I’d like to see the damsel get away without playing on the bad guy’s obvious attraction for her. It seems if someone does try to turn the trope the girl only gets away because she used her feminine wiles. :rolleyes:
It was actually refreshing to read an old romance book recently and find the heroine got away by smashing the kidnapper over the head with a pitcher (it was stoneware) and then running. Wish I could remember the name of the book.
I seem to recall an issue (during the time that Peter & MJ were married) that some criminals who found out Spider-Man’s secret identity (perhaps the Hobgoblin?) broke into their apartment intent on kidnapping her. MJ defeated them by donning Pete’s spare web-shooters and dousing the bad guys with web spray.
In one of the Tobey Maguire movies, Aunt May (Rosemary Harris) actually saves Spider-Man by bonking Doc Ock on the head at a convenient moment.
Willow from “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” (in her pre-badass lesbian Wiccan Dark Phoenix days) escaped Spike by clobbering him on the head with a lamp. (Of course, Spike did have that pesky Initiative microchip planted in his head, so it wasn’t THAT badass.) Buffy’s mom Joyce came to Buffy’s rescue by hitting Spike over the head (again!!) with an axe. Joyce: “You get the HELL AWAY FROM MY DAUGHTER!!”
Dr. Crusher subdued a Starfleet admiral that was being mind-controlled by one of those bug thingys. The admiral in question had just put the smackdown on Riker, Laforge & Worf.
Don, most of those are not ‘trickery’.
Except that River and Buffy are both badasses. They don’t fit the OP at all.
In the Spider Man comics, when the Chameleon shows up in Peter Parker’s shape to kill Aunt May, she sees right though him and offers him drugged tea. It just renders him unconscious, but to twist the knife a bit she asks him if he likes the almond taste and when he says yes replies with something like “Yes, that would be the cyanide. That’s what it tastes like, you know.” She also holds up her embroidery to show him what she’s been knitting: “GOTCHA!”
In one of Mercedes Lackey’s Tarma and Kethry stories two kidnapped girls contribute heavily to their rescue by guile. They drop bits of white cloth out of the wagon they are being held in into the snow, knowing that Tarma and Kethry’s kyree friend can track them by scent that way. Then, they disassemble some of the decorations on their clothing that are made of mildly poisonous seeds, drop the seeds in the camp cooking pot, and manage to make most of their captors seriously ill (along with themselves).
Ha, my first thought.
That reminds me of Horatia, in The Convenient Marriage, who pretends to play along with her abductor until she sees a chance to hit him on the head with an iron poker, then takes the key to her prison from his unconscious body.
Doesn’t really fit the OP, since it is a romance novel, not adventure fiction.
There is also the bit when she and the Prince are captured by bandits and she saves him by tricking the bandit leader. He says she can leave with whatever she can carry, meaning some of the loot. She picks up the Prince. The bandit leader laughs at her ingenuity and they are all friends.
Cinderella in the Grimm fairy tale is like a freaking NINJA. The ball takes place over tree nights. Each night she splits and vanishes. The second night the entire ballroom has guards posted at every exit and she still escapes. He puts down pitch to trap her and she still escapes. Cinderella=Ninja.
In some season of True Blood (season 3? I’ve only seen the first 3 or 4), Tara–definitely a sidekick with no magic, albeit with a tough-as-nails attitude–is kidnapped, and manages to murder her abductor through means I forget. I think that satisfies the OP.
Zebra, I’ll need to reread Cinderella with that in mind. She’s long been my least favorite fairy tale heroine, because she’s just so Charlie-Bucket passive. But perhaps I need to think of her as a ninja.
Hmmm…perhaps we can squeak in an entry via my favorite fairy tale? Gretel starts off in Hansel and Gretel being a weak little crybaby protected by her older brother; but when they’re captured, it’s Gretel who devises the ultraviolent plan to free them both. I think she qualifies.
In the original version of Cinderella (predating the Grimm brothers) she deliberately stays behind when her sisters invite her to go with them to the ball, pretending not to be interested. Then she arrives late in all her finery so she’ll be sure to make the most dramatic entrance.
