In trouble: Rescued From Purgatory

Link.

I think the name is the only part of it that isn't horrible.

... when I saw the name, I was expecting it to mean some sort of subversion of Everyone Is Jesus in Purgatory. I feel cheated.

On a more serious note: there might be a trope here, but the write-up is pretty dire. What's with all the bad pages with examples in the article?

Yeah, that's pretty dang bad. Move the examples down and try and fix the description to make it clearer if possible.

Okay, moved the examples down, killed the italics and added both spoiler tags and a notice about it being a Death Trope. Added some links but I don't know the proper series for Clear and Present Danger.

Still, if someone could add a bit more to the description, it would probably work better.

edited 11th Feb '10 5:52:15 PM by Deboss

I think there might be a trope in there, and the title fits it. The writing could be better. And the examples. Sheesh: the text states the character has to be dead, ... then not-quite-dead, then the examples redefine that to be "captured and tortured", then "exiled to a deadly place". Why not go the whole hog and redefine it to include "In the next room."

I guess this is always going to be problematic: as originally proposed it was rescue from a "quirky not-quite-dead state." You can just tell it's going to go south. (BTW as far as I can see, 6 hours between proposal and launch.)

What do we do? Cut it? We have Back from the Dead. Examples like Roy from Order Of The Stick belong there: standard resurrection, if that example is a rescue, well any resurrection would count.

Or we could keep it and tighten up the definition. How about: Rescued From Purgatory: The heros bring a dead friend back to life by going to the land of the dead and bringing them back.

edited 11th Feb '10 6:12:13 PM by Camacan

I like your idea, Camacan, because it has a lot of roots in mythology. Look at Orpheus and Innana. In fact, there's a whole wikipedia page about it.

This could be a sister trope to To Hell and Back.

I agree, Camacan, that sounds like the best solution. Plenty of examples, like someone's already said, from different mythologies, and I think I can think of a couple of others.

...I'm sorry, could someone please explain to me how this is different from To Hell and Back? At best it's a subtrope. That hasn't been split from its superior. And if it is it needs a better name since purgatory isn't a simple synonym for "the afterlife".

To Hell and Back, as written, is any narrative that takes someone to Hell, usually the Christian Hell (fire, brimstone, devils with pitchforks), for pretty much any reason other than death, with the specification that they intend to return. Rescued From Purgatory is about someone going to any afterlife or equivalent specifically to rescue someone therein. Sounds like a subtrope. Or maybe a sister trope, if you interpret "Hell" narrowly.

edited 12th Feb '10 2:05:00 PM by lebrel

From the (very basic) description I thought this was more about recovering the body than the trope title indicates. Like a Find the Cure! in reverse: It'd be easy to bring the character back from their incapacitated state, except they're incapacitated in a very inconvenient place. Death in this case is optional.

As far as I can tell we're better off just cutting this. The description is to vague to warrant anything besides random guesswork. While I agree that the notion of Rescue Mission To Hell is tropable and splittable from To Hell and Back, it would be much easier to start that project from scratch than to repurpose this page.

When I saw the title 'rescued from purgatory', I immediately thought of Orpheus. I say it works well. Even if Orpheus did fail...

I've done some rewriting and folder templating on this, but it still needs some Wiki Magic to make better.

On top of that, we seem to have this already. Orphean Rescue is the same trope, just a little more generalized to include journeys that aren't literally to hell.

We should merge this into Orphean Rescue.

I agree, honestly, after looking at that

This is absolutely the same thing as Orphean Rescue. They should be merged and be done with it.

31 intrawiki inbound links.

This thread expired after 60 days of inactivity.

So, merge with Orphean Rescue and make this a redirect to that page?

I didn't know about Orphean Rescue. I agree — merging into that article is a better solution.