Needs Help: Action Girl

Action Heroine is just a redirect to Action Hero, that might be why.

@Zeal: That's actually a viable definition for a trope, although I'm pretty sure if I was given the choice I wouldn't want it under the name of Action Girl, for reasons I've already stated. (That might have been your problem too.)

@Septimus: Well, we were talking about "girl who fights", but if you want to broaden the debate to "character who fights", okay then.

Anyway, I don't think you realize what you are saying. When I say "character who fights" or "girl who fights", I'm being perfectly literal. How they fight is not part of the trope. Who they fight is not part of the trope. What they are fighting for is not part of the trope. How good they are at fighting is not part of the trope. And so on, with no other qualifiers whatsoever.

Now that I've established that, I want you to tell me how "character X fights" (replace "character" with "girl" if you want) conveys meaning about the storytelling of a given work, with no other details. Because if it doesn't, well...

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

This seems like a solution in search of a problem.

I don't think very many people would argue that until, oh, 20 years ago, an action heroine was quite unusual. So it seems pretty self-evident to me at least that this is a trope. Now, one might consider it a Discredited Trope, as female action heroes are quite common now, and the more typical Love Interest or Damsel in Distress that one might find in an action film are growing less common. But just because this is a Discredited Trope doesn't mean it isn't a trope. Seems to me the thing to do would be to prune ZC Es and examples that date from after—I dunno, whenever Buffy the Vampire Slayer debuted on TV.

For the record, I'm not arguing that it's a Discredited Trope - that's Madrugada.

My argument is that the half-completed TRS from three years ago turned Action Girl into something that isn't a trope, and this led to the huge number of ZCEs. Now, we're trying to fix it.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

I don't think an Action Heroine (or a female Action Hero) and an Action Girl are the same thing, for the simple reason that an Action Girl doesn't have to be a hero - she could be an Anti-Hero, a villain or even a sidekick.

And it's definitely not People Sit On Chairs — the fact that a certain character tends to solve problems by physical action rather than by talking things through is notable.

Maybe the "girl" part is getting outdated. Perhaps a gender-neutral Action Person may be in order? But I don't think we're quite there yet. There's still a bit of an expectation that fighting is a male thing.

Anyway, I don't think you realize what you are saying. When I say "character who fights" or "girl who fights", I'm being perfectly literal. How they fight is not part of the trope. Who they fight is not part of the trope. What they are fighting for is not part of the trope. How good they are at fighting is not part of the trope. And so on, with no other qualifiers whatsoever.

Now that I've established that, I want you to tell me how "character X fights" (replace "character" with "girl" if you want) conveys meaning about the storytelling of a given work, with no other details. Because if it doesn't, well...

I am going to be frank: I have no idea what you are arguing for. Nothing in that post does in any way, shape or form describe how Action Girl (or "character who fights") in its broad-usage-form is PSOC. "Character X fights" does resolve stuff or advance the story (for example, if they lose and need to try again) and is not PSOC.

edited 18th Aug '14 11:28:40 PM by SeptimusHeap

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

Action Girl, as currently defined, is only a valid trope if Women Are Delicate is so omnipresent that simply averting it is noteworthy. While still very common, Women Are Delicate is definitely not as widespread as it once was, to the extent that treating it as the default, and treating characters who avert the trope as something special, doesn't seem like the best approach to me.

"It takes an idiot to do cool things, that's why it's cool" - Haruhara Haruko

Action Girl, as currently defined, is only a valid trope if Women Are Delicate is so omnipresent that simply averting it is noteworthy.

"Valid trope" as in, not The Same, but More Specific of Badass or as in Action Girl is People Sit on Chairs without the Women Are Delicate aspect? While I disagree with the first, it's a very legit argument. The second is flimsy.

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

I feel like Action Girl is Chairs if Women Are Delicate is not established to mean "women should not fight" in a work.

edited 19th Aug '14 1:03:46 AM by acrobox

That's The Same, but More Specific, actually. People Sit on Chairs requires a concept to not have storytelling significance; "person (regardless of gender) who fights" almost always advances the story in some way and can't be PSOC.

For example, someone defeating the villain in a battle and thus settling the conflict. Someone being defeated in a fight and seeking retribution. A battle in a war. Etc.

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

For instance in an action movie you may still expect Women Are Delicate such that the female characters are more emotional or sensitive or empathetic than the males. But Women Are Delicate does not mean, "women should not fight" because everyone fights.

I think a definition that means "woman who fights" is Chairs. You can be The Chick, or The Heart, or Ingenue, or Princess Classic or Mysterious Waif or The Empath or any other delicate trope and still fight.

"person (gender neutral) who fights" can be a trope, because not everyone fights.

But "woman who fights" is only significant if women are not expected to fight.

I.E. you have to establish that 'women should not be fighting' to have 'woman who fights' be a trope. and Women Are Delicate may be universal, but unless that means explicitly 'men fight, women dont' then they may be delicate in any other myriad way.

edited 19th Aug '14 1:08:52 AM by acrobox

People Sit on Chairs is "something that has no storytelling meaning". "Woman who fights" as I explained earlier has storytelling meaning, even without Women Are Delicate in play. Sure, a trope can gain storytelling meaning through two aspects rather than just one, but PSOC requires the complete lack of a storytelling aspect. Sure, there is a good argument in play that it'd be the same thing as Badass but that has nothing to do with PSOC.

