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alt title(s): The Kimberly
"You have a knack for getting in trouble."
"Dawn's in trouble. Must be Tuesday."
The Distressed Damsel is an age-old classic plot device, which places a character in danger to add tension to the story. Sometimes one character (usually a Love Interest or a relative of another character) seems to have no discernible purpose besides serving as the Designated Victim. If the character is popular with the audience, this can be effective. Other times, well... let's just say that the audience starts wishing that the Big Damn Heroes would get stuck in traffic, just so they won't have to put up with her anymore.
Most of the time, this character's plight is due entirely to her own stupidity. She doesn't just pick up the Distress Ball, she runs it into her own endzone and gets tackled for a safety. And she keeps on doing it, again and again and again. This may be due to being The Ditz, or a severe case of crippling genre blindness.
Even if she's just unlucky, she may be disliked for other reasons. Perhaps the audience finds her too bland, or too bitchy. Perhaps her presence seems shoehorned into the main plot (perhaps to attract a Periphery Demographic or for blatant Fan Service), and the audience feels she steals time from the story they're actually interested in. This is especially true when her subplot has nothing to do with the main plot at all. Or else she seems like useless dead weight whose only purpose is to pad the plot by getting in trouble.
The Chick of a Five Man Band is in danger of turning into this, if the audience finds her obnoxious and useless enough. Faux Action Girl is what you get when you mix this with an Action Girl. Chickification is what happens if an actual Action Girl gets retooled or derailed into this. Child characters can fall prey to this just as easily, especially the Tagalong Kid or a hero's Oblivious Younger Sibling.
See also Too Dumb To Live. Compare The Scrappy and The Load. Compare The Presidents Daughter. See also Reckless Sidekick.
Examples:
Anime and Manga
- Mokuba Kaiba from Yu-Gi-Oh.
- Yu Gi Oh The Abridged Series constantly makes fun of this trope. His older brother Seto Kaiba tries to reminisce about him and can only remember the thousands of times he's been kidnapped.
- Meg from Bakuretsu Tenshi. Supposedly an Action Girl, but Jo must rescue her all the time.
- Miaka from Fushigi Yuugi, despite being the series protagonist, has come in for some fan hate for the numerous times she pointlessly rushes headfirst into dangerous situations, in some cases even actively sabotaging her protectors or not telling them important information, then getting in trouble and needing them to come save her anyway. In fairness, some of this is Adaptation Decay, as her motives are often slightly more sensible in the manga than the anime.
- Beauty from Bobobobo Bobobo serves two purposes: perpetually reminding the viewer at the top of her lungs that the things the other characters are doing are bizarre, and being the Distressed Damsel when the plot calls for it.
Comic Books
- This is the characteristic once strongly associated with Lois Lane. Ironically, it can be argued that Lois' role as a Distressed Damsel was far more important to the Superman plot than her role as a love interest, Depending On The Writer. In the 1940's, she did need to be rescued a lot (usually while pursuing a news story), but was fairly intelligent and could sometimes get herself out of scrapes by kicking ass and taking names. Once the 50's, 60's and early seventies came around though...oy. She was an empty headed twerp who was constantly putting herself in danger for no reason, and whose sole goal in life was to trick Superman into marrying her. She took Too Dumb To Live to uncharted levels. In recent comics and other media she's a much more well rounded and developed character, who is extremely competent and able to take care of herself. She still needs to be rescued sometimes, and the trope may pop up occasionally, but for the most part she's a very independent, intrepid and intelligent reporter who just needs a little help against super powered agressors from time to time.
- The seventies-era book Superman's Girl Friend, Lois Lane seemed dedicated to making sure every single reader hated Lois. If you google around, you'll find scans of multiple letters columns where readers asked for Superman to spank Lois.
Film
- Willie Scott (Kate Capshaw) in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Done rather well to say the least.
- That blonde from Freddy VS Jason (Lori?). The one character that should have died in the first five minutes ends up surviving the damn movie.
- Dakota Fanning's character in the 2005 remake of War of the Worlds. She gets taken hostage by aliens, she panics every time someone says "boo,", she screams for the first fifteen minutes of the alien invasion even though her father is right there with her and she's
perfectly relatively safe. Why didn't Tom Cruise's character just open the car door and leave her on the side of the road? No one knows.
