Like You Were Dying/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character who's about to die decides to live life to the fullest.

  • Straight: Alice, who has a terminal disease, decides to spend her last few days seeing the world and experiencing it.
  • Exaggerated: Alice catches a cold, and, thinking she's going to die, goes on an extravagant spending spree.
  • Justified: Alice always talked about how she wanted to do these things.
  • Inverted:
    • Alice spends her last few days curled up in a ball, sobbing.
    • A cancer patient is about to live, he decides to lounge about for the rest of his life.
  • Subverted:
    • "I'm dying? I guess this is my last chance to travel the globe! To the Internet!"
    • She's not really dying, she's just living in such a manner.
  • Double Subverted: "Where I will buy plane tickets to everywhere!"
  • Parodied: Alice actually throws a little party when she finds out she has the disease.
  • Deconstructed: Alice's attempts to live life to the fullest are just a mask for her inability to cope with death.
  • Reconstructed: She copes with death by doing the things she loved in life, i.e. partying.
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted: Alice doesn't change her daily routine when she learns the news.
  • Enforced: "Alice is dying! It's time for a vacation episode!"
  • Lampshaded: "You've really opened up in these last few days!"
  • Invoked: Alice lies to a friend that he's dying so he can get out of the house.
  • Defied: Alice, after much consideration, decides that it would probably be better for her loved ones if she just stayed around them until she died.
  • Discussed: "You're dying? Shouldn't you be off swimming with dolphins?"
  • Conversed: ???

Back to Like You Were Dying.

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Like_You_Were_Dying/Playing_With?oldid=125546"