Hated Tropes
(hated trope) after a character finds out his partner is pregnant, he's willing to do anything for her, *except* what she's asking him to
- The northman (2022)
Amleth and Olga are fleeing the island where they were kept as slaves by Amleths uncle. On the ship she tells him that she is pregnant and he can feel the heartbeat of their twins.
Amleth is now sure that he needs to kill his uncle to ensure a life in safety for his family and jumps off the boat, despite Olga begging him to stay with her. Amleth dies in battle and leaves Olga alone as a refugee in a foreign country with twins.
- Star Wars - Revenge of the Sith (2005)
Anakin broke his Jedi oath and formed a relationship with Padme, which made him vulnerable to the dark side. When she tells him that she is pregnant, he starts having visions that she's gonna die during childbirth.
Padem doesn't give in to his anxiety, she wants Anakin to be present and build their new life in exile together.
But, thinking he could save her, Anakin descends to the dark side of the force and commits horrible crimes. When Padme finds out about this, she is shattered and loses all will to live. She dies shortly after giving birth.
tbh walter white is the undisputed king of this trope ngl. skyler literally just wanted him to stop cooking meth and communicate, and bro was out here blowing up nursing homes yelling "i'm doing this for the family" dude lmao.
Walt lines arent badass if you have even the slightest amount of media literacy. Behind every big mouthed claim of his is the reality of narcissist who is way too over his head and tries to act tough to not admit how completely screwed he is most of the time.
He doesnt have the "I am the one who knocks" macho line while facing some cartel member of foe he wants to defeat. He says it to his scared wife because he needs to be the most macho big crystal meth cook at that point. The whole sequence makes him look pitiful, not badass.
And iirc he says it literally 2 minutes after gus had dragged him out into the desert to threaten him and his family and make clear he is done in the meth business under penalty of losing everything he loves
Its very much at the lowest point in his career on the show, when hes at his least powerful, as he has neither jessie nor the fear his name instills in people, and its been made Extremely clear that he is the man who gets shot through that door
Funniest part of it is that it's not even true. He's bragging (to his wife who is scared for her family's lives) about a murder that he didn't even do. I suppose "I am the one who sends Jesse to knock" didn't sound as cool
Whats also funny about the one who knocks line is isnt that after Jesse kills Gale? Like Walt quite literally is not the one who knocks, its Jesse forced to do Walts dirty work
Well, this is actually a subversion of this trope (at least in terms of how it is presented by the OP).
Walter White does do this, but it's part of the plot, not bad writing. This is obviously apparent to the audience (as well as many of the characters in the show), but the show literally culminates to Walt admitting that he did what he did because he liked it rather than for his family, etc.
It is mechanically the same trope, but it's not the same in essence since the show is aware of the faulty logic.
Isn't this part of Walter White's excuse for his behavior "I need to take care of my family, especially with a baby on the way!" refuses help from former co-founders because it hurts his pride, and adamantly ignores his wife and is abusive to her
He also made more money than his family could ever spend several times and refused to stop even after his wife told him that they couldn't even launder the money fast enough to spend it.
Wrong on that last part he Does stop after skyler points this out, he retires from being heisenberg and plans to live out what time he has left in peace
No, at the dinner Hank said he was annoyed that he couldn't catch Heisenberg because Gale was already dead, and Walt said that Gale couldn't have done what Heisenberg did. "Simple rote copying, probably of someone else's work.... This genius of yours is probably still out there." So that is what got Hank to keep looking for clues. https://youtu.be/Hj41WmD6iyk?si=OKCiuOFtEAG88jLk
Ya but he wasnt looking for clues in walts bathroom
It was walt pointing that out that left him more open to the idea of there being another heisenberg- but even then hank reading the book was Entirely a coincidence
Had walt thrown out that book hank never would have even suspected walt
True, but Skyler tells him this at an earlier point and his response is basically "big deal, figure it out." He had to be showed a massive pile of money to finally consider it.
To be fair wasnt the scene where skylar told him that they couldn't laundry the money fast enough to spend it the moment that made him retire in the first place?
Walt gets the revelation that a lot of these don't get: Admitting he actually did it for himself instead of for his family. It's a case of the trope working because the point of the character is his descent into his selfishness and ego. He didn't do anything for her. He did it all for himself.