- I think I heard something one time about fathers who protect and care for their children regardless of the child's behavior, can't remember where, though...
- She screams for the first fifteen minutes because she doesn't know what's happening (just Stuff Blowing Up) and her father is just as panicky as she is.
- Nicole from the Dawn Of The Dead remake. And she survives until the end. Or does she?
- This troper has always found Faline from Bambi to be the most annoying Disney female ever. She basically spends the majority of the film either laughing at Bambi or calling for him repeatedly...
- Mary Jane Watson from the Spider-Man film franchise. Three movies. Three times kidnapped to be used as bait to lure Spidey out. Yawn. Spidey rescued her three times in the first movie alone.
- made worse by the fact that her only other purpose was being a Shallow Love Interest, and the same "Peter wants her but she's with someone else" plot is recycled in all three movies. Double yawn.
- Averted in the comics: she usually manages to rescue herself, and often other people, or at least beans the villain and runs for it. She's electrocuted kidnappers, beaten would-be rapists with baseball bats, and even shot the Green Goblin when he tried to dangle her from a bridge.
- Lampshaded in the third movie novelization by Mary Jane who asks if she has bait stamped across her forehead when she's locked in Venom's falling car.
- Also in the third movie, MJ does drop a block of cement on Venom's head as he fights with Spiderman.
- But not completely averted with regards to Gwen Stacey, the shrieking Penelope that Sam Raimi must've based his Mary Jane on. Though she was at least likeable to many of the fans, the repetitive rescue-me's got tiring enough to render her Scrappy.
- She wasn't always mindlessly emotional and constantly in need of rescue, but she did get flanderized pretty badly as time went on.
- Sky Captain And The World Of Tomorrow (2004) recreates the style of a 1930s Pulp Magazine story - right down to putting Gwyneth Paltrow in one of these roles (and as a Faux Action Girl, no less!) simply because, in those stories, every female character was a Damsel Scrappy.
- Even James Bond girls are not immune, such as Stacy Sutton. Seriously woman, Christopher Walken was able to sneak up on you in a zeppelin. And don't even get me started on the screeching...
- One could argue that Buttercup from The Princess Bride fits this trope. She seems pretty useless by herself, especially doing absolutely NOTHING when Wesley is being attacked by a giant rat right in front of her except gasping and looking scared.
- Does Padmé Amidala count? Her codependence on Anakin, to the point that she dies of a broken heart just after giving birth to twins, has inspired more than a small amount of rage in many fans. Oh, and she says Anakin wouldn't kill younglings, even though he confessed to killing children in Attack of the Clones.
- No, she does not count. At no point in the three movies is she used as bait or rescued by anyone but herself.
- There is a slight, teeney-tiny difference between killing the children of people responsible for the kidnap, torture and murder of his mother and killing, without visible motive, innocent, young Jedi in training, most of whom Anakin had probably interacted with... Can't be that hard to believe she'd be sceptical at first.
- Besides, sand people aren't people.
Literature
- Bella Swan from Twilight pretty much epitomizes this trope, even commenting in her own narrative that "I guess my brain will never work right. At least I'm pretty." Add in the fact that she can't seem to get out of any scrape without the intervention of a male, you've got one of the most textbook examples of this trope EVER.
- That's got to be a misquote. Well, unless it came from Breaking Dawn, post-vampirization.
- Not a misquote at all, unfortunately!
- Can you give me the book and page? I have got to see this.
- Sure. Breaking Dawn, page 406.
- This trope is Older Than Television. In the era of Pulp Magazine action stories (roughly the 1920s), their teenage male readers would frequently complain about the very existence of female characters, because they were inevitably Flat Characters whose only role in the plot was to get into trouble, be on the receiving end of vague threats from the villain, and be rescued by the hero.
- It's Older Than Radio, too, going back to Victorian Britain when women (or at least, upper class ladies) were expected to act this way in real life.
- And if they didn't they were considered 'coarse' and 'unmanageable', and depending on their family's views on women could be institutionalized as insane.
- The other side of the coin being that their brothers also faced penalties for failing to be manly and heroic, in certain circumstances these penalties could include imprisonment and death(war deserters).
