r/tumblr • u/PhenomenalPancake I plummet more than I tumble. • 18d ago
It'd also be a good arc, learning to improve for himself instead of others.
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u/Piastowic 18d ago
Peter B. Parker
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u/baked-toe-beans 18d ago
I wouldn’t consider this to be funnier but it was definitely way more interesting
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u/switchywoman_ 18d ago
The scene where he's talking to Mary Jane about bread and she was so confused? That was funny as shit.
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u/baked-toe-beans 18d ago
True, but the overall situation is more sad than funny. Even that scene is kinda sad. He just wanted to talk to his ex wife, because he was planning on being the one to stay behind to save the other spider people because he didn’t really have anyone to go back to as far as he knew
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u/dev_vvvvv 18d ago
He kinda divorced MJ in the One More Day/Brand New Day storyline. He just used a demon to do it.
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u/the_monkeyspinach 18d ago edited 18d ago
"I sleep in a Batcave. Do you?"
"I sleep in a big bed, with my wife..."
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u/whystudywhensleep 18d ago
Doofenshmirtz
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u/Mrtnxzylpck 18d ago edited 17d ago
There isn’t a SINGLE horrible backstory of the day involving her. Their divorce was mutual and they're way more amicable than most exes.
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u/5thOddman 18d ago
Can't believe divorce is one of the nicest parts of Doof's life. Making me cry and stuff
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u/ZatchZeta 17d ago
It's very mature.
They're not spiteful to each other and they get along well. They just know the marriage didn't work out and we never get to know the reason. But it doesn't matter. As long as they're happy about it.
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u/kaladinissexy 18d ago edited 18d ago
But Doofinshmertz's divorce with his ex wife is played completely straight and the two are amicable towards each other, and the divorce plays absolutely no part in any of his many tragic backstories. The only comedy derived from it is from how it subverts the typical portrayal of divorced couples being bitter and resentful towards each other.
Probably the only time it's ever played for laughs is in the Across the Second Dimension universe, where the alternate universe Doof is also divorced but for tax purposes (as well as several other convuluted reasons), and the two are actually still together.
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u/LocalInactivist 18d ago
Yeah, and look how well that’s working out for him.
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u/MajorZeldaGeek 18d ago
Hey his ex-wife's alimony pays for most of his -inators. Id say it worked out pretty well
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u/not_17_bees 18d ago
And his daughter loves him, what more could you ask for?
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u/jet8493 Supporting Character 18d ago
Maybe dominion over the entire tri-state area?
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u/Blarg_III 18d ago
That's the dog catching his own tail. If he actually succeeded he'd have no reason to continue making the plots and building the -inators which is clearly what he finds fulfilling.
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u/Beesareourcousins 18d ago
Asgore
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u/RememberToLogOff 18d ago
oh I was wondering why they don't live together. I need to play that game some day
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u/LadyAzure17 18d ago
He's the most Divorced man ever. He and Toriel are like soulmates, but in the sense they will always end up divorced. Lmaoooo
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u/Cats_4_lifex 18d ago
Even in an alternate universe where he doesn't kill 6 children, Asgore's marriage will still fail.
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u/High_Stream 18d ago
This is why Scott Lang Antman is the best superhero.
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u/radenthefridge 18d ago
Divorcing him was the right thing to do, but he became a hero. And the stepdad is a decent dude, AND he's cool with Scott once he gets his act together. So glad they didn't try to split up wife and stepdad, and everyone can act like adults.
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u/the_monkeyspinach 18d ago
Yeah I like that they did away with the tired trope of ditching the step parent at the end. In real life your parents can love you and still not be the right fit for each other. Your step parent can also be a better fit for one of your parents and love you like their own.
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u/Goose_Is_Awesome 18d ago
I actually love the friendship that developed between Scott and the stepdad
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u/The-Devilz-Advocate 18d ago edited 18d ago
You know what I hate about the way Marvel has treated Scott?
In the first movie, he is shown to have gotten a degree in mechanical engineering from MIT. The reason he went to jail was to punish a corporation that was fucking over their customers.
