The "B" Grade/Playing With

Basic Trope: The straight-A student gets a lower grade than expected.
 * Straight: Alice is a straight-A student who gets a B in one subject. She panics and stresses about it for days.
 * Exaggerated: Alice routinely makes perfect marks on everything she does. When she gets a "B" in one of her assigments, she has a mental breakdown the likes of which are usually reserved for manic-depressives who don't take their medication, ending with Alice having a Heroic BSOD (or a Villainous Breakdown, if she's the antagonist), taking a gun to school the next day to kill the teacher, or taking her own life when she gets home from school that day.
 * Justified: Alice studies very hard and is proud of her high grades, so she takes it personally when she slips up.
 * Alice is trying to get into a very exclusive college, and anything lower than an A average will get her snubbed.
 * Alice's parents (or legal guardians) are very strict about what their child gets on his or her report card and anything lower than an "A" is grounds for punishment in their household.
 * Inverted: Alice is a underachiever and proud of it. When her straight-F average gets bumped up to a D-, she freaks out and worries over being branded a "nerd" by her other anti-intellectual peers.
 * Alternatively, Alice is a struggling student trying to raise her F-average, and gets excited when she musters up a "D-".
 * Subverted: The "B" on Alice's report card was a misprint or computer error.
 * Alice gets a B, and shrugs it off, to the shock of everyone who knows that she works hard to get straight A's.
 * Double Subverted: The "B" on Alice's report card was a misprint or computer error. Turns out she was supposed to get a C.
 * Alice gets a B, and shrugs it off, to the shock of everyone who knows that she works hard to get straight A's. In private, however, she has a mental breakdown.
 * Parodied: Alice gets an A+, the highest grade possible, and complains that she didn't get an "A++".
 * Zig Zagged: Alice gets a B on her report card, which was printed improperly; so she got a C instead. But everyone did so horrible in the class that all of their grades are being pitched upwards (or the class was graded on a curve), so she ends up getting an A anyway.
 * Deconstructed: See "Exaggerated"
 * Averted: Alice gets a B grade and takes it in stride.
 * Lampshaded: "Oh, no! It's report card day. If Alice gets anything lower than an A, we're never going to hear the end of it."
 * Invoked: Alice gets an A on a test, but Bob, a fellow student, switches the grade to a B, or changes her answers, knowing how she will overreact. Then asks Alice how did she do as the teacher is passing the tests back to the students. This sends Alice in a blind rage, yelling at the teacher and anyone else. Then later finds out that Bill tampered with her test.
 * Exploited: Alice's Magnificent Bastard teacher intentionally gives her a B grade because he hates how much of a perfectionist she is and wants to see her suffer.
 * Defied: "I got a B in Art? Well...just gotta study harder next time."
 * Discussed: Alice is bragging about her 4.0 GPA. Her friends start to worry and talk to Alice about what she's going to do when she gets a B.

Back to The B Grade.