This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
- Haruka from Rah Xephon is very clearly an Action Girl - her first appearance singelhandedly proves she can hold her own against two armed MI Bs. But, for the rest of the series, she never again demonstrates her badassery. Should she then become a Faux Action Girl, due to her hack of ass-whupping? Or should we simply accept the fact that the plot never developed into a direction which caused this skill-set to be used again?
RowenaTheWitch: I removed this piece from the article:
- One could argue though, that bravery does not equal battle competence. Her qualities are e.g. standing up to Harry when he's even more self centered than most of the time, which noone else dares.
Forlong: I can't believe how long this has gone without a pic. Any objections to the one I chose?
Unknown Troper: how about a pic with Mai Valentine instead? I just don't think Rukia's necessarily an example (or at worst, not a good example) of this since it's not a demotion for "no reason". Sure it's plot-devicey as all hell, but that's not strong enough. Mai Valentine, on the other hand, is quite blatant with her lack of on-screen abilities.
Elfive: I'd question whether being an overly hyped duelist even qualifies her for this trope, as you can hardly describe the good duelists as Action Girls/Guys. Doesn't a Faux Action Girl have to at least throw a punch?
Charred Knight: Rukia's lack of power is a major plot point, and once that's taken care of she's an excellent fighter that's better than Renji. Mai Valentine is more Informed Ability. When I think of Faux Action Girl I think of characters like Lunamaria Hawke who is a top graduate of her class, is a horrible shot, and is pretty much completely useless.
Unknown Troper: well, my qualm is that Rukia isn't hyped as a fighter and then incompetent "for no reason" so much as have a plot related reason. Even then, she largely spends most of her time seeking out battles, despite lacking said power. Hardly Faux Action Girl, imo. When i think Faux Action Girl, i think female chars who are said to be powerful, but fail for no reason at all (as opposed to those who have very good reasons to not succeed like Rukia Kuonji.
Ribat: Removed the Tashigi example. The story treats it more like a case of Can't Catch Up that she's going to have to work hard to counteract, and the other characters (especially herself) notice how much trouble she has. Smoker's speech to her at the end of the Alabasta arc sums this up perfectly.
Jeep: What makes it even dumber is that there was never any strong hype concerning her fighting ability. From what we've seen, she's mostly a legitimate Action Girl who happens to not be a major character and whose defeats actually amounted to Character Development.
Binaroid: I'd think that Asuka Langley Soryuu would probably count as a deliberate example (Deconstruction?) of this trope, since her downward spiral was at least partially caused by her failure to live up to her own hype.
Looney Toons: That's a very astute observation.
Ununnilium:
- Raven from Teen Titans: If she has the power to destroy the world, fighting the villains in the Titans' Rogues Gallery should logically be a piece of cake, not to mention how much baby-sitting would be a waste of her talents. Not so in their world.
- Susan Storm from The Fantastic Four, the Invisible Woman (invisibility + force fields) actually moreso than the Invisible Girl (no force field power). The Invisible Girl was unquestionably The Chick; the Invisible Woman is supposed to be a more capable hero than her less-powerful counterpart, but her incarnations are still not held up to the same standards of heroism and independence as her male teammates.
I've got to disagree on both of these. First, the Invisible Woman. It depends on the writer, but really, she's taken down the Hulk by herself. She's usually the one who gets Power Creep, Power Seep. I say thee nay.
Second, on Raven... she had the power to destroy the world by letting her evil father in, not by blowing it up herself. And she's never shown as less capable than the others in battle.
Kim Possible and Juniper Lee also don't seem to belong here to me, but I haven't seen enough of their respective shows to say for sure.
BT The P: Of course, I need to weigh in. KP does do the job all by her lonesome several times over the course of the series, but the point of allowing Ron and others the occasional spotlight is to highlight the realistic conceit that no one person can save the world all alone. It helps the Mundane Fantastic nature of the show to have Kim need help and call in favors regularly. It think the problem is that the show subverts its own expectation, without doing a very good job of setting up the expectation ahead of time, especially if you only watch a few episodes. That, plus it's basically an ensemble show disguised as a single-character premise; the K-Team is all-important. No one complains when Hannibal needs BA to bail his ass out of a situation. I can see why she made your list, but I think that not being omnipotent doesn't make her any less of an Action Girl.
