Basic Trope: A character takes care to keep up status quo.
- Straight: John is careful not to progress in his life and to keep things as they are.
- Exaggerated: John shirks at the hint of his life going somewhere, underachieves consistently in everything, makes his decisions based on how mediocre his life will stay and takes actual pride in being called a loser and a useless slacker.
- Downplayed: John doesn't really have a problem with things changing per se. However, he's not all that motivated to change his life, either.
- Justified:
- John doesn't want risks, just a safe, boring and mediocre life.
- A new position would give him far less spaces to relax or otherwise take it somewhere he doesn't want it to go.
- The story is a psychological character study about a complex (or complexes) John has developed that show in his underachieving.
- If John were to climb up the ranks, he would have less time on leisure and more responsibilities added.
- John was raised to believe Ambition Is Evil.
- John's brother Jack is a Broken Ace, so John goes out of his way to avoid being like him.
- John is a Straw Nihilist who thinks there's no point in accomplishing anything.
- Inverted: John is the epitome of achieving, doing every thing to move up and forward in life.
- Subverted: John appears to be a louse, who does the bare minimum, but it is revealed that he is secretly working on his skills to raise his status at work/school.
- Double Subverted:
- Except that's a clever ruse to keep the others off pestering him...
- ...or he doesn't develop skills that would end up giving up his favorite places to relax.
- Parodied: John pulls off some insane, complicated plans to keep his state the same. If he has to make a world-wide bureaucratic mess, he does so.
- Zig Zagged: John's not the most motivated fellow, but when you get to know him, you see he does do stuff to benefit and let others benefit. Except that's just smoke and mirrors to make him appear more industrious than he actually bothers to be and someone calls him out on it. John starts coming to work with never before seen energy. In reality this is all just legwork, so John can move up to a position, where he needn't do much of anything. Too bad this doesn't quite work out. There isn't a good reason to fire John, either, though. To get by with less effort, John gets ready to mess up a system, just a little...
- Averted: If John can progress, he gladly does so, but he's not obsessed with it or anything. He just does his work because he's there to work.
- Enforced: The author wants to make a story similar to his experiences of how he used to find it hard to take opportunities.
- Lampshaded:
- "Wow, John, are you actually trying to keep yourself from getting forward?"
- "Move up in life? Fuck that, fame can lead to so much scandal anyway."
- "John, with all the time and effort you put into not working, do you ever think it would be less exhausting to just do the work?"
- Invoked: "Bob bullies John by making feel insecure so that he won't achieve his goals in life so..."
- Exploited: "...he won't be in the way of his own goals."
- Defied:
- John gets fed up with his current state of things and actually changes things.
- Alternatively, John's friends or coworkers seek to help him get out of his comfort zone and move forward in life.
- Discussed: "How could John ever be happy in not taking opportunities to change his life?"
- Conversed: "It wouldn't bite for the writers to have John to at least do something to change the world. If not, I'm no longer watching Troperville."
- Deconstructed:
- John achieves an unremarkable life. It's at the cost of passing up a lot of opportunities that could have helped him and his family, along with being written off as a irresponsible louse by all his coworkers and friends. Many of them cut ties with John, who becomes very sad. He does soul-searching.
- John is enjoying himself of not doing much to advance in life, but then realizes that those who did are happier than he is. He now knows this great mistake.
- Sometimes, change is outside of our control. John is content to mooch off of his parents, but when they die, he finds himself with nobody to lean on and no skills to support himself.
- Maintaining the status quo takes more time and energy than actually working, causing the very stress and burnout John tried to avoid.
- Reconstructed:
- He stays positive that it's all been worth it.
- But as soon as John tries working, he realizes how much of a waste of time it was. As a result, he starts being happy for not having to improve himself again and stops caring about what society thinks.
- John's parents are conveniently loaded, so he lives the rest of his life on their inheritance.
- As a Creature of Habit, John is perfectly willing to put in the effort to make sure his life doesn't change.
- Played For Laughs: John considers it a compliment, when people call him a slacker or a bum, but is terrified at the possibility he might get a promotion. In order to keep the status quo, does every thing in his (meager) power to make sure he doesn't achieve it.
- Played For Drama:
- John experienced such humiliation he wanted to avoid failure ever since. As a result, he has no self-confidence to try - even though he secretly wants to.
- Things come to a point where everything hinges on John making an important decision. Except he's absolutely not willing to. He even declares that he will stay a do-nothing even if it results in him earning everyone's hate.
Time is precious - so back to slacking off now, because if something happened, those days of bliss would be over.
