Adopt the Dog: Difference between revisions
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You're watching or reading something, and you're approaching a moment where the villain is on the spot. He's got a choice: continue [[Kick the Dog|being his old bad self]], or do something nice. He [[Good Feels Good|does something nice]]. Aww, a [[Heel Face Turn]], isn't that sweet?
But it's more complicated than that. What if it's not the villain who does it? What if it's the protagonist in a story of [[Gray and Gray Morality]]? What if you weren't at all sure the character ''was'' going to do something good, because everything was lining up for a [[World Half Empty]] [[Downer Ending]]? ''That's''
In addition to having an effect on the character (declaring themselves [[Character Alignment|Good instead of Neutral]], occasionally followed by [[Redemption Equals Death|death]]), it also has a profound effect on the ''audience''. When you're dealing with morally ambiguous protagonists and (more often than not) spending a lot of time in the drowning end of the [[Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism|Sliding Scale]] pool, you're never sure what the ending's gonna be like, who's gonna win, or whether you're going to be happy about it. Adopting The Dog is when the audience believes it might be possible to [[Earn Your Happy Ending]] - or, for that matter, that the character ''has'' earned it - and begins to actively be on that character's side.
As previously mentioned, can lead to [[Earn Your Happy Ending]], [[Redemption Equals Death]] / [[Redemption Earns Life]], and [[Big Damn Heroes]], since there finally is [[Buffy-Speak|a Hero who]] ''[[Buffy-Speak|can]]'' [[Buffy-Speak|Big Damn]]. Compare [[Last Second Chance]], in which the character is ''given'' the choice, instead of making it out of their own heart. Contrast [[The Atoner]]: a character who Adopts The Dog may not have actually done anything that requires atonement.
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* In the ''[[Doctor Who]]'' episode "The Parting of the Ways", the Doctor is prepared to commit another double genocide... and then he decides that no, once was bad enough, he's not doing it again.
** In "Journey's End", we're led to believe that Dalek Caan is prophesising the triumph of the Daleks... when actually he's constructed a gigantic [[Batman Gambit]]- only saved from being a [[Gambit Roulette|roulette]] by virtue of the fact that Caan has seen all of space and time - to bring down the Dalek Empire once and for all. But he forgot the Daleks have [[Joker Immunity]].
* ''[[Buffy the Vampire Slayer]]'', "Intervention". Pretty much ''the'' definitive moment in Spike's change from evil to good (which is different to his [[Heel Face Turn]], strangely enough). To elaborate: [[Token Evil Teammate|Spike]] is [[Stalker with a Crush|in love with Buffy]] and has a [[Odd Friendship|soft spot]] for Buffy's [[Annoying Younger Sibling|little sister, Dawn]]. Then the [[Big Bad]] abducts Spike for information about the location of a [[MacGuffin Girl|a magical living Key]]
* On ''[[Dollhouse]],'' the amoral Topher gets this in "Belonging" when he refuses Adelle's order to basically sell Sierra to [[Stalker with a Crush|Kinnard]]. Adelle makes her own final choice in "Stop-Loss" when she decides to turn on the Rossum Corporation (though this isn't revealed until the end of the next episode, "The Attic").
* The ending of the ''[[Firefly]]'' pilot episode has Mal choose to adopt the dog when he takes on River and Simon rather than cut them loose on the border worlds. Later on, in ''[[Serenity]]'', he does it again when he chooses to take River on board once more after learning of how dangerous she was when he killing-programming was activated.
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