You Can't Thwart Stage One: Difference between revisions

[[Finagle's Law]] meets the [[Rule of Drama]]. Any time the villain is putting together an [[Evil Plan]], we can ''always'' expect it to reach its final stage, no matter what the hero or heroes do to try to stop it. If the villain is trying to collect the [[Rule of Three|Three]] [[Cosmic Keystone|Cosmic Keystones]] that will allow him to become a [[Physical God]], he ''will'' assemble them all. If the villain is trying to unseal a [[Sealed Evil in a Can]], it ''will'' break free and need to be defeated or re-sealed. If the villain is planning to disgrace the king, [[Hypnotize the Princess]] and rule the kingdom, he ''will'' accomplish the first two before [[The Hero]] stops him. And so on.

 

 

This is especially painful to watch when [[The Hero]] or otherwise a good guy will attempt to foil the [[Evil Plan]] in a way that [[In-Universe]] seems like a perfectly good idea, but from a [[Watsonian Versus Doylist|Doylist]] point of view is too anticlimactic to work. In the ''best case'', they fail at the earliest opportunity in a relatively harmless way. Otherwise, they may appear to be making progress -- obstacles will be cleared and the stakes will rise -- only for the story to inevitably [[Yank the Dog's Chain]] and pull the whole thing into catastrophic failure.

* In ''[[Dragonball Z]]'', The [[Big Bad]] of each season will always reach his strongest transformation, especially in cases where this involves absorbing somebody. However the only strong characters have chronic cases of [[Honor Before Reason]] and typically let the enemy get to their maximum power so that there's no doubt of [[My Kung Fu Is Stronger Than Yours|who's the strongest when its over.]]

** The most straight forward and egregious example being the beginning of the Buu saga, wherein Goku and Vegeta who were at least twice as strong as [[The Dragon]] and 100s of times stronger than the [[Big Bad]] not only failed to stop [[Sealed Evil in a Can|Buu's revival]] but agreed to cause it so they they could settle their infighting. Cue 60+ episodes of trying to undo the damage.

* In ''[[Mai-Otome]]'', the protagonists make moves against Nagi's plans for the first 16 episodes, but are unable to accomplish enough to stop him from {{spoiler|taking over Windbloom or activating the Harmonium, leading up to an attempt to liberate Windbloom, destroy the Harmonium and defeat him}}.

* In ''[[Naruto]]'', Akatsuki need to seal all 9 of the Tailed Beast for their goal ({{spoiler|both the ones Pain and Tobi stated}}) to be completed. Inevitably, in the Rescue Gaara arc they fail to get Gaara back before his beast is sealed, beast 2-7 were sealed off-screen, and {{spoiler|Tobi seems to be able to at least partially make up for the absence of the 8 and 9-tailed beast with a fraction of each one's chakra found in a severed tentacle and the body of a man revived by Kabuto, respectively.}}

** Also averted: One of the past plans Dr. Impossible mentions never even got to the evil stage before being shut down: {{spoiler|the plan that created superhero Fatale}}.

* In ''The Amulet of Samarkand'', the first installment of ''[[The Bartimaeus Trilogy]]'', Lovelace manages to trap the British government and summon Ramuthra before he is defeated.

* The ''[[Seventh Tower]]'' series ends with the heroes fighting the [[Big Bad]] to regain the [[Cosmic Keystone|Violet Keystone]] - if they're too slow, their world's defense fails. They catch up to him just when he's summoning his army.

* Subverted somewhat in ''[[Dune]]''. Baron Harkonnen's plan to take over Arrakis, destroy House Atreides, and eventually place his nephew on the Imperial throne has several important factors go wrong from the beginning (such as Paul and Jessica surviving and his [[The Dragon|second-in-command]] [[Psycho for Hire|Piter]] being killed before he could assume control of Arrakis, and keeping a member of the Atreides staff alive and in his employ). The repercussions of these factors ultimately ruin the Baron, and probably meant that his plan wouldn't have succeeded in any case. As the Princess Irulan said, "A beginning is a very delicate thing".