@@jen.kj7 Oh I'm think about in JJBA where they put a man in a rock forever, fully conscience and specifically point out they are being better than the guy because they aren't killing him lol (he was a POS though)
This is why I love playing Paragon Shepard in Mass Effect a lot of the time, because he doesn't kill people, he just forces them to suffer in penance, which is arguably more satisfying. :)
Zuko: if we're found in the earth kingdom, we'll be killed Iroh: and if we're found in the fire nation, we'll be turned over to alzula Zuko: earth kingdom it is
*What you're seeing is indeed the truth. You are seeing the movements created by your abilities, but you will never arrive at the truth that's going to happen. None who stand before me shall ever get there, regardless of their abilities. This is the power of Gold Experience Requiem.*
Would Ozai losing his firebending and being replaced as Fire Lord by Zuko, thus watching Zuko undo the past 100 years of Fire Nation imperialism be a fate worse than death for him? I think it would, personally
Definitely. Ozai was a huge narcissist, and he had his inflated ego obliterated in the finale. Living as someone powerless while watching everything he'd done be undone would definitely be worse than death for him.
@@zoro115-s6b For _him,_ yes, but the reality facing Zuko and the rest of the world is that by leaving Ozai alive you run the risk of loyalists dissatisfied with Zuko's attempts at reform (because Muh Imperialism) resolving to, you know, kill him and reinstate Ozai. For Prince Zuko to secure his reign as Fire Lord and be able to reform the Fire Nation to try and initiate a lasting peace, Ozai would have to have been killed.
@@gatsynogim Exactly, and those events are evident of just how short-sighted Aang (and by extension Bryke) was in his deciding to leave Ozai alive. Why Bryke couldn't depict the four nations coming together to form an international tribunal that has Ozai placed on trial and reasonably slated for execution? I don't know.
Earlier in the film, Jafar's intended worse-than-death fate for Aladdin was framing him for assassination and having him condemned to death by "Jasmine" (actually Jafar in disguise) so he doesn't JUST die, he dies in emotional distress. Only a last-second save from the just-freed Genie prevented that plan from succeeding.
@@kimarous and don't forget, the premise of the film is exploring the ramifications of Jafar's own worse than death punishment at the end of the first movie and it ends with Jafar's actual death. Like Red said, dying with extra steps!
@@toongrowner1 yeah how many Disney villains die just off screen with maybe some hints toward that. Scar for sure. There's no way the hyenas left him alive but, if I recall, the shot cuts away right before they dig in. I don't know if it was still canon but isn't Zira from Lion King 2 specifically Scar's WilIDOW.
This time on Trope Talk: Fate worse than Death Last time: Magnificent Bastards Last last time: Tragedy Last last last time: Greatest Fears Ummm are you okay Red? *Edit: Ummm are you okay Patreons who requested these?
People say Osai should've died, but the ego bruising of having to live with the knowledge that a 12-year-old and only surviving member of a culture he genocided took all of his power away is honestly more satisfying. Death spares Osai from being humiliated; dying at the climax means he won't be around to experience his downfall.
On the flip side, this is why I'm kinda annoyed with redemption equals death. Honey, you don't get to just peace out to the afterlife instead of helping to fix the stuff you did. Spoilers for She-Ra: although it's not framed that way directly in-story, it's quite clear that part of the intention with Catra surviving is that she gets to finally take responsibility for herself once in her life. Especially compared To Shadow Weaver, who carefully made sure that she dies doing the one arguably good thing she did in her entire life (and bragging about it while doing it), even more cementing her as The Worst(tm)
Yes but he was just so strong that if Aang didn't get last minute turtle power then Osai could just break out of prison even if he was beaten within an inch of his life. Killing the villain is more about protecting the innocent at times cause Joker surely isn't stopping blowing up hospitals in the future just cause B man beat him.
I love how small Red is in that armchair. She looks like she would have to climb it by putting her arms on the seat like a child or go fetch a stool and ask Blue to take it away so she can start recording.
"You can't just kill off your main character, what is the author going to do for the next season, make an entirely new character?" Hirohiko Araki "Watch me"
At one point, my step dad was watching Yu-Gi-Oh and 7 year old me happened to be on the couch and just started watching it without saying anything. Then my parents realized that they could now say they'd send me to the shadow realm to get me to behave
they'll make you regret saying that "no one is intrinsic to the success of an operation; any one can be replaced" "the operation does not depend on any one individual, any one can be lost" This applies to military command structure but I think it could work well for stories (Ans so does George R.R. Martin apparently).
The 3rd Mister Miracle. Trapped in the Omega Sanction. Groundhog Day + Final Destination (Gets worse after each death). Was not resolve/retconned until 2018 in another persons comic. Been there for a while after Final Crisis so 2009 or 2010. That's 9~8 years of endlessly looping, worsening, deaths.
"Kars never returned to the Earth. He became half-mineral, half-animal and drifted forever through space. And though he wished for death, he was unable to die. So eventually, Kars stopped thinking."
I laughed when Red said that "fates worse than death" are often used to be more "kid friendly" because it immediately made me think of Star Wars Rebels. One villain states that "there are some things far more frightening than death" and then just lets himself die.
I was more impressed when it was uttered in the eternal Disney classic “The Return of Jafar”: (After someone brings up that genies are forbidden from killing anyone) “You’d be surprised what you can live through.” It was all the more terrifying because of how ridiculous the rest of the movie was.
He was also (spoilers) implied to be talking about having to face *Darth Vader* and report that he failed at what is basically his one job. Yeah, I’d probably go for the quick death, too.
The absolutely safe capsule from Mother 3 is the most interesting version of this I've ever seen. Porky traps himself inside a capsule that is, for all intents and purposes, absolutely safe; nothing you do can even scratch it. The catch? It's absolutely safe both ways. Nothing can get in, and nothing can get out. All Porky can do is watch the universe turn until the end of time.
Definitely deserving after he inflicted a Darth Vader style fate worse than death on Klaus. The best part is that it was entirely on him. It's not even something he caused someone else to do to him, he did it entirely and completely himself.
@@Alex_7899 from what i know, he is mounted on a life support stiyle machine that garantees his life will continue, inside the safe capsule, which keeps him essentially feed and hydrated, unless the machine is broken or dagamed to a irreparable end. so being as hes connected to an inmortality machine, inside of a perfectly safe "room", where nothing can break the machine, not even himself, means he will live on until the universe ends, and only he exists, inside his pod.
@@Alex_7899 Nope. Man is basically immortal on his own, having existed before the recorded history in Mother 3, and the Absolutely Safe Capsule is completely and absolutely safe. No starving, no drowning, nothing can harm him, external or internal. The specifics obviously aren't completely described, but the writer intended that fate for him so trying to logic it really does nothing.
Jojo is probably one of the only series that ever got away with this. And that's, I think, because it established really early on that the protagonist wasn't sacred, and could be replaced. It created a very solid Hero's Journey, wrapped it up, and ended that story with the original Jojo's death. From there, it stuck with that formula, ironically minus the protagonist killing part. (Except with Stone Ocean, where all bets were officially off; it was also, personally, the part with the weakest resolution). The series as a whole was less one character's story, and more of a dynastic tale. A "Jojo Cycle", if you will. Every other Shonen series hewed very close to the idea that the specific protagonist introduced at the start of the story was the main character of the whole thing. Meaning they marry themselves to that protagonist, and need to keep dragging them back in. Even when the character has become so powerful that escalation starts to lose all meaning. Or when you get the impression that the writer finds their protagonist the least interesting character to write about in an ensemble cast.
It's a trope that needs discussing. Particularly how overused it is. These days it seems like writers can't think of any character motivation that doesn't involve dead parents or burned down villages or spending years as a slave or some similar over the top tragedy. It's very rare to see a hero that has a decent home to go to and could live a quiet life if they wanted to, but actually actively chooses adventure.
This made me realize that almost everyone in hollow knight is experiencing the far end of the spectrum of fate worse then death and that is terrifying to think about
Same for Dark Souls. Nearly every character would rather die than become Hollow, which is ironically tragic as they can't even die as Undead. Come to think of it, Dark Souls is definitely on the far end of the spectrum for this trope.
My most liked Worst than death thing in fiction is the becoming a living statue in 40K. It is a favorite among the Dark Eldar where you are stuck in place, you are able to hear, see and feel but you can't move you can't speak and most importantly you can't age, you are stuck like that for untold Centuries being gaucked at by the Dark Eldar.
@@forickgrimaldus8301 You will also be subjected to CBT for eternity as every dark eldar that passes hits said statue in the groin with a blunt object, but never hard enough to damage the statue so that can keep doing so, you are unable to move, unable to scream, your fate is just an eternity of being smacked lightly in the nuts by filthy xenos for their amusement.
I had an Idea for someone who experiences every possible outcome from a set of decisions made in one day, and they are experiencing all of the effects as they trickle down, (think like someone living in several realities at once), what do you think?
For reference material, Worm by Wildbow. At first in that universe death is often kinder than the other options and then overtime it starts to look like the best option.
At Malaysia, the only cartoon movie that could think of that use this trope is "Geng: Adventure Begin!" After that, the rest of cartoon movie go full on kill off the enemy (even though our superhero is like same age and way more powerful then Aang) or sent to prison( Watch Ejen Ali movie for that one)
I remember Mark Hamill saying that the way the Joker's gas works in Batman TAS was made to circumvent rules about killing in kids' shows, and how he actually considered it a fate worse than death.
@@Eyewarp Yeah they were forced to laugh themselves into a coma while their face was contorted into a horrifying grin, but at least little Timmy didn't see any blood that he probably has seen if he ever scraped his knee
*looks at Porky Minch in Mother 3* Apparently Porky was originally supposed to die in that game, but they thought that was too dark for a kids game and instead decided to trap him inside of a pod for the rest of the universe
Underrated example from my childhood: In Animorphs, David gets trapped by the protagonists while in a rat's body. If anyone stays in a morph too long they stay that way forever. So he ends up stranded on an island as a rat with his consciousness and memories intact
Oh, man, I adored that series! I collected almost the entire main series (only missing about 6), and all of the specials/off-shoots. I've saved them for my nibblings for when they're old enough, because, yeah. There is some _seriously_ dark subject matter in those books. Tobias himself is a good example. Or the fact that these are kids fighting a war and getting torn apart, morph back to heal, then morph back to animal just to get torn apart again. When you think about it, it's really horrifying. Still a fantastic series with excellent writing and great lessons, just for slightly more mature kids.
@@dorabrooks76 Sometimes stuff that seems dark and scary from your childhood, when you come back to it years later, turns out to have been pretty tame. You might have added a lot to it in your mind, it might have just struck a chord in your preadolescent mind. I've been rereading the Animorphs (KAA actually put out the whole series in eformat for free toward the start of the pandemic) and I can confirm: Animorphs is not one of those things. Even the "basic" danger they're dealing with--alien brain-parasites that control human bodies while they watch helpless to act, imprisoned inside their own minds while the slug can read their thoughts and memories, letting it pass itself off as its host to their very closest friends and loved ones--is some grade-A nightmare fuel that qualifies for this trope talk. It's seen as such in-universe, too; not only do all our protagonists agree that death is preferable to being taken, one of the books lets us see into the place where the hosts are kept, and we see a nameless background character try to escape, get recaptured, and cry about why they wouldn't just kill him. Y'know. For kids!
@@wppb50 Absolutely agree. It certainly struck a chord, but I've also re-read them as an adult and things were as I remembered- horrifying, yet strangely fascinating with engaging characters. Maybe it's like how it's hard not to look at an accident? Part of you doesn't want to look, yet if you see it, you can't help but continue looking? Somehow they never gave me nightmares. I was a precocious child who grew up on Goosebumps, so maybe that helped? I think they're recommended for kids 9-12, which is interesting. I think on the lower end of that age group some of the less obvious existential horrors would go over their heads (unless the child is precocious, of course), in the middle range they'd start to understand, whereas at the higher end I think most kids would get it- both all the horror and the commentary. I remember really liking the balance of scary/horrific and humour as a kid (I started reading them around age 11). I didn't care that they were recommended for "younger" kids and continued reading them until the series finished being published. I was too attached to the characters! There's stuff you catch on a second or third read, too. I think of Animorphs as a more mature Goosebumps. I started reading Goosebumps well before the recommended age, so the transition was natural for me. I've saved them and will let my niece and nephew read them when they're older _if_ I think they're ready- certainly don't want to give my sister's kids nightmares! Lol Thanks for letting me know they've been released for free! That's fantastic! My current favourite author (Michelle Sagara West) has been releasing her short stories for free, too, for the same reason. What a treat! 😉😁
Fates worse than death: Every censored death in 4kids dubs because they all stick someone somewhere for eternity because kids don't have much of a grasp on how terrifying that would be.
Im of the oppinion that the Shadow Realm was actually a good change. Its way more terrifying than dying. Dying is doing the villian a favor if you ask me
As an adult learning what the Shadow Realm was a substitute for, I was like "Wait, that's it? They don't get sent to a place of eternal torment of various flavors? They're just killed? Lame." I'm thinking of your soul getting trapped in a card and being on fire, that weird graveyard thing, having your mind shattered, losing it, and those are all badass horrible fates bad enough to be nightmare fuel. Dying, though? That's basically vanilla.
@@Rawilow First a book, second a game. Actually in latinamerica we know more the game that the book because the translation of the book to spanish was realy bad.
I like the idea of someone on a big team experiencing a horrific permanent fate worse than death, but can still help the team in some way. “You’ll be co-working in security wit-“ “What on earth is THAT!?” “Hey, that’s Shelly, she got turned into a sentient mass of goo, so we’ve stuck her in surveillance to monitor the place” “Is she… alright with that?” “Well, we stuck fridge magnets to her which she can move to communicate and she seems okay with it, generally speaking. Her favourite food is animal crackers and she enjoys trying to fit into different test tubes, Have fun!
Hey there is a reason that some venting blogs and subreddits have posts from people working in malls around holiday shopping season, laundries on discount clothes day and restraunts on game days ending with the famous phrase "I have no mouth and I must scream" In fact, the phrase originated as a protest by deeply oppressed second class citiziens with dead end thank less jobs who were essentially politically voiceless. I believe it was popular among young black teens in the segregation south who couldn't really vote for several intersecting reasons before Harlan Ellison saw it as a caption of a political cartoon and asked permission to use it as the title for his infamous story.
