Clean-up on aisle: Xanatos Gambit

We can't just leave them if we expect people to switch over to the new trope. Especially since the proposed new supertrope is a subjective trope and would need to be mass moved to the YMMV tab - rather than shuffle off the objective subtrope to the same purgatory we'd need to find and fix them.

Also, don't forget all the tropers who know the correct meaning of Xanatos Gambit who will be disrupted by this.

Long story short, I won't support this unless we make a good faith effort to repair the trope first and it fails, which should have been done back when Batman Gambit was launched.

edited 18th Mar '11 5:02:44 PM by ccoa

What makes you think it would be subjective? I'm not proposing "plan the viewers think is ingenious", but "plan that gets other characters to do what Bob wants them to do, by various means". That is what most of the misuses still seem to cover.

That is why I stated almost all wicks upon redefinition would not need changing. We'd need to add more for the renamed trope, but there is nothing that says a Super-Trope and its Sub-Trope cannot be listed on a work page when both apply.

edited 18th Mar '11 5:31:55 PM by DragonQuestZ

That is exactly what you were proposing, actually:

"Any cunning plan" is the most common misuse. If we make the supertrope what you're proposing right now (as opposed to the proposal in the first post), then it would indeed be objective but the wicks will still have a large amount of misuse and still have to be cleaned up.

edited 18th Mar '11 5:50:53 PM by ccoa

What kind of misuse outside of that do you mean?

That's not me being rude, in case it accidentally came across that way. I'm actually curious.

edited 18th Mar '11 6:08:12 PM by DragonQuestZ

"A cunning plan" is not the same thing as "a plan that manipulates someone into doing something for the planner". The first is subjective, the second is not. Both could be the supertrope of what is currently Xanatos Gambit, Batman Gambit, and Kansas City Shuffle and both are what Xanatos Gambit is misused for.

For an example, Oceans Eleven uses it for both Batman Gambit and "any cunning plan". Avatar also misuses it as "cunning plan." Both those would be misuses of the objective supertrope. And that's just from checking three pages which are from works I've seen, I'm not sure how many others are this type of misuse because the examples rarely give enough context to call it if you haven't seen/played/read the work.

I think the biggest problem here is that no one ever bothered to clean up Xanatos Gambit and related tropes after identifying the trope decay and launching Batman Gambit. Perhaps the tropers responsible were naive enough to think the problem would solve itself, but that clearly hasn't happened.

I'm pretty sure that even if we did clean it up (we might have, I dunno), it would very quickly fill back up with bad examples. This is a big one, and it became big back when it was in full trope decay mode. While we could hope to change the collective subconscious of basically everyone who's ever touched this website, that seems a big less likely. All the Xanatos snowclones and such (which are also protected by the grandfather clause) would make far more sense if we changed this to a supertrope.

Honestly I can't see a good reason not to do this, other than out of some strange sort of respect for Xanatos the character, who frankly is completely irrelevant at this point. it doesn't matter what this trope was supposed to be, it matters what it is.

Also, "cunning" is a subjective adjective, so...

Can you state again what might be the sub-tropes if Xanatos Gambit it turned into a Super-Trope?

Bob sets off a plan where if it all goes according to plan, he wins, but if it doesn't he still wins, either still getting what he wanted or getting something else he wanted.

I will never understand why we are so against the concept of us having managed to create jargon ourselves. Xanatos Gambit has been steadily spreading over the internet since we created it, and I honestly wouldn't be surprised if it became a full fledged industry term someday.

Or, in short, it has quite possibly spread (or is spreading) beyond our ability to say it's not a known term.

I agree with the idea I seen in some other threads around here, of dealing with the surrounding tropes so that the misuse of this is lessened, but not with the idea of renaming this - also in part because I'm not particularly convinced this is broken in the first place.

I agree with you, but I don't think that's the problem DQZ has with the trope, at least from what I'm reading in the thread. What he wants to do is redefine and rename the trope to mean what some mistaken tropers think it means, and create a category of tropes that would fall under Xanatos Gambits.

That said, misuse should simply be cleaned up, and the trope clarified, rather than redefined and renamed. Making it a super trope is also needlessly complex and would invite more misuse, not less. The current page is more than adequate in getting the point across, we just need to get people to read it and understand it.

We could make a supertrope for plans and gambits, but it should NOT be called Xanatos Gambit.

edited 21st Mar '11 5:20:43 PM by redlar

"Making it a super trope is also needlessly complex and would invite more misuse, not less."

Bull. The misuse is treating this trope as if it already is a Super-Trope. That's the reason I'm suggesting this change.

No, because having more definitions, more confusing definitions, with possible overlap would lead to more people mistaking one trope for another. It's not bull; it's what will happen because people are already misusing this trope.

People misusing Xanatos Gambit as a supertrope simply means we either need a Super Trope not named Xanatos Gambit and make it clear on the trope page that Xanatos Gambit is not simply for cunning plans, possibly with bolded words at the bottom of the description and some sharp-eyed editors.

edited 21st Mar '11 5:23:48 PM by redlar

You don't get it. There is already confusion. I'm suggesting this name be made for a trope that the confusion is mistaking it for. You're acting as though redefining the trope to what most thought it would be, which includes the current trope as well as others, will somehow make more confusion and more misuse.

How does that work?

