Basic Trope: A character attempts to be dramatic, but fails. (Essentially an In-Universe version of Narm.)
- Straight: Alice attempts to tell Bob that she loves him in an Anguished Declaration of Love, but stumbles over her words, and both of them start laughing.
- Exaggerated: Bob is starting to have a stroke, but the way he repeatedly says "My arm's numb! Numb arm! Narm!" while Chewing the Scenery is so funny that everyone starts laughing about it.
- Downplayed: Alice mispronounces a word during a fairly dramatic scene and laughs it off.
- Justified: Alice isn't great at dramatic moments as it is.
- Inverted:
- Narm: The scene is meant to be dramatic or otherwise serious, but becomes funny by accident.
- Alice tries to tell a joke and fails.
- Subverted: Alice corrects herself, and the scene quickly becomes a Moment of Awesome...
- Double Subverted: ...until Bob slips on a banana peel.
- Parodied: ???
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: No failed attempts at drama are made.
- Enforced:
- "We need to show that even the dramatic characters are Not So Above It All. Let's have something funny happen to them while they do something dramatic."
- The actress playing Alice accidentally stumbled over her lines while filming the part where Alice declares her love for Bob, but the scene was considered so funny that they decided to Throw It In!.
- Lampshaded: ???
- Implied: Alice, who after the cut is on her knees and holding out an engagement ring to Bob, has an embarrassed look on her face as Bob is rolling on the ground laughing.
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: ???
- Defied:
- Alice actively rehearses her potential Anguished Declaration of Love just in case she needs to give it.
- Alice makes sure to really, really overdo the "anguished" part of the Anguished Declaration of Love, turning the fact that she is doing it in her Goofy Print Underwear and can barely say one word straight into more pity fuel rather than a drama-killer.
- Discussed: "It was more dramatic in my head..."
- Conversed: "Yup, more ammo for Alice being a Butt-Monkey. The writers can't even let her get hit by a car without making it into a joke somehow."
- Deconstructed:
- What was supposed to be one of Alice's best moments becomes one of the worst and people have even less respect of her than she had before. This completely shatters Alice.
- The way people react to this moment showcase that they are assholes with no respect for Alice, so Alice dumps them all.
- Reconstructed:
- If Alice is a Jerkass, this will give her an inescapable helping of humble pie.
- If Bob really loves her, he will say "yes" regardless of how embarrassing her declaration looked like.
- Played for Laughs: Alice, the drama queen, tries to make a huge deal out of her leaving the room, but walks into a closet. We were not supposed to take the "drama" in any seriousness, even before her faux pas.
- Played for Drama: It's only a failed attempt at drama because the people laughing have No Sympathy for Alice.
- Played for Horror: Alice completely snaps from this faux pas and how people reacted to it and the results are definitely not pretty.
Bacj to Failed Attempt at Drama. I mean back. You know what... forget it.