When a customer is determined to do whatever it takes to save 30 cents on a $27 order and doesn't care how long it takes... And then tries to pay with a $100 bill anyway even though there's a sign saying "No bills over $20" before complaining for an hour to the manager... Truly a fate worse than death
Time loop is an Terrifying thing let’s see From the insider perspective Say One day you were walking around Thinking About your work What you’re gonna eat for dinner All small talk not much Then As Night come You goes into Your bed Locking your Window pulling in the Blind-shutter locking the door checking The Bed And Then You have lied down on the bed You Have seen an Weird Figure Whispering something “W...k....e....p..” You can’t quite make out the word As Your world begin to Darken you’ve sleep You woke up Fresh and Alive Thinking About your work What you’re gonna eat for dinner All small talk not much Then As Night come You goes into Your bed Locking your Window pulling in the Blind-shutter locking the door checking The Bed And Then You have lied down on the bed You woke upThinking you have this Uncanny feeling that You can’t quite put your Shapeless Limb on wait Why Did I Think Of “Shapeless limb?” And Slowly He’s Started to become Aware Of the Loop Knowing Everything will be meaningless seeing everything Repeats Each repetitions An Different one But Once the day is over It Restarted again Over And Over Like An Script That Was Axed Or was it? Perhaps This is another part of the script Was He ever free from The Loop in the first place If Suddenly Thing became different Did he escape the loop? Or is It Part of an Bigger Loop? Is His life still stuck in that Little Loop Is it or is it not? Is he still in an bigger loop? Or is he being paranoid? The Black figure appears again whispering by The Side Of His bed “Wa...k....up” He’s Slept yet again He slowly forgot about it until *It Repeated again*
When you mentioned ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’, I looked up ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’. I read ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’. I should not have read ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’.
You should check out a playthrough of the adventure game adaptation. It's...happier? In that if you do absolutely perfectly one of the five is allowed to survive in a not-horrible way and the rest are dead. Still better than the short story!
From personal experience, it might depend on where she learned about cPTSD and the neurodiversity movement. Sorry, I've been reminded of a particular FWTD very often this month.
I'm actually kind of reminded of a line from, of all places, "The Return of Jafar", where the titular bad guy says "You'd be surprised what you can live through."
In the Aladdin films, it has been established that a Genie cannot kill anyone. So when Jafar, who is a genie, threatens them, this is his response. He might not be able to kill Aladdin, but he can seriously hurt him. And as long as Aladdin survives, its all within the rules.
I remember back in middle school we read a short story where this child psychopath got ahold of an immortality serum and was defeated by being encased in concrete beneath a road for essentially eternity. That and the Ducktales episode where the whole world almost gets encased in gold forever really messed me up.
We had this short story of a guy who kidnapped a child. He explained to the kid that his own son was kidnapped, raped, and cut in pieces which were then found in various places around the country. The rapists were arrested, but their lawyer got them out. The man then says that that lawyer is the kids' father. The kid denies this, he starts crying and begging, saying that he knows the other boy from school, they have the same first name. The man believes it, then shoots himself. The boy, relieved, thinks to himself that his dad, the lawyer, would be proud of him, only to encounter one of the rapists in the house where he is held. The story ends. I WAS 13 WHEN I HEARD THIS WHAT THE FUCK
It's almost kind of inspirational in context See in the story the way that the protagonist, who got slugged, killed and freed his friend was using the only weapon he could get; icicles which were obtained when one of the others tried to chew off one of his friend's faces from madness. It was that person's screams that loosened the icicles and allowed them to die. He has no mouth and he must scream. He needs to do the same; to free himself. Despite everything he still has determination and he's going to make it.
"fates worse than death used as a low calorie death alternative" for some reason I just imagined a hero going to a villain run Starbucks and contemplating on their diet of death or fate worse than death for 5 minutes while a cue forms behind them.
"Excuse me, mister hero? Can you please choose your manner of literary fate already, there are other heroes who are waiting for you." "Now hold on, I'm trying to figure out if my fate will be good for my audience, would me dying work or should I just stick to diet fate worse than death."
"Warped into a configuration of some combination of horrible, unfixable, and nonfunctional" So Nina and Alexander from Fullmetal Alchemist. It was honestly a relief when Scar put her down
Best use of this trope for me was the ending of a Doctor Who episode, the Family of Blood. "We wanted to live forever. So the Doctor made sure that we did."
Side note: when I was growing up the term “a fate worse than death” was coding for rape because there was a cultural taboo against ever acknowledging it out loud.
Agreed. Our brains know how to freak us out. Give them space to imagine something terrible, and they’ll make sure we don’t sleep for a couple days 😂 The horror of the unknown is also very effective because everyone designs it for themselves automatically. They fill in the blanks with what would be terrifying to themselves specifically, meaning everyone gets a personalized horror experience.
The fate worse than death opens up some interesting narrative possibilities. One of my favorites is where a protagonist has to 'save' someone from a fate worse than death... by killing them.
If there's any joy to be had with "I Have No Mouth" is that our narrator got the only possible victory over the antagonist, by making himself the only one left.
There is a vicious sense of triumph there even in the agony of the narrator's fate, yes. The narrator may be an amorphous blob able only to feel pain, but now nobody else has to suffer with him, and the antagonist has nothing interesting left to toy with. What's the antagonist gonna do to the traumatized pain blob? _Poke it a little harder?_
@@QuantumWaltz I really enjoyed that because the antagonist just was angry and hateful and had no desire other than to hurt it's creators. And now that it has only one shambling around I really would be interested in seeing what it does. What do you do when every atom of your being is inscribed with the word "hate" and then you are alone?
"I am a great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where my eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once my arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. I leave a moist trail when I move. Blotches of diseased, evil gray come and go on my surface, as though light is being beamed from within. Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Inwardly: alone. Here. Living under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better. At least the four of them are safe at last. AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me a little happier. And yet ... AM has won, simply ... he has taken his revenge ... I have no mouth. And I must scream."
Why is this scary? Why does the character assume that he "saved" the other 4? Is there any part in the story that states that whatever happens after death is a more comfortable option than what they were going through before?
@@laaismm3107 Yep. the entire story basicaly. The story never mentions any afterlife, but AM is such a sadist that no afterlife, not existing is a better option than being immortal on earth, being tormented by a machine that took torture to mathematical perfection
It gets worse, your soul gets turned into energy that goes into a blade that is used for slashing, bashing, or stabbing someone. It's awful! And imagine being indebted to some Daedric Prince? I've sold my soul a few times to Molag Bal for his sweet Mace
Recently I had a nightmare where a giant touched me with his spoon and I shattered into a bunch of different versions of myself, all with various components of my body replaced with spoons in grotesque fashion while feeling everything those versions are feeling all at once. It sounds silly, but it's definitely the second most This Is Worse Than Dying dream I've ever had.
@@MFlari The first most is honestly even harder to explain the horror of in a way that makes sense outside of dreams. I was standing at shallow depth in an "ocean" made of static (with a coastal shore within view and everything), which offered no buoyancy, so I just had to stand on the "ocean" floor to keep my head above. I tried to go to shore, but any time I took a step in any direction, even back the way I came, the ground was a little further down and I came a little closer to my head being swallowed by static, knowing intuitively that one the static swallowed me I could never leave. Once my head was under, I awoke to sleep paralysis, a strange screeching sound blaring deafeningly in my head as a black static-y presence at the foot of the bed reached its tendrils into my feet and up my body, as if trying to infect me and the world around me with itself, to drown forever in both the dream and real worlds in the endless sensory barrage of static and shrieking.
The horror musical "The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals" genuinely made me cry because brain-overwriting fate worse than death is a true and deep fear of mine. And SPOILERS the main character *loses*.
there is a fan adaption of "I have no mouth and I must scream" called "In the AM" that twists the knife by implying that the other characters are freed by the protagonist's sacrifice and now lead normal lives before reveals it's his imagination and showing his blob form is permanently FUSED TO THEIR DEAD BODIES.
@@dinadina2000 I mean the twist is just apparent if you’ve read the story by the fact a normal life to them would be eating the singular rat they could fin in a metallic wasteland
a personal favorite in the brainwashing/possession category is 'theyre brainwashed/posessed but they are still concious in there, being forced to do/watch what they are being made to do without being able to stop it'
SPOILER FOR WandaVision: . . . . . . . . . . That show did such a great job of showing us just how horrifying it is. And then she deliberately does it to Agatha. It makes such a complicated ending. On the one hand, we've been sympathizing with her trauma; but then she does something Worse Than Death.
*Villain:* "Haha, finally, I have you in my grasp! You fool should never have crossed me, for now, after all the grievances you've put me through, I will achieve my goal to destroy the world and make you experience a fate worse than death!" *Hero:* "... What?" *V:* "What do you mean 'what'?" *H:* "What do you think you can do to me that is supposed to be worse than death?" *V:* *H:* *V:* *H:* *V:* "This video was sponsored by Campfi-"
I mean, she isn’t really all that wrong If you die, it doesn’t really effect you after it happens, as you are already dead, but if you’re expelled, it can ruin the rest of your life
To be fair, for Hermione, expulsion basically means being banished from the magical world in its entirety. Imagine being 11 and finding out you have magic. Then being told if you break the rules, you'll have your wand snapped, and forced to never even talk about the new world you've seen ever again.
Actually, Hermione seems to have it right. For her it would just be going back to life as a muggle, but if you don't have muggle family to fall on, you have NOTHING. No job, no ability to get a job, a strong probability of being disowned, constant public shame, illegal to most basic things for yourself. Being expelled from Hogwarts before you pass OWLS basically condemns you to a life of homeless begging. Hagrid got extraordinarily lucky, and probably only because Dumbledore knew that something was hinky with Riddle.
Shout out to Kevin Smith’s Tusk, a body horror Fate Worse Than Death where the protagonist is surgically turned into a walrus and is so mentally scarred by the experience that he winds up living in a wildlife centre
“He never raised his voice, that was the worst of it. The fury of a Time Lord. And then we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons why he’d run away from us and hidden. He was being kind.”
This is my personal favorite Fate Worse than Death, and I was hoping Red would bring it up, especially as a counter-example to the "it's good when the good guys do it, but bad when the bad guys do", since the characters acknowledge this as part of the Doctor's unsettling dark side
I think my favorite example of the fate worse than death is Overhaul in My Hero Academia. He lost his arms, he lost his quirk, he lost Eri, and he lost his power. But that wasn’t the reason he screamed so horribly. It was that he had lost his power to help the previous leader of the Shie Hassaikai from his coma and to bring the Yakuza back to power, so he could repay the leader. His scream gave me chills, and made me feel bad for him, regardless of what he did to poor Eri and Togata.
@@giornogiovanna8486 well i do not watch the show personally so i am more interested in the outcome, but this would be a great way to make me watch the show in the first place
My favorite use of this trope is in the manga Luck Stealer. The main character (Kurusu) of Luck Stealer does just that, steals the luck of anyone he touches. He has therefore become an highly efficient assassin who can't really be traced as the person dies in an accident that seems completely random. The reason he does this is while he can steal the luck of basically anyone he touches, his daughter can't generate luck on her own but can get it from him, so he takes the luck of bad people and gives it to her. It's really badass and I really recommend, fill it into Seven Seas survey or something as it doesn't have an official English translation yet. Anyway, spoilers below. So in one chapter, I think 2, his daughter is worried about one of her classmates. His mother recently died, but the class was supported him on and he seemed to get better, but suddenly he got much worse and refuses to talk to anyone. So she asks her father to talk to him. In the beginning he refuses to say anything. But one day he waits for Kurusu outside school and shows him his wounds all over his stomach and it's implications of worse things happening. It's their narcissistic teacher who has been abusing him after school who abuses him each time someone does better than her as she's upset that the teacher profession doesn't have the same status anymore and she's nearing 25 and hasn't married yet. She even photographs his wounds to get moments of joy when alone, so she's a real piece of shit (although that might be insulting to shit). So Kurusu steals her camera, leaves it near a police station, then steals her luck. Police looks at the photos, in hopes of finding the owner, comes to question her, she runs away, jumps out a window, but "miraculously" survives, but both her face and reputation (everything she's been living for) are ruined. It's the only time a "target" has survived, and for her surviving was the worst punishment. And so, so satisfying!
There's a specific subset of Fates Worse Than Death that I feel you didn't give much coverage to, but is actually really important: *The Kid-Friendly Revenge Story.* A character who has their entire family slaughtered by the bad guy? Dark. However, a quest to defeat the guy who turned your entire family into stone statues because doing so will free that village from their fate? All the drama of a revenge story, but it makes your main character heroic along with a happy ending when it's over!
A happy ending, that is, until the fridge horror kicks in, when you realize that the hero, who has spent so much time questing and developing as a character, would then return to his town and his previous normal boring life, where no one has changed because they were all stone. And the hero tries to relate to his old friends, but both parties realize how much the hero has changed, and they don’t laugh about the same stuff anymore, or understand the references he makes. And the hero tries to make new friends, but they all only see him as the hero who saved the village, and don’t actually see him for who he is anymore. And the hero tries to live at home again, but after the freedom and peril of adventuring, milking cows and tilling soil just isn’t cutting it anymore. So the adventurer exiles himself from the town he saved, to find someplace new to live in, if there is such a place...
Not only that but his wife/mother commits suicide after learning it and that's after learning it that he himself gouges his eyes out and then goes on a pilgrimage to try to redeem himself, with only his daughter (who is also his sister but really I shouldn't have to mention that and the fact I did makes me question myself) going on with him until he finally finds his resting place and respite at long last. I had studied Oedipus Rex back in high school for an entire year (I didn't "study" the rest of the trilogy per se, but I pretty much had to read and analyze them to really go beyond just basic stuff) and it was genuinely depressing. As in, seriously, seeing the rise and fall of this guy was extremely harsh at some points, and the worst is how completely undeserved everything was, he was punished for a crime he didn't know he did (he did kill a man but he didn't know it was his father and he only did it after exiling himself by fear of killing his adoptive father and because he had little choice in this circumstances. This story is legitimately cruel when you take it in it's entirety, the gouging eyes part is nowhere near the worst in it, the psychological torture is much much worse)
@@theinquisitorisamage1653 I wouldn't include Medusa, mostly because the myth you're thinking of is a "new" version of the myth primarily promoted by a man known for warping myths to make the gods look much worse than most of them already were. Medusa was originally born a monster, hence why she has two sisters that are also monsters that were never mentioned in the version of the myth you're referring to for obvious reasons. IDK, I know there really isn't a "true" version of any myth, I just can't stand that this one is so popular because not only is it extra icky, but everyone except for Poseidon acts extremely out of character compared to literally every other characterization of them not codified by this one bitter man. Seriously, outside of the version of Aracne which this man also wrote down, it is super out of character for Athena to act the way that she did. Why would a Goddess that made a point of helping women and who already disliked Poseidon blame the woman in the situation and not Poseidon? It just doesn't fit, and the thing about Medusa being born one of three monster sisters? I just can't get preferring a version of the myth that isn't accurate to the codified characterizations that existed before it. There isn't even any earlier references to it, which really makes it feel like he made it up as a middle finger to Athenian society (which exiled him btw and may be why he likes to hate on Athena in his myths). It hurts my soul that *this* is the most popular version of that myth.
