Hackette/Analysis

reply: Trinity in The Matrix. "Trinity: "My name is Trinity."

Neo: "Trinity. The Trinity? That cracked the IRS dbase? Jesus."

Trinity: "What?"

Neo: "I just thought um... you were a guy."

Trinity: "Most guys do.""

Probably should be the trope quote.

reply: Samus Is a Girl Only With Hackers?

reply: Yup. Sub-trope time.

reply: I've never done one of these before, is there something I need to do to classify it as a sub-trope? I don't really know what I'm doing here, just felt this should be on tvtropes, feel free to edit the crap out of it.

reply: ^ Simply note in the description that it is a subtrope of Samus Is a Girl. And when you launch it, add a note in the trope comparison section of Samus Is a Girl that Samus Is a Girl is the supertrope to this trope.

reply: Supertrope to the rescue! bahahahahaha

reply: Radical Edward

reply: Sandra from the second Cube film. Yeah, it's a subtrope. I like subtropes.

reply: Not strictly a hacker, but related: In Time Twisters by Ged Maybury, there's a subplot with the neighbour boys speculating about the new player whose initials have started appearing at the top of all the high score boards at the video arcade; it turns out to be the protagonist's kid sister.

reply: Is adding the hacker part really distinct enough from Samus Is a Girl?

reply:
 * Claudia, when she is hacking into the Warehouse in the first few episodes of Warehouse 13, is spoken of with male pronouns until they learn her identity.

reply:
 * This is Truth in Television for most female programmers and computer technicians (whether they fit the general usage of "hacker" or not), since it's a very male dominated profession.
 * That said the Ur Example would be Ada Countess of Lovelace; who wrote a series of instructions that could have been executed by Charles Babbage's Analytical Engine (which would have been a Steampunk computer, were it built) and is often considered the world's first computer programmer (in the sense she wrote the world's first computer program).
 * The techs who maintained the world's first computer (Collosus) were mostly women from the Women's Royal Navy (or "Wrens").

reply: I don't think this is a subtrope of Samus Is a Girl, it's a character trope of portrayals of female Hackers, and part of that is they they are often subject to Samus Is a Girl

I think one showed up in White Collar and one in Suits, one in Burn Notice as well as that show The Cape, played by Summer Glau no less. Her character in Alphas probably counts as well.

reply:

Anime

 * In Princess Lover, Teppei is surprised to learn that his maid, Yuu Fujikura, heads an entire team of hackers (all maids, like herself). It even becomes a pivotal plot point, late in the series, when she spearheads a cyberspace counter-offensensive to regain control of the Arima Building from a group of terrorists, while simultaneously helping to disarm several remote detonated charges planted throughout the building.


 * Gundam Wing has Hilde Schbeiker. While aboard White Fang's orbital base, Libra, she hacks into their mainframe to access and download vital information on Vayette and Mercurious: their latest and most advanced in their line of mobile dolls.


 * Nene Romanova fills this role in Bubblegum Crisis. Much like the Princess Lover example, it becomes a plot point when Nene uses her hardsuit to hack into the AD Police mainframe (unbeknownst to her fellow officers) to regain control of the building from a terrorist and his team of rogue boomers. While, at the same time, guiding the police chief's neice to safety via the intercom.

reply: I dislike the name Hackette. It sounds like Smurfette, which might be accurate, but is kind of blah. If it's a subtrope of Samus Is a Girl, then how about (The) Hacker Is A Girl?

reply:
 * That one hacker girl from The Lone Gunmen, forgot her name...

reply:
 * Lisbeth Salander from The Millennium Trilogy
 * Penelope Garcia from Criminal Minds

reply: ^^ All Hackers Double Cross 2 X chromosomes. Holy crap I'm a genius.

reply: ^^^Her real name was never revealed, but she went by Yves Adel Harlow most of the time. All her aliases were anagrams of Lee Harvey Oswald.

reply: Not sure these count:

Film:

 * In Jurassic Park, Lex Murphy is able to (temporarily) fix a massive unix computer network. But it's not really a plot point that she's female and a people were assuming a male, it's just that no one expected an easily frightened little girl could figure out something several adults could not.
 * In Goldeneye, Bond girl Natalya Simonova is a hacker working for the Russian government. But the suspect turns out to be a male co-worker who is working for the Big Bad.

reply:
 * An episode of Burn Notice featured a girl hacker as well. Not only was the fact that she was an attractive teenage girl a surprise, but she also turned out to be utterly vicious and cold-blooded, as evidenced when she drugs Michael and then ties him to a chair and rubber-bands a plastic bag over his head in an attempt to kill him via asphyxiation (luckily, Michael manages to talk his way out of it).

reply: What about Es A Lady (Custom titled to e's A Lady)? Or some electronic version of Wrench Wench like; Cyber Chick, Gigabyte Gal, Megabyte Minx, Computer Cutie, Cyber Cutie, Data Dive Diva, etc.

reply: ^ All of those make me barf, barring the first one. (Es A lady)

reply: I dunno, I kinda like Data Drive Diva.

reply:
 * Acid Burn from Hackers. She was an alpha hacker so she had a coterie of boyhackers who thought she was awesome, but Crash Override was surprised to discover she was a girl.

reply: ^^ I'd argue hardly none of these characters are anything close to the diva archetype.

reply: I'd argue that very few characters on the Wrench Wench page are close to being "wenches".

reply: Originally, "diva" just meant "Very talented lady". (Not necessarily in the Sailor Moon sense.) The word comes from the Latin for "goddess".

Maybe Gigabyte Goddess? I like that better than "Gal".

reply: @Bisected8: No no no no no on all of those. No forever.

A female hacker doesn't have to be attractive. I know most women in fiction are stupidly attractive, but words like 'cutie' and 'minx' and 'diva' is just encouraging this to Trope Decay into a list of female hackers (I can think of at least a handful where their femininity is not remarked upon at all). Besides which, it's a Double Standards trope, it's a patronising trope, so while mildly patronising language (like "Hackette") is okay to reflect the sprit that the trope is done in, going totally over the top patronising by talking about the hacker's attractiveness, which she may not even have, just becomes fetishistic and offensive. The important part is the hacker, not that she has the potential, being female, for also being sexy to heterosexual men.

/punches self for Straw Feminist screed

Honestly, though, the 'cute' titles are demeaning, sexist, misleading and inappropriate for that the trope is actually about. Whatever you do, please don't do that.

I think this trope is related to GIRL.

reply: Although the characterization of a female hacker as being sexy may not be correct, it is accurate. In most popular works, female hackers always tend to be sexy. In all the examples above, the characters are what you would consider conventionally attractive.

reply: Just to make sure we're clear, is about a hacker who is revealed to be a female, or a hacker who is simply female?

reply: ^ I get it as "hacker was thought as male as a given, revealed to be female"

reply: @pinkdalek: Again; Wrench Wench hasn't had any of those problems.

What about Wren Hacker Reveal (after the "Wrens" who maintained Colossus?).

reply: I don't see any reason to change the name, especially not to any of the suggestions so far, which are actually less clear. I just don't plain understand Es A Lady.

reply: Don't like the name either. Surprise Female Hacker? Female Hacker Reveal? Hacker Is A Girl?

reply: ^^^^^ Um...Penelope Garcia isn't exactly "conventionally attractive". It would be kind to say she's cute in her own way, but not what most people call "sexy". I think that's why I'm starting to like Gigabyte Goddess. A goddess is powerful and respected, but not necessarily sexy. Kali, Hathor, Demeter and the Venus of Willendorf are all goddesses that don't fit the modern standard of conventionally atractive.

reply: @Noir Grimoir: He's A Lady "e" being used to denote technology. v_v

reply: sorry if i havent been around in a while. I dont have a lot of free time these days. If someone is willing to edit (or augment if its not good enough) the entry, if thats possible for someone other than the creator to do, then by all means edit away.

reply: Incorrectly launched. Returning to YKTTW.

reply: There's a Not Always Right story about a guy calling tech support/bringing his computer back to the store and demanding to talk to a male employee, being incapable of accepting that women can know enough about computers to help with his problem.

reply: End of markup