Hope Is Scary/Playing With

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Basic Trope: A character, roused from despair to hope, finds it frightening.

  • Straight: Orlando has trusted no one since he fell in love with a Decoy Damsel, whose treachery killed his brother. When Angelica hires him to escort her, he thinks it just a job, but when he finds himself falling in love again, he is unnerved and tries to draw back from her, and find someone else to take on the job.
    • After the king treacherously blamed Jack for a dragon's rampage, when someone else roused the beast and Jack killed it, Jack has worked at various jobs, demanding money in advance, and mistrusting all who praised him. When a queen hires him and the job starts getting out of hand, her brave confidence inspires him to follow her without his money in hand. He almost flees when he realizes this.
    • Enslaved, Romilly refuses to join an escape plan because being dragged back would be too crushing.
  • Exaggerated: Orlando realizes he is falling in love and gibbers in terror.
  • Downplayed: Orlando is startled to realize he is falling in love again.
  • Justified: Orlando's experiences have caused anxiety, and despair-inducing fatalism is the primary thing he gets to see direction in life.
  • Inverted: Georgiana loses hope after she is betrayed by the man she loves, and finds that the numbness can indeed be comfortable.
  • Subverted: Boris has his heart broken, but his aunt introduces him to the lovely Esmeralda to help him get over it, and he acts afraid to hope -- to trick Esmeralda into believing he was recovering, so he could get the knowledge of his aunt's plot out of her.
  • Double Subverted: He was that desperate to learn it because he really was starting to love again.
  • Parodied: ???
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted: ???
  • Enforced: ???
  • Lampshaded: ???
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited: The villainous Theodote realizes that Orlando is falling in love and Oblivious to Love, so points it out to unnerve him.
  • Defied: The Determinator
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???
  • Deconstructed: Orlando's fear of hope makes him a very unproductive person.

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