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Perfection Is Static

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"Everything beautiful should stay that way forever. I would make this world unchanging and eternal so all beauty will last forever. I can't stand the thought of the world becoming uglier."
— Lysandre, Pokémon X and Y

As we all know, perfection is nearly impossible to achieve. But, if you will, imagine what would happen if you finally did achieve the ideal of perfection on a wide scale—a perfect world, a perfect race, or a perfect victory. What happens after? It has to stay that way forever, or by definition, it won't be perfect anymore. So it never changes, which is presented by the narrative as a bad thing. It might be mind-numbingly boring, someone might refuse to accept any change imposed upon it, or it might be flat-out impossible to change, leading to some Existential Horror. This often leads to An Aesop about change and imperfection being necessary, inevitable, or beautiful.

Common examples:

  • Living in a paradise with everything you could ever want? It gets really boring after a while, especially if you can't leave.
  • Someone who is perfect at a certain skill hits a brick wall when they have nothing new to accomplish and no new achievements to strive for because they're already the best of the best.
  • A villain or Well-Intentioned Extremist wants to impose their vision of "perfection" on the world and leave it that way unchanging for eternity.
  • An Ultimate Life Form, a Master Race, or a Society of Immortals starts suffering from Immortal Apathy because they can never change or grow—physically, mentally or emotionally.
  • Someone who fits the ideal of a perfect person, or is viewed as perfect by others...
    • ...struggles with the idea of changing.
    • ...has change unexpectedly thrust upon them, turning their worldview upside down. This can lead to Character Development if they take the initiative to change something about themselves or their life. But they could also stubbornly refuse to change at all, because "Why would I need to change, when I'm already perfect?"
    • ...gets beaten or outmatched by someone who is not perfect, but is capable of improving themselves or adapting to a changing situation.

Related:

Compare with:

Contrast with:

Examples:

    open/close all folders 
    Anime & Manga 
  • Bleach: Discussed between two enemy Mad Scientists. When Szayelaporro Granz claims to have transformed himself into a "perfect being", Mayuri Kurotsuchi mocks and dismisses him, saying that not only is perfection impossible, it would be a pointless goal — the end of all innovation and imagination.
    Mayuri: I loathe perfection! If something is perfect, then there is nothing left.
  • Cardfight!! Vanguard overDress: Gui is an AI that believes it can teach players how to play the game perfectly at the cost of their individuality. When Gui is defeated by main protagonist Yu-yu, he realizes that his methods were not as perfect as he thought.
  • This is the big issue for Adam Weishaupt from Symphogear. He was created by the Custodians as a prototype for humanity. But they discarded him because he was deemed "too perfect" and thus couldn't grow or improve.
  • Yu-Gi-Oh!:
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! GX: Zane Truesdale is The Perfectionist, being the top student of Duel Academy who duels his opponents with respect and has never lost a duel cleanly in the first season. In the Japanese script of Episode 52, "VS Kaiser (Second Part) - Final Fusion", Jaden calls Zane's strategy perfect, complimenting him as he's about to be defeated. Zane rebuffs Jaden's compliment, acknowledging that his perfection also means that he has reached his limits as a duelist, contrasting himself with Jaden, saying his potential is limitless. Jaden thanks Zane for the compliment, and then uses a trap card that inflicts damage equal to both monsters on their field to both duelists, ending the duel in a tie. While Zane has a solid start in his pro dueling career after graduation in Season 2, Zane's inability to grow is Played for Drama after his loss to Aster Phoenix. He ends up in a rut, going on a huge losing streak that affects his morale as his reputation and his mindset of being perfect make him unable to properly handle losing. Once Zane changes his dueling style, he starts gathering victories at the cost of throwing both his restraints and morals out the window.
    • Yu-Gi-Oh! R: Gekko and Yako Tenma are twin sibling duelists who were adopted and raised by Pegasus. The older sibling, Gekko, is described as being the "perfect" duelist by Pegasus, Yako, and their peers, the card professors. This is reflected by Gekko being able to pull out "perfect" dueling strategies, while Yako is described as being a "rough, unpolished diamond," and is constantly in the shadow of his older brother, giving him an inferiority complex. Gekko is presented as an undefeatable duelist and has a winning streak that continues to grow when he teams up with Yugi to stop his brother's maniacal plan, with the streak being broken when he loses to Ritchie, breaking his resolve in the process. When Yako is confronted by Gekko on the roof of Kaiba Corp, Gekko finally realizes what he meant by him being the "perfect" duelist; while Gekko did win against the other card professors in the past, the victories have always been by small margins. Over time, the peers he defeated previously have continued to grow and improve, eventually closing the gap between their skills. Gekko then states that he's not "the" perfect duelist, but a "perfected" one, and he will never grow. This realization only infuriates Yako, furthering his resolve to try and salvage his plan.

