Needs Help: The Obi Wan

Grizzled Veteran redirects to Old Soldier, which seems wholly appropriate...

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Not really, a Grizzled Vet in say WW 1 could have been on the front lines for like 2-3 months to be transformed into the type of character I would link to the name. You dont even really need to be a solder to be the character type in stuff like Sports Shonen and such.

Umm Battle Hardened Warrior? Nah that's not right, to the trope finder.

edited 10th Mar '16 2:27:23 PM by Memers

Yes, that's where my post ended up. I was thinking that it was a non-mentor situation and more of a protector-situation until the hero comes to his senses and accepts actual mentoring.

I know what you're saying with the age, but I'd be wary about adding in any kind of age designation as often age is left to the imagination of the reader/audience. Sometimes it's obvious that the mentor is older (how much is left to guesswork) but sometimes it's really hard to tell and isn't as important to the story as what the mentor can teach the hero. In my experience, the age only crops up in the narrative if there's something story-significant about that age (such as, for example, a character being Really 700 Years Old, or seventy-year old Old Master in the cast of teenagers, or it needing to be established that the mentor was around for the specific historical event that defines the current storyline, such as a war or massacre, etc.).

edited 11th Mar '16 2:59:34 PM by Wyldchyld

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

I'm thinking The Obi-Wan needs to be cut. There's no place for it here anymore, and we have several tropes that serve the relevant purpose already.

That was kinda my point when I saw Grizzled veteran redirected to Old Soldier, since the latter has to be old the former just has to be an Experienced Veteran.

edited 11th Mar '16 8:18:30 PM by Memers

... That's still not true.

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I think it just needs to be more clearly defined and then cleaned up.

For instance a Mentor Figure that...

• Is present with the heroes
• Is part of an 'old guard' but still capable of fighting
• A firm believer in and has first hand experience with whatever Phlebotinum or Magic is at work
• Has a personal relationship with a major antagonist (who may be a former ally or mentee, usually in the form of a Darth Vader Clone)
• Is Killed In Action before passing on all of their knowledge to the new guard (sometimes at the hands of said former ally antagonist)

And you should be able to clearly meet at least 4/5 of these traits to qualify.

edited 13th Mar '16 1:19:21 PM by acrobox

I would agree with the qualifications (although I'd say even 4/5 would be too strict, I'd say 3/5) but I still call for a rename to the Party Member Mentor and make the trope more generalized, rather than based on the character of Obi-Wan.

"For if there's one thing that the Vanduul have taught us: it's that without victory, there can be no survival." -Admiral Ernest Bishop

Most of those should be their own trope and not wrapped up into 1 trope.

A fantasy element or anything like that is not required to be a Mentor, just tutelage in something, even if something non-combat like a job.

That should be a trope in of itself, something like My Mentors Old Rival or something. It is a thing and the student tends to view the old rival with even more distrust than the mentor does, the mentor actually does not even be in the story at all to have this.

It already exists Mentor Occupational Hazard.

edited 13th Mar '16 11:41:32 PM by Memers

And they can all be their own tropes. But when you have a good amount of these individual traits (or individual tropes) applied to one person, they become an Obi Wan Clone.

Almost every bullet on the Darth Vader Clone page links to a unique trope.

x2 Mentors Old Rival would be a better name for that so it doesn't sound like dialogue.

If a tree falls in the forest and nobody remembers it, who else will you have ice cream with?

Vader clones were codified with Vader. all the elements of your idea has been around since like 2000~ BC in various forms. And its been in popular culture forever I can name several WW 1 movies with mentors in a similar style it and hell Gandalf was doing it twenty years before Starwars, it is not a big enough thing specific to him to call it an Obi Wan Clone.

He is really just a Mentor Archetype that hits a bunch of tropes in the Mentors Index like every other Mentor Archetype.

IMO The Obi-Wan should be merged with the under used Mentor Archetype and used as a Supertrope (Trope + Index) for Mentors in general, instead of having "Mentors" be the index and Mentor / Mentor Archetype be the the trope. These trope Ideas can be YKTT Wed separately and put on the supertrope index section.

That is a better name yeah.

edited 14th Mar '16 12:10:29 AM by Memers

I support this plan.

I support that plan, too.

If my post doesn't mention a giant flying sperm whale with oversized teeth and lionfish fins for flippers, it just isn't worth reading.

aight, well just wanted to make a case.

I like the proposal in 37.

You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"

One last counter proposal.

If The Obi-Wan's requirements were stricter, and it was cleaned up (i.e. like the 4/5 thing suggested earlier) and renamed something like Mentor Classic. As you said there are plenty of Mentor's who hit those specific story beats, even if Obi Wan himself is an unworthy trope namer.

Then the ones who hit the Mentor Classic requirements stay there, and any misuse gets redirected to the Mentor Archetype super trope.

edited 19th Mar '16 4:26:09 PM by acrobox

I think the idea is to expand the Mentor Archetype description so that it matches (or at least includes) your proposed Mentor Classic trope. Mentor Archetype doesn't have much of a description of its own yet.

edited 19th Mar '16 6:50:17 PM by HeraldAlberich

Shall we set up the crowner then? I believe these are the proposed options, some of which are not mutually exclusive.

• Merge The Obi-Wan with Mentor Archetype. YKTTW possible new mentor tropes.
• Keep The Obi-Wan as is.
• Redefine The Obi-Wan as Obi Wan Clone.
• Rename Mentors to Mentor Index and make Mentor Archetype the Super-Trope to all of them.

You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"

Here's a crowner with those options.

You've got roaming bands of armed, aggressive, tyrannical plumbers coming to your door, saying "Use our service, or else!"

I'd like to rename Mentors to Mentor Index, but I don't like the supertrope idea.

... oh good. Mentor no longer looks like a word to me.

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Crowner is hooked.

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What's the feasibility of the other half of Memers' idea—putting index tags on Mentor Archetype and merging Mentors into it as a combined supertrope & index?

Supertropes are all like that IIRC.

For example Idiot Ball is one. There is index markup around the tropes and separate index markup on the medium pages since it is so large. Honestly Mentors in general are going to need pages by medium probably too.

Hmm, it's been a few days and we have two non-mutually-exclusive options in the green, one in definite consensus range. Do we wait for the other to get a few more votes or do we call now?