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Fearful Symmetry.
So I realized that I've had this narrative kink for a while, but only just recently did I figure out how to articulate it. (Thank you, Thundercats reboot!)
I have this inexplicable love for stories in which the heroes find themselves possibly doomed to re-enact the tragic lives of their ancestors and/or past reincarnations, but then find some way at the last minute to reverse that fate.
I remember that Sailor Moon hit this kink in a big way when I was a teenager. Come to think of it, this trope shows up a LOT in other shoujo manga as well. Homestuck sets up the trope in the most literal way possible by having the trolls grow up in a culture where they're encouraged to follow the same life paths as their ancestors. There was even a thread of this in Avatar with the Roku/Sozin and Zuko/Aang parallels.
The 2011 Thundercats reboot is clearly moving in this direction as well. And yes, this post title is a direct reference to the way that Tygra's character arc is being set up to parallel both Tygus in the distant past (who is the only other tiger in the series so far) and Grune in the immediate past (who is a saber-toothed tiger, a fact that admittedly it took me a while to pick up on - and it's not like the writers were even being subtle about it, either!).
When I think about this trope, though, I can't help but notice that all of my favorite examples of it come from decidedly kid-oriented media. In fact, I'm having a really hard time coming up with any examples of it in sci-fi or fantasy stories geared toward an adult audience. Homestuck may be a possible exception, as it doesn't seem to be deliberately aimed at any age group in particular and has attracted a mixed teen and adult audience, but at the end of the day I still think it's a deliciously juvenile story that revels in its own immaturity, and it's definitely not "more or less for grown-ups" the same way that, say, something like Star Trek or a George R.R. Martin novel would be.
So... why is that, exactly? I dunno. Maybe it's inherently a juvenile trope?
Can anybody else think of any examples from not-so-kiddie-oriented media? The best that I've been able to come up with is possibly the original Star Wars trilogy, but it doesn't quite fit the bill because a) Luke struggling to not repeat his father's destiny is not the same as struggling to not repeat his distant ancestor and/or past reincarnation's destiny, and b) Star Wars was intended to appeal to both a kiddie and an adult audience at the same time, so it's not quite as "adult-oriented" as I'm looking for.
I have this inexplicable love for stories in which the heroes find themselves possibly doomed to re-enact the tragic lives of their ancestors and/or past reincarnations, but then find some way at the last minute to reverse that fate.
I remember that Sailor Moon hit this kink in a big way when I was a teenager. Come to think of it, this trope shows up a LOT in other shoujo manga as well. Homestuck sets up the trope in the most literal way possible by having the trolls grow up in a culture where they're encouraged to follow the same life paths as their ancestors. There was even a thread of this in Avatar with the Roku/Sozin and Zuko/Aang parallels.
The 2011 Thundercats reboot is clearly moving in this direction as well. And yes, this post title is a direct reference to the way that Tygra's character arc is being set up to parallel both Tygus in the distant past (who is the only other tiger in the series so far) and Grune in the immediate past (who is a saber-toothed tiger, a fact that admittedly it took me a while to pick up on - and it's not like the writers were even being subtle about it, either!).
When I think about this trope, though, I can't help but notice that all of my favorite examples of it come from decidedly kid-oriented media. In fact, I'm having a really hard time coming up with any examples of it in sci-fi or fantasy stories geared toward an adult audience. Homestuck may be a possible exception, as it doesn't seem to be deliberately aimed at any age group in particular and has attracted a mixed teen and adult audience, but at the end of the day I still think it's a deliciously juvenile story that revels in its own immaturity, and it's definitely not "more or less for grown-ups" the same way that, say, something like Star Trek or a George R.R. Martin novel would be.
So... why is that, exactly? I dunno. Maybe it's inherently a juvenile trope?
Can anybody else think of any examples from not-so-kiddie-oriented media? The best that I've been able to come up with is possibly the original Star Wars trilogy, but it doesn't quite fit the bill because a) Luke struggling to not repeat his father's destiny is not the same as struggling to not repeat his distant ancestor and/or past reincarnation's destiny, and b) Star Wars was intended to appeal to both a kiddie and an adult audience at the same time, so it's not quite as "adult-oriented" as I'm looking for.
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Heck, I've been watching Star Trek for as long as I can remember, TNG's opening theme and Patrick Stewart's intro narration are some of my earliest memories.
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As for Star Trek, yeah, I watched a ton of TNG and DS9 as a kid, too. I know that lots of kids watch Star Trek, and The Powers That Be are definitely savvy enough to market to that audience - I mean, that's probably why we have Star Trek lunch boxes and backpacks - but at the end of the day I think it's fair to point to a show like Star Trek and say "This is a show for grown-ups despite having an incidental kid audience," the same way that it's fair to point at cartoons like Thundercats or Avatar and say "These are shows for kids despite them being good enough to have an adult audience and/or having some content that's clearly meant to appeal to an adult audience." The same can definitely be said for a lot of kid-oriented anime series too, from Sailor Moon to all of the Shounen Jump titles. And most Disney movies. And Dreamworks animated films. And the various Star Wars cartoons. Etc, etc.
Mmmmm, it's really hard to talk about "kid-oriented media" versus "media that's more-or-less for grown-ups" without adding a ton of disclaimers as to what we really mean when we try to label each category. Siiiigh. But in the end I think that most of us have a pretty solid sense of what media is intended primarily for kids versus what's intended primarily for adults. I mean, the cast of Star Trek never rode around in a giant cat-shaped car that they called "the Thundertank." Just saying.
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Nope, they sure didn't.