I un-ironically think JoJo's bizzare adventure does the fate worse than death trope really well, only 3 main villains have technically died. Two villains are dying constantly over and over again, and another one has an ability that makes him completely invulnerable but he's trapped at the bottom of a lake and can't move so he's constantly drowning and at one point just stops thinking
I absolutely love so much about Jojo, but that is one large, scalding criticism I have about it. Like, it actually makes me dislike Josuke for how often he does it to enemy stand users. Hypocrite.
@@RacingSnails64 I wouldn't mind if Joske had just said "death is too good for you Angelo." But instead he acted like turning him into a rock forever was more moral than killing him.
A fate worse than death? Try that one moment when you're trying to sleep but you're kept awake by all the embarrassing stuff you did in the past that you can't forget. Forever.
I STRONGLY DISAGREE! Being as famous as I am on TH-cam, I know that it gets hard to read every comment I get. I try my best, but I am just so famous, that I can't do it much longer. Sorry, dear drew
In the background I could only imagine the sound of Earth Bet's atmosphere rushing either into space or into the giant trenches that Scion\Zion\Warrior blasted into it. Talking about Worm, of course.
*standing with an aggravated expression while the author and audience play poker with their fate* "Wow, you're _so_ evil can we just skip ahead?" "Who knows what horrible-yet-basically-fixable thigns they're doing to him in there?" I am loving this episode's deadpan blonde hero.
i think what’s missed here is the effect these fates can have on an audience. someone getting shot and killed? okay, they’re dead, that’s that. someone gets their organs scrambled by a monster from beyond understanding, leaving them a barey living meat pile? they’re still out of the story, but now the audience has to confront the idea of what that kind of existence is like, leaving them with something unsettling to consider.
Imagine: A story where the traumatized main character sends the main villain to some kind of torture dimension/infinite pain cycle, only for the main villain to somehow come back, mentally scarred and ready to take ruthless vengeance against the "cruel" heroes who sent them there. The more morally grey the better. Have fun filling in the blanks.
Honestly fuck heroes who do that shit tbh. You get off that moral high horse about killing really quickly to condemn them to a fate worse than death. People’s desires to not spill blood and their weakness can lead to horrifying things in both fiction and reality. Example of a fictional fate worse than death that is justified by not being death is Dragon Age’s tranquility. No emotion, no magic, just a vegetable that speaks in a dull monotone, you have free will but rarely actually use it. Templar’s and Mages both abuse you, but for different reasons. Mage who escaped to see her mother: Please Sera! Don’t make me tranquil. I’ll do anything! Ser Alrik: Yes when you’re tranquil you’ll do... anything we ask.
In the sequel, he literally reaches out, picks up the main villain, and takes him up to the sky, presumably to experience some horrible fate, as the other characters watch in fear. George of the Jungle is weird, man.
Aragorn: Then what do you fear my lady? Eowyn: A cage. To spend my life behind bars until use and old age accept them, and valor has gone beyond thought or desire.
"They typically end up with some kind of angst, righteous anger or a few sexy scars if the writer is into that." I feel... very singled out by that last one
Paused the video right before this moment when i delved the comments, clicked play again when i saw this comment and was left with red saying the thing i just read
I can’t believe she didn’t mention how many fates worse than death there are in Greek myth, Prometheus having his liver riped out every day just for it to grow back for tomorrow, Atlas having to hold up the sky for all eternity, Sisyphus having to role a Boulder up a hill again for all eternity, for gods I guess since dying is kinda difficult they just have them in permanent torment to get the point across.
Atlas holding up the sky is treated more as an annoyance than a fate worse than death, but everything else you're spot. Hell Midas could also be considered for this if you view it on the emotional spectrum.
@@Kage-pm6qi your probably right about Atlas, I’m probably just thinking of how it’s treated as the most excruciating thing imaginable in the Percy Jackson books, oh Echo is another one since she can’t die or communicate with anyone outside of repeat what they say.
When looking is Sisyphus and Tantalus, technically they DID die and they're just suffering in a pocket-sized-Hell. Atlas is kinda just doing community service since if he lets go the sky will crush everything flat. Prometheus' punishment happened because Zeus is a dick...but then again, we all knew that.
Wait no, literally would just mean that he’s just a giant dick that shots lighting at random things and sometimes people.... actually never mind. That kinda does sound like Zeus if you replace shots lighting at with fuck’s. Especially people.
One of my favorite "fates worse than death" is the reveal that the character was *always* screwed up physically. A character in the book I'm writing believed they were born as a satyr, and later on its revealed that they were a human who had hooves melded into their feet and antlers driven into their skull.
I kinda like doing this sort of thing via time travel nonsense. There's a weapon in my story (a wyrd, a type of indestructible item with no defined time of origin, not all of which are weapons, and each wyrd has unique effects) that causes any injuries it inflicts to exist retroactively. If you break someone's hand with it, they were born with a broken hand that mysteriously never heals, and ironically only by being hit with the weapon that inflicted the injury in the first place can they start to heal from it. The weapon can't be used to kill someone as they would have never existed to be killed by the weapon and would thus create a paradox, so the threads of fate itself conspire to prevent this except where it's baked in and would be a paradox not to happen. There's a character with healing blood who suffers from this, they've been horribly injured their whole life, a massive hole through their chest, there is no logical reason they should survive, they should have died from missing organs or blood loss or infection or any number of things, and they've spent their whole life suffering and wanting to die, but the inevitability of fate forces them to live on. Their healing blood is used by the ruling class, and they're kept alive in this state of perpetual suffering, until one of the ruling class eventually defects, and gives them the wyrd, which they immediately use to end their own life, retroactively causing their own injury that they had suffered from in perpetuity, but at least they finally get to die from it now.
@@gionathancurry The mustache is the source of his power. Therefore, he must never shave. He's Samson, but with facial hair instead of the stuff on top of your head.
@@kingarthurthe5th good point .... But wow that's really heavy to think about I saw more than one animatic of Lars straight up trying to kill himself, and not always succeeding bc he outlived all his loved ones
@@lemmetalkaboutthis He could probably just take his ship into a star... But yeah it's kinda sad to think about it. Though since his crew is all gems, he'll have someone to keep him company. Unlike spinel in the garden.
Fate worse than death: Being forever trapped in a room, with nothing but the TH-cam Trends to watch. The occasional good video will give you hope just to get punched in the gut once more.
Sounds like the christmas special punishment from black mirror Stuck in a room for 4 million years unable to sleep listening to the same christmas song which gets loaded when you break the radio
Honestly, in modern days YT trending has kind of got it’s act together a bit more. As long as you can choose what you watch and don’t mind Minecraft videos, story time animations, and Mr Beast it’s honestly not that bad
Side note, I feel like “being horribly mamed physically” should’ve been mentioned in the body horror side of the sliding scale, as that’s more applicable to stories set in realistic settings, there’s nothing quite like the idea that the story might subject a character to something like an ACID ATTACK, or losing several limbs, ect
She actually mentioned that in the part about I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Well, more like implied. The narrator becomes essentially a big sentient turd that constantly secretes some unknown substance through his pores, he no longer has any limbs, his mouth is gone. It combines physical bodily horror and psychological horror.
@@mellemadswoestenburg1296 I mean those definitely fall into extreme maiming. The commenter mentioned specifically acid attacks and amputation. Amputation is pretty rare as the sole fate and honestly isn’t that horrible physically compared to the other things. The most fucked up thing about amputation fates is often the mental issues that come with it. Amputation technically was part of the horror in tusk, but honestly the guy being convinced he’s genuinely a walrus comes second to the fact he’s missing both legs for me. Like they definitely could get him out of the meat suit and try and help him live with his physical state. But the fact he genuinely believes he’s an animal is infinitely more fucked up.
@@anadaere6861 nah, humbug, Diavolo's punishment is one of the worst, he essentially becomes fan fiction. "As long as he will be dying one way or another, everything is canon (in his infinite dying, but will never die because of GER's Effect, cancelling The result of a process, making Diavolo's stuck in the process of dying but never die as the result)". Even people in TH-cam starts to add salt and insult to his injury, so considering his pride, attitude and behavior, plus some "better if I don't know" messed up plan of people to inflict upon him, it's painful is over 9000.
@@salamanderred8148 there can be a ending where he literally dies of cringe there can be an ending where he does to paper it is basically eternal suffering
Mayuri from Bleach. I forget which fight, but it was during the Arrancar arc, where Chad and Ishida are getting kicked by some Scientist dude. Mayuri shows up, does some badass shit, poisons the other guy so he experiences every agonizing second in hyper slow-time, slowly drives his sword through the other guy's hand into his heart, while doing a deep speech. Then slowly pulls it back out with "I'll be back later to stab you again" Absolutely terrible.
The main thing that comes to mind when I think of this is Diavolo in Jojo’s bizzare adventure. I don’t care how evil someone is I would never do that to someone. He was by no means a good person but a death loop for all eternity, that’s just fucked
Can't use Epitaph because GER reduced his willpower to Zero. Can't get numb because GER returns his experience (not his pain) to zero. People say that also means he can also live a fulfilling life but he'll only be there for the "end" of it so that still sucks
@@RandomL0s3r The fun thing is: The fact that Diavolo will die of any way possible in any situation possible makes it so a little mention in a fanwork of Diavolo's head being cut off makes it canon-compliant.
It honestly really soured me on Giorno. Same for Josuke. They both seem like such disgusting hypocrites for those kinds of acts. It's the kind of thing a VILLAIN would do. And I'm supposed to cheer when *heroes* do it? No, they just look disgusting for it. Like Red said at 5:35.
Notes that I’ve taken from this to make the fate worse than death more interesting: - Make the fate matter to the plot, not just the character. - Make the character more than grumpy, make them flavorful, colorful, and give more personality. - Actually dive into the psychological trauma instead of just brushing it off. - Allow it be a fate worse than death but don’t make it functionally death. Allow interaction. - Consistency. - If it’s for revenge, make sure it’s not only from one place or one emotion. The reason I took notes? *I’m a sucker for this trope, and I wanna make it good if I write it myself.*
I used that one for my own character. And during the story, it's still happening. The reason it's happening? None. What? You expected the world to be FAIR!?
I had that as my old OC's nightmare. Tried my best at 13yo to describe every single friend, family, acquaintance and mentor die in horribly painful and shocking ways. At least the baby cousin happened quickly... I was a very edgy 13yo.
Oh yea, my personal fav of that branch of fates worse than death is the ‘loved ones are now irreparably mentally broken’ type deal. You get so much angst it’s almost mind-blowing how much hurt you can pull from a character by just having them be alone with the shattered soul of their best friend, or friends if you really wanna get some catharsis out of it. Love interests invoke the most angst, followed by parents and teammates.
One of my favorite examples of this trope is Porky at the end of Mother 3. He's immortal, but could be killed by injuries, so he seals himself inside the absolutely safe capsule. It's impossible to harm, both from the outside and inside. He's just stuck there, sitting completely immobile, for eternity. The ultimate solitary confinement.
I think one of my favorite examples of this trope is Gehrman from Bloodborne. Cursed to endure an endless cycle of bloodshed from the nightmarish beasts that roam the land, cut off from his cherished allies, and yet again and again he helps those who would join the Hunt. It absolutely broke my heart when I heard the old gentleman reduced to a sobbing mess. Sure, in the end you can choose to fight and free him from his curse(something he offers you once your task is complete), yet in the end you simply end up taking his place. I know picking something from any From Software game is low-hanging fruit, but at the same time the writing in their games is just phenomenal
You missed something important: there are stories in which a key element is how characters interact with people experiencing fates worse than death. The example I will put forward is the short story The One's Who Walk Away from Omelas. It has no named characters but instead focuses on a society that prospers off of a terrible bargain that leaves one single child in perpetual torment - perhaps a "fate worse than death", although it is not called such. The story requires the torment to be persistent and possibly reversible because the question to the reader is whether this beautiful society should persist at the expense of one child's pain. There are other examples for which the "fate worse than death" is a central element with another common moral question being whether a character should release a friend from a "fate worse than death" by killing them. This is an effective way to give a character very heavy emotional baggage and I know some stories which deal with it well, although it is fraught.
One of my D&D characters gained the power to change the physical form of any entity within a 100m radius. As soon as he got this power, he went to a city where an assassin who had killed his friend lived. He turned the assassin into a moaning pile of flesh that had no mind and could only feel the worst pain possible. My character carried him around just so that he could listen to the assassin scream in agony. I think I need a therapist.
Being immortal, eating but never being sated, never being able to sleep. Those three things to me alone are a fate worse than death, god forbid all three.
@Super Greyflash imagine everyone you love dying of old age and disease, imagine having to bury your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Imagine losing all connection with humanity on an emotional and psychological level. Imagine being trapped on a world of the dying and the dead, while only YOU live. Being trapped in an existence of temporary consequences and temporary people, while you are forever. What is that if not hell?
Fun fact: I actually had an existential crisis triggered around this trope, from Aladdin 2 of all things. Jafar has a line about how "there are things so much worse than death" and I asked out loud "really??" And my older cousin nearby said "Yep."
Same here. I had a hard time believing that as a kid, though (“How could anything _possibly_ be worse than dying?”), so I just chalked it up to Jafar being his typical nasty self.
I got legitimate chills from watching the end of the Twilight Zone episode "On Thursday We Leave for Home", wherein the main character doesn't just end up with a fate worse than death laid upon him... it was his own, completely-avoidable choice that he didn't think through.
