Menstrual Menace/Playing With
Basic Trope: A woman who has particularly problematic periods.
- Played Straight: Alice has her period and she has severe cramps and becomes emotional to the point of insanity.
- Exaggerated: Alice turns into a bleeding Eldritch Abomination with a Hair-Trigger Temper and an insatiable sex drive every month.
- Inverted: Alice is an Eldritch Abomination that becomes a normal and innocent human girl during her period.
- Justified: Alice has a serious hormonal disorder.
- The story takes place during a time or place where female anatomy is more based on myths and urban legend rather than scientific fact.
- Subverted: Alice has her period, and aside from the usual discomfort and bleeding, nothing too serious happens.
- Double Subverted: ...but she has psychic powers or a spilt personality that only comes around when her period starts.
- Deconstructed: See "Played for Drama"
- Reconstructed: Alice gets medical attention for her menstrual problems
- Parodied: Same thing as Exaggerated
- Bob gets Ready for Lovemaking with a menstrual Alice by donning a suit of armor, getting a box of chocolates and an extra large bottle of Pamprin (along with a sword for protection), and saying goodbye to everyone he's known and loved before he heads for the bedroom.
- Zig Zagged: Some months, Alice will be a saint while on her period; other months, she'll be Satan.
- Alice's mood during her period changes each day (day one: she's cheerful and accomodating -- to the point that it becomes sickeningly sweet; day two: Alice will be Cute and Psycho [emphasis on the last word]; day three: Alice will be a weepy, emotionally wrecked Big Eater who cleans out Bob's refrigerator and watches nothing but Tear Jerker movies; day four: Alice will be a sexually frustrated Abhorrent Admirer that would make France, Lena Hyena, Pepe Le Pew, and FifiLaFume blush; day five: Alice will be a physically exhausted vegetable who spends the day in bed, waiting for her period to end or death to come, whichever comes first).
- Lampshaded: Bob has a tried-and-true plan he uses to escape Alice's clutches when she gets her monthly visitor.
- "My wife's on her period?! TO THE PANIC ROOM!"
- Averted: Alice has her period and her personality is pretty much the same.
- Enforced: Women's Mysteries, Most Writers Are Male, Did Not Do the Research
- Invoked: Alice was put under a spell that would warp her good nature when she comes of age to have her period.
- Defied: Alice uses remedies (perhaps even visiting a good witch) to counteract that curse.
- Discussed: "Watch out for Alice when she's on her period!"
- Conversed: "I swear, all women become manic-depressive when it's their time of the month."
- Played For Laughs: See "Zig Zagged," "Exaggerated," and "Parodied"
- Played For Drama: Alice's personality flip associated with her period has driven a wedge between her and her husband or boyfriend. Unless something can be done to fix it, her husband or boyfriend will leave her.