Extreme Doormat/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character who's passive and easily manipulated.

  • Straight: Alice is quiet and obedient to the point of being a pushover.
  • Exaggerated: Alice would gladly jump off a cliff if someone told her to.
  • Justified: Alice is a robot programmed to obey orders.
  • Inverted: Alice is a Hot-Blooded Determinator.
  • Subverted:
    • Alice acts like a doormat at first, but then when she's given a command she doesn't want to obey, she refuses.
    • Alice would not be a doormat of her own accord (that is, she has thoughts and opinions), but her training/upbringing causes her to believe that she should be a doormat, and try and stifle her emotions.
  • Double Subverted:
    • When the commander gets mad at her, Alice apologises profusely and obeys.
    • Alice gradually got used to acting like a doormat.
  • Parodied: Alice is literally a sapient doormat.
  • Deconstructed:
    • Alice is sick of constantly being walked all over, and eventually snaps.
    • Alice has crippling self-esteem issues and constantly helps others in order to feel useful. She ends up taking up too many tasks, letting everyone down. She is wracked with so much guilt and takes her own life.
  • Reconstructed:
  • Zig Zagged: Alice is very much an Extreme Doormat, but when she's ordered to do something she doesn't want to do, she refuses. The commander then threatens to beat her, so she timidly agrees to carry out the order. But when it looks like she's going off to fulfill the deed, she runs away.
  • Averted: Alice knows when to stand up for herself.
  • Enforced: "People will think it's awkward if we just made her as hot-blooded and headstrong as in the original story ... so maybe they'll love it if we go in the other direction!"
  • Lampshaded:
    • "She might as well have 'welcome' tattooed on her forehead, that Alice."
    • "Alice, you need to learn to think for yourself!" "If you insist... um... what should I be thinking about?"
  • Invoked: "Maybe if I'm really nice, I can get the information I need.
  • Defied: "What, you think I'll just do whatever you tell me to? Dream on."
  • Discussed: "If she just lets anyone treat her like that, she's going to get hurt."
  • Conversed: "The last girl I dated, you ask? ... Sweet as could be, but she never stood up for herself ..."

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