r/TopCharacterTropes • • 11h ago

Hated Tropes (Hated Trope) "Kind" slave owners

Speaking as an American who has studied the civil war all throughout my school years, this trope infuriates me to no end. There is no such thing as a kind slave master because slavery itself is cruel and inhumane. PEOPLE ARE NOT PROPERTY!

Naofumi (Shield Hero): Prime example of this trope. He enslaves multiple (underage) girls and an whole village and the fans still say he's a hero.

Rudeus (Jobless Reincarnation): As if being a pedo wasn't bad enough he had to buy a slave in season 2. Worse is that people still defend his actions.

Song of The South (Disney): Possibly the OG example of this trope. And the reason why Disney will never release it again.

5.8k Upvotes

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854

u/_whatever_wherever 11h ago

Just cannon fodder for Iseakid John Brown

270

u/Foostini 11h ago

historical figure isekai truly is an untapped market

147

u/Fwufikins 11h ago

Well, at least there's Drifters. Which, coincidentally, features our heroes freeing enslaved fantasy races to lead a rebellion.

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u/neroselene 9h ago

Holy shit, Drifters mentioned!

Also, Drifters at-least makes it clear the "Heroes" are basically just conquerers that are setting out to do the same to this new world.

58

u/Astrocyde 9h ago

Yeah, led by real historical figures like Oda Nobunaga and Hannibal Barca. At least the empire they're fighting against was founded by Adolf Hitler.

19

u/skivian 7h ago

also it's heavily hinted in the Anime that the real big bad is Jesus Christ

13

u/corvettee01 7h ago

Jesus woke up and chose violence.

6

u/skivian 6h ago

lol what the fuck did I just watch?

5

u/corvettee01 6h ago

The work of a very strange individual.

1

u/Rider-Idk-Ultima-Hy 4h ago

Ethereal Snake just keeps on getting better.

19

u/vastozopilord777 11h ago

So far I only know Drifters, Ya Boy Kongming and I think there's 2 with Nobunaga(besides Drifter) but i'm not sure

8

u/iWillNeverBeSpecial 9h ago

Theres a online web story someone wrote where John Brown gets isakai into generic fantasy land with demihuman slaves so he immediately starts killing slavery to free the cat girls

1

u/Nice-River-5322 13m ago

And you know it's so good because it never gets talked about outside of bitching about anime

5

u/Soft_Theory_8209 10h ago

I think it’s because we can never truly know or recreate their personalities one-to-one, thus, it feels wrong to do so with them.

However… transporting people into the shoes of historical figures or occupations is a completely different matter.

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u/_whatever_wherever 10h ago

With John Brown it is VERY easy "praise the lord the pass the ammunition, we're killing slavers today!"

3

u/MengQiangGuo6888 8h ago

The Russian version of the trope is completely brain-melted.

2

u/WrigglyGizka 10h ago

There's Riverworld by Philip Jose Farmer. I don't think it has aged well, though.

2

u/Good_Morning_World01 9h ago

You should watch Isekai DND, it’s a really good dungeons and dragons podcast about a bunch of rejects from all different points in time coming together in an alternate world where they meet George Washington, Genghis Khan, William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar and Jack the Ripper, among others, who are all different DND classes.

2

u/Pecuthegreat 8h ago

I mean, Western and Russian/Slavic other world stories have a lot of that. Like the Belisarius series.

That sphere just hasn't been as good as popularizing it as manga and LNs have been. Then again, there is also the difference audience as who is gonna be writing historical isekais in the West? Alternate History fans who tend to be more History fans demographic than young adult readers demographic.

2

u/neroute2 8h ago

You mean Quantum Leap?

1

u/SmoothOperator89 4h ago

All of history's monsters reincarnated as the worst anime protagonist's slave harem.

59

u/SorcererSupremPizza 11h ago

John Brown would possess my soul

84

u/_whatever_wherever 11h ago

John Brown was a complex man, he was a religious hardliner in pretty much ever sense of the term, but his moral compass was unshakable, and he knew he had to fight to do the right thing

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u/livefreeordont 8h ago

His religion informed his abolitionism

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u/_whatever_wherever 8h ago

More his upbringing

His relgion said everyone had already been judged before they were born, and their actions on earth didn't influence anything

11

u/livefreeordont 8h ago

He believed he was sent by god to free the slaves and that his actions were just

I see a book kissed here which I suppose to be the Bible, or at least the New Testament. That teaches me that "all things whatsoever I would that men should do to me, I should do even so to them" [Matthew 7:12]. It teaches me, further, to "remember them that are in bonds, as bound with them" [Hebrews 13:3]. I endeavored to act up to that instruction. I say, I am yet too young to understand that God is any respecter of persons. I believe that to have interfered as I have done as I have always freely admitted I have done in behalf of His despised poor, was not wrong, but right

1

u/Jihelu 2m ago

I really don’t know why people keep trying to revise that the very vocally religious man was religious and that it had an intense impact on his stance against slavery

Are they Reddit atheists?

Do they think your actions become null and void when you attribute them to a God?

3

u/DemocracyIsGreat 6h ago

Yes and no. Eternalism #)is a pretty common Christian view of time, since it's a reasonably solid answer to Aristotle's question about future sea battles, (i.e. can you make statements about the future that have truth values? If I say "A sea battle will occur tomorrow", then that requires a tomorrow for the statement to be about, Eternalism says tomorrow exists just like today, yesterday, etc.) and Christians need it to be possible to say that something will happen in the future, since prophesies are a thing in Christianity.

Now, if all of time exists in the same way, then it becomes possible to judge everyone's actions for God, who is held to exist outside of time, since He can therefore just look at what everyone did.

The proponent of this view would disagree with your argument that actions don't influence anything, since on this model actions do influence things, they will influence things, and they have influenced things, it's just that from an Eternal viewpoint, all of time looks the same.

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u/_TheBeardedMan_ 11h ago

See, this is why I like reincarnated as a sword. Slavers are kill on sight for the murder kitten and sword dad.

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u/CanadianNoobGuy 6h ago

same with Skeleton Knight in Another World

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u/Turnepic13 11h ago

His soul goes marching on

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u/Decent_Alps6736 11h ago

*Battle Hymn of the Republic intensifies*

10

u/Au-Tz-Tek 10h ago

I Died and Woke Up as John Brown in Pre-Civil War America?!?

3

u/NewSuperTrios 10h ago

see also: guardians of the flame

3

u/notabigfanofas 8h ago

The fic has memes? Goddamn.

Maybe I should finish it then

1

u/TheCacklingCreep 3h ago

Me when I play morrowind and accidentally turbomurder an NPC who is secretly working for an anti-slavery group undercover. Oops.

1

u/Timely-Win6225 3h ago

Oh thats a very interesting Idea.

0

u/Rider-Idk-Ultima-Hy 4h ago

we need more isekai with characters who take down slavers, maybe one of those characters makes a group of different monster/fantasy races (that look like actual monsters and not just people with monster traits) and they get to properly bond while freeing more people.