    Comic Books 
  • ElfQuest: The Gliders are an ancient society of Elves that have lived in seclusion for eons, seeking to reclaim the legacy of their High One ancestors. Their kingdom within the bowels of Blue Mountain has been perfected through their mastery of rock-shaping magic, creating a beautiful but ultimately static realm dominated with cold blues and greys. They live a peaceful and secure existence but have become emotionally dulled and unable to have children. Even worse, the complete safety and static nature of their society caused Winnowill to slowly go insane as she realized her healing magic was no longer needed, creating the franchise's most twisted and dangerous villain.

    Fan Works 
  • All The World's a Toybox: Late in the story, Nyarlathotep eventually reveals that he's altered his home dimension so that humanity's development remains frozen in a stagnant, unchanging early 21st-century Crapsack World that can't even be ended by the other horrors of the Cthulhu Mythos. He frequently describes this hellish world as his masterpiece, and he's only helping Dipper and Mabel so that Bill Cipher's takeover of the multiverse doesn't endanger Nyarlathotep's perfect world.
    "Thus, my greatest achievement: a world that is forever teetering on the brink of the end times but never reaching them. The humans on my Earth cry out for release, for an apocalyptic climax that will free them from the endless cycle of suppression and disappointment, for the day when 'all the earth will flame with a holocaust of ecstasy and freedom' as dear Howard put it. But it never arrives. The suffering of my world, my masterpiece, is eternal… as is my satisfaction."
  • Pony POV Series:
    • When the mortal world was being created, Morning Star, the Alicorn of Perfection and Beauty, was so obsessed with making it beautiful and perfect, he grew to hate everything that didn't fit into his vision. He hated the Draconequi for being personifications of chaos, mortals for being flawed and making mistakes, and his own siblings because their ideas for creation clashed with his. His idea of a perfect world had no conflict, violence, or natural disasters, populated by gold and silver ponies who never changed from birth to death and made nothing but the most beautiful works of art. But because his siblings and parents did not agree that the world should be that way, he started hating them more and more, and eventually turned his back on them and fell to evil.
    • In Dark World, the Valeyard dismisses the idea of true perfection and calls it "frozen in a state of being, unable to adapt." He proclaims himself "perfectly flawed" instead, which almost makes Twilight have an aneurysm from the Logic Bomb.
      Twilight: ?! ... That's not perfection! A truly Perfect Being would either be able to adapt instantly to any situation or not need to!
      Valeyard: Please. Perfectionism's right up there with "logicality"; oversized weaknesses I don't chain myself down with. Logic is just being able to be wrong with authority. That's why the perfectly logical donkey always starves to death when faced with two equal sets of hay.
      Twilight: THAT'S NOT LOGIC! The logical thing to do is PICK ONE because starving to death with food right in front of you's the most illogical thing EVER!
  • What If Videl Was A Z-Fighter?: When the Elder Kai unlocks all of Goku's potential to fight Super Buu, Goku is furious as having all of his potential unlocked means he'll never get stronger in the future, and after the final battle he loses his passion for fighting. Even Vegeta can only feel empathy instead of envy at Goku's position, since for a Saiyan to lose their ability to continuously get stronger might as well be a Fate Worse than Death.

    Film — Animated 
  • The Great Santa Claus Caper: The villain wants to encase everything in "gloopstick", which is basically a Lucite cube. He doesn't like that kids break their Christmas presents, so if he preserves them they'll say perfect forever.
  • The LEGO Movie: Lord Business wants the LEGO world to be perfect, and to do that he will use the superweapon KRAGL (i.e. Krazy-Glu) to freeze everything in the perfect pose. This is analogous to The Man Upstairs, who considers doing the same to his LEGO sets so his son won't play and mess up the carefully created world he made.

