Lots of Square Hole Round Trope examples.: The Lancer

Wow. That was rude. Thumped.

Even reading this discussion thread I can't work out whether the Lancer is meant to be the hero's no. 2 and who therefore normally is the counterpart to the hero's traits or if he's the person who is the hero's counterpart in traits regardless of relationship and standing with the hero.

So I think maybe the article needs a bit of a touch up, if it's more about the relationship with the hero I think the trait stuff confuses the issue a bit and it would at least need to be stressed that isn't the case, if it's that both need to be true, that needs to be stressed a bit more.

The quote seemed to be tending towards both needing to be true and if that's the case, it's a great quote, same with the picture, IF it's like that.

I cleaned up the description a bit. The lancer is a particular kind of foil, one that is not the leader, but reflects the leader's character via contrast, that's all.

Can we put the Religion section back? The Simon Peter example was completely legitimate.

I think that should go in Literature. The Bible is not a history book.

edited 29th Dec '10 8:21:13 PM by rodneyAnonymous

...Uh, I didn't say it should go in the Real Life section (although declaring that the Bible isn't historical is definitely Flame Bait). I don't really care if it goes in the Literature section or if the Religion section (it was the only example there) is restored.

I haven't seen a single page where The Bible was not included in Real Life, but instead, Literature. Maybe I just never noticed, but it always is in RL when I see it.

I have usually seen Bible stories in Literature, and would move it if I saw it somewhere else. The Bible is not Real Life; it is historical fiction. Religion is a category in some articles but it shouldn't be; articles are usually divided by medium and that's not a medium.

I don't particularly care either way. Besides, there can't be a Bible version of The Lancer, because there are no Five Man Bands...to my awareness.

The trope has decayed into any right-hand-man / foil for The Hero, regardless of whether they're part of a Five-Man Band.

Like, I said, Flame Bait. I don't have any objection to putting it in Literature, but I do think grouping it with Mythology (ie, Religion and Mythology) makes sense as well. *shrug* I'm not trying to make this into a big deal. I just want the example restored, without causing an Edit War, preferably.

And we're okay with that? If we are, alright, but...it sort of defeats the purpose of Five-Man Band.

When discussing the literary aspects of The Bible, it's generally put in Literature. If it doesn't beyond there, use "Religion and Mythology", not Real Life.

I love how anything even remotely critical of religion is Flame Bait :P "The Bible is not a history book" is a simple statement of fact. As far as I know, no historians or other authorities on history (including religious ones) consider the Bible to be an accurate historical account; it fails by far to meet the relevant criteria, established hundreds of years earlier. Bible stories should be filed under Literature. (Unless you want to argue about which of the Quran, Torah, Bhagavad Gita, etc etc is "real" and which are fiction, they all are.)

The issue is that, by putting it in the Literature section, you are denying that it is real life or ever occurred, essentially saying the events are fictional. That's why it's Flame Bait to a lot of people. As I said, it doesn't matter to me either way, and if the practice is to put events from the Bible into the Literature section, I've seen it misplaced a lot, which I'll work from now on to rectify (or just simply remove).

Accepting that the Bible has sections that are indeed written and presented as factual histories doesn't even require that you accept everything in it as true any more than accepting Livy's History of Rome as history means you have to believe everything he said.

There's a seperate section for "religion, traditions, culture" and stuff I believe.

Last time this came up, the consensus was "Literature" if we're analyzing it as a narrative (without taking any stance on its accuracy), or "Religion and Mythology" if we're talking about the beliefs and not the text.

After all, even if a story is 100% true, there is still an art to the telling of the story—while The Bible may portray Peter as The Lancer, an alternate (though still true) depiction of events may tell the story in a different way such that Peter doesn't act as a Foil to Jesus and thus isn't The Lancer. Just taking the events as depicted in the Bible, I don't think it would be difficult to restrict the narrative to Peter's point of view and have him as The Hero and perhaps John as The Lancer, with the story continuing past the Gospels and into Acts. If we only had The Bible to look at, it would probably be a fairly disjointed story, but let's assume that we could accurately observe the events—the story could easily be told. It just wasn't because the Gospels are the story of Jesus, and thus Peter is a secondary character.

So, yeah, storytelling tropes in Literature, since it's not actually a commentary about the truth (or lack thereof) of the story being told.

Don't really see what's so bad about putting The Bible in Literature. I mean, Romance Of The Three Kingdoms is in Literature and it's mostly historical.

...

edited 29th Dec '10 11:34:03 PM by rodneyAnonymous

What? Romance is a historical novel, albeit with a lot of exagerrations and bias and quite a few outright fictional stories added in, either for the sake of Rule of Cool or due to the sources it was being based on. <<;

edited 29th Dec '10 11:44:59 PM by Servbot

I think, having never read it, the idea is that it fictionalizes historical events (isn't there a Monkey God?), and the fictionalization is not taken to be true by a third of the human population.

Honestly, we're derailing. If it goes in the Lit section, it goes there.

edited 29th Dec '10 11:47:38 PM by helterskelter

You're probably thinking of Journey To The West. Romance Of The Three Kingdoms is the one about the wars during the Three Kingdoms era of China.

edited 29th Dec '10 11:52:27 PM by Servbot

Just popping in to make this clear, The Lancer can exist outside of the Five-Man Band, just like The Hero can. They are character types in relation to an ensemble, the Five-Man Band is merely one possible configuration. The only reason Simon Peter wouldn't qualify is because his relationship with Jesus is more Master/Apprentice rather than being a foil or contrast to Jesus himself (It's actually arguable that James takes on that role to Peter in The Acts and the Epistles).

^ Above post is right, the idea of a foil seems to involve the both people complementing each other but the biblical view of Jesus wouldn't allow him to have faults to be complemented.

Because I'm a sucker for flame bate, the book of Acts and Luke (of which this is very relevant) specifically claims to be a history of what occurred and Luke (the writer) has been acclaimed by many independent people as one of the greatest historians of his time (at least as reference to political figures, situations and geography goes, people would probably take issue with the central events because of the miracles)