Misused: The Dragon

Gonna take High Crate's suggestion from last month literally. Did I get this straight?

Makes sense to me. The only caveat I'd have is that since The Dragon is concerned with a character's place in the narrative, to define Darth Vader as The Dragon, you have to define what narrative you're talking about. In the narrative of A New Hope, he must be defeated before Luke can defeat the Empire (as symbolized by the Death Star), so that's a pretty clear-cut example.

In the narrative of the Original Trilogy, he stands between Luke and the Emperor; it's slightly muddied by the fact that it's Vader and not Luke who defeats the Emperor, but he's still the final challenge that must be faced before the Emperor can be defeated, so I'd still consider it a legit example.

If you add the Prequel Trilogy and beyond into the mix, it gets a lot muddier.

So... We seem to have two options to fix this issue:

Option A

Revise the definition for The Dragon to make it clear that it's NOT the Big Bad's right-hand man, move the examples of Number Two to that trope, and remove or replace the current image on The Dragon for being misleading.

Pros

• We keep the original meaning of the term The Dragon
• We feed Number Two (which lacks the examples that are all over the place in The Dragon)

Cons

• Due to the insane misuse, we would need to move thousands and thousands of wicks to Number Two
• We would need to force all TV Tropes to change their conception of The Dragon
• The tropes named after The Dragon ^list Co-Dragons (1682 wicks), Demoted to Dragon (409 wicks), Devour the Dragon (196 wicks), Dragon Ascendant (1032 wicks), Dragon-in-Chief (1333 wicks), Dragon Their Feet (345 wicks), Dragon with an Agenda (1254 wicks), and It's Personal with the Dragon would need to be renamed, and their wicks migrated

Option B

Make a Trope Transplant: move the genuine examples and the definition of The Dragon ("penultimate challenge for the hero") to a new trope that has a more intuitive name via TLP, and leave the examples of "the Big Bad's right-hand man" at The Dragon.

Pros

• We would need to move a very inferior number of wicks than in Option A
• The vast majority of TV Tropes already thinks The Dragon is the Big Bad's right-hand man

Cons

• The original term of the meaning "penultimate challenge for the hero" would be lost
• The Dragon would become a case of The Same But More Specific, as it would be Number Two... with an evil leader

edited 10th Feb '17 4:14:14 PM by Gosicrystal

Here's the thing: since 90%+ of the wicks are Zero Context Examples which will need to be cleaned either way, we're in for an insane amount of work no matter what. So "will take a lot of work" is not a con for Option A as compared to Option B.

It would take the most amount of work— although again, since the lion's share will be cleaning ZCEs, not all that much more at the end of the day— but there's also an Option C, which is:

• Move the Campbellian definition of The Dragon to a more intuitive name.
• Move the "Big Bad's right-hand man" misuse to either Number Two or a new "Evil Number Two" trope.

The real problem here is that the trope name "The Dragon" doesn't mean anything to anyone who hasn't read Joseph Campbell. The best long-term solution is not to use it as a trope name at all, for anything, and use plain English terms instead so that anyone who stumbles into TV Tropes off the street will know exactly what is meant.

What's not a good solution is to use a pre-existing term to mean something other than what that term means.

edited 10th Feb '17 7:01:47 AM by HighCrate

I'm not entirely against Option C. An intuitive name would help this trope.

What would we do about the ZCE? Remove them or comment them out? I suppose the latter, because 90% of nearly 14000 would be over 12000 wicks removed.

edited 10th Feb '17 7:43:45 AM by Gosicrystal

During definition changes (or removal of severe misuse) I tend to assume a ZCE is outright wrong for every definition. During more typical cleanup, it just needs commenting out and a message to the original troper.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Please remember that changing the wicks is just treating a symptom. The real thing we need to be worried about is how the troper hivemind sees the trope. And the troper hivemind sees it as "right-hand man (that might be the penultimate physical threat)." You can change every single wick to a different definition, but the hivemind will keep using the other one.

That's why just changing the description to match the use (and then cleaning the ZCEs) is by far the easiest and best option. Doing that will take a while, but it will get done. Trying to change the troper hivemind to "penultimate physical threat" might require a thread like what Complete Monster has, constantly combing through the entire wiki to discuss every individual example.

edited 10th Feb '17 8:35:03 AM by Discar

This. In a clean-up of this magnitude, if you can't supply the extra context yourself to determine whether it's a correct or an incorrect use, remove it entirely.

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

I support Option C too because I don't think the usage of "The Dragon" as either the original literature meaning (the penultimate challenge) or how this wiki calls it (the Big Bad's right hand man) is well known outside of this site.

We don't need justice when we can forgive. We don't need tolerance when we can love.

Go with option C.

High Crate, you keep saying that changing the definition of 13,887 wicks is just as easy as checking them for ZCE's, but that's just not true. Have you ever done a definition change? Or any major cleanup? Definition changes are much harder than ZCE cleanups, and ZCE cleanups aren't exactly a walk in the park either.

