View source for No Place for Me There

{{trope}}
{{quote|'''The Operative:''' I believe in something greater than myself. A better world. A world without sin.
'''Capt. Malcolm Reynolds:''' [[Utopia Justifies the Means|So me and mine gotta lay down and die... so you can live in your better world?]]
'''The Operative:''' I'm not going to live there. There's [[Trope Namer|no place for me there]]... any more than there is for you. Malcolm... I'm a monster. [[Necessarily Evil|What I do is evil. I have no illusions about it, but it must be done]].|''[[Serenity]]''}}

Every [[Dark Messiah]] and [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] knows that [[Utopia Justifies the Means]]... but a few of them know that their own methods for acquiring such a utopia would make it impossible to sustain. Essentially, this trope occurs when a character building a [[Utopia]] with [[Well-Intentioned Extremist|questionable methodology]] realizes (or is aware from the beginning) that they themselves would be unable to exist in the world that they are trying to create.

Depending on the character, this realization/knowledge can lead to an inevitable [[Heroic Sacrifice]] at the end, or to [[Jumping Off the Slippery Slope]] if not a full [[Face Heel Turn]] (the latter two are generally from the realization version). If the character continues to pursue the goal in spite of the fact that they themselves will not benefit from it, they are almost always a hero.

Distinct from [[Necessarily Evil]] in that their actions may not be "evil", only contrasting with the ideals that they are attempting to create: they could be perfectly heroic, at least [[Protagonist-Centered Morality|from the perspective of the heroes]]. Oftentimes [[The Hero]] will pursue such a goal even after he becomes aware of this, to improve the world for the next generation/the [[Protectorate]] or [[True Companions]]/other stock hero motive here. Often goes hand in hand with "[[I Am a Monster]]".

This trope is more frequent amongst heroes than villains, but a villain with No Place For Me There is completely possible; expect them to be an [[Anti-Villain]], [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]], [[Dark Messiah]], [[Worthy Opponent]], or any combination of the previous. Compare [[Heel Realization]] and [[Necessarily Evil]], compare/contrast [[Utopia Justifies the Means]]. A [[Hunter of His Own Kind]] who isn't hypocritical may take this option too.
{{examples}}

== Anime & Manga ==
* Lelouch Lamperouge of ''[[Code Geass]]'' decides that, in order to bring about lasting world peace, {{spoiler|he should take over as [[The Emperor]] and focus the hatred of the world on himself before having his best friend, disguised as his alter ego, kill him.}} It's partly because of this trope and partly because, by this point, he'd already been pushed past the [[Despair Event Horizon]].
* Zechs Marquise and maybe partially his 'friend', Treize Kushrenada, count in ''[[Gundam Wing]]''. The former leaves Earth because he is a warrior, and nothing but this, and he has no place in the peaceful world he helped create. The latter is up for interpretation whether it is this trope or [[Death Equals Redemption|redemption for the evil acts he did]] to achieve his better world.
* In ''[[Fullmetal Alchemist]]'', Roy Mustang wants to overthrow President Fuhrer King Bradley and the military state, knowing fully that he, along with everyone who fought in Ishval, would be tried and likely executed for their unpardonable war crimes. In fact, he ''wants'' this to happen, feeling that is the only atonement for what he's done.  {{spoiler|Relax, it doesn't happen.}}


== Comic Books ==
* A recurring theme in [[Batman]]: Batman's perfect world, one without crime, would have no need for the Caped Crusader.
** ''[[Justice League]]'' actually went on to show this in the two-parter "A Better World" -- [[Utopia Justifies the Means|the alternate Earth]] of the [[Knight Templar|Justice Lords]] drove their Batman to build a trans-dimensional portal out of boredom, so the Justice Lords could cross over to an Earth that still had crime and help that world too. {{spoiler|Well, that, or he was planning to betray the other Lords because he'd grown tired of their [[Knight Templar]] ways and wanted to see if another Batman could convince him that what he had been doing was wrong -- [[Enigmatic Minion|Lord Batman was sort of mysterious like that]]. In either case, he's the only one of the Justice Lords who gets away in the end.}}
** Similarly, in ''[[Infinite Crisis]]'', one of the things that manages to convince Earth-Two Superman not to cooperate with what he believes is Alexander Luthor's plan to restore his "perfect" world is the current Superman's insistence that if he truly ''was'' Superman, then it couldn't have been a perfect world -- "A perfect world doesn't need a Superman".
* V from ''[[V for Vendetta]]'' (at least in the comic book version). One of the prominent themes of the comic was contrasting Evey's pacifism with V's use of violence to work for the greater good. At the end,  {{spoiler|V pulls a [[Taking You with Me]], knowing that his violent ways would not fit in with the post-totalitarian order. He is replaced by Evey, the new "V", whose efforts are committed to creating things rather than destroying}}.
* Demongoblin, an enemy of [[Spider-Man]], fits this trope. He and the goblins of his dimension had a vision of their wickedness and the wickedness of others. They've all gone to other dimensions to cleanse them of sin (which means killing most-to-everyone). Each of them will return to the home dimension when he's done cleansing his. Then they'll all kill each other and the winner will commit suicide.