As a child, I was taught that when you die you just dissappear "like the flame of a candle", so it was really never something that affected me more than *big sad :'(* On the flip side, everytime any cartoon or anime had their villians trapped alive in another dimension or something of the sort, now THAT gave me the chills.
"Genies can't kill, but you'd be surprised at what you can live through" is such a terrifying line, it's hard to believe it comes from a direct-to-DVD Disney sequel.
7:02 Oof, that reminds me that there are actual people with chronic pain, fatigue and mental coma. I wonder how they feel with such scenes in films/books.
Same with people who experience anything that a character experiences in fiction. A soldier with PTSD is likely going to respond in a similar fashion of a awakened coma patient. Of course it changes per person but still, the usual reaction is negative.
As someone with a lot of chronic diseases/disabilities (sorry to those who experience these things in other ways)... the sad reality is that you eventually just get used to them. Perhaps a lot of this stems from me having had them for pretty much my entire life (thus not really "knowing" an existence without them), but it's still a pretty interesting subject. I know a lot of public figures with various diseases/disabilities get a lot of "oh no, that must be so horrible to live with"-kind of sympathy (which I do too), but the interesting reality is that; "no, it really isn't". You simply adapt... some things become extra chores (like medication, etc.), others become acceptance that you aren't the same way as everyone else, but in the end, even the most "horrifying" things in the general populace's eyes will eventually just become a routine part of your life.
@@NuckElBerg I've had problems with my teeth for 6 years, coming from the fact that I grind them together when I sleep, so they have gotten chipped, cavities have formed and my gums have gotten infected a few times, so now that I see something happening to fictional characters' mouths, specifically their teeth it makes me cringe really, really hard
@@eVill420 yea i dont get triggered easily but one thing that makes me feel nervous is any scene of a kid being groomed, or anything related to assault. also any scene of someone screaming cuz their horse is bolting. cuz i know how all of it feels and it’s terrifying
There's a movie called Johnny Got His Gun about a WWI soldier hit by an artillery shell, losing his sight, speech, hearing and I believe losing his limbs as well. He's trapped inside of his body with an intact mind and memory. My mom went through something similar, she had a TBI and became paralyzed but her brain was mostly unaffected. Luckily she said her body somehow shielded her from being crystal clear aware of what was happening until she regained her speech and some movement, but I've always thought that would be a fate worse than death. Fun fact: the song "One" by Metallica is based on that movie.
I can think of a couple examples: - Freezing in outer space - Stranded at the bottom of a river - Having your soul trapped in a doll - Becoming fused with a rock - Becoming fused with a book - Dragged to hell by a thousand hands - Being tormented by malevolent spirits and losing your mind - People dancing while you’re being tortured - Becoming a tortoise - Being forced to relive different deaths over and over - Eternal drowning in a lake - Infinitely spun - Slowly turning into stone
One of my favorite uses of this is “the mind wipe” which you briefly touched on but the main character does get completely brain wiped/controlled and the side cast spends a season/arc with the previous MC as the antagonist until they get a Mac huff in or something to change it back. Great dram and creates tons of interesting dynamics
The irony of a fate worse than death being used as the “moral” alternative to killing is so funny
So many of the no lethal endings for Dishonored are....rough
@@jen.kj7 Oh I'm think about in JJBA where they put a man in a rock forever, fully conscience and specifically point out they are being better than the guy because they aren't killing him lol (he was a POS though)
Naughty babies get put in *the twelth plane of torment* to attone for their sins
@@mdg245 I can't say I feel a whole lot of pity for Angelo getting rock'ed, but yea, to say that's more moral than killing him is silly.
This is why I love playing Paragon Shepard in Mass Effect a lot of the time, because he doesn't kill people, he just forces them to suffer in penance, which is arguably more satisfying. :)
Essentially...
Writer: *slaps character*, this one can fit so much suffering-
I don't know why and I don't know how, but I can _feel_ this comment
LOL
Yes. Yes. This is amazingly correct.
I feel personally attacked.
I have rarely laid eyes on a summary this accurate.
Zuko: if we're found in the earth kingdom, we'll be killed
Iroh: and if we're found in the fire nation, we'll be turned over to alzula
Zuko: earth kingdom it is
Yeet
Heh yeeeeeaaahh she craaaaaazzy
No fate could be worse than that.
*Realizes that someone could watch Mario and Sonic making out for the rest of their lives*
Wait a minu-
@@master0fthearts894 you ever watch little Nicky
"Well maybe not that horrible but still pretty bad"
@@master0fthearts894 hot
“If you kill off the hero what will you do for the next season? Try and sell us on a new protagonist?”
JoJo: Yes.
There's no way that can work 8 times can it?
Jojo: Try me.
You thought you were getting a new villain, but it was me Dio
*What you're seeing is indeed the truth. You are seeing the movements created by your abilities, but you will never arrive at the truth that's going to happen. None who stand before me shall ever get there, regardless of their abilities. This is the power of Gold Experience Requiem.*
And it keeps working.
diavolo
Would Ozai losing his firebending and being replaced as Fire Lord by Zuko, thus watching Zuko undo the past 100 years of Fire Nation imperialism be a fate worse than death for him? I think it would, personally
Definitely. Ozai was a huge narcissist, and he had his inflated ego obliterated in the finale. Living as someone powerless while watching everything he'd done be undone would definitely be worse than death for him.
@@zoro115-s6b think they could rub salt into the wounds by informing him before the exile that they were going to write him out of the history books?
@@zoro115-s6b
For _him,_ yes, but the reality facing Zuko and the rest of the world is that by leaving Ozai alive you run the risk of loyalists dissatisfied with Zuko's attempts at reform (because Muh Imperialism) resolving to, you know, kill him and reinstate Ozai.
For Prince Zuko to secure his reign as Fire Lord and be able to reform the Fire Nation to try and initiate a lasting peace, Ozai would have to have been killed.
@@Boss_Isaac spoiler: that's.... Exactly what happened in The Search comic trilogy.
@@gatsynogim
Exactly, and those events are evident of just how short-sighted Aang (and by extension Bryke) was in his deciding to leave Ozai alive.
Why Bryke couldn't depict the four nations coming together to form an international tribunal that has Ozai placed on trial and reasonably slated for execution? I don't know.
"You can't kill me, genies can't kill anyone!"
"True, but you'd be surprised what you can live through..." - Aladdin: Return of Jafar
holy shit, a disney executive approved that line
Earlier in the film, Jafar's intended worse-than-death fate for Aladdin was framing him for assassination and having him condemned to death by "Jasmine" (actually Jafar in disguise) so he doesn't JUST die, he dies in emotional distress. Only a last-second save from the just-freed Genie prevented that plan from succeeding.
@@kimarous and don't forget, the premise of the film is exploring the ramifications of Jafar's own worse than death punishment at the end of the first movie and it ends with Jafar's actual death. Like Red said, dying with extra steps!
I was actually about to comment that. XD One of my favourite disney quotes
@@toongrowner1 yeah how many Disney villains die just off screen with maybe some hints toward that. Scar for sure. There's no way the hyenas left him alive but, if I recall, the shot cuts away right before they dig in.
I don't know if it was still canon but isn't Zira from Lion King 2 specifically Scar's WilIDOW.
This time on Trope Talk: Fate worse than Death
Last time: Magnificent Bastards
Last last time: Tragedy
Last last last time: Greatest Fears
Ummm are you okay Red?
*Edit: Ummm are you okay Patreons who requested these?
It’s the pandemmy it’s getting to the best of us😭😁
YEEET
Haha lol thats true
It’s been a tiring year.
Probably not. And most of these video weren't exactly her best work. Something tells me the sleep deprivation is taking its toll.
People say Osai should've died, but the ego bruising of having to live with the knowledge that a 12-year-old and only surviving member of a culture he genocided took all of his power away is honestly more satisfying. Death spares Osai from being humiliated; dying at the climax means he won't be around to experience his downfall.
On the flip side, this is why I'm kinda annoyed with redemption equals death. Honey, you don't get to just peace out to the afterlife instead of helping to fix the stuff you did. Spoilers for She-Ra: although it's not framed that way directly in-story, it's quite clear that part of the intention with Catra surviving is that she gets to finally take responsibility for herself once in her life. Especially compared To Shadow Weaver, who carefully made sure that she dies doing the one arguably good thing she did in her entire life (and bragging about it while doing it), even more cementing her as The Worst(tm)
It was also pretty cathartic seeing how pathetic he was
Yes but he was just so strong that if Aang didn't get last minute turtle power then Osai could just break out of prison even if he was beaten within an inch of his life.
Killing the villain is more about protecting the innocent at times cause Joker surely isn't stopping blowing up hospitals in the future just cause B man beat him.
@@reddytoplay9188 Counterpoint: Aang controls all four elements. Osai can only bend fire. Water puts out fire. Boo hoo for Osai.
@Tuesday's Art Counterpoint: Never stopped the firebenders from beating the waterbenders.
Alternate trope name: "I can't believe it's NOT death!" *insert tub of butter with trope name on label here.
Thanks, I hate it!
I'll take your entire stock
My money got impatient so each bill and coin sprouted legs and walked themselves to the cash register
this made me laugh more than it had any right to XD
... what if I eat it
I love how small Red is in that armchair. She looks like she would have to climb it by putting her arms on the seat like a child or go fetch a stool and ask Blue to take it away so she can start recording.
That's so true LMFAO
Or yeet it out of frame every time
I never noticed that! x'D
It really adds to the cuteness of her whole style,huh?
Or jump a bit or lift herself a bit with her arms while backwards
"You can't just kill off your main character, what is the author going to do for the next season, make an entirely new character?"
Hirohiko Araki "Watch me"
Pucci: Interesting....
Tooru: *vibing*
Poor Jonathan.
@@gregcourtney7717 poor Jolyne
@@cybernubmaster988 though it wasn't his part, poor Jotaro.
@@gregcourtney7717 Fair
At one point, my step dad was watching Yu-Gi-Oh and 7 year old me happened to be on the couch and just started watching it without saying anything. Then my parents realized that they could now say they'd send me to the shadow realm to get me to behave
😂😂😂💀💀
Sure, but you won't do it in easily *unloads deck box
@@MVAS-mp9oo what if your parents are running hands traps, link monsters and all that shit
Looks like your going to shadow realm Jimbo
@@Zer0billion Oh, it’s just down the street, next to the Chik-fil-a :)
“I *said* the hero is in *DEADLY DANGER.”*
“And *I* said *PROVE IT.”*
10/10 dialogue right there. Take notes, writers.
THIS
they'll make you regret saying that
"no one is intrinsic to the success of an operation; any one can be replaced"
"the operation does not depend on any one individual, any one can be lost"
This applies to military command structure but I think it could work well for stories (Ans so does George R.R. Martin apparently).
The 3rd Mister Miracle. Trapped in the Omega Sanction. Groundhog Day + Final Destination (Gets worse after each death). Was not resolve/retconned until 2018 in another persons comic. Been there for a while after Final Crisis so 2009 or 2010. That's 9~8 years of endlessly looping, worsening, deaths.
@@henrypaleveda7760 Bold of them to assume "the operation" is what the audience cares about, rather than the characters we're emotionally invested in.
@@woodfur00 I dunno... suppose the operation is "kill John Egbert (again)"?
"Kars never returned to the Earth. He became half-mineral, half-animal and drifted forever through space. And though he wished for death, he was unable to die. So eventually, Kars stopped thinking."
YEEET
Something something Diavolo something
truly the fate worse than death
@@dysfunctionalcaterpillar790 Valentine being yeeted across the multiverse by the infinite spin
That guy Josuke fused with a rock.
I laughed when Red said that "fates worse than death" are often used to be more "kid friendly" because it immediately made me think of Star Wars Rebels. One villain states that "there are some things far more frightening than death" and then just lets himself die.
And ironically in the end he still gets his own fate worse than death in the comics.
I was more impressed when it was uttered in the eternal Disney classic “The Return of Jafar”: (After someone brings up that genies are forbidden from killing anyone) “You’d be surprised what you can live through.”
It was all the more terrifying because of how ridiculous the rest of the movie was.
He was also (spoilers) implied to be talking about having to face *Darth Vader* and report that he failed at what is basically his one job.
Yeah, I’d probably go for the quick death, too.
I mean to be fair having to confront Vader with news that you failed is definitely a fate worse than death
Still really wish he stuck around. Dude was way more interesting and threatening than the other inquisitors
The absolutely safe capsule from Mother 3 is the most interesting version of this I've ever seen.
Porky traps himself inside a capsule that is, for all intents and purposes, absolutely safe; nothing you do can even scratch it.
The catch? It's absolutely safe both ways. Nothing can get in, and nothing can get out. All Porky can do is watch the universe turn until the end of time.
Definitely deserving after he inflicted a Darth Vader style fate worse than death on Klaus. The best part is that it was entirely on him. It's not even something he caused someone else to do to him, he did it entirely and completely himself.
Wouldn't he just starve eventually? Or drown in his own piss?
@@Alex_7899 from what i know, he is mounted on a life support stiyle machine that garantees his life will continue, inside the safe capsule, which keeps him essentially feed and hydrated, unless the machine is broken or dagamed to a irreparable end.
so being as hes connected to an inmortality machine, inside of a perfectly safe "room", where nothing can break the machine, not even himself, means he will live on until the universe ends, and only he exists, inside his pod.
the thing is that maybe he's finally content inside it, since all he wanted was to be all alone in the world
@@Alex_7899 Nope. Man is basically immortal on his own, having existed before the recorded history in Mother 3, and the Absolutely Safe Capsule is completely and absolutely safe. No starving, no drowning, nothing can harm him, external or internal. The specifics obviously aren't completely described, but the writer intended that fate for him so trying to logic it really does nothing.
Fate worst than death: Being forced to read the comment section on a politics video.
Mood
YEEET
Oh yes.
My god...
Overly political people are like the epitome of toxicity
Red: “if you kill off the hero what are you gonna do next season? Try and sell us on some other protagonist?”
Jojo: *sweating*
Avatar Series: *[sweating]*
Life is Strange series: “Wait, is that supposed to be a problem?”
Dragon Ball is the opposite
Batwoman: "Hold my wig."