In the original Little Red Riding Hood, the girl sees through the wolf right away, and tricks the wolf into letting her go by saying she has to go to the bathroom. The wolf ties a rope around her waist but she manages to get the rope off and tie it around a tree without him noticing. before making her escape.
In David Drake and Eric Flint’s Belisarius novels, beings from the distant future attempt to alter the history of Earth by mucking around in 6th century Byzantium. The “good” time travelers choose General Belisarius as their champion, and the other time travelers spend a good amount of time trying to kill him.
At one point, a band of assassins have tracked down Belisarius’ wife, who locks herself in the kitchen. By the time they break down the door, she’s ready for them. They do not die well. The bit with the pot of boiling oil filled with semi-cooked flour dough was particularly harrowing.
In on of the Sword and Sorceress anthologies, there’s a story where a young virginal woman who has been selected to be sacrificed to the local dragon because she refuses the advances of the fat & lecherous High Priest encounters the dragon beforehand and talks to it. She convinces him that he’d do a lot better avoiding skinny virgins and eating someone with more flesh on their bones…like, say, priests.
Dragon: “I don’t want a virgin this time.”
Priest: “Uh…what do you want?”
Dragon: "Something…fat."
Priest: <squeaks> “Fat?!”
I read ‘Canal Dreams’ by Iain Banks a couple of months ago, in that a quiet middle-aged Japanese Cellist with a hidden vicious streak a mile wide takes on and slaughters a group of Panimaian terrorists after they take her and others hostage.
I’ve heard it described as the worst of Banks books and while it is a bit lightweight I liked it.
Jackie in Tim Powers’ The Anubis Gates talks her way out of Rats’ Castle by dressing as a whore, and then later saves the day for everyone by shooting the villain. She has a better self-rescue quotient than the protagonist (who she also saves once, though admittedly only after coming thisclose to shooting him in the head.
Buffy definitely doesn’t count. She may not look like a action hero, but her enemies know she is, and her enemies know that she’s a badass. If Xander, Joyce, pre-magicked-up Willow, or Dawn had ever been captured and then freed themselves through guile, that would be what I was looking for.
As I already wrote, I think you’re totally off on Buffy, particularly since the OP specifies escaping through guile. Buffy gets out of bad spots by the studied application of brutal violence, not by trickery, and occasionally has to be reminded that there are ways to resolve problems that do not involve beating someone to death.
River’s actions in the movie don’t count either, as her badassery is firmly established in the bar fight scene (in which she is the aggressor, incidentally) and as, in her final fight, she is emulating Summerian tactics. But her actions in the episode with Jubal Early (“Objects in Space”?) definitely qualify.
“Summerian”… That would be “As or in a manner reminiscent of Ms. Glau”?
I agree with the Rhymer here that Buffy is not an example. Xander has the marvelous The Zeppo, where he saves the day by being totally bad-assed while the Slayers are off defeating a Cthulhian horror.
But the first example that sprang to my mind was Barry Gordy’s The Last Dragon, where Bruce Leroy is searching for Sum Dum Goy to teach him the secret of The Glow, while Sho’ Nuff, the Shogun of Harlem, is trying to establish primacy in the Kung Fu world. At some point Bruce’s little brother is tied up by a second-string villain and escapes by break-dancing his way out of the ropes. I don’t know if it counts, but never pass up a chance to mention Barry Gordy’s The Last Dragon.
“In a manner reminiscent of Buffy Summers.” It’s in the OED, though I myself thing “Xenaesque” is more appropriate.
White Collar, in the premiere of the second half of the third season. El, the wife of one of the leads (and definitely not part of the regular action - she’s an event planner, not an FBI agent,) is taken hostage by a recurring bad guy to force the two leads to give up/help transport a large stolen treasure. El tricks her way into an escape using a dog bite, a thermostat, a metal chair, and her diamond anniversary ring. Bonus points for the fact that she doesn’t try to seduce any of her captors at all - no feminine wiles used. (El is very awesome.)