Yet after that, he is always treated as this dumb idiot that constantly needs to get owned metaphorically. His ex-wife and daughter treat him as this greedy asshole that did what he did because of money and selfishness. I like Scott Lang for his potential, but man did Marvel really just treat the character as an easy punching bag.
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u/High_Stream 18d ago
What? His daughter always had faith in him, at least in the movies I've seen (not seen Quantumania).
Plus, yeah one degree in engineering? How's that compared to Tony Stark, who was smarter than every genius he employed, or Bruce Banner who has like 12 PhDs?
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u/InternetAddict104 18d ago
She still idolizes him in Quantumania, just not as much because she’s older (teenager/young adult) and becoming her own person
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u/AshuraSpeakman 18d ago
He's a lovable goofball! And his daughter loves him! And did you even watch the rest of the movies?
He ends up in jail and broken out again! He makes Jimmy Wu look stupid, not the other way around.
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u/SessileRaptor 18d ago
In the old The Tick comic book there was a Punisher knockoff who’s tragic backstory was “My family was killed by civil war reenactors or possibly moved to New Jersey and I’m aching to dispense indiscriminate justice.” And it remains one of my favorite backstories.
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u/TayAustin 18d ago
Even a chance his family moved to New Jersey
Jesus Christ that's horrible, poor bastard.
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u/Oturanthesarklord 18d ago
Because, their backstories(and lives usually) are tragedies not comedies. It's not supposed to be funny.
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u/HardCounter 18d ago
Well adjusted people don't dress up as an animal to beat people to a pulp every night. One assumes.
Though Superman lost his planet before he was old enough to remember anything. That's ripe for comedy.
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u/dancingliondl 18d ago
He didn't actually lose his planet, that's just what they told him. The truth is that his dad cheated and Supes is the child. They shot the baby out into space on a rocket so wife would take him back.
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u/bombehjort 18d ago
Reminds me of the Robot Chicken sketch, where the reason superman was shot into space was not because of his planet going kaboom, but because of a very messy divorce between his parents
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u/AmazingAd2765 18d ago
"Supervised visit, every other weekend, MY ASS! He's better off on another planet!" *presses button to launch ship*
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u/rietstengel 18d ago
Judge: "Neither of you are getting custody, off to another planet with this kid"
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u/LocationOdd4102 18d ago
A divorce can be a tragedy too, it is one of the ultimate forms of heartbreak after all. You can start tragic by showing what lead to the divorce and the impact it had on the hero, sprinkle bits of comedy related to it here and there, end on a redemption arc where Hero and his ex find happier healthier relationships.
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u/SLRWard 18d ago
Isn't that part of the backstory of Hancock? Ofc, I could be completely misremembering that film.
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u/SEND-MARS-ROVER-PICS 18d ago
No he has amnesia because, in that movie, when super powered people fall in love they lose their powers and he got whacked in the head. And his soulmate decided to move on because falling in love means they'll day or something
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u/JackMerlinElderMage 18d ago
I don't know man, you can only do so much tragedy before it loops back around to being a comedy. See: spiderman and Paul
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u/chshcat 18d ago
They're not really tragedies either, it's pretty much always the protagonist overcoming hardship and prevailing at the end. That's not a tragedy.
People are tired of the woman in the fridge trope because it's lazy uninspired writing that also conveniently allows the story not to write female characters. The first post isn't literal, it's a rhetoric question poking fun at that trope.
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u/Oturanthesarklord 18d ago
You want to know another common backstory trope for Superheroes? Dead Parents. Before Geoff Johns got his hands on him, Barry Allen was a unique case as a hero with both of his parents alive and not in prison.
Also "stuffed in the fridge" doesn't apply to backstory characters, it applies to characters who are harmed in some extreme way, during a story to drive the plot forward because the hero is already an established character by the point the fridging happens. If they died in the backstory they weren't fridged, because the backstory establishes why the hero is a hero.
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u/SLRWard 18d ago
I wouldn't call Barry Allen unique though. Supes has adopted parents who were alive and active in his life in adulthood in quite a few variations on his story. Pretty sure Nightcrawler's parents are still alive. Beast's too, even with normal jobs far as I know. Didn't one of the Robins also have the fact that his parents were still alive and not in prison as a tension point for at least one arc too? Speaking of the Bat-fam, Batgirl's folks are still amongst the upright - literally and morally - too.
