Chess Motifs: Difference between revisions
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As [[Chess]] is one of the oldest and simplest, as well as ''the'' deepest [[Turn-Based Strategy]] game in the Western world, games of chess are often used symbolically in media in order to represent war, battles of wits, and similar events. Sometimes this is done directly by the author; other times by the characters themselves (by, e.g., having a conversation about a war over a chess match, using chess as an example).
A very simple such analogy is the [[Mooks|Pawn]]
A frequent variant is for the author or a character to explain how the situation is ''not'' analogous to chess, but rather to some other game such as poker, Battleship, or [[Calvin Ball]].
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** [[Fridge Brilliance|Even more interestingly]], Hidan and Kakuzu's names contain the characters for "bishop" and "rook". {{spoiler|Shikamaru [[Crowning Moment of Awesome|manages to outwit and defeat Hidan almost entirely by himself]].}}.
* [http://www.mangareader.net/406-57758-32/ao-no-exorcist/chapter-15.html Chapter 15] of the ''[[Blue Exorcist]]'' manga includes one of these. Shura explicitly says that Mephisto "seems to be enjoying himself, manipulating everyone like pawns on a chessboard" with a picture of Mephisto playing a game of chess with a grin on his face (though this scene is imaginary.) Whether he is a [[Magnificent Bastard]] or a [[Guile Hero]] is uncertain at this point, but he certainly shows plenty of [[The Trickster|Trickster]] and [[Chessmaster]] tendencies.
* This is how the master-servant devil relationships work in ''[[High School DxD]]''. The protagonist, Issei, is the [[Almighty Janitor|Pawn]],<ref>All eight of them.</ref>
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* "I've Seen All Good People", by Yes starts out with the section called "Your Move". The song features lyrics like:
{{quote|"Don't surround yourself with yourself. Move me on to any black square.}}
* "White Rabbit" by [[Jefferson Airplane]] contains a few direct references to the
* "Only a Pawn in Their Game" by [[Bob Dylan]] applies a chess metaphor to the slaying of civil rights leader Medgar Evers.
* The german Rap-group "Blumentopf" has a song called "Am Schachbrett" ("On the chessboard") which is [[Exactly What It Says on the Tin]].
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== Theater ==
* The 80s rock musical ''[[Chess (theatre)|Chess]]'' is pretty much all about this.
** In particular, ''Prologue (The Story of Chess)'' has what it describes as a "vague report"
* Samuel Beckett's post-apocalyptic ([[Mind Screw|maybe]]) ''[[Theatre/Endgame|Endgame]]'' refers eponymously to the final stage of a chess game. No one legitimately knows what Beckett's plays [[Absurdism|actually mean]] so any reader can take a stab at what this motif means and how deep it might be.
* In ''[[Man of La Mancha]]'', Cervantes, repositioning Antonia, the Housekeeper and the Padre to the corners of the stage, calls them the queen, the castle and the bishop, respectively. "And now--the problem of the knight!"
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* Just about everything in ''[[Tex Murphy|Tex Murphy: Overseer]]'' revolves around chess, due to both the [[Well-Intentioned Extremist]] and the [[Big Bad]] being chess nuts. The final puzzle of the game is even a chess match where the player is hopelessly out-manouvered and only one sequence of moves can checkmate the enemy king. Which is probably metaphorical as well.
* The first room in the [[Trippy Finale Syndrome|trippy final level]] of ''[[Prince of Persia]] 2'' is a giant chessboard.
* [[God of Evil|Lord Fain]] of ''[[Lusternia]]'' has an aesthetic that is a cross between
* Chess pops up sporadically in ''[[Katawa Shoujo]]'', but [[Shrinking Violet|Hanako]]'s path is the one that makes the most use of this trope. Not only is chess one of her hobbies, it's symbolic of her connection to Hisao. Her Act 3 is called "Castling". {{spoiler|Castling is a move in chess that places the Rook and King pieces next to each other. When you consider that the King is a "weak" piece that needs to be defended, and that the Rook is a "stronger" piece, this could be almost directly applied to how their relationship develops within that Act.}} In fact, the entire path is determined by how much Hisao acts like a {{spoiler|[[Knight in Shining Armor|White Knight]]}}, or, if you're aiming for her good ending, {{spoiler|[[Don't You Dare Pity Me!|how he does not]]}}.
* In "[[Silent Bomber]]", Benoit {{spoiler|the final boss}} uses chess analogies the whole game. Then {{spoiler|right before the climactic showdown with him, you fight lots of chess pieces on a chess board in what is probably the hardest moment in the game, except for maybe the fight with Benoit himself}}
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== [[Web Original]] ==
* Jennie uses chess pieces to illustrate a military strategy in the ''[[Lonelygirl15]]'' episode "Cold War Revisited".
* The Chessmaster from the [[Whateley Universe]] uses a lot of these, shockingly enough given his name. His normal [[Mook
* ''[[D8]]'' ''is'' this. The entire story is pretty much one big Chess Motif.
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