View source for Playing with a Trope

{{Useful Notes}}
[[File:playingwithredux3 867.png|frame|An easy visual reference.]]

Even with [[Trope Tropes|tropes about tropes]] (metatropes) that describe how tropes tend to be used, it can be hard to pin down the exact relationship between a [[Trope]] and a particular work. This is a quick-reference guide, illustrated for clarity with two simple examples:

* [[The Butler Did It]] (committed the murder in a mystery story) 
* [[Power Glows]]

See also [[Playing with Wiki]], an entire subwiki dedicated to doing this to every trope in [[The Catalogue]], and in particular [[Trope Name/Playing With]], which is a [[Laconic|reasonably concise]] version of this list.

* {{smallcaps|Played Straight}}: The trope is simply used. Note that this is the 'default' manifestation of a trope unless stated otherwise; when citing an example, it's usually [[Word Cruft|needless]] (and/or [[Department of Redundancy Department|redundant]]) to explicitly mention that it was "played straight". (Inversely, if a work plays the same trope several times in several different ways or it's a trope which is more commonly played with than played straight, like a [[Dead Horse Trope]], ''then'' it's worth noting it was "played straight".)
** [[The Butler Did It]], and everyone is genuinely surprised.
** [[Power Glows|Powerful weapons glow]] inexplicably.
* {{smallcaps|[[Justified Trope|Justified]]}}: The trope has a reason [[In-Universe]] to be present where we see it.
** The butler did it because he's actually an assassin that took the job to ''be'' [[Beneath Suspicion]].
** Powerful weapons glow because our heroes are fighting [[Living Shadow|shadows]]. Or the weapons are powered by glowing [[Applied Phlebotinum|Phlebotinum]].
** NOTE: [[Tropes Are Tools|Almost all tropes are justified in some way]]. If you put a [[Justifying Edit]] after every trope that you see you'll be on All The Tropes for the rest of your life and annoy people, too.
* {{smallcaps|[[Inverted Trope|Inverted]]}}: The trope (or its elements) are reversed and then used. (Not just [[Gender Flip|taking the usual gender for the trope and making it the opposite one]], unless gender is ''specifically'' what the trope was about in the first place.)
** The butler is the victim. Or the butler solved the crime.
** Only weak weapons glow. Or powerful weapons absorb light, creating darkness around them.
* {{smallcaps|[[Subverted Trope|Subverted]]}}: A trope is set up to occur, but then the audience's expectations are thwarted in some way. Compare [[Red Herring]].
** The butler is the prime suspect at the beginning, and is later found innocent.
** A huge glowing bomb is assumed to be a superweapon, and is then revealed to not have any effective blast due to its inefficiency.
* {{smallcaps|[[Double Subversion|Doubly Subverted]]}}: Like a [[Subverted Trope]], but then later it turns out that the apparent subversion was misleading, too. [[Mind Screw|Again,]] compare [[Red Herring]].
** The butler is the prime suspect at the beginning, but then eliminated as a suspect—except he ''did'' do it, and the exonerating evidence is false.
** A huge glowing bomb is assumed to be a superweapon, and is then revealed to not have any effective blast due to its inefficiency. But the glow itself [[Nuke'Em|is super-effective]].
* {{smallcaps|[[The Untwist|Untwisted]]}}: The audience expects a trope to be subverted, but it is played straight instead. (Highly subjective; any plot development can become [[The Untwist]] to a [[Tropes Will Ruin Your Life|sufficiently paranoid reader.]])
** The butler is shown early on as the suspect with the flimsiest alibi, like a typical [[Red Herring]] with a [[Big Secret]], but after a series of twists and turns the detective reveals to everyone's surprise that it ''was'' old Alfred, after all.
** The glowing weapons appear to not glow at all—at least, not in the visible spectrum.
* {{smallcaps|[[Parodied Trope|Parodied]]}}: The form of the trope is twisted and often used in a silly way for comic effect.
** Butlers learn their trade at butler college where they are taught [[Bread, Eggs, Milk, Squick|cleaning, cooking, and murdering.]]
** The heroes fight with giant glowsticks, the kind that you have to snap and shake.
* {{smallcaps|[[Deconstructed Trope|Deconstructed]]}}: The intentional use and exploration of the trope, played far straighter than usual in order to show the trope as poorly thought out, impractical, and/or much less nice than commonly assumed. 
** The butler is a revolutionary serial killer, who purposely takes jobs as butlers to murder his rich masters. All the unfortunate implications of class warfare that this suggests are brought up and discussed.
** The most powerful characters are all blind. What was the audience expecting, them to be able to see after that ultimate attack that's rated at [[Star Trek|47]] million Candela?
* {{smallcaps|[[Reconstructed Trope|Reconstructed]]}}: Reconstructed tropes are the new and improved Played Straight of an often [[Deconstruction|deconstructed trope]], taking the best parts of the Deconstruction or reassembling the original trope to strengthen its flaws or improving its feel. [[Viewers are Morons|In other words, this is the inversion of a Deconstruction]].
** The butler was defending himself from his [[Asshole Victim|cruel master]] who was about to murder the butler.
** Vision damage is a risk that the heroes must take to defeat the [[Ultimate Evil]]. And the heroes, at least, [[An Aesop|take]] [[Averted Trope|eye]] [[Goggles Do Nothing|protection]] [[Serious Business|seriously]].
* {{smallcaps|[[Zig-Zagging Trope|Zig Zagged]]}}: None of the above, or more than one of the above; a trope that gets triple subverted, or inverted and played straight at the same time, or, well, [[Mind Screw|just done confusingly]].
** The butler did it, but he was under [[Mind Control]] at the time. And it later turns out that the one mind controlling the butler looked exactly like the butler. And then we find out that it was actually his [[Evil Twin]], who was also a butler. But it turns out it was a conspiracy hatched by the Butler and his [[Evil Twin]], one born of necessity because the victim was going to do something monstrous.
** There's a fifteen-page-long chart explaining [[Tactical Rock-Paper-Scissors|how effective weapons with different glow intensities are against one another.]] And the authors ''still'' manage to do a complete [[Ass Pull]] every once in a while.
* {{smallcaps|[[Averted Trope|Averted]]}}: The trope is simply not used where it could have been. (Generally not worth noting except in cases where this is especially surprising, such as for a [[Omnipresent Tropes|nearly universally-used trope]] or aversions [[Word of God|known to have been deliberate]]; see also [[Enforced Trope]] below.)
** The butler didn't do it. Or there was no butler at all.
** The weapons do not glow. Or there are no weapons at all.
* {{smallcaps|[[Enforced Trope|Enforced]]}}: The trope occurs solely because of outside expectations or obligations placed on the writer to use it.
** The company producer hates butlers, so [[Executive Meddling|he ordered the writers]] to cast the butler as the killer.
** The toy company handling the merchandising wants to make all the best weapons glow in the dark, so the producers have that incorporated into the strongest weapons on the show.
* {{smallcaps|[[Necessary Weasel]]}}: Similar to an [[Enforced Trope]], the trope is included because [[The Coconut Effect|the genre's audience already expects it to be there]].
** The butler had to be the killer, because the target audience are people who never read mysteries before.
** Children are known to be drawn to the shinier things in a show, so the most powerful things are indicated that way.
* {{smallcaps|[[Implied Trope|Implied]]}}: The trope isn't shown, but the audience is indirectly led to believe that it happened off-screen.
** The detective rules out all the guests one-by-one, but in the end he fails to find the real killer. The astute reader notices he never bothered to investigate the butler.
** A character on his way to judge martial arts try-outs carries a light meter.


