All Girls Want Bad Boys/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A female character falls in love with or feels very attracted to a 'bad boy' (i.e. a male character with dysfunctional, aggressive, socially discouraged, or outright criminal character traits), usually choosing him over a 'nice guy'.

  • Played Straight: The female character falls in love with a rebel.
  • Exaggerated:
    • The female character falls in love with a bloodthirsty, megalomaniacal criminal.
    • The female character falls in love with a psychopathic Serial Killer.
    • The female character falls in love with the Devil. How's that for exaggeration!?
  • Downplayed: She rejects a Nice Guy for being too boring in favour of a Jerkass, for a while, at least.
  • Justified:
  • Inverted:
  • Subverted:
    • The woman seems to have fallen for the bad boy...but she's actually into someone else, he was misinterpreting all the signs.
    • The man was a Hero with Bad Publicity
  • Double Subverted:
  • Parodied:
    • A woman falls in love with a man because he forgot to pay a parking ticket (or some other similarly minor 'bad' trait), this making him a 'bad boy' in her eyes.
    • Alternatively: a man goes to ludicrously extreme lengths to present himself as a 'bad boy' in order to attract a woman's interest. This includes kicking babies in the face, setting kitties on fire, blowing up buses full of nuns, and playing whiny protest songs from the 60's. And it works!
  • Deconstructed: A woman falls in love with a bad boy and runs away with him, only to be trapped in an unhappy relationship as the man physically and emotionally abuses her, cheats on her, and ruins her life.
  • Reconstructed:
    • A woman falls in love with a bad boy and runs away with him, only to be trapped in an unhappy relationship as the man physically and emotionally abuses her, cheats on her, and ruins her life. She then meets another bad boy who genuinely loves her and treats her well.
    • Jane is abused by John, but all the Nice Guys look the other way; Jack, Badass and dangerous, stops him and teaches her to fight him on her own, and they form a Battle Couple.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice has an obvious crush on her friend Bob, the bad boy of the school (he has yet to tell anyone but Alice that he just likes the fashion), but then Bob's put into a situation that is out of the law's hands. Alice is against all of this, seeing that it's changing him, and abandons him. Later, she gets attracted to him anyway. Doesn't help that she's also attracted to Charlie and Bob gets a new friend, Darlene. Charlie has his eyes more on Darlene than on Alice. The Creators try to get Yaoi demographic by introducing Eddy, the Bigger Bad Boy who's involved in a Ho Yay Love Triangle with Bob and Charlie. Alice and Darlene also have their own Les Yay going on.
  • Averted: There is no single 'bad boy' character; the woman's romantic options are between flawed but decent men.
  • Enforced: "We need to soften this criminal character up, so he has a reason to clean up his act. Maybe make one of the supporting female characters fall for him?"
  • Lampshaded: "Of course, she loves him; bad boys are sexy, everyone knows that!"
  • Invoked: A guy tries to build up a bad boy image to get a girl to like him.
  • Defied: "What, you think your attitude turns me on? No, thanks, unlike the girls that fawn on you, I have some self-respect."
  • Discussed: "It's weird, isn't it, how women seem to be really attracted to bad guys?"
  • Conversed: "That character is dreamy! He's such a rebel!"

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