Villainized: My Death Is Just The Beginning

My complaint is that the article speaks as if only villains would be capable of this (with a meek admission that heroes can pull this at the end), and it even blatantly states it to be "the flip side of Heroic Sacrifice". But if we go with the definition of "using one's own death as a part in one's Xanatos Gambit", then there's no reason why this should be limited to bad guys, or why it wouldn't overlap with Heroic Sacrifice. The correct way would be to say that this can be a Heroic Sacrifice if the Xanatos Plan has a selfless purpose and does not include too many other sacrifices, while simply aa normal self-sacrificing act if the plan is less heroic.

Could it perhaps be rewritten a bit as more character-neutral, so that it does not suggest to be a Spear Counterpart?

edited 8th Oct '10 9:30:16 AM by Vree

Is Thanatos Gambit, not this.

Fight smart, not fair.

^Yup, it's the same.

Which means that we have a duplicate.

Not entirely. The two tropes do attempt to distinguish themselves, although how successful this is may be up to the individual.

My Death Is Just the Beginning is when the character's death kicks off or gives a major impetus to their plan. It is not the goal so much as a stepping stone on the path.

Thanatos Gambit is when the character's death is the endpoint of their scheme, completing whatever plan they had.

edited 8th Oct '10 10:01:16 AM by Fighteer

"It's Occam's Shuriken! If the answer is elusive, never rule out ninjas!"

That's a bit vague a distinction to be possible to pin down IMO. The Xanatos Plan has to be in place when the character dies, since they won't be able to modify it anymore - so it's arguable if there is any case when you can call it a "stepping stone".

If I understand correctly-

Thanatos Gambit is when you manipulate the circumstances of your death to your own ends. It's things like "I've got a nuclear device in Heroesville, and it's set to detonate the moment my brain ceases to function, things like "I've convinced all these people that I'm good- if you strike me down here, all these people will think YOU are the bad guys!", as well as a simple Better to Die than Be Killed.

My Death Is Just the Beginning is more for things like- "Once I've made the preparations, the only thing left for me to do to release this Sealed Evil in a Can is to kill myself on the altar! Then, in three days, I'll be resurrected by my minions, and I'll command the ancient evil to destroy the heroes!"

They lost me. Forgot me. Made you from parts of me. If you're the One, my father's son, what am I supposed to be?

^ Like that, yes, but also things like the Sherlock Holmes story The Problem of Thor Bridge — the villain's plot is completely contingent on her death. If she doesn't die, the plot doesn't even start. Actually, Conan Doyle liked to play with this one — there's also The Norwood Builder, and The Empty House, both of which rely on a faked death.

edited 8th Oct '10 1:40:33 PM by Madrugada

...if you don’t love you’re dead, and if you do, they’ll kill you for it.

I always took My Death Is Just the Beginning to be about either coming back from the dead later, or Ascend to a Higher Plane of Existence.

edited 8th Oct '10 1:41:01 PM by Deboss

Fight smart, not fair.

Bumping. Original author of My Death Is Just the Beginning here.

I've always thought of MDIJTB as being "the dead-to-be's hand continues to shape the plot after his death," whereas Thanatos Gambit is "the dead-to-be's hand punches someone as he dies." It's a matter of time: MDIJTB is one's death as part of a plan, Thanatos Gambit is a plan to capitalize on one's death. There is some overlap between these two and Heroic Sacrifice. All these deaths are intended to achieve something. A Heroic Sacrifice is presumably not planned, which differentiates it from the two.

Well, compare and contrast these two examples:

As for altering the article to make it less villainy, I'm not opposed to that at all, though The Chessmaster suffers from a similar problem if we're aiming for consistency. I maintain MDIJTB and Thanatos Gambit are not copies; the original YKTTW entries suggest that.

edited 20th Nov '10 11:53:18 AM by Zephid

I wrote about a fish turning into the moon.

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