== Films ==
* [[Worthy Opponent|The Operative]] from ''[[Serenity]]'' was both the [[Trope Namer]] and the provider of the quote.
* V in ''[[V for Vendetta]]'' says as much to Evey at the film's climax:
{{quote|"...the world that I'm a part of and that I helped shape will end tonight, and tomorrow a different world will begin that different people will shape, and this choice belongs to them."}}
* A common theme in Westerns, where the heroes are often strong, simple, violent men who are fighting in defense of a civilization which has no place for them. Among the more notable examples:
** [[John Wayne|Tom Doniphon]] in ''[[The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance]]''.
** Harmonica in ''[[Once Upon a Time in the West]]''.
** Perhaps most famously of all, Ethan Edwards in ''[[The Searchers]]''. At the end of the film {{spoiler|the rest of his family are reunited while he stands alone in the doorway, unable to even enter their house, until he finally turns away.}}


== Literature ==
* [[Older Than Feudalism]]: In ''[[The Bible]]'', Moses could not enter the Promised Land because of his impiety at Meribah. He goes up on a mountain and looks out over the Jordan River into the Promised Land, but never gets to cross over.
** Similarly, King David was not permitted to build God's temple because he was a man of war, despite the fact that these were wars that God basically ordered and were widely viewed as necessary by the Israelites. The story goes that the man to build the temple needed to be a man of peace.
* Although not a villain, Bahzell's father Bahnak in the [[The War Gods|WarGod]] series is one of these. He's unique among his race, a largely barbaric people, for enforcing order, building infrastructure, educating his people, and generally trying to bring them up to the point where they can live in the civilized world again. Bahzell ruminates that although Bahnak is doing his best to unite his people and restore peace, he himself is such an ambitious warrior at heart that he could never be happy in the very world he seeks to create for his people.
* [[Daemon]]'s {{spoiler|Matthew Sobol}} deconstructs this to some extent. {{spoiler|Since he is dying anyway, he knows that he won't be around to see the new society he is hoping to create, but is still willing to pay the price of becoming the [[Complete Monster]] he believes will be necessary to cause the change. [[The Extremist Was Right|He succeeds]] but since [[My Death Is Just the Beginning|his death]] is what started the sequence of events he hoped would change the world, he would never know if it had been worth the price.}}
* The short story ''Not Fade Away'' by [[Spider Robinson]] is about a man. He is described as a muscular human being, and viewed as hideous by the narrator, containing such grotesque irregularities as an excess of musculatur, primitive senses, and bilateral symmetry that leaves a blind-side. He's a Warrior, the last of his kind. Humanity grew, bonded, and merged with every other form of life. He and his fellows fought each other, with nothing else to do. They hoped, with the discovery of a Malign Bonding in another galaxy, to have an enemy... but they CURED it. So now he is the last. And the narrator? An enemy.  {{spoiler|Actually the last of the Healers, healing, by killing (and dying with), the only being left in the universe who needs healing. Each is leaving a universe he no longer has a place in.}}
* [[The Elric Saga]]'s eponymous character, Elric of Melnibone, often fights for Law despite his deep connections to Chaos. In the end, he  {{spoiler|literally makes a better world, destroying his world utterly (though it was already pretty close to destroyed, he and friend Moonglum were apparently the only non-mutated people left) and replacing it with a new world ruled by Law. He is the last survivor of the old world, Moonglum having sacrificed himself to provide energy for making the new world. And there is no place for him in the new world - he's almost immediately killed.}}


== Tabletop Games ==
* In ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]'', many [[Knight Templar|Banishers]] hold the opinion that all magic is inherently evil. This means that they hold to the belief that they would need to destroy themselves in order to create a world truly devoid of magic (although there are those who hold out hope that it might be possible for them to be rewarded by being freed of their magic).
** The Guardians of the Veil believe in a [[Messianic Archetype|Messianic figure]] who will close the Abyss and save the world who they need to prepare the way for, and that not only will this figure ''not'' be a Guardian, but when the time comes the figure will need to judge them for their sins (the implication is that, whether they are forgiven or condemned, the Guardians themselves will cease to be).


