Discussion Main / Chickification

Late reply, but the kinky badass and lovelorn columnist were two different characters. The Golden Age Wonder Woman, who was nearly unflappable, and the Silver Age Wonder Woman, who was more emotional and openly emotional at that, were Alternate Universe counterparts who in fact had different powers, and different life experiences but existed at the same time. I'm sure you could point out example of chikification for each one, as well as from one version to the other, but such things would have to be specified.

Late reply, but you do. The trope description has gotten too long winded for its own good, but the page is for competent women who become less so as they gain more feminine traits. Girliness Upgrade is for competent women who remain so while gaining more feminine traits. Chikification also includes active women who become more passive as they are made more feminine and assertive women who become more submissive. It could be reduced to two paragraphs, maybe three to keep some of the "flavor".

A female with a strong role in a story loses character strength and or narrative agency in conjunction with additional traditional feminine traits being adopted by her or revealed about her. If the female's role remains strong in spite of adoption or revelation of more feminine character traits, then you're looking at Girliness Upgrade, there is no overlap.

It's really disturbing to see people trying to apply "Chickification" to *real life women*, not gonna lie.

Because you're stretching the Men Act, Women Are trope well past it's breaking point when the entire game is told from the perspective of Samus blowing the hell out of things at the player's command? I think that's a good one. And frankly, if people keep pulling it for not fitting the page (and I rarely stop here, so I know it's not me!), that should tell you that it doesn't fit and trying to make it fit isn't going to happen.

You're entire argument is "Samus has emotions and that's means she's a useless chick now." So I took it back off because this isn't even the first time people have pointed out it's not fitting the trope.

You're entire argument is "Samus has emotions and that's means she's a useless chick now."

No, it's not, and you know it's not, and it's frankly insulting when you say it is because it does a disservice both to my argument and to your own.

Samus does nothing to drive the narrative, in contrast to her previous role as the action hero player character. Her most important actions in Other M are turning on the power and opening a door; Adam destroyed the Metroids, the Queen killed Ridley, Melissa was destroyed by Madeline and the Federation, Anthony saved Madeline, and the Federation eventually blew up the BOTTLE SHIP. Compare to Metroid Prime 3 or Metroid Fusion, where she drives much of the plot; in Fusion, she is the one who destroys the bsl, while in Prime 3, she assaults the Leviathans and destroys Phazon. Yes, Other M Samus blows stuff up in the gameplay, but that doesn't define her role in the plot where all that gameplay is meaningless. While Samus can target the final boss, it's somebody else who takes her out. When Samus reaches Sector Zero, somebody else handles that action. Samus blows up all the monsters except the one that's important to the story (Ridley).

The Chick is a character who does not drive the plot or take action; instead, he or she exists to serve as an emotionally sympathetic character by being the "heart", which is Samus's role in Other M. There is nothing necessarily negative about that role, but it's pretty clear that Samus doesn't do much in Other M to affect the story and is primarily there as a character to sympathize with. While other characters like Melissa Bergman or Adam Malkovich or even Anthony do the important things, Samus just watches and monologues on how she feels about those actions. Since Samus has always been a driving force in the plots before Other M, and has never really been a character defined by her emotions (Presumably because she's a Silent Protagonist). Aka Samus went from The Hero to The Chick, a move from a more stereotypically masculine "does stuff" to a more stereotypically feminine "feels stuff". Chickification.

tldr; she's not chickified because she has emotions, she's chickified because her role has changed from being identified solely by her actions to being defined solely by her emotions in the plot.

And frankly, if people keep pulling it for not fitting the page (and I rarely stop here, so I know it's not me!), that should tell you that it doesn't fit and trying to make it fit isn't going to happen.

If something is controversial, that does not mean that one side is wrong with no room for argument; it just means that it's controversial. I will not put the entry back, but please come up with a better reason for taking it down than "your argument that you didn't even use sucks".

