Deliberately Distressed Damsel

That Alice! She seems Too Dumb to Live. She picks up the Distress Ball and, like a true Damsel Scrappy, scores on her own team with it. And worse, she seems like she's enjoying it.

While this character may look like a Damsel Scrappy at first glance, she's actually Obfuscating Stupidity. Whether she's pulling a Wounded Gazelle Gambit, or just into this sort of thing, she doesn't get captured because she's weak, she gets captured because she wants to. She may even have the skills to get out of the scrape she's in herself if necessary. If this is the case, expect her to say Let's Get Dangerous! at some point.

If she's getting captured because she's into it, she may be a case of Best Her to Bed Her. Expect her not to have much regard for Safe, Sane, and Consensual. If her getting captured is part of her Evil Plan, she's really a Decoy Damsel. If she is a protagonist, she may be letting herself get captured as part of The Infiltration. Alternately, if she's Bruce Wayne Held Hostage, she may pretend to be a Hysterical Woman in order to convince the villains to let her go before she comes back in her more heroic guise.

Compare I Surrender, Suckers, Too Kinky to Torture, Aren't You Going to Ravish Me?

---

Examples:

Anime & Manga

• Black Butler deconstructs this trope with Elizabeth "Lizzie" Middleford. The attitudes of Victorian society and her fears that No Guy Wants an Amazon coming from an incident she witnessed in her early years result in her hiding her talent as a Master Swordsman and Little Miss Badass Adorable and living in constant fear that her fiancé Ciel Phantomhive would reject and hate her if he knew the truth. In the process of hiding her talents and pretending to be clueless, the poor girl's self-esteem suffers and she even places herself at great risk, out of the terror she feels upon probably being seen as "uncute" and "undesirable" by the guy she loves since childhood. Once the truth comes out and she learns he doesn't mind marrying a Lady of War, she's noticeably more confident.
• Bleach:
  • Rukia Kuchiki in the Soul Society arc. In this case, however, it's because she's suicidal, and wants to die to atone for killing her sub-captain and first love in self-defense after he was possessed by a Hollow. The fact that circumstances have prevented her from regaining the power she lost in the first episode don't help.
  • Orihime later tries to pull this in the Hueco Mundo arc. She's first taken as a hostage after a cruel Sadistic Choice, and later she tries to act like she has joined the Arrancar to both keep herself alive while surrounded by enemies and get an opportunity to reject the Hogyoku with her powers. She has even less luck than Rukia does, and boy does that break her.
• Both Kamanosuke and Anastasia have used this trick in Brave10.
• Dragon Ball Super: Super Hero: The Red Ribbon Army tries to kidnap Pan, Gohan's three-year-old daughter. Pan knocks out her would-be captor in one blow, but Piccolo convinces her to go along with it to motivate Gohan to train. Later, Gohan gets his second wind when Piccolo (disguised as a Red Ribbon grunt) asks Pan to scream as if he's hurting her.
• It's strongly implied in the Fatal Fury anime that Mai Shiranui's apparent Chickification is this, since she wants to invoke The Dulcinea Effect on her crush Andy because he's either too shy/reserved to openly show his feelings for her or too focused on training to pay attention to her. Confirmed at the almost end of The Movie: when the normally VERY badass Terry and Joe are disabled by the enemy in a Hostage Situation, Mai immediately decides to fight back alongside Andy and she very easily defeats her rival Panni, a powerful Dark Action Girl who had just as easily defeated the same guy that held Mai hostage in the second TV special.
• Eiko from Hajimete no Aku tries this trope out to gain fame and fortune. She just ends up scaring off the people who put her in distress on accident.
• Darkness from KonoSuba keeps trying to be one of these, because she has a massive kink for being captured and subjected to all kinds of horrible fates where she can suffer nobly (and erotically) like a brave heroine should, to the point where she actively refers to things like that as "play", but she comes on way too strong too fast and just turns the villains off. Babbling on about her elaborately-detailed fantasies right in front of them when they've only just met isn't exactly the best strategy, especially when it causes the people around them to start thinking horrible things about her would-be paramour.
• Happened in Mobile Fighter G Gundam, with Tomboy Princess Maria Louise of France playing this role. It backfires spectacularly.
• In My-Otome, Shizuru intentionally gives herself up to the invading Schwarz forces to buy Natsuki enough time to escape and get enough help to take back Garderobe.
• Used twice by Shampoo in Ranma ½.
  • Maomolin tried to force Shampoo to become his wife a couple of times. Shampoo could have easily dealt with him on her own but preferred to play the Damsel in Distress role to make Ranma protect her.
  • During the Pink and Link arc, she easily frees herself from their kidnapping, beats them up, and forces them to stick to the role of kidnappers so she can still be rescued by Ranma.
• Spy X Family: A variant. Anya has telepathy, letting her identify terrorists and criminals. But she's five years old, so she can't do much about it herself, and she's terrified of anyone finding out her secret. So she tends to throw herself into danger, making it look like the terrorists are trying to kidnap her. Enter Yor, her Mama Bear mother who is also the most feared assassin in the world, taking out all the terrorists.

