Needs a lot of work: Consequence Combo

It's not Too Rare To Trope, it's too specific to trope. If we drop the part about the Call to Adventure, then if loads of examples of that subtrope pop up in the examples list we can make a trope for it then.

Just think it's more important that we have an Omnipresent Trope like Carrot And Stick ("characters are motivated by rewards for good behaviour and threatened with punishments for bad behaviour") than an overly specific sub-variant of that.

So, we should YKTTW Carrot And Stick. However, this trope is when a character will be rewarded for accepting The Call, but gets punished for declining it. It is too specific, but if we can just find two more tropes, it will not be Too Rare To Trope.

Well this has been stickied for almost two weeks now, and not one other example has appeared. zerky personally sat there and thought about it for a good hour and didn't come up with a single thing. And the problem is, even if you pull in the entire forum and get everyone to search every single work for two more examples of this trope, the rarity of Consequence Combo is always going to be a problem. The page will have three entries instead of one, but if we're struggling so much to come up with examples now, other people aren't just going to stumble on such a low volume/traffic page like Consequence Combo and think of a dozen more instances of it occurring in other works. Forcing another two examples onto it will fool the current system into letting it through as-is, but it won't magically make Consequence Combo more common in media.

I doubt I will be able to create a 4th Extreme Trope Makeover. I can't think of any examples either, expect the Alex Rider one, which I'm not sure is even a call.

So why not go with johnnye's solution and just remove The Call from the equation? As it is, it's Too Rare To Trope. No one can even think of a single example for it.

Do we not already have "If you win you get the prize, if you lose you get something worse than not playing"? It seems so standard and generic, you'd think we'd have it already.

BTW, I'm a chick.

Apparently not.

Having this in relation to the call seemed like it should be a lot more generic too, but just look at the difficulty we're having with examples. :P

Heeeeeeey this is an extremely common fairytale trope!

Something about an everyman hero participating in series of challenges, if he wins he gets the girl and half the kingdom, if he loses he will die - either by execution or because challenges are deadly

edited 5th May '11 10:11:58 PM by Aminatep

   I will consume not only your flesh, but your very soul.   

also I see this trope a lot in military-related fiction (referring mostly to speculative fiction), where a hero is a soldier or a low rank officer (either way, somebody who actually participates in battles) who at some point throughout the story offered by high ranks to participate in an extremely secret mission, so secret he wouldn't even hope to get security clearance for it. Usually suicidal as well.

Accepting it leads to promotions and medals. Denying it is, well, treated as desertion, because it's the military. Or maybe reassignment to an even more suicidal mission.

edited 5th May '11 11:35:43 PM by Aminatep

   I will consume not only your flesh, but your very soul.   

Not sure if it counts if the negative consequence of the Consequence Combo is as a direct result of the tasks.

It kind of goes without saying that if you perform a dangerous task, the consequence of failure is usually death or severe injury. zerky believes it should only apply if you decline the task.

Can you name specific works that invoke this trope? It would be helpful to add to the article.

Rumpelstiltskin, maybe? She spins the straw into gold, she marries the king; she doesn't, she gets put to death. Maybe a bit of a stretch, though.

That's not a call to adventure. The marriage offer comes on the third night, and it's not an either/or deal. The king is so impressed the he decides to marry her. The first night he just says that she must spin the straw into gold or he'll execute her.

zerky supposes that it really depends on which version of the story you're reading, though. Maybe in some versions the king does offer his hand in marriage if the miller's daughter can spin the straw into gold on the first night.

okay, so wouldn't spider-man's backstory fit here? He had powers, he had a chance to stop a criminal, and chose not to. The consequence being he lost his Uncle.

There are various canon backstories for Spiderman, so it really depends on which one you're looking at... but in the backstory you're referring to, what were the options presented to Spiderman? and was he aware that his uncle's life was at stake from the beginning?

zerky is only really familiar with the film canon, which definitely isn't an example*

but perhaps Peter's backstory from another medium would illustrate Consequence Combo better.

Could you describe what happens in the backstory you're referring to and which medium/time period it belongs to?

edited 20th May '11 12:24:41 PM by zerky

He's probably referring to the original Amazing Spider-Man intro comic back when Stan Lee first brought the character to life. And if memory serves, it pretty much goes down like it went down in the 2000 movie, with some of the details changed. Spider-Man was never faced with a choice whether to catch the thief or lose his uncle, it was just a progression of events.

After digging, the only things I can find that may be it is: Too Many Magicians, A Lord Darcy novel by Randall Garrett. Where I gather the hero was blackmailed into taking the case but I haven't read the novel so I don't know if there was any carrot to go with it.

Metal Gear Solid: I know he's given a threat, I'm not sure if he's offered any carrot.

The Eagle Has Landed (Jack Higgins): The Hero is offered carrots in terms of no-longer having to do a suicide job, and chances of his father being released from the Gestapo and there may have been some stick in terms of it not helping his father to refuse but unfortunately, I can't remember can't find it and haven't got the book on hand. At the very least they'd continue with the suicide duty that was already being forced on them by the Germans, the people calling them.

And that's about it, I think in a story, normally if the hero is going to be forced into it with a stick they don't bother softening the blow with a carrot because it makes the threat seem weaker. There are a crud load of examples for just stick but not many for carrot and stick. Every Hero ever called by Lord Vetinari, was either forced into the call through fate or was sticked into it. But the carrot is always "and who knows, I might even not stick you". I think the carrot is always implied and uncertain at best.

Yet it's crazy because it's the sort of thing you'd expect to see everywhere. Carrot and Stick is such a normal principle in Real Life

EDIT: In finding an example at last, I also found a quote explaining my above, Making Money:Vetinari just used a stick, or hit you with the carrot

edited 12th Jul '11 5:40:58 AM by Tomwithnonumbers

At least in Finland the dominant version of Rumpelstiltskin is that on the first night, the king announces the girl must prove her claims about spinning straw into gold true: if it's the truth, he shall marry her, and if it's a lie, she will be executed. She's given a bunch of straw and in the end she manages to spin it into gold. However after seeing the gold the king becomes greedy, and repeats the ultimatum, only now she has to spin a full basketful of straw. On the third night this is repeated once more, and she is introduced to a room full of straw.

It's bit of Fridge Horror though... what will happen in the future when the king gets gold-hungry again?

edited 7th Jun '11 3:31:04 AM by peccantis

I think we should unpin it and disband the Extreme Trope Makeover. It isn't working at all.

Yeah, I'm inclined to agree. This is not working at all.

Rhymes with "Protracted."

I'll holler then.

Although this was unpinned, it wasn't closed, and it just sort of drifted to the bottom of the forum.

Is there anything else to be done with this, or should it be closed?