Trope bit is now missing: Black Magician Girl

So, Fast Eddie "cleaned up" Black Magician Girl. Unfortunately he did this by removing the entire trope from the description. The Black Magician Girl is supposed to be a foil to the Staff Chick and have a specific character type.

Here's the original description. Emphasis on personality in bold and foil in italics because really, it is kind of confusing as it was.

Morrigan disapproves, -20.

The Staff Chick isn't the only Role-Playing Game woman around. More often, she's accompanied by a Black Mage to offset her healing powers. They may be the same age, but that's usually about all these girls share. Where the Staff Chick is quiet, helpful, a Distressed Damsel and Friend to All Living Things, the Black Magician Girl is much more forceful in personality: a Genki Girl, Ice Queen, Tsundere, or whatnot. They're probably a Tomboy and Girly Girl, too.

Whether tomboyishly cute or stately and beautiful, the Black Magician Girl is an Action Girl who relies almost exclusively on offensive spells. She probably has a weapon just in case — usually a Simple Staff, perhaps a servicible dagger, or perhaps something more... unusual. Whatever it is, it likely doubles as a Magic Wand.

Whether having both women in the party is an attempt at casting equality or an appeal to two different fanboy preferences is unclear, but as the Grand List says, they're both probably in love with The Hero.

Note that this is a personality type. "Girl who uses attack magic" (or "African-American female magic user," if you're one of those people who doesn't read the description) is not the trope. The character has to have attack magic and a particular personality to qualify here.

Named both for the Final Fantasy "Black Mage" Class, and for the Dark Magician Girl from Yu-Gi-Oh! (known in Japan, funnily enough, as the Black Magician Girl). Not to be confused with the Dark Magical Girl. The non-magical version is Small Girl, Big Gun.

Also see Black Magician Girl-tan. Sometimes overlaps with Hot Witch.

I did no such thing. I removed digressions. Is the character still the character if they are not accompanying some other character? Yes. Other character is a digression.

All that crap it starts out with about what they "probably" are too: also unnecessary. Are they cute or beautiful? Maybe, maybe not, doesn't matter.

It's an Action Girl who uses magic. Action Girl is a personality type, a girl disposed to action over thought or dithering. Redescribing the Action Girl attributes in this description is pointless.

The description as it is now is perfectly clear and doesn't require that reader see 12 other barely-on-topic tropes to understand it.

I cleaned it up because there were a number of complaints that it was confusing as-was.

edited 28th Jan '11 2:31:44 PM by FastEddie

Is The Lancer still The Lancer if we don't have The Hero? No. Same with this trope. It's a foil for another character.

And how are we supposed to have a personality based trope without any mention of what that personality is? This is a trope defined entirely as a foil to the Staff Chick. You can't have a Black Magician Girl without one. You just have a Staff Chick.

edited 28th Jan '11 2:34:22 PM by shimaspawn

So yeah forceful personality (any but most often Lady of War), Action Girl (not so much Plucky Girl), Offensive Caster, and rival to the Staff Chick basiclly.

Jessica from Dragon Quest VIII I think is the best example of the trope in all respects, personality (very Lady of War at times but has a [[Tsundere dere side]]) and pretty much screws Angelo up (a rare guy Staff Chick).

Now does the Staff Chick have to exist to have a Black Magician Girl?

edited 28th Jan '11 2:45:13 PM by Raso

I think so. It's why she's got the two different personalities to her. She's very much a foil to the other female character and they have a very hero/lancer relationship to them. What counts as a Black Magician Girl is defined by what the Staff Chick in a series happens to be.

I do think we need a general trope for offensive casters, but that's another issue.

edited 28th Jan '11 2:44:01 PM by shimaspawn

If that is true, then I think there is a trope about the duo. This one is a description of a character type. If they are not defined primarily in terms of their relationship to another character, that is, they are a specific kind of foil, they should stand on their own. We should talk about a common pairing elsewhere.

edited 28th Jan '11 2:49:12 PM by FastEddie

Is The Lancer suddenly an invalid character trope just because it's a specific type of foil?

YKTTW a Black Mage trope for general offensive casters? (I can do it when I get home my android won't load YKTTW its too big of a page.)

What does that make The Rival?

edited 28th Jan '11 2:53:46 PM by Raso

Is this a specific kind of foil? I don't think so. The Lancer is a specific kind of foil. In fact, there is no reason a Black Magician Girl could not also be a Lancer.

edited 28th Jan '11 3:22:39 PM by FastEddie

It was written as a specific type of foil before the description was pruned off. The entire trope was written as playing against the Staff Chick.

edited 28th Jan '11 3:28:31 PM by shimaspawn

Incorrectly. I see maybe one or two Staff Chick/Black Magician Girls in the examples list. The bulk of them are about the one character.

