Warrior Poet/Playing With

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Basic Trope: A warrior who applies poetry, philosophy, and/or art to combat.

  • Straight: Bob is a war veteran who writes an epic poem based on his experiences in war.
  • Exaggerated: Bob is a Dance Battler who, in the midst of battle, sings a beautiful and mournful elegy to each enemy he kills.
  • Justified: Bob needs to cope with war somehow, so he uses expression to help himself along.
  • Inverted: Bob is an artist by day and a brutal, psychopathic serial killer by night. The latter is inspiration for the former.
  • Subverted: Bob writes an epic contemplative poem based on his experiences in war but it turns out he's a Miles Gloriosus.
  • Double Subverted: But when the Miles Gloriosus is thrust into a combat situation, he ends up doing well and writing an even better poem.
  • Parodied: Bob uses his experiences in war to write childish nursery rhymes.
  • Deconstructed: War turns Bob into a savage or traumatizes him, which crushes any poetic tendencies he might have.
  • Reconstructed: War turns Bob into a Shell-Shocked Veteran but this only fuels his desire to express his views on combat through art and poetry.
  • Zig Zagged:
  • Averted: A movie takes place in a time and place where warrior poets are a traditional trope (ancient China, ancient Japan, the Crusades, Sparta, etc.) but the main characters are unthinking soldiers who fight without wondering why they do.
  • Enforced:
  • Lampshaded:
  • Invoked: Bob is a scholar of samurai literature, and when he's thrust into war he tries to apply this trope to his life to keep himself sane.
  • Exploited: The military uses traditions, pageantry, and ceremony to keep its personnel from cracking.
  • Defied: Bob is a Cultured Badass, but as far as he's concerned, once battle starts the artistic aesthete side of him stays in the tent. When he picks up his sword he turns into a brutal Combat Pragmatist and Screaming Warrior.
  • Discussed:
  • Conversed:

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