For Happiness/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Happiness is a good thing that everyone should have as much of as possible.

  • Straight: The character is an Ethical Hedonist or simply an empathic person.
  • Exaggerated: The character is some kind of Mary Sue who somehow always manage to make everyone happy.
  • Downplayed: The character only cares for his loved ones' happiness.
  • Justified:
    • The character likes happiness (duh!) and has a good-natured disposition.
    • Alternately, she's The Empath. Happy people are much more comfortable to be around.
  • Inverted:
  • Subverted: The character tells everyone, probably including himself, that he is For Happiness, but is really self-serving or clueless about what make people happy... especially in the long term.
  • Double Subverted: The character fails to make someone happy, but it was on purpose as a part of a plan to help the person reaching her own happiness and allowing her to take the credit for it herself.
  • Parodied: The character is a endless source of shallow gestures of happiness.
  • Deconstructed:
  • Reconstructed:
    • ...combined with Straw Man Has a Point
    • Bob reminds her that if she focuses on her own happiness once in a while, she'll be in a better frame of mind to help others.
  • Zig Zagged: Making Bob happy makes Alice unhappy, making Alice happy makes Steve unhappy, and none of them want to be cheered up anyway, but they actually need it although they refuse to admit it.
  • Averted: Meh. We're all gonna die anyway. And besides, hedonists are immoral, aren't they?
  • Enforced: Executive Meddling says: Screw Darker and Edgier
  • Lampshaded: "No, Bob. I want people around me to be happy. When my pals are unhappy, I can't be all that happy myself."
  • Invoked: "Puppies, kittens, baby penguins...I think I've got everything I need."
  • Exploited: A Complete Monster tricked Bob into doing something for him by showing how it will make eveyone happy. In reality, it would lead to the apocalypse.
  • Defied: "He needs time to process his sadness. And if he can't get the strength stand up to the bully on his own, he never will."
  • Discussed: "And there's Alice hard at work trying to reverse frowns."
  • Conversed: ???

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