Basic Trope: An unscrupulous goal-driven person willing to do anything to get what they want.
- Straight: Bridgette does whatever she can to achieve her goals, even if this means breaking various laws and breaking the trust of those who care about her.
- Exaggerated:
- Bridgette is willing to do morally atrocious deeds to become successful in life; this includes murdering her own friends, family, Love Interest, and her pet.
- Bridgette is unfettered to the point of not only doing morally questionable deeds, but deeds that are highly degrading or disgusting as well, so long as they serve her ends.
- Bridgette commits Moral Event Horizons at a very regular (and unnervingly swift) rate in order to complete her goals.
- Complete Monster
- Downplayed:
- Bridgette does whatever she can to achieve her goals, even if this means breaking various laws and breaking the trust of those who care about her, but shows remorse for her actions.
- Bridgette does whatever she has to do to achieve her goals, but the things she has to do to achieve them aren't necessarily unlawful or immoral, just a bit harsh and deviant from the social norm.
- Justified:
- Bridgette feels that restraining herself with moral standards is making it difficult in effectively reaching her goals.
- Bridgette is incredibly self-centered and stone cold.
- The Fettered methods turned out to be ineffective, so she decides to abandon them and win by all means necessary.
- Bridgette has an exceptionally Dark and Troubled Past and either lost or been betrayed by everyone she cared about.
- Bridgette is a psychopath, and believes that other people's moral standards are weaknesses that can only hold them back from success.
- Inverted: The Fettered
- Subverted:
- It turns out that someone was making false claims of Bridgette being overly pragmatic.
- Even Bridgette has lines she refuse to cross.
- Double Subverted:
- Bridgette really is over pragmatic, making the person's accusations true.
- But when pushed, Bridgette can still bypass those moral limits, despite her despair upon doing so.
- Parodied: Bridgette is willing to win $1 billion by writing graffiti on every building walls.
- Zig Zagged: Depending on situation, Bridgette either follows rules or breaks them, whatever is more useful.
- Averted: Bridgette neither does anything questionable nor upright to achieve her goals.
- Enforced: "Let's create Bridgette as a representation of how people in real life will do anything for success."
- Lampshaded: "There's Bridgette. Whatever she's willing to do to in getting what she wants, it isn't good."
- Invoked: Bridgette's parents have a very important goal in mind. They know it will require morally questionable actions to accomplish, but they don't have the stomach to go through with it themselves. Instead they raise Bridgette to believe that nothing should ever stand in the way of what she wants, and set her loose on their goal.
- Exploited:
- Steve knows Bridgette is unfettered, and starts a rumor mill to defamer her, knowing she'll prove them right soon enough.
- Because Bridgette is unfettered, it is much easier for Steve to swindle her into ruining herself because a fettered individual (both the smart and foolish versions) would not rush in.
- Defied:
- Bridgette decides not to cross every lines to achieve success and, with great reluctance, follows the societal principles that is expected of her.
- Everybody else makes their point known that if Bridgette even thinks of crossing whatever lines they establish, they will completely walk away and leave her to whichever bad fate she just summoned for herself or will kill her, and pray to anything they hold holy that they will be able to fix whatever mess she caused for them.
- To her existential shock, Bridgette finally acknowledges that crossing every single moral line only made things worse in the long-term both for everyone else and her. As a result, she reigns herself in or transitions to the opposite; even becoming The Atoner as a bonus.
- Discussed: ???
- Conversed: ???
- Deconstructed:
- Bridgette is so willing to do anything to win that she engages in self-destructive behavior or even outright illogical actions so long as it guarantees her victory, even if it comes at such a high cost that she is ultimately worse off than when she started.
- Bridgette is so focused on achieving her goals that she never takes the time to fully conserve or observe her resources. Ultimately when she runs out, she has no idea what she can use to achieve her goals.
- Bridgette is Unfettered, but she's still ultimately moral. The more times she has to Shoot the Dog, the closer she comes to a breakdown, until she breaks entirely.
- Bridgette ends up building herself a bad reputation that paints her as a complete sociopath and there is absolutely nobody that will accept her—even if that means having to suffer whatever she will do in the attempt to strong-arm them in doing so.
- Bridgette is so driven to do anything to win that she becomes a Straw Vulcan or Know-Nothing Know-It-All — if a strategy involves "holding back", "compassion", "retreat (even faked)", "negotiation", "understand how complicated - or screwed up - the political environment is before butting in" or literally anything that is not "charge in guns blazing and strong-arm the survivors", she absolutely refuses to hear it and may even terrorize whoever proposed it to her. Unsurprisingly, this screws her over more often than not. Even when she finally gets it in her head to be more stealthy, she never loses the "I have to be the one with the bigger knife and be the one who stabs first" mindset, means she is still predictable but she thinks she is stealthy, so buzz off.
- Reconstructed:
- But it turned out to be the best course of action, because she knows that the alternative is ''worse''.
- With every deed, Bridgette has greater, rather than less resolve: she feels she has to make those sacrifice count for something.
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