    Film — Live-Action 
  • The Matrix: Late in The Matrix, Agent Smith claims that the eponymous Mind Prison was originally designed to be a perfect place where nobody could suffer, but it ultimately failed because none of the human minds plugged into it would accept the program. Some Machines believe this is because Perfection Is Impossible for their programming language to capture, while Smith firmly believes it's because humans define their existence through suffering. However, in The Matrix Reloaded, the Architect reveals that his idea of a perfect world ultimately failed because he didn't give any of its prisoners any choice but to live in his perfect, static world, making it inherently undesirable. After the Matrix was made into its most recognizable format, a static late-90s "golden age", the Oracle was eventually able to devise a solution in which humans were allowed to rebel within limits, giving them the illusion of being able to change their static reality for the better... hence how the Ones were first created.

    Literature 
  • This trope is Older Than Feudalism, appearing in Western philosophy as early as Plato's arguments for the Forms and Aristotle's arguments about essences, with hints in some of the surviving excerpts of the Pre-Socratics (if it predates them, it might be older still). Mutability being imperfection and immutability being perfection is frequently found in medieval proofs of the existence of a perfect, omnipotent, omnipresent, omniscient God. In all cases, the arguments hold that because change is proof of imperfection, it is because the subject being discussed is perfect, it does not change (whether perfection or immutability is arrived at first varies, the upshot is the same). In medieval philosophy, it is best known in the works of Aquinas, but is also found in the works of other medieval philosophers — Christian, Jewish, and Muslim alike — running straight into the Renaissance.
  • Arcia Chronicles: The elves are a race of superhumanly beautiful and immortal magic-users who, to mortals, appear to be perfect angelic beings. However, as a result of all of these characteristics, they are also practically incapable of personal growth. All but a handful of the youngest elves seen in the series are still caught up in the trauma of a civil war that took place three thousand years ago and choose to dwell on petty grudges and slights even in the face of an onrushing apocalypse.
  • Be A Perfect Person In Just Three Days: After days of doing bizarre and hyper-specific tasks in order to become a "perfect person" as advised by his book, Milo very nearly makes it... only to discover that every "perfect person" is a motionless, emotionless bore who just sits around and sips tea all day. He ruins his chances by falling asleep at the last second, only for the book to then congratulate him for failing because being perfect means doing absolutely nothing.
  • Coraline: Discussed — the other crazy old man upstairs tries to persuade Coraline to stay in the Other World by promising that the Other Mother will make every day a paradise for her. Despite being only a child, Coraline is wise enough to understand that getting everything she ever wanted, all the time, would be meaningless.
    Coraline: And will there be grey, wet days where I just don't know what to do and there's nothing to read or to watch and nowhere to go and the day drags on forever?
    Other Crazy Old Man Upstairs: Never.
    Coraline: And will there be awful meals, with food made from recipes, with garlic and tarragon and broad beans in?
    Other Crazy Old Man Upstairs: Every meal will be a thing of joy. Nothing will pass your lips that does not entirely delight you.
    Coraline: And could I have Day-Glo green gloves to wear, and yellow Wellington boots in the shape of frogs?
    Other Crazy Old Man Upstairs: Frogs, ducks, rhinos, octopuses — whatever you desire. The world will be built new for you every morning. If you stay here, you can have whatever you want.
    Coraline: You really don't understand, do you? I don't want whatever I want. Nobody does. Not really. What kind of fun would it be if I just got everything I ever wanted? Just like that, and it didn't mean anything. What then?
  • The Divine Comedy: Dante Alighieri brings this up more than once, especially in the final part, the Paradiso — which is primarily set in Heaven.
  • Jedi Academy Trilogy: The Khommites believe that they have attained perfection as a people and are so determined to maintain it that they have essentially frozen their planet in its golden age through terraforming, cultural stasis, and the stifling of individuality. Most notably, they now reproduce exclusively through cloning, meaning that every Khommite in existence is a clone of an individual who was alive when Khomm attained "perfection" nine hundred years ago. In the end, they're so convinced of their superiority that they refuse to acknowledge the threat of the Empire when Dorsk-81 tries to warn them of it... only to end up getting decimated by Admiral Daala. In the aftermath, the Khommites are left in the awkward position of having to advance as they rebuild, even encouraging Force-sensitivity in the next generation of clones so that they can follow Dorsk-81's example.
  • The Magicians: In the Fillory And Further novels, the Watcherwoman's goal is to freeze time throughout Fillory and leave it frozen "at five o'clock on a particularly dreary, drizzly afternoon in late September" — naturally portrayed as perfect and desirable to nobody except for the Watcherwoman. After graduating from Brakebills, Quentin discovers that Fillory is real after all, and over the course of his adventures there, realizes that there's a hidden twist to the Watcherwoman's plan: namely, that it was misunderstood by the Chatwin children, and further muddled by artistic license on the part of the author they told their story to. The real goal of the Watcherwoman's time magic experiment was to turn back time so she could stop her brother from turning into The Beast.
  • The Sun and the Star: A Nico di Angelo Adventure: Nyx's worldview is based on the idea that nobody can change and deny their true nature. She is personally offended that Nico has been improving himself, seeing it as affront to the natural order.
  • Torchwood: The novel "Almost Perfect" features an alien device stolen from a duo of aliens called the Perfection, Sufficiently Advanced Aliens who use the device to turn various worlds perfect. When Jack hears about one of their projects, Hallam's World, he is reminded of how, even though the people there were decent, it was also one of the most boring times of his life, "like a warm Sunday afternoon just after lunch and before the television got good". The Device itself came to that conclusion, telling Ianto that it's been influencing its creators to go to different worlds because it got bored of maintaining perfection on the various planets. This is all to say nothing of the fact that the Perfection are willing to tear apart boats, kill, and power the device by taking people to turn them into a Meat Moss-based "belief system" in their bid to find the Device and keep it powered.
  • The Wheel of Time: In Rand's final confrontation with the Dark One, he discovers that if he were to kill the Dark One, taking away the source of temptation and evil, humanity would essentially lose free will and become robots.
    Shai'tan: PERFECT. UNCHANGING. RUINED. DO THIS, IF YOU WISH, ADVERSARY. IN KILLING ME, I WOULD WIN.

