Gray Rain of Depression/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: The rain symbolizes a character's sadness.

  • Straight: Betty cries in the rain after her dog dies.
  • Exaggerated: Betty's tears are accompanied by a huge flood, a typhoon, and a tsunami.
  • Downplayed: It's overcast, and Betty is bored.
  • Justified:
  • Inverted: Happy Rain
  • Subverted: Betty seems to be crying in the rain, but as the camera zooms in, it shows that she was actually laughing the entire time.
  • Double Subverted: ...but laughing hysterically; she just found out her parents have died.
  • Parodied: Betty hears bad news, and the moment she starts crying a black Personal Raincloud appears over her. Then she finds out that she was misinformed, and the rain stops instantly.
  • Deconstructed: Betty's in a black mood, and the skies above her reflect it. When she discusses the problem with a friend, he points out that because she's in a bad mood, she's reflecting on the worst aspects of things - only last week she was jumping in puddles in the exact same weather.
  • Reconstructed: Betty likes walking in the rain when depressed for the same reasons that she likes to slump over a bourbon listening to The Blues - it's cathartic. It makes her feel a little better to think that the world sympathises with her pain.
  • Zig Zagged: Betty walks out of the house in a bad mood, and as soon as she's outside it starts raining - just her luck. She complains about it to Arthur, who points out she's just seeing the worst of things, and does his best to cheer her up - at which point the sun comes out. She jokingly suggests she has weather control powers, and he laughs at her, oblivious to the storm clouds building above him as she gets angry.
  • Averted: The show has no Empathic Environment. It rains when the clouds reach saturation point and the droplets of water fall to earth.
  • Enforced: We need to let the audience know that Betty is really depressed. Let's make it rain in the background.
  • Lampshaded: "Typical. Even the weather's against me."
  • Invoked: Betty cries in the rain to show everyone that she is really upset.
  • Defied: She insists she isn't crying. She's just got rain on her face.
  • Discussed: "If the universe had any sense of dramatic necessity, I would be walking home in the rain right now".
  • Conversed: "Is Betty a weather god now?"

Back to Gray Rain of Depression, and I suggest you bring an umbrella...

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