Defrosting Ice Queen/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A cool character's exterior is melted by the Power of Love.

  • Straight: Sophia is condescencing and dismissive of Robert, until he valiantly saves her from her enemies, helps her bringing the children endangered by the enemy to safety, and brings her a bouquet of flowers.
  • Exaggerated: Sophia refuses to acknowledge Robert's existence until he kills every monster in the realm and gives her a factory's worth of boxed chocolate.
  • Justified: Sophia has been burned badly by a slick false love and both wants to protect herself and does not trust her judgment.
  • Inverted: Sally is madly in love with James, until James actually shows some interest in her; then she freezes.
  • Subverted: As soon as Sophia thaws, Robert dumps her.
  • Double Subverted: Sophia deduces his Freudian Excuse and helps him.
  • Parodied: Unappealing doofuses can win a princess of literal ice by making a romantic gesture.
  • Deconstructed: Robert is ignoring Amelia, superior in every way, and in love with him, for Sophia just because she's hard to get, because he insists that My Girl Is Not a Slut and assumes any interest in him is proof of sluttishness.
  • Reconstructed:
    • Amelia, it turns out, is a Clingy Jealous Girl. Something warned Robert off.
    • Amelia falls in love with someone else the next week. And a third man the week after that. . . meanwhile, once Robert wins Sophia, they settle down, Happily Married.
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted:
    • No one is hard to get.
    • All hard-to-get characters don't get anyone.
  • Enforced: "The romance subplot has to last through the trilogy; she has to play hard-to-get."
  • Lampshaded: "I can't be all smiling and welcoming. If I do, men will walk all over me and women will call me a whore."
  • Invoked: "Men are hunters at heart so ,to them, cold women are like an elusive prey. Winning their heart is all the more validating. Why do you think Sophia is so popular despite her frigid bitch act?"
  • Defied: Robert choses the sweet Girl Next Door despite the attractiveness of the Ice Queen, because she's too hard to get.
  • Discussed: "Why are you such a bitch, Sophia?" "I'm not. I'm just keeping my dignity intact, that's all."
  • Conversed: "Cold women usually have a warmer heart, trust me."

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