Kendra Kirai: About Sue Richards, her forcefield power is limited only by her willpower..kind of an invisible Green Lantern Ring. Theoretically, she could defeat anyone short of an Anthropomorphic Personification, or Galactus. She doesn't even get captured much anymore, last I saw.
And as for Raven, she's shown several times that she's probably the most powerful of the Titans, even without Trigon. She's gotten captured I think twice, and that was when everyone else did too. (Except the time by Trigon himself, who is essentially a God, and when she was set upon by Slade, who had help from Trigon). Her "babysitting" job was to protect the kids from whoever the Brotherhood sent..in that case Mallah, which she did remarkably well, considering she was not only fighting him, but protecting the kids from harm.
As for Kim Possible, well...sure, she's good, but she can't be in two or three places at once, can't possibly know everything, and expecting her to have read access to, plus know how to pilot, the many vehicles her called-in favors do. Even (The goddamn) Batman needs a Robin from time to time.
For Juniper Lee...she's a young girl who had the job dumped on her all of a sudden! Of course she'll need help!
Creator of This Page: My point isn't that these are girls who aren't perfect. Their fellow characters just give them far more credit than they would appear to deserve, if you based their credentials on what you actually see and not what you hear about. It's like they're simply held to lower standards.
Harpie Siren: Nobody's perfect, not the character, not the writers... It would be incredibly hard to write a character that lives up to all the hype who isn't perfect, and last time I checked we don't want perfect characters.
Creator of This Page: But if an imperfect, realistic, sympathetic character was what the writers were going for, why all the in-universe hype? Naturally, it's good that these girls aren't perfect; I find it bad that they're weaker than they're supposed to be. The disproportionate hype is the key, IMO. (In both directions, whether they're overrated like Kim or underrated like Raven.)
Tzintzuntzan: Thing is, in the show examples I have seen, it's not hype. On a kick-by-kick basis, Kim and Juniper Lee really are better than anyone else in their shows' universes, and I can name times when both of them save the day on their own on-screen. In fact, Juniper seems to beat the monster on her own almost every time, with her team-mates only maintaining the Masquerade. (The "talent show" episode of Kim Possible is similar, as Kim saves the day while Ron's only achievement is stalling.)
They may be overrated on a more strategic level (notice how often Kim gets captured), but then it's often just bad luck (usually Ron's the one who gets them captured).
Ununnilium: Yeah. These aren't fake Action Girls, is the thing. They're real Action Girls with a good team behind them.
I'm gonna take out these entries, but save them on here in case we want to put them back in. Two are up there, two are down here:
- Kim Possible: Just try and name one instance where the titular character saved the day on her own. The list of Kim's past heroic exploits given by her chauffeurs is much more impressive than her track record on the show. Typically, if she wasn't learning about how to be sympathetic to The Libby or not to lie, cheat, or to respect her parents or the kid in a wheelchair, she was stepping aside to let her sidekick feel better about himself by saving the day. Her established reputation as a hero is never quite justified by what the viewers actually get to see. Ultimately, after the cheerleading moves and Le Parkour are done, she's all action but no victory.
- Juniper Lee from The Life And Times Of Juniper Lee
Creator of This Page: I'm still sensing a degree of stereotyping on the writers' part in all the discussed cases. For one, Kim leaves me feeling like I should be impressed by her, so why not let her impress us? Except for the Adrena Lynn episode and partially the talent show episode, the spotlight's and credit's always on Ron. It seems like the writers even consciously defend this situation in the episode with Joss. Given the name of the show, I find that unfair to a protagonist.
Harpie Siren: This is quite the can of worms ... is it just me or is there a bit of a double standard? Would anybody be complaining if the titular character of Danny Phantom needed help?
Creator of This Page: Danny Phantom usually saves the day; Kim Possible usually delivers An Aesop through a negative example. Other characters aren't deperately hammering at us what a great, talented hero Danny Phantom is. Kim's reputation and history of past exploits is constantly shoved in our face. Why can't they just give her the spotlight as often as Ron? There is definitely a double-standard: "girls apparently don't have to be actually as great/strong as men to be considered as great/strong because they just aren't capable of equality" is the message these girls present, IMO (however unintentional- that, I can't say).