"Samus does nothing to drive the narrative," except since she is the main character of the game and the player always controls her at all times, if anything is insulting, it's your idea that a woman is a useless Damsel in Distress that must be rescued by men if at any point in their adventure they receive a small amount of help and then continue to do exactly what they've been doing before that. Which is, by the way, wthis whole trope is about women who repeatedly turn into a Damsel in Distress. As Samus never does and the player always does all of the work from her perspective, this is patently false. Furthermore, your OTHER trope you're citing only covers characters that do absolutely nothing in the narrative at all. As the main character of the game and the only person the player has control of, that's already false because Samus herself, through the player, still has to deal with all the game's major scenarios.

Admit it, Square Peg Round Trope, end of discussion. The merits of Other M aren't relevant to this trope and one look at the edit history of the page shows that's why people kept pulling the trope. This is not a trope to complain that women are "too female."

"Samus does nothing to drive the narrative," except since she is the main character of the game and the player always controls her at all times,

We have a trope for that in literature. It is perfectly possible for the main character of a work to have no or little effect on the plot through his or her actions.

if anything is insulting, it's your idea that a woman is a useless Damsel in Distress that must be rescued by men if at any point in their adventure they receive a small amount of help and then continue to do exactly what they've been doing before that. Which is, by the way, wthis whole trope is about women who repeatedly turn into a Damsel In Distress. As Samus never does and the player always does all of the work from her perspective, this is patently false.

I would have thought that Chickification was about a character becoming the Chick, becoming more stereotypically feminine and less of an active character. You'll notice that I never mentioned anything about Damsel in Distress; Chi-Chi undergoes Chickification in Dragonball Z, but it's not because she's a damsel in distress, it's because she becomes a housewife and becomes more stereotypically feminine. Samus is "useless", but only if you consider having no physical effect on the plot useless.

Samus getting help means nothing, since plenty of active characters receive help; what really matters is that she has no effect on the plot through her actions. Name one important action Samus undertook from a plot standpoint. It doesn't matter if she had help on that action from Anthony or Adam or whoever, just name one.

Furthermore, your OTHER trope you're citing only covers characters that do absolutely nothing in the narrative at all. As the main character of the game and the only person the player has control of, that's already false because Samus herself, through the player, still has to deal with all the game's major scenarios.

She deals with them by reacting to them, but she never affects them. Again, see The Ishmael.

Admit it, Square Peg Round Trope, end of discussion. The merits of Other M aren't relevant to this trope and one look at the edit history of the page shows that's why people kept pulling the trope. This is not a trope to complain that women are "too female."

No, it's not the end of discussion. I never talked once about the merits of Other M or about whether Samus was "too" female (She is more feminine in role; that's an observation, not a value judgement). You don't seem to realize this, but Chickification is not a Your Mileage Will Vary trope. Putting an Other M example here does not condemn the game.

You are right that this is not a trope for complaining. That's what bugs me about your response: There is no complaining in the example you deleted.

"I would have thought that Chickification was about a character becoming the Chick, becoming more stereotypically feminine and less of an active character. "

You know, I swear, it's like the actual trope descriptions cease to exist. As the current description states:

"So you have an Action Girl. She rocks. There's only one problem: she's also the only female in the main cast, and you don't have a Non-Action Guy or other similar balancing factor to counterbalance this. Where are you going to get your Designated Victim for the team to save every episode? What's an executive to do? Completely replace her tough image and capabilities with something more fitting to the Distressed Damsel you need, someone who tends to Stay in the Kitchen or not do anything rather than go out and fight, whether by punching people alongside the others or analyzing the scenario and figuring out a solution so she can help others punch people.

Chickification differs from Faux Action Girl. The latter is just about a so-called Action Girl who never lives up to her reputation once the plot hits the fan. Chickification involves a genuine Action Girl who was badass at one point, but was derailed into a weak and helpless (or at least significantly less badass) character, without any in-universe justification for such a change. The lack of in-universe justification is key to this trope. If the Action Girl is changed as the result of physical and/or emotional trauma, that's something else: it can be Character Development, Break the Cutie, Break the Haughty, etc. "

And the very next sentence is:

"This trope is not about any Action Girl who shows those icky and bad 'female' emotions."

That one is key.

