Driven by Envy/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: An unsympathetic character acts out against a sympathetic character out of jealousy.

  • Straight: Sally is jealous of the naturally-talented Alice, so she tries to make her life a living hell.
  • Exaggerated: Sally repeatedly and openly tries to kill Alice at various intervals.
  • Downplayed: Sally is jealous of Alice and steals her chocolate pudding.
  • Justified: Sally and Alice are competing for the same rewards, so Sally wants to give herself any advantage she can.
  • Inverted: Sally is jealous of Alice, but does everything she can to make Alice's life better.
  • Subverted: It turns out that Sally is actually a huge Jerk with a Heart of Gold - being mean to Alice is just her way of pushing her to succeed even further.
  • Double Subverted: But then it turns out that the Training from Hell angle was just an excuse to get Alice out of the picture for real.
  • Parodied: Sally is The Hero in a To Be a Master type of anime, and the way she progresses up the ranks is by killing off or otherwise annoying the hell out of her opponents.
  • Deconstructed: Because Sally is so focused on her jealousy of Alice, she fails to develop her own talents enough to where she can achieve her own goals. As a result, she becomes a bitter failure while Alice goes on to great success.
  • Reconstructed: In time, however, she learns to bury the hatchet with Alice and the two become friends and collaborators.
  • Zig Zagged: As "Double Subverted"...except it turns out that Sally is so devoted to her Training from Hell angle that she makes it seem that she genuinely hates Alice - when the opposite is true.
  • Averted: Sally is jealous, but not unreasonably so.
  • Enforced: ???
  • Lampshaded: "Didn't Sally try to poison you because you were her rival?" "Oh, that's just crazy talk."
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited: ???
  • Defied: "I am jealous of her, but that doesn't mean I should try to hurt her or anything."
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

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