Basic Trope: A character that has to be perfect at what they do.
- Straight:
- Alice has to organize a party for billionaires. She has to make it perfect in every way.
- Alice is completing an assignment, and she insists on making it perfect, such as rewriting her essay every time she makes a mistake so that no correction tape/ink is seen on her work when she submits it.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice tries to make it more perfect than perfect.
- Alice tries to make it perfect even when it's impossible to do so, e.g. completing a writing assignment/exam where getting 100% is impossible, or demanding herself to be able to answer questions in subjects/topics she hasn't even learnt yet.
- Downplayed: Alice must make it "good enough" to her standards, which are still quite high.
- Justified:
- Alice won't get a grand prize if her work isn't perfect.
- Alice will get a punishment if her work isn't perfect.
- Alice had too many failures with trying for 'good enough' when she started.
- Alice was taught that she's worthless if she isn't perfect.
- Inverted: Alice strives to never be perfect in her work. She's just pretending to be lazy so she isn't assigned hard tasks, and she doesn't want people to know how good she can actually do.
- Zig-Zagged: Alice demands herself to be perfect in some aspects of her work, while she is okay with being "good enough" in others.
- Invoked: Alice's parents teach her from a young age that she has to be perfect at what she does, otherwise she'll be seen as unworthy.
- Exploited: Bob chooses Alice as a partner in doing a group project, as he knows Alice will try to make the project as perfect as possible, and he'll be able to get a good grade from it.
- Played For Drama: Alice's perfectionistic tendencies alienate her from her friends, who don't understand how she takes things as Serious Business.
- Deconstructed:
- Alice is highly self-critical such that she could make her work perfect. This takes a toll on her mental health as a result, and has a mental breakdown whenever she doesn't reach her sometimes impossibly-high standards.
- Alice falls victim to the Perfect Solution Fallacy — because she can't come up with an idea that's perfectly flawless, she ends up accomplishing nothing.
- Reconstructed: Alice goes to therapy as a result of her mental health issues, and gradually accepts her own limitations and is able to take a loss more gracefully while knowing she tried her best.
Wait, don't go back to The Perfectionist! Not all of the examples are there yet!