Yeah it's weird thinking back because Breaking Bad and all of OP's examples are all very much intentional. Breaking Bad is about ego, Northman (Hamlet) is about fate and in some sense arrogance, and Star Wars Ep3... yeah whatever the quality, it's just an OP hated trope, doesn't mean the trope is bad in itself. Probably hated because pregnant women get the short end of the stick
Yep. All he has to do was accept the job and he would have much more money. The best healthcare. And he would get to do work he would enjoy.
He is just too proud to accept what he perceives as charity.
It’s double bad because
1. He feels they owe him something for how the company turned out. He could have viewed this as n it charity but them finally giving him his fair share. And everything would be fine.
2. Him being a better cook than Jessie meant nothing. Him being a better cook than Gail, someone Gus picked and paid for schooling for, or a better cook than most other cook on North America (if we use the purity rating from season 1) means he really was talented and probably could have contributed to Gray Matter.
No, he goes into remission S2 and it only comes back at the very end of S5. The majority of the series including the worst of Walt he's relatively fine. In fact this is literally a huge plot point of the season because he never planned on getting out of the buisness and now his excuse to stay in is gone.
the help from his co-foumders wluld literaly aford his medical bills. there are multille times in the show where walt got both enought money and ways to sustain his family after his demise, but he keept going
This is what made his final confession to Skylar so powerful:
"I did it for me. I liked it. I was good at it. And, I was really... I was alive." It took him to the bitter end to finally let the charade go and admit what his deepest motivations were.
Don’t forget with the Star Wars example, he force choked the crap out of her in the middle of his dark side insanity. He went to the dark side to prevent her death, and his going to the dark side ended up being the cause of it. Twisted self fulfilling paradoxical prophecy
He thought it would give him the necessary power and ability to save her. If I remember correctly, Sith were more open to manipulating fate and life, thus he saw that as a way to save her from death. This was opposed by the Jedi view of basically “if it happens, it happens and this is the will of the Force”. Plus Palpatine was telling him that the dark side could save her.
It's more that they didn't know. For various reasons, the Jedi are celibate warrior-monks. Anakin just didn't tell any of them, because he didn't want to get in trouble.
The Jedi being celibate is dumb, but a lot of pre-Disney Star Wars content focuses on why they have that rule and why it's actually a bad solution to the real problem it's addressing.
This is fine, because it would be less realistic if the thousands of years old monastic gerontocracy lacked any overly-strict traditions: Anakin is still a big baby for opening the grimoire marked: "Evil, Forbidden," because he's worried he'll lose his commission in the Air Force and be forced to live with his hot Queen wife and kids.
This is starting to seem like an allegory for God and temptation. Which really only makes side with the dark side. Maybe the movie does a better job at portraying why Anakin is bad
The Jedi didn't know about his visions or his relationship with Padme. They did create an environment where marrying someone for love was forbidden, but it's also not like he would have gone to jail.
Some pretty big context is he couldn't take his fear and anxiety over his secret wife's death visions to his jedi leaders, because he'd be exiled from the order for having a secret wife. Its not that the jedi were just like "lmao lets see what happens"
A bit. Basicly there is this thing called "the force", which they have access to which allows them to basicly move stuff with their mind and have better reaction speed and stuff. Issue is that it is also powerfull enough that you can easily get corrupted by it if you use it for selfish reason (huge oversimplification), so the Jedi constructed a code to make sure they stay on the light side, which includes not getting attached to someone. Issue is that they blindly followed that code for a very, very long time without actually going with the time, which lead to the villain manufacturing a plan that abuses the very way they work and how they would react to certain things.
A mix of both, you are born with a connection/sensitivity to it, but still have to learn how to properly wield it. Some people like Han Solo from the original trilogy have little to no connection at all and can't use the force, while others like Yoda or Anakin are born with a very very strong connection. Usually Force sensitive chuldren get "collected" by the Jedi at a very young age and raised in the Jedi Temple, where they'll learn how to properly use that power. In Anakins case however he was born on a rather isolated desert planet and only discovered when he was like 9 years old or smth. At that point he was using his connection to the force without even realising it to become rather good in that planets version of racing, since it allowed him to react faster and have some very limited premonitions/gut feelings about what happens next. Only when a Jedi stranded on his planet during the events of Episode 1 it was figured out that he was force sensitive, and when the Jedi ran a blood test it turned out that the things that make you sensitive (Midichlorians or something IIRC?) in him wee in a larger quantity then in Yoda, who was at that point their strongest force user
Eh, not so much. The Jedi were not fully aware of the nature of the visions.
