Badass tropes - now on: Action Girl

So I just wrote a really long post that my WiFi outright murdered. It was suggestions on basically sifting through the examples of Badass Gay once we've decided where to ditch a lot of the wicks.

Suggestions (which are probably going to be shorter than they were; I am mad)

1. "Badass is gay"/"Gay character is badass" a.k.a. The ZCE. Most refer to other tropes in a character list for separate gayness and badass-ness. Kill.
2. Basically a stand-in for Ambiguously Gay or Bi The Way, but for Bad Ass characters. Kill.
3. Straight Gay is badass. When the sexuality is mentioned as a separate incidental character trait, kill. Otherwise, there may need to be review to see if/where it has value, likely to fit into New Trope.
4. Camp Gay characters are good fighters and camp. Most examples will fit into Agent Peacock, which may need an addendum to fully cover more ground. Where it is a camp gay who is skilled/'insert other definition of badass' but this is at least inferred to be some sort of "in spite of" or even "because of", there may be some that fit into Misery Builds Character. Others need review.
5. Butch Lesbian. Some discretion needed here, I think. There's Butch Lesbian is a skilled fighter rather than the "bruiser" stereotype examples (and within this, examples where it is incidental and others where it is not), and there's Butch Lesbian is fulfilling stereotypes (unacknowledged). Neither appear to have an appropriate trope at the moment. Of course, this is for examples where the sexuality is incidental, thus the former may be inherently a part of New Trope. The latter would then be perhaps some spawn of Action Girl, or a new Tough Chick kind of trope which would note outright butch violence (rather than the typical Beauty Is Never Tarnished of female fighters) that also covers straight women.
6. Lipstick Lesbian is a skilled fighter. Examples where the sexuality is incidental will likely be instead a case of "girly + badass", which is probably Kicking Ass in All Her Finery. There may be other tropes.
7. New Trope — Sexuality and badass-ness not incidental, but directly linked. Likely lampshaded. Possibility to have a trope or section for specific instances as well as a character trope.

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Have I missed anything? Any other suggestions?

edited 1st Aug '16 12:54:48 PM by lakingsif

OH MY GOD; MY PARENTS ARE GARDENIIIIINNNNGGGGG!!!!!

Yes, any character or situation that has the "badass" (whatever that means) and the "gay" traits as incidental is misuse and should be deleted.

Tough Chick sounds redundant and destined for the same sort of "this female character is badass" misuse as Action Girl. Splitting up Butch Lesbian examples by their fighting style is hair splitting.

The 'Tough Chick' is something I think is needed as a polar opposite of Girly Bruiser.

As that page goes, "If there is a Tomboy and Girly Girl situation then she will be the Girly Girl but will not be any less of a badass." The rough and tumble tomboy badass in that pair is really a trope as well.

Sure there are times when the Girly Bruiser is stronger than the Scrappy Tomboy Bruiser / Rough And Tumble Tomboy Bruiser like Futari Wa Pretty Cure but it's still a trope imo.

edited 3rd Aug '16 3:02:22 PM by Memers

I tried launching Tough Chick a while ago as part of the Action Girl clean up effort and it was met with stiff opposition in YKTTW / TLP.

Probably because Tough Chick, even if launched as the antithesis to Girly Bruiser, might suffer decay.

I've been reviewing examples of how to use other gay tropes to denote badassery. I particularly like this example of Undyne from Undertale:

• Butch Lesbian: Hot-Blooded, an Action Girl, refuses to do anything by halves...about the only reason she's not under Testosterone Poisoning is that she's female, and yep, she likes the ladies.

Pretty covers it what Badass Gay would imply, don't you think?

A cruel, sick joke is still a joke, and sometimes all you can do is laugh.

That's not quite right and way too broad. Not all Butch Lesbian are the rough and tumble badass brawlers that everyone is thinking of, it's closer to One of the Guys but that comes with more baggage. There are many ways to be 'ungirly' and not be butch such as The Lad-ette.

I really think we need a Tough Chick type trope for those examples.

edited 3rd Aug '16 8:00:54 PM by Memers

Maybe if we kill all of the obvious misuse first, we'll have a clearer set of "examples" to work out what to do with? As it stands, we have three things (and I'd suggest in this order, too) 1. Kill and redirect misuse, 2. Rename examples to app. tropes (e.g. Agent Peacock, Kicking Ass in All Her Finery, Misery Builds Character), 3. Possibly create two new tropes, the pending Defend My Sexuality and Tough Chick.

So going through wicks and any ZCEs or "character is badass and gay" are to die, anything that reads like Ambiguously Gay should be moved under that title.

OH MY GOD; MY PARENTS ARE GARDENIIIIINNNNGGGGG!!!!!

On option 2, we would need to rewrite Agent Peacock to better fit some of the examples and more on the flamboyancy instead of 'girly'. It's already mostly there but it doesn't quite cover all of it.

Why is Kicking Ass in All Her Finery there? Opulent outfits that a girl can still kick ass in doesn't really have anything to do with this at all. Girly Bruiser would probably be the badass Lipstick Lesbian trope, maybe.

edited 4th Aug '16 5:37:28 AM by Memers

Kicking Ass in All Her Finery is there because most of the Lipstick Lesbian examples I've come across like to write Badass gay tropes with a focus on "and she even does it in this fancy dress!"

