Not Rare Over There/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Someone goes great pains to obtain something which someone else can provide easily.

  • Straight: Alice and Bob spend all day looking for some apples, only to find Clare has a large sack and shares them freely.
  • Exaggerated: Alice and Bob spend the entire year searching the country for apple pies. When they get home they discover that Clare has baked them several for their celebratory welcome back party.
  • Downplayed: All the shops are out of apples, but luckily Clare still has some.
  • Justified: Alice and Bob couldn't find any apples because Clare owns the only orchard in town and hasn't shipped that years crop.
  • Inverted: Alice and Bob spend the entire day giving away their excess of apples, only to find that Clare's making cider and needs all the apples she can find.
  • Subverted: Clare opens her cupboard and finds that she's also out of apples.
  • Double Subverted: ...so she tells Alice and Bob they can just pick them straight from her tree.
  • Parodied: A montage of Alice and Bob going to greater and greater extremes to find apples ensures, culminating in Claire offering them a sack and claiming she's been trying to give them to them all day.
  • Deconstructed: Alice and Bob can't find any apples even though it should be easy...because there's a severe problem with apple distribution that could undermine the economy of fruit shops around the country.
  • Reconstructed: ...namely that the Apples By Claire Co. is behind on its shipments. The problem's soon resolved.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice and Bob are constantly finding places that normally have loads of apples...but are revealed to have ran out.
  • Averted: Alice and Bob find the apples they're looking for at the corner shop.
  • Enforced: Apples serve as Alice and Bob's Power-Up Food. If they got it too easily there wouldn't be any drama.
  • Lampshaded: "Why can't we find any apples!? They're one of the easiest fruits to grow in this climate! They grow all year round for goodness sake! There is an orchard no more than a mile down the road!"
  • Defied: Alice and Bob frequantly use eBay and other online marketplaces, meaning they never have trouble finding anything they could reasonably obtain.
  • Discussed: "Oh, I know! This is going to one of those things where we spend ages searching and find an entire mountain of apples when we give up, isn't it?"
  • Conversed: "Have they found some apples yet?" "No, there's another 15 minutes to go, there's time for a few more 'sorry, out of apples' gags before they discover Claire's got a fresh crop of them."
  • Exploited: Claire obtains as many apples as she can knowing she'll be able to sell them all to Alice and Bob and charge as much as she likes (since they'll have been searching all day).
  • Played for Laughs: Alice and Bob doggedly keep trying to obtain an apple, ignoring opportunities to win huge amounts of money, meet their favorite celebrities or obtain alternative fruits.
  • Played for Drama: Alice and Bob promised their dying grandmother that they'd get her an apple and be back immediately (thinking it would only be a short run to the shops); she could be dead before they return with it.

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