Ununnilium: I just don't see it.
Tabby: I'm not entirely sure what version of Kim Possible "creator of this page" is watching.
Kendra Kirai: Every episode I remember seeing of Danny Phantom has Danny needing help from his friends or a temporary ally of some sort, so I have to wonder what version of that he's watching.
Ununnilium: Yeah; one of Danny's Aesops is The Power of Friendship.
Creator of This Page: One of the fundamental rules of drama is "show, don't tell." We're told Kim is a hero, but all we're shown is that she's an athlete and good enough to be shown as the hero more often than she is; we're shown Ron as the main hero most often. I'm on Kim's side; I think the writers are unfair to her. P.S. I'm a "she."
Kendra Kirai: I still think you're being too hard on Kim. If it showed Kim doing something super-heroic on her own, they'd have no reason to have Ron or wuzzisname, the computer guy. Even James Bond doesn't do everything all on his own. ....and we're shown Ron as the hero more often than Kim? Uh...maybe in the 'pushing the button at the right time' manner, but they're a TEAM. The stuff that isn't shown, isn't shown because it's not important to the main story...it's just a way to get Kim a favor to let her reach the Plot Zone. You go by what is shown, not what is said in the backstory. What's shown, is that Kim is a definite Action Girl. She meets or exceeds everyone in-shows expectations, and she has a couple people helping her in the adventures that we're shown. This isn't anime, where a recurring character can just be left in the background for a few episodes...it's a show where all main characters are always present, and if they aren't, it's now shown because it's not important enough for everyone to be present. In this case, Kim, Rom, Wade, and Rufus. Everyone else is just the supporting cast. P.S. I'm happy for you. Just pick a nickname for gods sake, it's not like there's any way to link a nickname to a real person without doing some fairly high-level hacking. And that could be done simply by checking your IP, which is saved on the page history anyhow. In fact, if you put down a nickname, that covers your IP, making it harder for people to track you down.
Gus: Is there a case for the gender-free version of this? Well, make that the male version. A male action hero who is all rep and no action, that is. Nothing comes to mind for me immediately, but it seems odd that there wouldn't be any.
Looney Toons: Gilderoy Lockhart from the Harry Potter books.
Bluetooth The Pirate: No, he's got a case of the Feet of Clay. The difference is the perceptions of the audience vs. the perceptions of the characters on-screen. I think COTP may have a point, but that's probably because all men of action are written as self-sufficient loners, and their sidekicks and teams are just there for comic relief. I sense her bigger beef is with the fact that a teenage girl on television tends to act like a "teenage-girl-on-television" regardless of what else she may do. It's notable that babysitting is an example.
Also, at least some of KP's "least I could do after..." speeches from her rides are things we see, because they're call backs to previous episodes, and occasionally things from earlier that episode.
COTP: "at least some of KP's "least I could do after..." speeches from her rides are things we see, because they're call backs to previous episodes, and occasionally things from earlier that episode." Really? I don't remember any of those alluding to something from an episode.
I agree about Gilderoy Lockhart; the characters didn't buy his hype in the end any more than the audience. In the other examples, the characters' opinions of the girl are perfectly right in their universe but make no sense from our point of view.
I also agree that there must be cases of boys and men who don't live up in our universe to their legitimate reputation in their universe, but I don't know what to call that or what examples to include.
BT The P: Episode "The Full Monkey", Kim and Ron get a ride from the entomologist Prof. Acari that they helped in the first episode, "Tick Tick Tick". He explicitly references the events of that episode. In "Team Impossible", they get a ride from someone they helped earlier that episode, though the favor they did in that case was not heroic so much as helpful. Most of what KP does to earn rides are simple favors like putting up fliers, helping to save the manatees, that sort of thing.
Gus: Actually, the Action Girl trope doesn't have any requirement that the AG actually be effective in any way. It is about approach and attitude. Think of it as the antithesis of "Indecisive Girl".
LTR - That's pretty much my thought too. A Faux AG will get tossed in a dungeon and paitently wait there 'till she's rescued. The real AG will try crawling out the ventilation ducts or stealing her cell keys from the guard. She may not make it out on her own, but at least she's going to try.
Ununnilium: I agree. The difference between an AG and a Faux AG has nothing to do with how they're hyped, it's what they actually do in the context of the show.