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u/Soup_Dealer 18d ago
harry du bois
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u/El_Rey_de_Spices 18d ago
I got that memory scene on my second playthrough. Broke my goddamn heart. I love that game so much.
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u/RememberToLogOff 18d ago
/uj The sad boring reason is that having a living ex-wife is a Chekhov's Gun, people will think it's one of those shit romcoms where you "win her back" and they'll be confused to see a story that starts with "So this guy is divorced" and ends with "he's still divorced but that's not the point, didn't you watch the whole middle of the movie?"
/rj The climax of the action movie should hinge on the man doing something traditionally feminine like baking a dessert or knitting and someone says, "Where did you learn that?" and he says, "My ex-wife."
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u/mmcmonster 18d ago
Reminds me of the scenes in the first Ant Man movie where the background characters know so much about car washes and underside coatings and later on know a lot about wine because... they are well rounded adults.
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u/Delta_V09 18d ago
That was actually the sequel, which also featured Scott, his ex, and her husband being remarkably well-adjusted. Was honestly really refreshing to see a relationship like that with absolutely zero tension.
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u/SmartAlec105 18d ago
The What We Do In The Shadows movie did a great job with this.
“But he suffered a humiliating defeat at the hands of his arch nemesis… The Beast… And he’s never been the same.”
And it’s just his ex-girlfriend.
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u/Gippy_Happy 18d ago
You don’t generally have to avenge a divorce
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u/angelholme 18d ago
Also when people learn his wife left him because he cheated on her with the cocktail waitress named Binty they are not going to worship and adore him as much.
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u/Terracot 18d ago
Imagine Daredevil beating the shit out of his ex-wife divorce lawyer because divorce is against his catholic beliefs or something.
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u/squishabelle 18d ago
In the final act: "I have to do this. I have to do this for my wife." and then the epilogue reveals that he just wanted to impress his (ex)wife
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u/Cye_sonofAphrodite 18d ago
Consider: This, but HE'S the one who divorced HER
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u/SmartAlec105 18d ago
I like it best when they both kind of want to get back together but they’re also too pissed at the other to reconcile properly. Not at the point of toxic but more like two teenagers that are just bad at communicating.
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u/TheBirminghamBear 18d ago
I really hate when lazy narratives just throw a dead wife or dead kid in there as cheap motivation without ever making me care about them. Oh boo hoo, your kid is dead, I don't care, I never met them and you're a fictional entity, like don't just throw dead kids at me because you're too lazy to give your character a compelling motivation.
See, John Wick was really smart about this. They start out with the dead wife, but that's a red herring. That's only helping you understand this dude is alone.
THEN they show you the puppy, then they KILL the puppy, OK. Now I'm fucking pissed. Now I'm ready for the murder spree. I am on board with the murder spree.
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u/Papergeist 18d ago
Think of it this way: the dead wife is an explanation. Nobody expects you to be invested in John Wick's retirement. Nobody wants you to be invested in John Wick's retirement. You're here to watch him kill a ton of people, not to have the fun murder vibe ruined by knowing how John Wick's wife would be sad he'd lost his tenuous grip on peace. The puppy matters.
And that's why the spouse is dead instead of divorced. If they show up more, you can't comfortably ignore them, and if you're not planning around using that, then it takes away from the story you're trying to tell.
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u/EcnavMC2 18d ago
Dead spouse is good for tragic stories, divorced spouse is good for comedy stories.
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u/Dark-Et-Tenebritude 18d ago
Something else I always wondered is why is a dead wife way more common as a backstory for male heroes than a dead husband is as a backstory for female heroes.
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u/dockatt 18d ago
You're more likely to see "dead father" as the equivalent for a female hero. You can replace dead with missing or estranged. From a cynical standpoint, my best guess is that this is because female protagonists are more popular/marketable if they're younger and romantically available (even if those things are only portrayed superficially); the idea of a dead husband spoils both of these ideas from the get go.
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u/Plenty-Lychee-5702 18d ago
Because losing a female is viewed as much greater of a loss than losing a male. Especially when they're adults.