Well a cleanup was needed but the examples I do know of that don't state who the Staff Chick is there really is a Staff Chick in there as a semi The Rival.

But I am not apposed to making this not a The Rival to Staff Chick to more of a solo character type trope alone.

edited 28th Jan '11 3:40:28 PM by Raso

None of the examples I actually know lack the Staff Chick. It might need some trope clean up and some listing of the staff chicks, but they are foils. Lulu for one is this to Yuna, the Staff Chick in Final Fantasy X.

Once again, if someone feels there is a case for there being a specific duo of a Staff Chick and a Black Magician, that would be separate from a description of the two types, since the types can exists without the pairing.

Except then we have no definition to this trope since the personality component is just the opposite of the Staff Chick they play the foil to. There isn't a trope here without that without that.

The Trope Namer though does not have one I don't think its just a card.

1. Mahou Sensei Negima's Yue Ayase is the classic BMG; however, her rival is not a real Staff Chick or White Mage. Nodoka however in the last arc has dressed like a classic Final Fantasy White Mage, to complete it.

This example she certainly acts the part of The Rival to Nodoka who fits Staff Chick personality wise but not powers wise (Mind Reader and very much a Plucky Girl when it counts) but they are really BF Fs (via Love Triangle) and umm its complicated.

EDIT: Posting too fast ftl

Offensive Caster Girl is all this trope has without The Lancer component which could work on its own but really that would be made Unisex into what I would call a Black Mage trope (if that name wasn't already taken)

edited 28th Jan '11 3:49:38 PM by Raso

This trope describes a character. What would you call the duo?

Black And White Mage Duo? err nah that wont work.

I think there are two personality tropes in Black Magician Girl (as it was previously written) - the stately, elegant woman who is probably an Ice Queen (such as Lulu from Final Fantasy X) and the tomboyish Genki Girl who loves to make things go boom (such as Lilka from Wild ARMs 2). While they both have offensive magic, they're otherwise not really the same trope.

These tropes as foil to the Staff Chick may or may not be central to the trope. I can't think of any Black Magician Girls that have appeared without a Staff Chick in video games, but that doesn't mean that there aren't any.

edited 28th Jan '11 5:23:53 PM by ccoa

Splitting the trope is another option I suppose. It would get rid of the fact that it's two conflicting character types.

I think that would reduce the misuse this trope gets. I suspect that the conflicting descriptions of what she might be led people to just stuff any old offensive magic character on there.

For example, I see Yukiki on there listed as being both a Black Magician Girl and a Staff Chick. Which should be impossible given the old definition of Black Magician Girl. This isn't the first time I've seen a character listed as both, either.

The one I can think of is Yukiko Amagi From Persona 4 her "Rival" is not a Staff Chick as apposed to a Cute Bruiser, Kick Chick, The Big Guy, Poisonous Friend BFF Chie.

But now that I think about it Yukiko is both Staff Chick and Black Magician Girl if you look at it from different directions which is kind of weird. She has the best heals in the game but also the Best Nuke in the game and very much has the Lady of War personality.

(Ok I have gone Cross-eyed)

I actually think I agree. And they are two different character types.

A Black Magician Girl can heal and a Staff Chick can have offensive magic. It's the personality that makes them a Staff Chick or a Black Magician Girl more than anything else.

edited 28th Jan '11 5:38:46 PM by ccoa

I think the problem here is that this an RPG trope that moved away from the game mechanics as the essential part and made the personality the central part instead.

It's very easy to identify the Staff Chick in an RPG. She casts defensive magic, buff spells, healing, ect. (She might have a special "holy" attack). She usually wields a less lethal weapon, such as a staff. Fitting this role, she tends toward more passive personality types. She's the Girlfriend Healer.

But the trope seems to have moved to emphasizing only the personality, enough so that it's even suggested that The Archer can be a staff chick. That's just not true. The Archer is not the staff chick in an RPG party. I don't care if she has a passive personality, if she's not a White Magician Girl, she's not a staff chick.

Similarly the Staff Chick counterpart Black Magician Girl is a caster that specializes in attack magic (with the occasional status effect spell). Fitting this role she tend to have a more assertive personality. Tomboy, or Ice Queen, or something. There tend to be more variations on aggressive then there are on passive, which is why there tend to be two flavors of Black Magician Girl. The elegant enchantress/sorceress, and the tomboy witch/mage.

I don't care if she has a forceful personality, if she's not casting Black Magic (attack spells), she is not a Black Magician Girl.

That's how I would summarize the two tropes. That's how they appear in RP Gs, which is main source of this trope, and from which it has spilled out into various other media, usually based in a similar genre (fantasy/adventure).

I mean, really, why are we calling it Black Magician Girl if being a Black Magician Girl isn't required?

edited 28th Jan '11 6:01:39 PM by Sackett