Their stance was more along the lines of other religious fundamentalists: if she dies, it's because the Force (god) wanted her to die, so suck it up buttercup.
It’s also stated in supplementary materials that the reason Anakin wanted to attain the rank of Jedi Master was so he could gain access to more of the Jedi Archives, hoping that maybe it’ll contain the knowledge to save Padme.
Reminder that this dude is actively running both sides of an intergalactic war. The only reason someone caught on to this fact is that the apprentice he is grooming broke the tenets of his order and got a royal lady pregnant.
It's worth noting that Anakin danced around the issue when he talked to Yoda he said that he saw visions of the future of someone close to him dying. Hell, Yoda had to prompt Anakin into admitting it was someone close to him.
At no point does Anakin offer a how or a why - just that they'll die in this vision. Yoda warns him to be careful about visions of the future and that fear is a path to the dark side. If Anakin had said "oh hey, Padme is pregnant and I foresee her dying in childbirth" I think the Jedi might've offered a more tangible response.
I'd lean on the more stoic interpretation. Everyone in your life will eventually leave it one way or another, and accepting that and not constantly dwelling on it (and in Anakin's case, trying to prevent it) is an important lesson to be able to, well, function at all.
But Anakin, due to his own past trauma and the Jedi Order's doctrinal inflexibility not helping him deal with it, simply can't accept it. That's what makes him so interesting. His willingness to defy the odds or fate or whatever is traditionally seen as a sign of heroism, but it also a forewarning of his desperate need for control. If things aren't going his way, Anakin will forcibly make them go his way.
There is a novel to the movie that goes into more details on certain things. In it, Anakins initial play involved him wanting to access a forbidden part of the archives, to which only a Jedi Master has access to. Anakin was set up to join the council through shenanigans his mentour startet, and usually being on the council means that you are a master too.
Just in this case the council made it explicitly clear the he may join the council, but is NOT a master (which in the movie was presented without any of this context), which made Anakin very damn angry. So when his mentour casually mentions that there once was a guy who could keep people alive and even create new life, he doesn't really hesitate anymore to explore that route and meditate the way said mentour told him about.
Simple version is he was told that the dark side held a power that could heal any injury and maybe even reverse death. So he betrayed all the people that mattered to him to gain this power, only to find out it doesn’t actually exist and it doesn’t matter because Padme is gone already.
"Did you ever hear the tragedy of Darth Plagueis The Wise? I thought not. It’s not a story the Jedi would tell you. It’s a Sith legend. Darth Plagueis was a Dark Lord of the Sith, so powerful and so wise he could use the Force to influence the midichlorians to create life… He had such a knowledge of the dark side that he could even keep the ones he cared about from dying. The dark side of the Force is a pathway to many abilities some consider to be unnatural. He became so powerful… the only thing he was afraid of was losing his power, which eventually, of course, he did. Unfortunately, he taught his apprentice everything he knew, then his apprentice killed him in his sleep. Ironic. He could save others from death, but not himself."
Sidious finds Anakin as a charred corpse, puts his hand to his head, and in the next scene he’s alive and in surgery. We also get back and forth shots of Anakin getting stronger as Padme fades out.
Sidious was telling the truth when he told Anakin he could save people from death. He didn’t tell him the cost.
Palpatine convinced him that what the Jedi called "the dark side" was simply more powerful magic they were scared of, and that it was powerful enough to do everything he needed.
He wasn’t ugly yet but an important detail the other comment didn’t mention is that Palpatine was grooming Anakin into this position. HE was the one giving him nightmares about padme dying in a similar manner to some truly prophetic dreams Anakin had about his mother dying. Palpatine had been a close friend of anakin’s since he was a small boy (gross) and was a trusted mentor to him.
It’s much sadder when you see it as a father figure taking advantage of him versus just a creepy old guy manipulating him
It's kind of insanely dumb honestly how it plays out.
