Turn Out Like His Father/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character raises a child to not act like another character.

  • Straight: After John dies in battle, before his son, Bob, is born, Jane raises Bob far away from military installations and does not tell him anything about his father's military career.
  • Exaggerated: Jane raises Bob in the Lost Woods, so no one could tell him anything about the military.
  • Downplayed: Jane tells Bob about the military, some local installations, and some relatives who were in the military (obviously not including John), but that's it.
  • Justified: Jane is terrified that Bob will die, too.
  • Inverted: Jane eagerly tries to mold Bob into acting just like John.
  • Subverted: It looks like Jane is trying to raise Bob to be different, but then it turns out that she is subtly trying to mold him into John.
  • Double Subverted: Except then she's not.
  • Parodied: John was an ice cream salesman, and Jane lives in morbid fear that Bob will be - gasp! - an ice cream man as well.
  • Deconstructed: Jane's pathological need to control Bob is part guilt over how she treated John, part making her son wholly her own, and results Bob revolting and fleeing her. To join the army.
  • Reconstructed: She has, however, installed in him some sense, so that while he turns a soldier, he is less headstrong and survives.
  • Zig Zagged: Whenver Bob does something, Jane immediately compares it to what John would do. Then she decides whether to encourage or discourage it based on how well it worked for John.
  • Averted: Jane is okay with him being whatever he wants to when he grows up.
  • Enforced: Turns out John wasn't dead at all, just alienated from Bob by Jane; he sues her for primary custody, wins, and raises his son to be just like him.
  • Lampshaded: "My mom was always scared I'd turn out like my dad. I guess it makes sense. I mean, he died."
  • Invoked: "Do you think maybe your mom is terrified you'll turn out like your dad?"
  • Defied: "Nah."
  • Discussed: "The chances are that Jane will raise Bob to be different from his father."
  • Conversed: "The Hero will never turn out evil like his father. His mother always brings him up to be different."

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