Basic Trope: Evil is unable to remain victorious for very long.
- Straight: The deities Ahura and Angra are locked in battle for eternity. Whenever Angra gains the upper hand, she is unable to retain it for long.
- Exaggerated: Angra immediately loses to Ahura the second she comes into being.
- Downplayed: Angra waxes and wanes, at times becoming more powerful than Ahura and much weaker, the power differential depending on the actions of their worshippers.
- Justified: Evil is inherently sterile, self-destructive and unsustainable, making Angra's loss inevitable.
- Inverted: Angra, once triumphant, reigns for the rest of eternity.
- Subverted: Whenever Angra is on the verge of losing, she threatens to take all of creation with her, ensuring she manages to retain the upper hand.
- Double Subverted: Until Ahura and the forces of good finally call her bluff, causing her demise.
- Parodied: Angra winks out like a candle after committing a single bad deed.
- Zig Zagged: Angra may lose out at first, but she learns from her mistakes and manages to become stronger than Ahura, eventually becoming dominant. Then she becomes complacent and loses again.
- Averted: Neither Angra nor Ahura wins the cosmic battle. Entropy does.
- Enforced: Angra was created by or is subordinate to Ahura, and is too weak and self-absorbed to reign over the cosmos.
- Lampshaded: Angra knows she cannot win against Ahura, but will perish trying.
- Invoked: Angra wants to be destroyed, seeking out battle with Ahura in the hopes that she will be annihilated in defeat.
- Exploited:
- Ahura wants Angra to be redeemed, not destroyed, and uses Angra's defeats to teach her to change her ways.
- Angra sets up a massive Failure Gambit. As his loss is guarantied, so is his victory.
- Defied: Angra wins, will win, and always has won out over Ahura. Period.
- Discussed: Ahura's followers deliver frequent sermons on the futility of evil.
- Conversed: Angra soliloquizes over her inability to win, in the process inspiring a poet to tell her side of the story.
- Implied: Ahura lets Angra run roughshod over creation because her victory is assured, to the consternation of her worshippers.
- Deconstructed:
- Angra may not win, but she is far more powerful than Ahura, and far more destructive. The destiny of good is to pick up the pieces of her reign.
- While Evil might fail eventually, it's small comfort for the beings and people who end up suffering in the meantime. Many of them end up utterly resentful of the fact that Ahura cannot decisively ensure that Evil fails sooner or absolutely, and end up intentionally trying to ensure one side wins no matter how bad the consequences could be, just so their current misery can end.
- Ahura ends up suffering from an existential crisis under the revelation that Angra was doomed to fail from the start and that thus, all of her blood and tears, all of her and her allies sacrifices, were in the end pointless and made no difference.
- Reconstructed: Followers of Ahura find wonderful purpose and deep meaning in restoring good to the world, and strive to preserve it for as long as possible.
Thus, be good, and go back to the trope using the header, for this is the duty of the Troper.
