Basic Trope: Character is at another's mercy, but will never cooperate, no matter what fate may befall them.
- Straight: Alice is taken prisoner by Baron Von Bloodlust, who says she will be spared if she kneels and declares to be his vassal. Alice spits in his eye in response.
- Exaggerated: Even after being executed, Alice's ghost haunts the baron, driving him bonkers.
- Downplayed: Alice just shrugs, and says that she'll think about it.
- Justified:
- Alice was stalling, so that her people could finish their evacuation.
- Nothing Alice does will change her execution, so why not?
- Inverted:
- The Baron refuses to demand that Alice surrender, no matter how much she begs him to let her do so.
- Alice is already prepared to submit to The Baron before he can even demand anything from her.
- Subverted: Alice just stands up, after being told to kneel, but then gets into a proper bow before the Baron.
- Double Subverted: This was to help set up Alice's stance, so she could slip out of her bonds and fight the guards.
- Parodied: The guards grabbed Alice's armor, but she wasn't in it, and it takes even the Baron a few minutes to realize it, after furiously demanding her submission, and getting silence.
- Zig Zagged: Alice declares that she'll never join Baron. He coolly comments that he believes her and has her immediately executed on the spot. Alice starts to beg for mercy, but when the Baron starts to ask what she'll do, she says she was kidding, and spits in his eye.
- Averted:
- The Baron doesn't demand anything, just orders Alice taken to the stockade.
- The Baron is a Torture Technician and intends for Alice to submit to his will, so he simply breaks her.
- Enforced: Alice's actress is known for her hilarious zingers, and this scene was written just so she could lob a few at the Baron.
- Lampshaded: Black Magician Girl Marcy sighs as Alice tells Baron von Bloodlust to go fuck himself.Marcy: Alice, telling him to go fuck himself is gonna go nowhere. Though I'd pay a lot to see that happen, heh...
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: The Baron was just looking for an excuse to do some Cold-Blooded Torture today (doing it to just anyone would be a Genre Blind mistake), and having Alice refuse to submit was the perfect reason.
- Defied:
- The Baron decides to hypnotize Alice, just so that she would submit to his demands.
- Alice isn't going to be rude to the Baron. He's just a commander who happens to be on the other side. So Alice will just politely turn down his request to surrender.
- The Baron blows Alice's brains out before she can even think of giving him a Death Glare, let alone something more substantial like foul language.
- The Baron tortures Alice (and worse) to ensure she loses her defiance, before killing her. As long as she continues to resist, he will keep her alive longer just so he can continue to torture and break her.
- "That sonofa-" "Alice, don't try it. He'll kill us all anyway, there's no point."
- The Baron makes absolutely damned sure Alice falls in battle (hopefully the first to die) in order to skip over the whole "bloodied but unbowed" part of inevitably making her a martyr.
- Discussed: The Baron wonders why prisoners have to be so snarky.
- Conversed:
- "I feel like Alice's final act of defiance cements her character very well"
- "You know, it doesn't matters how precise it's supposed to be, telling a guy about to kill you that he can go fuck himself has become a pretty laughable cliche."
- Deconstructed:
- Defiance does nothing. It won't stop the Baron from torturing Alice, and it won't stop Alice from dying a horrible death. It won’t stop the Baron from continuing his injustices upon the people and Alice’s rebellion may as well not even be remembered. This is something the Baron will make sure to remind everybody from now on.
- Alice's defiance is actively detrimental to her own cause. Instead of manning up, accepting her defeat, cutting her losses, and regrouping to recover from her failure and plan for a better attempt next time, she throws away the lives of her supporters for a meaningless display of self-sacrifice that doesn't actually accomplish anything.
- Reconstructed: Alice understands that her fate is inescapable. She acts defiant as a means of showing she is not afraid of Baron Von Bloodlust, to not feel utterly humiliated in light of her inevitable Cruel and Unusual Death, and to send a message to the Baron that the heroic army will never submit to his will.
- Played For Laughs:
- Baron Von Bloodlust demands Alice kneel before him to spare her life. She responds with a Groin Attack that causes him to double over and destroy all of his priceless art.
- Baron Von Bloodlust wants Alice to give him a two-dollar discount on her Girl Scout cookies. Alice refuses with the same gravitas as if he was interrogating her for nuclear launch codes.
- Played For Drama: Alice has a bad relationship with her father Baron Von Strohiem in part because her impulsive behavior constantly endangers both her and her siblings. He frowned upon the idea of Alice joining the fight again Von Bloodlust. When Bloodlust realizes that Alice was Strohiem's daugther, he sends a message to Strohiem describing her execution, how defiant she was and that he would have spared her had she not spit on his face. Strohiem goes through a mental breakdown trying to process this.
- Played For Horror: What the Baron does to Alice because of her defiance is so nightmarish that other prisoners learn their lesson, and nobody acts that way ever again.
Take me back to Defiant to the End, but I won't talk!
