Lady of War/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: An Action Girl who is graceful on the battlefield.

  • Straight: Alice is a Badass Action Girl, but is also very swift and elegant even while fighting.
  • Exaggerated: Every single move Alice takes, she ALWAYS does it with remarkable grace and femininity.
  • Justified: Alice was once a dancer before receiving her weapon. 
    • Alternatively: Alice only uses long-distance weapons or pole-arms because she knows her height and weight put her at a disadvantage against taller, stronger opponents. Being graceful also ensures that she's less likely to leave herself open or stumble/fall.
    • Or Alice is a member of a secret sorroity that teaches it's own style of martial arts as part of it's Women's Mysteries.
  • Inverted: Non-action Badass Pacifist
  • Averted: Alice is polite, but brutal on the battlefield, or she is just as direct and blunt in social interactions as she is while fighting.
  • Subverted: Alice, known for her graceful movements, also leaves a swath of bloody carnage behind.
    • Alternatively, while she is graceful in a fight, she still is a Dojikko and faceplants every now and then.
  • Double Subverted: Later on, her murder scenes become beautiful and full of sparkles.
  • Parodied: Alice wears a ballerina outfit while massacring a bunch of Mooks.
  • Deconstructed: Alice's grace and poise look out of place in contrast to the ugliness of battle.
  • Reconstructed: But even her comrades begin to accept that the beauty she contributes to combat helps them deal with the uglier scenes.
  • Zig Zagged: Alice's grace comes and goes, depending on whether she's in a one-on-one duel or a hack-and-slash melee.
  • Enforced: "War Is Hell, but I still want our heroine to be sympathetic."
  • Lampshaded: "I may be feminine, I can still kick butt and take names!" 
  • Invoked: Alice is a conscript of high rank and makes every effort to keep her grace and poise, lest she descend to the level of the mere peasant.
  • Defied: Alice practices this method and gives up immediately.
  • Discussed: "Wow, Alice! I never knew murder could look so glam!"
  • Conversed: "When watching Alice, I am conflicted between cheering on her kicking ass or drooling over the beauty of her carnage."
  • Played For Laughs: Musical Assassin
  • Played For Drama: Alice developed her elegant technique to counter the barbaric warrior who slaughtered her family. When she finds him, she intends to skillfully disarm him before enjoying an extended period of revenge.

The Lady of War's not for burning. I mean you could try, but you'll just end up on the business end of a naginata.

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Lady_of_War/Playing_With?oldid=861451"