Live Action TV
- 24's Kimberly Bauer, the former Trope Namer, has an annoying habit of getting Trapped By Mountain Lions, wandering around bra-less in wifebeaters around potential rapists, and doing everything in her power to anger men with guns. Kim is sometimes known as "Bathroom-Break Bauer", due to a nearly-unbroken string of kidnappings, confinements and hostage-takings, which make it possible to take a bathroom break whenever she's on screen without missing anything truly important. The writers have admitted, in essence, that she can't be killed off because Jack has already lost Teri, his wife and it would destroy him. She has now effectively left the show, thankfully.
- Ally Mc Beal in the show of the same name.
- Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher) in Desperate Housewives
- Ironically, Hatcher also played Lois Lane in the '90s Superman drama Lois And Clark.
- Tegan from Doctor Who—though, as a woman of normal intelligence stuck on the TARDIS with three alien super-geniuses (The Doctor, Nyssa, and Adric/Turlough), she was Damsel Scrappy By Default. You want real a Damsel Scrappy in Doctor Who, try Vicki, Victoria Waterfield or Peri Brown.
- Victoria's an interesting case because in her last episode her screaming is essential for killing the Monster Of The Week.
- Mel was the only companion during her tenure, and thus had the duty of getting captured. This would be fine if she were useful or likable. And then she was followed by Ace. Who killed Daleks with homemade explosives (Stored in deoderant cans) and a super-charged baseball bat. Nobody loves Mel.
- The Pink Ranger from Mighty Morphin Power Rangers, whose job as The Chick was to get in trouble and flirt with Tommy.
- The Powers That Be presumably noticed the near-Wesleyan levels of dislike after a bit, though; In Turbo: A Power Rangers Movie the Rangers tried to get Kimberly's help and she turned out to be one of the villains. No less annoying, however.
- Surely much of that hate is in retrospect. The kids MMPR was targeted at don't usually get too worked up over that sort of thing. The Turbo movie came out during the 56k modem era, so internet fan-rage wasn't as rampant as it is today. And to be fair, they gave Jason, a fan favorite, the same treatment in that movie. In fact, this troper noticed more anger about Kimberly's replacement, Katherine- who's sole purpose in the story seemed to be "Tommy's new girlfriend, because Kimberley quit."
- It's even worse when you remember that before she started dating Tommy she was a kickass action girl. This troper liked her throughout all of Power Rangers though.
- Heck, she was named Kimberly...
- Shannon on Lost.
- Lana Lang on Smallville, for quite a while now.
- Maya on Heroes.
- Colonel Tigh's wife in the Battlestar Galactica remake. The woman was essentially a walking plot complication. They eventually had to put her down because of it.
- Well, let's be fair. They put her down for collaborating with the Cylons. Plus, she's a horrible, horrible bitch.
- Of course, it's been retroactively justified now that she's been revealed as the Final Cylon.
- This troper suspects that Beverly Hills 90210 updated this trope for the teen soap/drama in the form of rich girl Kelly Taylor. Just read her Wikipedia article. Then again, maybe they're right: being stalked, burned, brainwashed, raped, addicted to cocaine and shot does enable one to become a stronger person. *cough* Marissa *cough*.
- "Marissa"? Is this a reference to Stephen Ratliff of Star Trek fanfic fame?
- And she's a guidance counselor now, So Yeah.
- As the page quote implies, Dawn from Buffy The Vampire Slayer.
- Cordelia was also bad about this when she first joined the main cast.
- NCIS subverts this, with the multiple attempts to kidnap the Perky Goth Lab Rat ending with the team showing up to find the criminal hogtied, duct-taped, or being tased.
- Not to mention (ex?) Mossad agent Ziva David who is generally quite capable of not only taking care of herself, but often embarrassing the male members of the team. The few times she was successfully kidnapped tended to be along with at least one male member of the team, and she was usually the level-headed one who was most successful in getting them out.
- Jennifer Keller from Stargate Atlantis, though she learned to fight in the final season and part of the Scrappy-ness has to be from her replacing Carson Beckett.
- Fans are probably also willing to cut her more slack because her actress is associated with a well-liked former role. Or that may paradoxically lead some to dislike Keller because she's not Kaylee. Ah, human nature, you never fail to amuse with your delightful contradictions!
- Daniel Jackson from Stargate SG-1. Although his character is likable enough for everyone to ignore the fact that he is almost always the character that gets kidnapped, injured or killed.
- Maybe the fact that he's so likable is why those things keep happening to him - he's easy to sympathise with in his suffering.