But let's ignore that for a moment. Changing the description of The Dragon to "right-hand man (that might be the penultimate physical threat)" would require cleaning 13,887 wicks. Changing the wicks to anything else, such as "penultimate physical threat," would not only require changing those 13,887 wicks, but also renaming Co-Dragons (1682 wicks), Demoted to Dragon (409 wicks), Devour the Dragon (196 wicks), Dragon Ascendant (1032 wicks), Dragon-in-Chief (1333 wicks), Dragon Their Feet (345 wicks), Dragon with an Agenda (1254 wicks), and It's Personal with the Dragon (100 wicks). That comes out to 20,238 wicks.

So I reiterate: Changing the description to match the use of "right-hand man (that might be the penultimate physical threat)" is the only reasonable option.

I think the closest parallel to this current problem is Genre Savvy. It was, and may still be, a trope where misuses outweigh correct use and a large number of wicks. Since Genre Savvy was redefined and many misuses removed, I've seen very few misuses since them, even when many of it's sub-tropes are more loose in their usage. From that, I think simply revising the definition of The Dragon and cutting misuse and ZCE would ultimately be adequate even if the tropes (which may no longer qualify as sub-tropes) named after it remain the same.

However, the sub-tropes for Genre Savvy were somewhat consistent with its correct use, which the one that wasn't (Dangerously Genre Savvy) being cut. If the Dragon sub-tropes (which there are more of then Genre Savvy) are all based of that misuse, it might be worth redefining them ("Dragon with an Agenda" renamed "Subordinate with an Agenda" or something, for example). It would be a large, long project, but since simply redefining Genre Savvy took a year or two to take effect in the usage on this wiki, we may as well spend that time coming up with a comprehensive fix.

ZCE issues are not a reason for a wick cleanup. Mostentimes, when ZCE issues occur they occur over a number of examples on a given page not over a number of wicks to a given target. A per-wick cleanup is totally ineffective.

Also, trope renames cause more problems than "a lot of work". Stable names become better known and are easier to find.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

@High Crate

This is one of the Tropes Of Legend with a stupidly high inbound count (>40,000, which is actually more inbounds than Big Bad has). The name does have a meaning to those who haven't read Campbell (reminder that the first relevant search term of the phrase is our wiki page and the high wick count mentioned by Discar), and the hivemind thinks that it's "Big Bad's right hand man". A rename is out of the question and I'm with Discar all the way on how to proceed.

Also, unlike other ZCE magnets this is honestly an easy fix because the (perceived) definition is so simple.

edited 10th Feb '17 6:20:54 PM by Karxrida

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

So is Genre Savvy. It was still fixed to the definition, not the misuse.

edited 10th Feb '17 5:14:40 PM by crazysamaritan

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

The problem with Genre Savvy was that the definition that was in use (just "not a complete idiot") isn't a trope. The definition in use of The Dragon is very much a trope.

edited 10th Feb '17 6:06:00 PM by Discar

Pretty much . The way Genre Savvy was used was Chairs (or Not A Trope, too lazy to bother being exact atm), and the only realistic option was to redefine and cleanup. The misuse for The Dragon isn't the same; it's a very clear case of Trope Decay that we can't easily force the hivemind to revert on.

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

It's very much a trope indeed, and it's called Number Two. It's the right-hand man for a leader... that happens to be the Big Bad. Now, is this a legit Sub-Trope or The Same But More Specific? If it matters, The Dragon is listed as the Evil Counterpart of Number Two. Maybe restricting Number Two to heroic instances and making the aforementioned Trope Transplant for The Dragon would be the easiest thing to do, which would leave things like this:

• Number Two: The Hero's or the Big Good's right-hand man.
• The Dragon: The Big Bad's right-hand man.
• (A new trope via TLP): The Hero's penultimate challenge.

edited 11th Feb '17 7:16:18 AM by Gosicrystal

You already designated that Option B.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Restricting Number Two's definition wasn't in Option B.

And we aren't changing Number Two's definition without a thread for that trope.

Link to TRS threads in project mode here.

Changing The Dragon to "evil Number Two" would change the currently morally-neutral Number Two to "good Number Two" by implication. Which would raise the question of where to put examples that aren't strictly evil, but aren't particularly heroic either.

edited 11th Feb '17 11:08:00 AM by HighCrate

Or you leave Number Two alone and define The Dragon as the villainous subtrope thereof.

"For a successful technology, reality must take precedence over public relations, for Nature cannot be fooled." - Richard Feynman

It should be 'Antagonist's faction' not 'evil'.

The good guys could be the antagonists but from a plot perspective the good guy's second is still the dragon and can become Dragon Ascendant or any number of The Dragon tropes.

edited 11th Feb '17 11:20:34 AM by Memers

I'm not convinced people are using it that way, and if we're going to fix this to match the way its used, then we have to go by the way it's being used. I don't recall ever seeing this be used for a non-evil antagonist. (Or at least evil-ish.)

(And pulling out one example won't suffice as a counter-argument, since we're looking for a broad pattern of usage.)

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.