Ambiguous Name: Aint Too Proud To Beg

Gonna try my best to cut down on the digressions and side tangents of #23 to distill what's actually being said for the sake of everyone else, because no offense to Coachpill, but their points are still extremely hard to follow, being buried under unnecessary walls of text for irrelevant context.

What interchangeable tropes?

What do you mean "actual examples"? There are plenty of uses of Ain't Too Proud to Beg.

Again, of what tropes? How can it possibly be either of those at the same time?

How is that a significant hinderance? People continue to add entries of tropes in TRS all the time, those are still addressed in the cleanup or other necessary actions, and usually having a "this trope is in the TRS thread" at the top is a sign for folks "hey, please check it out right now because things are subject to change."

Yes it can, we can just rewrite the trope description so it can be more precise and concise, then do wick cleanups to ensure that the use of the trope fits the revised definitions. That's not rocket surgery.

Yes, and that's why we can just correct the definition to deemphasize that. If your problem with the trope and why you queued this for the TRS is about how the trope of "undignified begging" arbitrarily splits itself based on the morality of the person using it, we can simply revise the description so it's not a thing and disregard that cruft. This isn't the Sisyphean roadblock you constantly imply it to be, that's just business.

I have to only assume that that's your problem — again, you haven't explained what the actual issue with Ain't Too Proud to Beg is that warranted discussion in the TRS, and your paradigms for how you were categorizing wicks in your wick check are just as vague and confusing. We can't accept suggestions to act on for concerns you can't describe for endgoals that you don't seem to know.

Also re:, if the route is to just reorient this trope to be about undignified begging in general, I wouldn't mind a rename to Undignified Begging or something a bit snappier, though tbh I honestly also wouldn't mind keeping Ain't Too Proud to Beg as is and just rewriting the description to exclude its arbitrary categorizing.

Edited by number9robotic on Jan 19th 2024 at 2:35:42 AM

Isn't all begging a bit undignified? That is what separates it from just asking. And if it is specifically asking for mercy, then it overlaps a lot with surrendering. That is why as a straight trope it is rare. The heroes usually win, and even if they lose, they die with dignity and usually with defiance.

It is also possible that then trope is part of a belly of the whale moment for the hero, and he gets captured, but usually when heroes get captured they either go down fighting or surrender with dignity.

If course there are also times when someone begs on behalf of someone else.

The current name "Aint Too Proud To Beg" implies the character is believed to be Proud but in this case isn't, so we could focus on that and keep the name.

Edited by Amonimus on Jan 19th 2024 at 2:01:40 PM

I just assume it means that the character straight up isn't prideful. That's always how I've interpreted the title. The "less proud than actually believed" interpretation is similar enough to count for flexibility I think.

My thought here is that excessive pride is a Fatal Flaw, an evil sin, something harmful. So that is why I think the current hero angle makes sense; heroes are less likely to be so prideful as to choose death over begging.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 19th 2024 at 12:03:30 PM

I think a lot of people are too proud to beg, unless they are actually in a difficult situation. I don't see the name as implying the character is proud.

Pride is see as a vice, but it can also mean basic self respect.

Yeah, thinking about it, if the trope is fundamentally just about begging in desperation, I don't think "pride" needs to be like, Fatal Flaw-levels of intensity, it's just for anyone with a base level of dignity. In that sense, I think "Ain't Too Proud to Beg" is alone a perfectly fine name, it's just the trope description being vague that's the source of problems. I don't want to complicate things with a rename that might be misleading when the problem is not the title, but user error due to unclear descriptions (a la that time Precision F-Strike got renamed to Breaking Point Swearing for a few months).

I mean, I'm just basing my thought based on what I think the trope is actually going for. I didn't mean to say that a character's pride needs to be a Fatal Flaw for them to not want to beg; just that prideful villains are more common than prideful heroes (because it's often such a big flaw), and so a hero is less likely to find begging shameful. A hero is simply less likely to prioritize ego over safety and survival, and I the title being what it is, this is just what I believe the trope is trying to be about. I'm really just examining why it would be specific to heroes, if we want to keep it that way.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 19th 2024 at 4:40:54 AM

In my experience, this is the opposite; heroes are frequently determinators who refuse to give in to evil, no matter what, and never accept the Big Bad’s request to Kneel Before Zod, while villains, despite being prideful, are also more likely to beg when defeated to show how pathetic they are and how overblown their ego is.

I mean, maybe, but both can be true depending on the type of story and it doesn't have to be a villain the hero is begging to. But your point is probably why so many people use this for villains in the first place.

At the end of the day this isn't a hill I'll die on. Just me trying to figure out the logic of the trope as currently written. Everything just points me in the direction of "this trope is about lacking the pride that would prevent heroes from begging".

"why so many people use this for villains in the first place"

Cue Villains Want Mercy, which Ain't Too Proud to Beg treats an Inverted Trope instead of Sub-Trope.

Which, if Ain't Too Proud to Beg is specifically for heroes and isn't treated as shameful... yeah the inversion tracks IMO.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 19th 2024 at 6:33:48 AM

I think the core issues right now, as a whole, are a) this trope isn't being played straight a lot of the time, but clearly isn't a Dead Unicorn Trope, and b) the inversion aspect (Villains Want Mercy) isn't clear. Post 27 reflects this pretty well and that seems to be a good place to bounce off of.