Also, thanks to Ohkubo, I can no longer hear or see the word 'symmetry' without covering up a smirk. Todd Haberkorn may also be responsible for this too.
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An example I can think of (even though it's kiddie-oriented, sadly, I'M 21 AND I'M NOT ALLOWED TO PLAY VIOLENT VIDEO GAMES SOB) are Kamen Rider Kiva. A plotline of Kamen Rider Kiva (POSSIBLE SPOILERS) deals with this evil quartet called the Checkmate Four. Throw in the fact that the main character may or may not have some close ties to the members and develops a romantic relationship with a girl recently awakened as one of the members and has to deal with whether they should live their lives the way they want or follow what their ancestors did. One of the taglines of the show is, "Break the chains of fate!"
oh gooood homestuck and all its time-traveling shenanigansno subject
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If you do watch it, tell me what you think! I like reading people's opinions over shows I enjoyed.
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When Vlad is given a bit of a history lesson, he is told the story of the traitor Dolivar. Vlad doesn't really like the sound of the guy. Vlad gets told that he is the reincarnation of Dolivar. A point is made that Vlad had joined House Jhereg, which is the House created by Dolivar. Aliera, who is a reincarnation of one of the people Dolivar betrayed, treats Vlad as something like a brother because of their history. She also wants to see whether Vlad will be like Dolivar, or will he be different.
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I keep wanting to say the book The Mists of Avalon would fit, but it's been over a decade since I read it and I'm a bit fuzzy on who was implied to be a reincarnation and their dynamics, and also things ended unhappily for most everyone. Hmm. Maybe there's another Arthurian legend-based property I'm failing to think of.
Out of curiosity, would Fakir and Duck from Princess Tutu fall under this kink by a technicality?
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As for Duck, I think she definitely fits. Being forced to act out a pre-determined role in a story is kind of the same thing as living out somebody else's life; and the central conflict was the same, that she had to find some way to change her fated "ending."
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Secondly, near the end it did turn out he was Drosselmeyer's descendent. The Book Men had been stalking him because they knew he was related to Drosselmeyer and they were wary of him showing the same power and tried to chop his hands off when it started showing up again. (Mirroring how they or their ancestors had chopped off Drosselmeyer's hands when he went wild inflicting despair on the town.) First Tutu had to stop them, then Autor had to do this whole HE IS DEFYING HIS DESTINY, HE IS USING HIS LEGACY FOR GOOD BY REWRITING DROSSELMEYER'S EVIL speech while fending off a battleax with a book.
So both of Fakir's available paths to destiny (Knight, Author) involved defying fate.
Edel was fond of saying "There is happiness for those who accept their fate. For those who defy it, there is glory" to Duck and Fakir both.
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If you remove the "past lives" part, then you get the seemingly more common themes of "Guy who has made/repeated mistakes in his past, who now has to learn a new way of living" or "Good guy who has to stand against a culture of corruption bred in his profession/family/race/world/whatever".
Unless you are doing a sci-fi/fantasy show specifically, you aren't going to do a redemption story about a cop who was a corrupt cop in his previous lives. Instead, you will just do a redemption story about a corrupt cop who is faced with some event that changes his attitude. Or a story about a good cop trying to do the right thing in a corrupt station.
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The comments here have definitely provided plenty of examples, though. :)
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Maybe it is seen as an unnecessary complication. If you are writing a sci-fi story, you aren't likely to include predestination unless it is the main purpose of your story. The exception is if you include elements that themselves are connected to ideas of predestination. If your story includes clones, you might have a side story touching on the idea of whether and how much a clone's actions are affected by its "parent", simply because it isn't an entirely uncommon theme when dealing with clones.
The idea of fighting against the weight of past lives is a bit more complicated than just fighting against your own past or fighting against others of the present.
But why is it seen as more child-like? If it were more common in adult stories, we'd in turn see more new adult stories that include it. But it seems stuck in children's stories. Why did it get stuck there? Hrm.
Is it that it is easier to identify with fighting against yourself or others than to identify with fighting against some grand fate? Is it that fighting against the former two options is seen as more of a personal achievement, and thus more rewarding, than fighting against the latter? Is it that the former two are so evident in real life, and thus more likely to be the target of stories written about such challenges?
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(Anonymous) 2011-10-09 10:02 pm (UTC)(link)no subject
But I was thinking more in terms of examples of how this trope was used as a source of dramatic tension, rather than as a straight-up joke.
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There is a shoujo/shounen-ai anime/manga that I've picked up, titled Uragiri wa Boku no Namae wo Shitteiru (I THINK that's the right spelling) translats to The Betrayal Knows My Name and shortned by fans to Uraboku. It's about a bunch of people who have spent lifetime after lifetime fighting duras (demons) led by a half human half dura who keeps reincarnating himself after each battle to continue to fight on, since he's never been defeated yet. The main character is the only one who doesn't remember his past reincarnations, but all the others do but are torn between telling him and letting him find out on his own. There's more to it, but I dont want to keep rambling about it, so if you want to, check out the anime/manga (NOTE: the manga is only translated up to chapter 21, so after that you would need to find Raws or i know chinese scan sites).
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PS - If you're looking for SE spoilers, they've been available for a couple days already, here (http://sd666.jugem.jp/?eid=1047#sequel), here (http://hagurepi.la.coocan.jp/sotop.html), here (http://shirayuki.saiin.net/~c-so/r220.html), and here (http://its-onthefritz.livejournal.com/355497.html).
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Yeah, i guess it is more targeted at teens. (i personally put it at older teens, but I guess since it's not explicit it can go in the younger category.)