Misused: Light Feminine And Dark Feminine

Light Feminine and Dark Feminine seems to suffer from a lot of examples being forced in.

From my reading of the trope description this is supposed to be a duo. A pair of female characters that are contrasted with each other.

Tons of examples are just a "light" female character and a "dark" female character who are not a pair, nor really drawn as contrasts but just happen to be in the same show because the villain is female.

This is most strongly evidence by the number of examples that list more than two characters. Often with the line that either one can fit as the 'dark feminine' so "take your pick."

That does not sound like an example of a pair.

Compare this to Tomboy and Girly Girl which are always shown strongly as a pair.

Which is another thing, the trope says that both girls are supposed to be feminine, yet some Tomby And Girly Girl comparisions seem to have crept in.

There are also a bunch of examples that seem to assume blonde = light, and dark = brunette.

Let's look at some of these examples:

• In Code Geass, Shirley is the Light Feminine to contrast with either Kallen as the Dark Feminine, both being part of the Ashford Student Council and love interests for Lelouch. Kaguya could also be the Light Feminine to C.C's Dark Feminine, with those two being a part of the Black Knights.

Ah... no. Shirley is the normal girl compared to Kallen the Action Girl. Kallen isn't even really dark, she's a Fiery Redhead who wants to rebel against tyranny. Not what I would call dark. I suppose she does represent the Veronica while Shirley is the Betty, but that's not this trope.

CC is a Mysterious Waif, she is dangerous, but I wouldn't really call her dark. Well... maybe second season. Is she really contrasted with Kaguya though?

• Mawaru-Penguindrum gives us Himari Takakura (Silk Hiding Steel Girl Next Door) and either Masako Natsume (Action Girl Large Ham) or Yuri Tokikago (Badass Normal who swears by the Rule of Glamorous).

Huh....? Okay, so right here you have three girls listed. Yuri isn't dark, she represented as light. Masako might fit as the "dark" to Himari's "light" as Masako sees Himari as her rival (and of course views the roles as reversed), but I'm not even really sure that is accurate.

Really the closest to light vs dark is Himari vs the Princess of the Crystal (who possesses Himari's body).

• Batman Forever has Two-Face's molls, Sugar (played by Drew Barrymore) and Spice (played by Debi Mazar). Subverted in that both of them are "bad", and "Sugar" is probably worse because she gives The Riddler the cube with the information about Bruce Wayne's Secret Identity.

Ah.... aren't these just two villain molls?

Others aren't clear that they don't fit,m but don't seem to be very clear that they do fit.

One of the few that is really clear:

• The Virgin Spring features Karin, the innocent blonde who is specifically stated to be a virgin, and is also a Christian, and Ingeri, her servant girl, who is dark-haired with a dark complexion, is about eight months pregnant, isn't married, and is a secret pagan.

Now that sounds like a clear comparison between the Light Feminine and Dark Feminine.

I mean this clearly a trope, but I think the description could use some work, the examples need to be cleaned up, and I think perhaps there should be a standard format for examples that ensures the contrast part of the trope is emphasized.

edited 10th Apr '14 7:04:06 PM by Sackett

The description looks good but the examples obviously need to be cleaned. I think it would help to have a name change to something like naughty and nice.

Naughty and nice isn't really the division though and would just cause trope decay.

I think we need an example format that will enforce the trope on the examples.

Something like:

• Alice and Betty a paired because of <situation> (eg they are in a love triangle with Bob). Alice is the Dark Feminine because of x and y traits. Betty is the Light Feminine because of the a and b traits. Z scene/arc contrasts these traits by doing i and j.

Explain why the two characters are paired. Identify their light and dark traits. Give an example of the contrasting done in the media.

That would help certainly. Enforcing it is the question.

I agree wholeheartedly with the clean-up. I remember that I deleted some shoe-horned examples when the girls were decidedly a trio. However, it's always hard to say if they are related if you are not familiar with the work. Plus there are some examples that I think are misuse as well — the girl has Split Personality and one side is light while her other is dark. I think they should be strictly two different people (though I might be wrong on this one). Also, the page is heavily commented out because of Zero Context Examples - it woulf be cool if we could collaborate and add scontext to some of those.

I like the name a lot. Light and Dark are great metaphors for the personality type. We only need to make clear that it should not be taken literally, but I know of several examples when the Light Feminine has Hair of Gold, Heart of Gold while the Dark Feminine has Raven Hair, Ivory Skin.

I think it can be done with the following steps:

We add it to the description as the required format for examples.

Modify current examples to match the format. (The one we know)

Nuke all the other examples.

Clock is set.

Clock's up; locking for inactivity.