Positive Discrimination/Playing With
Basic Trope: The Token Minority can do no wrong.
- Straight: Alice is the only female member of the Five-Man Band - and is the most competent member.
- Exaggerated: All the women are Supergenius competent while all the men are Too Dumb to Live.
- Justified: The Mentor of the Five-Man Band is a sexist, so she's got to work extra hard to prove herself.
- Inverted: Alice is constantly getting into trouble - the guys have to bail her out.
- Subverted: Despite appearances to the contrary, it's Bob that has to end up saving Alice.
- Double Subverted: That was a one-time thing - the rest of the time, she's doing the rescuing.
- Parodied: The rest of the characters are all rock stupid and suck at fighting. When Alice(dressed in the girliest clothes imaginable) enters, a glowing halo of light and sparkles surround her along with a bunch of roses ala Revolutionary Girl Utena. She kicks the snot out of all the villains, and while that happens one character turns to another and says "Wow, talk about your girl power!"
- Deconstructed: Alice decides to leave the team because she's far more competent than the rest of them.
- Reconstructed: ...But she comes back because she needed them as much as they did her, even if it's just so she'd have people to entertain her since she's so much better than the rest of them.
- Zig Zagged: Alice is just as incompetent as the rest of the team, but receives most of the credit... Until she is saved by Bob, which she can never live down.
- Averted: The males and females are equally competent. Or incompetent.
- There are all kinds of people, with their fair share of forte and flaws.
- Enforced: "A lot of girls watch this show! Let's make the female lead the only competent one."
- "We'll get in trouble if the token character is in any way, shape, or form a bad person, or not, in some way, superior to the generic white male. Let's make Alice the most competent and the rest of them incompetent, for they are, after all, white males."
- Lampshaded: "Alice is both the only girl in their group and the only competent one."
- Invoked: Alice works hard on becoming highly skilled and competent.
- Defied: When Bob sees that Alice is showing him up, he starts training and working hard himself.
- Discussed: "Okay, here comes the rescue scene. 2 to 1 odds it's Alice saving the guys again."
- Conversed: "Ever notice how it's always the girls and the minorities who win most of the battles, particularly against the white guys?"
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