Guy Smiley: If there is even ANY discussion of Kim Possible, how the Totally Spies cast has escaped this beats me. They are routinely incapacitated only to be saved by some form of plot-induced stupidity on the antagonist's part. Admittedly, they do actually have to actually get out of the jam, but it borders on Penelope Pitstop levels.
BT The P: It's because they're all teen girls. Despite personality differences, they're fundamentally interchangeable. They rotate week to week who gets to be the big hero.
- Jack Cain: Alright. I'm tired of this argument. Kim is not a faux action girl. Unless the episode is focusing on another character, Kim saves the day. She saves the day with some help from her sidekicks. Ron is the secondary main character, so he gets his fair share of screentime and glory. But she is the main main character. She does the work and deserves the respect. Can we end this once and for all now?
Ununnilium: Took out:
- By the same token, The Pink Ranger in the earliest incarnations of the Power Rangers.
...because I can't really recall any instances of this.
later: ...so why, wiki, did you put it back in?
Seth: I only saw the first two series (Because i was too old for rangers after them, got boring) but aside from Tommy/Green/White who for some reason kicked all their asses in terms of how much they did in battle the other five were more or less on equal footing. Including Kimberly/Pink.
Ununnilium: Re-removed. If you're going to put it back in again, please give a reason. >>
Ununnilium: Took out:
Ditto for Supergirl. It also goes for Wonder Woman, but there that was part of the point...
...because how the heck would you bind and gag Supergirl? And as for Wonder Woman, it was indeed part of the point.
Later: And also:
- Considering she has the exact same powers as Captain Marvel, Mary Marvel of The DCU got bound and gagged a whole awful lot in the Golden Age.
...because all three (Mary, Captain Marvel, and Captain Marvel Jr.) got bound and gagged a lot in their civilian forms; it was the standard schtick to keep them from using their magic word.
Wiki: Took out Orihime of Bleach. While she does potential, unlike the typical faux action girl (like say the old Sakura), whom we're constantly reminded by the other characters how skilled and powerful she is but never bare witness to this, she's the exact opposite. Several times in the Soul Society arc and onwards can we find Ichigo, Chad, and Ishida professing how weak and helpless she is, and several times its shown that she's fully aware of it, which is where her determination to become stronger comes from.
Spider: I'm not sure that Riza Hawkeye of Full Metal Alchemist counts as a Faux Action Girl. In episode 13, she demonstrates her precision shooting skill[z] when she fires a few rounds at Black Hayate and purposefully misses him (to teach him a lesson). Later, in episode 15, she saves Mustang's life by kicking him to the ground (and, granted, misses Scar when she fires at him...but Scar is supposed to be a badass villain whom many have fought and failed to defeat). In the Ishbal arc in the manga (chapters 56-62), her sharpshooting skills are well displayed when she saves Hughes' and Mustang's lives from a surprise attack.
When she fires at Archer in the last anime episode, all of her shots are accounted for and hit Archer's back (on his human side, also demonstrating her accuracy) so she is not responsible for Mustang's injury.
She does indeed break down when she thinks Mustang has been killed, but that emotional response is clearly in contrast to her cool-headed demeanor in other dangerous/emotional situations (e.g., fighting Barry the Chopper and Gluttony in the manga; dealing with a traumatized child and crying Winry at the site of one of Scar's murders in the anime, etc). It's strongly implied that she has a Bodyguard Crush on Mustang, so it makes sense that he would be her weakness.
Rowena The Witch : I added Ginny Weasley from "Harry Potter". Sorry if I made a lot of edits, I had problems with Text mark up ^^
Charred Knight: Hawkeye is a Faux-Action Girl because in the ANIME she never does anything useful. Her best show of aiming is during a COMEDIC scene. For the rest of the anime she's basically protrayed as Mustang's babysitter.
Tanto: KhymChanur, stop playing around with the media divisions until you've figured out how the markups work.
Coolnut: I quickly theorized when/how the Faux AG might have originated. If I'm wrong, feel free to delete and/or counter-explain my entry. Thanks!
(later) Thought about it again after hitting a few counterexamples via the Web, and deleting it for now (sorry).
