Papa Wolf/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A man fiercely defends his loved ones.

  • Straight: A man's children are threatened and he leaps to their defense.
  • Exaggerated: A man inflicts Disproportionate Retribution on anyone who even annoys his children -- even justifiably. See Knight Templar Parent.
  • Justified: They're his children, and his protectiveness is an expression of his love for them.
  • Inverted: A man will protect any and every one but his children, whom he will abuse for getting into trouble.
    • Or the adult children fiercely defend their aging father against all threats.
    • Or the father is fierce and defensive until you threaten his kids. Then he becomes a docile, Bumbling Dad.
    • Offing the Offspring
  • Gender Inverted: Mama Bear
  • Subverted: A man's defense of his children keeps them too sheltered to survive when he dies, so they end up worse off than before.
    • The father tries to be a Papa Wolf, but proves woefully inadequate against the threat against his children...
  • Double Subverted: He arranged for a Parental Substitute, since no matter how hard they tried, they would never have been able to face their dangers.
  • Parodied: Unending conflicts between fathers over real and imagined slights to their children.
  • Deconstructed: Fathers obsess over their children to the neglect of what else is their duty, and shelter them into helplessness.
  • Reconstructed: A father learns his Aesop and teaches his children to defend themselves, and brings them along to help others.
  • Zig Zagged: The little girl who the old man goes out of his way to protect at all costs is under a magical effect that has reduced her to the appearance of a child. She's his mother.
    • The father and the daughter are a Battle Couple protecting each other fiercely.
  • Averted: Disappeared Dad
    • The father is too cowardly to try to protect his kids.
  • Enforced: "If he doesn't protect his kids, it means he doesn't care about them, and it makes him look like a Jerkass.
  • Lampshaded: "Just because he's a shop clerk doesn't mean we can risk his seeing us harm his kids!"
  • Invoked: "I knew if they did that, they would bring down the father's wrath on them."
  • Defied: "I know my kids can take care of themselves -- I won't steal their thunder."
  • Discussed: "He would do anything to protect his kids."
  • Conversed: "You have to write in a son for him. It gives him a motive. Men in stories like that will punch out God to save their son."

Back to Papa Wolf, and get your hands off my son!