What defines a Dragon?

No, it can't. Number Two only applies to military chains of command or other similarly strict hierarchies, which a lot of Dragons aren't part of.

Edited by badtothebaritone on Jun 1st 2023 at 10:39:38 AM

Bumping this thread as The Dragon Wick Check only has a third of wicks left to check. Feel free to add more wicks.

Can be "Other usage" folder be split further?

Thanks for reminding me. I'm busy today, but I may have time to finish up tomorrow if nobody else wants to.

There's also Dragon Their Feet, which seems to assume that the heroes normally fight the Dragon as the penultimate boss (because it's about a particular sort of aversion where The Dragon is the ultimate boss instead, without being a Dragon Ascendant. It also seems to cover situations where The Dragon is The Unfought if there's a final post-climax meeting with them isn't a physical confrontation, I guess.)

Although oddly that trope seems find and reasonably well-defined, since it describes a fairly specific sequence of events that happens fairly often.

Edited by Aquillion on Jun 16th 2023 at 12:17:03 PM

Alright, gonna try and wrap up Sandbox.The Dragon Wick Check today. If anyone wants to help wrap up the last chunk, be my guest!

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 18th 2023 at 5:11:48 AM

~El Rise, I finished the wick check. Now we can work out ideas. We also may want to edit the sandbox for consistency reasons, as we have slightly different wick checking styles; for instance, I keep Main tropes at the top without a namespace and use double asterisks for indentation. And of course if we need to make new folders or anything we can do that as well.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 18th 2023 at 12:28:42 PM

Dang it, punctuation glitch. ~El Rise

Looking at the wick check, I'm not surprised ZCE are the majority, it's an old trope and it was previously on the TRS for that reason, and the clean-up after never got off the ground.

It seems like the "penultimate thread" idea is hardly present, so I guess that settles that. If someone wants to start that trope, they can do it from TLP without worrying about overlap with The Dragon.

Seeing almost as many examples of The Dragon being the second-hand guy to an evil boss other than the Big Bad does lend credence to the idea that The Dragon really is used as "Evil Number Two". Unsurprising, given Big Bad is also often misused as "Evil The Leader", which I suspect is thanks to the popularity of the old Five Bad Band trope.

Yeah, that's the biggest issue I think — well, that and the usage that is just "follower of a villain" or similar. The Dragon mainly seems to be used for any devoted follower of someone else, who is usually evil but even that isn't present in every example. It's Number Two for antagonists, but even then it's all over the place, and my hypothesis about the trope fundamentally misunderstanding Big Bad has been proven correct. Big Bad has zilch to do with it, it's all just about someone serving a villain. Being the Number Two also doesn't seem to mean much, though, as the examples range from employees to romantic partners or generic underlings.

But of course, the sheer number of ZCE makes it hard to truly solve this puzzle since we just don't know how a majority of the examples are being used. It's one of the tropes that are often used just to tag characters, and not to actually add context to an example.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 18th 2023 at 1:34:06 PM

Yep, Big Bad is another one of those heavily misused tropes that has been used anywhere from Arc Villain, evil team leader, or even just a bad guy. I've seen Big Bad shoehorned in a work with No Antagonist to describe the most unpleasant/malicious/Jerkass character even though said character is barely relevant to the plot.

Doesn't help that the term is generally used outside the site to mean "main villain" rather than "source of conflict", especially in the TTRPG community.

We were discussing Big Bad and it's misuse elsewhere, but yeah we can at least gather that the correct definition of the trope as used doesn't require a Big Bad be present.

I'm honestly more interested in the whole "not always a Number Two" issue though, since it's also extremely common and isn't as easily explained away. So many examples are just "follower", in any form that might take.

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 18th 2023 at 2:13:53 PM

Probably worth a TRS if the wick check is done.

If Big Bad requirement is lowered, would it stand as "an evil right-hand-man / main minion"?