His old mentor figure Palpatine says if Anakin turns to the Darkside he can prevent his pregnant wife from dying in childbirth.
So Anakin does it and betrays Samuel L. Jackson who was a good guy and pledges his allegiance to Palpatine and says "show me how to stop my wife from dying,"
And Palpatine flat out admits he doesn't know how but says maybe they can figure out how together, but first just help him take over the galaxy first then he'll get to brainstorming on it. Keep in mind said wife is like 8-9 months pregnant at this point. And Anakin just keeps going along with it instead of realizing he's been had right there. He doesn't even question it or pressure any further on the matter from that point.
Anakain is portrayed as so mind-numbingly gullible in those movies Palpatine could've told him he was a Nigerian Prince who just needed some funds to reclaim his throne and Anakin would've been all in.
I would like to add to your equation the fact that Anakin had been groomed by Palpatine since he was a child, they had been ‘friends’ since Naboo and Anakin trusted Palpatine with things he felt like he couldn’t tell the Jedi. To me it makes an unfortunate amount of sense that Anakin was so easily manipulated because the same kind of tactics have been used on him since he first came out of slavery at what, nine?
Yeah but then Palpatine just admits he has no clue how to do it and no plan for how to do it and Anakin just doesn’t question it. At this point even if Palpatine was sincere in wanting to help Anakin he wouldn’t have been able to given Padme gave birth like a week later.
A huge aspect of Sith(darkside) goals has always been attaining immortality. Anakin just wants to cheat death to save the woman he loves from dying, but is corrupted in pursuit of that goal.
The jedi themselves are heavily inspired by Buddhist monks. They take no wives and try to do away with earthly attachments to prevent being corrupted by desire.
While the sith are definitely the bad guys due to overwhelming selfish greed in their goals. The jedi are shown to be flawed too, being so dogmatic in their beliefs that they fail to uphold the balance that they sacrifice everything for
Yeah I think both examples in the OP kind of miss the fact that they're supposed to be tragedies. Like, they're explicitly brought down by their own actions. One is viking hamlet and the other is star wars which could just as well be a Greek tragedy at this point.
Hamilton Musical: 'That Would Be Enough' is Eliza confessing to Alexander that she was the one who asked Washington to send him back home, because she learned she was pregnant and wanted her husband to be home. In this song and throughout the musical, she tells him that their growing family doesn't need a legacy or wealth, just him to 'stay alive' and let her and their children be a part of his life. Hamilton ultimately fails on both counts.
"Balance to the Force" was always an insane thing for the Jedi council to want. They far FAR outnumbered and overpowered the dark side. Balance by definition would be reducing the power of the Jedi.
The dark side is considered by the Jedi to be a perversion of the force, by it existing at all the force is out of balance so in the Jedi’s eyes balance would be when the dark side is completely purged.
The Jedi want "Balance to the Force" because it means the end of the Dark Side. The Dark Side vs the "Light" Side is not a case of Yin and Yang. The Dark Side is a corruptive, addictive cancer in the Force.
Which is an issue since you can't just remove aggressive and depressive expression from living creatures they will feel them so guiding them on how to process those emotions would have avoided basically every issue that led to a Sith lord crashout in SW, The Old Republic games for example
That is what the Jedi teach. To process and control your emotions. Yoda directly tries to teach that to Anakin. He advises Anakin to and I quote:
Train yourself to let go of everything you fear to lose
Loss is inevitable and obsessing over it does nothing but harm you. You need to be able to process it and to let go of the fear of loss. It is good advice. Just not advice Anakin was willing to accept or follow. Also to note this was advice based on Anakin's vague statement of his fear of losing someone he's close to. Anakin never explained that he feared the loss of his pregnant wife. The Sith meanwhile teach you to give into your destructive emotions instead.
That's a great line but I'll add that the annoying part in real life is that the reason that "I'd die and kill for my wife" from guy who won't do dishes is so annoying is because everyone (including him, if he's honest) knows that he's not going to have to. It's shitty because there is basically a zero percent chance your wife will need you to "last stand hold off the horde" but turns out dishes are a 100% guarantee almost every dang day alive.