Comic Strips

• During their run in Dragon, the party in Nodwick at one point 'rescued' a princess from a dragon who was not only such a royal pest that the dragon practically dumped her in the party's lap, but turned out to have gotten 'kidnapped' willingly in order to get rescued by a handsome prince. She was none too happy that a Ragtag Bunch of Misfits (and non-royal ones, at that!) showed up first, and even Piffany is so annoyed by her insufferableness that she begins rethinking her vow of nonviolence.

Fan Works

• BURN THE WITCH!: Lila convinces herself that the only reason Hawkmoth is permitting Witch Hunter to go on such a rampage is because he's setting up a trap for Ladybug of this nature. After all, surely, she's far too valuable to him as a partner-in-crime for him to just... let her be burned at the stake for real, right?!
• I'm In Love With Another Boy: After Chat Noir learns that Ladybug is crushing on his civilian identity, he starts intentionally endangering himself as Adrien so that she's forced to repeatedly rescue him. He doesn't consider how this is impacting his performance as a superhero until Ladybug finally calls him out on all the battles he's shown up late to or skipped outright.
• Princess Celestia Gets Mugged. It's in the name! Instead of revealing her identity and curbstomping the attackers, she decides to play along and see what happens.

Films — Live-Action

• In Alien Avengers, George Went's character's wife does this. The pair make it seem like the wife is unconscious, and ask an implied gang member if he will help. He said that since it is George's wife after he's done with her, he can have a turn. She gets up from her feigned incapacitation and the two kill the guy. She fit this trope in that moment because she is really a homicidal alien with a strong sense of justice instead of a weakling.
• The Avengers reveals that this is a favorite tactic of Natasha Romanoff/Black Widow, because between her captors' boasts and whatever they think is important enough to question her about, she learns a lot. Her introductory scene opens with her tied to a chair and surrounded by thugs, who are ready to torture her at behest of a rogue Russian general...then a call from her fellow Agent Coulson confirms this is just another day of work for her and she breaks out and beats them all up the minute he needs her on a different mission.
• The short film that D.E.B.S. was based on had a team member who keeps getting kidnapped by the Big Bad to cover for their Dating Catwoman relationship.
• Played with in Monkey Business, when Mary Helton drops a handkerchief in front of Zeppo, who pockets it and then drops one for her to pick up.

Literature

• In Everworld, Senna knew that someone like Loki was going to come for her eventually, so she purposefully manipulated people she knew to get sucked into Everworld with her. Particularly early on she tried to play the innocent Living MacGuffin, but April, Jalil and Christopher could see through her. David had a harder time of it, though, for various reasons.
• In The Light Fantastic, Cohen the Barbarian, Rincewind, and Twoflower interrupt a druidic sacrifice, in the process rescuing the maiden who was about to be sacrificed. Said maiden is extremely indignant about the rescue, protesting that if it weren't for them rescuing her she would be "having tea with the Moon Goddess by now" and that they'd just caused "eight years of staying in on Sunday nights" to go "down the drain".
• In Murder on the Leviathan, Renata Kleber gets into trouble on purpose in hopes of starting a Rescue Romance with the handsome protagonist, who seems to uphold chivalric values.
• Spice and Wolf: Holo gets kidnapped, and though she is a goddess and could easily escape, she doesn't because she wanted to see her love interest, Kraft Lawrence, bust in like a badass, beat up the kidnappers, and sweep her off her feet. She gets upset when Lawrence, whom she forgot doesn't have any fighting skills, does the sensible thing by hiring expert mercenaries to rescue her.
• In The Twilight Saga, Bella thinks that she can psychically connect with her ex-boyfriend Edward if she gets an adrenaline rush, and purposefully puts herself in near-death situations to bring them on.
• Urban Dragon: Arkay's main source of income involves pretending to be a ditsy ingenue for would-be sexual predators, beating them within an inch of their lives, and robbing them blind.
• The Wheel of Time: Aes Sedai Magical Society members take a magically binding Oath never to harm humans with their powers except in defense of their own lives — such as when they deliberately wade into the battlefield until they feel threatened enough for the Oath to let them start slinging fireballs.

