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Basic Trope: A Stock Character who embodies negative stereotypes of working-class or poor people.

  • Straight: Alice lives in a tough neighborhood with her boyfriend Bob. She dresses in impressive-sounding fake labels (and her outfits tend to leave little to the imagination). She has a fake tan, and opted not to go to college (and may not have even graduated high school). Bob bought her a knock-off purse that allegedly Fell Off the Back of a Truck.
  • Exaggerated:
  • Downplayed:
    • Alice has picked up a few bad habits and norms from living in a tough neighborhood. There's little or nothing some effort (and maybe moving) couldn't cure, though.
    • Alice is a bit rough around the edges and has a few eccentricities, but overall is an honest, hardworking person.
    • Alice is a working-class heroine who is also a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
  • Justified: Life's nasty for Alice. The result isn't nice.
  • Inverted:
  • Subverted:
    • Alice lives in a rough neighborhood with her boyfriend, but the two of them are working hard to better themselves and better their lives. They may not be receiving any kind of public assistance, but if they are, they aren't abusing it or trying to get more of it than they need (in fact, they might possibly feel ashamed of needing assistance to get by, Depending on the Writer).
    • Alice likes to wear designer tracksuits and had her first child at age 17, but she is an intelligent and likeable person.
    • Although Alice lives in a trailer home or a shabby apartment, her place is well-kept and she always pays the rent on time.
    • Alice lives amidst deprivation, but she is a middle-class or rich girl Slumming It and her family can bail her out when she gets into real danger or just tired of this charade.
  • Double Subverted:
    • In order to move up, they rely on a Get-Rich-Quick Scheme, which may be illegal.
    • In the sense that she is street-smart; she's Book Dumb.
    • Her family cuts her off and her own life regresses to the mean of her milieu in short order.
  • Parodied: Alice was a well-cared-for girl who just started acting this way after her family had a Broke Episode when she was fourteen.
  • Zig-Zagged:
    • Characters of many socioeconomic descriptions occupy all positions on the spectra of intelligence and manners.
    • Alice is a poor young woman, but she's well-mannered and hard-working on good days. But good days are few and far between for her; the rest of the time, she's totally out of it, and most days she wakes up naked, hungover, and with an unexplained new scar in the gutter.
    • Alice gets "The Reason You Suck" Speech about how her poor circumstances are more her fault than any other person's, event's, or thing's. Chastened, she works hard to improve her behaviour; but when she doesn't get a better opportunity despite her improvement, she regresses to her prior loutishness. Then she gets called out again and tries to better herself again.
  • Averted: See "Inverted" and "Subverted".
  • Enforced:
  • Lampshaded: "Sure, life's been bad to you, but you need to Stop Being Stereotypical, too, girl!"
  • Invoked:
  • Exploited:
    • A popular politician finds out about Alice. Depending on their attitude towards poor people, they may use her as a cautionary tale about what can happen if you don't finish school, an iron-clad excuse to abolish social assistance or at least curtail it sharply, or a person who simply needs opportunities to find out what useful skills she has.
    • Alice becomes The Scapegoat for her sociopathic criminal friends who pin their crimes on her.
  • Defied: Alice either gets a GED or finds a way to complete High School and at least go to community college or trade school (maybe even four-year college), and works hard to make a better life for herself and her child (see "Subverted"). She puts her child's interests and long-term well-being ahead of short-term pleasure for herself.
  • Discussed: "I went to high school with Alice and looked her up on Facebook to see how she was doing. Looks like she has three different kids from three different dads and won't stop trying to get people involved with multi-level marketing schemes when she isn't starting petty drama with other people and making vaguely threatening posts aimed at unknown parties."
  • Conversed: "My sister hit me up for money. Again." "Alice? Oh, God, what's her sob story this time?" "She and Bob are allegedly waiting on both a settlement check and a disability claim but ran into a few problems with their landlord." "Damn, they sure do have a lot of unreasonable landlords and always seem to be either suing someone or waiting for a disability claim to go through." "Tell me about it. I'm like one of three people in the family who they still try this with because everyone else has told them to fuck themselves or gone no-contact with them after one too many requests for money, and those are the people who didn't sever after they stole twelve grand from Grandpa when he was recovering from heart surgery and not in his right mind."
  • Played for Laughs: Alice is a Straw Loser.
  • Played for Drama: Alice lives a dead-end life based around milking everything and everyone for whatever she can get out of them (often via scheming and stealing) because it's all she knows and, frankly, her only really viable option. Her family has a well-ingrained tradition of generational welfare: her mother had her when she was nineteen to a father who disappeared the minute he learned she was pregnant and never had anything to collect anyway due to his numerous stints in jail and refusal to work a job that was on the books, and she herself got knocked up at seventeen to another useless loser who, like her father, alternated between stints in jail and working cash-in-hand to avoid garnishments. With a child and no reliable transportation, employment is difficult to acquire and keep, and while the local community college has a daycare, it is almost an hour away each way, and she simply has no way of getting there, which leads to her having no marketable skills that would allow her to get a decent job. As a result, she simply gave up trying, applied for every benefit she thought she had a shot at getting, and lives a life of general deprivation and cheap pleasures (plus whatever she can wring out of boyfriends).
  • Played for Horror:
    • Alice's extreme poverty gives her and the people who meet her vivid and intense nightmares.
    • Whenever Alice is presented with a Hope Spot that can get her out of her quagmire, she trembles in fear.
    • Alice is one murder away from snapping and becoming an example of the Hillbilly Horrors trope. And that murder is going to happen soon, one way or another…
  • Deconstructed: Being so poor and such a punching bag to everybody else has harmful effects on Alice's mental and physical health.
  • Reconstructed: She gets so used to having such a crumby life that her cheap pleasures come to seem Worth It to her, and may later become so, too, depending on how much stock she puts in "fake it 'til you make it".
  • Implied: Alice is The Ghost, but Bob goes to what he knows to be her residence and sees all the telltale signs and mementos of poor people who Stopped Caring a long time ago, if they ever cared.

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