I also looked through what we could do for the Badass Gay examples, top to bottom, and ended up just editing a lot of pages because of the fixes:

OH MY GOD; MY PARENTS ARE GARDENIIIIINNNNGGGGG!!!!!

"Scrappy Tomboy Bruiser" is The Same But More Specific to tomboy. One of the classic tomboy traits is that a girl would rather roughhouse with the boys than play dress up with the girls. While this doesn't describe ALL tomboys it is not so exclusive that we need separate tropes for "tomboys that fight" and "tomboys that do not fight".

The same is true for Tough Chick. There is nothing about this proposal that makes it different from Action Girl. Unless the difference is "Tough Chicks get bruised when fighting and Action Girls don't".

the difference is the intuitive distinction between Action Girl (girl who just happens to be capable fighting or isn't totally helpless) and Tough Chick (girl that makes a point of being capable of fighting that its pretty much in her character description/personality). Its easier to see than it is to define. It's very slight distinction when you try to word it, but unless you're being pedantic its pretty easy to spot.

but i feel like we're getting off topic.

Like I said, The Same But More Specific. What you say about "making a point of being capable of fighting" sounds like You Go, Girl!.

As for being off topic, yes, we were talking about Badass Gay, weren't we? Let's get back to that.

I recall that were discussing removing examples from it that better fit other tropes such as Agent Peacock or Manly Gay. It was talking about what do to with Badass Lesbian examples that we got sidetracked into this "Action Girl vs Tough Chick" thing. My opinion on that is if the character's femininity is what's highlighted in the context rather than sexuality, then tropes regarding the former are where the xample should go.

Honestly, I still think the best course of action of Badass Gay is a rename.

That's what we've been trying to do, but we can't settle on name. Apparently, it has to be a name that pretty much says "badass in spite of/because of being gay." What we've brought some up in the past pages, but were a few shot down while others weren't really talked.

A cruel, sick joke is still a joke, and sometimes all you can do is laugh.

Defending Your Sexuality seemed to float.

I don't see how it's even tropeworthy going by this definition. At least stuff like Badass Grandpa and Badass Adorable have much stronger (and obvious) contrarian elements that make them valid tropes.

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

which is why Badass Gay needs change more urgently than those do.

Defend Your Sexuality works because it means someone calls you out for the identity, and you defend yourself either by working past, or working with, whatever stereotype they tried to throw out you.

otherwise yeah just being gay and a part of the main active cast is not tropeworthy if no one even calls attention to it. in which case its covered by Token Minority.

edited 6th Aug '16 6:29:34 PM by acrobox

Pretty much this.

A cruel, sick joke is still a joke, and sometimes all you can do is laugh.

okay, time to start throwing out ideas on how to rewrite Badass Gay into Defend Your Sexuality, then

OH MY GOD; MY PARENTS ARE GARDENIIIIINNNNGGGGG!!!!!

On the "Defend Your Sexuality" thing, what of characters who are never called out on it? For example, Niles, Rhajat and Soleil from Fire Emblem Fates. All three are canonically bisexual characters, but no one ever calls them out/makes fun of it^note Well, aside from Soleil's bisexuality being Played for Laughs because Values Dissonance.

Also, I just remembered something: There was talks about I Just Want to Be Badass being changed or renamed. Why? The trope name and main description explain it very well and most examples aren't a Zero Context Example from what I can see.

Pretty sure the entire argument for the last few pages has been that characters like that just aren't tropeworthy.

those three fire emblem characters are not tropeworthy as Badass Gay or Defend Your Sexuality.

Niles and Rhajat are tropeworthy for Gay Option, as the first and only male/female characters that can be in a confirmed same sex relationship.

And they can be tropeworthy for other combat tropes.

Like if you see Dark Magical Girl and Gay Option for the same character 'Badass Gay' is already heavily implied and therefore pointless, better covered by other tropes separately.

or Gay Option and Big Damn Heroes if they get like a Cutscene Power to the Max moment.

Or just Gay Option for a playable non-Joke Character in a video game makes 'Badass Gay' again pointless, because they're only as Badass as you make them by leveling them up and getting good with them.

Badass Gay doesn't mean anything.

edited 6th Aug '16 11:28:42 PM by acrobox

'Defend Your Sexuality' sounds like an entirely different trope than anything discussed here, violence is not required IMO, take it to YKTTW IMO.

edited 7th Aug '16 2:31:27 AM by Memers

violence isn't necesarry to being Badass either.

I mean we can YKTTW it, but then we should just cut Badass Gay wholesale instead of saving the wicks.

Whether we YKTTW Defend Your Sexuality or not, the fact of the matter is Badass Gay needs to renamed, redefined, and/or cut altogether. It sounds like a "trope" that might be in the workshop for some time. Like how the appearance tropes ^note  Red-Headed Hero and Tomboyish Sidetails are two former tropes being gotten rid of, Action Girl ^note  becoming a super trope with a list , and Dangerously Genre-Savvy are being heavily reworked as of now

edited 7th Aug '16 1:42:49 PM by erazor0707

A cruel, sick joke is still a joke, and sometimes all you can do is laugh.