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Playing With / Symbolic Mutilation

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Basic Trope: A character is mutilated in a symbolic way.

  • Straight: Bob, who never listens, gets his ears damaged during an adventure.
  • Exaggerated: Every character gets mutilated in a way that represents something about themselves.
  • Downplayed:
    • Bob, who never listens, gets temporary hearing loss during an adventure.
    • Bob, who never listens, is deafened by an explosion.
  • Justified: Alice is a fan of giving her victims Karmic punishments, and it just so happens that Bob is a Fearless Fool.
  • Inverted: Bob, who never listens, gains Super-Hearing during an adventure.
    • Bob loses an ear, and afterwards stops listening to people.
  • Subverted: Carol, who is selfish and miserly, gets her arm sawed off by Alice... but the saw breaks before it can cause anywhere near enough damage to cost Carol the arm, and she manages to escape before Alice can finish the job with a new weapon.
  • Double Subverted: That is, until the wound gets infected and Carol loses it anyway, thanks to having been too stingy to buy proper treatment supplies.
  • Zig-Zagged: ???
  • Parodied: ???
  • Averted: Injuries have no symbolic meaning.
  • Enforced: ???
  • Lampshaded: ???
  • Invoked: Emperor Evulz mockingly destroys Bob's ears after his lack of listening leads him to fall into a trap.
  • Exploited: ???
  • Defied: ???
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

Back to Symbolic Mutilation.

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