I Let You Win/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character reveals that another character who beat them somehow only won because they let them.

  • Straight: Alice is fighting Dracone and after a long, arduous battle, she wins. He later reveals that he let her win for reasons unknown.
  • Exaggerated: Alice fights Dracone several hundred times, winning each time by the skin of her teeth. Dracone reveals that he was letting her win each time.
  • Justified: Dracone is looking for a successor and sees great poetential in Alice. By letting her win he he sets up a better a better dragon for his employer. However, if he she didn't meet his standards he would have killed her than and there. either outcome worked for him.
  • Inverted: Alice gives up against Dracone.
    • Alice gloats after beating Dracone, saying that defeating him was a such a breeze... When, in fact, she had a really hard time winning.
  • Subverted: After recalling the fight, Alice realizes that Dracone couldn't have let her win...he was fighting too hard.
  • Double Subverted: He was fighting hard to further his motives.
  • Parodied: Alice beat all kinds of pain into Dracone's sorry ass, and yet he still insists that she only won because he let her.
  • Deconstructed: The revelation that he let her win causes Alice to give up and stop fighting the bad guys.
  • Reconstructed: Alice realizes that Dracone might have let her win, but she needs to keep fighting.
  • Zig Zagged: It's truly too difficult to tell whether he was letting her win or not.
  • Averted: Alice won fair and square.
  • Enforced: "We need to show that this villain is sinister! What better way than to tell The Hero that he let her win?"
  • Lampshaded: "Remember when you defeated me at Death's Gulch? I let you win that time!"
  • Invoked: Dracone, while fighting Alice and holding his own, realizes that his agenda would be better served if she won. So...he lets her win.
  • Defied: Alice, realizing that Dracone is about to let her win, forces him to keep fighting her.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

I let you go back to the main page, you little fool!. Muahahahahahahaha!!!