Basic Trope: A female combatant.
- Straight: Alice can take out a whole bunch of Mooks and even the Big Bad with her physical combat skills.
- Exaggerated:
- Alice often takes out a whole bunch of Mooks, Quirky Minibosses, Brutes, Evil Geniuses, Dragons, and Big Bads with nothing but the sheer power of Awesomeness.
- World of Action Girls
- Amazon Brigade
- Alice is a superhuman with near world destroying powers.
- Downplayed:
- Alice rarely gets into physical combat, by either choice or lack of situations, but she can put up a fight whenever necessary.
- Alice fights with cleverness rather then brute strength and is not stupid enough to believe that being beautiful makes her able to brawl with mooks with the build of longshoremen. Thumping them on the head with cobblestones while they search for her somewhere else is what sensible women do.
- Alice, though not exactly an action hero, is a Badass Driver and could probably easily beat racing legends such as Michael Schumacher or Mario Andretti in a race.
- Justified:
- Alice grew up in a rough neighborhood where women got no special treatment for having a vagina. She would have to learn how to defend herself unaided to survive.
- Alice grew up in a culture where women did get special treatment for having a vagina. The special treatment is to be put through a savage martial arts course.
- Alice joined the military or became a police officer, etc.
- Alice is the Heir to the Dojo, etc.
- In Alice's culture, it is not unusual for women to go to war.
- Inverted:
- Alice is always the Damsel in Distress. She has no fighting skills whatsoever and always has to be rescued, usually by the male members of The Team.
- Alternatively, Alice may not have fighting skills, but instead uses incredible calculative abilities to be a Guile Hero.
- Non-Action Guy.
- Gender Inverted: The male Action Hero
- Subverted:
- Chickification or Faux Action Girl.
- Alice is physically stronger than her boyfriend, and comes from a military family. However, the stresses of her Training from Hell and Military Brat upbringing have turned her into an Actual Pacifist.
- Double Subverted:
- Alice seems like a Faux Action Girl. Her resume or reputation speak of her ass-kicking skills, but she doesn't fight much, or gets handed the Distress Ball every now and then. When she finally gets her chance to shine, they have to clean up what's left of the villains with a mop.
- Alice acts like a Faux Action Girl to get close to the Big Bad, whereupon she takes him out.
- When someone she loves is threatened, she is forced to renounce her pacifism, as violence is the only way to save them.
- Parodied:
- Alice is The Ace/
Mary Tzu and a Parody Sue who is seemingly the only person with any competence in fighting at all. - The series is a World of Action Girls, and every female character is a formidable combatant. Yes, even the nuns, the little five-year-old girl, and even old ladies.
- Alice effortlessly overpowers brickhouses of men who are more than half as tall again and twice as heavy as she is, then tosses them around like rag dolls.
- Alice is a Shameless Fanservice Girl who fights nude ... and her reputation is such that when men see her naked, more of them run away from than towards her.
- Alice is The Ace/
- Zig-Zagged:
- Alice is a Faux Action Girl, add Took a Level in Badass, then stir in Chickification for good measure.
- Alice's culture is a Proud Warrior Race. The women are supposedly expected to stay home and look graceful and demure while the men are slaughtering the Mooks of the Evil Overlord. But under their elegant exterior the women are as much warriors as the men, are often called upon to defend their homes, and are sternly trained in Urban Warfare, by the teachers in female warrior sisterhoods. They live peacefully caring for their children until an enemy raiding party shows up. At which time they brutally slaughter them and are only grieved that their nice dresses are ruined. When the men come back from their heroic campaign they rebuke the women, not for fighting(for no one objects to that) but for their inconsiderate behavior in not leaving some alive so that the men could share the fun. Whereupon all the women politely and submissively apologize while rolling their eyes at male eccentricity. And everyone lives happily until it is time for the next campaign.
- Averted:
- Alice does not fight.
- Alternatively, no one fights in the show.note
- Enforced:
- Affirmative Action Girl
- It's appropriately humiliating to show that Beastly Bob, Chameleon Charlie and Danger David can't walk the talk by having them be outdone by Alice.
- Lampshaded:
- "You took out Evil Elliott! Way to go, Alice!"
- "Dude, you just got your ass kicked by a girl..." "Shut up, she'll hear you!"
- "No, this is fighting like a girl!" [WHAM!]
- Invoked: I Was Beaten by a Girl
- Exploited: Bob recruits Alice for his Badass Army.
- Defied:
- Alice chooses not to fight, so that she will not intimidate Bob and so she can be rescued by him.
- Alice chooses not to fight because she is an Actual Pacifist.
- Men Use Violence, Women Use Communication
- Discussed: "Aw, come on, Alice, you can go into battle! Please? Pretend you're one of those badass female warriors from those books you love!"
- Conversed: "I love this show. That one girl Alice kicks so much ass."
- Deconstructed:
- Alice kicks ass and takes names, but everyone especially her love interest is intimidated by her, even though she is in fact a decent, lovable person. This causes her to feel bad about herself and give up fighting.
- Alice is as strong as the male characters, but just the fact that she's a girl causes her trouble. Every month she's incapable of fighting for a week and she's not taken seriously and just dismissed as 'the woman' regardless of her abilities. Having to fight her culture tooth and nail just to keep her career quickly gives her Jade-Coloured Glasses in addition to the regular War Is Hell trauma.
- In order to compete successfully with her male colleagues and gain an edge over her enemies, Alice must work twice as hard. She finally abuses steroids, which turns her into a Brawn Hilda, or is a cause of Muscle Angst.
- Alice kicks ass and takes names, but she forgets that in spite of all of this, she can never catch up to a man of similar fitness in terms of strength. Underestimating one male opponent costs her her life.
- Reconstructed:
- Alice intimidates people, but she does not let it get to her. They get used to the fact that she is an Action Girl and some admire or lust after her for it.
- Despite knowing the disadvantage she is given, Alice knows that the same thing gives her advantages. She can exploit a villain that underestimates her and otherwise use guile to augment her fighting skills.
- Alice has Super-Strength; her physical attributes mean nothing.
- Her fans like heavily muscled women and her work ethic encourages her teammates.
- Played for Laughs: Alice will kill you for breaking her nails.
- Played for Drama: Alice must prove that not everyone is effeminate in a world of Girly Girls.
- Played for Horror: Dark Action Girl.
You'd better return to Action Girl, before Alice takes you and your minions down!
