Is this a trope?: Badass Gay

This just comes across as tropers gushing about action-oriented gay characters they love. Considering the description says it doesn't matter whether or not they're Manly Gay or Agent Peacock, or if they engage in same-sex romance, then the character's sexuality is completely incidental. Not to mention many of the characters mentioned aren't even gay, but bi/omnisexual. Then...what is the trope about exactly? This was even brought up in YKTTW and the original author dropped the idea before someone new picked it up, but the new author didn't seem to get the memo that "Gay character who can fight" is not a trope by itself.

edited 2nd Jan '12 2:59:36 PM by DesertDragon

Yeah, unless being gay has something to do with them being a badass, then it's just a list of people who are both badass and gay, which isn't a trope.

We seem to have a fair number of "badass BUT X!" tropes around. I think this has as much justification to exist as those do.

In other words, not much at all? But seriously, "Badass BUT X!" is not a trope. What little there is that could be a trope just devolves into tropers raving about characters they love.

edited 2nd Jan '12 3:46:36 PM by DesertDragon

Precisely. I feel like it's better to try and deal with those as a whole, rather then just focus on one trope.

Well I'm certainly up for suggestions on how to go about that, since it would take a a massive undertaking to separate the legit tropes in the Badass index from the ones that are just gushing. This one just caught my attention first because I try to keep an eye on the Queer as Tropes index.

edited 2nd Jan '12 3:57:40 PM by DesertDragon

I think this one was made because it breaks the stereotype that gay man are sort of pansy pushovers IIRC.

Wouldn't Manly Gay cover that pretty well?

So it's Manly Gay But More?

And Agent Peacock covers the non-manly examples of this.

Agree with nrjxll. I think we need to trim the whole collection of Badass X tropes. They are pretty pointless in most cases. I know whenever they would show up in YKTTW, I tried to discourage them.

They could definitely use a trim, starting with this one.

Speaking of badass tropes that are really completely incidental, which would actually fit into that category? I wouldn't mind trimming some of them since I do feel we have too many.

edited 2nd Jan '12 7:36:09 PM by Arha

Things we should keep, I think are re-occurring, specific character-types of badass that have a clear origin.

Awesome Aussie, for instance can stay because it's a specific character type, based of people like Steve Erwin and the character Crocodile Dundee. Same with Badass Israeli, since the character type comes from the fact that the Israeli military is highly respected and thought of as Badass in RL.

Most of the 'prop' or other things that are ways to tell if a character is badass, such as Badass Cape and Badass Beard can also stay. These are obviously tropes, in that they are shorthand to say "this character is a badass!" Anything that is just 'this prop is cool!' should be cut.

Things that are just Character trait + badass should be cut. They are just lists of character that are whatever that trait is and happen to be badass. The badassness has to be especially associated with the character trait, not an add on.

In other words: They must be badass because of said trait, not badass and said trait.

edited 2nd Jan '12 8:02:23 PM by NoirGrimoir

"They must be badass because of said trait, not badass and said trait."

Great standard.

That's my preference.

Agreed.

Certainly, but which badass tropes fall into that? And technically, Badass Adorable is supposed to be about the contrast of awesome fighter to cute appearance, thus the adorable part does not lead to the badassery.

That said, I don't see Badass Adorable characters as actually being badass, though I wouldn't say it's not a trope.

I don't think that "badass because they're gay" is a common enough think to be tropeable, nor do I think that there's really going to be any way to keep the misuse from totally swamping any valid examples that are found.

In any case, I think we should do away with all the Badass X names, since they encourage that sort of "anything that happens to both be badass and X" misuse. Mother Russia Makes You Strong is fine, because the name clearly conveys the fact that the trope is about characters that are portrayed as badass solely because they are Russian.

Badass X or whatever is generally not fine, and should never be an acceptable trope name; the names should be required to be something that explicitly implies that you are strong or dangerous because of X, due to the extremely frequent misuse that tropes of this nature attract.

(Being Gay Makes You Tough or whatever could be a name if people really feel this is common enough to be tropeable. But Badass X is never an acceptable trope name in my book; all of them badly require renames, without exception.)

The only exception, I guess, is stuff like Badass Adorable, where the X is something that is clearly opposed to badass normally, and the trope is about having someone who combines these two normally-exclusive features. "Badass Despite X" is a valid trope... Handicapped Badass works, too.

(There was a time, granted, when gay and badass would have been seen as exclusive — but in that time, the people who felt that way didn't use gay characters. I can't think of any works that have really used the combination of badass and gay in a 'badass despite being gay' fashion — probably because the window of time between "nobody is allowed to discuss gays at all" and "treating it surprising to have a gay character be badass is rife with Unfortunate Implications" was too slim to let anything slip in.)

edited 3rd Jan '12 12:27:34 AM by Aquillion

I agree with axing all the badass X names and changing them to something more descriptive.

I also think all the notable subversions, like Badass Bookworm, Badass Bystander and Badass Adorable do count, but again they have to be notable and reoccurring. For instance "Badass Gardner" or "Badass hairdresser" aren't a notable enough subversions to count, IMO.

And I think Badass Gay is a a notable subversion, I just think Agent Peacock and Manly Gay sufficiently cover instances of it and are much better written.

Actually, Badass Bookworm is supposed to be about a bookworm that is secretly badass.

I suppose we could expand Noir's standard for some cases - Adjective X can be "adjective BECAUSE it's x" or, separately, "adjective DESPITE being x, but only when the contrast is the point of the trope". "Adjective, and also, x" though should never be allowed.

I agree with pretty much everything already stated, though I would add that Badass Normal should be ok too, since it's specifically a non-powered member of superhero team.

I think Badass Normal is doing all right. It's only problem is that people sometimes use it when there are no supers around to compare the normal to. Badass Abnormal probably needs looking into just to be safe, but I think that's working too.

I've noticed with Badass Bookworm that it often gets confused with Genius Bruiser or just "Badass who is also a Bookworm." I do think it needs a rename that makes it clear the character is a Bookworm who is also Badass despite not looking Badass.