Basic Trope: A person gets revenge by defaming or harming a character based on someone who angered them.
- Straight: Alice is angry at Bob after they've had an argument. When the group are telling stories, Alice tells a story about Robert, who ruined his life by not listening to Alicia, his wise and heroic girlfriend.
- Exaggerated: Alice gets revenge on everyone who's ever irritated her by writing a book of stories about them as people with no redeeming qualities who come to bad ends. She then uses her money to have it published all over the world and optioned for film by several movie studios.
- Downplayed:
- Alice says an improvised limerick about how much Bob sucks as a boyfriend, but she doesn't sees the utility in writing it down.
- Alice writes a story about Robert, who is rude and dumb but still a Jerk with a Heart of Gold.
- Justified:
- It’s easier for Alice to express her feelings via story writing.
- Alice wishes to be thorough in her lambasting of Bob.
- Alice writes better when she is angry. Bob just had the bad luck of providing her fuel and inspiration.
- Alice knows that writing about tossing Bob head first into a woodchipper is better than actually tossing Bob head first into a woodchipper (with the former she doesn't risk going to jail, for one).
- Inverted: Alice is happy with Bob after he does something nice for her. When the group are telling stories around the campfire, Alice tells a story about an amazing man called Robert and his equally incredible girlfriend Alicia, and how they triumphed and lived happily ever after.
- Subverted: Alice and Bob have just had an argument, and as they're sitting around the campfire, preparing to tell stories, Alice grins savagely at Bob...and then Bob spits out his drink, which Alice spiked with hot pepper.
- Double Subverted:
- ...And then Alice tells a story about the stupid Robert, who ruined his life by not listening to and upsetting Alicia, his wise and heroic girlfriend.
- Annoyed, Bob tells a story about Alicia, a spiteful hellcat who abuses her loving and intelligent boyfriend Robert.
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Parodied: Emperor Evulz captures Bob, promising to punish him horribly for all the times he's ruined his schemes...and then tells him a long string of stories about a man named Robert, who was stupid, clumsy, incompetent, mean, and smelly, and how he kept harassing the innocent King Evuls.
- Lampshaded:Bob: Amazing how you came up with such an intricate plotline while still furious with me.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Implied: Bob and Alice come back to the campfire after having an argument and Charlie suggests they all tell stories, hoping to calm them down. One scene cut later, Bob and Alice storm off in separate directions and Charlie says unhappily, "I didn't mean that kind of story..."
- Defied:
- Alice is shut down before she can tell a story.
Charlie: We all know you are just gonna try and insult Bob in your story, Alice! Not cool of you!- Neither Bob nor Alice see any use in wasting time and creative effort in manufacturing a story that is a symbol of their feuding (and if they wish to vent, well, yelling and plain old fisticuffs work well for that), so they don't.
- Bob threatens to sue for defamation if the story is published.
- Played For Laughs: Alice's story is an In-Universe Revenge Fic that is plagued with every "don't do this" in the fan-fiction writer's book, including absurd character assassinations, atrocious grammar, allegedly "karmic" retributions that make the "villain" sympathetic and the "hero" vile, and show-don't-tell.
- Played For Drama: Bob's feeling are hurt by the story, and Alice is called out on it, who realises that insulting Bob like that didn't give her the satisfaction she wanted.Charlie: Well congrats to you, Alice! You happy now?Alice: ... No.
- Played For Horror:
- The violent revenge Alice is writing about won't remain a story for long.
- Alice is writing the story of Bob's violent, Undignified Death in a Reality-Writing Book. About an hour after she adds "The End", Bob will meet his end.
- Bob decides that the story is an insult worth killing Alice over.
- The story Bob created about the brutal murder of the fictional version of Alice, and the sheer unhinged way he told it, made Alice decide that it's best to call the police, file a restraining order, and maybe ask about entering Witness Protection so she can move very far away, change her identity, and pray Bob never finds her.
- Alice just went and gave Lila ideas in how to remove Bob from the triangle (that is all in her head).
There once was a stupid Troper who just complained and never followed the wiki rules. After red-linking Revenge via Storytelling, they got eaten by a Peeve Goblin...What did they look like? Huh, I'd say a lot like you!