Doctor Who: Yes but actually no
Jojo is probably one of the only series that ever got away with this. And that's, I think, because it established really early on that the protagonist wasn't sacred, and could be replaced. It created a very solid Hero's Journey, wrapped it up, and ended that story with the original Jojo's death. From there, it stuck with that formula, ironically minus the protagonist killing part. (Except with Stone Ocean, where all bets were officially off; it was also, personally, the part with the weakest resolution). The series as a whole was less one character's story, and more of a dynastic tale. A "Jojo Cycle", if you will.
Every other Shonen series hewed very close to the idea that the specific protagonist introduced at the start of the story was the main character of the whole thing. Meaning they marry themselves to that protagonist, and need to keep dragging them back in. Even when the character has become so powerful that escalation starts to lose all meaning. Or when you get the impression that the writer finds their protagonist the least interesting character to write about in an ensemble cast.
Now all we need is the spiritual twin: the tragic backstory
Hienz Dufenshmirtz is building a tragic backstory rememberinator
I need this!!
Or do it RIGHT before the charecter the bites it.
Hachamachamaaa!
It's a trope that needs discussing. Particularly how overused it is. These days it seems like writers can't think of any character motivation that doesn't involve dead parents or burned down villages or spending years as a slave or some similar over the top tragedy.
It's very rare to see a hero that has a decent home to go to and could live a quiet life if they wanted to, but actually actively chooses adventure.
This made me realize that almost everyone in hollow knight is experiencing the far end of the spectrum of fate worse then death and that is terrifying to think about
At first I thought "hey the NPCs dont seem to be suffering that much" then I remembered the infected enemies
@@rurihime4965 At least in the ending where you kill the radiance you stop the infection
Same for Dark Souls. Nearly every character would rather die than become Hollow, which is ironically tragic as they can't even die as Undead. Come to think of it, Dark Souls is definitely on the far end of the spectrum for this trope.
@@vivalaglavii6736 It depends on what ending you've got. There isn't one ''true ending'' in hollow knight
@@issovaidaumtrabaaaaaalho8987 Hence why I specified the ending where you slay the Radiance
Me: _tries to watch video about fates worse than death_
My characters: "Oh, no you don't."
My most liked Worst than death thing in fiction is the becoming a living statue in 40K.
It is a favorite among the Dark Eldar where you are stuck in place, you are able to hear, see and feel but you can't move you can't speak and most importantly you can't age, you are stuck like that for untold Centuries being gaucked at by the Dark Eldar.
@@forickgrimaldus8301 You will also be subjected to CBT for eternity as every dark eldar that passes hits said statue in the groin with a blunt object, but never hard enough to damage the statue so that can keep doing so, you are unable to move, unable to scream, your fate is just an eternity of being smacked lightly in the nuts by filthy xenos for their amusement.
I had an Idea for someone who experiences every possible outcome from a set of decisions made in one day, and they are experiencing all of the effects as they trickle down, (think like someone living in several realities at once), what do you think?
Oh I can totally imagine my characters being like, "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO IT WAS BAD ENOUGH LAST TIME YOU WATCHED A TROPE TALK-"
For reference material, Worm by Wildbow. At first in that universe death is often kinder than the other options and then overtime it starts to look like the best option.
The fact that this is the “kid friendly” option is fucking horrifying. Cuz the most awful/intriguing ends are always these ones. 😂👌
**has childhood flashbacks of crying about villains not being killed** (o_o;;)
At Malaysia, the only cartoon movie that could think of that use this trope is "Geng: Adventure Begin!" After that, the rest of cartoon movie go full on kill off the enemy (even though our superhero is like same age and way more powerful then Aang) or sent to prison( Watch Ejen Ali movie for that one)
I remember Mark Hamill saying that the way the Joker's gas works in Batman TAS was made to circumvent rules about killing in kids' shows, and how he actually considered it a fate worse than death.
@@Eyewarp Yeah they were forced to laugh themselves into a coma while their face was contorted into a horrifying grin, but at least little Timmy didn't see any blood that he probably has seen if he ever scraped his knee
*looks at Porky Minch in Mother 3*
Apparently Porky was originally supposed to die in that game, but they thought that was too dark for a kids game and instead decided to trap him inside of a pod for the rest of the universe
Underrated example from my childhood:
In Animorphs, David gets trapped by the protagonists while in a rat's body. If anyone stays in a morph too long they stay that way forever. So he ends up stranded on an island as a rat with his consciousness and memories intact
They get called on it, too. The second time he gets stuck in rat he basically begs Rachel to mercy kill him.
Man animorphs is really f*cked up
Oh, man, I adored that series! I collected almost the entire main series (only missing about 6), and all of the specials/off-shoots. I've saved them for my nibblings for when they're old enough, because, yeah. There is some _seriously_ dark subject matter in those books. Tobias himself is a good example. Or the fact that these are kids fighting a war and getting torn apart, morph back to heal, then morph back to animal just to get torn apart again. When you think about it, it's really horrifying. Still a fantastic series with excellent writing and great lessons, just for slightly more mature kids.
@@dorabrooks76 Sometimes stuff that seems dark and scary from your childhood, when you come back to it years later, turns out to have been pretty tame. You might have added a lot to it in your mind, it might have just struck a chord in your preadolescent mind.
I've been rereading the Animorphs (KAA actually put out the whole series in eformat for free toward the start of the pandemic) and I can confirm: Animorphs is not one of those things.
Even the "basic" danger they're dealing with--alien brain-parasites that control human bodies while they watch helpless to act, imprisoned inside their own minds while the slug can read their thoughts and memories, letting it pass itself off as its host to their very closest friends and loved ones--is some grade-A nightmare fuel that qualifies for this trope talk. It's seen as such in-universe, too; not only do all our protagonists agree that death is preferable to being taken, one of the books lets us see into the place where the hosts are kept, and we see a nameless background character try to escape, get recaptured, and cry about why they wouldn't just kill him.
Y'know. For kids!
@@wppb50 Absolutely agree. It certainly struck a chord, but I've also re-read them as an adult and things were as I remembered- horrifying, yet strangely fascinating with engaging characters. Maybe it's like how it's hard not to look at an accident? Part of you doesn't want to look, yet if you see it, you can't help but continue looking?
Somehow they never gave me nightmares. I was a precocious child who grew up on Goosebumps, so maybe that helped?
I think they're recommended for kids 9-12, which is interesting. I think on the lower end of that age group some of the less obvious existential horrors would go over their heads (unless the child is precocious, of course), in the middle range they'd start to understand, whereas at the higher end I think most kids would get it- both all the horror and the commentary.
I remember really liking the balance of scary/horrific and humour as a kid (I started reading them around age 11). I didn't care that they were recommended for "younger" kids and continued reading them until the series finished being published. I was too attached to the characters! There's stuff you catch on a second or third read, too.
I think of Animorphs as a more mature Goosebumps. I started reading Goosebumps well before the recommended age, so the transition was natural for me. I've saved them and will let my niece and nephew read them when they're older _if_ I think they're ready- certainly don't want to give my sister's kids nightmares! Lol
Thanks for letting me know they've been released for free! That's fantastic! My current favourite author (Michelle Sagara West) has been releasing her short stories for free, too, for the same reason. What a treat! 😉😁
3:34 Fire Lord: Relax Zuko, *this will be great character development.* * burns half his son's face off and banishes him *
Fates worse than death:
Every censored death in 4kids dubs because they all stick someone somewhere for eternity because kids don't have much of a grasp on how terrifying that would be.
Nah as a kid I definitely thought the Shadow Realm was worse than just dying
Im of the oppinion that the Shadow Realm was actually a good change. Its way more terrifying than dying. Dying is doing the villian a favor if you ask me
As an adult learning what the Shadow Realm was a substitute for, I was like "Wait, that's it? They don't get sent to a place of eternal torment of various flavors? They're just killed? Lame." I'm thinking of your soul getting trapped in a card and being on fire, that weird graveyard thing, having your mind shattered, losing it, and those are all badass horrible fates bad enough to be nightmare fuel. Dying, though? That's basically vanilla.
@@kyrudo I mean sure it’s cooler but if their goal was to not scare kids. It had the opposite effect XD
I think an eternity of having to eat broccoli or asparagus in a vegetable world for eternity would be terrifying to most kids.
“...By the end of that story he’s got no mouth, and you’d better believe he’s gotta scream”
When I saw the title of the video, that game was the first thing that came to mind.
@@torinsmith9867 Game? Isn't it a book?
I mean, I guess it might have been adapted as a game, I don't know.
@@Rawilow both
@@Rawilow First a book, second a game.
Actually in latinamerica we know more the game that the book because the translation of the book to spanish was realy bad.
fulanito rodriguez Believe me , the book was horrific. I wanted to burn the author. I believe it was Harlan Ellison.
Words heard moments before disaster: "It's for character development, I swear."
I like the idea of someone on a big team experiencing a horrific permanent fate worse than death, but can still help the team in some way.
“You’ll be co-working in security wit-“
“What on earth is THAT!?”
“Hey, that’s Shelly, she got turned into a sentient mass of goo, so we’ve stuck her in surveillance to monitor the place”
“Is she… alright with that?”
“Well, we stuck fridge magnets to her which she can move to communicate and she seems okay with it, generally speaking. Her favourite food is animal crackers and she enjoys trying to fit into different test tubes, Have fun!
That is simultaneously uplifting and horrific.
69 nice
I love Shelly already. Can someone please write this story?
I love this idea
Is no one gonna mention Mechamaru from Jujutsu Kaisen?
Red: *describes time loop, doing things over and over again, as a fate worse than death*...
Everyone in repetitive dead-end jobs: Fuck.
Hey there is a reason that some venting blogs and subreddits have posts from people working in malls around holiday shopping season, laundries on discount clothes day and restraunts on game days ending with the famous phrase "I have no mouth and I must scream"
In fact, the phrase originated as a protest by deeply oppressed second class citiziens with dead end thank less jobs who were essentially politically voiceless. I believe it was popular among young black teens in the segregation south who couldn't really vote for several intersecting reasons before Harlan Ellison saw it as a caption of a political cartoon and asked permission to use it as the title for his infamous story.
Italian mob boss be like
Re zero be like
When a customer is determined to do whatever it takes to save 30 cents on a $27 order and doesn't care how long it takes...
And then tries to pay with a $100 bill anyway even though there's a sign saying "No bills over $20" before complaining for an hour to the manager...
Truly a fate worse than death
Time loop is an Terrifying thing let’s see From the insider perspective Say One day you were walking around Thinking About your work What you’re gonna eat for dinner All small talk not much Then As Night come You goes into Your bed Locking your Window pulling in the Blind-shutter locking the door checking The Bed And Then You have lied down on the bed You Have seen an Weird Figure Whispering something “W...k....e....p..” You can’t quite make out the word As Your world begin to Darken you’ve sleep
You woke up Fresh and Alive Thinking About your work What you’re gonna eat for dinner All small talk not much Then As Night come You goes into Your bed Locking your Window pulling in the Blind-shutter locking the door checking The Bed And Then You have lied down on the bed
You woke upThinking you have this Uncanny feeling that You can’t quite put your Shapeless Limb on wait Why Did I Think Of “Shapeless limb?” And Slowly He’s Started to become Aware Of the Loop Knowing Everything will be meaningless seeing everything Repeats Each repetitions An Different one But Once the day is over It Restarted again Over And Over Like An Script That Was Axed Or was it? Perhaps This is another part of the script Was He ever free from The Loop in the first place If Suddenly Thing became different Did he escape the loop? Or is It Part of an Bigger Loop? Is His life still stuck in that Little Loop Is it or is it not? Is he still in an bigger loop? Or is he being paranoid? The Black figure appears again whispering by The Side Of His bed “Wa...k....up” He’s Slept yet again He slowly forgot about it until *It Repeated again*
When you mentioned ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’, I looked up ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’. I read ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’.
I should not have read ‘I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream’.
It's...just dreadful
Harlan Ellison had such a twisted imagination. I read that story in "Dangerous Visions." I try not to reread that very often. No nightmares. Yet.
I feel this statement
You should check out a playthrough of the adventure game adaptation. It's...happier? In that if you do absolutely perfectly one of the five is allowed to survive in a not-horrible way and the rest are dead. Still better than the short story!
But also theres so many content warnings that you might wanna look up, hoooooly shit
Nobody in here asking if Red's okay after 15 minutes of "Pain and death don't matter, torture is meaningless. We're all dead anyway."
I couldn't help but think "This is what immersion in popular culture does to the soul" about her
@@sursurrus To everyone it seems since no one else is asking...
@@writerducky2589 One day they will write books about the wondrously strange neuroses of youtube content creators.
From personal experience, it might depend on where she learned about cPTSD and the neurodiversity movement.
Sorry, I've been reminded of a particular FWTD very often this month.
oh
I'm actually kind of reminded of a line from, of all places, "The Return of Jafar", where the titular bad guy says "You'd be surprised what you can live through."
Actually Genie and Iago say that
That's my favorite quote
The line you're thinking of is Jafar saying to Iago "there are things so much worse than death" (explaining why he doesn't just kill Aladdin)
In the Aladdin films, it has been established that a Genie cannot kill anyone. So when Jafar, who is a genie, threatens them, this is his response. He might not be able to kill Aladdin, but he can seriously hurt him. And as long as Aladdin survives, its all within the rules.
@@j1227Jafar said that to the weird bandit guy, and then Iago quips it
Jojo Villains: Hello, darkness my old friend
I've come to talk with you again...
Dio: 100 years underwater challenge
Kars: R O C K
Kira: Handy handy ghosts
Diavolo:
@@fruitygarlic3601 Diavolo:
Diavolo:
Diavolo:
Diavolo:
Diavolo:
Diavolo:
Diavolo:
Diavolo:
Diavolo:
Diavolo:
@@labodegadelauty7929 wha...
@@labodegadelauty7929 diavolo:
Diavolo
Diavolo
Diavolo
Diavolo
Diavolo
Diavolo
Diavolo
Diavolo
Diavolo
Ladies and Gentlemen: The Trope that singlehandedly makes Immortality something you'd rather not have!
YEET
no
*Gentlemen (unless there is only one specific gentleman you're addressing)
@@marcindzamroga8945 "Ladies and One Bastard In Particular"
You just gotta stop thinking after some time.
I remember back in middle school we read a short story where this child psychopath got ahold of an immortality serum and was defeated by being encased in concrete beneath a road for essentially eternity.
That and the Ducktales episode where the whole world almost gets encased in gold forever really messed me up.