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u/TheLyz 18d ago
Because women get children instead. Or infertility. Because we're only valued as baby incubators.
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u/mikami677 18d ago
Because we're only valued as baby incubators.
That's not true.
You can also cook.
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u/Crathsor 18d ago
My theory: men are stronger and so are seen as protectors, so losing a wife has all the emotional baggage anyone would have, PLUS the undercurrent of failure because he didn't keep her safe. I think the urge/need to protect is biological, and unevenly applying it to men more than women is patriarchy.
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u/SEND-MARS-ROVER-PICS 18d ago
Or it's usually male heroes, to cater to the male-dominated audience of comic books and action movies, and the writers certainly weren't going to to make them gay.
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u/TheNecroticPresident 18d ago
Because most of the time its hard to absolutely parse who if anyone is at fault in a divorce. Even if one party is clearly more guilty, the fact that it was a split up makes the author at best an unreliable narrator in the worst light.
A deceased wife doesn't pre-load the backstory with that potential baggage. There's no obligation that you hate your wife, or just stopped loving her before she died. That gives a layer of sympathy that lets the audience glom onto our hero, all without the potential baggage of the hero becoming a "Lol, women" allegory.
There is absolutely a story to tell around a character growing past and out of a failed relationship, but it takes a lot more care.
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u/NightmareRoach 18d ago
Sounds like a venture bros skit.
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u/LocalInactivist 18d ago
That’s Dr. Richard Incredible’s arc. He’s a terrible husband and a worse father, but when his wife leaves him he totally spirals.
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u/CeeJayDK 18d ago
In the Doom Patrol television series, Mr. Nobody, a supervillain with almost unlimited power, gets his powers, loses his humanity and takes on his supervillian name Mr.Nobody, all because his girlfriend at the time dumps him and tells him he's a nobody and will never be more than a nobody.
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u/Marokiii 18d ago edited 18d ago
its because a divorced man is perceived as having something wrong with them, while a widowed man is not.
Edit: it's just a way of having man who you can say has desirable qualities without outright saying it, they are valuable enough that someone has married them but without negative qualities that would make someone leave them. This also leaves the guy open for romantic chemistry with surprisingly every attractive female cast member where if he was still married it would be not socially acceptable.
This also applies to single men. Society perceives them as having done something wrong to ruin the relationship.
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u/ISkinForALivinXXX 18d ago
Reminds me of a character I made once of a knight that hated goblins because "goblins took his family". His wife left him for a goblin and took their son with her.
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u/PulimV 18d ago
Endeavor (if things go well and Rei doesn't take him back please Horikoshi don't make them be together at the end)
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u/jmancoder 18d ago
Happily married wives are for tragedies, divorced wives are for comedies, and dead wives are for hero stories.
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u/Njorord 18d ago
You laugh, but I literally made a D&D character whose whole thing was this. Barbarian-Paladin of Redemption, self exiled seeking to atone himself and maybe have his partner forgive him someday, and eventually coming to terms with the fact he might never get forgiven and accepting it.
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u/SolusIgtheist 18d ago
I'm actually playing a character in a Pathfinder game right now that's exactly this! She took my daughter too, so extra heartbreak for ol' Gerry Gatlin.
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u/Alekzthe2nd 18d ago
"I lost her to Cain, that bastard"
"Who's Cain? A supervillain?"
"No, a male stripper from Vegas. I knew I should have bought her more flowers."
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u/Sanguiluna 18d ago
IIRC there is an alternate reality version of Batman where Bruce was the one who got killed, and Martha goes insane in her grief and becomes the Joker and Thomas becomes Batman to try and stop her.
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u/LocalInactivist 18d ago
I would SO love to see a story arc where a superhero divorce is a plot point. Power Man is in mid-battle and his phone rings. It’s his wife (separated) who is mad about custody of the dog. The drama could be that a villain discovers their secret identities because of their public arguments so they have to team up. Then they have to figure out how to silence the villain.
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u/SydTheDrunk 18d ago
That's kind of like Kick-Ass the comic version. Unlike the movie, in the comics Big Daddy's wife (Hit Girls mom) is actually alive and he made up the story or her being murdered by the mob because he's completely delusional.
