Fearful Symmetry.

[nenena]

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.

Comments

[ruuger]

I actually (re)watched a movie just yesterday that I think fits that trope: a Finnish-Chinese wuxie movie called Jade Warrior, where a Finnish blacksmith is the reincarnation of a half Finnish, half Chinese warrior, who is destined to be reborn until he manages to kill a certain demon.

[dragonmage87.livejournal.com]

Hmm, the only think that comes to mind at the moment (since I just finished watching it about a week ago) is an anime called Air. Not sure if you've seen it, but it falls into the same category of ancestor being reborn and following the same path until they save someone. Man that's vague. Ending will have you balling your eyes out. I'm not sure if it falls into the 'adult-oriented' audience, but I think that may be just a matter of opinion.

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.

[aesmael.livejournal.com]

Just finished reading a novel of that sort, Memory, by Linda Nagata. Struggling to think of others although am sure they exist somewhere.

[icysnowdrop.livejournal.com]

I feel like I've run into this trope a lot but can't, for the love of God, think of any examples that you haven't mentioned.
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 shenanigans

[tekalynn.livejournal.com]

Definitely a major kink of mine. Katharine Kerr's Deverry series does this very well. It's the central theme of the first four books, especially, though it's present in all of them.

[baines.livejournal.com]

Stephen Brust's Vlad Taltos novels have something similar, but (at least from what I've read) it is only a minor element.

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.

[corinn.livejournal.com]

This makes me want to check in with my friend and see how her original fiction that deals with such things is coming along. I haven't seen a draft in over a year now. *chinscratch* She's been pretty busy, though. Hm.

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?

[baines.livejournal.com]

I wonder if the "juvenile" part is the fantasy element of previous lives itself (or its sci-fi equivalent like clones or whatever.)

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.

[(Anonymous)]

Oh gosh I can't really think of any clear cut examples...but I suppose Agrajag in The Hitchhiker's guide to the Galaxy series can fall into a sort of subcategory of this. This joke character is reincarnated over and over and in each new life he is killed by the main character again and again either directly or indirectly. Though it doesn't really fit since it's played for laughs and it really has nothing to do with the actual story, plus Agrajag retains all memories of his past lives and never really solves his problem in any way by himself. Though he does try to put a stop to all this dying and actually ends up trying to assassinate the main character Arthur Dent, it really goes nowhere and it's just kind of depressing and sad. It's also just more of a reccurring joke than anything else.

[titangirl161.livejournal.com]

I was actually looking for SE spoilers when I saw this, but I'll try to give what I think of as an example.

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).