What to do with this trope...: Action Girl

All right, I'm not the first to say this, but I'm starting to wonder if Action Girl is getting a bit too broad with the examples. For starters, we don't have an "Action Guy" page. While it's definitely still present, the idea that there is something "special" about a female action character is increasingly a Discredited Trope, as can be seen by all the examples that say things along the lines of "Every woman in the cast". Just because a trope is no longer widely in use doesn't mean we shouldn't have examples from when it was, but as media increasingly makes Badass a gender-neutral trope, having a separate page for female Badass characters seems a little... wrong. I'm starting to think we may want to figure out a way to differentiate between those works, usually older, where a female character being an action character was tropeable (as in, a difference from the norm), and those more modern works where it isn't. The question is, how?

The other issue with the trope is that I've read in some places that Action Girl was never meant to be just "any female character who can fight", but was meant specifically as the Distaff Counterpart of Action Hero, a very specific trope. If that was the intention, then Action Girl becoming a be-all end-all list of every woman with an action scene in all of fiction is massive Trope Decay, the kind I'm not sure if we can fight.

edited 18th Mar '11 9:26:48 PM by nrjxll

Perhaps there needs to be one group for works who have an action girl that stands out as an actual Action Girl, then when it comes to a show that has almost the entire female cast composed of action girls, there could be a different name for them, since they don't stand out as much with the basic trope.

Troper Page

I've been noticing this a bit myself. In lots of places on this site I'm beginning to see pretty much any female character who does anything notable in the plot as an Action Girl. Back in the day that may have been more notable, now it seems like TV Tropes/the tropers themselves are perpetuating the Double Standard, by still pretending that a female character is special and somehow a trope if they actually do something.

edited 19th Mar '11 2:21:40 AM by Jokubas

You would be surprised on how many series don't have them. And how many series have Faux Action Girl s, Chickification, Women In Refrigerators, and other tropes a true Action Girl isn't the standard in alot of works and genres in general.

I would say that any Action Girl that doesn't fall under the subtropes could be listed on the page and just let Character Pages link to the page.

edited 19th Mar '11 2:42:47 AM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

I agree the Double Standard is still present in many works - the point is that more and more are averting it. I'm inclined to agree with Jokubas: by lumping together both works where an Action Girl is something "special" and works where action-y stuff knows no gender, we're sort of perpetrating that Double Standard ourselves.

In a way, it's like Five-Man Band: a partially Discredited Trope that is still played straight in some places, but that is just as frequently not played straight. We can catalog the existing examples, but we shouldn't try to lump them in with examples from the new trope or tropes taking its place. No new trope is replacing Action Girl - instead, it's becoming insignificant whether a Badass character is male or female - but otherwise, it's a pretty similar situation.

And how many series have Faux Action Girl s, Chickification, Women In Refrigerators, and other tropes a true Action Girl isn't the standard in alot of works and genres in general.

That's because the series have varieties of female characters just like they have varieties of male characters. Of course not everyone is going to be an Action Girl.

I've always seen Action Girl as when you don't expect the girl to be action-inclined. So Sarah Connor in the first Terminator movie was an Action Girl, but in the second she was just a Badass.

I'd say it is the opposite. Sarah Connor in the first Terminator movie is something different, but the second movie gives her more of an Action Hero vibe.

Fight smart, not fair.

Then the one that is an Action Girl is notable because she stands out in contrast to the rest of the cast. Still a trope because of how it's used when played straight. While Action Girl is becoming less special of a trope as gender equality increases, it's still very much played straight in modern TV. The idea of a female character being on par with guys in terms of action is still treated with surprise in real life and modern TV. Witness the reactions to female soldiers in Afghanistan, the fact that the US still doesn't allow women in front-line positions and the fact that tropes like Designated Girl Fight and Wouldn't Hit a Girl are still played straight today.

"Thorough preparation must lead to success. Neglect nothing."

Is it mean, or are a lot of people are questioning the Tropes Of Legend tropes?

Being one of the Tropes Of Legend means that they're more high-profile, which leads to being shoe-horned in by everyone, which leads to the tropes showing up here. Plus a lot of them have titles that wouldn't hold up if they were created today, for various reasons.

"Thorough preparation must lead to success. Neglect nothing."

Okay, so that means this trope was originally meant to be the Distaff Counterpart of Action Hero, as posited above. And with the Terminator example, Sarah is an Action Girl in the second movie and simply an aversion of Distressed Damsel or even The Load in the first. But, as pointed out above, that would mean that basically ALL of the examples are incorrect. That's basically impossible to fight, especially for such a well-established trope as this.

From the description page of Action Girl:

The first part says that Action Girl is the Distaff Counterpart of Action Hero but the second part mentions various aspects that are specific to the Action Girl, those being the spunk and agility in contrast to the stoic and muscular Action Hero. If we go by the second part, the two are different tropes because they're Distaff/Spear Counterparts of each other. In other words, there's a difference between a female Action Hero and an Action Girl.

That being said, there's enough subtropes on this page that I think it should just be an index. I doubt we'll find an Action Girl listed as an example that doesn't fall under one or more of those subtropes.

