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Author: SolipSchism

Jan 2nd 2015 at 9:14:30 AM

crazysamaritan, stop throwing bold formatting around at everyone. You're not making your point any harder, you're just coming across as aggressive.

Why, exactly, do we care what one particular work calls one particular strategy? We're not troping that strategy. We're troping a trope. The name is indicative. It makes sense. Just because it overlaps with something doesn't make it invalid.

On top of that, the trope is far more common in fiction than the actual strategy described on the Thirty-Six Strategems.

This is fiction. How strategy works in real life is not the issue here. What happens in fiction is. People don't often use that actual strategem in fiction. They tend to use the one described above.

In case it needs to be said again: TVTropes is about works of fiction. Not real life. We don't care about real-world military tactics and strategy except as it relates to fiction. We're not troping RealLife.

EDIT: But maybe EmptyFortGambit would be a better title just so people won't say "OMG This isn't ''the'' Empty Fort Strategem/Strategy that I am familiar with, how dare they use that name."