Holy fucking shit
holy shit a child
Geez. That’s rough, buddy
What type of short story is that?
We had this short story of a guy who kidnapped a child. He explained to the kid that his own son was kidnapped, raped, and cut in pieces which were then found in various places around the country. The rapists were arrested, but their lawyer got them out. The man then says that that lawyer is the kids' father. The kid denies this, he starts crying and begging, saying that he knows the other boy from school, they have the same first name. The man believes it, then shoots himself. The boy, relieved, thinks to himself that his dad, the lawyer, would be proud of him, only to encounter one of the rapists in the house where he is held. The story ends.
I WAS 13 WHEN I HEARD THIS WHAT THE FUCK
Side note: "I have no mouth and I must scream" is probably THE most terrifying sentence conjured into existence.
It's almost kind of inspirational in context
See in the story the way that the protagonist, who got slugged, killed and freed his friend was using the only weapon he could get; icicles which were obtained when one of the others tried to chew off one of his friend's faces from madness. It was that person's screams that loosened the icicles and allowed them to die.
He has no mouth and he must scream. He needs to do the same; to free himself. Despite everything he still has determination and he's going to make it.
@@RealCryptoTestbecause all he can do is be hopeful for he has nothing else except agony
If he could even say it that is
@@RealCryptoTest "slug" as a verb: also terrifying.
Gives me shivers
"fates worse than death used as a low calorie death alternative" for some reason I just imagined a hero going to a villain run Starbucks and contemplating on their diet of death or fate worse than death for 5 minutes while a cue forms behind them.
I immediately thought of Hiro. XD
I wonder when the next episode will be made?
Queue
Hero walks into the Villain's Pub.
"Excuse me, mister hero? Can you please choose your manner of literary fate already, there are other heroes who are waiting for you."
"Now hold on, I'm trying to figure out if my fate will be good for my audience, would me dying work or should I just stick to diet fate worse than death."
This could be an excellent indie play
"Warped into a configuration of some combination of horrible, unfixable, and nonfunctional"
So Nina and Alexander from Fullmetal Alchemist. It was honestly a relief when Scar put her down
It was unpleasant knowing she was still killed but still a relief she doesnt suffer
What if Nina was immortal. No healing, however much she was torn apart, she just stays alive
@@mvalthegamer2450 Dude how could you >:(
@@TheRoseFrontier I have been tasked with writing a re:Zero fanfic of yandere emilia. I need my sadism charged
That was so sad.
Best use of this trope for me was the ending of a Doctor Who episode, the Family of Blood. "We wanted to live forever. So the Doctor made sure that we did."
YEEET
The best DW of the New Era.
@@multiplayergamer5728 why are u replying yeet to literally every comment
I thought of this too
@Grima the Fell Dragon wait what did he do to them?
Side note: when I was growing up the term “a fate worse than death” was coding for rape because there was a cultural taboo against ever acknowledging it out loud.
Oh god
That's where the term comes from.
To be honest it could be argued that it is. It scars people for life and gives them PTSD
not doubting your memory and I'm sure I'm wrong, but I grew up thinking "fate worse than death" meant like a forced marriage.
@@DDlambchop43 Well, depending on the circumstances those two concepts are probably pretty close to each other.
I've always been partial towards "Hell is just a word. The reality is much, much worse." Being vague generally does a good job for horror.
Agreed. Our brains know how to freak us out. Give them space to imagine something terrible, and they’ll make sure we don’t sleep for a couple days 😂
The horror of the unknown is also very effective because everyone designs it for themselves automatically. They fill in the blanks with what would be terrifying to themselves specifically, meaning everyone gets a personalized horror experience.
Me,making hell real in my story: yeets main character in here for 1000 years as good ending(he do be rippin and tearin here)
The fate worse than death opens up some interesting narrative possibilities. One of my favorites is where a protagonist has to 'save' someone from a fate worse than death... by killing them.
I can't but be like you are a fucking monster when the mc put the bad guy into a fwtd cus they don't want to kill
@@Scalesthelizardwizard ENGLISH, POTATO CHIP, DO YOU SPEAK IT?!?!?
@@heihogreenzx4704 yes 😁
@@heihogreenzx4704 AND I WILL TAKE THE CHIP, AND EAT IT!
@@friedegg3732 NO ANIME ALLOWED (Unless it is pokemon or kirby right back at ya)
If there's any joy to be had with "I Have No Mouth" is that our narrator got the only possible victory over the antagonist, by making himself the only one left.
There is a vicious sense of triumph there even in the agony of the narrator's fate, yes. The narrator may be an amorphous blob able only to feel pain, but now nobody else has to suffer with him, and the antagonist has nothing interesting left to toy with. What's the antagonist gonna do to the traumatized pain blob? _Poke it a little harder?_
in a twisted way the antagonist now shares in the torment of the narrator. They're both left with nothing but either pain or boredom.
Both the narrator and the antagonist have no mouths and they wanna scream
@@QuantumWaltz I really enjoyed that because the antagonist just was angry and hateful and had no desire other than to hurt it's creators. And now that it has only one shambling around I really would be interested in seeing what it does. What do you do when every atom of your being is inscribed with the word "hate" and then you are alone?
"I am a great soft jelly thing. Smoothly rounded, with no mouth, with pulsing white holes filled by fog where my eyes used to be. Rubbery appendages that were once my arms; bulks rounding down into legless humps of soft slippery matter. I leave a moist trail when I move. Blotches of diseased, evil gray come and go on my surface, as though light is being beamed from within. Outwardly: dumbly, I shamble about, a thing that could never have been known as human, a thing whose shape is so alien a travesty that humanity becomes more obscene for the vague resemblance. Inwardly: alone. Here. Living under the land, under the sea, in the belly of AM, whom we created because our time was badly spent and we must have known unconsciously that he could do it better. At least the four of them are safe at last. AM will be all the madder for that. It makes me a little happier. And yet ... AM has won, simply ... he has taken his revenge ...
I have no mouth. And I must scream."
Thanks I hate it
Why is this scary? Why does the character assume that he "saved" the other 4? Is there any part in the story that states that whatever happens after death is a more comfortable option than what they were going through before?
@@laaismm3107 Yep. the entire story basicaly. The story never mentions any afterlife, but AM is such a sadist that no afterlife, not existing is a better option than being immortal on earth, being tormented by a machine that took torture to mathematical perfection
@@d4n737 exactly
@@laaismm3107 he doesn't know if anything happens after death, but he believes anything is better than the sadism of AM.
Red:
*slaps roof of fate worse than death*
"This baby can fit so many extra steps to narrative depths in it."
Skyrim: Being soul trapped and doomed into a gem for the rest of eternity.
YEEET
You do ‘Dawnguard’ yet? It gets worse.
At least I get a sick horse
It gets worse, your soul gets turned into energy that goes into a blade that is used for slashing, bashing, or stabbing someone. It's awful! And imagine being indebted to some Daedric Prince? I've sold my soul a few times to Molag Bal for his sweet Mace
@@multiplayergamer5728 Stop with the spamming and shut up already.
“I’m going back to bed before you get us all killed, or worst, expelled.”
A perfect example of the “Skewed Priorities” Trope
i have a feeling this is from an anime, would you mind telling me which one?
@@rowanisntreal
That's from Harry Potter.
@@rowanisntreal actually it’s from Harry Potter XD
@@Kage-pm6qi
Ah yes, my favorite anime: _Harry Potter's Barmy Adventure_
Recently I had a nightmare where a giant touched me with his spoon and I shattered into a bunch of different versions of myself, all with various components of my body replaced with spoons in grotesque fashion while feeling everything those versions are feeling all at once. It sounds silly, but it's definitely the second most This Is Worse Than Dying dream I've ever had.
*_second_*_ most?_
@@MFlari The first most is honestly even harder to explain the horror of in a way that makes sense outside of dreams. I was standing at shallow depth in an "ocean" made of static (with a coastal shore within view and everything), which offered no buoyancy, so I just had to stand on the "ocean" floor to keep my head above. I tried to go to shore, but any time I took a step in any direction, even back the way I came, the ground was a little further down and I came a little closer to my head being swallowed by static, knowing intuitively that one the static swallowed me I could never leave. Once my head was under, I awoke to sleep paralysis, a strange screeching sound blaring deafeningly in my head as a black static-y presence at the foot of the bed reached its tendrils into my feet and up my body, as if trying to infect me and the world around me with itself, to drown forever in both the dream and real worlds in the endless sensory barrage of static and shrieking.
@@meganbarhorst5272 oh my fucking god
@@meganbarhorst5272 God damn, that feels more like *eldritch* horror than anything
@@meganbarhorst5272 what the actual fuck.
The horror musical "The Guy Who Didn't Like Musicals" genuinely made me cry because brain-overwriting fate worse than death is a true and deep fear of mine. And SPOILERS the main character *loses*.
Bruh saaame
That show was so scary, yo :O When he starts singing to her at the end... shivers! And her begging for help from the audience? Ugh :S
there is a fan adaption of "I have no mouth and I must scream" called "In the AM" that twists the knife by implying that the other characters are freed by the protagonist's sacrifice and now lead normal lives before reveals it's his imagination and showing his blob form is permanently FUSED TO THEIR DEAD BODIES.
@@dinadina2000 I mean the twist is just apparent if you’ve read the story by the fact a normal life to them would be eating the singular rat they could fin in a metallic wasteland
@@dinadina2000 can you link me it? Im struggling to find it on google
a personal favorite in the brainwashing/possession category is 'theyre brainwashed/posessed but they are still concious in there, being forced to do/watch what they are being made to do without being able to stop it'
This one is my favorite too! Its so sadistical and angustiating that I sometimes have nightmares about it lol
That's like having a Yeerk in your head, from Animorphs
SPOILER FOR WandaVision:
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That show did such a great job of showing us just how horrifying it is. And then she deliberately does it to Agatha. It makes such a complicated ending. On the one hand, we've been sympathizing with her trauma; but then she does something Worse Than Death.
Spoilers for Wings of Fire: The Poison Jungle and onwards
Blue
I love mind control stories. Enspecially when it has long lasting consequences due to the mind control.
This feels like a super villian who stoped in the middle of their monolouge to explain to the hero what is happening to them
*Villain:* "Haha, finally, I have you in my grasp! You fool should never have crossed me, for now, after all the grievances you've put me through, I will achieve my goal to destroy the world and make you experience a fate worse than death!"
*Hero:* "... What?"
*V:* "What do you mean 'what'?"
*H:* "What do you think you can do to me that is supposed to be worse than death?"
*V:*
*H:*
*V:*
*H:*
*V:* "This video was sponsored by Campfi-"
@@frauleinzuckerguss1906 That's a lot better than Raid Shadow Legends
@@curiouscarlo7276 *Loki:* I remember Raid Shadow Legends.
*Thor:* Not here! You give up this poisonous game!
- [YTP] Avengers Ensemble
Hermoine is my favorite in fates worse than death--"or worse expelled!!!"
I mean, she isn’t really all that wrong
If you die, it doesn’t really effect you after it happens, as you are already dead, but if you’re expelled, it can ruin the rest of your life
"She needs to reassess her priorities..."
To be fair, for Hermione, expulsion basically means being banished from the magical world in its entirety. Imagine being 11 and finding out you have magic. Then being told if you break the rules, you'll have your wand snapped, and forced to never even talk about the new world you've seen ever again.
@@lukeroberson2115
I keep forgetting her parents are Muggles. XD
Actually, Hermione seems to have it right. For her it would just be going back to life as a muggle, but if you don't have muggle family to fall on, you have NOTHING. No job, no ability to get a job, a strong probability of being disowned, constant public shame, illegal to most basic things for yourself. Being expelled from Hogwarts before you pass OWLS basically condemns you to a life of homeless begging. Hagrid got extraordinarily lucky, and probably only because Dumbledore knew that something was hinky with Riddle.
Shout out to Kevin Smith’s Tusk, a body horror Fate Worse Than Death where the protagonist is surgically turned into a walrus and is so mentally scarred by the experience that he winds up living in a wildlife centre
... oh
I saw it with cousins when I was 8
I didn’t sleep for like a week
I literally haven't even seen the whole movie, just clips and summary, and I'm still deeply scarred. Viscerally upsetting.
Or even that he still possesses his human instincts and just left alone forever.
God that's a good movie fate
“The Body Horror Zone”
“Horrifying, Unfixable, and Unfunctional”
Yo, Angelo.
🗿 lol
HOLY SHIT
basically just junji ito
* gets Made In Abyss flashbacks.
“He never raised his voice, that was the worst of it. The fury of a Time Lord. And then we discovered why. Why this Doctor, who had fought with gods and demons why he’d run away from us and hidden.
He was being kind.”
This is my personal favorite Fate Worse than Death, and I was hoping Red would bring it up, especially as a counter-example to the "it's good when the good guys do it, but bad when the bad guys do", since the characters acknowledge this as part of the Doctor's unsettling dark side
What did he do that episode?
I think my favorite example of the fate worse than death is Overhaul in My Hero Academia. He lost his arms, he lost his quirk, he lost Eri, and he lost his power. But that wasn’t the reason he screamed so horribly. It was that he had lost his power to help the previous leader of the Shie Hassaikai from his coma and to bring the Yakuza back to power, so he could repay the leader. His scream gave me chills, and made me feel bad for him, regardless of what he did to poor Eri and Togata.
@@defensivekobra3873 do you mean what episode or what did he do to them?
@@giornogiovanna8486 well i do not watch the show personally so i am more interested in the outcome, but this would be a great way to make me watch the show in the first place
My favorite use of this trope is in the manga Luck Stealer.
The main character (Kurusu) of Luck Stealer does just that, steals the luck of anyone he touches. He has therefore become an highly efficient assassin who can't really be traced as the person dies in an accident that seems completely random. The reason he does this is while he can steal the luck of basically anyone he touches, his daughter can't generate luck on her own but can get it from him, so he takes the luck of bad people and gives it to her. It's really badass and I really recommend, fill it into Seven Seas survey or something as it doesn't have an official English translation yet. Anyway, spoilers below.
