Basic Trope: A crappy party.
- Straight: Sarah throws a Christmas party. The only decoration is a Christmas tree with only five baubles that is leaning towards a corner because she didn't bother to set it up properly. She orders pizza for her guests because she didn't want to cook, hire a cook, or even try to find a more appropriate dish. She tries to turn on some Christmas music, but her overly compressed MP3s (which are themselves bad covers) being played on a bad speaker are just painful to listen to. In the end, she serves cheap storebought cookies, stale cake, and awful instant coffee.
- Exaggerated: There are no decorations whatsoever, and the venue is full of dust and cobwebs. The music is unfitting and so loud that it ends up damaging the guests' hearing. Sarah serves old food from the trash and accidentally poisons Bob with methanol because "screw it, alcohol is alcohol, right?"
- Downplayed: Sarah's Christmas party is nice, but some of the decorations look old and shabby.
- Justified:
- Sarah is a Ridiculous Procrastinator who put off all the preparations to the last moment.
- Sarah dislikes the guests and genuinely doesn't care about giving them an enjoyable experience.
- Murphy was in full swing: The fridge conked out, the new internet-bought decorations are lost in the mail… This was all she could do on such a short notice.
- Inverted: Sarah's party is perfect in every way.
- Subverted: The guests expect to have an awful time at Sarah's party after they notice the shoddy decorations, but they later say they liked it.
- Double Subverted: It turns out that they lied about enjoying the party to spare Sarah's feelings.
- Parodied: Sarah's party is full of Self-Deprecation, e.g. banners reading "Insert stupid banner here."
- Zig-Zagged: Some aspects of Sarah's party are shoddy, while others are amazing and some are middling.
- Averted:
- Sarah doesn't throw a Christmas party.
- Sarah's Christmas party is pretty good.
- Enforced: Sarah is a Kafka Komedy series and the writers utterly refuse to give Sarah any breaks, even in a party of her own devising.
- Lampshaded: "You let Sarah organize the party?!?"
- Invoked: Sarah's rival Alice sabotages her party.
- Exploited: Alice sends invitations to Sarah's party to everybody on her enemies list, knowing the crappiness they are about to endure will be a satisfying slap to their faces.
- Defied:
- Sarah's friends help her plan the party to ensure that it becomes enjoyable.
- Sarah refuses to organize a party, knowing it'll be shit. Whatever occasion she's supposed to celebrate, "Netflix and chill" will have to do.
- Discussed: "Sarah's planning a Christmas party? Ten dollars says it'll be awful."
- Conversed: "You know that when the loser announces loudly that she's organizing a party in these kinds of shows it will then cut to the party and it will be the most soul-sucking piece of suck in the universe, right?"
- Implied: While we don't get to see what Sarah's Christmas parties are like, Bob says he'd rather go to a Nasty Party than return next year.
- Played for Laughs:
- Sarah throws a terrible Christmas party, but nobody realizes it's terrible.
- Sarah was really, really trying to make a cool party, but epic failure hounds her every step. Maybe it even bounces back to being so lousy that people find it cool.
- Played for Drama:
- Sarah is too poor to blow money on Christmas decorations, but was hoping to enjoy a nice party with her friends anyway — which is the spirit of Christmas, after all. Unfortunately, her "friends" disagree and bully her for her poverty.
- Sarah was trying to stave off a wave of suicidal depression by throwing a party. Because it's so off the cuff, it obviously lacks cool things to do. The end result, and the vitriol that the partygoers show Sarah as a response, make her decide to eat a gun a couple of hours later.
Bill Gee, what's taking Sarah so long in the damned bathroom?!
[Everybody hears a gunshot coming from within] - Played for Horror: Sarah's huge Christmas party ends with most of the guests dying in a fire because she didn't even bother to make sure the venue was safe.
- Deconstructed:
- Sarah holds unenjoyable parties, but she's the only member of the group who will hold parties, so nobody has any fun no matter what.
- Knowing that nobody likes her parties does a number on Sarah's self-esteem.
- Reconstructed:
- The story is set in a Dying Town and Sarah's friends come to realize she's at least trying to give them something to enjoy.
- Sarah says "Let's See YOU Do Better!" to her friends Alice, Bob, Tom, Carol, and Charlie. They all try and fail to hold better parties than Sarah, and she feels bad for them but less bad about herself.
Back to Shoddy Shindig.
