History Main / DamselScrappy

* Princess Marichio (Don't know if that's spelled right) from {{Bleach}}. A bratty spoiled rich kid, who can't seem to stop getting kidnapped. Seriously, after Ichigo and crew have the kidnapper cornered, and it looks like the {{filler}} arc is over, [[spoiler: Captain Amagi shows up, reveals he is a villain,]] and kidnaps her ''again.''

*** [[LampshadeHanging Lampshaded]] in the third movie novelization by Mary Jane who asks if she has bait stamped across her forehead when she's locked in Venom's falling car. Also in the third movie, MJ ''does'' become an HeroicBystander and drops a block of cement on Venom's head as he fights with Spiderman.

**** She wasn't always mindlessly emotional and constantly in need of rescue, but she did get flanderized pretty badly as time went on.

* Miaka from ''FushigiYuugi'', despite being the series protagonist, has come in for some fan hate for the numerous times she [[MartyrWithoutACause pointlessly]] rushes headfirst into dangerous situations, in some cases even ''actively sabotaging'' her protectors or [[PoorCommunicationKills not telling them important information]], then getting in trouble and needing them to come save her anyway. In fairness, some of this is AdaptationDecay, as her motives are often slightly more sensible in the manga than the anime.

* Pepper Potts in ''IronManArmoredAdventures'' has two purposes for her existence: help Tony out on occasion and get captured and rescued constantly even in situations she should be able to escape from on her own. Her behavior is consistently damsel-like despite her aspirations to be a kick-ass SHIELD agent - at one point she's in the middle of an abandoned warehouse where two different factions of Chinese assassins are fighting and she sits there waiting to be rescued instead of getting away from the fighting. Yeah, real SHIELD material.
** She did exactly what any sane person would do when two gangs are shooting all over the place. Once she got out of the room she was held in (she managed to pull an airvent escape until the airvent was shot down), gun fighting started, and she was too busy not being shot to escape. She did try, but what would you do if you were next to two gangs gun fighting? She does actually manage to avoid a team of assassins for a while and created a plan to retrieve a set of armor with no batteries which did succeed at the end of the day.

*** Not to mention that despite being "called out for it" or whatever, Rinoa's DistressBall derails almost everything happening concurrently in regards to plot and characterization. Examples? The Garden War scene where she's hanging from the edge and the party comes back to get Squall to rescue her. Keep in mind that, at this point, Squall has been deemed the commander of this war and the life of every Balamb student (SeeD or otherwise) is his responsibility. Squall refuses to go and save ONE student as opposed to the dozens, if not hundreds that need him now--then the party ''completely disregards what he says'' and tells him to do it anyway while they make up their own plan. I'm sorry, who was in charge here again? Worse, they use the phrase "Rinoa is one of us" for their justification (as opposed to, you know, the other people in the Garden whom many either grew up in and befriended long before Rinoa came along). Next, when Squall actually mounts his rescue, the means to do so ''literally'' drops into his lap through ContrivedCoincidence. Third, after he rescues her, he and Rinoa run through an intense battlefield with warriors from both sides killing and being killed mercilessly while they head to defeat the BigBad behind the whole war. Then, they suddenly decide to stop and have a cutesy romantic conversation involving Squall's ring--''while the people under Squall's command are fighting and dying a few yards away''.

** Averted in the comics: she usually [[BadassDamsel manages to rescue herself, and often other people, or at least beans the villain and runs for it.]] She's electrocuted kidnappers, beaten would-be rapists with baseball bats, and even shot the Green Goblin when he tried to [[WomenInRefrigerators dangle her from a bridge]].

**** [[TakrThat Because you guys would act just as whiny and useless as she did?]]

See also TooDumbToLive. Compare TheScrappy and TheLoad. Compare ThePresidentsDaughter. See also RecklessSidekick, SympatheticSue. DeliberatelyDistressedDamsel can justify or subvert this trope.