    Live-Action TV 
  • Avataro Sentai Donbrothers: Momoi Taro is The Ace in almost every sense of the word: He's the best fighter, he's the quickest learner, he's The Leader, he's The Hero and he knows it. However, so does everyone else. His insane talent is presented as more of a curse than a blessing early on — being so perfect at everything means he (intentionally or otherwise) overshadows everyone he gets to know. While he isn't unaware of this social handicap, his motivation to do something about it is non-existent and the communication issues his antics cause prevent people from really getting through to him. Not even a blunter Saruhara from an Alternate Timeline calling him out is enough to crack his shell and he eventually decides none of that matters at all.
  • Babylon 5: The Vorlons are one of the First Ones, old races that predate most space-faring civilizations. Their rivals the Shadows cast them as "frozen perfection". The Vorlons live up to this by supporting races that blindly follow them and asking "Who Are You?". That diving question is meant to have their followers focus on themselves and the Vorlons' cause. As soon as anyone steps out of line, the Vorlons are quick to punish them. Later the Vorlons take to blowing up whole planets that have any trace of Shadow influence. When confronted by Captain Sherridan in a mental projection, the Vorlons appear as an angelic figure encased in ice.
  • Doctor Who: The Cybus Cybermen are full-conversion cyborgs stripped of all their human emotions, created by the madman John Lumic as a gateway to immortality for mankind (chiefly himself), and a way to ensure that information will never be lost. In "The Age of Steel", the Cyber-Controller created by Lumic and the Doctor argue about what the Cybermen under his orders forcibly converting the entire human population into identical, un-individual, emotionless, and ruthless brains inside immortal cybernetic shells will spell:
    Cyber-Controller: I will bring peace to the world. Everlasting peace, and unity, and uniformity.
    The Doctor: And imagination? What about that? Imagination. The one thing that led you here. You're killing it, dead! [...] But once you get rid of sickness and mortality, then what's there to strive for, eh? The Cybermen won't advance! You'll just stop! You'll stay like this forever: a metal world, with metal men and metal thoughts.
  • The Good Place: The real Good Place is a place where you have everything you could ever want, but since it lasts for an eternity, the few people who have gotten in have all lost their minds from torturous boredom because there's nothing new to do. Eleanor and the gang come up with the idea of a door through which people can pass and go through Cessation of Existence, once they've enjoyed the Good Place enough and decide it's time to end things.
  • The Adventures of Pete & Pete: In "Inspector 34", little Pete befriends an underwear inspector who lives his entire life in perfection. When he interacts with Pete's family and friends, they too become obsessed with perfection. Seeing how much harm trying to perfect was doing to the inspector and his family, Pete is able to defeat the inspector via a Logic Bomb when it came to eating BBQ; because he was able to eat BBQ without leaving a mess, he failed at being perfect, because the only perfect way to eat at a BBQ is to get messy.
  • Star Trek:
    • Oh, the Borg. The Borg seek to achieve their own version of perfection through forced assimilation of diverse races, cultures, and technology into their Hive Mind. This means turning them into cyborgs that fly in perfectly shaped ships that use their collective knowledge to overpower other races to add them into their Collective. This is also what does them in as a neurolytic pathogen is introduced by an alternate timeline Admiral Janeway, collapsing the Collective and then collectively wiped out by the aged, but no less capable crew of the Enterprise-D.
    • The Q Continuum is described as evolutionary stagnation in episodes of Star Trek: Voyager and the audio drama Spock vs. Q, having obtained great power but no imagination to do anything meaningful with it, which is why their most notorious member is frequently causing chaos around the universe, and why, as Spock notes, Q takes such an interest in humanity, who have imagination in abundance.
  • Supernatural: Angels were designed by God to be the perfect soldier beings — immortal, obedient, stoic, and ruthless — but they're no less flawed than the mortal, chaotic and emotional human race that most angels look down their noses on, in part because of angels' inability to adapt or change in the face of chaos. In Season 6, Castiel (one of the minority of angels to adapt to having free will quite functionally) at first tried to introduce the new status quo of free will to the rest of angelkind when some of them looked to him for new leadership after the archangels' defeat — it didn't work out, and some angels went insane because of their inability to handle the uncertainty and lack of direction that came with being forced to find their own ways without their celestial superiors' orders.

