Unrequited Love Switcheroo/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Someone loves someone else, but their love isn't returned - until they enter into another relationship.

  • Straight: Bob is in love with Alice, but she doesn't return his feelings. When he gets into a relationship with Carol, she falls for him.
  • Exaggerated: Every part of the Love Dodecahedron flips when someone enters a relationship.
  • Downplayed: Alice wasn't entirely oblivious before, but once Bob and Carol become official she realises she's jealous.
  • Justified: Alice didn't realize she loved Bob until he wasn't on the table anymore.
  • Inverted: It's not until Bob's in a relationship with Carol that he realises he loves Alice.
  • Subverted: Bob gets into a relationship with Carol. Alice is glad because that means he'll stop trying to pursue her.
  • Double Subverted: But after a while, she realizes she secretly enjoyed being pursued...
  • Parodied: Alice openly and repeatedly mentions her vitriolic hatred for Bob - until he gets into a relationship, when those feelings are replaced with slavish devotion.
  • Zig Zagged: Will They or Won't They?.
  • Averted: Alice just plain isn't interested in Bob, before or after his new relationship.
  • Enforced: "OK, we've dragged out the Unresolved Sexual Tension between these two enough, but how can...wait, I've got it! Let's have him get into a relationship with someone else!"
  • Lampshaded: ???
  • Invoked: Bob starts hanging around with Carol in the hopes of getting Alice's jealousy working.
  • Exploited: ???
  • Defied: ???
  • Discussed: ???
  • Conversed: ???

Back to Unrequited Love Switcheroo. Funny, you didn't seem very interested in it until it started dating someone else...

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