** The point was to show how a real person, not an ActionGirl like Marion or Ilsa, can cope with all these crazy adventures.

** Averted in the comics: she usually manages to rescue herself, and often other people, or at least beans the villain and runs for it. She's electrocuted kidnappers, beaten would-be rapists with baseball bats, and even shot the Green Goblin when he tried to [[WomenInRefrigerators dangle her from a bridge]].

** It's OlderThanRadio, too, going back to VictorianBritain when women (or at least, upper class ladies) were expected to act this way in ''real life''.
*** And if they didn't they were considered 'coarse' and 'unmanageable', and depending on their family's views on women could be ''institutionalized as insane''.
*** The other side of the coin being that their brothers also faced penalties for failing to be manly and heroic, in certain circumstances these penalties could include imprisonment and death(war deserters).

** [[spoiler: She's baaaaaaaack.]]
*** [[spoiler:[[RescuedFromTheScrappyHeap She's also better.]] The fact that [[LampshadeHanging even she realizes how annoying she was]] helps a lot. Well, not counting running after an armed terrorist without grabbing a weapon of her own.]]

* Susan Mayer (Teri Hatcher) in ''DesperateHousewives''
** Ironically, Hatcher also played Lois Lane in the '90s Superman drama ''LoisAndClark''.

* Lana Lang on ''{{Smallville}}'', for quite a while now. And when they decided to fix it in later seasons [[GodModeSue they went too far in the opposite direction]].

* Shannon on ''{{Lost}}''.

* During the long drought in [[{{WWE}} World Wrestling Entertainment]] between The Fabulous Moolah and Chyna, these kinds of female characters became frustratingly common in ProWrestling, and they still pop up occasionally. One of the most annoying was Sharmell Sullivan, 1991 Miss Black America and the wife (both [[{{Kayfabe}} on-screen]] and off) of former WCW great Booker T. Beginning in 2005, Sharmell accompanied Booker to all his matches dressed "beauty queen" style in a fashionable gown and tiara, and sometimes petticoats as well. Her only purpose when she and Booker were faces seemed to be getting menaced by her husband's heel opponents (including KurtAngle, who notoriously [[DudeNotFunny threatened to rape her]]). While Sharmell was capable of giving some of the weaker villains a good slap across the face from time to time, for the most part she was reduced to shrieking "BOOK-ERRR!" until her husband could come in to save her. After the pair's FaceHeelTurn (and especially after Booker became "King Booker"), Sharmell became more of a FauxActionGirl (with a bit of TheLibby thrown in). At the 2006 ''[Wrestle=Mania]'' she even joined Booker in a handicap match against The Boogeyman - but the pair lost when Boogey grabbed Sharmell and shoved a handful of worms down her throat!
* Vickie Guerrero as well, with a side order of MilesGloriosus to boot. As General Manager of ''Friday Night [Smack=Down]'', Vickie would boss around all the fan favorites in her obnoxiously whiny voice and generally act like a bitch....until someone like The {{Undertaker}} would threaten her, and Vickie would turn into a cowardly ScreamingWoman who was helpless until her love interest of the moment could come rushing to her rescue. She eventually did [[TookALevelInBadass Take A Level In Badass]] and even wrestles occasionally, but at heart her character is still a man-hungry ditz who acts like a brat when she doesn't get her way and still screams all the time (particularly when her newest boyfriend, Dolph Ziggler, is losing a match).

Even if she's just unlucky, she may be disliked for other reasons. Perhaps the audience finds her [[ShallowLoveInterest too bland]], or [[TheLibby too bitchy]]. Perhaps her presence seems [[TokenRomance shoehorned into the main plot]] (perhaps to attract a PeripheryDemographic or for blatant FanService), and the audience feels she [[SpotlightStealingSquad steals time]] from the story they're actually interested in. This is especially true when her subplot has [[TrappedByMountainLions nothing to do with the main plot]] at all. Or else she seems like [[TheLoad useless dead weight]] whose only purpose is to pad the plot by getting in trouble.