Live Action TV

• The Flash: In "The Flash Reborn", Iris deliberately offers herself as a hostage to the "Samuroid", hoping that her being in danger will snap the mentally-unstable Barry out of it. It works. And how!
• Neal Caffrey pulls a male version in the Pilot Episode of White Collar: Long story short, Neal has been let out of prison in order to help the FBI catch an art forger known as The Dutchman. If he fails, he goes back to prison to finish out his sentence. He and Agent Burke have ID'ed The Dutchman and found his base of operations, but they don't have probable cause to carry out a search. Neal gets around this by getting himself captured by The Dutchman's Mooks, knowing that this will take him outside of the two-mile radius afforded by his tracking anklet, setting it off and giving the FBI an excuse to raid the base.

Tabletop Games

• Champions: Princess is a supervillain (given a very loose definition of 'villain') who subconsciously does this to herself. She is romance junkie who has fixated on superheroes as the modern version of a Knight in Shining Armor. Her uncontrolled powers keep placing her in bizarre and dangerous situations which force superheroes to come and rescue her.

Video Games

• Princess Garnet in Final Fantasy IX tries to invoke this trope by begging Tantalus member Zidane to kidnap her in order to escape the country. Unbeknownst to her, Tantalus was there to kidnap her anyway.
• The Legend of Zelda:
  • Played with in The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword. Though Zelda herself certainly doesn't choose to be kidnapped, it's later revealed that her plight was part of a plan set in motion by her previous incarnation. In her past life as the goddess Hylia, she predicted that putting her human self in danger would be a surefire way to spur Link into action.
  • Played straight in Breath of the Wild. Zelda may have been trapped inside Hyrule Castle for the past 100 years, but that's because she's been busy keeping Calamity Ganon sealed up with her.
• In The PK Girl, Cassie is kidnapped by thugs in the beginning. She admits after you rescue her that she could easily have escaped and taken care of her attackers herself, but she didn't because being rescued was more fun.
• A mission in Pokémon Super Mystery Dungeon involves a request from a Grovyle to rescue a Shiny Celebi. When you finally find that Celebi, she states she pretended to be in trouble in the dungeon so that she can cause Rescue Romance with Grovyle... whose sole response is that she's strong enough to have no trouble in that dungeon.
• In The Secret of Monkey Island, Governor Elaine Marley is kidnapped by her rejected suitor LeChuck. Guybrush manages to track LeChuck's ship to Monkey Island, and nearly manages to free Elaine when the ship sails back to Melee Island where LeChuck hopes to force her to marry him. Guybrush manages to crash the wedding at the last second... only to discover that the bride isn't Elaine, but a pair of monkeys. It turns out Elaine freed herself and hatched a plan to destroy LeChuck. It is unclear exactly at what point she hatched her plan - possibly even before being kidnapped.
• Alicia Pris pulls this off in Solatorobo: Red the Hunter. hiring the Sky Pirates to kidnap her, all in the hopes that the good cop Waffle will come rescue her. Unfortunately for her, Red gets there before her intended man and Hilarity Ensues.
• A common interpretation for Super Mario Bros.'s Princess Peach is that she lets herself get kidnapped out of boredom, or to give the brothers something to do. As shown in various games in the franchise ( Super Mario Bros.2, Super Mario RPG, Super Princess Peach, Super Paper Mario, Super Mario 3D World, Super Mario Run, Mario + Rabbids Kingdom Battle, Mario + Rabbids Sparks Of Hope and Super Smash Bros) she is a very powerful and dangerous Action Girl when she wants to be so this most likely is the case.
• One common fan theory about the ending of Half-Life: Alyx is that the G-man deliberately allowed himself to be captured by the Combine, because he already knew that Alyx would inadvertently free him.