"Thorough preparation must lead to success. Neglect nothing."

The main issue I see with the secondary requirements has more to do with stereotypes of bodytypes exemplified by men vs women in hollywood. You don't really see many women built like a brick shit house using a The Big Guy fighting style when Waif-Fu is much more popular due to what hollywood has determined to be the body type of "female:attractive".

Fight smart, not fair.

For the record, I am the one who phrased that line of the description, and not without reason. It's been stated several times on other articles that Action Girl is the Distaff Counterpart to Action Hero, and I was surprised to find that at the same time Action Girl's article mentioned nothing of the sort. Also, emphasis on "essentially" (i.e. "not literally").

To my understanding, a trope need not be simply "identical in all but biological sex" to the trope it is a Distaff Counterpart of. Of course, the main difference has to be "male vs. female", but there can be other differences that necessarily arise from the Gender Flip.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

There might be a Sliding Scale of Action Girls though

• A few different grades of action girls
  • The Action Movie Star Action Girl (IE Tomb Raider.)
  • The Girl fighter in an ensemble cast (The Ala Alba fighters in Negima, most of the cast of Nanoha).
    • Subtropes like Lady of War, Black Magician Girl ect
• Plucky Girl
• Faux Action Girl

ect (I am probably missing a few tropes here.)

edited 19th Mar '11 7:22:04 PM by Raso

Sparkling and glittering! Jan-Ken-Pon!

I think we have to define exactly what constitutes an Action Girl since there are a few underlying problems with the current "any female who can fight" definition.

First of all, it's all over the wiki. I've even seen tropers apply it to characters who, when it comes down to it, really haven't done much fighting or had done something that one time that was considered Badass. This widespread use has turned it into, as others have said, a special definition. The problem about this particular special definition (and, to be fair, I believe that this is unintentional) is that it carries the implication that women don't or even can't fight nor do anything awesome unless they're an Action Girl.

Secondly, the current definition has an effect on other tropes relating to this one. Namely, Faux Action Girl. If a character loses fights and otherwise go against the expectations that tropers have of her, she gets labeled a Faux Action Girl. Just the other day, I had to delete an "example" simply because a competent character lost her first fight in the series since her opponent kept his mouth shut about a very important component of his abilities when he had freely explained everything else. The real problem, however, is that this can include characters that were never an Action Girl to begin with.

edited 20th Mar '11 9:52:02 AM by RedViking

Faux Action Girl is pretty clear: It's about Action Girl as an Informed Ability. It's perfectly tropable as "girl who is supposed to be good at fighting but isn't," even if we narrow the definition of Action Girl.

You are right that the definition is clear. A Faux Action Girl is an Action Girl who, in reality, doesn't live up to her reputation. That was never in dispute.

The problem, however, occurs in the interpretation of the Action Girl trope itself. When people interpret Action Girl as "all female characters who can fight," you're going to have situations where a character will be labled a Faux Action Girl when she never was an Action Girl in the first place.

edited 20th Mar '11 12:39:43 PM by RedViking

Mayba we should go though the exemplars and remove the one's that are not real and keep the one's that are.

Agreed. I just didn't want Faux Action Girl cut if something extreme happens with Action Girl. Just because it's obvious doesn't mean everyone sees it.

The problem is we don't have a good definition. The original definition seems to be "action-oriented female." In that case, most of the examples do fit. There are a few where people seem to have mistaken it for "any time any girl does anything remotely action related, even if she normally doesn't," but we can clean those when we see them.

However, if the definition is actually (as suggested) a Distaff Counterpart to Action Hero, then we have a very, VERY big problem, one that we may not be able to beat.

edited 20th Mar '11 8:29:33 PM by Discar

For reference, both the pages for Action Hero

and Distaff Counterpart

suggest that Action Girl is indeed the Distaff Counterpart of Action Hero.

edited 20th Mar '11 9:09:50 PM by nrjxll

Much the same way that Five-Man Band is evolving, the Action Girl is evolving. The page we have is for the classic trope, and it needs to stay that trope.

But fewer and fewer writers are using the classic Action Girl, so we need to identify the new tropes that are displacing it, rather than morphing it to try to keep up, and in the process, losing a trope that was widely used for quite an extended period of time.

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

I'm sorry, but do we even know for sure which definition came first? We have two pages that say its a Distaff Counterpart to Action Hero, and five thousand that say otherwise. I'm not saying we should just embrace the trope decay, I'm saying that we should make sure that there is decay before we start such a monumental project.

Well, actually, we have two projects here:

1. which we all agree on, is to try and fix the misuse of Action Girl to mean "any girl that has an action scene, ever", and deal with the fact that Action Girl in its classic form (as Madrugada says) is increasingly a Discredited Trope.

(Incidentally, I don't think there is a new trope replacing it - Action Girl is falling out of favor because having a self-capable female character is no longer something unique. Really, the "new trope" is simply a gender-neutral form of Badass.)

1. is to fix the possible Trope Decay if Action Girl is supposed to mean "female Action Hero". However, in this case, we still need to prove that this is the intended meaning - I'm not sure one way or another.

edited 22nd Mar '11 5:31:30 PM by nrjxll