- In the Robin Hood on the BBC a number of viewers feel that the replacement for Marian, Kate, fits this. She's pushy, loud and generally useless, where in contrast the previous character in the love interest role was an Action Girl who at least had the dignity to be right when she was pushy, and was never louder than was needed.
- In her capacity as a "damsel" scrappy, she's been captured by guards more times in one season than any of the other outlaws have in three. The words: "Where's Kate?" could be a drinking game.
Newspaper Comics
Video Games
- Princess Elise from Sonic The Hedgehog 2006 probably got kidnapped more times in that one game than Amy Rose did throughout the entire series.
- Princess Shine starts out as one of these in Super Robot Wars Original Generation, but becomes less so as we get to know her better. Then we find out she has special powers that allow her to use a super-advanced Humongous Mecha.
- The Damsels in Spelunky are pretty much based on Willie Scott and manage to work this trope into game mechanics.
- Princess Peach. With the sole exception of one game, she's been kidnapped in every single mainline Mario game. The one she wasn't, Super Princess Peach, proved that she should be more than capable of taking care of herself.
- You mean two games. The American SMB 2 counts.
- Princess Zelda in the Legend Of Zelda series, though the more recent ones have shown her to have some offensive abilities. Apparently things are so bad in Hyrule (with some help from the screwy timeline) that occasionally there are multiple Princess Zeldas kidnapped, under sleeping spells, or otherwise in trouble simultaneously.
- "HEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEELPPPP!! LEONNNN!!"
- Rosie in Fossil Fighters seems to exist soley to get kidnapped a lot, and to have various other humorous problems befall her. It wouldn't seem quite so bad if she and the hero weren't getting Strangled By The Red String. You, however, can eventually choose to deny the red string and Toy Ship yourself with Action Girl alien Duna if you want.
- Shirley Fennes from Tales Of Legendia, along with being the series' plain Scrappy.
Webcomics
- Celia from Order Of The Stick was quickly flanderized into a model damsel scrappy after her second reappearance.
- Elan from the same comic is an even better example, as he had a tendency to destroy things or derail the plot due to his damsel scrappiness; this does not go over well with some of the people he works with. That said, the fandom has a much more positive view of him than most damsel scrappies, for one reason or another.
- To be fair though with Celia, she did show that she is probably more capable of defeating enemies then even some of the fighters that aren't in the actual group. Its just that shes a pacifist and really doesn't want to kill people. and the reason for it is later given.
- Zola of Girl Genius, as shown in Gil's flashback
 .
Gil: Well, after that, she was just someone I knew.
Zeetha: Who had to be rescued a lot.
Gil: Hey, she wasn't boring.
Zeetha: She sounds annoying.
Gil: Annoying, I'll give you.
- However, earlier, we see her as a highly trained expert, entering Castle Heterodyne with a team that effortlessly defeats elite Wulfenbach guards (and being cold as ice about that slaughter) while using ruthless willpower to cow dangerous prisoners into line, and there was a strip where she states that she deliberately acts that way in areas she thinks the Castle may be watching them so that it will underestimate her. The other characters came to this realization a tad too late.
Western Animation
- Normal Price in Fireman Sam. Even on the rare ocassions that someone else needs rescuing, he's usually the cause of the trouble.
- Julie Yamamoto from Ben 10 Alien Force. As one fan put it, 'Julie had a good 30 minutes to actually do something other than 'I smile, accept Ben, and become a damsel in distress'.
- She did get some fighting skills in 'Pet Project', but this troper thinks that was because Ben/Gwen shippers were beginning to compare her personality to that of ''cardboard''.
- Hey in that date episode she did try to help herself...She was dialing for, hopefully, 9-1-1 when Ship made her drop her phone.
- Daphne Blake from Scooby Doo is known to often fall into traps, be kidnapped by the villain, or anger the villain in some way. Her nickname in the original Scooby Doo, Where Are You? series was "Danger-prone Daphne".
- Daisy, and that other girl from Static Shock. Real shame, because she actually did stuff in the earlier episodes.
- Frieda you mean? This Troper never seemed to recall her getting kidnapped, though it's hard to say for certain...
- This Troper seemed to recall Frieda being about as helpful as an ordinary person could be against a criminal (or at least extremely PO'd) metahuman. In one episode, she even helped Static out by calling the firemen and getting Hotstreak taken down with a hose.
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