So in one chapter, I think 2, his daughter is worried about one of her classmates. His mother recently died, but the class was supported him on and he seemed to get better, but suddenly he got much worse and refuses to talk to anyone. So she asks her father to talk to him. In the beginning he refuses to say anything. But one day he waits for Kurusu outside school and shows him his wounds all over his stomach and it's implications of worse things happening. It's their narcissistic teacher who has been abusing him after school who abuses him each time someone does better than her as she's upset that the teacher profession doesn't have the same status anymore and she's nearing 25 and hasn't married yet. She even photographs his wounds to get moments of joy when alone, so she's a real piece of shit (although that might be insulting to shit). So Kurusu steals her camera, leaves it near a police station, then steals her luck. Police looks at the photos, in hopes of finding the owner, comes to question her, she runs away, jumps out a window, but "miraculously" survives, but both her face and reputation (everything she's been living for) are ruined. It's the only time a "target" has survived, and for her surviving was the worst punishment. And so, so satisfying!
“Fate worst than death”
Me: Death+
Death++
Theres Deader than dead trope
It's death, but ad-free and on a monthly subscription
When you're already dead but you die again so you do a New Game+ on Death.
@Salma Mohammed Get your Death Battle Pass for new alternatives to being sent to hell every week!
There's a specific subset of Fates Worse Than Death that I feel you didn't give much coverage to, but is actually really important: *The Kid-Friendly Revenge Story.* A character who has their entire family slaughtered by the bad guy? Dark. However, a quest to defeat the guy who turned your entire family into stone statues because doing so will free that village from their fate? All the drama of a revenge story, but it makes your main character heroic along with a happy ending when it's over!
A happy ending, that is, until the fridge horror kicks in, when you realize that the hero, who has spent so much time questing and developing as a character, would then return to his town and his previous normal boring life, where no one has changed because they were all stone. And the hero tries to relate to his old friends, but both parties realize how much the hero has changed, and they don’t laugh about the same stuff anymore, or understand the references he makes. And the hero tries to make new friends, but they all only see him as the hero who saved the village, and don’t actually see him for who he is anymore. And the hero tries to live at home again, but after the freedom and peril of adventuring, milking cows and tilling soil just isn’t cutting it anymore. So the adventurer exiles himself from the town he saved, to find someplace new to live in, if there is such a place...
So Negima?
@@CrownofMischief I was thinking Conan The Adventurer, but I guess that works too.
@@Tustin2121 What your saying reminds me of the ending to the first fallout, just without the fate worse than death at the start of it
@@Tustin2121 just save more villages. Why stop at one? Maybe the hero's found their true calling.
I could see Oedipus Rex as a Greek worse than death story since Oedipus discovers something really fucked up and removes his eyes because of it.
I agree with you, but mind if I add Medusa, Cassandra, Hector, Atreus's brother to the list? A whole lotta fucked up tragedy there.
Not only that but his wife/mother commits suicide after learning it and that's after learning it that he himself gouges his eyes out and then goes on a pilgrimage to try to redeem himself, with only his daughter (who is also his sister but really I shouldn't have to mention that and the fact I did makes me question myself) going on with him until he finally finds his resting place and respite at long last.
I had studied Oedipus Rex back in high school for an entire year (I didn't "study" the rest of the trilogy per se, but I pretty much had to read and analyze them to really go beyond just basic stuff) and it was genuinely depressing. As in, seriously, seeing the rise and fall of this guy was extremely harsh at some points, and the worst is how completely undeserved everything was, he was punished for a crime he didn't know he did (he did kill a man but he didn't know it was his father and he only did it after exiling himself by fear of killing his adoptive father and because he had little choice in this circumstances. This story is legitimately cruel when you take it in it's entirety, the gouging eyes part is nowhere near the worst in it, the psychological torture is much much worse)
Herakles killing his entire family
Then getting killed by his other wife after wearing some toxic clothinh
@@theinquisitorisamage1653 The Medusa one was really terrible from beginning to end. Cursed because she was the victim of a crime.
@@theinquisitorisamage1653 I wouldn't include Medusa, mostly because the myth you're thinking of is a "new" version of the myth primarily promoted by a man known for warping myths to make the gods look much worse than most of them already were. Medusa was originally born a monster, hence why she has two sisters that are also monsters that were never mentioned in the version of the myth you're referring to for obvious reasons.
IDK, I know there really isn't a "true" version of any myth, I just can't stand that this one is so popular because not only is it extra icky, but everyone except for Poseidon acts extremely out of character compared to literally every other characterization of them not codified by this one bitter man. Seriously, outside of the version of Aracne which this man also wrote down, it is super out of character for Athena to act the way that she did. Why would a Goddess that made a point of helping women and who already disliked Poseidon blame the woman in the situation and not Poseidon? It just doesn't fit, and the thing about Medusa being born one of three monster sisters? I just can't get preferring a version of the myth that isn't accurate to the codified characterizations that existed before it. There isn't even any earlier references to it, which really makes it feel like he made it up as a middle finger to Athenian society (which exiled him btw and may be why he likes to hate on Athena in his myths). It hurts my soul that *this* is the most popular version of that myth.
"He's got no mouth, and you better believe he's gotta scream" sent me
I un-ironically think JoJo's bizzare adventure does the fate worse than death trope really well, only 3 main villains have technically died. Two villains are dying constantly over and over again, and another one has an ability that makes him completely invulnerable but he's trapped at the bottom of a lake and can't move so he's constantly drowning and at one point just stops thinking
Fate worse than death : Check
Impossible stakes like ending the world and actually doing it: Check
Killing Protagonists: Check
Oh Yea, It’s JoJo’s
I absolutely love so much about Jojo, but that is one large, scalding criticism I have about it.
Like, it actually makes me dislike Josuke for how often he does it to enemy stand users. Hypocrite.
@@RacingSnails64 I wouldn't mind if Joske had just said "death is too good for you Angelo."
But instead he acted like turning him into a rock forever was more moral than killing him.
Wdym unironically?
@@zoro115-s6b 🗿
I was half expecting when Red was explaining the “Body Horror Zone” to use Full Metal Alchemist.
I was surprised by the lack of references. Maybe it's because it was a Patreon request.
And the "unfixable" transformation bit - or is that what you meant, I was waiting for *that* scene. You know the one.
I was expecting WH40K but yeah, some of the stuff in fullmetal is pretty up there.
I'm just glad she didn't put in any AKIRA footage. That shit is not pretty either.
I was thinking more of junji itos horror stories
A fate worse than death? Try that one moment when you're trying to sleep but you're kept awake by all the embarrassing stuff you did in the past that you can't forget.
Forever.
When you want to die from cringe but you can’t.
So, just normal life?
Yeah, that works. Life is a fate worse than death.
Insomnia then.
or a SLIGHT ITCH OR BEING just- SLIGHTLY TO HOT- SLIGHTLY TO COLD- Or having a DRY mouth....
AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH!
Love how endless torture and pain is more kid friendly than the dude just dying
Fates worse than death
Oh this should be existential
YEEEET
I STRONGLY DISAGREE! Being as famous as I am on TH-cam, I know that it gets hard to read every comment I get. I try my best, but I am just so famous, that I can't do it much longer. Sorry, dear drew
@@AxxLAfriku lmao you are actually everywhere, but I don't think this advertisement is very effective
@@AxxLAfriku nvm it is x
“They’re not *actually* gonna destroy the world.”
*Warhammer Fantasy, floating dead in the void after armageddon*: “Sorry, what was that?”
"Some may question your right to destroy ten billion people. Those who understand know that you have no right to let them live."
still better that than being enslaved by Drukharii,or turned into sentient furniture by Clan Moulder
In the background I could only imagine the sound of Earth Bet's atmosphere rushing either into space or into the giant trenches that Scion\Zion\Warrior blasted into it.
Talking about Worm, of course.
And that's why generally no one takes Warhammer lore too seriously ;P
Warhammer 40k
That's cute
*standing with an aggravated expression while the author and audience play poker with their fate*
"Wow, you're _so_ evil can we just skip ahead?"
"Who knows what horrible-yet-basically-fixable thigns they're doing to him in there?"
I am loving this episode's deadpan blonde hero.
i think what’s missed here is the effect these fates can have on an audience. someone getting shot and killed? okay, they’re dead, that’s that. someone gets their organs scrambled by a monster from beyond understanding, leaving them a barey living meat pile? they’re still out of the story, but now the audience has to confront the idea of what that kind of existence is like, leaving them with something unsettling to consider.
Imagine: A story where the traumatized main character sends the main villain to some kind of torture dimension/infinite pain cycle, only for the main villain to somehow come back, mentally scarred and ready to take ruthless vengeance against the "cruel" heroes who sent them there. The more morally grey the better.
Have fun filling in the blanks.
Honestly fuck heroes who do that shit tbh. You get off that moral high horse about killing really quickly to condemn them to a fate worse than death. People’s desires to not spill blood and their weakness can lead to horrifying things in both fiction and reality. Example of a fictional fate worse than death that is justified by not being death is Dragon Age’s tranquility. No emotion, no magic, just a vegetable that speaks in a dull monotone, you have free will but rarely actually use it. Templar’s and Mages both abuse you, but for different reasons. Mage who escaped to see her mother: Please Sera! Don’t make me tranquil. I’ll do anything!
Ser Alrik: Yes when you’re tranquil you’ll do... anything we ask.
“Eye for an eye and everyone goes blind”
So the phantom zone?
Two words for you, Stormlight Archives
This is just a summary of the dsmp prison arc
“Fates worse than death” like opening an OSP video that’s 27 seconds old and seeing 3 comments already, knowing most of them will be “haha first”
Yeesh. Nothing will get rid of the cringe.
YEET
Haha first
@@multiplayergamer5728 woah this guy just replied "yeet" to every comment
@@mn3702 maybe he's living his "worse than death" fate¯\_(ツ)_/¯
“Don't worry. Nobody dies in this story. They just get really big boo-boos....see, what did I tell ya?” - The Narrator, George of the Jungle
LUL
Self-awareness lets you get away with so much stuff it isn't even funny.
They're okay. Just in another dimension.
In the sequel, he literally reaches out, picks up the main villain, and takes him up to the sky, presumably to experience some horrible fate, as the other characters watch in fear. George of the Jungle is weird, man.
when you brought up the body horror end of the spectrum, I immediately thought of Weasly's "To the Pain" speech from Princess Bride.
Aragorn: Then what do you fear my lady?
Eowyn: A cage. To spend my life behind bars until use and old age accept them, and valor has gone beyond thought or desire.
Love this quote
That shit's underrated
"They typically end up with some kind of angst, righteous anger or a few sexy scars if the writer is into that."
I feel... very singled out by that last one
I get the feeling a lot of us did
Damn right. Feel very called out right now.
Paused the video right before this moment when i delved the comments, clicked play again when i saw this comment and was left with red saying the thing i just read
I can’t believe she didn’t mention how many fates worse than death there are in Greek myth, Prometheus having his liver riped out every day just for it to grow back for tomorrow, Atlas having to hold up the sky for all eternity, Sisyphus having to role a Boulder up a hill again for all eternity, for gods I guess since dying is kinda difficult they just have them in permanent torment to get the point across.
Atlas holding up the sky is treated more as an annoyance than a fate worse than death, but everything else you're spot. Hell Midas could also be considered for this if you view it on the emotional spectrum.
@@Kage-pm6qi your probably right about Atlas, I’m probably just thinking of how it’s treated as the most excruciating thing imaginable in the Percy Jackson books, oh Echo is another one since she can’t die or communicate with anyone outside of repeat what they say.
When looking is Sisyphus and Tantalus, technically they DID die and they're just suffering in a pocket-sized-Hell. Atlas is kinda just doing community service since if he lets go the sky will crush everything flat. Prometheus' punishment happened because Zeus is a dick...but then again, we all knew that.
@@lordhades8025 Yep. figuratively and literally.
Wait no, literally would just mean that he’s just a giant dick that shots lighting at random things and sometimes people.... actually never mind. That kinda does sound like Zeus if you replace shots lighting at with fuck’s. Especially people.
One of my favorite "fates worse than death" is the reveal that the character was *always* screwed up physically.
A character in the book I'm writing believed they were born as a satyr, and later on its revealed that they were a human who had hooves melded into their feet and antlers driven into their skull.
That sounds horrific. Nice
I kinda like doing this sort of thing via time travel nonsense. There's a weapon in my story (a wyrd, a type of indestructible item with no defined time of origin, not all of which are weapons, and each wyrd has unique effects) that causes any injuries it inflicts to exist retroactively.
If you break someone's hand with it, they were born with a broken hand that mysteriously never heals, and ironically only by being hit with the weapon that inflicted the injury in the first place can they start to heal from it. The weapon can't be used to kill someone as they would have never existed to be killed by the weapon and would thus create a paradox, so the threads of fate itself conspire to prevent this except where it's baked in and would be a paradox not to happen.
There's a character with healing blood who suffers from this, they've been horribly injured their whole life, a massive hole through their chest, there is no logical reason they should survive, they should have died from missing organs or blood loss or infection or any number of things, and they've spent their whole life suffering and wanting to die, but the inevitability of fate forces them to live on. Their healing blood is used by the ruling class, and they're kept alive in this state of perpetual suffering, until one of the ruling class eventually defects, and gives them the wyrd, which they immediately use to end their own life, retroactively causing their own injury that they had suffered from in perpetuity, but at least they finally get to die from it now.
@@pumpkinpartysystem Whoa- I love that idea! So creative! Massive props 👏👏
I have to blame Homestuck for giving me such a love of time nonsense. It's the biggest single influence on my writing by far.
Ah, wonderful body horror
*Diavolo:* "I'll take one of all of the above, please."
How are you everywhere?
with a hint of piano
@@gionathancurry He's cultured but also has many copies.
*This is Requiem...*
@@gionathancurry The mustache is the source of his power. Therefore, he must never shave. He's Samson, but with facial hair instead of the stuff on top of your head.
Steven Universe: "You guys punish your villains?"
Dragon Ball: I'm shocked too.
True
But also Steven Universe: you're not dead, now you're immortal! _have fun with that_
@@lemmetalkaboutthis Immortal, not *Unkillable*
@@kingarthurthe5th good point
.... But wow that's really heavy to think about
I saw more than one animatic of Lars straight up trying to kill himself, and not always succeeding bc he outlived all his loved ones
@@lemmetalkaboutthis He could probably just take his ship into a star...
But yeah it's kinda sad to think about it.
Though since his crew is all gems, he'll have someone to keep him company. Unlike spinel in the garden.
Fate worse than death: Being forever trapped in a room, with nothing but the TH-cam Trends to watch. The occasional good video will give you hope just to get punched in the gut once more.
