Several tropes are going for a wild ride in "Rigamarole" so I'll just name a few for now.
- Tomboy.
At first glance Leia will seem like a pretty typical tomboy cliche. She doesn't really wear makeup often, she's always wearing hoodies and jeans, her hair is messy, she has a tendency to be aggressive. But with Leia this doesn't counter her other traits. She can be delicate and hard, and they aren't dichotomous to each other. She likes the color pink, she's not sporty, and is actually on the chunkier side with her build, making her a little soft and marshmallow-y (I don't know any chubby tomboys in fiction, do you?)
She's not trying to "put on" any character, so all the complexities of her show naturally. Some of these are traditionally feminine and some are traditionally more naturally, but they all just seem to make sense with her. This wasn't even a conscious choice for me when I wrote it, but as she developed it just came to her naturally. The clearest example of this is that she has an Ebony fashion Barbie whose hair she died pink on the same shelf as an Indiana Jones figurine. She likes star Trek, comic books and science fiction, but she also likes Disney channel (mostly for the stars, because she admits the sitcoms are pretty corny.)
I think her character is interesting for this reason because the point of it isn't really her being a tomboy, and she's never going to have a "tomboy to pretty girl" makeover moment. sometimes she dresses in clothes that suit her body type better, or are more traditionally feminine, but again, it's not a transformation, it's just who she is.
- Knight in shining armor
Leia's character brings all the cliches you'd associate with an action or fantasy novel where there is physical danger to the realm of emotional danger. She puts herself to the side, and becomes tough and hardcore, thinking on her feet, trying to rescue her little brother from the reality that he'll be treated like something "broken" or a "case" if their parents find out what's going on his head. These sort of attitudes are typical for the hardened female warrior in another genre, but in a slice of life? it's something I've never seen before. But she's treating the emotional realms as every bit as dangerous as the physical realm, and the primary threats of the story all stem from there.
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