Magnetic Girlfriend/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Women don't take an interest in the hero until after he gets a girlfriend.

  • Straight: The once unpopular Bob starts dating Alice. Carol, Donna, and Eileen want to date him now.
  • Exaggerated: Carol, Donna, and Eileen hate Bob's guts. Once he starts dating Alice, they worship the ground he walks on and insist they always have.
  • Justified: Bob was a slob until he had someone to make himself presentable for.
  • Inverted: Once the extremely popular Bob starts dating Alice, other women start avoiding him.
    • Carol, Donna and Eileen still don't like Bob at all, however, they really HATE Alice! So they start harassing Bob in order to put a strain on their newly forged relationship.
  • Subverted: Once Bob starts dating Alice, women start following them around... and making passes at Alice.
  • Double Subverted: They're trying to invoke Girl-On-Girl Is Hot to get Bob's attention.
  • Parodied: Bob turns to leave after scheduling his first date with Alice, only to find every other character (and others who have never been seen before and will never be seen again) descending on him with roses.
  • Deconstructed: Alice is suspicious of how little Bob does to discourage the other women who are always declaring their love for him. She fights with Bob as a result, and eventually breaks up with him.
    • Having never been presented with this much temptation before, Bob tries to take advantage of his newfound fortune. This backfires, earning him a reputation as a Jerkass and causing his would-be girlfriends to Abandon Shipping.
  • Reconstructed: After Alice breaks up with him, Bob starts dating Carol. Alice decides she wants him back, and finds herself in the same position as Donna and Eileen.
  • Zig Zagged: Carol was already interested in Bob, but took it for granted that they'd get together... until Alice shows up. Donna also harbored some interest in him, but instead of getting upset and jealous when Alice shows up, she becomes a Shipper on Deck. Eileen, meanwhile, stays out of the conflict entirely... until the couple goes through a rough patch and breaks up, at which point she swoops in to catch him on the rebound -- and attracts Faye's attention to him in the process.
  • Averted: Bob isn't attractive to anyone but Alice.
  • Enforced: Bob/Alice is the creators' OTP, but you can't have a harem anime without the harem.
  • Lampshaded: "Why couldn't this have happened when I was single?"
  • Invoked: Bob dates Alice in hopes that he'll soon have hordes of women fighting over him.
  • Exploited: Bob takes advantage of his sudden rise in popularity to manipulate the girls pursuing him, encouraging them to fight over him.
  • Defied: Bob is dating Alice at the start of the show, and is also pursued by Carol, Donna, and Eileen. Flashbacks reveal that they've been chasing him since high school.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

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