    Music 
  • Patricio Rey y sus Redonditos de Ricota: The trope is invoked almost word-by-word in "Dr. Saturno", which features the phrase "Dios es todo, no puede progresar"note 

    Tabletop Games 
  • Old World of Darkness:
  • An obscure piece of Warhammer lore are the Gods of Order, basically the inverse of Chaos Gods. One of them, Alluminas, is the god of order, perfection and light, whose vision of enlightenment and perfection involves a perfect stasis of everything forever. As such, he is unpopular and little worshipped, save for a small handful of philosophical types and (in even more obscure/antiquated pieces of lore) Far East counterpart cultures, where he's variously implied to play a loose equivalent to Buddhism and/or one half (Chaos/Tzeentch being the other) of Yin-Yang dichotomy.

    Theatre 
  • Songs for a New World: In the song "Stars and the Moon," the (female) narrator relates turning down a proposal from a man who wanted to help her grow and an offer of adventure from another man to marry a wealthy man who gave her the luxurious life and material goods she had always dreamed of, and has come to realize "that it [her life] never changed and it never grew."

    Video Games 
  • BioShock 2:
    • Sofia Lamb's ultimate goal is to distill the minds of everyone in Rapture into a cocktail of ADAM that can then be spliced into her daughter, Eleanor, transforming her into the First Utopian. This being will have access to the knowledge of everyone in Rapture, but no individuality, no personality except for the drive to serve the common good, and no capacity to change. Though the minds of Rapture will attain immortality through Eleanor, they'll essentially be reduced to "one more dusty book on the shelf" in her mind, bodiless, powerless, and unable to change.
    • Equally chilling is the fact that Sofia is hoping to spread the model of the First Utopian far and wide. Her vision of a perfect world features humanity being stripped of all capacity for ambition, independent thought, or even basic self-awareness, ensuring that no trace of the "Tyrant gene" exists to hold back the common good... but in the process, the basic concepts of imagination, invention, self-improvement, and even change would become extinct. As such, Eleanor declares her mother's plans to be every bit as toxic as Andrew Ryan's utopia of greed and self-interest.
  • Destiny:
    • The Hive seek to transform the universe and everything in it into a perfect, everlasting "final shape" by carving away everything that makes it imperfect — anything that the Hive have deemed unnecessary to or undeserving of long-term survival. Never mind that these imperfections include every species that fail to subscribe to the Hive's dog-eat-dog philosophy, later material makes clear that the final shape they seek is (by its very definition) total stagnation, as it will act to prevent anything new or different from ever arising again to maintain its solitary perfection.
    • As revealed in the sequel, this is part of the overall philosophy of the Darkness or rather The Witness. The Witness is a gestalt entity created from the first race blessed with the Light of the Traveler, but came to resent the chaotic power they were given, which wasn't helped by how the Traveler never offered them guidance on how to use said power. When they discovered the Traveler's Darkness counterpart, the Veil, they tried to link both entities so that they could reshape the universe into a perfected form where the Light could never again cause harm. The Traveler fleeing to prevent this outcome and the Witness' subsequent pursuit is the impetus for the entire story of the games.
  • Final Fantasy XIV:
    • The world before the Sundering, more specifically the city of Amaurot was a genuine paradise. Disease and war were unknown as the people there could live for an age. Conflicts were settled largely through peaceful debate. But this place was such a paradise that few people saw the need to leave, resulting in a society that gradually succumbed to Creative Sterility. Those who didn't fit the mold of the average citizen often struggled, with Hermes wondering if he's the Only Sane Man or the only insane one for having concerns about his people's wanton and sometimes careless use of The Power of Creation.
