Basic Trope: A character becomes more lively over time.
- Straight: Initially, Alice was a gloomy girl. However, over time, she cheers herself up.
- Exaggerated: Alice goes from a antisocial, brooding, stoic Broken Bird to a 24/7 Genki Girl Large Ham.
- Downplayed: Alice used to be quiet, withdrawn and somewhat robotic. Over time, she smiles occasionally when in the company of her True Companions and/or Love Interest, and Took a Level in Kindness.
- Justified:
- Alice makes friends that prove they'd do anything to help her out, and that she isn't alone in this cruel world.
- Alice is (or at least was) recovering from learning, through her Great Grandmother, that people don't live forever.
- Alice has been going to therapy.
- Inverted:
- Subverted: Alice turns out to be faking her new cheerful disposition.
- Double Subverted: Initially, Alice was a Stepford Smiler, but through making a conscious effort to feign happiness, the companionship and goodwill it brings her cause her to genuinely feel less gloomy, and she ended up Becoming the Mask.
- Parodied: See Exaggerated, which happens at the drop of a hat, and for a select person/group of people.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is a heavy Mood-Swinger, going from content to embittered and morose consistently.
- Averted: Alice was never sullen to begin with, or she never becomes more lighthearted.
- Enforced: The setting is a Sugar Bowl. Alice, being her somber self, would look out of place, ergo, events will have to shape her into becoming a more positively-minded character.
- Lampshaded:
- "Alice has never looked happier before."
- "Not your usual gloomy self today, I see."
- Invoked: Alice takes happy pills, or decides to undergo therapy.
- Exploited: Carla, a therapist, uses a cheerier Alice as a testimonial for her services.
- Defied: Alice tries her damnedest to maintain a pessimistic world view, and any glimpses of merriment are immediately repressed by her reminding herself of how bad things are.
- Discussed: "I wish Alice would just stop being so down all the time. This isn't exactly a Crapsack World."
- Conversed: "Fiction makes it seem like The Power of Friendship/Love can heal almost any level of emotional damage, given time."
Back to Took a Level in Cheerfulness.