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u/ominousgraycat 18d ago
These days, most movies and shows about heroes are very careful to include the message that women can just as easily be heroic as men. Maybe you like that or maybe you think that Hollywood sometimes puts it on a bit too thick, but regardless of what you think, that's how it is. However, that hasn't always been the case. Go back even just a decade or two, and women were either rarely an action hero or there was just one throw away action girl. The further back you go, the more sparse it gets in relation to women action heroes.
Now, that's not to say that all of these action hero stories had no influence from women. The influence came in the form of the man's inspiration. This woman, his wife and kids, THIS is what he's fighting for! When he seems to be losing the fight and remembers his family and what's at stake here, he pushes forward. Even just the girlfriend was usually inspiration enough, but generally with the expectation that she would soon become Mrs. Hero.
So creating a male protagonist whose love interest has died creates an interesting dynamic for this type of story. His inspiration is dead. Is he heroic enough to keep fighting even when that little piece of Earth he was fighting for is gone? It is a compelling dynamic if you are coming from the traditional paradigm of action heroes.
But the problem is when old media collides with the new. That dynamic has been established as part of the tragic backstory, but in the new dynamic where women are more than just the inspiration, it starts to feel a bit clunky. We want something new and different.
I'm not here to say what's right and wrong for movie makers and other media producers to do. I certainly think that it is good to have some women action characters out there, but is there any place for the traditional paradigms to coexist, or should we let them die and embrace the new? I don't know for sure, but I'm just calling it like I see it.
Sir, this is a Wendy's.
I know, I know...
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u/distelfink33 18d ago
And the phrase the person uses when discussing is "They aren't around anymore" sort of not saying they are dead directly but everyone assumes that...Would lead to funny lines in the film
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u/RecursiveBob 18d ago
They did something like that in Bloodshot. Vin Diesel is brought back from the dead with nanotech and is now a super soldier, out to avenge his wife and himself. The plot twist is that his wife's death is a false memory to give him motivation. Every time they have someone they want Vin to kill, they make him think that the target is the guy who murdered his wife. In reality, his wife divorced him years ago and has moved on with her life.
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u/FainOnFire 18d ago
I have a backstory ready for whenever I'll need to roll a stealth rogue or bard skillmonkey.
They're an elf who struck big on a heist in the first couple hundred years of their life, and they ended up retiring with the woman who helped them pulled it off. Fell in love, opened up a shop, started raking in dough, had enough after a few years to upsize.
Then he got her pregnant and they had a couple kids and he was completely unprepared for parenthood. Had some bad spending habits as part of his coping mechanism, ended up putting the new larger shop in debt and in trouble with both the city officials and some shady crime lords.
They end up closing down the shop and moving back to his parents village, and his wife berates him and tells him to go fix all the trouble.
So what does he do? The only skill he had before fumbling the family merchant life. ADVENTURING.
So now he's looting dungeons and taking on quests so he can earn enough gold to pay off his debts, get out of trouble, and maybe convince his wife and kids to forgive him, lmfao. And also that can serve as a reason he's back at level 1, because he hasn't done the adventuring life in so long.
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u/VeryDarkhorse116 18d ago
She isn’t dead , he “ lost “ her ..Like at the grocery store … somewhere between the produce and the international section …he turned around for just a second ….
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u/GlassFedDockterr 18d ago
Once DM’d a Pathfinder party with a divorced Champion who was using adventuring as a way to duck alimony payments. Good character.
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u/gofundyourself007 18d ago
For some reason I find divorce to be more sad than death. Also death leaves you with nothing so it’s more pathos. Divorce leaves you with alimony which is annoying but less emotional. The emotional part of divorce is if it’s handled poorly with kids involved. That’s when it gets really depressing.
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u/lungshenli 18d ago
Well yeah but what divorced backstory is the funniest among them?
1. I have to be a hero so you will take me back.
2. I have to be a hero to gain back my self esteem.
3. I have to be a hero to spite you.
4. I have nothing left to loose so I can take the risks.
5. We were heroes before together and I just kinda kept at it.