Old Flame Fizzle/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character meets an old friend, or old flame, and realizes that he no longer feels anything for this person.

  • Straight: Esmeralda meets up with Georgiana, whom she had known in school. Within a minute, she realizes that they no longer have anything in common.
    • Leopold returns from making his fortune in the city, and realizes that Mariana, his old love, is a silly, ill-educated, self-centered brat.
  • Exaggerated: Hubert is always fascinated after the first date, and then disillusioned the second.
    • Ferdinard attends his high school reunion and realizes that all of his classmates, including the girls he dated, are silly, stupid, nasty, or otherwise unpleasant -- some through having grown worse through the years, some because he had not noticed that start of these traits in school.
  • Downplayed: Meeting an old flame is not as instantly thrilling as Horatio thought, though they get to know each other again.
  • Justified: Character Development in the interim.
  • Inverted: New Old Flame
  • Subverted: Leopold thinks Mariana silly and shallow, and slowly realizes that he was expecting her to act like the women of the Vice City, whereas she is simply natural and not exhibitionist.
  • Double Subverted: However, her natural state is silly and shallow.
  • Parodied: Bernardo is always disappointed when meeting someone again -- five minutes after they are introduced, even.
  • Zig Zagged: ???
  • Averted: Sebastian never meets an old friend or an old love.
  • Enforced: "We can't introduce a new character permenantly, so we need some way to make this old friend no longer a friend."
  • Lampshaded: ???
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited: Elisabetta, sick of how her husband Archibald pines after his lost love Veronica during their Arranged Marriage, arranges for him to meet Veronica again.
  • Defied: Leopold insists on marrying Mariana and taking her with him when he goes to make his fortune, to prevent their growing apart.
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

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