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Playing With / Informed Flaw

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Basic Trope: We're told a character has a problem of some kind, but it never seems to have a true impact in the story.

  • Straight: Alice is said to have too much Pride for her own good, but survives many scrapes with the law through basic humility.
  • Exaggerated: Alice purportedly flaunts every one of her accomplishments — however minor — in everyone else's face, but seems perfectly well-adjusted.
  • Downplayed:
    • Alice often sneezes into the air without covering her nose.
    • Princess Alice is a Lethal Chef in a story where everyone is royalty and thus has maids who cook delicious food for them anyway.
  • Justified:
  • Inverted: We hear Alice knows an awesome technique, but we never see her using it.
  • Subverted:
    • Alice really can't do something that the audience has been told she can't do.
    • Alice does, in fact, have a tendency to rub everything about her into someone.
  • Double Subverted:
  • Parodied: Fiction Broadcasting Station airs a profile of "Proud" Alice and her highly successful charitable foundation, the Friends of Orphaned Trope Links.
  • Zig Zagged: Dale complains about Alice's Awesome Ego for the first book and a half, until she wakes up realizing it was All Just a Dream. Then, the first time she runs into Dale while awake, he tricks her into showing off her lack of skill at Game X in front of an 80,000-strong crowd, but his target wasn't our Alice, but one Alessandra, who often goes by "Alice".
  • Averted: We're told Alice's flaw, and we get to see firsthand instances of how it affects her.
  • Enforced: "Alice is a invokedMary Sue, but she's a minor character and the fans won't give a flying fart about her ... just say she's got a penchant for boasting and release the product."
  • Lampshaded: "Dale, you can't call me proud. If anything, I'm too humble. If pride were really my Fatal Flaw, how come I've never had an axe in my eye for saying I could throw one when I couldn't?"
  • Invoked: Alice is trying to infiltrate the inner circle of a Big Bad who takes great pleasure in indulging in all Seven Deadly Sins.
  • Exploited: A Villain with Good Publicity fabricates a story about Alice doing something heinous to discredit her.
  • Defied: Knowing that people think she's smug, Alice resolves to eliminate all traces of egotism from her outlook, to the point of asking her hyper-observant ex-boyfriend Mike to keep a constant eye on her and viciously rebuking her if she makes a mistake.
  • Discussed: "Alice is a lot nicer in person than her lousy reputation implied."
  • Conversed: "For all this talk of 'Proud' Alice, she was really not written to be that hubristic."
  • Played For Laughs: The narrator is an Unreliable Narrator and tells us that Alice has a problem but we regularly see the opposite.
  • Played For Drama: Alice is the Unreliable Narrator and, unsure of her own ability, constantly downplays it. She tells us that her Fatal Flaw (or a list of fatal flaws) are this, but in actuality, the characters can see that the Fatal Flaw is really Alice's self-esteem.

"Good thing you don't require singing skills to return to Informed Flaw, because I'm a TERRIBLE singer! True story, bro!"

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