Tag Archives: Speech

Prompt: The Reason You Suck Speech

Write a “The Reason you suck” speech that one of your characters would give, had they been present in the last scene you read that called for one.

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“Do you know why treason (through murder, especially) is considered the worst crime in existence, and war is considered a diplomatic maneuver?… The reason is really quite simple. See, a person can almost respect an enemy, no matter what horrible deeds they perform. ‘They’re our enemy’, they’ll say. ‘Of course they’ll do that’. It takes real balls to tell someone that you’re their enemy and you will do everything in your power to destroy them.

Traitors, on the other hand, pretend to be your friend. They’ll saddle up, have a few drinks… and when you’re too calm around them to even keep your guards around, then they’ll kill you. A traitor doesn’t even have the balls to tell you that they hate you and want to see you dead.

Oh, but you’re even worse than that. See, plenty of traitors simply have the conviction that what they do is right, and just keep it secret until it’s impossible. Think John Wilkes Booth, or Brutus. The former yelled ‘Death to the tyrants’ before he fled like a coward. But Brutus had enough of a spine to not only confess his crimes, but to explain them in such a way that he expected to get off. But no, you just planned in secret, expecting to be an unsolved murder for the rest of eternity. You didn’t even have enough of a spine to confess.

And Brutus regretted it. He had the heart to care about what he was doing – he knew he was doing wrong and he accepted it. After all, it’s one thing to kill your best friend – it’s another to let your best friend become a scourge upon your nation. Booth? He had a fierce, fervent belief that he was doing the right thing. Sure, he was wrong and evil and all that, but he believed in what he was doing.

And here, we have the worst part of your betrayal. You didn’t even manage that.

You didn’t believe in what you were doing. You didn’t even have the decency to be as good as Booth. Let me repeat that: JOHN WILKES BOOTH – a man who murdered the leader of a free nation because he wanted slaves – was a better man than you. You killed a wonderful, innocent, intelligent hero of this land who was about to lead your world into a golden age… because you didn’t like that she got power and you didn’t. You didn’t even have the spirit to fight for a cause.

And if you don’t have spirit, heart, spine or balls, then what good are you?”

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A little wordier than I’d like, and bringing Booth in may be a bit controversial, but I think it works.

“I never liked the phrase ‘looking down on’ something…”

“I never liked the phrase ‘looking down on’ something. It’s supposed to mean that someone feels smug and superior, sees themselves as above the concerns of another. But to me, looking down implies you care enough to see where someone lesser is. After all, the greatest damage is caused not by the man who looks at the ants to know how high he is. It’s caused by the man who doesn’t even look at what he steps on. Me? I look down on mortals. But I don’t look to know how high I am – I look to see where I step.”

-Onore, Goddess of Light and Law

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This is something I wrote to try and show Onore’s sense of – for lack of a better term coming into my head at the moment – noblesse oblige. Basically, “I’m better than you in every way, but intend to help you because it’s the right thing to do.” In addition, the speech is written in such a way that you could hand it to a villian and it would still work. This is a huge part of Onore as a public figure – to her people, she is practically benevolence incarnate, a beacon of light and law within an unending sea of blackness and chaos. To everyone else, though, she is a misguided despot who only thinks herself good.

What do you guys think? Good, bad, stupid?