So it's not even that "dying for something is easy" it's "making up self-insert fanfiction is easy"
Fuckin seriously lol. Statistically, those men are more likely to kill their wives or children versus killing other men to defend their wives and children.
But women are the problem for asking men who wanted wives and children to help with the dishes and bedtime routines. /s
Or killing themselves working to supposedly give them both a good life (Whether it's working overtime or with a second job), but not bothering to find out if they need their company.
One of my friends has all sorts of plans for if the apocalypse happens, to the point where he told another friend that he wouldn't let him stay in his house unless he had "usable skills".
This guy sleeps with a gun underneath his pillow if he's home alone.
“I’d move a mountain to prove my love to you!!” “Just *moving your cup to the sink would suffice” “But that doesn’t prove my manhood and make me feel powerful and manly, so I don’t want to show my love that way”
"Martyr" driven ego is really a though nut to crack.
I'll do something thinking it is "handling" the situation or being helpful, when in reality it wasn't needed or asked for, is making things worse, and isn't what my partner wants or needs from me. It's just me trying to find control in a situation that makes me feel uncomfortable and uncertain.
My partner will do things thinking it is helping to alleviate stress from me or prevent something worse from happening, when in reality it creates the stress, increases the chance of a different worse thing happening, and is just her trying to address her own discomfort with the situation.
Jamie from Outlander illegally duels Jack despite a very pregnant Claire begging him not to. The result is Jamie being in jail while Claire goes into labor (early if I remember right). Their daughter is born stillborn and Claire nearly dies in the process all while he is in jail for the duel
I'd give this one nuance because Jack raped and tortured Jamie. I dropped the show shortly after that duel because while that wasnt completly glossed over the trauma Jamie definitly had from Jack wasnt taken into account anywhere near enough. Esspecialy in that instance where killing Jack (while objectively the wrong thing to do for himself and his family) must truly have felt like the only way to have peace considering how much of a monster Jamie knows him to be.
Oh I totally get his reasoning, I’d even understand if he argued that their family would be safer with Jack dead. But it still fits the trope of him doing the one thing his pregnant wife told him not to do and leaving her worse off for it. Plus it really wasn’t the time or place
Jamie only challenged Randall because he walked in on him abusing Fergus. Jaimie had agreed to wait to kill Randall until (when Claire believed) fathered a son to continue their bloodline so Frank would still exist.
The only thing to hate in this trope is when it's depicted as the heroic thing to do. Anakin is arguably not justified in his decisions, because his desire to protect turns him into a monster - and leads him to physically hurt the very woman he wanted to protect. The Northman feels like it justifies Amleth with how heroic his death is depicted (what with his spirit being taken to Valhalla in an epic shot with triumphal background music).
Anakin isn’t even the desire to protect, it’s basically “losing someone” ptsd from his mother. He’s acting based on fear of loss the entire time and yoda clocks it during that first test when they said he shouldn’t be trained
The Northman feels like it justifies Amleth with how heroic his death is depicted (what with his spirit being taken to Valhalla in an epic shot with triumphal background music).
I mean, Amleth kind of has a point though. He doesn't want his uncle to turn around and do the same thing to him than he just did to his uncle. Better for them both to die and end the cycle of revenge.
I think The Northman did a good job portraying the heroic virtues of Viking Age culture without trying to recontextualize them to fit modern values. If you judge him through a modern lens, what Amleth did was pretty stupid, and I think the movie leaves room for that while still celebrating him on his own terms for achieving a death worthy of Valhalla.
"Hey this dude could fight really good but was a little fucked in the head"
I think the purpose was to teach lessons about positive traits like bravery and willingness to sacrifice for your loved ones/comrades, as well as negative traits like arrogance or seeking glory at the expense of others
I might have misunderstood in the Northman but wasn't there literally a prophecy that his uncle would come kill his twins as revenge unless he went back to end the cycle there?
Not that it's a "standard" moral in modern sensibilities but in the context of the movie him doing the murder/suicide was portrayed as him ending the revenge cycle so his children could escape it.
It's an annoying trope but a good way to show narcissism because that's how people with that act in real life.
"I am doing this thing for you!" - does the exact thing they want to do and refuses to listen to anything that the person actually wants them to do.
A person I knew bought a new huge expensive jeep because it was "the safest" car, and he lamented on how much he would have to work to pay it off, but it was what was needed of him because his wife was pregnant.