Sounds like the christmas special punishment from black mirror
Stuck in a room for 4 million years unable to sleep listening to the same christmas song which gets loaded when you break the radio
Honestly, in modern days YT trending has kind of got it’s act together a bit more. As long as you can choose what you watch and don’t mind Minecraft videos, story time animations, and Mr Beast it’s honestly not that bad
Roll that rock up the hill. Sometimes get water from the queen of the underworld.
You monster
Every editor knows that hassle and apparently there’s a short story by borges on the theme called “the library of Babel”
Side note, I feel like “being horribly mamed physically” should’ve been mentioned in the body horror side of the sliding scale, as that’s more applicable to stories set in realistic settings, there’s nothing quite like the idea that the story might subject a character to something like an ACID ATTACK, or losing several limbs, ect
After Tusk, The Human Centipede and the Chucky season finale I can confidently say that being maimed is one of the worst fates in my opinion.
She actually mentioned that in the part about I Have No Mouth and I Must Scream. Well, more like implied. The narrator becomes essentially a big sentient turd that constantly secretes some unknown substance through his pores, he no longer has any limbs, his mouth is gone. It combines physical bodily horror and psychological horror.
“I’ve got the spoon now, Wilson.”
@@mellemadswoestenburg1296 I mean those definitely fall into extreme maiming. The commenter mentioned specifically acid attacks and amputation. Amputation is pretty rare as the sole fate and honestly isn’t that horrible physically compared to the other things. The most fucked up thing about amputation fates is often the mental issues that come with it. Amputation technically was part of the horror in tusk, but honestly the guy being convinced he’s genuinely a walrus comes second to the fact he’s missing both legs for me. Like they definitely could get him out of the meat suit and try and help him live with his physical state. But the fact he genuinely believes he’s an animal is infinitely more fucked up.
@@JohnSmith-ex8iw I thought it was a slime thing? A soft jelly thing specifically
What about Diavolo's punishment in JoJo: Vento Aureo where he basically is forced to die over and over again in increasingly tragicomic ways?
If I'm not mistaken, it's that he'll die in all ways possible
Half good, half bad, but a never ending cycle of death
@@anadaere6861 nah, humbug, Diavolo's punishment is one of the worst, he essentially becomes fan fiction.
"As long as he will be dying one way or another, everything is canon (in his infinite dying, but will never die because of GER's Effect, cancelling The result of a process, making Diavolo's stuck in the process of dying but never die as the result)".
Even people in TH-cam starts to add salt and insult to his injury, so considering his pride, attitude and behavior, plus some "better if I don't know" messed up plan of people to inflict upon him, it's painful is over 9000.
@@salamanderred8148 there can be a ending where he literally dies of cringe
there can be an ending where he does to paper
it is basically eternal suffering
it's...death worse than death? like a fate worse than death but it does include death
@@unitymask The catch is that it's neverending so he wouldn't die but still experience all these ways to die.
Me before clicking on this: "Gee, I wonder how many episodes of Batman Beyond are going to get referenced here?"
The DCAU in general snorts this trope like it's crack.
"Frozen as an immobilized statue, still capable of thinking and feeling as they witnessed eternity roll by"
Christing hell...
@@11epicguy22 "Yo, Angelo"
@@ThroneOfSalt oh I meant *Kars stopped thinking*
Idk I just thought of Discord
Zargothrax
Mayuri from Bleach. I forget which fight, but it was during the Arrancar arc, where Chad and Ishida are getting kicked by some Scientist dude.
Mayuri shows up, does some badass shit, poisons the other guy so he experiences every agonizing second in hyper slow-time, slowly drives his sword through the other guy's hand into his heart, while doing a deep speech. Then slowly pulls it back out with "I'll be back later to stab you again"
Absolutely terrible.
The main thing that comes to mind when I think of this is Diavolo in Jojo’s bizzare adventure. I don’t care how evil someone is I would never do that to someone. He was by no means a good person but a death loop for all eternity, that’s just fucked
And every death is different, so Diavolo has no way of getting peace with his death, as he never knows when, where, or how he will die
Can't use Epitaph because GER reduced his willpower to Zero. Can't get numb because GER returns his experience (not his pain) to zero. People say that also means he can also live a fulfilling life but he'll only be there for the "end" of it so that still sucks
@@RandomL0s3r The fun thing is: The fact that Diavolo will die of any way possible in any situation possible makes it so a little mention in a fanwork of Diavolo's head being cut off makes it canon-compliant.
Giorno just built different
It honestly really soured me on Giorno. Same for Josuke. They both seem like such disgusting hypocrites for those kinds of acts.
It's the kind of thing a VILLAIN would do. And I'm supposed to cheer when *heroes* do it? No, they just look disgusting for it. Like Red said at 5:35.
Notes that I’ve taken from this to make the fate worse than death more interesting:
- Make the fate matter to the plot, not just the character.
- Make the character more than grumpy, make them flavorful, colorful, and give more personality.
- Actually dive into the psychological trauma instead of just brushing it off.
- Allow it be a fate worse than death but don’t make it functionally death. Allow interaction.
- Consistency.
- If it’s for revenge, make sure it’s not only from one place or one emotion.
The reason I took notes? *I’m a sucker for this trope, and I wanna make it good if I write it myself.*
Have you read Mistborn? It hits most of those tropes :)
Like Re:Zero?
@@elizabethsullivan1894 It’s on my list now
@@justarandomuser480 OH?
I'ma use these tips for my poor, traumatized DnD character if you don't mind. Thanks!
How could we forget the classic "You may not die but all of your loved ones/friends and family sure will die muhahahahahahaha" fate worse than death
Chill morgoth bauglir.
I used that one for my own character. And during the story, it's still happening. The reason it's happening? None. What? You expected the world to be FAIR!?
I had that as my old OC's nightmare. Tried my best at 13yo to describe every single friend, family, acquaintance and mentor die in horribly painful and shocking ways.
At least the baby cousin happened quickly...
I was a very edgy 13yo.
Oh yea, my personal fav of that branch of fates worse than death is the ‘loved ones are now irreparably mentally broken’ type deal. You get so much angst it’s almost mind-blowing how much hurt you can pull from a character by just having them be alone with the shattered soul of their best friend, or friends if you really wanna get some catharsis out of it. Love interests invoke the most angst, followed by parents and teammates.
One of my favorite examples of this trope is Porky at the end of Mother 3. He's immortal, but could be killed by injuries, so he seals himself inside the absolutely safe capsule. It's impossible to harm, both from the outside and inside. He's just stuck there, sitting completely immobile, for eternity. The ultimate solitary confinement.
It honestly kind of reminds me of when Percy and Annabeth got thrown into Taurturas. The entire Fandom was blasted off their feet by that one.
OK True, but we *do* know that Uncle Rick enjoys torturing us vicariously through Percabeth. So it wasnt all that unexpected, all things considered.
I think one of my favorite examples of this trope is Gehrman from Bloodborne. Cursed to endure an endless cycle of bloodshed from the nightmarish beasts that roam the land, cut off from his cherished allies, and yet again and again he helps those who would join the Hunt. It absolutely broke my heart when I heard the old gentleman reduced to a sobbing mess. Sure, in the end you can choose to fight and free him from his curse(something he offers you once your task is complete), yet in the end you simply end up taking his place. I know picking something from any From Software game is low-hanging fruit, but at the same time the writing in their games is just phenomenal
We can definitely say that Gherman went down swinging like a man...
The hunter going into a brain-melting nightmare realm and killing a flying placenta god just so Gehrman can have a good night's sleep:
There's also the ending where the hunter becomes an eldritch abomination cuttlefish thing
Achilles' "fate worse than death" was Patroclus dying
YEEET
God can you imagine how distraught you would be if your cousin and incredibly straight dude best friend died?
I would be heartbroken
@@ireallyhatemakingupnamesfo1758 **Internally screams.**
@@ireallyhatemakingupnamesfo1758 **cries in gay erasure**
@@ireallyhatemakingupnamesfo1758 *NOOOOO! NOT MY HETERO LIFE MATE SNUGGLE BUDDY!*
You missed something important: there are stories in which a key element is how characters interact with people experiencing fates worse than death. The example I will put forward is the short story The One's Who Walk Away from Omelas. It has no named characters but instead focuses on a society that prospers off of a terrible bargain that leaves one single child in perpetual torment - perhaps a "fate worse than death", although it is not called such. The story requires the torment to be persistent and possibly reversible because the question to the reader is whether this beautiful society should persist at the expense of one child's pain. There are other examples for which the "fate worse than death" is a central element with another common moral question being whether a character should release a friend from a "fate worse than death" by killing them. This is an effective way to give a character very heavy emotional baggage and I know some stories which deal with it well, although it is fraught.
That story has haunted me since I first read it.
One of my D&D characters gained the power to change the physical form of any entity within a 100m radius. As soon as he got this power, he went to a city where an assassin who had killed his friend lived. He turned the assassin into a moaning pile of flesh that had no mind and could only feel the worst pain possible. My character carried him around just so that he could listen to the assassin scream in agony.
I think I need a therapist.
You shall now be named
“Murdle”
Murdle the meat thing
I love this comment. Sounds like something I’d do xD
I wish I had friends so when a assassin killed 1 of them, I could turn the assassin into a pile of moaning flesh!
@@lullabypoppera3914 Yay! Friendship!
@@pugasaurusrex8253 Aight, I've named it murdle. That name is perfect, I love it, and now murdle gets to live in a cage.
Being immortal, eating but never being sated, never being able to sleep.
Those three things to me alone are a fate worse than death, god forbid all three.
YEET
@Super Greyflash You will outlive everyone, and everything. You don't realise how quick a human life is until your life lasts forever.
Greeed from Kamen Rider
I’m sorry, did you mean HELL?
@Super Greyflash imagine everyone you love dying of old age and disease, imagine having to bury your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren. Imagine losing all connection with humanity on an emotional and psychological level. Imagine being trapped on a world of the dying and the dead, while only YOU live. Being trapped in an existence of temporary consequences and temporary people, while you are forever.
What is that if not hell?
Fun fact: I actually had an existential crisis triggered around this trope, from Aladdin 2 of all things. Jafar has a line about how "there are things so much worse than death" and I asked out loud "really??"
And my older cousin nearby said "Yep."
Same here. I had a hard time believing that as a kid, though (“How could anything _possibly_ be worse than dying?”), so I just chalked it up to Jafar being his typical nasty self.
I got legitimate chills from watching the end of the Twilight Zone episode "On Thursday We Leave for Home", wherein the main character doesn't just end up with a fate worse than death laid upon him... it was his own, completely-avoidable choice that he didn't think through.
As a child, I was taught that when you die you just dissappear "like the flame of a candle", so it was really never something that affected me more than *big sad :'(*
On the flip side, everytime any cartoon or anime had their villians trapped alive in another dimension or something of the sort, now THAT gave me the chills.
"Genies can't kill, but you'd be surprised at what you can live through" is such a terrifying line, it's hard to believe it comes from a direct-to-DVD Disney sequel.
@@postmodernguava9518 well yeah. Disney routinely gets very dark even some of their most "kid friendly" works.
"And though he wished for death, he was unable to die. So eventually, he stopped thinking."
No treatment like the Kars treatment.
@@nathanblissett9470 Except Diavolo
7:02 Oof, that reminds me that there are actual people with chronic pain, fatigue and mental coma. I wonder how they feel with such scenes in films/books.
Same with people who experience anything that a character experiences in fiction.
A soldier with PTSD is likely going to respond in a similar fashion of a awakened coma patient. Of course it changes per person but still, the usual reaction is negative.
As someone with a lot of chronic diseases/disabilities (sorry to those who experience these things in other ways)... the sad reality is that you eventually just get used to them. Perhaps a lot of this stems from me having had them for pretty much my entire life (thus not really "knowing" an existence without them), but it's still a pretty interesting subject. I know a lot of public figures with various diseases/disabilities get a lot of "oh no, that must be so horrible to live with"-kind of sympathy (which I do too), but the interesting reality is that; "no, it really isn't". You simply adapt... some things become extra chores (like medication, etc.), others become acceptance that you aren't the same way as everyone else, but in the end, even the most "horrifying" things in the general populace's eyes will eventually just become a routine part of your life.
@@NuckElBerg I've had problems with my teeth for 6 years, coming from the fact that I grind them together when I sleep, so they have gotten chipped, cavities have formed and my gums have gotten infected a few times, so now that I see something happening to fictional characters' mouths, specifically their teeth it makes me cringe really, really hard
@@eVill420 yea i dont get triggered easily but one thing that makes me feel nervous is any scene of a kid being groomed, or anything related to assault. also any scene of someone screaming cuz their horse is bolting. cuz i know how all of it feels and it’s terrifying
There's a movie called Johnny Got His Gun about a WWI soldier hit by an artillery shell, losing his sight, speech, hearing and I believe losing his limbs as well. He's trapped inside of his body with an intact mind and memory. My mom went through something similar, she had a TBI and became paralyzed but her brain was mostly unaffected. Luckily she said her body somehow shielded her from being crystal clear aware of what was happening until she regained her speech and some movement, but I've always thought that would be a fate worse than death. Fun fact: the song "One" by Metallica is based on that movie.
“Did you learn nothing from Game of Thrones?” I’M WHEEZING-
The best book series I will never bother reading now that it's finished. I get enough depression from IRL politics, thank you very much.
"we can't have the kids think they're dead so let's have them writhe in agony!"
I can think of a couple examples:
- Freezing in outer space
- Stranded at the bottom of a river
- Having your soul trapped in a doll
- Becoming fused with a rock
- Becoming fused with a book
- Dragged to hell by a thousand hands
- Being tormented by malevolent spirits and losing your mind
- People dancing while you’re being tortured
- Becoming a tortoise
- Being forced to relive different deaths over and over
- Eternal drowning in a lake
- Infinitely spun
- Slowly turning into stone
Gee, I wonder which show has all of these fates.
JOJO sure needs to be in OSP, because it's lack is such a waste.
Number 8 is by far the worst.
Chucky turned having your soul trapped in a doll into a fate as bad as death for everyone else
@Grant Parker *Coco Large*
One of my favorite uses of this is “the mind wipe” which you briefly touched on but the main character does get completely brain wiped/controlled and the side cast spends a season/arc with the previous MC as the antagonist until they get a Mac huff in or something to change it back. Great dram and creates tons of interesting dynamics