Needs Help: Action Girl

I don't think we need to add our opinion into the description. Just note that the trend of having action girls has become more popular with time. Maybe note that there's less intention to buck tradition behind said movement than there used to be.

There's a big difference between something "generally" being the case, and something being the case "in some media and cultures". And the difference in length between the two wordings is minimal, FYI.

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I assume that instead of 'some media and cultures' its probably closer to 'most media and cultures worldwide', which then can be simplified to 'mostly' then to 'generally.'

I can't think of a real life culture that prioritizes female action heroes over male heroes in terms of sheer volume of stories they produce.

Arha, if it were solely up to me, I wouldn't touch the real life issues/causes/whatever with this trope with a ten foot pole. But it's not, and several people here have indicated they believe that the whole real life thing is the heart of the trope.

One way or another, the description is going to have to have some kind of statement in that regard, and I'd like to keep it as clean and nonjudgmental as possible.

I didn't say we shouldn't mention it, I said we shouldn't be making value judgements. If it were me I'd make the sentence something like "As time has gone by, action girls have simultaneously grown more common and thus the novelty value or intention to buck tradition have started fading from the trope." Speculating about why that might be the case could be and probably already is the subject of an essay, not something people come here to have fun reading about. They can draw their own implications from the information we provide.

I would more precisely state that as the "subverting gender roles" purpose of this trope started fading, it became more about a type of inversion: that is, the feminization of Action itself. The modern Action Girl is more likely to deal with battle "in a feminine way". Creating a new Double Standard in and of itself.

For example, Chun-Li, Lara Croft, Buffy Summers, Sailor Moon, and Resident Evil's Alice have become the default that the layman thinks of when you say "Action Girl".

Nah we dont want to conflate the supertrope with any subtropes regardless of how prominent they are.

Action Girl should not be equated to Dainty Combat in its definition. Nor She-Fu or Lad-ette any other qualifier. Keep it as simple and clean as possible.

All the other stuff can go on the analysis page, or on the subtrope pages themselves.

edited 8th Sep '14 11:53:48 PM by acrobox

Agreed. This is a very broad supertrope and should be as unspecific as we can make it.

Huh? In that case, wouldn't the whole "woman is subverting gender roles" part be covered by other subtropes?

I'm just saying that, if you're trying to briefly outline the baggage of trope (which seems to be partially the goal), that would be part of it.

edited 9th Sep '14 2:50:40 AM by KingZeal

You're adding baggage that doesn't really have anything to do with it, though. An action girl doesn't have to be feminine or girly.

Okay, fair enough. But in that case, so is the part that talks about the gender dynamics fading over time. In any particular example, that may be true or it may not be.

basically that on a macro level, its becoming more common, so its less of a straight subversion. but end it there.

But what I'm saying is, that's adding a presumption into the trope.

Not really. Action girls have become more common as time went by and there's often less emphasis placed on them being girls. If you want to complain about that, you could say it has nothing to do with the trope directly.

I have a better proposal:

"As society has marched on, the view of this as a subversion has faded in some media, leading to stories where Action Girls are the norm rather than the exception — stories set in a World of Action Girls."

I remembered that we had noted problem cases where wicks should be listed under World of Action Girls instead of just Action Girl, so that way we make this relevant to the trope and possibly help stem that kind of misuse. (I should have thought of this sooner.) Sound good?

My issue with what Arha said is "there's often less emphasis on them being girls". The point I was making before is that this isn't strictly true. It's not that there's "less emphasis"; just not the same emphasis.

This trope juggles "Here's a girl doing what men normally do and that's exceptional" alongside "here's a girl doing action her way, because she's a girl". Both sides of the coin emphasize that it's a girl doing these things.

Stories which play Gender Is No Object completely straight in an action conflict are still very much an exception and not any sort of rule.

edited 9th Sep '14 1:38:35 PM by KingZeal

Looks good.

I like it too. the only thing i would change would be

"As society has marched on, the view of this as a subversion has faded in some media, leading to stories where Action Girls are the norm rather than the exception such as stories set in a World of Action Girls."

just so you know, it doesnt have to be a World of Action Girls for action girls to be seen as normal in-universe.

^ I was thinking the same thing.

also @Zeal

i see what you're saying, but as a supertrope we don't want to favor any one side of that coin in the description.

Some subtropes will favor "Woman does 'man's work'," and some will favor "Woman makes 'man's work' feminine" and for some may not call attention to that at all. But all three of the above are becoming more common on a macro level.

edited 9th Sep '14 2:22:34 PM by acrobox

I advocate that. "Not favoring" any side of the coin is exactly why I suggested it in the first place. We either need to account for all three phenomena in the description, or none of them. None of them, of course, is more efficient.

The current proposal seems acceptable.

Made the change to the sandbox per the above suggestions.

Anything else we need to change or tweak? If not, I'll switch the definition out, and then we can start on the oh-so-fun work of wick cleaning.

Go for it,

also im going to try to take The Tough Chick to the YKTTW to get back the prototypical spunky attitude default Action Girl that was lost overtime.

I'll do the switch tomorrow evening, just to make sure anyone else who has objections or issues has time to comment.

In the meantime, anyone know of any subtropes the current list might be missing? Might as well make sure the list is comprehensive so we have the most places there for the wick cleanup.

I am fine with Sandbox.Action Girl as a description.

The current list should actually probably remove more things than it adds. I'm going to add them to the bottom of the sandbox and look through them. I'll comment out ones I don't believe are subtropes, meaning they need to be A. character tropes B. exclusively female and C. always capable of fighting.

Done. I got rid of probably 2/3 of the subtropes listed. I'm not convinced that Cute Bruiser is female exclusive but since it's written like it is I didn't comment it out, just attached my opinion to it.

edited 11th Sep '14 11:24:19 AM by Arha