Never a Self-Made Woman/Playing With

Basic Trope: Female characters never accomplish anything by themselves. They always have a man to thank for their achievements in one way or another.

• Played Straight: Maureen, a seasoned Action Girl who achieved a lot through continuous endeavours and training, never could get to where she is now if she wasn't the daughter of Bruno, a Retired Badass who taught her how to master her emotions and make rational decisions, and the lover of Tobias, an Action Hero, who trained her and taught her how to fight and survive.
• Exaggerated: Maureen wouldn't even know how to handle herself on a daily basis without a man around.
• Justified: Maureen comes from a culture where Lineage Comes From the Father and who usually dismisses females as second-class citizens.
• Inverted: Tobias, an Action Hero, honed his fighting skills and survival techniques thanks to his mother who trained him from childhood.
• Subverted: Maureen is very Genre Savvy and knows all to well that No Guy Wants an Amazon. Hence, she makes believe that she got into the business thanks to parental pressure. But in actuality, she chose that lifestyle herself, without using any connections to get to her current position.
• Double Subverted: ... However it turns out that, even with her best efforts, she still ends up needing her dad or Tobias to help her dealing with her everyday tasks.
• Parodied: Maureen's father and boyfriend are both incompetent idiots who accidentally teach Maureen several moves, yet she still have them to thank for.
• Deconstructed: Because everyone believes Maureen is only a Daddy's Girl with no actual skill of her own, everyone disregards her input and her skills whenever she comes up with a solution.
• Reconstructed: ...and then it is revealed that it's not her father who taught her but her mother.
  • Her father only taught Maureen the basics; she developed her own moves by herself.
  • Hypocritical Humor, where a Fridge Horror occurs to everyone afterwards that they couldn't be what they are today either without their parent, loved ones and friend's support.
• Zig Zagged:
• Averted: Relationships to the men in her life are irrelevant to Maureen's line of work, whichever it is.
• Enforced: The writer believes that women can't be successful (for whatever reason(s)) without a man by her side.
  • "Male viewers/readers always feel threatened by strong female characters. Make Maureen's father and husband stronger and better than she is, else she will never appeal to the male audience."
• Lampshaded: "Maureen, honey, don't fool yourself. Without your dad and your man, you're pretty much useless."
• Invoked: Maureen's father taught her from young not to be too independent.
• Defied: "You know, just because I'm Bruno's daughter doesn't mean my dad has anything to do with me being good at what I'm doing."
• Discussed:
• Conversed:

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