Small Girl, Big Gun/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: Cute girl with ridiculous firepower.

  • Straight: Linda, a cheerful young waitress, has a gun that takes up most of the room in her purse.
  • Exaggerated: Linda carries around a Grenade Launcher, even when she's waiting tables.
  • Justified: Linda lives in a dangerous part of town, and feels safer if she's obviously armed.
  • Inverted: Butch, a huge, tattooed biker, has a gun so tiny that it's barely visible past his huge hand.
  • Subverted: Linda admits to a friend that the gun's just for show, and she doesn't own any ammo.
  • Double Subverted: Linda claims she has no ammo for the huge gun, but was lying to put her friend at ease.
    • Linda admits to a friend that the big gun's just for show... then pulls out a second piece and says that this one is not.
  • Parodied: Linda has a zillion guns, but can never decide which one goes with her shoes.
  • Deconstructed: Because of the size disparity, Linda can hardly hold the gun properly, let alone fight the recoil, and thus she's horribly inaccurate, putting bystanders in danger.
  • Reconstructed: ...So she gets a gun with a built-in bipod, further increasing its size.
  • Zig Zagged: ...But this makes it too heavy for her to lift it al all. So she mounts it on wheels and uses it as a cannon, but ends up being injured when she can't manoeuvre with it fast enough.
  • Averted: Linda has a pistol.
  • Enforced: Guys think girls with guns are hot, so, how about we give 'em "bigger boomsticks"?
  • Lampshaded: "You might not want to take that thing with you on your date, Linda. Poor guy's probably nervous enough as it is."
  • Invoked: Tired of being written off as "the cute one", Linda deliberately buys a huge gun so she'll seem more dangerous.
  • Defied: "That one looks a little... cumbersome. Got anything smaller?"
  • Discussed: "It's only loaded with one round of ammo, since I end up on my butt after the first shot anyway."
  • Conversed: Linda sure likes boasting about her gun, and that she "Likes 'em big". Mere Fetish Fuel or Getting Crap Past the Radar?
  • Played For Laughs: Linda is armed all the time, even while waiting tables. This leads to some awkward situations. (On the other hand, people never, ever forget to tip her.)
  • Played For Drama: Something bad happened to Linda recently, and she's taken up arms to protect herself. She's allso growing increasingly temperamental and distrusting. Her friends are all worried, but they're too scared of what might happen if they upset her to talk about it.

Back to Small Girl, Big Gun

Retrieved from "https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Small_Girl,_Big_Gun/Playing_With?oldid=868615"