My thoughts:

• The coverage of The Dragon is way too broad. Other than second-in-commands or right hands, it is also used in servants, henchmen, bodyguards, (top) enforcers, allies on equal footing, etc. "The subordinate whom the boss favours / trusts / relies on the most" may be trope-worthy, but something clearly needs to be done with this.
• Morality isn't important, given how a Big Bad isn't necessary.
• Other than renaming, would nuking be a viable solution? Any meaningful patterns (the one I mentioned before) can be yarded anyway.
• Only by dealing with The Dragon (the core) could we deal with its related tropes (Dragon Ascendant, Dragon with an Agenda, It's Personal with the Dragon, etc.). I suggest putting it in the TRS Queue ASAP. We have more than enough time to discuss solutions if you are not ok with mine.

Not sure I follow this - being a villain trope is maybe the most consistent aspect of the usage.

Ah, I've worded that incorrectly, then. The "villain" aspect is generally consistent, but Big Bad isn't. My point still stands though.

I've personally always felt many of The Dragon subtropes were unnecessarily specific. Most of them don't really require for the character to be the second-in-command, they could apply for any villain that serves another villain. For example, Dragon with an Agenda specifies the dragon, but it could happen that any other villainous servant can have a hidden agenda, like maybe the Evil Genius has an agenda but The Dragon remains loyal

Quick thoughts on how I personally see The Dragon and the subtropes that specifically mention it:

Edited by BlackMage43 on Jun 19th 2023 at 3:04:50 AM

I think these all are worth renaming or merging with other tropes.

I still think the best way to handle The Dragon is as the non-hierarchical and villainous sister trope to Number Two. In other words, it's a character that would be Number Two if the villains had a strict enough hierarchy to justify the use of that trope instead. So, the character would have to narratively be identified as the primary villain's right-hand person, and therefore the one effectively in charge in the absence of the primary villain, but this dominant-subordinate relationship does not exist within the strict hierarchy that Number Two depends on. It could then mop up some villainous Number Two examples that fall foul of there being a narratively defined second-in-command villain despite there being no organisational hierarchy that would fit Number Two (it won't solve the problem of non-villainous Number Two examples, but a Number Two clean-up would be a separate project anyway).

That would make the narrative point of The Dragon trope being that the primary villain requires a second-in-command for whatever narrative reason, but who doesn't play the master-servant role found in The Igor.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jun 20th 2023 at 8:54:39 PM

El Rise already put the trope on the TRS queue, but I suppose it's not too late to still at least pitch ideas. The queue will take a while.

Do you have a link to the queue? I would love to know why I can never remember the location of it. I think I'm going to have to bookmark it.

Sandbox.TRS Queue

(It’s also in my signature - I keep it there on purpose to help others find it)

You’re very welcome.

Edited by themayorofsimpleton on Jun 20th 2023 at 4:05:03 AM

Thanks! I knew somebody had a link to it in their signature, but I couldn't remember that either!

This was under "uncategorisable", but I note it at least seems to imply the "Number Two" meaning.

I agree with BlackMage's assessments overall (I think if The Dragon became Right Hand Minion then I'd change Co-Dragons to something like Right Hand Gang), though I wonder about the extent to which it wouldn't be better just to merge The Dragon with Number Two and then figure out what to do with the other pages. I notice Number Two doesn't actually say that it's for "good guys" - most of the language is just for hierarchical organisations, and in fact the page quote is a villain talking about his own lead henchman.

Furthermore I continue to contend that Carthage must be destroyed Big Bad must be redefined, and The Dragon provides evidence for that because the idea of an impersonal catastrophe having a second-in-command is nonsensical, but that's a topic for its own thread

That's fair. I put in that category because I didn't really think it was worth trying to dissect a joke, but there's definitely a case to argue for it to be moved to a different folder.

As for the Big Bad thing, I'd prefer we actually just remove any reference to it in terms of The Dragon and save the wider issue for later, instead of redefining it to better match The Dragon

Edited by WarJay77 on Jun 20th 2023 at 4:24:39 AM