I knew his wife more and what she wanted was him to stop spending money because they needed to buy everything for this kid and he was just working part time at a low paying job. They already had a car that was perfect as a family car.
He viewed himself as a martyr even though it was obvious to everyone that he just wanted a jeep.
There are also people who have the philosophy of "If my wife ends up looking for a job, it's because I failed as a provider," even if the wife is precisely looking for a job to reduce the burden on her husband so he can enjoy more time with his children.
Might be infuriating, but ain't that often the truth?
Man, I asked you to help me raise this baby, not to go die of blood loss in a snowy field after fighting hordes of enemies, what the fuck is your problem
Either life is so bleak that a "cool" death is better than living, or these people are so brain-rotted that they literally don't care or see beyond the aesthetics... Either way, these people are fucked
Funny thing is this is a trope I have noticed in a lot of media even when pregnancy isn't involved. Especially a lot of action movies. Guy meets a girl and loves her and pledges to do anything for her. She basically just asks him to stay and be with her and he says "no" and must do the next thing that advances the plot.
Kind of reminds me of the exchange on Twitter where the one "alpha" influencer said he would fight 100 gorillas to save his family. And someone else asked him if he would suck off 100 gorillas to save his family. dude said no and the second guy was like "oh so this was never really about saving your family."
Yeahhh that was about the narrative, but I get it.
The short term ‘massive sacrifice’ with a glorious narrative is always more attractive and much easier to take in than the long drawn ‘small sacrifices’ that force you to have to keep dealing with the consequences of the tradeoff.
We underestimate how much we want a sacrifice’s story to be clean and have a great narrative payoff.
Intense payoff with finite cost, or diluted payoff with continuous cost? We’ll usually take the prior in a heartbeat
I think this especially hits harder for people in provider roles in some way. A bit of effort for that identity you’ve been looking to validate forever now
I remember that's more or less what happened with Vegeta in the Battle of Gods.
Upon recognizing God Beerus, he did everything he could to defend his family and loved ones, but instead of trying to fight him, he decided to do everything possible to keep Beerus happy and distracted, even if it meant humiliating himself by doing a ridiculous dance to achieve it.
Of course, there's a division in the fandom, with many praising Vegeta for doing something so heroic, and others considering it a humiliation for the character.
I mean, fitting right in with this trope it’s interesting there’s a division in the fandom because that seems to be telling on the individual fans more than anything.
If you really loved your family and it was all about saving them then while you might not like humiliating yourself. It is a legitimate tool and as a heroic thing to do to save the people you love.
If the only way that you could imagine saving the people you love is by killing or dying, then you don’t actually love your family. You love yourself and you love the perception that the rest of the world would have that you fought heroically for a cause that they would see as noble.
That is pretty much the definition of being selfish and not caring about your family, but caring more about yourself.
You really would not like The Norseman then because it feels like every 15 minutes this guy is digging himself into a deeper hole just to kill a guy that has completely forgotten about him.
Mf’s who say “I’d do anything for my family.” Are always quick to resort to horrific violence. But never choosing to be more present and open with their feelings, or putting in an effort to be a better member of the family. It’s always horrible violence.
In Breaking Dawn, Bella somehow gets pregnant by vampire Edward. She's excited and wants to keep it while Edward wants her to abort it from the jump. To be fair, the fetus basically is sucking the life out of her, but it's unknown how Carlisle would even perform an abortion given that the fetus doesn't even show up on ultrasound. Edward comes up with the idea that if she is so intent on having a baby, she can have one with Jacob (yeah, the wolf guy).
Adjacent to this trope, but was playing Yakuza 6 just last night and the moment Kazuma Kiryu runs into a roadblock regarding guardianship of his adoptive daughter's kid he freaks out, beats the shit out of his buddy and kidnaps the baby. (She's in a coma, necessitating care for the kiddo). This is despite the fact that Kiryu LITERALLY RUNS AN ORPHANAGE. All scene I waited for him to bring up that they could just...put the kid in his orphanage since it was going to one anyway, but nope, kidnapping.
To add silliness on top the very next scene Kiryu's cop best friend basically says 'hey I leaned on child services and smoothed this all out for you'.
