Damsel Scrappy/Playing With
- Basic Trope: A character who is disliked by the audience for always needing to be rescued.
- Played Straight: Helpless Holly is hated for always being in danger.
- Parodied: Helpless Holly enjoys being kidnapped.
- Exaggerated: She gets this treatment because she got the Distress Ball once.
- Justified:
- Holly was Ret Conned into a Faux Action Girl via Chickification, perhaps in a change in adaptation or an attempt to appeal to some Periphery Demographic.
- Holly's misfortunes are due to her own stupid decisions in-series.
- Holly is a Mary Sue or Creator's Pet, and blatantly so.
- Inverted:
- Helpless Holly is all the more popular because she always needs to be rescued.
- Holly is a God Mode Sue.
- Subverted: The Fandom has the general consensus that the one isolated incident with Holly and the Distress Ball was very badly handled, but didn't lose any respect for the character herself.
- Double Subverted: Until it happens again.
- Deconstructed: Helpless Holly constantly getting herself in danger eventually leads to the death of her rescuer which turns her friends against her and causes them to abandon her to her fate the next time she gets in trouble.
- Reconstructed: After inadvertently causing the death or injury of a loved one due to getting herself in danger, Helpless Holly wises up and realizes that she needs to stop putting herself in danger. She trains to become stronger and also becomes much nicer to her friends since she realizes how much they constantly risk to get her out of danger.
- Lampshaded: "Laddie, Helpless Holly's trapped in a well...again!"
- Zig Zagged: Some fans like Helpless Holly, some fans dislike her, and some fans are indifferent towards her.
- Averted: Helpless Holly catches no fan flack for being helpless.
- Enforced: Hatedom
- Invoked: Holly is handed the Distress Ball for an episode or a season. The fans are not amused.
- Defied: The author doesn't want this to happen, and so does not make her completely helpless.
- Discussed: "Holly really needs to learn to not get kidnapped..."
- Conversed: "It's easy to see where Helpless Holly got her name..."
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