Misused: Face Death With Dignity

If I'm understanding the Example As Thesis first paragraph properly, this is a trope in which a tragic character deliberately goes into a deadly situation as a means of (quasi-)redemption and/or as a Heroic Sacrifice.

It is not used this way even in that very page, such as with Gravity, Toy Story 3, almost everything in the Real Life section, and even more, all of which take the trope name literally.

So there are several possible causes and courses of action here here:

• This trope could be merged in somewhere, perhaps with Heroic Sacrifice or Obi-Wan Moment, both of which seem to match the misuse. (In fact, Obi-Wan Moment is a weird one, in that I can't see any distinction with it from several other tropes.)
• The first paragraph could be rewritten to clarify the definition.
• The trope could be redefined entirely (assuming the definition I gave above is correct) to hew closer to the misuse.
• The trope could be renamed to get it away from the misuse. (In which case, I'd advocate making it a redirect to Obi-Wan Moment.)

Thoughts?

I only think we need to clarify the first paragraph a bit. This is the antithesis of Defiant to the End.

Example as a Thesis says: Character hunted by powerful enemies decides to give up without a fight and let them kill him. With the implication that this is somehow the "responsible" thing to do that gives "their end some order or meaning."

"Another variant" says: Character surrenders to a villain to save someone else in a hostage situation.

Laconic says: "A doomed character accepts their death with serenity."

The name, at least to me, suggests a euphemism for suicide and/or euthanasia.

And yet there are still examples that fit none of the above. Before thinking about how to fix it, we'd first have to decide what its supposed to be.

If its the opposite of Defiant to the End, that sort of matches the first one. But the rest of the page and most of the examples do not. There are even examples that are Defiant to the End.

I don't think the name is really appropriate for that, either. Not the least because Defiant to the End itself says that's the way to "lose with dignity." Gotta have some consistency here.

I don't think we need to be consistent at all, we have an entire page of tropes that oppose and potentially contradict each other on Opposite Tropes.

I also don't know that it's necessarily the antithesis of Defiant to the End. While a lot of times the defiance might be of the "screw you" variety, I think you can be defiant with dignity, so some examples would go on both lists.

I would argue for cleaning up the description rather than the page. I think the tropes that have been added are all appropriate for Face Death with Dignity, and I would think that trope name appropriately covers a lot of situations that don't match the "deliberately allow yourself to be killed" description. I think the whole "turning yourself in knowing you will end up dead" is perhaps a sub-trope. We don't have a Lamb To The Slaughter trope (link goes to disambiguation page), but that might be a good name, albeit one with connotations of innocence or ignorance that obviously don't apply in every situation.

I'd go with a description of something like:

Most people fear death, and in the face of their impending demise it's common to see screaming, crying, begging, desperate searching for any means by which they can escape their fate.

However some characters maintain their composure in the face of their demise and maintain their dignity at the very end. Perhaps they are The Stoic for whom it is merely dying the way they lived. Others may have been decidedly undignified in life choose dignity if only in their last moments. Often it is a quiet form of Defiant to the End, either to their enemies or to death itself, not screaming and throwing insults but showing that they were composed and in control of themselves to the last.

Tropes do not need to be either or. Overlap is possible, and false opposites are a thing. Just because someone declared two things are opposites doesn't mean they are. Maybe we just need to drop the statement that they're opposites.

There is no statement to drop. Neither trope directly mentions the other. That was just Morgenthaler who said they were opposites.

That would be the "accept death with serenity" -definition, then? That does fit most of the examples.

That's how I understood the trope all along.

The trope description indicates that what is supposed to be troped is the reason why a character is dying. It does not cover the emotional state of the character when they die, their emotional state would be a different trope entirely.

I think the trope name is a problem. Yes, the trope description could do with being tightened up, but when people think of "facing death with dignity" they do tend to think of "facing death with serenity", and that's what most of the examples appear to be. To my mind, that means that if we change the trope description to fit the examples, we're changing the trope to fit the misuse.

I'm suggesting we've got a genuine second trope that needs to be captured.

• As I understand it, the current description of Face Death with Dignity is really Dying To Fix Mistakes.
• The current misuse of Face Death with Dignity is really Face Death With Serenity.
• Someone who is Dying To Fix Mistakes can do it in any one of a number of emotional ways - Face Death With Serenity, Defiant to the End, Despair Event Horizon, etc.

edited 15th May '16 9:33:50 AM by Wyldchyld

@4: Your proposed rewrite sounds exactly like Obi-Wan Moment.

