Badass tropes - now on: Action Girl

There were two options in that post. Or did you mean "Yeah, make a crowner with those two options"?

edited 3rd Feb '17 3:17:59 PM by MarqFJA

folding Prince or Princess who fights, especially in their nations military, into Warrior Prince(ess) is good. There's storytelling nuance there in what the relationship between the noble and the warrior class is.

I'm less sold on Tomboy Princess and definitely not Plucky Princess. All that is already covered by Tomboy, Ladette, or Plucky Girl. Being a noble is incidental.

I feel like there's a lot of stereotyping around the Princess Classic sort of thing, though, that does create a definite distinction.

It's playing around the Princess Classic stereotype and Damsel in Distress. The stereotypical Princess is just a demure doorstop waiting to be rescued by their prince.

Tomboy Princess is explicitly not, they do not take lessons on etiquette or Tea Ceremony and almost always are in conflict with teachers over that or in conflict over an Arranged Marriage and such. Many tomboy The Ojou are in the same situation, which probably should be expanded to include them. They may or may not be a Rebellious Princess and not all Rebellious Princesses are that.

A Plucky Princess will follow the Princess Classic but when push comes to shove they avoid things like Damsel in Distress by rescuing themselves or talking their way out of trouble. Princess Peach in the Mario games where she is playable are portrayed like this while the rest are just stereotypical doorstop princess to be rescued. So would Princess Fiona in Shrek which notably played her as a pure damsel at first before busting the stereotype as it was only bait and she could channel The Matrix when needed. Related to Yamato Nadeshiko which tend to do the same when pushed and Silk Hiding Steel.

Edit: Princess Zelda only becomes a Warrior Princess in Hyrule Warriors and every other entry she is just a Plucky Princess.

edited 4th Feb '17 1:47:35 AM by Memers

reading the trope for Tomboy Princess i can see how it counts.

Plucky Princess is still nothing but 'active or not damseled?' that's pretty non-tropeworthy. We already have Royals Who Actually Do Something for that, and various general personality tropes that can better describe individuals.

Royals Who Actually Do Something is a potential supertrope to all these really depending on the actual example. Not all of them though.

Royals Who Actually Do Something isn't the same thing at all, since it's such a broad supertrope.

The biggest argument about whether Plucky Princess (which most covers Badass Princess as I currently understood it, incidentally) is tropeworthy is whether it's a common and deliberate enough variant on the broader "princess stereotypes" to be worth troping as anything other than a subversion of Princess Classic. I'm inclined to think it is, but I suppose there's room for debate.

edited 4th Feb '17 4:30:30 AM by nrjxll

The one that I think best fits Plucky Princess as you describe it is Asami from Legend of Korra, she's created as this member of the elite, and is very glamorous. But, when she needs to, she can beat you down.

Girly Bruiser? Cute Bruiser? Lady of War? Kicking Ass in All Her Finery? Silk Hiding Steel?

We already have tropes that are about appearance or composure and how that subverts expectations about how good a fighter they are, or what their fighting style is.

Or if you don't know they're female both Sweet Polly Oliver (when its an intentional disguise on their part) and Samus Is a Girl (where it's your unconscious sexist bias that made you assume male)

Again being a noble is incidental, because even Asami as you pointed out, is NOT a noble. She's just rich.

edited 4th Feb '17 9:02:39 AM by acrobox

Yeah, I'm not sold on Plucky Princess, either...

I see Royals Who Actually Do Something getting the same treatment as Action Girl — getting turned into a supertrope that direct to specific sub-tropes (i.e. Warrior Prince(ss) and Commander King), with examples that do not fit the sub-tropes being listed on the main page, such as those covered with our given definition of Plucky Princess.

edited 4th Feb '17 9:32:36 AM by erazor0707

A Plucky Princess really does not have to be a Royals Who Do Something because that requires some kind of active role in governing and such and not sit on their ass all day.

A Plucky Princess might just be a Hikikomori getting waited on hand and foot until she gets pissed off by anything and she pulls out a minigun and fills the threat full of lead. Ala Rozalin Disgaea 2 who literally did nothing as a Princess since she was a prisoner in her castle all her life but still had that minigun.

