Severe Misuse, Trope Decay: Proud Warrior Race Guy

Perhaps it is time for a split. Proud Warrior Race Guy is a character trope about a particular individual who is part of a Planet of Hats whose hat is warfare (occasionally with some honor and warrior's code thrown in).

The trope however is almost 50% of the time used to refer to the Culture the Proud Warrior Race Guy comes from. But let the evidence speak of themselves:

1. Read the trope's page, check all the examples who do not NAME anyone character.
2. The majority of the 281 wicks for the redirect Proud Warrior Race do not, in fact, refer to a character, but instead refer to the culture.

My suggestion is to do a split, to take Proud Warrior Race and move it to it's own article, making it about the culture, where as Proud Warrior Race Guy should remain about the token character from said culture.

Pretty small distinction for all that work. Maybe the fix in this case should be to the article, not all the uses of the title.

Edited a few minutes later: There. I changed two words in the article making it about the race, with specific instances in some characters. Job over.

edited 7th Nov '10 2:50:19 AM by FastEddie

Would it be better now to switch with the redirect?

edited 7th Nov '10 9:46:56 AM by DragonQuestZ

No point, IMO. The only thing seperating Proud Warrior Race Guy from Proud Warrior Race is adding an "s" to the end of "guys". If the use was overwhelmingly in favor of the plural then maybe, but trying to decide if that's the case falls under the "too much work for not a lot of difference" again.

A small number of words does mean it is a small change. A character is a completely different sort of trope from an otherworld or setting trope. It involves playing about with different elements, it impacts on the use of other tropes differently, the connotations are different, what the audience sees is different and what the writer does is different. If I have a Proud Warrior Race Guy then I have probably set The Big Guy for my Five-Man Band, I have a token alien who helps remind people looking at the DVD box art that this is a Scifi or fantasy show, I have a guy who can be The Unfunny and can produce culture clash humour.

There is not even a one to one connection between having a Proud Warrior Race Guy and a Warrior Hat Culture. You might have the culture but no guy, you might have the guy but it's not really a uniform culture or race. The way we actually go about saying that this character is like another character and are the same trope are from the various shared characterisations and roles they play in the cast.

Split it or put in the examples in Space Jews or Planet of Hats where the hat is "Proud warrior race" and "setting up unfortunate implications by primarily using black actors".

I entirely agree with you Some Sort Of Troper. Fast Eddie's redefinition is great when talking about the race archetype, but the guy variation is lost in the process. I do feel we are dealing with two separate tropes here.

edited 7th Nov '10 11:02:08 AM by Ghilz

I don't think it would be difficult to write something up for the split. "Warrior Race takes cues from various warrior castes and highly war based cultures and puts this element of humanity into a fantastic or science fiction setting by creating an entire species built around war." "A warrior race can be brought in to help deliver an Aesop Of The Week about war or mercy or somesuch. They may be fertile ground for finding the Proud Warrior Race Guy who joins the main cast. Beware of Unfortunate Implications by making a warrior race version of Space Jews." "The culture can vary. It may be all Blood Knight all the time, some, especially protagonist aligned races, tend to Honor Before Reason. Sometimes however they may basically be this setting's Space Nazis."

Take all that is on the page now and use the links to put the situation right on their pages, clean up this page, move the information over. That might only be a fraction of the wicks but it's probably the most exposed fraction and it will get Warrior Race healthy. The rest of the wicks may be harder but less of a big deal after we get that done. Tactical wick fixing.

Change the target of the Proud Warrior Race redirect, since 90% of them are about the race and not the Guy, and that's almost 200 wicks right there.

If there's no objection, I'd get on it tomorow.

I'm gonna raise a cautionary "not so fast" hand because 1: I don't really understand SSOT's argument and 2: This is an awfully big and popular trope to make major changes on a whim.

True, forgive my enthousiasm.

Bump. Guess everyone is cool with this idea?

No, I really don't get SSOT's argument either. One is talking about the characterization of a group of people, the other is talking about the characterization of an individual, regardless of what role he fills in the work.

I think I see what SSOT is saying, but I'm not sure I believe that the "Guy" variant is really a trope. Seems to me more like a common excuse for introducing tropes like One-Man Army or The Stoic or the Determinator. Proud Warrior Race is definitely a trope, but I'm not sure there's really any unifying characteristic to the guys from those races as they appear in fiction.

