Good Angel, Bad Angel/Playing With

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Basic Trope: A character has a crisis of conscience personified.

  • Played Straight: Alice has a crisis of conscience. A good angel with wings and a halo dressed in a modest white kimono appears on her right shoulder, appealing to her good or nice side. A demon with a skimpy top, fishnet stockings, and a miniskirt and stiletto heels appears on the other, appealing to her selfish or mean side.
  • Exaggerated: Other Exposition Fairy type characters (representing all aspects of her personality) appear to offer their two cents.
  • Inverted: Alice counsels the angel and the devil.
  • Justified: Alice is having a crisis of conscience; caught between what she should do and what she maybe wants to do.
  • Subverted:
  • Double Subverted: But the angel character fights back.
  • Deconstructed: Alice actually has a mental disorder. When she tells her family that there is an angel and a devil telling her what to do, the family gets worried and puts her on medication.
  • Reconstructed: Alice is actually getting counseling from her parents. She just happens to think of her mother as an angel and her father as a devil or vice versa.
  • Parodied:
    • The appearance of the angels is set up like the beginning of a wrestling or boxing match: "In this corner, from the Superego, representing virtue and selflessness, Angelica! And her opponent, from the Id, representing vice and selfishness, Diabolica!" *ding, ding!*
    • The ensuing battle sets Alice's head on fire and she runs away screaming.
    • The two characters' fighting literally gives Alice a headache.
    • The only character to appear is Diabolica. (Angelica is duct taped to a chair.)
    • Diabolica raises a valid point, and Angelica takes her side.
    • Or, alternatively, Angelica raises a valid point, and since Even Evil Has Standards, Diabolica sides with her.
  • Lampshaded: "Hey Angel, Devil, what advice do you have for me?"
  • Averted: No conceptual representations of conscience appear on Alice's shoulder or anywhere else.
  • Enforced: "We need to show an abstract concept like a crisis of conscience in a way the audience can understand."
  • Invoked: Alice is faced with a tough moral decision to make.
  • Defied: Alice decides for herself, rather than letting an Exposition Fairy make the choice for her.
  • Discussed:
  • Conversed:
  • Played For Laughs: The two characters have an Escalating War going on, and focus on attacking each other more than helping Alice think.
  • Played For Drama: Both raise equally valid points, and so neither one is particularly helpful.

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