Lale: Was Zelda ever supposed to be an Action Girl? I got the impression she was an unusual Distressed Damsel.
Tanto: No, she's a straight Distressed Damsel in almost all the games, with only a couple of exceptions (those being Ocarina of Time and Wind Waker). She's never advertised as being more than she is.
Coolnut: Removed:
- Zelda of The Legend Of Zelda just can't escape being a Distressed Damsel, not even as a Future Badass crossdresser in Ocarina of Time or as a reincarnated pirate captain in Wind Waker and Phantom Hourglass.
- The characters in Metal Gear Solid make a big fuss about how incredibly tough Meryl is - an eighteen-year-old female soldier with a Desert Eagle. However, she trembles when told to shoot, forgets to take the safety off her gun, gets Mind Controlled by a psychic into shooting Snake and attempting a suicide, 'takes point' in the most useless way possible for the gamer and for Snake, gets shot by a sniper, and spends the rest of the game getting tortured and arguably raped off-camera, to make a return, unconscious, at the end. Depending on the ending, she may or may not live to crash her car and pin her and Snake under it. However, it wasn't that she was inherently useless so much as very young and inexperienced - she becomes aware of this over the course of the game and her façade of arrogance is dropped.
For the first one, I agree with Tanto here - Zelda happens to be a Distressed Damsel who happens to subvert her role when the plot calls for it. She is the opposite of the Faux AG, who has the Action Girl skills (or so we are told) and shows nothing (or nearly so) that would prove it.
The second one is Feet of Clay - Meryl's failure is from her youth, inexperience, and arrogance, or at least what I picked up from the description.
I'm not sure if she counts as an 'action girl' in the first place, but Jane Fairfax from Emma was constantly praised for her virtue and good character, yet we never ever see her do anything particularly virtuous.
Rogue 7: I'm pretty sure that someone hasn't caught up on the Bleach manga. Rukia gets her due as the cast starts going up against the Arrancar. She takes down one of the espada, for crying out loud, and before that she pretty much took everything else out in one dance of her sword. She's at least at vice-captain level.
Lord Seth: Deleted:
- Unusual and really cool aversion: Lieutenant Karrin Murphy from The Dresden Files - while she is fairly often injured, she is also the Badass Normal in an Urban Fantasy world of wizards, vampires, evil fairies, werewolves, and the like. Her only power? Akido training, written by an author actually trained in it and who only allows her to use it realistically. In short, she may not be the most powerful character, but a Muggle who still gets to kick ass regularly, and never acts as a mere Distressed Damsel, but as a proper partner? That's a full Action Girl.
Coolnut: Also deleted:
- Fire Emblem 7 has Florina, the sweet and shy Shrinking Violet who is Lyn's best friend (and maybe more, if you read their ending that way). She first appears when she's cornered by bandits right after finishing her training, cowering in fear and pretty much crying until Lyn and her gang came for her. To be fair, she's always been scared of men even since she was a little girl, but later does try her damned best to prove herself as a worthy warrior as seen in her supports with Lyn and her older sisters.
- Fire Emblem 8 has Tana, Pegasus Knight and Princess of Frelia, whose portrayal depends greatly of which path you choose. If you try Eirika's route, she's more mature and strongwilled, personally convincing Eirika of letting her join her group; in Ephraim's, she attempts to sneak on his troup only to get captured and having Ephraim bail her out.
Neither of them were really action girls during those points in the game: Florina was just a low-level trainee and pretty much just a wimpy fighter, at first — she later does get stronger and helps Lyn reunite with Eliwood and Hector during an intense battle later on.
Tana was like Florina — another rookie Pegasus Knight. In fact, many people, especially her brother Innes, did not want her around because they felt she was too weak. Again, she does get stronger as the story progresses.
Ismaire, on the other hand, does fit.
Re-deleted whoever put Tana and Florina back there. Mind you, they do not have a reputation in combat in the cases when they are in danger. The Faux AG is when a woman with great power or skill is not seen effectively using said power or skill. Tana and Florina do not have any mad skillz to speak of, though they can get stronger as their respective games progress.
Chris X: Since they put Tana and Florina AGAIN, and now adds Lilina to the mix... I think we may need to rethink the concept of a Faux Action Girl. Thus, in YKTTW, I added an entry about 'Redefine Faux Action Girl'. Search there and we may discuss it there.