Regarding my own post—I don't want to step backwards. That's probably something I've been doing in this thread anyway, which definitely takes away from the issue, but there's more to my post than just "the scope is ruined forever and wicks shouldn't be added". I even compared it to Exactly What It Says on the Tin to emphasize how it's not a Sisyphean task—that trope has far more issues than most misused tropes in general—but whatever issues this trope have has to do with how it's being evaluated, in the sense that any proper situation can be constrained as "begging" if it turns desperate.

I'm not saying the examples aren't "actual examples" to be condescending to whoever wrote them (not that someone ITT was implying that, I just want to clarify that it wasn't at all my intention to disparage the entries), just that they aren't examples of the trope. My point is that there's nothing guiding a lot of entries; the type labels are the closest thing to pre-written examples of the trope, but they don't do much in practice. The only idea I get from them is what seem like they could work as subtropes—Too Desperate to Be Picky, Break the Haughty (which may work better as a super-trope, as 17 mentioned), what have you. This is probably something we should address after the other issues are tackled, though.

I think the first thing that needs to be addressed is figuring out what the trope actually is. The description is says that it mostly applies to heroes, but that it could apply to villians. It also says it is about more than begging, but rather signs of submission are what is important.

Villains want Mercy is clear that it is about one way that villains react to defeat. Ain't too Proud to Beg could be rewritten along similar lines.

Technically what it says is that it doesn't need to be a villain the heroes are begging, not that villains can be doing the begging. It's badly worded, but the context of the line is clear enough.

Edit: Unless I'm just reading it wrong which is entirely possible, too. Looking at it again, I'm more inclined to think that I've made an error here.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jan 19th 2024 at 12:41:05 PM

Regardless of redefining this, the description clearly needs to be rewritten, given that there's significant disagreement on what the current definition even is. (although clarifying the definition probably isn't necessary if something else is done i.e disambig as suggested by OP)

based on this thread, i understand this potentially could be understood as (via a good-faith reading of the page description as currently written):

• The hero, specifically, begging the villian for mercy
• Undignified begging, in general
• limited to begging for mercy specifically
• limited to heroic characters
• limited to characters who are prideful or thought to be prideful (?) (sorry if i misunderstood this one)
• the opposite interpretation, that this applied to characters who don't suffer from pride
• the hero bows, kneels or begs to the villian

roughly, is this correct? It might help if @coachpill can clarify exactly what definition they used for their wick check

added

added

Edited by Tremmor19 on Jan 20th 2024 at 7:31:31 AM

I don't think the final bullet is wrong, but there was also the opposite interpretation floating around (that this applied to characters who don't suffer from pride).

The current definition covers more than just begging: "The opposite of Defiant to the End, this is when the hero of his own accord begs for mercy, or bows, kneels, cowers, or does pretty much anything covered under Kneel Before Zod." Although "of his own accord" suggests that the hero takes the initiative as opposed to responding to an ultimatum.

Edited by ry4n on Jan 20th 2024 at 2:04:28 AM

Sorry for the late reply—

Yeah, I essentially went with the "of his own accord" definition, since that implied that the hero's never been in that situation before and doesn't know/want to know what will happen if they don't immediately beg. This tends to be the definition people stick with in the context of begging on behalf of others as well. It's tricky because heroes will often have pride in the name of love (and no, I'm not just talking about the song, lol); Unrequited Love Switcheroo shows that it's sometimes easier to accentuate if isn't familial.

I'm starting to wonder if there's a concept that could be yarded along the lines of "Begging on your family's behalf has more repercussions than begging because of pride you lost at an earlier point, where you refused to beg"; kind of like Chekhov's Begging or something. I think that shows what this trope's been trying to cover other than "fake" begging (Type I) or "genuine begging" (Type II), the latter of which could be analyzed more in the context of Kneel Before Zod to see if it's separate enough from that.

In most cases, fake begging is covered by "I surrender, Suckers" or "Truce Trickery" Although, heroes often do a version of it where they don't actually surrender or call for a truce, so it is less of a deceit.

Edited by ry4n on Jan 21st 2024 at 12:40:52 PM

Anyway, yeah, it's clear there are multiple definitions floating around. At this point we all clearly have our own versions in mind, and with the description being what it is, we can't use that to settle this.

I think the clock isn't need at this rate.

To start with, this definitely should only cover sincere begging, since fake begging falls under I Surrender, Suckers.

Also, if this is supposed to be a "heroes only" trope, there is nothing in the current name to imply that.

I agree with limiting it to sincere begging, though I've been wondering if limiting it to heroes is necessary. Would there be any overlap with other tropes if we allowed the roles to be reversed by allowing examples of villains begging for mercy from heroes? I Surrender, Suckers allows examples of either villains or heroes being the ones doing the insincere begging that trope involves, if that matters when it comes to how to define a trope for sincere begging.

Edited by GastonRabbit on Jan 21st 2024 at 8:04:38 AM

"examples of villains begging for mercy"

Villains Want Mercy.