Badass tropes - now on: Action Girl

I'm just saying that the definition dispute and decay is not as bad as you make it out to be. Yes, badass is overused all over the wiki, but it's not used for wildly differing, irreconcilable ideas. It can all fall under a single banner, and the current definition (roughly, a person whose actions hew to the Rule of Cool, is "extreme", and is deserving of admiration) can be applied pretty damn well considering how widely it's used. It fits characters who are stereotypical, leather-jacket, tattooed, biker Anti-Hero badasses as well as some of the characters I've seen on the wiki that seem quite different. We're not seeing such rampant disregard for the "proper" definition of Bad Ass that we need to either drastically revamp the definition or give up and toss it in the YMMV pile.

People attach badass to damn near everyone, so that argument doesn't hold much water. Man, English has weird expressions. Anyway, apart from that is also the fact that that may be a perfectly valid subtrope, but a supertrope has to contain all the subtropes described. A Badass Adorable character is not going to be a grizzled anti hero just oozing manliness and composure, thus we cannot define Badass that way either.

I forget, don't played with variants of tropes count as subtropes?

Heads-up: Badass Feminine in YKTTW.

Interesting discussion, haven't noticed this in Special Efforts. How about just limiting the term to works that action-based? I think that cuts down on half the misuse so we don't have it used in pages like, I don't know, Glee.

It might help, or would at least cut down the misuse of people using the the term as a synonym for liking a character. On the other hand, that is a rather exclusive role and might lead to problems further down the line.

So I crossread the thread, and if I understand this correctly, one of the central problems with our Badass tropes is that they fundamentally try to cover different things: A character concept, a trait that is used to imply the concept and a single event.

edited 15th May '12 6:13:56 AM by eX

Badass Feminine looks like chairs.

Now, this looks like it's part of the now deprecated Badass Longcoat and Badass Labcoat family.

edited 16th May '12 4:15:26 AM by lu127

I noticed that Badass Angster has been redirected to Heartbroken Badass, when it seems closer to Hurting Hero to me.

Badass Bandanna.

Full of Zero Context Examples.

It seems to be one of those tropes like Badass Longcoat that actually is a trope, but it's an establisher and not a character trope. I think we should probably try to get it a different name and have the description elaborate on that point a little.

Are we gonna cut some of the tropes, or just redefine all of 'em?

Badass Automaton and a few others were felt to be cuttable.

Real Men Love Jesus needs a look over, since it defines itself as "very religiously-devout Badass". Strangely enough, it's not listed on any of the Badass tropes-related indexes.

edited 6th Aug '12 7:40:12 PM by MarqFJA

I feel that there are way too many of the "Badass X" tropes anyway, since they're often just a combination of two qualities, such as Badass Biker, Badass Furry or Badass Gay. Even Action Girl is (in my opinion) moving closer to being chairs. It used to be notable back in the day when women were still expected to be feminine, do housework, etc. but it's becoming less of a trope since they're so incredibly common nowadays. That aside, I feel that all the "Badass X" tropes that are only a combination of two things should be cut, and only the ones that actually mean anything (such as Handicapped Badass, who still kicks ass despite being handicapped, or the Badass Pacifist who manages to be the "baddest motherfucker on the planet" despite being an Actual Pacifist) should remain, i.e. the ones that describe a character you wouldn't think to be badass because of some other quality they have (which is also the reason that I think Action Girl is moving closer to being chairs, since "badass" and "girl" are no longer seen as a stark contrast by most people).

EDIT: Reading through that wall of text again made me realize that I might not get my message across properly, so I'll try to make it concise here: only the subtropes of Badass that are tropes should remain, in this case the ones where the X in the "Badass X" is something that contrasts with the Badass. Anything else and it's chairs.

edited 18th Aug '12 4:10:32 PM by xtrem3rd

i also think it should count if X affects the WAY they are badass

So: badass who happens to wear a suit, not a trope. badass who is very professional and fights in a way to keep their suit clean, Badass in a Nice Suit

I have a suggestion to help this effort stop stagnating here. Instead of dealing with these all one by one, perhaps we could just hold several crowners. For example, the first would just list basically every contested one like Badass Automaton to vote on if we think they're a trope or not. Vote up means we keep it, voting down means it goes.

This might be a good way to speed up the effort, but not a good way to get useful opinions.

Possibly. We don't get much through traffic here, but in the TRS it might work better. Then again, the TRS is full right now.

I think we do need some way of speeding this up. A large crowner like that might be the best way to go about it.

edited 15th Nov '12 11:19:40 AM by Arha

Maybe, but we should make sure to put a brief/concise explanation of the Whats and Whys for those who can't be bothered with reading through the TRS threads that are connected with crowners (which sadly comprises the majority of crowner voters, last I heard). The "At issue" box is horribly underused.

edited 15th Nov '12 11:53:53 AM by MarqFJA

@ xtrem 3d I think we can keep Badass Biker as there are a lot of these in media (Johnny Klebitz,Francis, and Mad Max come to mind)). However, I think we can toss Badass Gay because I can't really think of any examples from recent media other than Metal Gear Solid.

edited 23rd Nov '12 8:59:24 AM by IlVit

That's not really a valid argument. Tropes come and go, but we still document when they occur even if they don't anymore.

I think we could probably delete the majority of the Badass tropes, and be left with a handful of tropes that actually mean something other than "this person is cool," like Dying Moment of Awesome (for example).

I sticki'ed the OP.

Now, where were we with the sorting?

I think it was Sandbox.Badass Tropes.

Also, a link to it should exist in the OP.

Hm? Weren't we planning to send things through the TRS and fix them up like that? I thought the prevailing opinion was that Special Efforts doesn't get enough through traffic to sort out all the individual tropes, but the TRS thread for Badass Native was locked so that we could talk about that sort of thing here.

So if we're not doing that anymore what's the new plan?