But really it is just the big remainder of the Badass Princess trope, I think it should exist because it is specifically calling out that Princess Classic is bullshit by injecting a bit of girl power into a doorstop stereotype. If it doesn't exist we can expect shoehorns in Warrior Princess for pretty much every princess that gets that little bit of action to move them outside the Princess Classic stereotype.

edited 4th Feb '17 4:20:37 PM by Memers

Hmm... I do see the point. I guess any measure of deflecting Trope Decay from Badass Princess is better than nothing.

edited 4th Feb '17 4:28:11 PM by erazor0707

While I'm in agreement with Memers for the most part... I thought we'd be eliminating Badass Princess altogether, and instead dividing the examples among Warrior Princess, Tomboy Princess, and Plucky Princess.

The whole point to this was to get rid of the 'badass' as the term was just too damn broad as well as pretty opinion based. Making tropes for specific non-opinion based aspects of the trope such as if it is part of an Unlikely Fighter stereotype is the goal as I understand it.

And Plucky Princess is that, thanks to Princess Classic along with other high class stereotypes you do not expect a princess to be anything else but a doorstop and its a surprise when she does.

A Tomboy Princess is not a fighter at all it is an unlikely personality trope which could be a Plucky Princess, Warrior Princess, just a sports player (pictured) or any number of things.

Royals Who Do Something is a broad supertrope to most of the examples for these but also covers those politically active and use politics as a tool and such, which were still getting filed under 'badass' hence the issue. EDIT: Politically-Active Princess is also a thing.

EDIT 2: The rest of the badass tropes like Badass Gay or Badass Unintentional need that as well.

edited 4th Feb '17 5:31:56 PM by Memers

Bad Boss, Hair-Trigger Temper, Berserk Button?

There's still nothing you've said about Plucky Princess that makes the "princess" part particularly important. I also would be wary of calling pulling out a machine gun as 'pluckiness'

If I'm understanding Memers correctly, the "princess" is necessary so Plucky Princess can serve as a subversion of the Princess Classic stereotype.

Holy shit, I forgot all about Politically-Active Princess...

"Has at least one moment when she subverts Princess Classic somehow" doesn't seem like a good trope if there's no other rules or patterns we're looking at for it.

I think it ought to be more than just one moment, certainly.

It's for the examples where a princess is not fighting either for or against her country (Warrior Princess and Rebellious Princess), but can still kick ass, right?

Hope you don't mind me jumping in... but I'm wary of using the name Plucky Princess because by definition, the word "plucky" simply means brave or courageous. And that's too broad of a name to discern a specific pattern of traits.

A "subversion of the Princess Classic stereotype" is not by itself tropeworthy, because we don't split every "subversion of a trope" into a separate page. Not unless we can identify what the subversive element is, and that said element happens frequently enough in numerous works, anyway.

edited 5th Feb '17 8:09:12 AM by Adept

exactly my point. like we need to be really specific about what we're subverting with Plucky Princess, otherwise it just becomes a list of Subversions that's so open to interpretation that it suffers the same fate as "badass"

x11 We also have Cute and Psycho.

edited 5th Feb '17 10:19:52 AM by acrobox

I only said Plucky Princess cause it sounds good and I have seen it used on another forum to describe a princess who would fit in the unbrella I was thinking of.

I'm just using Plucky Princess as a placeholder because it's what was being used already. It wouldn't be a good trope name.

Agreed that Plucky Princess is not a good trope name but I also agree with its purpose. I believe the first paragraph of Badass Princess describes what Memers wants to do: "With all the luxury afforded to a princess and all the knights dedicated to her protection, who would have thought the most dangerous person in the castle is the princess herself? Instead of knitting or gossiping, this princess has developed powers or abilities that make her more like a cactus than a delicate flower. " She's not a tomboy nor a professional warrior (military and all that) and so the expectation is that she's some pampered rich girl who can't take care of herself. Hence the surprise when a dagger drops out her of poofy sleeves and shanks a would-be kidnapper.

The problem/trick here is how to make it distinct from related tropes like (as has been mentioned a couple posts back) Girly Bruiser, Lady of War, Silk Hiding Steel, etc.

Nobility required? Discussed or lampshaded?