The Grand Unified Appearance Trope Clean-up:

Indeed. 3.5: 1 is impressive.

It's always the obvious ones you don't think of right away.

I'm going to holler for a call on this crowner.

Calling crowner in favor of Rose-Haired Sweetie.

That was the amazing part. Things just keep going.

Bump. I believe we should start tackling Thigh High Boots now. Rose-Haired Sweetie has long been fixed IIRC.

Is dast der Zerstorer? Odar die Schopfer?

All right, the issues with that one seems to be it's just anyone in thigh high boots, and the image seems to fall into that category.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

It's been a pain in the butt since the tweak to the description about the character being aggressive. The first thing we need to do is an example pruning, limiting it to actual over-the-knee boots, and then possibly revisit the name issue and fiddle with the description some.

edited 21st Mar '14 9:55:04 PM by Willbyr

To me, thigh-high boots are a signal of overt, active sexuality, not aggression. Aggressiveness may go along with it, but doesn't need to. You don't put a sweet Girl Next Door in thigh-high boots.

edited 22nd Mar '14 6:23:09 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I think a Girl Next Door in thigh-high boots could be a Subverted Trope example if the circumstances surrounding the scene are right. Like, say, a Cool Big Sis is playing dress-up with her, and the GND's unofficial, Oblivious to Love love interest sees her in the boots, and for the first time in his life actually looks at her as a woman rather than just a female friend.

edited 22nd Mar '14 6:33:34 AM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

Well, yes, but that's Subverted. Subverting a trope makes it say something different that the trope played straight. She may be playing dress-up, or have gotten a "sexy" make-over or any number of things, but that's not going to make the boots into a different symbol.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I wasn't advocating for making the boots into a different symbol in the first place.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I'm not so sure about the "overt sexuality" definition. I think it means aggressive in the "you will obey me, scum!" sense as opposed to "I shall whip you into submission" sense.

Lu Lingqi sports a pair, and she's hardly a dominatrix Ms. Fanservice, she's slightly tomboyish and rather aggressive though.

also, you asked for an image, the link had one with lingqi, though she's just standing in it.

Is dast der Zerstorer? Odar die Schopfer?

Yes, but she has armoured boots, and they really don't seem to keep the same symbolism when they're done as video game armour since that seems to be generally just designed as random selection of elements the designer finds sexy rather than any particular nod to safety, security, or the character's personality.

That's a whole different trope, not this one.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

That relates to one of my concerns about attempting to "salvage" Fanservice Costumes tropes, though: can we really tell whether there's a deeper meaning and associated characterization for most of them beyond just "it looks sexy"?

edited 22nd Mar '14 9:16:46 AM by nrjxll

^^^ Hookers are often put in thigh-high boots, even when they aren't domme-ish at all. Dommes wear them because they add to the overt sexuality, not because they are aggressive in any other sense.

Show a picture of a woman in thigh-high boots to a bunch of people, and ask them to give a thumbnail characterization of the woman wearing them, and, at a rough guess, 90% of them will talk about her sexuality, not her aggressiveness or ability to kick ass.

^ The difference is in whether the "looks sexy" part is used to add anything to the characterization or not. Look at Daisy Duke in the Series.The Dukes Of Hazzard: midriff top, short-shorts, bare legs, long flowing hair. But none of those added anything to her characterization — they were just there to make her better as eye-candy.

edited 22nd Mar '14 9:23:36 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Say what. I thought the whole point was the fact that people who wear THB are aggressive?

why is armored boots somehow different? do armored boots somehow equal Chain Mail Bikini?

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that's probably pretty much the problem of anything else that we might try to tackle here. Try Underwear of Power for one. The actual "underwear gives powers" definition consist of less than half the examples there. it's basically just a character design trope with no real meaning other than it connotes someone is a superhero or something.

EDIT: and typo

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Oh, I guess that does make sense. on the picture test, I'd say what she wears as a top would make the difference. bikini top would imply sexually overt. something more conservative (say leather jacket) would likely imply Biker Babe instead.

edited 22nd Mar '14 9:29:25 AM by ShanghaiSlave

Is dast der Zerstorer? Odar die Schopfer?

Yeah, Armoured Boots and Armoured Gloves are more Chainmail Bikini. Often times they're used as a place to put token armour somewhere without actually covering up the torso where the sexy happens.

Also, Biker Babe is generally overt sexuality + motorcycles.

edited 22nd Mar '14 9:33:04 AM by shimaspawn

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

^^ Armor of any nature connotes "aggressive". And on the picture test, what else she's wearing will certainly have an effect. A woman in leathers and thigh-high boots is going to be seen as tougher than the woman who's currently the Thigh High Boots page image, in her little knit dress. But in both cases, the boots are accentuating her sexual nature, not her tough nature.

edited 22nd Mar '14 9:34:27 AM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Well, for me "thigh-high boots" usually indicates "sexual aggressivity" mostly.

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

#717 — you officially lost me there man. I thought that was about armor which is non-protective and impractical? armored boots are incomplete leg armor at best. and yeah, kinda missed that.

#718 — well that settles it for me. guess you're right.

EDIT: i forgot number sign makes bullets

edited 22nd Mar '14 9:42:02 AM by ShanghaiSlave

Is dast der Zerstorer? Odar die Schopfer?

Sounds like a dominatrix, but we can't do that.

edited 22nd Mar '14 5:39:48 PM by captainpat

@715: Again, that's my concern. I can agree with the desire to move appearance tropes away from lists of characters with Physical Feature Or Clothing X, but I think there's a big risk of basically tacking arbitrary meanings on stuff that doesn't have anything beyond behind the designer thinking it makes for an interesting or sexy or striking look.

I like what was pointed out earlier, about the contrast between a Biker Babe and the Girl Next Door. Associations of "toughness" will hold up with the former but the later is more likely to be "enforced for eye candy". In the case of the later it wouldn't mean anything and counts only as Fetish Fuel, which was jetisoned from the wiki a while ago.

All I can say is to repeat what Madrugada and Septimus said: in fiction, thigh-high boots tend to stand for overt female sexuality, especially aggressive or dominant sexuality.

Look, I'm no fan of sexualised characters or fanservice, but some tropes are sexual in nature. Neutering the Thigh High Boots trope to mean simply "aggressiveness" (which, as others have mentioned, is a very broad term) destroys whatever meaning it has. In fact I can't think of any "aggressive" (not aggressively sexual, just aggressive) female characters who wear thigh-high boots.

edited 25th Mar '14 4:16:45 AM by DoktorvonEurotrash

It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird

If there's nothing to it besides sexuality (and thus fetish fuel) then we should cut it. Even if the definition became "visual cue for female sexually aggressive character" I forsee a decay into fetish fuel, Zero Context Examples, and other stuff we don't want here.