Basic Trope: Someone average gets Emotionally Tongue-Tied trying to talk to someone of higher status.
- Straight: Bob meets Alice Troperena, a famous movie star. He stutters and struggles to speak to her.
- Exaggerated: Bob meets Alice Troperena, a famous movie star, adventurer, politician, and billionaire. He can barely even open his mouth around her.
- Downplayed: Bob meets Alice Troperena, a semi-successful actress. He stutters a bit more than usual.
- Justified: Bob has a Celeb Crush on Alice and by nature Cannot Talk to Women. Put them together, and...
- Inverted:
- Bob is more confident talking to Alice than he is talking to his neighbor Eva.
- Alice ends up tongue-tied as she struggles to respond to Bob's adoration of her.
- Subverted: Bob meets movie star Alice Troperena and stutters continually around her...however, then it turns out Bob has had a speech impediment since childhood; he stutters around everyone.
- Double Subverted: However, then it turns out Bob didn't know who Alice was. When he meets her again after finding out, he can barely put together a sentence.
- Parodied: ???
- Zig Zagged: ???
- Averted: No one ever meets someone of higher status.
- Enforced: The author wants to foreshadow Alice's role as a villain, so he has her react snobbishly to Bob.
- Lampshaded: "It's you. It's you, it's you! I've s-seen all your tilms fen times — I mean ten times. Sorry, it's just, you are my number one fan, and my tangue gets tonglued — oh rats, that's not what I meant..."
- Invoked: Dracone intentionally brings up Bob's ordinariness and all the possible ways he could make a fool of himself in front of Alice to make him nervous before he meets her.
- Exploited: ???
- Defied: Bob extensively rehearses what he'll say when meeting Alice to avoid this.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Bob meets Alice offscreen. Later, he is asked what he said to her when they met, and he just says "Nothing much."
- Deconstructed: Bob gets completely tongue-tied and spouts gibberish when he meets Alice...and the whole event is caught on camera. The video goes viral, and Bob gets a worldwide reputation as a total loser.
Back to Starstruck Speechless, but-but-but, I just want you to know, it - I was honored to meet you.
