Too Happy to Live: Difference between revisions

{{quote|''"Hey, you know what else I love? Living! I love living! I hope to do a lot of living while I'm still alive. I'm just so lively. Wouldn't it be a great tragic irony if I was to ''not'' be living? God, I love being alive. ''Alive!''"''|'''[[That Guy With the Glasses|Nostalgia Critic]]''' on Hiller's ([[Will Smith]]) best friend in ''[[Independence Day]]''}}

 

 

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The pursuit of happiness is one of the fundamental activities of mankind, be it from accomplishment, family, or gainfully performing a duty or calling. This is why characters who are shown to have attained a certain amount of happiness are very sympathetic to an audience, something indispensable for an author to tell a good story. However, people who are happy [[Refusal of the Call|don't usually go out of their way]] to answer the [[Call to Adventure]], making their involvement in a story very difficult. The solution writers [[Enforced Trope|most often employ]] is to [[Doomed Hometown|kill the happy characters]].

 

 

 

This isn't to say this trope is only used to unjustly torment heroes; [[Start of Darkness|villains can be born from these tragedies]] (or kept from a [[Heel Face Turn]]) in equal measure. Nor is the use of this trope a sign of poor writing; personal [[Tragedy]] is a valid motivation for characters, as is the struggle to [[Earn Your Happy Ending]]. Only when the story [[Tragic Dream|sabotages the character's dreams]] to preserve [[Status Quo Is God]] at the expense of [[Emotional Torque|catharsis]] does [[Too Happy to Live]] start to go overboard.

* So you've moved up the ladder in life. You have a loving foster father, and an adorable foster little sister. You steadily rise in your occupation, what's with being [[The Paragon|a phenomenally talented person]]. Your fiancee is the son of one of your higher-ups. The aforementioned little sister is going your path, and is an even more talented person than you. Things will be getting even better in the future, right? The answer is, unfortunately, a profoundly resounding NO, because your name is [[Ga Rei Zero|Isayama Yomi]].

* In ''[[Madoka Magica]]'', {{spoiler|Mami Tomoe}} is killed almost immediately after she finally finds contentment in her life - directly on the heels of a monologue about how wonderful she feels, in fact.

* {{spoiler|Euphie}} from ''[[Code Geass]]''. She's just about ready to make peace with ''[[Magnificent Bastard|Zero]]'', and he's ''[[Morality Pet|willing to accept it]]''. Cue in some... [[Diabolus Ex Machina|unfortunate incidents]] and she's dead ''and'' forever hated by an entire country (or more). She even ''dies happy'' thinking she did her best for the world.

* In ''[[Blood-C]]'', [[Genki Girl]] {{spoiler|twins Nene and Nono}} are the first to die.

* In ''[[Neon Genesis Evangelion]]'', it appears that the universe goes out of its way to horribly destroy anyone that even ''tries'' to be happier. For example, we have Kaworu Nagisa, the only person in the entirety of the series which is shown to love Shinji unconditionally. {{spoiler|He doesn't even last the episode he appears in.}}

 

== Comic Books ==

* Though nobody dies, this is just one of many reasons why ''[[Spider-Man]]'' fans hate ''[[One More Day]]''. Peter and Mary Jane have been [[Happily Married]] for about twenty years ([[Comic Book Time|real-time]]). But we can't have ''that''; how are we going to get Peter caught up in [[Love Triangle|Love Triangles]]? (And this isn't the first time; they previously tried to kill MJ off in order to make Peter a swinging single again.)

** Peter and MJ recently reached the 25 year mark in the newspaper strips, so that's some small comfort, and there [[Happily Married]] in [[Spider Girl]]

* The [[Incredible Hulk (Comic Book)|Incredible Hulk]] is not the Hulk unless he's upset. Therefore it's kind of a [[Foregone Conclusion]] that any happy relationship he is currently in will end poorly at some point in the near future.

* Most [[Death By Origin Story|Deaths by Origin Story]] are this way. From [[Spider-Man|Ben Parker]] and [[Batman|Thomas & Martha Wayne]] to [[The Boys|Wee Hughie's girlfriend-turned-fiance]], it seems the greatest tragedies come from the greatest happiness.

[[Category:Orphaned/Sandbox/Depressing Tropes]]

[[Category:Too Happy To Live]]