By sheer virtue of Samus being the main character, she cannot be this trope. You might have had it if Samus was side-lined to the point of being unplayable (say, she got knocked out for lengths of time and you had to actually play as Anthony), but unfortunately, this is a video game and regardless of cutscenes, a video game must be seen in its entirety and Samus is the driving force of this game. If Samus was not in the game, the game wouldn't happen and nobody would care about the Bottle Ship, Adam Malkovich, etc. This is entirely irrelevant to any complaints about the quality of the plot, the quality of the characterization, and the execution of plot vs. gameplay.

Now, if this page is getting clogged with entries that are "This girl is too girly!" or "So and so got girlier!", well, that's just means the page needs a clean up.

By the way, your Chi-Chi example really just proves why Samus doesn't fit - Chi-Chi is always a combo of stereotypical feminine and masculine traits (her first appearance has her simultaneously crying like a little girl in terror AND decapitating a monster), the problem is she stops doing anything in the plot except being Goku's wife and occasional victim. The entire story of Other M is Samus' story, even if other people impact more than in previous games (which, since all previous games are Samus as the only character to impact the plot, doesn't take much.)

Furthermore...

"She deals with them by reacting to them, but she never affects them. Again, see The Ishmael. "

Point to me where in the description this trope is "The Ishmael with tits." Even then, I've read Moby Dick. Ishmael is nothing more than a narrator who also exists in the story. Without Ishmael, the story would be exactly the same. Other M would not work at all without Samus. Therefore, she's an active character in the plot.

Looking at the description, the laconic, and the name, they don't match. The laconic includes Neutral Female, something applicable to Other M Samus in many situations (Sector Zero, final boss), or Damsel in Distress, something not. The description requires "helpless." The name makes no sense if becoming a figure similar to The Chick is not part of the trope; something like Damselification would work better.

By sheer virtue of Samus being the main character, she cannot be this trope. You might have had it if Samus was side-lined to the point of being unplayable (say, she got knocked out for lengths of time and you had to actually play as Anthony), but unfortunately, this is a video game and regardless of cutscenes, a video game must be seen in its entirety and Samus is the driving force of this game. If Samus was not in the game, the game wouldn't happen and nobody would care about the Bottle Ship, Adam Malkovich, etc.

That's the thing: It would happen. Adam's team arrived independently of Samus, Adam was going to find out about and destroy Sector Zero either way, the military would have arrived and attacked independently, the Deleter would still be killed by mb, Anthony would have still been the sole surviving member who convinces the military to let him take Madeline, and at the end the entire ship would still have been blown up because of Anthony's survival and the destruction of the Metroid program.

By the way, your Chi-Chi example really just proves why Samus doesn't fit - Chi-Chi is always a combo of stereotypical feminine and masculine traits (her first appearance has her simultaneously crying like a little girl in terror AND decapitating a monster), the problem is she stops doing anything in the plot except being Goku's wife and occasional victim. The entire story of Other M is Samus' story, even if other people impact more than in previous games (which, since all previous games are Samus as the only character to impact the plot, doesn't take much.)

It's not really Samus's story; the Madeline and Melissa subplot has nothing to do with Samus, and neither does the conspiracy one. Only one subplot is focused on Samus, and it's a subplot about an emotional relationship with another character. Out of the three subplots, this one relies on the characters as an observer, not a participant; it's about how Samus feels, not about what she does (It also portrays her as a static character in the Sector Zero scene, which means that she doesn't actually even affect it).

Point to me where in the description this trope is "The Ishmael with tits."

I never said that; I said that the switch in character from active participant in narrative to peripheral perspective fits this trope.

Even then, I've read Moby Dick. Ishmael is nothing more than a narrator who also exists in the story. Without Ishmael, the story would be exactly the same. Other M would not work at all without Samus. Therefore, she's an active character in the plot.

Again, what successful actions does Samus take that affect the narrative?

You keep saying she's an active character, yet you never say what she actually does. An active character in the plot does things to affect the plot beyond being an observer or recipient. That's why it's called an active character. A character is not active just because he or she appears a lot and feels stuff; a character is active when he or she does stuff. To use the blog I linked to, Batman is an active character, the Joker is an active character, but Alfred is not an active character in the plot, because even though he's impeccably acted and his emotions reflect the themes of the movies, he barely affects the plot.

(Btw, thank you for taking the time to reply politely and throughly. I know it's rather annoying to argue with people over the internet.)

