Curse Escape Clause: Difference between revisions

{{examples}}

== [[Anime]] and [[Manga]] ==

 

 

* In the [[Disney]] adaptation of ''[[Sleeping Beauty (Disney film)|Sleeping Beauty]]'', this is justified in that Merriweather was actually augmenting Maleficent's "die on her [[Dangerous Sixteenth Birthday]]" curse. She wasn't strong enough to negate it, but she could provide an out.

* Disney's ''[[Beauty and the Beast]]'' had the enchantress give the stipulation that if the Beast could learn to love someone selflessly, and have his love returned by the time the petals fall off a magical rose, the spell would be broken. Possibly to Teach Him A Lesson but her motives aren't revealed.

* In ''[[Shrek]],'' Princess Fiona is cursed from a young age to transform into an ogre at sunset and return to her human form at sunrise. It can only be undone by [[True Love's Kiss]]—but when this kiss comes from the titular male ogre, she finds herself permanently stuck in her night form, for better or for worse.

** In ''Shrek Forever After'', Rumpelstiltskin's [[Magically-Binding Contract]] with Shrek is rendered null and void by... wait for it... [[True Love's Kiss]].

*** ''Shrek Forever After'' further [[Playing with a Trope|plays with it]] by noting that Rumpelstiltskin is obligated to provide an escape clause in his contracts, and he's had to resort to alternate forms of trickery to hide it. In Shrek's case, {{spoiler|the words are scattered willy-nilly about the page}} and it requires {{spoiler|origami}} to put it together.

* In the ''[[Chronicles of Thomas Covenant|Second Chronicles of Thomas Covenant]]'', one of the subplots involves a sorcerer who uses pure gold as his power source, but must deliberately put a flaw in each spell. For example, he created a magical prison for the destructive Sandgorgons, the flaw being that if a particular Sandgorgon's name is spoken aloud, it is released until it kills the speaker. He wants Covenant's white gold ring, because being an alloy, it is "flawed" already, and thus can be used to create perfect works.

* In [[Mercedes Lackey]]'s Tales of the Five Hundred Kingdoms series, setting and foiling these clauses is practically a science (though it would have to be, since the ambient magic in the land causes events to turn out like whichever fairy tale they most resemble).

* In [[Robert E. Howard]]'s [[Conan the Barbarian]] story "[[Iron Shadows in the Moon|Shadows in The Moonlight]]" when a [[Physical God]] used [[Taken for Granite]] on his son's murderers, for [[Plot Hole|some reason]] he let them move in the moonlight—which lets them plague people during that time. [[Dreaming of Times Gone By|Fortunately, Olivia deduces this from her dream]].

* In James Schmitz's Telzey Amberdon short story "Child of the Gods", Telzey is mentally enslaved by another psionic, with several of her most potent skills locked away. When the man is incapacitated and a monstrously powerful alien is shortly due to arrive to enslave and/or eat them, Telzey breaks free when she realizes that his command to look after his best interests—without him conscious to decide otherwise—would best be served if she had full access to all her abilities and was free of his control so she could use them most effectively.

* Cleverly applied in ''[[Buffy]]'' and ''[[Angel]]'': Angelus, described as "the most evil vampire on record," is cursed with a human soul, which comes with a human sense of morality, making him feel guilty for all the evil things he did. the ''clever'' part is that the escape clause is "if he experiences true happiness", which in the season it became a plot point is explicitly defined as "one moment when his ''soul'' is at peace". Effectively meaning that the curse would break only when it was no longer making him suffer. When Angel has his night with Buffy, the one he loves, in the second season of her show, it's enough to activate the Curse Escape Clause and before Buffy knows it, [[Face Heel Turn|it's Angelus time]].

** The curse is later deliberately broken when they need to ask Angelus some things Angel doesn't know, by hiring someone to feed him into a magic [[Lotus Eater Machine]].

** In-universe, True Love's Kiss acts as a universal cure for all manner of curses.

 

 

== Tabletop Games ==

** The ''Book of Vile Darkness'' gives us dying curses, which are spoken by an evil creature as it dies. There are two ways to cure them - one is ninth-level magic, and one is a condition set at the time of casting (such as "Climb the tallest mountain in the world"). These may be completed by someone acting on the cursed's behalf, as long as they do so explicitly to lift the curse (for example, if a peasant didn't know the king was cursed and climbed the tallest mountain in the world, nothing would happen - but if the king's champion did so in his lord's name, the curse would be lifted).

* Inverted in ''[[New World of Darkness]]'' game ''[[Changeling: The Lost]]''. One power changelings get is the ability to create Pledges—magically binding agreements with a range of possible effects. For instance, a person may agree to do a changeling's laundry in exchange for having a servant show up out of nowhere and work for them free of charge. While low-power pledges can be of the "do this to get that" variety, increasing power requires both parties to stipulate some kind of increasingly-bad punishment for breaking the pledge. Fortunately, they can be made for a set duration.

** ''[[Mage: The Awakening]]'' plays it straight with conditional durations that can be set for spells by a mage with sufficient power over Fate. It allows a mage to extend the duration of a spell, in return for setting a condition under which the spell will end instantly (the easier the condition, the longer the duration). Its explicitly noted that impossible conditions (such as "When the moon falls") cannot be set. It's also subverted with the Curses of the Proximus bloodlines (families of mortals with a magical heritage). If a Proximus family attempts to exploit loopholes in their family Curse, the Curse just alters itself to become ''worse'', while closing off the loophole.

* For game balance reasons this is required for any "permanent" effect in ''[[GURPS]]''.

* In ''[[Into the Woods]]'', the witch's spell causing the Baker's family to be barren will be lifted if the Baker and his wife can procure a few [[Plot Coupon|select objects]]. (The objects are not directly related to the curse on the Baker's family: they're actually part of the Escape Clause for a curse that ''the witch'' is suffering under, and she promises to take the spell off the Baker if he helps her out.)

* In the [[Gilbert and Sullivan]] opera, ''Ruddigore'', Baronets of Ruddigore are cursed to do an evil deed every day or die painfully. The main character outwits the curse by pointing out that not doing an evil deed is the same thing as killing himself, which is in and of itself an evil deed.

 

 

''Drive the curser from the land'' {{spoiler|Baba Yaga laid the curse, she needs to be driven out of Spielburg.}} }}

* Invoked with [[King's Quest VI]] where Alexander is cursed by the Beast. Alex, being a minor sorcerer, points out that ''every'' curse has a weakness to which the Beast tells him to go out and fetch a "Beauty" for him.

* In ''[[Fantasy Quest]]'', you can break the curse on a man trapped as a dog by feeding him. This serves mainly as mad mockery; the dog appeared in the first game, you had no option to feed him, and now he's retconned as a man still bitter about your earlier indifference.

* {{spoiler|[[Big Bad|Caius Ballad]]}} of [[Final Fantasy XIII-2]] tries to invoke this regarding {{spoiler|Yeul (who is [[And I Must Scream|cursed to constant death and resurrection because of seeress powers]])}} by initiating a successful [[Time Crash]]. After all, {{spoiler|if there's no timeline to see, there's [[Your Days Are Numbered|no impending threat on Yeul's life]].}}

[[Category:Speculative Fiction Tropes]]

[[Category:Magic and Powers]]