Ambiguous Name: Uriah Gambit

I think everyone agrees that intent is important: the commander must be doing it in order to get the subordinate killed. If the commander doesn't intend for the subordinate to die—even if the commander expects the subordinate to die, but still doesn't want it to happen, he just wants the mission done—it's not this trope.

But the particular motive the commander has for killing the subordinate? I don't think we need to add that.

If we did, after all, where would it end? There's a Hunting "Accident" trope. Okay, that covers every time you kill someone but make it look like a hunting accident—do we need to divide it into subtropes? (kill someone and make it look like a hunting accident to get his girl, kill someone and make it look like a hunting accident to steal from him, kill someone and make it look like a hunting accident because he knows too much, kill someone and make it look like a hunting accident to hide the masquerade...)

I don't think that's necessary. If in a particular work a commander sends his subordinate off to die to get his girl, you just link to two tropes: The Uriah Gambit and Murder the Hypotenuse. You use one link for the murder technique, another for the murder motive—two different tropes, both applying to the same murder.

edited 6th Apr '12 3:06:28 PM by Narsil

Isn't that double jeopardy?

Hmm. I agree it is important the gambitter sends the person on a suicide mission primarily (if not solely) to get them killed.

However, while their death is often a means to some end (David did it to avoid the adultery scandal over Bathseba's child), the key is that the primary purpose of the errand is simply to get the dude killed; their death serves no purpose relevant to the errand itself.

edited 7th Apr '12 10:24:56 AM by Stratadrake

That should be in the description. It's three tiny paragraphs...

edited 7th Apr '12 10:08:29 AM by Oreochan

I don't think that is a necessary distinction to make. If you're sending them on a suicide mission because you want them dead, and the mission manages to get accomplished too, that just makes it a nice neat Xanatos Gambit.

Sending them to die takes priority over whatever objective they were ordered to accomplish.

This. If the plan being successful is compatible with the subordinate coming back alive, it's not this trope.

I'd say, yes and no. It's reasonable for a commander to have multiple objectives, trying to kill two birds with one stone. He may (a) really want Smith to plant that bomb in the enemy HQ, and (b) really want Smith to die when the bomb goes off "prematurely". If Smith plants the bomb and it goes off, but Smith made it to cover in time, the commander may feel like he got half a loaf—Smith lived, which is a shame, but at least the HQ did get blown up.

Yes, but it's still not a complete success. (Heh, are we debating "glass half full/half empty" here? ) If it's this trope, there's work left to be done in that case.

No argument that the description needs some fixing! And I think everyone agrees that the trope requires that Commander X send Private Y on a mission with the intent of Y being killed. It sounds like the question is: (a) Does the trope require that this be the only purpose of the mission? (i.e. if X didn't want Y dead, he wouldn't have put together the mission at all.) Or (b) does it simply require that Y's death be a major goal of the mission? (i.e. if he didn't want Y dead, he might have arranged the mission differently to improve people's odds—or he might have just picked other people, knowing they would probably die and regretting that fact.)

For example, the case of Uriah and of Buffy are clearly in case (a)—the mission was put together to get the person killed, and in the case of Uriah, it even got other people killed while accomplishing nothing useful. But the case from MASH (where a commander sends black soldiers on the most dangerous missions) seems to be more like (b)—from the description, he's picking the soldiers he doesn't like to go on the most dangerous missions, but they're missions that were still militarily useful.

Either way is fine with me, though if we settle on (a), we need to clean out some examples.

edited 10th Apr '12 10:53:22 AM by Narsil

Y's death is not a goal of the mission ... it is THE goal of the mission.

Either X knew the mission was destined to failure from the start, or he deliberately sabotaged it to fail.

edited 10th Apr '12 11:08:18 AM by Stratadrake

I'd rather leave room for less extreme examples. Cases like MASH are clearly in the spirit of the trope. They might be Downplayed (at worst) but they should count.

edited 10th Apr '12 3:12:38 PM by troacctid

I think this thread is a good example of the same type of literalism that Eddie warned against with respect to page images. In this case, the Trope Namer has several aspects, and although many of them are irrelevant to the trope's definition, a splitter may take issue with one or another. It's best to remember that a Trope Namer very rarely unambiguously exemplifies every aspect of a trope's definition

Clocking due to lack of activity.

Hooka-ed.

Downvoted the "rename" option because Oreochan's wick check as well as the nature of the story about Uriah make it sound like the name fits both the romantic and the nonromantic definition.

I take issue here because the "broaden" option is not actually broadening. That's the status quo. This trope has never been restricted to a single motive.

The "broaden" option is about making the current broad state "official" in the description.

Just a quick note to say that my vote for not renaming is actually a vote to rename The Uriah Gambit to Uriah Gambit. If we're going to snowclone we should at least do it properly.

Cool, thanks.

edited 13th May '12 8:06:24 PM by BrentLaabs

^ Just added that to the crowner as a compatible option.

Yeah, I'd phrase it as "clarify that the trope describes 'sending someone to die in general' (regardless of motive)", rather than "broaden", since it seems to me that that's what the trope always described.

But I just read the crowner option that way, voted accordingly, and now I'm happy.

edited 14th May '12 11:41:04 AM by Narsil

Calling crowner. The two options in the green should be implemented.

Tweaked the description.

Looks like the swap has been done, and the description looks good. Are we done here?

Guess so. Locking up.