Charred Knight: Deleted them, and Lilina is clearly an AVERSION which unless its a major aversion we generally don't list them.
Rebochan: Pulled out Minako from Sailor Moon. Her ditziness is legendary and definitely a severe case of Flanderization, but that doesn't make her a Faux Action Girl because despite being a ditz, she is still an incredibly powerful fighter and along with the other main characters, still gets her filler episodes where she effortlessly pummels the crap out of the monster of the day.
Actually, in all of the franchises, there aren't really any FauxActionGirls because the show constantly shows its all-female main cast beating the living crap out of anything standing in their way. The closest they ever get to being overshadowed by men is in the anime, during the obligatory moments where Tuxedo Mask has to rescue Sailor Moon, give her a pep talk, and then send her on her way to killing the monster of the day. And whenever a serious story battle is going on, Tuxedo Mask is always sidelined. In the manga, they explicitly state that even though he has the Sailor Crystal of Earth (the Golden Crystal), only women can be Sailor Senshi so he's by definition always weaker in power levels than everyone around him.
Chuckg: Removed the 'Deathstroke does that to everybody' comment from Black Canary's entry: the fact that Deathstroke is far too often a ridiculously written Villain Sue, while entirely true, doesn't really change the fact that Dinah's had the living hell Chickified out of her since she stopped being written by Gail Simone and started being written by Judd Winnick.
Does anyone think Mina Harker from Dracula should go in here? The other characters were always going on and on about how she was such a Strong Woman, but she never really did anyting more daring than "Accompany them on their expidition" (and according to some of here correspondance with Lucy, "go bicycling".
theorc: Considering the time it was written, I don't think she was intended to be an Action Girl in the first place.
Lale: Yumi's not only an example, she's one of the clearest, most blatant examples period. Maybe people exaggerate about Characters They Don't Like, but this is the one example that fits the trope decsription to the letter even if none of the others do.
St Fan: Quoted from the Flanderization page:
- Chickification and Faux Action Girl were about Action Girls who are either changed into more passive ladies without any convincing explanation, or don't live up to the Action Girl fame they have in canon. Now, it seems that any Action Girl has lost right to either show a more vulnerable side, have a bad day or more, lose a single fight (even if she does fight to the fullest) and/or handle difficulties in any other way than using a Megaton Punch, lest they'll be accused of being Chickificated and/or having been Faux Action Girls all along. (Apparently, a woman is only strong if she acts like a stereotypical man and she is forbidden of having girly tastes or needing a male's help.)
I have recently watched the whole series... and as I see it, Yumi NEVER "gets more and more incompetent in combat, with no explanation, no acknowledgement". You're seeing things that aren't here. We would need a very specific statistic of every episode to show whether or not she get devirtualized more or kill less monsters as the show go on, but it without such specific statistics it is nowhere evident — and such Character Derailement is supposed to be obvious. In Season 4 she beats William at the very least 3 times... do the others even do as much?
I don't contest the Designated Victim aspect... though even the "Pick on Yumi Week" is a bit of fan exageration. This, however, has nothing to do with the Action Girl status. On the contrary, it shows that she goes through plenty hard times and survive.
The same way, Aelita getting more powerful as the show went on did nothing to reduce Yumi's status as an Action Girl. For that matter the position of The Chick in the Five-Man Band say nothing about her fighting prowess... The Chick is not necessarily the weakest fighter.
I see neither a Chickification or Faux Action Girl case in the whole series, but plainly a Flanderization of both tropes as explained by the quote above.
Charred Knight: I haven't seen Lyoko in years, but I have never seen Yumi being shown as anything more than completely incompetent. In the first few seasons it was always Ulrich or Odd that managed to fight anything at all while Yumi did nothing but block crap with her fan.
St Fan: Which is why this kind of thing shouldn't be judged by memory. Statistics would show that Yumi kill on average as many monsters as Ulrich and Odd.
In fact, in-story-wise, the one complaining about Can't Catch Up is not Yumi but Odd, in episode "Three Is an Odd Number".
Coolnut: Pulled because merely "bad stats" for a female character shouldn't count — game-wise, I already know dozens of touted-as-strong female heroes with below-average stats. If she's woefully incompetent in-game, gets captured a lot, etc., then she may qualify.