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

To add to what Septimus wrote, for Action Girl to be PSOC, it would have to be the case that all female characters, without exception, would tend to solve their problems with violent means. This is obviously not the case. It still makes sense to say that, for example, in Rizzoli & Isles, Jane is the action person ("girl" may be outdated, since there's nothing unusual about a female detective anymore) while Maura is a bookish scientist. That's not PSOC at all.

On another point, I'm not sure that an Action Girl is the same thing as a female Badass, because to me "Badass" carries connotations of being physically imposing and somewhat scary. For example, Kenzi in Lost Girl is an Action Girl because she's out there fighting by Bo's side, but IMHO she's not very badass.

^" it would have to be the case that all female characters, without exception, would tend to solve their problems with violent means" would technically be an Omnipresent Trope.

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

Well, perhaps. It would, as you wrote earlier, depend on whether it served any story-telling purpose or not.

@Septimus: You're doing a good job not answering my argument.

We have a different trope for that.

We have a different trope for that, too.

I wonder if we have a trope for that as well... ^note Talk about your clunky trope names.

I did say to tell me what the storytelling meaning of "character who fights" with no other details. Those are all "other details", so let's rephrase this. Tell me what storytelling meaning is conveyed by the sentence "character X fights".

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

You're asking the wrong question: not all tropes have story significance. Some tropes are simply descriptive, and explain components of a work, such as specific characters, which may have little or nothing to do with the story as a whole. For example, Fanservice Extra or Lady Not-Appearing-in-This-Game.

Likewise, an Action Girl can be a characterization trope. In that sense, it's definitely a trope that has a purpose (or else it wouldn't be used so damn much), so in actuality, we only need to figure out what purpose.

edited 19th Aug '14 7:19:51 AM by KingZeal

Yes, it's a characterization trope. Calling a character an Action Girl tells us (some combination of) things like that she is a fighter, doesn't shy away from dangerous situations, tends to solve problems by force, and so on. All of which are useful things to know and can't by any reasonable contortion of mind be called PSOC.

OK, @67, that is a better argument. Methinks you threw me off by constantly mentioning People Sit on Chairs (which has nothing to do with being covered by a different trope). One conclusion to draw from that is that if a character does not partake in much fighting, one should be on the look for other tropes that may apply to a fight. As for the meaning of "character who fights" with no other details, let me put it the way that it almost always (if not always, period) advances the story in some fashion.

Also, I guess this topic should be mentioned to the folks in the Badass cleanup as well since some arguments apply to that trope too.

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

@Everyone: Please do not confuse story (aka plot) and storytelling (which you ought to note is the word I was using). Characterization is part of the latter, but not always the former.

@Gnome, Zeal: I have no major problems with that as a possible definition of Action Girl. But the current definition of Action Girl is not that, and it hasn't officially been used that way in years.

@Septimus: That was the original argument I was making, just worded differently.

Significance isn't just something that shows up in examples. It has to be part of the definition of the trope itself. That's why I keep saying it's PSOC. Saying "character who fights" is a trope is no different from saying "character is blonde-haired" is a trope. Without additional details, both are meaningless concepts. When it comes to significance, a trope has to stand on its own.

Expergiscēre cras, medior quam hodie. (Awaken tomorrow, better than today.)

"Blonde hair" does not usually affect the story, unlike fights. Otherwise, I am convinced that "character who fights" is a trope if it happens with some regularity to the point that it is a characterization factor, but if no it should be troped under individual fight scene tropes instead.

Also, I referenced this thread in the badass cleanup effort.

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

agree with post 71

also if "character x fights" with no other context is a trope, how is "character x is explicitly female and fights" a unique trope that wouldn't be lumped in with the gender neutral version.

Otherwise you need "character x is explicitly male and fights" if the associations are so wildly different between the sexes, rendering "character x fights" an example less supertrope

edited 19th Aug '14 9:07:19 AM by acrobox

I think there's a difference in the way this site defines a "trope" from what the whole truth, which is exacerbating our troubles.

The real problem here is that this is a situation where there is definitely a trope, but we simply don't know how to define it succinctly and correctly for the purpose of a web encyclopedia. Again, we can tell this is a trope because works and creators go well out of their way to create an Action Girl, but there's no unifying concept to the trope beyond "girl who uses physical force to solve her problems".

Look at the trope from the perspective of a random viewer. Let's assume some person wonders, "Gee, I wonder what action works have female fighters?" That's actually a legitimate question, because it's not something you can expect to see in every work, no matter how much action it involves. For example, Independence Day doesn't have a single one, despite a very diverse cast of token characters whose tokenism is kind of the Aesop. Regardless of this, not a single female character is shown doing anything action oriented.

You can't reverse that question and get the same response, because the answer would be "Everything, unless it's a World of Action Girls."

Regardless of how much progress we've made, or how much the world has changed, Action Girl is a trope because of that imbalance and will remain such unless that imbalance somehow becomes corrected. Heck, even then, it might still be a trope, because a later change doesn't change the fact that the imbalance once existed.

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Am I making sense so far? Because if I'm still a bit hard to follow, I can try to break it down more.

edited 19th Aug '14 9:19:26 AM by KingZeal

edit: delete comment

edited 19th Aug '14 9:12:30 AM by acrobox