When You Coming Home, Dad?/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Children whose parent(s) love him/her, but are too busy to spend time with.

  • Straight: Alice, a Lonely Rich Kid, has parents who are continuously trying to spend time with her, but is too busy to do so. This disappoints Alice.
  • Exaggerated: Alice's parents are so busy, that Alice doubts that she's their daughter. They forgot her birthday, didn't come to the science fair, didn't greet her at home... but they really love her.
  • Downplayed: Alice's parents are busy, but still find some (little) time to spend once in a while.
  • Justified: Alice's parents are busy, and don't understand that Alice needs more that money to be happy.
      • Or, Alice's parents are poor and constantly work so they can scrape together enough money to feed, clothe and educate her.
  • Inverted: Alice's parents continuously try to spend time with her, but Alice is too busy hanging out with her friends and boyfriend.
      • Or, Alice's parents hate her, but they hang out so much together to a ridiculous extent, that people think that they're a happy family.
  • Subverted: Turns out her parents realized their mistakes and starts cutting off their work for awhile.
  • Double Subverted: Unfortunately, a more important and urgent job comes in - and they had to leave.
  • Parodied: Alice's parents are so busy, they didn't know where Alice is 80% of the time; and they also didn't know that Alice had run away months ago to her friend's house - and her parents thought Lisa, the girl next door was their daughter.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice spends a lot of time with her parents on some occasion, sometimes they hardly see Alice at all.
  • Averted: Alice's parents, although busy, spends a healthy time with Alice.
  • Enforced: The creators wanted a tragic back story for Alice, who is a rich girl.
  • Lampshaded: "Why are you two never around for me when I need it?!"
  • Invoked: ???
  • Exploited: Alice realizes that her parents are too occupied with work to notice her, so she started doing things... that she shouldn't be doing.
  • Defied: Alice tries to make her parents be there for her, or vice-versa.
  • Discussed: "Back then, my parents were always talking with their phones to even look at me..."
  • Conversed: "Alice's parents are so busy, huh? When will they ever learn?"
  • Deconstructed: Alice's life began to spiral out of control, and she began to use drugs and skip school. After recovering, she soon became a workaholic herself, repeating the cycle. Her parents, now old and retired, regrets never being there for her - who now has nearly no time for them.
  • Reconstructed: Alice vows to never be like her parents; and she did become a good parent later on.

Back to When You Coming Home, Dad?, and you better hang around for a while.

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