[[Trope]]s can also be played differently in terms of tone and style:

* {{smallcaps|[[Played for Laughs]]}}: The humorous elements of a trope are played up. Differs from Parody, when different, by being a straight use.
** The Butler did it, but it took him three hundred and seventeen tries (of which we're [[Show, Don't Tell|shown twelve]]), all of which his master escaped without realizing anything was happening (including the time when he walked up and shot his master, which the master passed off as "you could've hurt someone, mistaking that gun for a lighter.").
** The hero's glowing sword occasionally starts to flicker and go out, and he has to [[Percussive Maintenance|smack it a few times]] to get it working again.
* {{smallcaps|[[Played for Drama]]}}: The serious or melodramatic elements of a trope are played up. Normally only applicable for comedic tropes, but can show up for any trope.
** The Butler did it, but is quite [[Sympathetic Murderer|sympathetic]], and the reasons he did it are gone into in great detail.
** [[Unholy Holy Sword|Only evil weapons glow, causing the user much angst.]]
* {{smallcaps|[[Exaggerated Trope|Exaggerated]]}}: The trope is used [[Up to Eleven|to an extreme.]] Please note that this does not necessarily have to be used humourously—a trope can be exaggerated yet still played completely seriously.
** All the butlers in the city go on a killing spree, and nobody suspects a thing.
** The strongest weapons completely obscure the screen by their glow.
* {{smallcaps|[[Downplayed Trope|Downplayed]]}}: The trope is used to a far lesser degree than typical.
** The butler did indeed do it... "it" being [[What Do You Mean It's Not Heinous?|leaving the toilet seat up.]]
** [[What Do You Mean It's Not Awesome?|The hero activates the power in his sword]], but the glow is very faint.

