We Really Do Care/Playing With

Basic Trope: When someone appears to leave for good, all of their friends get together and bring them back.

• Straight: Alice feels slighted by her group of friends and contemplates leaving town. Before she can, they all get together and tell her how much they appreciate her, and she decides to stay.
• Exaggerated: Alice is slighted by her friends, and to make up for it, they throw her a lavish party and spare no expense.
• Justified: Well, they really do care. They don't want her to leave.
• Inverted: They run off a list of reasons why Alice shouldn't stay.
• Subverted: Alice is about to leave for good, but is expecting to meet her friends one last time. They don't show up...
• Double Subverted: ...until the last minute.
  • Potential triple subversion: But only to make sure she's really leaving this time.
• Parodied: Alice contemplates leaving about once a week, meaning the friends have to go through this whole to-do all the time.
• Deconstructed: For all of the heartwarmingness of the appreciation, Alice realizes that they only paid attention to her when she threatened to leave, and decides to pack up anyway.
  • Especially since it's all talk -- no one even mentions changing how they treat her until she asks, whereupon they promise to behave better toward, and break it within hours.
• Reconstructed: Alice eventually decides to accept the kindness of her friends anyway.
  • Some of them pull up their socks and treat her better, and she remains friends with them, only.
• Zig Zagged: No one shows up to keep Alice around... until the last minute. But they weren't there for her sake... because they didn't know she was leaving. Once they find out, they try to get her to stay, and Jane, who they originally came to see off, is forgotten, and feels so betrayed that she decides never to come back from her trip. The day before the trip ends she changes her mind, but then she gets eaten by a shark.
• Averted: Alice's friends don't throw her a party to convince her to stay.
• Enforced: "We need a sappy moment to make the viewers tear up. Here's what we'll do..."
• Lampshaded: "I know we haven't been the best friends this week, but we still love you!"
• Invoked: Alice starts talking about leaving town, and Bob overhears it.
• Defied: Alice decides that she doesn't feel that slighted, and decides not to leave.
• Discussed: ???
• Conversed: ???

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