What defines a Dragon?

The problem with merging The Dragon with Number Two is that it will automatically limit The Dragon to rigid hierarchies while expanding it to include non-villains as well. Examples of villainous right-hand men in stories that don't have these rigid hierarchical villainous organisation will no longer be able to use The Dragon.

Number Two feels too military-based for me to relate it with The Dragon. If Number Two got a a wick check to see non-hierarchical examples first, that direction would be more optimistic.

I've also wondered if The Dragon could be an Evil Counterpart to The Lancer.

That's the way it was treated in Five-Man Band.

The difference is that The Lancer is more than just the hero's second, they're their foil as well. The Dragon and the main villain don't always have this kind of relationship, and when they do it's usually a physical / mental divide.

When we did the big The Dragon cleanup years ago people were heavily against merging it with Number Two, but people were usually defining it as the Evil Counterpart to Number Two.

x4: Given the results of the wick check, I don't see a problem with that. Almost two-thirds of the examples are in the ZCEs folder; about half the wicks in the second largest folder ("Other") involve evil militaries, businesses, organised crime, etc, and the next two folders below that are for the Number Two of either the Big Bad or some other character. That's at least 32 Number Twos out of 148. Skimming through the remaining 27, they aren't written in a way that really suggests another common thread like "The Lancer archetype, but to a villain" or "Evil Duo who are Brains and Brawn".

Not that I can't imagine wanting a Right Hand Minion supertrope for Dragon-in-Chief (renamed), The Igor, Noble Top Enforcer, The Renfield, The Starscream, and Vile Villain, Laughable Lackey - I'd support that option, too, it just isn't obvious that The Dragon is actually used for that so TRS might decide to just scrape clean-up examples to send to TLP.

Oh, of course, that wasn't what I was suggesting - I meant that when the time comes to discuss fixing Big Bad, the fact that it has been part of the definition of The Dragon for so long will be relevant evidence to how the term is generally understood on the wiki as well as off-site.

(EDIT: I just checked to make sure Wyldchyld was still the most recent post...)

Edited by Noaqiyeum on Jun 20th 2023 at 11:01:47 AM

See, it's the military / hierarchal requirement for Number Two that throws me off a little. Number Two is more specific than "right hand man", and that's what most of these examples actually are — not an official "evil Number Two", but just the villain's closest follower.

Ah, okay. I have the impression that quite a lot of them are Number Twos in some official capacity still, but it's probably less clear than my count makes it out.

Feel free to put your suggested solutions in the OP in Sandbox.TRS Queue.

Also, Dragon-in-Chief is NOT when a Dragon is stronger or more active than the Big Bad — that would be The Heavy. A Dragon-in-Chief is a character who is nominally a Dragon but is the one really and openly running the show.

The Heavy is just the primary threat, it has nothing to do with "being stronger than the Big Bad", especially as Big Bad continues to be a very broad trope and not simply the main villain.

Yeah, I listed my interpretation of the relationships in this post. I'm not surprised that there's a lot of "Number Two" misuse for The Dragon because Number Two and The Dragon do get confused. I do think the current trope descriptions have a clear distinction between the intentions of the two tropes, but they don't explain those intentions well and therefore have a long history of misuse. While Number Two went through a partial clean-up in the past, I think this is the first time a solid look at The Dragon's use has been made.

I don't think Dragon-in-Chief would be an example of Right Hand Minion — they're more like an aversion of it; they're supposed to be the Big Bad's right-hand, but they don't act like it and the Big Bad cannot do anything about it because the apparent Dragon is really the more powerful/threatening/dangerous/etc of the pair. The difference between Dragon-in-Chief and The Man in Front of the Man is that it's always obvious that the Dragon-in-Chief is a greater threat than the "official" Big Bad, whereas The Man in Front of the Man's true status is a secret until The Reveal, making them a subversion of Right Hand Minion.

Edited by Wyldchyld on Jun 24th 2023 at 3:34:19 PM