== Videogames ==
* Claudia of ''[[Silent Hill 3]]'' is happy to stain her own hands with blood and cause [[The End of the World as We Know It]] as long as her idea of "Paradise" can happen, but she's more than aware that she herself is too sinful to enter said Paradise.
* Pravin Lal from [[Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri]] has [[Hypocrisy Nod|this realisation]] despite being one of the most heroic characters:
** "Yes, he would kill for peace. And that was the problem."
*** [[Inherent in the System|Not that he has any chances of success otherwise]]
* In the [[Baldur's Gate]] expansion pack ''Throne of Bhaal'',  {{spoiler|Balthasar}} is on a mission to kill all of the Bhaalspawn. Since he is one himself, his final plan is to kill himself once all of the others are dead. In fact, he planned to use a ritual suicide to ensure Bhaal could never be resurrected.
*  {{spoiler|Kreia}} from [[Knights of the Old Republic]] is well aware that destroying the Force will eliminate her along with the endless Jedi versus Sith conflict that periodically burns the galaxy. She's perfectly happy with it, and actually delighted that Exile  {{spoiler|is able to not only prove her theories, but become strong enough to kill her.}}
* The very end of ''[[The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker|The Legend of Zelda the Wind Waker]]'' has  {{spoiler|King Hyrule use the Triforce to grant hope to Link and Zelda. He also decides to have Hyrule washed away by the ocean... permanently. After fighting Ganondorf, Zelda tries to convince Hyrule to come with them to a new land, but he refuses, having realized he is just as tied to Hyrule as Ganondorf.}}
* In [[StarCraft II]], Jim Raynor believes that it's his duty to take down [[Evil Overlord|Arcturus Mengsk]] and the [[The Empire|Terran Dominion]] and it's up to people like [[The Heart|Matt]] [[The Lancer|Horner]] to make something better of the world.
** This is actually a crucial thematic and characterization point for the series: Tosh [[Sliding Scale of Idealism vs. Cynicism|believes that, after they take down Mengsk, another 'Mengsk' will take his place, and the next day another one after that.]] He is still loyal to Raynor, he and his Specters are just out for revenge against Mengsk. Still, Tosh openly challenges Matt's belief that he can actually create "A better tomorrow". Raynor actually reaches Tosh ''and'' Matt with the above declaration, which is the [[Take a Third Option|third option]] to the dilemma, providing a way forward for both the cynical "devils" of the past and the idealistic "free thinkers" of tomorrow.
* At the end of the Resistance campaign in ''[[Brink]]'', Chen, the Resistance leader, opts to stay behind on the Ark and  {{spoiler|give up his seat on the plane the Resistance was using to look for land to someone with "less blood on their hands."}}
* At the end of the ''[[ActRaiser]]'' games, {{spoiler|humanity no longer needs the Master, and worship of him slowly fades away. His temples are abandoned, his statues crumble, and he is forgotten.}}
* Used on a small scale, and with a bit of a twist, in the original ''[[Fallout]]'' game. Your main motivation for everything you've done in the game is to safeguard the Vault you grew up in, first by securing their water-supply, and then by wiping out a major [[Big Bad|threat to the continued existence of unmutated humanity]]. However, at the end of the game, as you return to the Vault, you are blocked at the doorstep by the administrator of the place. He outright tells you that you have no place there anymore - you've become too much of an outsider, too much of a warrior, to fit into the peaceful, bottled piece of civilization that Vault represents. How well you take it [[Karma Meter|depends on your choices so far]], but the end result is always the same - turning your back on the tiny world you helped save, you wander back out into the dangerous wasteland...


== Webcomics ==
* Othar Tryggvassen, [[Gentleman Adventurer]]! of ''[[Girl Genius]]'' is [http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/comic.php?date=20040922 on a one-man crusade] to kill every [[Mad Scientist|Spark]] and end the threat they pose to everyone. However, [[Hunter of His Own Kind|he's a Spark as well]], so he plans to end the crusade with himself.
* {{spoiler|Mako}} in ''[[Schlock Mercenary]]'' - except she's not too optimistic about how easy "no [[I Am a Monster|monsters]]" state would be to achieve.
{{quote|Civilization needs people who can protect it, and then go back to being a ''part'' of it. Otherwise it stops being a civilization. [...]
I wish this job could have been done differently. Maybe you'll figure out how that works.
You know, so you can save civilization from its enemies without making it afraid of its weapons. }}

== Real Life ==
* "I suppose that in any well-ordered society people like us would be locked up or shot. But then you would have to get people like us to do the locking up and the shooting." — Jim Morris (US Army Special Forces)
* On a species-wide scale, the [[wikipedia:Voluntary Human Extinction Movement|Voluntary Human Extinction Movement]].

{{reflist}}
[[Category:Morality Tropes]]
[[Category:Older Than Feudalism]]
[[Category:No Place for Me There]]