True Love's Kiss/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A character is able to save the person he/she loves with a kiss.

  • Straight: Alice is put into a magically induced coma by an evil sorceress, and Bob is able to wake her up with a kiss.
  • Exaggerated: Bob is able to cure anybody with any kind of illness with a kiss.
  • Justified: Bob has an hitherto unknown healing ability, the kiss is the skin-to-skin contact needed to save Alice; the spell can be broken with the kiss of the person's true love.
  • Inverted: Bob is able to harm people he hates with his kisses.
  • Subverted: Bob kisses Alice, but she doesn't wake up.
  • Double Subverted: Bob kisses Alice, but she doesn't wake up... quickly. It takes a few moments for her to come to.
    • Alternately: Bob kisses Alice, and she doesn't wake up. Bob's sidekick, Fred, says, "No, man, a Real Kiss, like this," and proceeds to give Alice a big, sloppy kiss with lots of tongue. She wakes up.
  • Parodied: Bob is a hippie who loves everyone, so he is hired by various royalty with comatose daughters to wake them up.
  • Deconstructed: Bob and Alice were dating, but he wasn't in love with her, so he can't wake her up.
  • Reconstructed:..But Charles does love Alice, but he was afraid to say anything. He kisses her and her curse is cured.
  • Zig Zagged: Bob kisses Alice, and she wakes up. Except then she falls back into a coma. Except it turns out it was just heavy sleep, because her body needed rest to work off the curse.
  • Averted: The curse can only be cured with the MacGuffin.
  • Enforced: "Our young audience loves the Power of Love, so that's how Bob will break the curse!
  • Lampshaded: "Why is it always a kiss? Surely there's a potion or a countercurse?"
  • Invoked: "Kiss her, idiot! It always works!"
  • Defied: The sorceress considers true love's kiss as a Curse Escape Clause, but figures that would be too obvious and comes up with something else.
  • Discussed: "Ten shillings says it's broken by a kiss... yup, right here; 'true love's kiss.' Pay up."
  • Conversed: " “Why is it always "true love's kiss" anyway?"

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