Visual Novels

• Akane aka June in Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors. In reality, she's the Deadly Game's creator, and coldly manipulates everyone to ensure her survival.
• Jessica Ushiromiya in Umineko: When They Cry. While she is asthmatic, she more than once pretends to be more ill than she truly is.

Webcomics

• Blindsprings: The plot gets kicked off when a princess gets rescued from The Fair Folk by her Unlucky Childhood Friend. Unfortunately, the princess was there to fulfill an as-yet unclear "contract" with said Fair Folk that required, among other things, that she never leave the forest. The Childhood Friend? Refuses to listen, physically drags her from the forest anyway, and permanently breaks her contract, effectively rendering literally centuries' worth of her work pointless. The result: an even more difficult contract for the Princess, the permanent breach of their friendship, and all kinds of scorn heaped on said Friend. Nice one, fella.
• Mentioned in El Goonish Shive to parody the Damsel in Distress:
  Grace:"[discussing why a video game princess keeps getting kidnapped] Oh, it's like foreplay to her. She's kind of evil that way."
• Zola's early appearances in Girl Genius, with a generous helping of Obfuscating Stupidity.

Web Original

• In episode 17 of RWBY Chibi, Nora repeatedly tries to stage herself being attacked by a Grimm creature in hopes that Ren will save her. It doesn't work: the first two times she's saved by Sun and Yang instead, while the third time has Ren see she has it under control and leave.
• In Sword Art Online Abridged, Suguha Kirigaya is a Jerk Jock and Little Sister Bully who enjoys thrashing and insulting her brother during kendo practice, but when she logs into Alfheim Online it's to roleplay as "Princess Leafa," someone victimized by other players in an I Have You Now, My Pretty scenario. She's bad at it, since she can't help but brandish her sword even while trying to plead for her life, but Leafa aspires to be a helpless damsel, hence why she allows Kirito to "rescue" her. Given that Yui's psychoanalysis of Leafa/Suguha pegs her as a Tomboy with a Girly Streak who views her own femininity as a weakness, it's likely that Suguha's roleplaying as Princess Leafa is a way to safely explore that aspect of her personality, as a sort of inverted Power Fantasy.

Western Animation

• The gender-flipped version is discussed in the Captain Planet and the Planeteers episode "Beast of the Temple". Upon seeing Wheeler for the first time after he lured the dragon away from her, Linka throws herself into his arms in relief. Wheeler tells her that if he'd known getting captured would produce this reaction, he'd have gotten himself caught more often.
• In Good Wilt Hunting, the first movie made for Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends, Nina, who created Eduardo as a little girl, is able to use Eduardo's Papa Wolf Mentality towards her to her advantage by playing Deliberately Distressed Damsel when interrogating some stowaways on the bus, despite being a cop herself and him being the most cowardly member of the group trying to find Wilt.
• In Muppet Babies (1984), Piggy would always cast herself as the classic fairy tale princess or damsel-in-distress, helplessly trapped by the villain, in the games the babies imagined so that her hero "Kermy" could rescue her... and then things would go south, so she'd have to step up, say, "Gimme that stupid sword!", and beat the bad guys herself, acting very annoyed the whole time ("Can you believe this?").
• Spoofed in Pucca, when Pucca's best friend Ching (a Cute Bruiser) tries to stage several dangerous situations to attract the attention of her crush Abyo - and not even a single one works. And then it's subverted: when Abyo ends up in trouble and Ching saves him, he's revealed to be an Amazon Chaser.
• Gender-Inverted in the ThunderCats (2011) episode "The Duelist and the Drifter." Adventure Town resident and habitual Distressed Dude the Drifter gets snagged on high fences three times, each time enlisting protagonist Lion-O's help to get down. This would be innocuous but for the fact that the Drifter possesses Not Quite Flight, and readily exploits these encounters to offer Adventure Rebuffs and unsolicited, passive-aggressive advice on Lion-O's own increasing problems while elaborately feigning disinterest.

---