*** Before TheAbridgedSeries, nobody made much of a big deal about Mokuba's DistressedDamsel tendencies (which crop up more because kidnapping him's the only proven method of getting under Kaiba's skin then because of the inherent weakness of the character). Mokuba remains a very popular character, mostly due to his status as Kaiba's MoralityPet.

* Colette Brunel from ''TalesOfSymphonia''. Despite that she does get better after a little while (And that technically, Mithos can kidnap ''ANYONE'' at the end, even Kratos or Regal), some people actually do dislike her for this.

* During the long drought in [[{{WWE}} World Wrestling Entertainment]] between The Fabulous Moolah and Chyna, these kinds of female characters became frustratingly common in ProWrestling, and they still pop up occasionally. One of the most annoying was Sharmell Sullivan, 1991 Miss Black America and the wife (both [[{{Kayfabe}} on-screen]] and off of former WCW great Booker T. Beginning in 2005, Sharmell accompanied Booker to all his matches dressed "beauty queen" style in a fashionable gown and tiara, and sometimes petticoats as well. Her only purpose when she and Booker were faces seemed to be getting menaced by her husband's heel opponents (including KurtAngle, who notoriously [[DudeNotFunny threatened to rape her]]). While Sharmell was capable of giving some of the weaker villains a good slap across the face from time to time, for the most part she was reduced to shrieking "BOOK-ERRR!" until her husband could come in to save her. After the pair's FaceHeelTurn (and especially after Booker became "King Booker"), Sharmell became more of a FauxActionGirl (with a bit of TheLibby thrown in). At the 2006 ''[Wrestle=Mania]'' she even joined Booker in a handicap match against The Boogeyman - but the pair lost when Boogey grabbed Sharmell and shoved a handful of worms down her throat!

* As the page quote implies, Dawn from ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer''.

->''"Dawn's in trouble. Must be Tuesday."''
-->-- '''Buffy''', ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer''

See also TooDumbToLive. Compare TheScrappy and TheLoad. Compare ThePresidentsDaughter. See also RecklessSidekick, SympatheticSue.

** And don't think we're kidding when we say ''any'' scrape, poor girl is liable to grievously injure herself walking through a ''door'' if a fellow cast member isn't there to assist her (and by "assist" we generally mean "literally pick up and carry").

** She did exactly what any sane person would do when two gangs are shooting all over the place. Once she got out of the room she was held in (she managed to pull an airvent escape until the airvent was shot down) gun fighting started, and she was too busy not being shot to escape. She did try, but what would you do if you were next to two gangs gun fighting? She does actually manage to avoid a team of assains for a while and created a plan to retrieve a set of armor with no batteries which did succeed at the end of the day.

* Dakota Fanning's character in the 2005 remake of ''{{War of the Worlds}}''. She gets taken hostage by aliens, she panics every time someone says "boo,", she screams for the first fifteen minutes of the alien invasion even though her father is right there with her and she's [[strike:perfectly]] relatively safe. Why didn't TomCruise's character just open the car door and leave her on the side of the road? No one knows.
** Um...I think it was because she was his ''child.''
*** That does nothing for the fact that she was TheLoad. For the entire movie, she did nothing but scream and, from anyone's view, apparently couldn't walk because Tom Cruise's character has to carry her around most of the time. And then there's the fact that her getting in "danger" (as in a group of people trying to get her to safety) and nearly ended up getting her brother killed after her father was forced to save her instead.

** In an interview, the staff of that movie said that changing Daphne ''was'' necessary for the sake of proper method acting. The goal established from the start was for live actors to do the best interpretations they could of the cartoon characters, but they ran into a roadblock with Daphne because in the cartoon she essentially had no personality. The natural choice was for Sarah Michelle Gellar to channel her greatest known role.