Basic Trope: A child that will take a level in badass to protect their parents.
- Straight: When 7-year-old Alice sees her father Bob being cornered by a mugger, she beats the criminal (or at least tries to) to rescue him.
- Exaggerated:
- When 3-year-old Alice hears that her parents had ran into trouble while on a business trip on the opposite side of the country, she rushes to their side on foot, surviving through storms, explosions and heavy traffic, and arrives just in time to beat up the robbers that were holding their office hostage.
- Alice frets over her parents to keep them from suffering from even the slightest hint of harm, such as tripping, getting a paper cut, or breaking a nail.
- Downplayed: Alice has an important part in her parents' rescue by calling 911 or something similar.
- Justified:
- Alice is a Mage Born of Muggles, so she has the powers to easily beat up criminals, monsters and other threats whereas her parents do not.
- Bob is a 70-year old Elderly Father suffering from multiple diseases and declining mental health. Alice is a Badass Action Girl at the peak of her physical prime, so of course she'd be protecting him instead of the other way around.
- Inverted:
- Subverted: ???
- Double Subverted: ???
- Parodied: ???
- Zig-Zagged: ???
- Averted: No children protect their parents.
- Enforced:
- "We should do the opposite of Papa Wolf / Mama Bear. Let's make the kid the one that saves the parents!"
- "Alice is our Kid-Appeal Character, but we can't keep letting her be the load. What's something useful she could do?" "Well, she loves her parents, right?"
- Defied: The mugger immediately shoots Alice rather than take the chance of letting her do this.
- Lampshaded: Bob: It's my job to protect you, not the other way around.
- Invoked: ???
- Exploited: A bully threatens Alice's parents to provoke her and get her in trouble.
- Discussed: ???
- Implied: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Played for Drama:
- Bob feels like he's failed as a father because Alice is always the one protecting him.
- Alice is resentful because she's always protecting Bob, but he's too much of a doormat to do the same for her.
- Deconstructed: Alice tries to rescue Bob from harm, but because she's still an inexperienced child, she gets herself severely injured, or even killed. This actually makes Bob feel worse about the incident, and he spends the rest of his life haunted by the guilt of letting his child protect him instead of taking care of her.
- Reconstructed: ???
- Played for Laughs: ???
Back to Extremely Protective Child
