Combat Stilettos/Playing With
Basic Trope: A woman fights in high heels, despite how impractical it is.
- Straight: Alice's battle outfit consists of a pair of high-heeled boots.
- Exaggerated: ...In addition, the heels are actual weapons.
- Justified:
- Alice wears them as they can be useful weapons.
- Alice can fly, so fighting in them is a bit more practical.
- Alice considers herself such a good fighter that she handicaps herself by fighting in increasingly-high heels.
- Alice sharpens the heels to the point where they can be used as knives.
- Alice was attacked while attending a dinner party, so she has to fight in her heels.
- The fact that Alice is supremely vain is a large part of her character.
- Inverted:
- Alice wears combat boots despite never being in combat.
- Bob fights in high heels.
- Subverted: Preparing to fight, Alice decides to switch to more sensible shoes.
- Or she doesn't switch, and pays the penalty in the form of a Broken Heel.
- She kicks her shoes off before the fight and fights in bare feet.
- Doubly Subverted: These "sensible" shoes are still high heeled, but they do not contain the "ridiculous additions" as her previous ones.
- Parodied:
- Alice's high heeled boots has 12-inch heels to the point where wearing them requires her to stand on her tip toes.
- Alice wields a high-heeled boot as a hand weapon.
- Deconstructed: Due to constantly fighting in heels, Alice is viewed as a clumsy and slow fighter, bordering on being ineffectual, and has broken her ankles a few times.
- Reconstructed: But constant Training from Hell in them has made her ankles stronger and has improved her balance.
- Zig Zagged: Preparing to fight, Alice decides to switch to more sensible shoes. These "sensible" shoes are still high heeled, but they do not contain the "ridiculous additions" as her previous ones. However, it turns out these are genuinely practical, due to the odd physics of the area. Then it turns out that was just a bluff, she's Cherry Tapping. Except that was a bluff, her friend just turned off the gravity, so now shoes don't matter and the points of her heels (sharpened or not) are effective weapons...
- Averted: Alice's battle outfit contains sensible, flat-soled boots to begin with.
- Enforced: "Oh, these new heels I got from the mall? They're my ass kicking boots!"
- Lampshaded: "I did all of that while wearing heels!"
- Invoked: "There is no way I'm going to be seen without my heels, even in a fight."
- Defied: Alice is designing her battle outfit. While the heels are sexier and look good with the outfit, she decides to go with a more sensible pair of army boots.
- Discussed: "Who'd thought fighting in heels would be so effective!"
- Conversed: "How can you possibly fight in those heels?"
- Plotted A Perfectly Good Waste: The fact that Alice wears high heels for every occasion, including fighting and mountain climbing clues in readers that something's not right. It is later revealed that Alice's legs have shortened tendons, thus making it necessary for her to wear heels or she would otherwise walk on her tip toes.
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