Clarify definition: Sensual Slavs

A LOT of the examples for Sensual Slavs are... well let's check it out.

• The sensual bisexual male, Vamp from Metal Gear Solid.
  • Romanians aren't really Slavs; there is lots of genetic and cultural overlap, but Romanians do not consider themselves Slavs. They speak a Romance language, not a Slavic one.
  • Sniper Wolf is supposedly a Kurd, but her entire character just screams "Russian" all the time. The pale skin and blond hair are also doing their part.

One is nattery. The other outright admits to not being an example (Kurds aren't Slavs).

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• Also by Blizzard, World Of Warcraft's female Draenei are considered to be these by many.
• Jaheira (and Edwina) from Baldurs Gate II.

Two of the three aren't even human. None are from earth! And heck, two of them don't even sound russian!

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The description of the trope evokes a specific image. Are any vaguely pseudo-russian sounding creature examples?

edited 26th Jul '11 7:43:30 PM by Ghilz

I think the trope is badly named. Slav doesn't parse as "Russian" normally. At least not to me. I think "south eastern Europe" when I think Slavic.

Fight smart, not fair.

Yeah, someone put alliteration over clarity. I hate those people.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Which still leaves the non human, non terran examples.

Those are simply bad examples and should be removed.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

Unless they're Space Russians they shouldn't be on the page.

Reality is that, which when you stop believing in it, doesn't go away. -Philip K. Dick

Cleaned up the page a little & deleted some bad examples.

I don't know what to do with the following, though:

• The third season of the French cop show Engrenages (Spiral in the UK) has a bunch of vaguely-Slavic prostitutes (one is explicitly said to be Czech) who are viciously abused by their Albanian pimps.

This seems to simply be "Slavic Prostitutes", not Sensual Slavs. I think I'm going to delete it.

These two gush/drool (I'm not sure) over real-life persons:

• Even the politicians can get quite attractive. Ukrainian ex-Prime Minister Yulia Tymoshenko is quite glamorous◊ despite having just turned fifty!
• Leelee Sobieski, tall, blonde, buxom, gorgeous.

Does the wiki want to have these?

edited 6th Nov '11 3:55:44 PM by LordGro

Let's just say and leave it at that.

All three of those look like bad examples. And in answer to your second question, no, we don't want "drool entries" like those last two.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

They are gone. Going to request a clock.

@Deboss — I don't think the name is a problem:

Russians identify as Slavs, no more or less than Poles, Czechs, Slovaks etc.

Let's just say and leave it at that.

I always actually thought this was "Sensual Slavic Accent", so those speculative fiction examples did fit. I'm inclined to think that, as a sister trope to Everything's Sexier in French, makes more sense as a trope then what's currently here.

The description did not say this is about the accent. The way it is now, Slavic accent is part of it, because the character must be in some way recognizable as Slavic.

But Everything Sounds Sexier in French is "the language alone makes everything sound more sexy", which you can't say about a Slavic accent, I presume. Slavic accent is also an accent, not another language, like French.

This trope is rather a counterpart to this one: Everyone Looks Sexier if French. However Everyone Looks Sexier if French is ambivalent on whether it is about French people specifically, or whether it is generally about Foreign People Are Sexy (which is a redirect to Everyone Looks Sexier if French). So this here is supposed to be either a sister- or a subtrope.

Something entirely different: Come to think of it, the "sex-worker version" described in the last paragraph seems rather questionable:

I think this doesn't belong to Sensual Slavs at all. Neither are prostitutes in any way inherently sensual, nor does being "downtrodden and horribly abused", "close to or in Sexual Slavery", in any way connect to "sensuality". I think this last paragraph might need a serious rewrite.

edited 5th Nov '11 9:54:00 AM by LordGro

Let's just say and leave it at that.

^ That bit about prostitutes doesn't belong at all.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

What more needs to be done here? Was it just an examples and definition clean-up?

Clocking.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

That's my point - I think that "Things Sound Sexy In Slavic Accents" is a valid sister trope to "Things Sound Sexy In French". I've seen the idea referenced on occasion, and it seems more like an actual trope then the current page, which in some regards reads as Gushing About Slavic Characters You Think Are Hot, even after the cleanup.

edited 4th Nov '11 6:37:04 PM by nrjxll

My problem isn't with whether or not Russians identify themselves as Slavic. My problem is that many people don't seem to know that the word "Slav" is not either a misspelling of slave or something referencing the country of Yugoslavia.

