This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Fast Eddie: Needs a shift away from rant and a better title. Probably better to just start over.
Twin Bird: Score one for Completely Missing The Point. These are not duplications of anything. Rather, they are differentiated from other Death Tropes by...you guessed it...the gender/sexuality of the victim! The point is that these characters' deaths tend to be well telegraphed by the fact itself, and treated in similar ways by the plot (as "punishment," or just insufficiently). By this logic, you might cut all the Death Tropes since they're just the same thing - someone dies. (Yes, this is copy-pasted, but what's wrong with that? It's the same objection each time.)
P.S.: Fast Eddie's objection, on the other hand, may have some merit.
Black Humor: Dead Kennedy, you seem to be doing this a lot. I'm sure we have this guideline here somewhere but this was easier to find.
(still Black Humor}:Fast Eddie, I'm pretty sure we don't have this guideline here but maybe we could use it.
Dead Kennedy: Twin Bird, I didn't miss the point at all. What you are clearly not grasping is that the point is not a sound point. I get the point, the point is just ASININE. Nobody can actually make an argument explaining how Vasquez heroic and noble death is a "punishment" for being a masculine woman that doesn't contradict every other elements of the movie. If anything, Vasquez was more likely SPARED an ignoble death (like every other Marine in the movie) because she was a woman.
And when the Trope Namer doesn't support the trope, I think it's reasonable to insist the trope is BS. This entry really has nothing to do with tropes in media, and everything to do with unsupported ax-grinding feminist critique.
Black Humor: Apparently the point wasn't what I thought it was. Thing is, this is a trope with 23 examples and 20 straight uses. It is definitely a trope; if Vazquez wasn't actually an example (and Aliens did fit the trope), then that's grounds for a rename, not a deletion.
Twin Bird: I think the implication here was "Vasquez Always Dies, but Ripley Always Lives." Female soldiers are less likely to die if they're not especially masculine, like Ripley (granted, not exactly Sailor Moon, but still...), but if they're threateningly masculine, like Vasquez, they're more likely to die than central male soldiers.
Lavode: The other female marines weren't that much girlier than Vasquez, were they?
gkong3: A trope's a trope, even if it's justified the majority of the time it's used. In this case, I would say it's justifiable 90% of the time - if said "Vasquez" is 'one of the boys', then she can be expected to be treated like one of the boys, and thrown into the fray. Whereas the more 'girly' ones would probably be the ones that needed protection - and thus more likely to survive. On a different note, is Ellen fricking Ripley really the best choice for more feminine woman? Might as well call Linda Hamilton in Terminator 2 the more feminine woman - and she the only main woman character in the show that survives to the end! Some aversions: in all of Firefly, all of the ladies make it. Okay, it's Joss. But what about David Weber's stuff? Honor Harrington's as Badass as they come - half-cyborg, expert marksman and swordsman, gets put in suicidal situations all the time - and she still survives. For now, at least. And in the Bahzell series, his senior Champion colleague is still alive too, despite meeting up with the Mother of Demons. Terry Goodkind's Sword of Truth series has Cara, his pet dominatrix, survive the entire series. Terry Brooks has Princess Amberle Elessedil sacrifice herself to renew the Ellcrys, whereas the much more Action Girl type Eretria survives to marry The Hero.
MercuryinRetro: This 'trope' is mostly subversions/aversions. Including the trope-namer. I concur with the troper above. Ripley is not more feminine, she's just older and more mature in character then Vasquez.
Removed this...
There is a notable subversion in Predator 2. The titular character has the Vasquez by the throat, only to stop when using x-ray vision he sees that she is pregnant, and lets her go without causing any fatal harm.
...because it doens't fit the trope. Leona isn't contrasted with any more feminine character in that movie (at least partly because there are hardly any female characters in it).
