Is this a trope?: Badass Gay

Badass Gay is much newer than agent peacock and it's all ready got almost as many inbounds despite the fact that it's still a new trope. It's doing better outside the wiki than that trope is.

Manly Gay doesn't mean badass. It's more of an aesthetic. You can be manly without being dangerous and a lot of Manly Gay characters get treated in works as pushovers, because they're gay.

Most characters that are Badass Gay aren't effeminate. They wouldn't be covered by that trope either.

That's because the name is a lot more straightforward. I had no idea what the hell Agent Peacock was about before clicking the link (I meant to bring up how horrible that name is before, but forgot about it while TRS was down), but you know what you're getting with Badass Gay. That still doesn't make it a trope. And the thing that bothers me the most is the fact that it still uses tired, immature stereotypes to define gay people (subversion or no), even if the author simply wanted to make an interesting character who happens to be gay.

edited 3rd Jan '12 10:54:44 AM by DesertDragon

For some reason, I didn't get this thread on my watchlist - in spite of having the trope on my watchlist. And thereäs talk of cutting other tropes as well. Maybe we should just add a tag manually to all the tropes in question, so everyone who have the tropes watchlisted get a chance to participate.

As for the issue - cutting only this trope would be unreasonable. Either we cut the entire line of "Badass & X" tropes, with certain exceptions, or we don't.

I'm against such a cut-sweep. Badasses makes the world of action go around, and it's really fascinating what a diverse lot they have become over the years.

Also, a combination of of traits such as badass and gay may be irrelevant in-universe, but still a distinct narrative tool in how it plays on the audience's expected expectations.

Finally, being badass and being masculine is two unrelated concepts. Thus, Manly Gay is hardly even connected to this trope, and the overlap is rather small.

I don't think we should actually cut every badass trope. I think we should cut those that are pointless and then rename away everything else from the snowclone as much as possible so we don't perpetuate the character trait + badass problem.

So i guess our qualifiers for legitimate tropes are "badass because of a trait" and "badass despite of a trait" (subversion).

I kind of started going through with a tentative sorting Badass Tropes Sorting, just sort of to get a better idea about where the state of the badass X tropes are. Feel free to make comments on the page and add more. I didn't finish. I feel like a lot of the Badass X tropes actually are tropes, they are just being snowcloned in with the Badass X tropes when that isn't even what they are or should be.

Badass Bookworm has always confused me with Minored in Ass-Kicking. I know the definitions are 'different' but I feel like practically speaking they are the same thing.

I see what dissenters are saying about Badass Gay, I'm still kind of on the fence about it, though. On the one hand it's a subversion. On the other hand, effeminate examples will already fall under Agent Peacock and non-effeminate examples that are Straight Gay or Manly Gay can still grab the regular Badass label. At this point I'm not really sure if it is enough of a character 'type' to really count, outside of the effeminate version. I mean the stereotypical 'effeminate gay' characters are a type, but gay characters outside of that don't follow a type and their 'gayness' is a secondary, not primary part of their characterization, so lumping them into something like Badass Gay seems a bit like trait + badass.

edited 3rd Jan '12 4:31:23 PM by NoirGrimoir

Trait + Badass falls under Trope Mathematics. I dislike those tropes. The idea of "Badass because of or in spite of trait" is different.

Badass + Camp Gay = trope. Badass + Gay = Badass + Gay, not an entirely new trope.

Though looking at it, Agent Peacock actually says 'campy/effeminate' rather than camp gay. Still, it covers camp gay badasses.

YES, I agree.

We should actually have a Trope Mathematics index. That would be cool.

edited 3rd Jan '12 5:57:28 PM by NoirGrimoir

The thing about the Badass X tropes is, "Badass" is just...vague. Like, they're actual trope, but the trope isn't actually "a Badass X." Badass Spaniard, for example, isn't about badasses from Spain. The trope is that specific swashbuckling, sexy Inigo Montoya type, probably codified by Zorro, and very much like the Spear Counterpart to Spicy Latina. And the trouble with the name is that Badass...well, technically, yes, that is one way to be badass, but it's more specific than just general badassery, with specific badass traits that are associated with archetypal Spanish badasses, and that's what makes it a trope.

Badass Gay doesn't have that dynamic at all. Manly Gay has it, and Agent Peacock has it; I think those are tropes. But I'm not really convinced that Badass Gay is a trope.

I totally agree, which is why I think we should rename away from Badass X as much as possible. I actually hadn't realized that about Badass Spaniard until you described it. A lot of the time these trope are actual character-types that also happen to be badass, and the naming scheme Badass X not only doesn't do them justice but is actually misleading.

edited 3rd Jan '12 6:03:31 PM by NoirGrimoir

I think we actually have Trope Arithmetic somewhere.

I thought we did too but I couldn't find it.

If Agent Peacock is a weird name, what about using something along the lines of Badass But Camp or Campy But Badass as a redirect?

I just added Effeminate Badass and Badass And Fabulous as redirects earlier so adding one of those wouldn't hurt.

edited 3rd Jan '12 7:32:05 PM by NoirGrimoir

I would rather get away from making more badass snowclones. Weren't we just talking about how we wanted to reduce the number to discourage snowclones that aren't even tropes at all?

This is purely for searching purposes. It's the sort of thing people would search for.

Effeminate Badass is a great redirect though. Would be a strong name; oh well.

edited 3rd Jan '12 9:32:48 PM by rodneyAnonymous

x?

Sorry, wrong link. Troperithmetic. Forgot where I had left my link.

Bump. If we want to clean up all the Badass X tropes, perhaps we should start a thread on it in Special Efforts?

I think we should.

I think special efforts really is more the place for this. Should I lock this and someone can start a larger thread for the overhaul? I think it might work better.

Sounds like a plan. But as for Badass Gay specifically, the trope started to grow on me. I would now argue that this is a trope if and only if the character is a hardened badass as a result of some kind of trauma over their sexual orientation. Say, if a gay man is beaten or a lesbian is raped to "make them straight", and they learn to fight afterwards. But if their sexuality is incidental, then no.

edited 6th Jan '12 8:52:22 AM by DesertDragon

I think Badass Gay can hang around as a trope until we've figured out what we're going to do with the badass X tropes as a while. I do feel like it could be a trope, I'm just not sure it isn't legitimately covered by other tropes already.

edited 6th Jan '12 5:06:17 PM by NoirGrimoir

Made the special Efforts thread: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/posts.php?discussion=13258997110A98996400&page=1#1

All right. Locking this. Thanks for making the special efforts thread.