Fight smart, not fair.

Everything Sounds Sexier in French is somewhat of a hodgepodge: It appears it started out as being specifically about French, but it obviously has been widened to mean "Foreign languages make things sound special/different/*something*, even if what is said actually isn't". Everything Sounds Menacing In German has been added as a redirect. In any case, it is about languages first and about accents second.

I think this here is a valid trope. Slavic accent could be mentioned as a facet of this trope. Personally I would not see it as a self-standing trope. Apart from A Fish Called Wanda, I know of no example. Rather it seems, Slavic accent is given to a female character to characterize her as a Sensual Slav. It's usually not the Slavic accent inherently that is 'sexy'.

This trope is rather a subtrope of Everyone Looks Sexier if French, which actually is about how Foreign People Are Sexy, not only about French. As such, it's a sister trope to Latin Lover, Spicy Latina, Hot Gypsy Woman and Foreign Fanservice. It is primarily connected to seductive Soviet Honey Pots of Cold War spy stories — as seen in the James Bond series. It could need some clarification, though.

My suggestions to improve the page:

• Make it a No Real Life Examples Please trope like the others of this group already are. — done
• Clarify that personality and function of the character in the story do matter. "Slavic woman that is hot" does not count. "Slavic woman that uses her sex appeal to seduce/manipulate/distract the protagonist" or "Slavic woman that is ready or eager for a sexual adventure with the protagonist" counts. — done
• Narrow the trope down by making one or several of the following limitations:
  • Exclude male examples. Name could be Slavic Seductress or Slavic Temptress.
  • Narrow it down to Russian characters. Name could be "Russian Temptress" or something. This would mean to eliminate a Czech and an Ukrainian character from the example list, however.
  • Treat it as a purely historical trope about communist Cold War Honey Pots. The name could be Soviet Seductress or Soviet Temptress.

@Deboss: I don't know whether people are confused by the word "Slav" or mix it up with "slave", but Yugoslavia would actually count.

edited 5th Nov '11 11:29:17 AM by LordGro

Let's just say and leave it at that.

Agree that this should have no real life examples. And if it's about just Russians, the name should say that.

It does not matter who I am. What matters is, who will you become? - motto of Omsk Bird

I'd keep it Slavic, just to avoid technical Internet Backdraft over "what is a Russian." Politics are involved, there.

I despise hypocrisy, unless of course it is my own.

Clock extended.

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I know that the Yugoslavia is a Slavic nation, my issue is that I don't think most people know that Russia is Slavic. I just asked my mother, she named several countries, all of them smaller and south European, didn't think Russia was one.

I would not be avers to breaking off Russian specifically, mostly for the benefit of our cold war spy novels.

Fight smart, not fair.

Bump.

My suggestion: Make a single Super-Trope describing all well-known national stereotypes revolving around each nationality/ethnicity's stereotyped particular brand of sex appeal, and make Sensual Slavs and other such tropes (e.g. Spicy Latina / Latin Lover) subtropes to it, with the ones that do not appear to be "large"/"prominent" enough to merit a separate article relegated to redirects to the main trope (i.e. softsplit), which will contain a brief description of said subtropes.

edited 17th Jan '12 2:03:17 PM by MarqFJA

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

The trope could have an explanation of the extent of Slavic territory, possibly naming a few if not all countries that are Slavic. That should solve the problem.

Bump.

Fiat iustitia, et pereat mundus.

I'm getting really sick of having to keep pointing this out. Romanians are not Slavs. Just because someone speaks with a vaguely Eastern European accent does not make them a Slav. Either stop citing the trope as "Sensual Slavs" or take Vamp out. You might as well just throw Hungarians, Albanians, and Greeks into the Slavic category if you're just going to throw one giant blanket on the Eastern and Southern European peoples.

"I want to put you in a box with a rabbit and Sufjan Stevens and keep you safe from the world."

Right — Romanians are their own distinct ethnic group. The mixture of Latin and Slav is too homogenous to try to separate one or the other. The language even reflects that.

Also, not all Russians are Slavs, only "white" Russians. And they have some Norse blood in them too, of course. The rest of the Russians are various, mostly Turkic ethnic groups like the Yakuts, Kazakhs, Uzbeks, and many others.

edited 10th Feb '12 10:01:14 AM by Martello

"Did anybody invent this stuff on purpose?" - Phillip Marlowe on tequila, Finger Man by Raymond Chandler.