Note: "I'm not sure" is the key word in all the above.

I am at my typewriter, I am about to write in a Proud Warrior Race Guy, what do I type? I type something completely different from a Warrior Race. Alternatively, when I watch one, I see different things happening.

Imagine if this trope was called "The Worf".

edited 11th Nov '10 4:28:19 AM by SomeSortOfTroper

What do you type in? That depends. Were you planning to go for The Stoic or One-Man Army or the Determinator or Sergeant Rock or some other, similar trope? I admit that Star Trek is very popular, but I don't see a lot of difference between Worf and The Third Generation Cop (a popular stock character in crime dramas) or The Third Generation Marine (ditto for war dramas). *shrug*

edited 11th Nov '10 7:42:35 PM by Xtifr

I think we should split it into "Proud Warrior Race" and "Proud Warrior." Proud Warrior Race could cover both the Planet of Hats race, as well as characters from that race. Proud Warrior could then cover those that act like Proud Warrior Race Characters, but are not part of a planet of hats (thus covering things like "Third Generaton Cop.")

Whatever is done, I hope we get rid of the word "guy." Unfortunate Implications abound even with the redirect.

Also, the trope names might be better with "Honorable" in place of "Proud" because Honor Before Reason is usually their defining characteristic besides being warriors, but that is rather minor.

Hold on there. While I'm all for moving most examples—i.e. the ones about Planet of Hats—to "Proud Warrior Race," there is in fact a justification for keeping around a trope called "Proud Warrior Race Guy. The "Proud Warrior Race Guy," as originally envisioned, is the one member of Five-Man Band or what have you who is a member of that 'Verse's Proud Warrior Race; this character almost inevitably shows up in most works of Speculative Fiction that includes other races. This character typically has a Character Arc about a. synthesizing his (or occasionally her) Proud Warrior Race roots with his/her devotion to the team b. embracing culture while still being warlike or c. both. The ones I can think of off the top of my head are Worf and Teal'c, but I'm sure there are more.

What's up with the Buffy Speak title? What's wrong with just Proud Warrior?

Proud Warrior is too wide a concept for this trope. That could be any fighter character with a sense of pride. This is a guy/girl who is explicitly from a culture that values honour and warfare above more gentle or "civilised" concepts. In other words, a guy from a proud warrior race.

edited 4th Jan '11 12:15:54 PM by DoktorvonEurotrash

It's a character archetype, right? Does it matter what the backstory is that made the character into the archetype? "Character who is from a Proud Warrior Race" is an example of Proud Warrior Race; being from a Proud Warrior Race is a potential justification for being a Proud Warrior. Yes?

I actually like the title. It seems to be gently mocking the kind of cultural posturing you know goes hand in hand with this archetype. Which is why I would say background and motivation matter quite a bit. Warrior is less their occupation than their hat.

Although now that it's been mentioned, a "Proud Warrior" (or somesuch) supertrope doesn't seem like a bad idea. I'm somewhat surprised there isn't one (Arrogant Kung-Fu Guy is much more specific.)

I do sort of like the title, but I disagree that it's an archetype. As I implied earlier, it is, I think, a character device (not Character As Device) for justifying any of a number of archetypes, ranging from the rugged individualist brawler to the ultra-disciplined emotionless supersoldier. For example, in Farscape, D'Argo is the former, and Aeryn is the latter, and they're completely different archetypes, but both justified by the same basic character device.

I'm getting that you basically want to expand the trope. I think this trope has so many examples it'd be better to make a supertrope of Proud Warrior types rather than rework Proud Warrior Race Guy. Unless there are a bunch of shoehorned examples that don't qualify as the archetype.

If that was addressed to me: no, I don't want to expand the trope. I'm not even fully convinced it's a valid trope, though it's not something I feel strongly about. But even if it is a trope, it's not an archetype, even as it stands. Whatever it is, I think it's a bit of a mess at present, but I do still kinda like the name.

It was directed at you, more or less. I don't see how it's not about expansion, essentially. You have a trope about a specific kind of character, who hails from a proud warrior race, is a proud warrior themselves and derives a lot of that pride from their own sense of heritage and culture. What you are suggesting sounds like, make it about a proud warrior type who may have the proud warrior race in their background, which would mean you're not excluding current examples but relaxing the definition which would allow for the inclusion of more.