We have created Jargon. Xanatos Gambit is in widespread use across the internet and is one of the most successful tropes ever. However, the meaning it's being spread around as having is not what the trope description on this site actually says. There is currently a huge amount of misuse that can easily be solved by acknowledging that this is out of our control and describing what the trope has now ended up meaning, instead of uselessly trying to prescribe the meaning that the original trope creator apparently wanted for it. It's not our place to fight the inevitable.

edited 21st Mar '11 7:47:08 PM by Clarste

No, actually, I have seen no evidence that it's being spread around as a misuse. I have seen it get misused here in a wiki subject to Square Peg Round Trope, Tropes Are Not Good, and meme-viruses. In a wiki where capitutaliting to the affects of Square Peg Round Trope, Tropes Are Not Good, and meme-viruses has never produced a good thing before.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm off to fix some High Octane Nightmare Fuel, Incredibly Lazy Pun and Flanderisation wicks.

Um, first of all, I doubt you've looked at all the inbound wicks to determine there is no outside misuse. It might be best to actually show us some samples to prove any misuse is low.

Second of all, the in-wiki use has been enough for renaming before. So acting like it's not is a bad argument.

As for the third claim, that just seems to be proclaiming unproven absolutes with no proof just to avoid a change you don't like, even though it has precedent.

Well, that should be testable. Having Google search for the quoted string "Xanatos Gambit" returns the following page of hits for me:

1. The TV Tropes Xanatos Gambit page, unsurprisingly.
2. David Xanatos's Wikipedia page. Doesn't mention the term at all.
3. http://forums.spacebattles.com/showthread.php?t=149305 A forum discussion about Xanatos Gambits that begins by saying "A Xanatos Gambit is a plan desgined in such a way that, no matter what happens, the planner wins." That's how we currently define it.
4. http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20100708205812AADOU7Z A thread of somebody asking for animes which feature Xanatos or Batman gambits. Doesn't define the term, but the "or Batman" in there strongly implies that the querent is aware that a Xanatos Gambit is not just any cunning plan.
5. http://bleachfanfiction.wikia.com/wiki/Xanatos_Gambit Apparently a page about a fanfic group dedicated to protecting people from being manipulated by masterminds. Includes a note near the end that "Xanatos Gambit is the term that denotes a television trope which usually involves heroes in a story being successful in stopping the main villain's obvious plans, only to fall for the villain's hidden plans." That's clearly closer to the current definition than just "any clever plan".
6. http://xanatos-gambit.deviantart.com/ A page for somebody using "Xanatos Gambit" as a nickname, I think.
7. http://acecombatskies.com/topic/27327-xanatos-gambit/ Another messageboard thread, which starts by defining the term as "secretly manipulating someone into trying to foil your own plans. It assumes two possible outcomes by the one being manipulated - success or failure, and the plan is designed in such a way that either outcome will ultimately further your goals". That matches the current definition pretty closely.
8. http://kevinswatch.ihugny.com/phpBB2/viewtopic.php?p=774964 Yet another thread, this one about the Thomas Covenant books, which states in the first post "The Xanatos Gambit is a method used by Chess Masters to ensure their own victory given any possible scenario." Again, pretty much spot-on.
9. http://www.flickr.com/photos/21075074@N05/4550931651/ A picture of Gargoyles Xanatos shouting at X-Men Gambit.

Five relevant hits, and they all reference people using the term in accord with the current page definition. To me, that supports my initial suspicion: changing things now would only make things worse.

While I'm sure there are a significant number of people who misunderstand the term, is there any evidence that they outnumber the people who understand it to mean what the page currently says?

(EDIT: Huh, autonumbering of lists. That's neat.)

edited 22nd Mar '11 2:48:48 PM by tbarrie

What part of "this change would still include the current definition" makes you think those links would suddenly become wrong?

Second of all, ten links isn't a good sample size. That's something you learn in first year statistics.

And use outside the wiki is not a good answer to the misuse here. That has to be addressed.

edited 22nd Mar '11 3:11:23 PM by DragonQuestZ

Well one time, I got interested so I googled "Xanatos Gambit", read through a few things, felt impressed. It's more than anyone who has made a falsifiable claim in this thread has ever shown me.

The fact that most of those links include definitions of the term, and those definitions match the current accepted definition here, not what you want to change it to.

Well you know what, we rename tropes anyway, even if the external wicks are often right, since it's in here that the misuse is still happening. Unless those wicks can magically change the misuse here, and stop any further misuse, they are not a reason.

Very few tropes get the kind of outside exposure and run-away success as Xanatos Gambit, though, so drastic changes (and yes, expanding the definition to include things the trope does not currently include to make it a supertrope is a major change) should not be taken likely.

I'm currently firmly in support of clarifying the current definition and doing a bad wick purge.

Well it might be best to have a page action crowner, where we do my proposal, do just a definition and wick cleanup, or... is there another option someone has? I don't think "Do nothing" is something supported here though.

I'm with Meeble on this one.

Your idea works in theory, DQZ, but ultimately there's nothing we can do and I seriously doubt there misuse far outweighs the proper use.

Don't tell me there's nothing we can do. And you can't just use a hunch to declare the misuse ratio.

I'll get to looking at the wicks shortly.

edited 22nd Mar '11 4:41:48 PM by DragonQuestZ