Basic Trope: The passage of a year and a day is significant.
- Straight:
- Jack must travel a year and a day to reach a mountain in a Magical Land.
- Jill must live in a city a year and a day to have the status of legal resident.
- Exaggerated: Every journey in the Magical Land takes a year and a day.
- Downplayed: It's a year and a day on a planet that travels around its sun much more quickly than usual, so it's not as long of a time period.
- Justified: It takes a year and a day for the evil priests to summon the Great Demon of Mighty Darkness because of the arbitrary rules of demonkind.
- Inverted: Jack must travel a day, then a year (or a minute without a second) to reach a mountain in a Magical Land.
- Subverted:
- Having been warned about the year and a day, Jack talks with wizards along the way, and gets magical wings that will let him get there much sooner.
- The city's lawyers figure out a way to not grant residency.
- Double Subverted:
- The wings cause him to crash at the foothills of the mountain; he has to recover before he can finish the journey; the journey takes only a day, but his recovery ate up the rest of the year.
- The mayor's rivals use it as a campaigning point about how the law is not respected, and grant residency when they win.
- Parodied:
- "I just wanted some milk and eggs, not some quest that takes a year and a day!"
- It takes a year-long day.
- Zig Zagged: Having been warned about the year and a day, Jack talks with wizards along the way, and gets magical wings that will let him get there much sooner. But the wings cause him to crash at the foothills of the mountain; he has to recover before he can finish the journey; the journey takes only a day, but his recovery ate up the rest of the year. But then it turns out he was in a pocket dimension and, while it seemed like a year and a day to him, it's actually been two minutes. But then trolls abduct him and he escapes just in time to get there at the end of a year and a day.
- Averted: The journey takes only about a week.
- Enforced: "A year alone is too boring, but a year and a day already has merit in ancient myths."
- Lampshaded:"You mean I'll be out in the wild for a whole year?"
"No, for a year and a day. There's a difference." - Invoked: The journey takes a year, but Jack takes a one day break during it because "a year and a day" sounds cooler.
- Exploited: A city requires that yearly laborers be hired for a year only, because then they don't get the day that will make the residents.
- Defied: ???
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
Back to A Year and a Day — hope it won't take you that long!
