Power Fantasy/Playing With

Basic Trope: Character imagines himself taking revenge on his bullies.

• Straight: Nerdy Girl Alice is frequently bullied by Janet and imagines herself as superhero Amazing Girl, who takes down evil Miss Libby, based on her oppressor.
• Exaggerated: Every time a particular group wrongs Alice, she imagines herself waging world wars against them.
• Up to Eleven: For every minor discomfort, Alice completely immerses herself into her imagination where she declares herself 'God'.
• Justified: Alice has always had a very overactive imagination and the bully has been particularly destructive.
• Inverted: Superhero Amazing Girl just wants to be normal and imagines herself having normal high school life and being bullied by a girl similar to her Arch Enemy, Miss Libby.
  • Alice fantasizes about saving Miss Libby
• Subverted: Alice realizes that dreaming about beating up Janet won't solve anything and looks for other way to stop Janet from bullying her.
• Double Subverted: ...until she gives up and just comes back to imagining herself beating Janet.
• Parodied: Alice's fantasies are ridiculously underwhelming, like finding a penny on the ground and picking it up before Libby does.
• Deconstructed: Alice spends too much time escaping to the world of her fantasies, more and more losing the touch with reality, until she starts to believe that she really is Amazing Girl and assaults Janet, mistaking her with Miss Libby. She ends up catatonic in a mental asylum, without any touch with reality, living only in the world of Amazing Girl.
• Reconstructed: Alice turns her fantasies into comic books and becomes a popular, financially successful writer, while Janet ends up as the jobless and often abused wife of Jerk Jock Steve.
• Zig Zagged: ???
• Averted: Alice doesn't imagine herself taking revenge on Janet.
  • Alternatively, Alice doesn't fantasize of revenge. She does it.
• Enforced: “Those parts were Janet is bullying Alice are pretty dark. Maybe we could lighten them with Alice imagining how she takes her revenge?”
• Lampshaded: "I sure wish I could show Libby who's the boss - but I think I'll fantasize about it instead of doing it."
• Invoked: Alice starts planning out how she will get even with the bullying, so she begins to imagine different scenarios
• Defied: Bob tells Alice that she shouldn't be imagining how she deals with Janet, but do it.
• Exploited: Bob encourages Alice to tell him her fantasies, and he turns them into comic books and becomes a popular, financially successful writer.
• Discussed: “We all sometimes are so pissed we almost see ourselves kicking asses and taking names, right?”
• Conversed: "When will people realize that they can't dream their problems away?"
• Plotted a Good Waste: Alice's imagination makes Amazing Girl real ... and Miss Libby, too.

---

Back to Power Fantasy