Reconstructed: After nearly dying in the fight with her newfound enemies, Alice manages to come Back from the Brink, regrouping with her remaining allies and galvanizing them against the neutrals, convincing them that their treachery proves they were always their enemies. Meanwhile, the neutral parties' actions cost them most of their supporters, as many sympathized with Alice and her cause, but not necessarily her methods. The neutrals' constant failure to address her concerns, and their apparent belief that Alice was a bigger threat than her enemies in contrast to common opinion, cause the relatively moderate populace to become fed up with them. Now radicalized, their supporters turn on them, deposing them and joining Alice's forces, making her even more powerful than before.
- Played for Laughs: Alice initially declares Charlie an enemy and prepares to kill him for saying he didn't know whether to support her or not. Charly quickly points out that she never actually explained what her cause was. Alice sheepishly apologizes and starts explaining the matter properly.
- Played for Drama: Alice and Bob's contempt for neutrality in their conflict lead them to steamroll the other parties if it means getting at each other. Anyone caught between the two of them is given the choice between picking a side, or being conquered and forced to fight for their new rulers anyway.
- Played for Horror: Charlie refuses to take a side between Alice and Bob. Later, he is found brutally murdered to send a message to any who remain indecisive.
If you're not for the main page, then you're against it.
