Playing With / Desperately Craves Affection

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Basic Trope: A character wants to feel love and affection...very badly

• Straight: Charlie tends to be quite clingy and is either a bit too obsessed in finding friends or obsessed with finding a spouse.
• Exaggerated:
  • Charlie's constant yearning for affection leads to him having No Sense of Personal Space
  • Showing Charlie any sort of kindness can cause him to get quite unhealthily fixated with whoever showed him any. As a result, he may have some Yandere tendencies.
  • Love Hungry
• Downplayed: Charlie has a generally good relationship with family and/or friends. The problem is that he feels it's missing something.
• Justified:
  • Charlie's childhood was quite unhappy mainly because of poor treatment he had to endure, be it from his relatives or peers
  • As a child, Charlie's parents were neglectful and didn't pay attention to him or his needs. At times, they even forgot about Charlie completely.
  • Charlie suffered from All the Other Reindeer syndrome and a Friendless Background.
  • Charlie was on the receiving end of Bully Brutality for years.
  • Charlie's main role in the story is that he's a Cosmic Plaything so naturally, he has traits that come with having such a role.
  • Charlie has depression.
• Inverted:
  • Charlie Hates Being Touched
  • Allergic to Love
• Subverted:
  • Charlie reveals that his act of wanting to constantly feel loved was just because he wanted attention.
  • Charlie receives a really heartfelt compliment from Bob and gets shocked... because he was in the middle of a mission to see whether or not shapeshifters have taken over the town, and Bob wouldn't say something like that.
• Double Subverted:
  • (continuing from first Subverted example) But the reason why he's such an Attention Whore is because he does crave affection.
    • Alternatively, once he no longer has their constant affection, he starts to genuinely crave it
  • (continuing from second Subverted example) But shapeshifter or not, Charlie feels touched inside because he's not used to receiving such compliments. Nevermind that it may not even be genuine.
• Parodied: Charlie falls in love with someone because they greeted him good morning and bumped into him and apologized.
• Zig Zagged: Charlie both Desperately Craves Affection and at the same time, Hates Being Touched. This is mainly due to the numerous issues he has with past experiences.
• Averted: Charlie is a well adjusted person who's fine on his own and doesn't want to feel affection to a ludicrous extent.
• Discussed:???
• Conversed: ???
• Exploited: See Deconstructed
• Implied: Whenever treated with genuine kindness, Charlie looks quite surprised and will thank the person in a voice that indicates he's shocked from receiving such treatment.
  • The normally stoic Charlie, who's The Friend Nobody Likes, smiles for once when Alice hugs him.
  • Charlie's low self-esteem raises a bit whenever someone shows him affection.
• Deconstructed:
  • Because he becomes absolutely devoted towards anyone who gives him any sort of affection, Charlie is quite easy to manipulate.
  • Charlie constantly rushes into relationships (that soon fail) with numerous people who he gains an interest in because of the kindness they showed him
  • Charlie finds himself in bed with woman after woman because he's desperate to feel loved in anyway possible.
    • To make matters worse, most of them really would prefer it to just be a one night stand, while Charlie wishes and/or feels there was something much more.
• Reconstructed:
  • Through counseling and the help of people who truly do care for him, Charlie progressively becomes more emotionally independent.
• Played For Laughs: see Parodied
• Played For Drama: The constant need for affection is the result of Charlie's various issues.