The Glasses Come Off/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character takes off their glasses to show they mean business.

  • Straight: Alice is about to fight Bob, and takes her glasses off.
  • Exaggerated: Alice is completely incompetent as a fighter while wearing glasses.
    • Alice is a total bookworm while wearing her coke-bottle lenses, and a total badass while not.
  • Justified: The glasses act as a Power Limiter, and Alice needs to take them off in order to fight at full strength.
    • Alternatively, Alice is long-sighted and needs $900 glasses to correct this. Taking the glasses off won't affect her ability to see Bob at close ranges, and prevents them from being smashed.
  • Inverted: Alice puts a pair of glasses on before fighting Bob.
  • Subverted: Alice is about to fight Bob, and takes her glasses off... in order to clean them so she can see better.
  • Double Subverted: ...but then she realizes that the tension of the battle is making her glasses foggy, so she takes them right back off.
  • Parodied: Alice swaps out her glasses for a monocle to show that she's fighting at approximately half of her full potential.
  • Deconstructed: Alice is unable to see without her glasses on, and can't land a single attack during the fight. She seems to 'see' fine before the fight- until she punches into a tree.
  • Reconstructed: So she instead chooses to rely on her ears instead of her eyes.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice is about to fight Bob, and takes her glasses off... in order to clean them so she can see better. But then she realizes that the tension of the battle is making her glasses foggy, so she takes them right back off. Then she remembers that they're enchanted glasses that can help her read Bob's next attack. But she decides that the risks of keeping her glasses on outweigh the advantages.
  • Averted: Alice does not take her glasses off at any point during battle.
  • Enforced: "We need to show how hardcore the hero is when she fights and because glasses are usually associated with intellectuals, she should take them off."
  • Lampshaded: "You want to take off the glasses now, or wait until later?"
  • Invoked: Alice doesn't need glasses any only wears them so she can take them off for dramatic effect.
  • Defied: Alice wears contacts.
  • Discussed: "No more glasses, huh? So are you going to start taking me seriously now?"
  • Conversed: "If she doesn't need them to fight this good, why wear them in the first place?"

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