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Playing With / Puppy Love

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Basic Trope: Two child characters are in love with each other.

  • Straight: Alice and Bob are in 3rd grade and fall in love.
  • Exaggerated:
  • Downplayed:
    • Alice and Bob are around eleven years of age and begin dating.
    • Alice and Bob are in 3rd grade. Bob blushes whenever he talks to Alice, but their relationship doesn't progress beyond a vague crush.
  • Justified:
    • Alice and Bob really are in love.
    • Alice and Bob are Free-Range Children who behave more like miniature teenagers or adults.
    • Alice and Bob live a society where children marry during the onset of puberty, so their romantic relationship is supposed to set them up for this.
  • Inverted:
  • Subverted: Alice has a crush on Bob, but he doesn't notice her, and her Girl Posse warns her about cooties.
  • Double Subverted: But she gets up the courage to give him a sweet valentine, and finds out he likes her, too.
  • Parodied:
    • Alice and Bob are perpetually holding hands and surrounded by Love Bubbles.
    • Alice and Bob have what appears to be a make-believe wedding, only it's a real (and legally-binding) one.
  • Zig Zagged: Due to time travel, Alice and Bob's relative ages to each other constantly fluncuate.
  • Averted: Alice and Bob are just friends, casual acquaintances, or even enemies or rivals. Nothing more, nothing less.
  • Enforced:
    • The writers are trying to create a show that audiences would find overly sweet.
    • Alice and Bob first appear in another work, where they are already Official Couple despite being young teens. Since they're quite popular among fanbase, the author write a prequel focus on their relationship.
  • Lampshaded: "Aaaaw... How sweet! She just gave him a kiss!"
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited: ???
  • Defied: Alice and Bob are too concerned about cooties to even speak to one another, let alone share that Sacred First Kiss. At least in the meantime.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???
  • Implied: In a Valentine's Day Episode, a child character is shown shopping for a gift, and picks something that would be suitable for another kid, such as a toy.
  • Deconstructed: Kids are not usually ready to handle all the emotional ups and downs of relationships.
  • Reconstructed: But somehow it works, and Alice and Bob have a strong relationship. They may even get married when they grow up.
  • Played For Laughs: Alice's father and brother aren't happy with the relationship. They use various over the top methods to break up the couple, which always backfire hilariously.
  • Played For Drama: As they grow up and remain in a relationship, Alice and Bob often ponder if they really love each other, or if it's just some childish imagination. Bob even thinks about breaking up, believe that they're too young to think of it thoroughly. Alice definitely won't take this well.

I probably should still be in my "girls equal cooties" phase, but... You're nice. Let's go back to Puppy Love instead, and maybe put in a Childhood Marriage Promise while we're at it.

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