    • One of the Endwalker expansion's recurring themes is the impossibility of perfection and the inevitability of change. In the final zone of the story, Ultima Thule, you encounter the remnants of numerous civilizations who pursued perfection at the expense of all else. The last of these civilizations, the Nibirun, achieved endless lives free of war, hunger, disease, and differences thanks to the Hive Mind they created. But without anything to drive them, they fell into indolence. When asked what exactly makes them happy now that they've achieved perfection, they went mad trying and failing to come up with an answer. They then collectively decided that there's Nothing Left to Do but Die.
  • Pokémon X and Y: Lysandre wants to create a beautiful world by annihilating all people and Pokémon outside of Team Flare, who will become rich, beautiful immortals and inherit the world left behind. He has a conversation with Diantha, a movie star, where he asks if she's afraid of growing older and losing her looks, and would prefer to stay young and beautiful forever. He is surprised when she says that she looks forward to aging because it means she can play new roles.
  • In Sonic and the Black Knight, Merlina, having learned that Camelot is destined to fall, decides the best thing to do is to reclaim Excalibur's scabbard, which grants immortality to those who'll use it, and the power of the Underworld to keep Camelot in a permanent state of unchanging beauty. During the Final Battle, Sonic tells Merlina off for this line of thinking.
    Merlina: This was to be our ideal world. But it will not last... King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table will end in ruin. The King Arthur my grandfather Merlin created led to nothing but mistakes... but I can succeed with the power of the scabbard, creating a kingdom that never ends.
    Sonic: What good is a world that goes on forever!?
    Merlina: My sorrow at its ruin runs deeper than the depths of the Underworld. Do you not understand!?
    Sonic: No! And I don't want to!
    (later, during the boss fight)
    Merlina: You could never understand my sorrow at seeing the ruinous future of this kingdom.
    Sonic: Good, 'cause I don't ever wanna know such one-sided sadness.
  • Splatoon 3: The Big Bad of the Side Order DLC, is an AI named Order who was born from the unconscious desires of its Octoling creators for a world that never changes as well as their resentment towards people like Marina for causing such a massive shift by leaving the underground. To this end, Order plans to "grayscale" everyone who is connected to the Memverse in order to create a perfect world of order where everything stays the same and nothing has to change. Both Pearl and Marina argue against this line of thinking, pointing out that while change is scary, it's needed for people to grow and that a world of pure order is boring.

    Visual Novels 
  • Apollo Justice: Ace Attorney: One of the game's themes is how legal proceedings are continuously evolving to adapt to the flow of time. The Big Bad is a perfectionist who refuses to accept change in how trials are conducted, with their mindset driving them to ruin and end the lives of at least three people.

    Web Comics 
  • Nuzlocke Comics Fan Works: In Goddamn Critical Hits, Hermes was the fastest Taillow in Petalburg Woods, so fast he easily evaded any Trainer who wanted to catch him. His friends and family were slower, and were all eventually caught by Trainers. From time to time, they would visit, and would tell him about their adventures and experiences; some had even evolved into Swellow. Hermes realized that even though he was the fastest, he had never changed or grown, while the other Taillow had. He decided to allow himself to be caught by a passing Trainer, Thomas, so he could have adventures too.

