Sticky Fingers/Playing With

Basic Trope: A character cannot restrain themselves from stealing, or steals things for any number of reasons including boredom, to see if they can or for their own entertainment.

• Straight: Alice cannot help but steal Bob's lunch every day at work.
• Exaggerated: Alice sees the Eiffel Tower on TV. The next day she has one hell of a lawn ornament.
• Downplayed: Alice isn't above stealing someone else's pen or lunch if she forgets or loses her own, but doesn't do it just because.
• Justified: Alice suffers from kleptomania (or at least the Hollywood version of it).
  • Alice gets addicted to the adrenaline rush she gets from stealing stuff and getting away with it.
  • Alice grew up as a Street Urchin who became The Artful Dodger to survive, and her thieving is part habit, and part connection to her past.
• Inverted: Alice cannot bring herself to take anything without the owner's permission. She won't even begin eating a hotdog until she's paid for it and been given her change.
  • Or people sometimes find their houses broken into with random things being left there.
• Subverted: Alice was stealing Bob's lunch to set him up with Claire, who shares her lunch with him.
  • Alice has been stealing Bob's possessions to assemble a creepy Stalker Shrine.
• Double Subverted: Alice could just have easily told them both how they feel about each other. She just found this way more fun.
• Parodied: Alice is an Impossible Thief, and any time anyone turns their back on her, they turn back to find something large and unmissable has simply vanished and Alice is busily Acting Unnatural.
• Deconstructed: Alice gets a reputation for theft and people start paying close attention to their belongings when they're around.
  • Bob starts packing disgusting lunches, like Dog-Food-On-Pumpernickel sandwiches and a thermos of week-old coffee.
• Reconstructed: Alice loves that people are trying to hide stuff from her. It makes it a game!
• Zig Zagged: ???
• Averted: Alice is never shown to be tempted to steal anything.
• Enforced: Alice is the party's thief. Stealing is what she does.
• Lampshaded: "My lunch is missing, have you seen Alice?"
• Invoked: "If I make a habit of stealing, no one will be surprised when I do it and they won't mind as much when I'm caught."
• Defied: Alice, Bob and Claire live in a country with (quite literally) Draconian laws. Alice doesn't dare steal a thing.
• Discussed: "Why does she keep taking my lunch, Claire?" "No idea, Bob...urm...You can have some of mine if you like."
• Conversed: "Oh, there's Alice with a lunch bag, I wonder who's it is."
• Plotted A Good Waste: Alice is just doing it as a prank. She has no mental illness or hidden agenda. She's just a Jerkass.
• Played For Laughs: Bob resorts to increasingly comical methods to protect his lunch, while Claire starts packing meals for two.
• Played For Drama: Bob becomes angry and confronts Alice. Can she calm him down without ruining her plan to bring Bob and Claire together?
• Exploited: Claire decided to share her lunch with Bob to get his attention after realising Alice would always manage to steal it.

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