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Comforting the Widow: Difference between revisions
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{{trope}}
{{quote|''Thrift, thrift, Horatio! the funeral baked meats
''Did coldly furnish forth the marriage tables.''
|'''Hamlet''', ''[[Hamlet]]'', Act I, Scene II}}
Poor Alice. Her husband Bob has just died.
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* Bob isn't dead after all.
The first is a classic murder motive. The second is a way of [[Can't Get Away with Nuthin'|punishing]] Charlie for betraying his friend (often he's the next target for the [[Black Widow]]). The third is [[Scare'Em Straight|a lesson]] to wives about the danger of a non-husband male friend offering comfort. While the last situation is the most common for the
Contrast [[Romancing the Widow]], which is when an appropriate time of grieving has passed, and the widow is encouraged to move on with a new romance. See also [[Death of the Hypotenuse]], where Charlie had feelings for Alice before Bob died.
{{noreallife|this is All The Tropes, not Tropes After Dark.}}
{{examples}}
==
* Invoked in an ad for a sex hookup site featuring a woman that claims her husband died and she doesn't want love, just sex. The absurd nature of the ad has spawned parodies.
* In ''[[Soul Eater]]'', it's [[Mad Scientist|Franken Stein]] (of all people!). Not so much comforting a widow but instead a [[Christmas Cake]] (sometimes [[Played for Laughs]], but NOT in this instance), especially in the manga, as Marie Mjolnir loses her [[New Old Flame]] just before they reconcile their relationship again... [[That Came Out Wrong|Err]]...[[Shounen|comforting in a platonic sense]], [[I Thought It Meant|by the way]].▼
== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==
▲* In ''[[Soul Eater]]'', it's [[Mad Scientist|Franken Stein]] (of all people!). Not so much comforting a widow but instead a [[Christmas Cake]] (sometimes [[Played for Laughs]], but
** A significant moment for both for rather different reasons - Marie, because she's had feelings for Stein since they were in school and the BJ/madness thing complicated things somewhat, and Stein because it's the ''only'' example of him showing real empathy for another human being, aside from the odd nice gesture towards the students.
* In ''[[Saiyuki]]'', Dokugakuji ''[[Parental Incest|to his own mother]]''. [[Squick]]ily justified as it was [[Big Brother Instinct|to protect his younger half brother]] from being beaten to the point of death.
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== [[Literature]] ==
* [[Deconstructed]] in ''[[Harry Potter]]'', when Snape tries to get Voldemort to
** To add insult to injury, Dumbledore [[Genre Savvy|realizes]] that Snape is trying to invoke it, and he's so pissed off that he angrily [[What the Hell, Hero?|chews him out about it]].
*
* The story of the Woman of Ephesus in the Roman novel ''The Satyricon'' might count as the oldest one in the book- the seemingly virtuous widow was at her husband's tomb ready to starve herself to death, but after some comforting words from a centurion ends up having sex with him and offering her husband's corpse to be crucified after one of the corpses the soldier is overseeing is stolen.
* From "The Notebooks of Lazarus Long" in [[Robert A. Heinlein]]'s novel ''[[Time Enough for Love]]'':
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* In [[Tom Clancy]]'s ''The Cardinal of the Kremlin'', American physicist Alan Gregory is abducted by the KGB with the assistance of one of his colleagues, who hopes to be able to make a move on Gregory's fiancée once he's out of the way.
== [[Live
* Happens in ''[[Scrubs]]'', where J.D. ends up having sex with his patient's widow, and comments "There are a lot of ways to grieve, but last time I checked, wheelbarrow style wasn't one".
** Borders on [[Romancing the Widow]] in this case, as the man had been in a coma for several years (after a car accident two weeks into their marriage). As "Tasty Coma Wife" puts it, she had already grieved over losing her husband, his actual death really just gave her some closure.
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* ''[[Homeland]]''; at some point in the eight years Nicholas Brody was missing presumed dead, his friend Mike went from looking after his family to "comforting" his "widow". It's not clear how long it took, but they hadn't told the kids about it yet so it's presumably relatively recent.
== [[Music]] ==
* [[The Decemberists]] describe a Comforting the Widow scenario in which a [[Casanova|young]] [[The Gambling Addict|party boy]] seduces the narrator's recently widowed mother and then wastes away her fortune before leaving her to die in ''The Mariner's Revenge Song.''
== [[Porn]] ==
* Judging how many image search results for "喪服" (''mofuku''), mourning wear, are porn with this theme, it seems Comforting the Widow is a notable subspecies of porn in Japan. It helps that the full mofuku is only worn by the closest of the close family. And very bold, very attached lovers.
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* In ''Snatcher'', Gillian Seed (who is by the way married) can try to persuade the 18 (14 in the original Japanese version!) year old daughter of a dead teammate to let him try to comfort her. [[Robot Buddy|Metal Gear]] finds this very objectionable, and ''yells'' at Gillian to stop it. The daughter can get angry enough to throw Gillian out of the house, preventing him from returning for a while.
* Campbell says this was how he found his second wife in ''[[Metal Gear Solid]] 4'' - her husband had disappeared and he 'comforted' her. {{spoiler|It might have been the case in a very warped way, but the marriage was actually a sham intended to protect her and her son from the Patriots.}}
* A dark variation in ''[[City of Heroes]]'': In one [[Mirror Universe|Praetoria]] story arc, one PPD cop comments to another about comforting a journalist's girlfriend. While said journalist lies dying at his feet.
== [[Web Comics]] ==
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** Later repeated in the second movie with Zapp Branigan and Amy, after {{spoiler|Kiff goes splat}}. Gets kinda awkward when he inevitably gets better.
* The ''[[Family Guy]]'' episode "Perfect Castaway" has the family mistakenly believing that Peter has died at sea. Upon his return, he finds that Lois has married Brian. Subverted in that they never actually consummate the marriage before Peter's return (much to Brian's frustration).
▲* A dark variation in [[City of Heroes]]: In one [[Mirror Universe|Praetoria]] story arc, one PPD cop comments to another about comforting a journalist's girlfriend. While said journalist lies dying at his feet. {{spoiler|Guess who's responsible...}}
{{reflist}}
[[Category:Sex Tropes]]
[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
[[Category:
[[Category:Widow Woman]]
[[Category:Alice and Bob]]
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