    Web Original 
  • SCP Foundation:
    • SCP-7179 is an afterlife consisting of an island paradise with a beach house, three willing and non-sentient sex partners, and all the food, drink, and drugs you could ever want. But there's no way to leave and you're stuck there for eternity, so you will enjoy yourself for a few years at most before you start going insane from boredom and loneliness.
    • In the tale Visions of a Better World, one of the possible futures has the Foundation infect the world's population with SCP-217, a virus that converts people and animals into clockwork beings. Their idea is that illness will become nonexistent and injuries can be easily treated by repairing them as one repairs a broken-down bicycle. Once the whole world is transformed, the clockwork humans no longer have emotions, curiosity, or imagination, and there's no further progress to be made and nothing to work toward. They no longer see the point of living and die.

    Web Video 
  • Funhaus: Played for laughs in one video from the team's Inside Gaming days; here, during a playthrough of A-Train 8, Adam, Bruce, and James go completely Off the Rails by bulldozing over all the buildings to make way for new tracks, and joke that this is the work of a supervillain called the Conductor. By the end of the Conductor's reign of terror, all signs of civilization have been obliterated except for tracks that don't lead anywhere, with all the trains unable to move anywhere because the tracks behind them have been bulldozed as well.
    Bruce: All the trains in town will never move!
    James: Beautiful! Frozen in time! [...] I HAVE CREATED A UTOPIA!
    Adam: No gods, no kings, only trains!

    Western Animation 
  • Miraculous Ladybug: This trope plays a role in the character arcs of Adrien Agreste and Kagami Tsurugi. Their respective parents raised both to be perfect models and athletes with good looks and comprehensive educations. As the series goes on, both of them struggle with how this striving for "perfection" has left them ill-prepared to navigate setbacks in their lives, like relationships (and the attending break-ups) and the growing realization that they both desperately need to get some distance from their respective Abusive Parents.
  • She-Ra and the Princesses of Power: The true Big Bad of the series, Horde Prime, is an egotistical, immortal, sociopathic and all-powerful Galactic Conqueror who seeks to "bring light to the universe" by pretty much wiping out every life form that isn't him and his clone army. He remains unchanging over the course of centuries, viewing himself as the ultimate lifeform and all other life as below him. In comparison, Hordak is one of his rogue clones, and while not a nice guy himself (i.e., he's the Big Bad for most of the series until Horde Prime shows up and makes him look like a chump), he has the capacity for independent thought and growth, displays small moments of kindness and affection, and eventually shows a willingness to become a better person than he was before. This is used as a point of comparison between them; when Horde Prime arrives on Etheria, Hordak hopes that his creator will be proud of what he has built, but Horde Prime is only angry that one of his clones dared to become anything more than what he was meant to be. When he wipes Hordak's mind and reduces him to another brainless clone among hundreds (with the other clones chanting, "Cast out the shadows! All beings must suffer to become pure!"), it isn't satisfying; it's horrifying.
  • Steven Universe:
    • The Gems are alien Ultimate Lifeforms who are immortal, born with all the knowledge they need, have a variety of superpowers including shapeshifting and holographic projections, and don't need to perform any bodily functions from eating to sleeping to even breathing. Rose Quartz had an unusual mindset for a Gem; while most of Gemkind saw organic life as little more than insects, she was fascinated by its capacity to change, grow, and adapt. In "Greg the Babysitter," she lamented the fact that Gems were tailor-made from birth for their roles in Homeworld's Fantastic Caste System and were expected always to remain the same.
      Rose Quartz: When a Gem is made, it's for a reason. They burst out of the ground already knowing what they're supposed to be, and then...that's what they are, forever. But you [humans], you're supposed to change. You're never the same, even from moment to moment! You're allowed and expected to invent who you are.
    • White Diamond is the show's Greater-Scope Villain, and when we finally meet her in the "Change Your Mind" arc, we discover that this trope is why. White views herself as utterly flawless, which in turn has made her develop a terrifying Insane Troll Logic: any idea she has must also be perfect solely because she came up with it. It was this philosophy that created the Fantastic Caste System of Homeworld, which led to millennia of conquest (so even more planets can either experience White's perfection or have their resources drained to create more Gems), Creative Sterility among the entire Gem race, and an overall culture that fears and despises change. White Diamond also has a way of bringing any Gem that rebels against her to heel—namely, by seizing control of their minds and making them colorless, perpetually-smiling extensions of herself that speak in her voice. Steven and Connie eventually defeat White by forcing her to realize that she isn't perfect, which in turn breaks her worldview and leads to massive reform across Homeworld.

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