So, looking at the Laconic, I don't see any major issue - in this case, Samus' reactions to her situation are not qualified for Neutral Female as she is given reasons to behave as she does beyond "she's a gurl" (I noticed she's not on that page either). She's not a Damsel in Distress as the closest anyone gets to "saving her" is momentarily pissing off Ridley and getting "killed", requiring Samus to do everything else. Character Development is a valid reason to react differently than normal and that's explicitly stated. And this is all entirely outside of whether or not any of this is actually good as a storyline or whether Gameplay and Story Segregation are hurting the title. I'm not terribly interested in going in-depth on the quality of Other M as a game or a story outside of this trope, but for the sake of a trope entry, it seems out of scope.

Still, it seems like we've got a classic case of trope drift. A lot of these entries on the page are way off the topic as presented and it seems a lot of people are confusing "the girl is the designated team victim" with "the girl is feminine." I spotted at least one entry that, paraphrasing, reads like "Alice is really girly but she's the most powerful person on the team!"

...as for a rename, apparently Damselfication has come up in the past, but checking through the site, I've noticed that all those discussions are several years old and pre-date Troper Repair Shop. It could bear raising the issue over there and maybe get some traction to head off the confusion created here.

Sorry I took so long to reply. I've been looking at the trope repair shop and surrounding pages, and many tropes, including The Chick, have undergone recent debate and modification. The definition of The Chick I was familiar with, an emotional character of a team, has been revised to be more of an emotionally supportive role (Which Other M Samus is decidedly not, since she keeps most of her thoughts private).

I think I might try to post something in the repair shop some time when I have less work on whether this trope should be renamed. Thank you for responding.

I wasn't aware of changes to The Chick at all, so thanks for the response.

I don't see anything that suggests Casca was "Chickified" - just hated by fangirls for not being a permanent bad ass and singled out as if suffering a horrifying fate worse than death is unique to her. From what I know about this show, everyone had that happen to them. I'd pull the entry, quite frankly. There's nothing special about her that makes this a uniquely female event.

I haven't read Berserk yet, so I can't comment too much, but just reading the unspoilered part of the entry bothers me: it says that the trope is averted, then claims that it is averted "almost to the point of deconstruction". Er, what? A deconstructed trope is played straight, not averted. It's the overlooking/whitewashing of Unfortunate Implications that's averted, not the trope itself; the whole point is that the trope is played dead straight, and has any and all implications, unfortunate or otherwise, explored in detail. Could someone with a little more knowledge of the series and the character maybe clean this up?

... And this is also the girl who was epically kidnapped and almost cloned by Datamon (and needing rescue from a boy too), spent quite a while needing emotional rescues due to her genuinely bad emotional state (given by a girl Digimon like Piyomon), later needed to be rescued by her mother and Mimi in Tokyo, and when she was supposed to actually find Yamato she ended up brainwashed by rhe Darkness and needed Yamato AND Jyou's help to fight back.

Sora was a rather complex character, with both strenghts and weaknesses, and she DID have her reasons to be the way she was. She both helped people AND needed help, and it was a big theme for her development. (Not to mention it's not like she was the only Digidestined who needed rescue and help.) Harping only in OMG SHE WAS SO USELESS IN DIGIMON 02 LOL while ignoring that she needed help *in both seasons*? IMHO it's redundant, as well as unfair to Sora herself.

All the characters were complex and had both strengths and weaknesses. And I realize my previous posts (this is the same person, new username) were running up against an Edit War. However, I know I'm not the only person who feels this way, as she's been removed before and stuff about Chickification has been on the Digimon page, and she used to be the page image for Distress Ball. I think at the very least, the discussion about Sora should be referenced, and I added a note including both sides and a YMMV note.

Unless she keeps holding the Distress Ball in later episodes, not really. Not to mention she was under the influence of the Sloth Chapter...

Yeah, anything with a Justifying Edit like that you can go ahead and nuke. Like I did to this whole page just now.

I notice that in the process you managed to nuke the example that made me propose the trope to begin with, on account of someone bringing up a one-episode exception.

Hm, in Anzu's particular case I'd say that since technically more than one character got hit with Badass Decay, it's more of general Character Derailment rather than pure Chickification.