This is discussion archived from a time before the current discussion method was installed.
Discuss Badass Adorable here.
zeroplusalpha: If it's okay with everybody, I'm just going to edit and maybe expand the article. I notice that US spelling has been settled on as the default house style (hence the correction of 'behavioural' to 'behavioral'; I assure you that the former is legitimate, at least according to my doorstopper edition of the Oxford Dictionary). I will try to conform to this, but old UK habits die hard.
Dark Hawk: Sure, just make sure to keep it Gender-neutral because adorable is more general neutral than cute. Also, are we able to post animated pictures, because I think a few Before/After would make the point a bit better.
Quills: Cut and put here in case anybody who knows Touhou wants to edit it down to a more reasonable length:
- The Touhou series features various powerful characters (and, as mentioned above, adorable), but the extent of their abilities, and how willing they are to use them, is mostly open to fan interpretations. Thus, some examples could be: Flandre Scarlet (who's aware of her destructive powers, having used it once against a meteorite that was "destined" to fall at the mansion she lives in, but oblivious of what's the ingredient for her dishes, and is described as being normally docile. She might not qualify, though, because since vampires attempt to defeat their human opponents and then suck blood from them, and Flandre doesn't know that her food comes from the humans' blood, she just obliterates them without leaving a trace), Utsuho Reiuji (who, after receiving the powers of the Yatagarasu, claimed that she would turn the surface world into another Hell in Aya's scenario, but is believed to be either bluffing, or untame at this time. After that, though, she's shown to be a naive, bird-brained girl. With powers over nuclear fusion and fission, enough to rekindle the flames of the former Hell and have her excess power be used to power the Kappa's industries) and Yukari Yakumo (who's elderly and very proficient with calculations, and is stated to be able to destroy Gensokyo, the series' setting, if she wanted. The irony is that she would never do so, because she's also stated to be the one that cares the most for Gensokyo, and that she, as the most youkai-ish youkai, can't be fathomed by humans, and her ability to manipulate boundaries cause a huge strain over her mind, making her somewhat even stranger, perhaps another reason for why she doesn't try to use her abilities to become a PersonOfMassDestruction)
Would Yachiru Kusajishi from Bleach count?
zeroplusalpha: Might be a matter of opinion. Add it anyway, but you might want to point out the overlap with related tropes. You'll know if anyone strongly disagrees; they'll just edit it out.
Anonymous Mc Cartneyfan: This trope is on the Cut List. If it hadn't been pointed out that adorability is gender-neutral, I'd think dividing these between Cute Bruiser and Badass Lolita would be fine. (Cuteness is also gender-neutral, but what's the male equivalent of a "Lolita"?)
Black Humor: This could probably use a better name, but it seems to be an actual trope. Or at very least, it's got too many wicks to cut, anyway.
Cliche: The problem I have with the trope is that the two traits seem totally arbitrary with no connection to each other, so it is really two tropes masquerading as one. (07/22/09)
zeroplusalpha: The two are not so much arbitrary as discrepant, maybe. It's possibly not as clearly demarcated as it could be, but people do seem to differentiate between this, Cute Bruiser and Badass Lolita. The former implies a more physical, direct style (with an emphasis on brute strength), the latter are defined by their youthful and childish appearance (the attendant deception is often a favoured strategy); they're pretty narrow delineations. And where else would you put the vast range of Japanese entertainment media that practically lives off this trope?
Smokie: Cute people doing badass things. That creates a contrast. That is this trope.
Sean Tucker: Cute Bruiser implies extreme physical strength in contrast with a cute appearance. Badass Lolita is specifically when a small girl (Lolicon) is badass, cuteness notwithstanding. Badass Adorable is required to be cute and badass; that does not mean brute strength (Nanoha is not terribly strong, and she's the goddamn page image) and it doesn't mean the character has to be a loli (Kirika is clearly an older teen, possibly young adult).
Fuzzy_duck: Any chance of getting a Troper Tales page here?
zeroplusalpha: That's actually not a bad idea.