- In an example of this being caused by Gameplay and Story Segregation, Fran in Final Fantasy XII. Her magical talents and athletic ability are touted time and time again at the beginning of the game, but in fact she has one of the lowest Magic stats of the available party members. Even inexperienced kid thief Vaan is better at casting magic than she is. At Lv.100, Fran is stuck firmly in the lower-tier, being surpassed in every stat by at least one person.
- This trouper thinks that you just didn't level her off properly as her Fran at level 100 is the second in terms of magic and is stronger than Van.
Leone: Removing the Nico Robin example. First, Robin was never a traditional action girl in the first place, and second, she's consistently been portrayed as extremely capable and an invaluable asset to the crew.
TheLaughingFan: I removed Kim Possible as an example. Yes, her Kung Fu skills depends more on the writer than her character, and yes she desperately needed help in both A Si T and Graduation, but she still wins more fights than she looses, and that she does ends up fighting Shego that's far more than capable to beat Ron's ass. And do I need to mention how much she owned the entire So the Drama?
Sparkysharps: Am I the only one here who realized, after TLS's removal of the KP example, that Faux Action Girl makes a really unfortunate acronym?
Cliché: If the trope name has Action Girl in its title, please explain to me why the examples are not limited solely to Action Girl types. Either the title is actively misleading, the description is not clear enough, Flanderization is at work, or I'm just blathering again. For some reason, I'm suspecting some sort of mold breaking for this trope with the Mad-Eye Moody example, bringing it even closer to Informed Ability.
Rogue 7: I'd debate Ginny and Hermione's inclusion on this page. No one in HP is particularly good at combat. Everyone ended up pretty beat up at the Ministry in 5, Ginny was holding her own quite well in 6, and she had survived the entire battle in 7. The same with Hermione.
Dalantia: Flanderization is definitely at work here, considering I've seen and had to cut at least three examples of characters who had zero reputation as Action Girls, and oftentimes, within the storyline, outright stated to be noncombatants (Anya of Gears, Callo Merlose of Vagrant Story).
DoKnowButchie Removed the Sally Acorn example. Although the character was an Action Girl who became less so, it wasn't because her abilities diminished, but because she was simply taken away from the battlefield. It's Character Derailment, and possibly Chickification—she already has an example there—but not Faux Action Girl
Removed this:
- In Terminator Salvation, the hero Marcus's love interest is a tough female soldier who ejects from her jet and must return to base on foot. Supposedly she can take care of herself, but when she gets attacked by a bunch of guys she's subdued in 10 seconds and he has to rescue her. To be fair, she does return the favor later.
- Also in the interest of fairness, it was a "bunch" of guys, and she didn't want to hurt them, which was a disadvantage. He was backup more than a rescuer.
- Also Marcus was part terminator. Otherwise, no one (at all) in the film succeeds against any more than a single combatant without excessive amounts of help.
- Her name was Blair Williams, played by Moon Bloodgood (Jumping Jesus, they should have just used her REAL name! It's awesome!), and being being subdued by about half a dozen full grown men with hand weapons is excusable. In T2, Sarah Connor was subdued by a couple of psych ward orderlies, and NO ONE could mistake her for being a faux action girl. The fact that Marcus , who is a terminator, renders the assailants about as dangerous as a pack of 6 year olds with wiffle bats is more of a testament to his great strength stemming from the fact that he is indeed a nigh impervious death machine (remember Arnold taking out an ENTIRE POLICE STATION single handedly in T1?) than to William's vulnerability.
- Also in the interest of fairness, it was a "bunch" of guys, and she didn't want to hurt them, which was a disadvantage. He was backup more than a rescuer.
The counterarguments show that she's not an example of the trope.
The Tambourine Man: Cutting:
- And we can't forget, from Radiant Dawn, Failcaiah, a borderline God-Mode Sue in the cutscenes, but a Squishy Wizard through and through in-game.
Sara Jaye: About the picture...I'm not attempting to split hairs and I won't pretend I know everything about Voltron, but how does Allura represent this trope? As far as I know she never had an Action Girl reputation to begin with and took up the mantle for the Blue Lion after Sven got hurt (since we're talking about the dub, lol) just to help the team.