In fact, isn't Obi-Wan Moment basically Face Death With Serenity?

edited 16th May '16 1:33:18 AM by Leaper

There's some serious overlap there, for sure.

Yeah, if there is going to be a Face Death With Serenity trope or focus, it needs to be established what the core differences are (if any exist) between it and Obi-Wan Moment.

When I think of the phrase "face death with dignity," the trope that comes to mind is Obi-Wan Moment (although I feel this may be a non-indicative name). However, the trope description for Face Death with Dignity seems to imply that the character is facing death specifically in the context of punishment, which seems like it would be a notable subtrope.

So, the current trope description of Face Death with Dignity is essentially a Dying To Fix Mistakes trope, suggesting the trope description needs clarification and the misuse should be moved to Obi-Wan Moment?

edited 17th May '16 1:46:02 PM by Wyldchyld

Yes, with the additional thought that we should make Face Death with Dignity, the name, a redirect to Obi-Wan Moment and find a new name for the current trope.

ETA: another thought: would a succinct definition of the current trope be "a character deliberately tries to evoke Death Equals Redemption"?

edited 17th May '16 3:14:33 PM by Leaper

Only problem with the latter aspect is that redemption isn't a matter at all; the character is just trying to end the struggle or minimize collateral damage.

Ah, now that I reread it, yes, the second paragraph is much more restrictive than I remembered.

Personally, I favor making a new name for the current trope and moving current examples and misuse as a redirect to Obi-Wan Moment (and would not be opposed to making Face Death with Dignity the primary name).

Bump to repeat my assertion above. One point in favor of it is that it'd greatly reduce the amount of cleanup necessary on the current trope, assuming there's actual agreement on what the current trope IS, which I admit is not guaranteed.

Alice is the first word on the page. Not good.

That issue aside, I find it hard to form an opinion on this one.

I do want to say, rather vehemently, that the proposed definition rewrite in post four is right out. That rewrite would make it identical to Obi-Wan Moment.

Also, the laconic has to be rewritten to match the page description. It is way too far off. This should be done right away. In fact I'll just do that.

Because I find it hard to form an opinion, I propose letting this one slide. Do nothing and focus on other tropes that need fixing. Minor fixes to the description to clarify that it is about preventing losses by turning oneself in can be done without all the fuss of a vote. Hopefully that will prevent the misuse.

But what about the already rampant misuse?

[there was stuff here, but I can't think right now and redacted it for not being super coherent or even helpful]

edited 10th Jul '16 11:57:50 PM by Karxrida

When I hear the phrase Face Death with Dignity, the first image that comes to mind is Sir John Burke in the novel Star Trek: Federation, where as a leader of La Résistance he requests to A Nazi by Any Other Name Adrik Thorsen that Thorsen give him his cane back so he can walk to his execution by firing squad on his own two feet. (Admittedly Burke actually wanted his cane so he could kill his guards with the concealed laser inside it, but my point is the image he was projecting.)

edited 2nd Aug '16 2:51:39 PM by StarSword

OK, here's a question, then: what do you all think of the usage of this trope, on its page and in its wicks? Because from my view, and my personal knowledge of the works in question, I'm not 100% sure that the current definition is worth keeping, especially given the strictures in the second paragraph.

I really really think that we'd lose absolutely nothing by making either this or Obi-Wan Moment a redirect to the other, and I haven't seen anything yet in this thread that would make me think otherwise.

Anyone care to disagree?

I have a beef with Obi-Wan Moment's title, its Trope Namer Syndrome is why people thought of this trope instead when they see Obi Wan Moments.

I say, we merge OWM and FDWD (including its examples), make the latter the real title, and transplant its real definition (dying to fix mistakes) and its fitting examples to a new trope.

That is, if "Dying To Fix Mistakes" isn't already Self-Sacrifice Scheme or Heroic Sacrifice.

I wonder if that means there's a Dying To Fix Mistakes supertrope then? Although I see your point, since those two tropes do cover the option of dying because it's the only way to fix your mistakes, but since they are broader than that, they wouldn't automatically come under such a supertrope. It's probably worth observing (with regards to Heroic Sacrifice) that dying to fix your mistakes wouldn't necessarily be viewed as heroic (or villainous for that matter) any more than it would come under Death Equals Redemption.

edited 28th Aug '16 2:00:27 PM by Wyldchyld