Badass tropes - now on: Action Girl

Okay, so

1. Cool. Probably the most common usage in normal speech
2. Fighter. The most common usage on the wiki
3. Brave.
4. Skilled.

Are there any other particularly common usages?

Tough. As in, exhibits unusual endurance to pain and/or injury. And I do not mean that it's limited to shrugging off blows like they were nothing with no visible damage; I also include cases of clearly suffering injuries, yet perserving against them in a way that a "normal" person would not be able to (e.g. refusing to pass out from the pain or fall down when others would've long done so).

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I would add "powerful". I see that a lot. "Badass: X is a powerful character". It's like that.

I think one meaning that is quite common is "Dangerous". Whether the badass is dangerous because they're a trained fighter, or because they're an overpowered demigod, or for whatever else reason.

Another quite common thing is "exceptionally good at fighting". Like, not just any competent fighter, but someone who can kick all the competent fighters' asses. That's how a lot of examples are worded: either the character manages to defeat an army, or an overpowered monster, or win in a handicapped situation, or something like that. So, not just any fighter, but an exceptional one.

Another common meaning is "commanding respect". The character has such an imposing image, foes and allies alike can't help but respect them.

Similar to "Tough" and "Resilient", there's also "Got balls" and "Got willpower". Some examples are worded like that, and I also encountered the word being used in real life for examples of sheer bravery or willpower strength.

I suggest that the new page should use the Mary Sue page as a template.

1. very brief and general statement about the trope
2. History of the term
3. small sections for each use

etc

Sandbox Bumb!

A week has past and no one has posted so I'm going to bumb this thread with a draft version of the page. This is just a rough version of a possible page. Let's talk about it: https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Sandbox/BadassFanSpeak

That looks like a solid start. I think the description before the types needs to be longer, and the list can just be bullet points instead of headers.

I was also thinking that a bunch of tropes with badass in the name could simply use a rename. Say Badass Cape could just be renamed to something like "Cape of Asskicking" or "Warrior Cape". Badass Princess could be renamed something like "Princess of Power" after She-Ra (I do not recommend merging with Warrior Prince, since that trope still fits Men Are Tough but a princess stereotypically falls under Women Are Delicate).

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

The first part could definitely use more meat. This is something I threw together quickly. Please feel free to add or change anything you see.

I think 'Badass as fighter' should probably either go at the top or have a note saying that that's how the trope is most frequently used on this wiki. Or both. The other definitions are also valid in their own way, but I think if we do that we'll have less problems in YKTTW with people making new unrelated subtropes and it'll help make things easier for this project going forward.

Yeah, I also like it!

I think the first "meaning" should just be "cool, awesome" — because that's the way the word "badass" is most commonly used in the vernacular.

Arha, seriously, that's your statistic but I respectfully disagree with it. Let's just mention all meanings without getting into a long dispute about which one is more common. It's unnecessary for this writeup.

And I think, after this change, new Badass snowclones should just be verboten altogether.

edited 13th Oct '15 3:07:52 PM by Rjinswand

It's not really about Badass itself when I say that. I just want this project to know what we're doing with future pages. I mean, if all current subtropes are valid if they use any one of those definitions things are going to get very complicated and we'll have no basis for stopping ykttw badass tropes. I don't really have any intention of working on that vague of a project.

It doesn't have to be 'this is the most common usage' even though it is but just that that's what the subtropes are usually built around.

Also, what about the wicks? Do we delete all zces and those that don't fall under one of those definitions?

edited 13th Oct '15 3:24:34 PM by Arha

I don't think it should have any subtropes, really. If anything, our discussions, and the current rewrite, clearly shows that the word "badass" is too broad and multi-definitioned to serve as a trope.

As for the wicks, I don't think it should have those either. I mean, which meaning would those wicks use? But that could be solved via a new crowner, I guess.

I put an alternate version of the description up since I found the old one a little clunky. I might touch up some of the individual definitions later.

Also, if you're suggesting that Badass will have no subtropes, then that creates a number of issues we need to resolve in some other way. Like why we have five hundred tropes that all have Badass in the title. And what exactly all those pages have in common.

Edit: As for wicks, I could go either way.

edited 13th Oct '15 3:53:50 PM by Arha

That's what this thread is for. As DragonQuestZ said, they would warrant renaming to more clear titles.

I don't think they all have something in common. Most likely there are several quite distinct trope trees.

The wick checks showed a clear pattern, there was a pattern we were using in this thread... look, I don't care anymore, but it's rude to treat Arha like a lone Single-Issue Wonk when he's far from the only person who thinks the wicks are being used a certain way. Let's just drop the subject and move on.

As for the wicks, while I am still in favor of deleting ZCE's outright instead of commenting them out, I think renaming each and every subtrope is unnecessary. For some of them, sure, but the thread has already gone over most of the badass subtropes, sorting them or renaming them. We don't need to do those again.

I'm still in favor in killing the examples wicks for the supertrope since it's so broad, plus it leads to gushing about characters when it's not attracting ZCEs. At least subtropes like Badass Adorable and Badass Bookworm have specific definitions that sometimes display contrasts between appearance and ability.

edited 13th Oct '15 5:05:57 PM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Renaming all the subtropes doesn't just sound unnecessary, it sounds next to impossible. Renaming Badass Normal sounds like a huge headache by itself let alone a lot of the other related tropes. And I also support deleting ZCEs over commenting them out like normal since I know that there are just far too many to really expect people to actually fix them. Plus, if we cut down on the number of pages that link to Badass it'll be easier to check it again in the future. I also suspect that most of the usage is redundant, such as listing someone as a Badass and a Badass Normal or whatever.

edited 13th Oct '15 5:06:59 PM by Arha

I was under the impression that Fanspeak pages weren't tropes anyway, but kept as psuedo-Useful Notes pages.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Woops, too late deleting that from my post. And uh, let me check the fanspeak pages I can remember off the top of my head. Dandere is apparently listed on the main pages and Baka transformed into Useful Notes at some point. Do we have a policy for dealing with fanspeak? I thought we did but now the two pages I knew of aren't treated like that anymore.

Edit: Okay, too tired to talk about this right now. Kinda feels like I'm not stating my position properly.

edited 13th Oct '15 5:18:14 PM by Arha

Dandere is in the Anime Fan Speak Index like Baka, so I don't know what the hell's up with that. It should probably be a Useful Note like Baka.

edited 13th Oct '15 5:22:16 PM by Karxrida

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

@1340: I don't want to be rude, I'm just reiterating that the wick checks I've done show that "is a fighter" is not the most common definition of "Badass". The fact that you agree with Arha doesn't negate my reasons for disagreeing with them.

---

As for the names. We can keep the most well-suited Badass snowclone names, due to Grandfather Clause. But in any case, if a trope's named e.g. Badass Normal, that doesn't mean it should necessarily be a subtrope of the fan-speak Badass page.

edited 13th Oct '15 6:16:48 PM by Rjinswand

Fan Speak is an ad hoc sort of thing with each page treated in its own way.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Maybe we should start with things we definitely agree on. Is everyone in favor of removing all ZCE wicks? Or are there other opinions on that matter? Because if everyone agrees they should be removed, we could start doing that, it'll take quite some time to do.

Removing ZCE has always been a free action. As well as commenting them out.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

Okay! Then my suggestion to everyone is to focus on removing ZCE. After we do that, it'd be easier to review and decide on the other examples.