Basic Trope: Trying to sound like the opposite gender makes you sound crazy.
- Straight:
- Alice is pretending to be a man. However, when she tries to speak in a man's voice, she sounds more like she has laryngitis.
- Bob is pretending to be a woman, but his falsetto voice sounds too high, and almost helium-like.
- Exaggerated: Alice-as-a-man sounds like a growly, heavy/black metal vocalist at a business meeting.
- Downplayed:
- Alice and Bob do pretty good opposite sex voices, but their voices do occasionally crack.
- Alice and Bob both have to pretend to be the opposite sex for a while, and Alice does a good job while Bob doesn't.
- Justified: Well, sounding like the opposite sex can be hard!
- Inverted: Alice and Bob naturally sound like the opposite gender and want to correct their voices but have trouble doing so.
- Subverted: Alice and Bob initially have trouble trying to sound like the opposite gender, but they get better with practice.
- Double Subverted: They still have a lot of trouble when they need to sing, though.
- Parodied: Whenever Alice or Bob speak in their disguise, their lines are replaced by a long string of censor beeps. The subtitles show what they are saying and add a disclaimer saying "trust us, you really don't want to hear this".
- Zigzagged: Alice and Bob's attempts at sounding like the opposite sex vary in results, depending on things like their mood, whether they've had enough sleep, whether they're shouting, speaking, or singing, etc.
- Averted:
- Alice and Bob have a knack for imitating voices, so they can sound like the opposite sex just fine.
- Neither Alice nor Bob has to imitate the opposite gender.
- Alice and Bob imitate the opposite gender, but they don't speak.
- Enforced: "Alice doing a perfect guy voice, or Bob doing a perfect lady voice, would just sound too creepy!"
- Lampshaded: "Man, I suck at sounding like a dude/woman!"
- Invoked: Bob is supposed to dress up as a distraction, so deliberately tries to sound as distracting and over-the-top as possible.
- Exploited: Because Alice fails to sound like a man naturally, she cons people by claiming she is a man who needs money for a vocal chord surgery after a freak accident that ruined his voice.
- Defied:
- Alice and Bob practice sounding like the opposite gender.
- Alice and Bob refuse to speak as the opposite gender, maybe even learning sign language so they can communicate while disguised without having to put on any voices.
- Discussed: "How do I sound like the opposite sex?"
- Conversed:
- "She sounds more like someone with a serious throat infection than a man."
- "Does he think all women are sopranos?"
- Implied: In the comic book adaption, Bob's dialogue is usually printed normally, but when disguised as a woman his speech uses a different, ridiculously flowery font.
- Deconstructed: This leads to Alice and/or Bob being caught.
- Reconstructed: ???
- Played for Laughs: Cringe Comedy transpires as Alice and Bob must make excuses for sounding so weird.
- Played for Drama: Alice is a trans woman who has trouble sounding like a woman and feels bad about it.
- Played for Horror: Satan has trouble sounding like a woman.
Back to Larynx Dissonance.