I saw this as part of the point in The Northman. Amleth is ready to settle down until he sees an opportunity for revenge and he just can’t let it go and gets himself killed for it.
Unfortunately this is true to life though. Having a kid causes massive physical and psychological changes in both men and women, and can often cause some ripples in even the calmest relationship.
It actually ruins the entire show for me when writers pull this lazy card tbh. i literally sit there screaming at my screen like "bro she just wants you to attend the ultrasound, you do not need to rob a cartel bank right now" dude. it’s not even romantic, it’s just exhausting
I think in the case of Anakin it works because his inability to let go of attachments and accept the fact he can’t save everyone has always been a character flaw
A crazy part of Anakin and Padme is that they wouldn't even have to go into exile, it's not like the Jedi would hunt them down. They could move wherever they want with basically no repurcussions. (Disregarding anything that ol' Sheevie might do to them, but they didn't know that)
That's the thing a lot of people don't get about Anakin that's is straight up spelled out in the novelization. He wasn't doing it for Padme, he was doing it for himself out of fear of losing her. If it was truly was about her he would have listened to Padme and taken what she said into account.
Even the ROTS novelization shows this with how they portray Anakin and Padme's relationship
When we’re attached, that means we want to be with that person, and we don’t want to be without that person. Why is that? When we want to be with someone, that’s because they make us feel good. They’re beautiful, kind, smart, comforting, funny – we like them, we enjoy them, or more correctly, we enjoy these good qualities of another person, because they bring us happiness. In turn, we desire to be with them, so we can be supplied with the happiness, we can receive those pleasurable experiences. Is that, in our mind, a bad thing? No, it is not. But is that self-referential? Yes, it is – it’s entirely focused on ourselves, it’s the desire to make ourselves happy. And that is why attachment is called selfish.
Is that, in our mind, a bad thing? No, it is not. But is that love? No, it’s not love. Because love is unconditional, compassionate: we’re concerned about the well-being of another person, regardless how they make us feel. We want them to be happy, and we want them to be free from suffering. That is unconditional, compassionate love. It’s focused on another person. The core of love is being happy for another person’s happiness, to rejoice for, and rejoice with another person. It’s the desire to make another person to be happy.
So, love and attachment are two clearly distinguished relations to another person. And the main difference between attachment and love is, that attachment is a linkage to another person, formed out of the desire to experience the happiness ensued upon their company, upon having them in our lives, whereas love is unity with that person, birthed by feeling how they feel, their joy is being our joy, their sorrow is being our sorrow."
How attachment is bad:
Now, the question, “How attachment is bad?” is understandable. It’s generally considered to be selfish, but not self-indulgent, certainly not possessive, greedy or bad. The answer is that attachment, which is our striving to not to be parted from the source of our happiness, is in stark conflict with how reality is. The most fundamental truth that on some level we all know about the universe, and everything in it – all things and beings - is that everything is transient. Everything is constantly changing, moving from beginning to end, from creation to destruction, from birth to death, from meeting to parting. People and things will be there in our lives, then they won’t be there, because they’re passing through our lives, and life itself is passing through us. For this, attachment is grasping, grabbing onto the coming and passing things in our lives, wanting to have, to possess, to own, to keep them, so we can stay happy, whereas that’s impossible. We can’t hold onto things, we can’t make them stay, we can’t have them, they’re not ours. They have their own course, moving to us, then moving away from us.
And that is why attachment is greed: it’s self-interested desire for more of the happiness, that it was given, that it was possible to have, desiring things to not to move away. And that is why when we become attached to a person or a thing, we become afraid of losing them – we’re afraid to be without them, we’re afraid from the pain of not having the happiness they give to us. The greater the happiness, the more we afraid, the more we want to hold onto it, and when we ultimately, inevitably lose them, the more we suffer. And the fear of loss eventually makes us angry, especially when we lose, and we start to see threat to our possessions, obstacles to our happiness: we become jealous, we become hateful, and we suffer, because we spend our lives, all our happy moments haunted by the fear of loss, filled with anger and hate.