[[Genre Savvy|Specific]] characters (or the narrator) can also play with tropes:

* {{smallcaps|[[Lampshade Hanging|Lampshaded]]}}: A trope is played straight but explicitly pointed out, without any further explanation.
** "So the butler did it! [[I Always Wanted to Say That]]."
** "Why are glowing swords more powerful? I mean, [[Fridge Logic|it just doesn't make much sense]]."
* {{smallcaps|[[Invoked Trope|Invoked]]}}: A character is [[Genre Savvy]], and/or uses their knowledge of a trope as a reason for their own actions, hoping that the effect will come through as it does "in fiction".
** Ex-butlers are employed as assassin trainers because of their experience as potential murderers.
** The heroine does everything possible to enhance the brightness of her weapon, seeing how brightness is power.
* {{smallcaps|[[Defied Trope|Defied]]}}: A character [[Genre Savvy|recognizes a trope]] is about to happen, and takes steps to avoid it.
** "We have to lock all the butlers up before they can kill!"
** "Try not to make the sword glow. We don't want the enemy to know which one to take if they capture us."
* {{smallcaps|[[Discussed Trope|Discussed]]}}: The trope is explicitly discussed by [[Genre Savvy]] characters in a situation that is directly relevant to the trope. Can overlap with [[This Is Reality]].
** "Unlike what you may read in detective stories, the butler is an unlikely suspect in any murder investigation of this sort."
** "I don't care what anime has taught you: [[This Is Reality|in the real world]], a [[Buffy-Speak|glowier]] sword is not more powerful."
* {{smallcaps|[[Conversational Troping|Conversed]]}}: A conversation about tropes the characters have seen in a [[Show Within a Show]], or another work. Differs from a [[Discussed Trope]] mainly in either its [[Seinfeldian Conversation|sheer irrelevance]], or being used purely to [[Leaning on the Fourth Wall|lean on the fourth wall]].
** "In these shows, the butler always does it." 
** "In a [[There's No B in Movie|bad movie like this]], the more powerful swords always glow."
* {{smallcaps|[[Exploited Trope|Exploited]]}}: A [[Genre Savvy]] character, knowing a trope will occur, uses it to their advantage.
** The detective purposely investigates the butler first, because the butler always does it in the mystery books he reads.
** A hero deliberately supercharges his [[Heroes Prefer Swords|sword]] with power [[Mundane Utility|so he can use it as a flashlight in a dark cave.]]
<!-- %% Commented out because I can't find any TropeTrope page for it - to be restored if such a page exists. @/RobinZimm -->
<!-- %% * Doubly Exploited: A GenreSavvy and also reality-savvy character uses to their advantage the fact the trope cannot really occur, but all other characters expect it to do so. -->
<!-- %% ** The real murderer gets away by successfully framing the butler. -->
<!-- %% ** The USA Government enacts a law requiring all nukes to be surrounded with glowing but useless toy weapons, in an attempt to mislead would-be thieves. -->

And finally, a special case:
* {{smallcaps|[[Intended Audience Reaction]]}}: A reaction that is normally unintentional on the part of the writer is used intentionally, to toy with the audience. Not applicable to many, many tropes, but still a method of playing with a trope. This concept is not applicable to generic tropes such as [[The Butler Did It]] or [[Power Glows]], but one might suggest, for example:
** The [[Unfortunate Implications]] of [[Beneath Suspicion|class warfare]] involved in [[The Butler Did It]] are brought to the fore.
** The [[Show Within a Show]] has [[Power Glows]] to the point of obscuring the action as a part of its [[Stylistic Suck]].

{{reflist}}
[[Category:Trope Tropes]]
[[Category:Meta Concepts]]
[[Category:Playing with a Trope]]
[[Category:Self-Referential Humor]]