Action Dress Rip/Playing With

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Basic Trope: Action Girl rips part of her dress off so she can fight while still wearing what's left of it.

  • Straight: Barbara is enjoying herself at a festival, wearing a pretty dress that's distinctly different from her normal outfit. Suddenly, monsters attack! Barbara immediately rips off the hem of her dress and goes for the nearest Improvised Weapon before charging into the fray.
  • Exaggerated: Barbara and the rest of her friends are attending an upscale gala, wearing an array of Pimped Out Dresses. When Emperor Evulz has his forces crash the party, all the women there immediately tear off parts of their dresses so they can help fight.
  • Justified: Barbara wants to join the fight quickly, but would be hindered if she tried attacking while wearing such a restricting and unfamiliar outfit.
  • Inverted: Barbara slips on a more elaborate outer skirt because it's heavily warded.
  • Subverted: Princess Violet joins the fight without having to tear her Pimped-Out Dress. One of the perks of being a Squishy Wizard, one supposes...
  • Double Subverted: Thanks to her spellcasting abilities, Violet is able to immediately join the battle without having to damage her dress. However, she still finds it difficult to evade the enemies while wearing her dress. Her gown quickly gets snagged on something, forcing her to tear it free.
  • Parodied:
    • The action girls remove all their clothes at the slightest hint of danger.
    • This has happened so often that the Action Girl brought a dress with a detachable velcro skirt just in case.
  • Deconstructed: Barbara tries to tear the dress, but it doesn't come away as easily as she thought and she gets tangled up in the fabric. The Mooks look down at her struggling on the floor and shoot her in the head.
  • Reconstructed: Barbara struggles with tearing the dress at first, but despite being at an initial big disadvantage, ultimately points out that if she'd insisted on fighting on without getting rid of the hindrances, she'd be in an even worse mess due to tripping up on her own clothing.
  • Zig Zagged: Emperor Evulz sics his minions on the ball. Barbara immediately tears off her skirt and leaps into action. Princess Velvet, on the other hand, tries to avoid damaging her clothes by spellcasting from a distance, but is eventually forced to rip part of it off to free herself, to her dismay. Claudia dressed sensibly enough that she isn't hampered by her attire and doesn't have to tear it just so she can fight, and Maria manages to avoid damaging her dress entirely somehow.
  • Averted: Barbara's clothes are enchanted so that she never has to damage them just to gain full mobility.
  • Enforced: Fan Service.
  • Lampshaded: "Another fight? Damn, at this rate I'll have no nice dresses left..."
  • Invoked: "Why did you rip part of your dress off?" "That's what Action Girls always do..."
  • Defied:
    • "I'll be damned if I'm ripping up another dress, I'll fight as I am"
    • Barbara wears a little black dress so she doesn't have to wreck her dress when the inevitable fight starts.
    • Or "I don't care if it takes a few minutes AND I have to fight in my underwear, I paid a lot of money for this dress, and I'm not going to rip the skirt off OR let monsters tear it up. I'm going to completely remove my dress and put it in a safe place, then go fight the monsters."
  • Discussed: "This is the part where an Action Girl would rip up her Pimped-Out Dress - but not all of us have an unlimited clothing budget"
  • Conversed: "They always do that, does it really make that much difference in a fight?"
  • Played For Laughs: One of Barbara's best friends is Taylor, who regularly repairs Clothing Damage for her and everyone else in the City of Adventure. Business is always brisk.
  • Played For Drama: Barbara has been working tirelessly, to the point where her friends are starting to worry about her not having any downtime. So they convince her to attend a festival and just relax for a while. Barbara reluctantly agrees, but has difficulty letting her guard down and having a good time... and just when it looks like she's starting to adjust, the party is disturbed. Her minor progress towards having a more normal life immediately falls by the wayside as she snaps back into action mode, ripping her dress so she can join the fray.

Back to Action Dress Rip.

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