Playing With / Exact Words

Basic Trope: One person invokes exactly what he/she or another person says.

• Straight:
  • Bob asks Alice to make him a sandwich. Alice responds by pushing his head down to put his chin onto a piece of bread on the counter and putting another piece on top of his head, then declares, "There, now you’re a sandwich."
  • Bob asks Alice if her dog bites when he sees a Terrier lying near her. Alice says no. It's not until after Bob nearly loses a hand and accuses her of lying that Alice supplies the necessary additional information that the Terrier is not her dog, it's her sister's.
• Exaggerated:
  • Alice replies in a similar manner to anything asked of her.
  • Alice turns Bob into a "sand-witch" with sand and earth powers.
  • Alice rather helpfully does not tell Bob that the pack of Velociraptors he is about to pet are not hers but Chris'.
• Downplayed:
  • Bob asks Alice to make a sandwich for him. Alice makes a sandwich as Bob requested, then proceeds to eat it herself and says, "You only asked me to make a sandwich, not to give it to you as well."
  • The sandwich Alice makes Bob has dry bread, a single slice of meat, and a lettuce leaf, with a single packet of mustard on the side.
  • Alice warns Bob that the Terrier is not her dog when he asks about if her dog bites, leaving unsaid if her dog bites.
• Justified:
  • Alice is both Literal-Minded and The Ditz, so she literally doesn't know better.
  • Alice is a Jerkass with a taste for irony.
  • Alice is cursed to go by anyone's Exact Words.
  • Alice wanted to give Bob powers while being able to say that he asked for them.
  • Bob is a Jerkass. This is Alice's way of Bothering by the Book.
  • Bob literally did not ask. A little bit of extra curiosity to get additional context would have prevented a lot of calamity.
• Inverted: Alice ascribed great metaphorical meaning to the most mundane statements.
• Subverted: Bob asks Alice to make him a sandwich. Alice makes the sandwich, eats it in front of him, arguing that he didn't ask her to give him the sandwich... Then she makes him another sandwich which she gave to him.
• Double Subverted: Turns out the second sandwich was merely a sandwich statue : Bob didn't ask Alice if she should make a sandwich edible.
• Parodied:
  • Alice constantly follows to the word any request made to her, but doesn't follow them in spirit, because it amuses her.
  • Bob asks Alice if she saw Charlie and she says no. The fact that Alice is obviously blind with sunglasses and a white cane doesn't tip Bob off to the blatant half truth.
• Zig Zagged: Alice eats the sandwich in front of Bob, then gives him another one. But turns out this one was inedible, but Alice made another one. That one isn't inedible and Bob eats it, but Alice reveals that it's poisoned (Bob didn't ask her if she should poison it or not). But turns out the "poison" was merely sauce.
• Averted:
  • Alice is an obedient suck-up maid who simply makes a sandwich.
  • I Lied
  • Alice flat-out refuses to make the sandwich.
• Enforced:
  • The work is instructional material for children struggling to deal with those who use metaphors.
  • Alice is a caricature of someone the producer knows.
  • The show's plot consists of fracturing fairy tales and children's books, and this is the Amelia Bedelia episode.
• Lampshaded:
  • "Let me guess, she made you into a sandwich?"
  • "This is so not what I meant!"
• Invoked: Alice does this to weasel out of her responsibilities.
• Exploited: Alice at least feels this way as she’s taken to a hospital for evaluation.
• Defied:
  • The first thing Bob asks of Alice is to follow everything to the spirit of his demands, not the word.
    • "Alice, make me a sandwich! And you know what I truly meant! If you try to twist the words in any way or form, I swear I'll Kill You!"
  • Bob doesn't uses colloquialisms when he gives Alice orders, instead providing her with exact words of his own such as "please make a sandwich with the following ingredients: bread, sliced tomato and ketchup, and then place it on a plate so I can eat it."
  • Alice makes sure to never beat around the bush with this so anybody who has to deal with her (ex. Bob) will be informed of what they are risking: "My magic has a particularly sick sense of humor. If you wish for me to make you a sandwich, you have about a 50/50 chance that it will make you a sandwich. Also, my dog is a Shiba Inu and that is the only dog I can guarantee for a fact won't bite you if you approach it, and even then you better not show any hostility; which leads to the third part of the punchline - I don't know where that Terrier came from."
• Discussed: "Alice will do what you ask of her and nothing more. That's the problem."
• Conversed: ???
• Deconstructed: Alice suffers from an ambiguous disorder, which makes it difficult for her to follow the spirit of the word as well as the word itself. This in turn makes it hard for her to do various jobs as her superiors are forced to give her very specific orders all the time to her.
• Reconstructed: Against an injust master, it's her only way to rebel. Sometimes it allows her to be subtle, and sometimes it allows her to be very messy and loud.
• Implied: Bob comes out of the kitchen with one piece of mustard-laden bread on his back and another on his stomach and warns, “Don’t ask her to make you a sandwich, she’s Literal-Minded.”
• Played For Laughs: Alice is a ditz and her method of following the orders is Epic Fail incarnate.
• Played For Drama:
  • Alice is rebelling against a horrible regime that would summarily execute her if she sucks at her job. This way, they will need to spend more time micromanaging her and if she still screws up it's their fault.
  • Alice is a jerk and this kind of taking orders gets someone hurt or killed.
• Played For Horror:
  • Alice is a Jackass Genie and always finds ways to twist her orders to be brutal murders while still following the wording. Like when Bob asks her to make him a sandwich and she tosses him into a woodchipper to make fillets for the sandwich.
  • Alice the terrorist swears she will not do terror plots anymore… leaving out the fact that she already has a terror plot ongoing that will reach fruition without her, and it's kind of hard to think of how to top yourself when you nuke the entire Eastern Seaboard flat.

Back to Exact Words.

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