This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Working Title: The Adrenaline Makeover: From YKTTW
None of the three examples listed for The Dresden Files have anything to do with this trope. Susan was gorgeous long before she became an Action Girl, the Butters comment is incomprehensible, and Murphy's Action Girl status doesn't really seem to be as much of a factor of her physical attractiveness than would be necessitated to be an example of this trope. If anyone qualifies, it would be Charity, though I don't think even she is a strong enough contender for this particular trope.
Ununnilium: Agreed. Pulling them all out:
- Karrin Murphy from The Dresden Files is a partial aversion. She's beautiful already but doesn't act like she thinks she is. She showed up with the level in Bad Ass, and she's not in love with Harry. But she does become more and more an Action Girl as the series progresses.
- Harry's romantic interest Susan is a partial subversion. She does end up with the level in badass but it's more through her own ignorance and its consequences than from directly adventuring with Harry.
- Completely subverted by Waldo Butters, the geeky medical examiner with a taste for polka, first by being male, and secondly being fundamentally unchanged except in knowledge of the Masquerade after playing a critical role in taking down three separate Big Bads in the events of Dead Beat.
Duckluck: Everything on this page seems to be either a "semi-subversion" or a "partial-aversion." Can we cut the crap and get to the facts? Either something uses a trope, or it doesn't, and if it doesn't it's not really much of an example, is it? A few of these "aversions" don't seem to fit at all (like Alien), and others don't seem to actually be aversions and are, at best, subversions. Speaking of subversions, most "partial subversions" are just straight uses of a trope that people don't want to admit. Let's try to cut the qualifiers.
Anomaly: On the same vein of what Duckluck's saying, is the The Mummy subversion really a subversion, of just a Gender Flip or Reversed Trope? I really don't think it counts as a subversion if it boils down to "same damn thing, but for the guy instead".
Indigo: I would say the Alien example fits. Ripley did start out mild mannered and become Bad Ass. The reason it's a partial subversion is because she had no Love Interest to make it happen; it was her crewmates and concern for them, instead. In the second movie, the Love Interest and child cemented the makeover.
- Susan started out gorgeous but unaware of it, and the Took A Level In Bad Ass part fits. Six of one, half a dozen of the other.
- As for The Mummy, I'd have to say no, it's not the same thing. Because Rick wasn't shy and retiring and bumbling. He was always capable and always an Action Guy, but falling in love made him a different, "better" person.
- See the Wesley in Wanted example for a guy who meets the Love Interest and gets the Adrenaline Makeover mainly through being involved with her.
Ununnilium: There is no such thing as a partial subversion. It's either a straight example, an aversion, or something else in Playing with a Trope.
- In Spider Robinson's pseudo-anthology novel Callahan's Lady (a spin-off of the Callahan's Crosstime Saloon series, a "client" undergoes a subtle transformation "off-screen", eventually inverting the trope. She is already physically beautiful and knows it, but from exposure to the "old boys club" that is your standard sexist research lab (the story takes place in the earlier days of Women's Lib) and getting sick of it, she uses her knowledge and talent to make mind-control devices so that she is no longer ignored as just another pretty lab assistant. The inversion is that one of her own devices is what is used by Sally McGee (the Madame) to turn her into exactly the kind of shy, meek, subservient woman that she hated to begin with. It's rationalized by the fact that her mind was too disturbed to be able to handle the power that her devices gave her. Hey, I didn't write it and it makes much better sense in context... it's totally not an anti-feminist thing if you know anything about Robinson's writing.
...I don't see how this is an inversion. (I do see how it's deeply disturbing! ``) It shares nothing with the trope other than the "makeover" aspect.
- Love Potion No. 9 subverts the trope. The nerd girl knows she's got bad teeth and awful glasses. When she comes across the titular concoction, she romances a rich guy who cheerfully pays for her to get her teeth fixed, and contacts (or Lasik surgery). The adrenaline part comes from the excitement of the scientific breakthrough and the guy she's really in love with.
Similarly, this seems more like a subversion of Beautiful All Along.
He does differ though from the female examples, in that their transformation tends to involve losing articles of clothing, whereas he ends up better dressed than previously.
- Not so different. Girl fanservice involves losing clothes; guy fanservice involves period shirts and long coats with big collars.
- Also, the few shots we get of Tristan's chest reveal him to be excessively hairy for a true Shirtless Scene.
- Not so different. Girl fanservice involves losing clothes; guy fanservice involves period shirts and long coats with big collars.
Conversation In The Main Page.
Also, the trope description is kinda muddled. Fiddling with it to make it clearer.
Someone (more knowledgeable and witty than myself) should add that one episode of Firefly, when that mousey chick has to dress up in a fancy dress for some reason I can't remember?
Paradisca Corbasi: You're thinking of "Shindig" and Kaylee. That's not this trope. That's She Cleans Up Nicely.