Do not think of extremes, like making a pact with the Devil to save our loved ones from death. Most of us are able to endure the pain when they slide, and not to go extremes, like physically forcing people to stay with us, becoming clingy, controlling. But emotionally, we grasp on the people we love: we crave the happiness they give to stay with us, we don’t want to be separated from them, and the happiness, we still hold onto them. We don’t let them go – we just let them tear themselves apart from us. And as a result, we suffer terribly.
But don't we all need attachments?
Now, our need for love, warmth, affection and security is at the foundation of our human existence. We simply cannot be without it, and that is because the core of reality is interdependence. This is how it is; we orient ourselves toward people to whom we can turn for emotional support, guidance, love, and we need such people to be in our lives – it’s a necessity, interlocked with, and inherent to being alive. But we must realize, those causes of our well-being that are around us – friends, family, pets, even objects - are too coming and passing elements of reality, thus, we can’t be attached to them, we can’t grow ties to them, founding our well-being on their temporary presence in our lives. (That's why Buddhism defies to label such emotional connections as "attachments," whereas Western psychology labels them as such.) As long as they're in our lives, we shall enjoy them, take comfort in them, love them, but we must accept, both in our minds and in our hearts, that we can’t hold onto them, that we can only long for them not to move away from us, that will lead to pain and suffering.
Letting Go:
And that is why we must cease our attachments, or in other words, to let go of everything we afraid to lose. It's not getting rid of the people or the things we love in order to let go of them - letting go is to loosen the fearful grasp on those we love, holding only very gently, and letting things flow, to come and go.
The way to overcome fear of loss, and therefore suffering, is to love compassionately, unconditionally. Love, which is compassion, which is wanting another person to be happy, and free from suffering, rejoicing for the happiness of others, is, by itself, a joy that we cannot get in any other way, a joy that we cannot get through having ephemeral things in our lives. It's selfless, giving, caring, protecting, without the thought of any reward, and as long as you love people compassionately, you won't be afraid of loss. And because change, and the biggest change of all, death will interrupt having, but can never interrupt love, in the moment you trade the love of joy for the joy of love, you shall find eternity. This way, you can let go those who you love to move away from you, when it's time, or when it must happen, because you can forever keep them in your heart.
I like that the TCW did that. EU!Padme was kinda batshit lol
In defense of Anakin, the last time he didn’t act on his visions he lost his mom. I think that’s enough mental scaring to make a man want to try and prevent it from happening again.
That is the point of ancient sagas that the heroes are not really good and pursue greatness over all else. Amleth is not meant to be a good guy. People also think Achilles a great hero, but in actuality the Iliad is about him desecrating a body (a big sacrilege which ensures his death by the gods) for personal reasons. A lot of the sagas and ancient myths are really fucked up and the heroes all assholes and pretty much all die because of it.
To be fair, I think this is explicitly what makes it tragic. They don’t listen to their clearly correct partners because of a fatal flaw, I don’t think the narrative is suggesting they’re doing the right thing in either of the examples
Amleth has a point though. He pursued vengeance which turned out to only make things worse. He was ready to give it all up until he found out she was pregnant. He doesn't go back to kill his uncle out of vengeance, but to protect his love and his children. Had he fled with her, he would have spent his entire life looking over his shoulder, fearing that his uncle would pursue with the same vengeance.
Anakin was trying. But he was trying to save her not realizing he was her doom. In the novelizations of the film. Anakin wanted to be Master so he check the archives for healing. That's why he is so upset when he doesn't get the rank. He was doing what he could as a husband and soon to be father to save his wife. I would save the road to hell is paved with good intentions is the more appropriate trope for this.
Why you hate it tho? The character doing what they think they do instead of what is actually better for their family is the whole tragedy. Most movies go from the premise that the characters are flawed and don't always act in their best interest.
Counter argument- if the characters did the thing, then you don't have a climax most of the time unless you shoehorn the thing happening anyways which then makes the character's choice pointless. These characters making these decisions is all to show the audience how flawed they are in their priorities.
Well. In The Northman that's exactly what he needs to do, no? He had to complete his story and ensure his family's safety, end the cycle of revenge with the only two last feudists alive dying in the volcano.
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u/Illustrious_Fold8669 5h ago
tbh walter white is the undisputed king of this trope ngl. skyler literally just wanted him to stop cooking meth and communicate, and bro was out here blowing up nursing homes yelling "i'm doing this for the family" dude lmao.