AllXAreY... except for those that aren't.

I have a bit of a beef with the All X Are Y format for naming tropes.

Right now, it seems there are three types of pages that could take this name.

First: All X's actually are Y. Such a trope would be so common that it would list aversions rather than straight examples. I don't know if we actually use All X Are Y for any such page, bu I think it would be okay to do so.

Second: People mistakenly assume that all X are Y. Some examples of this would be All Anime Is Hentai or All Animation Is Disney. This too seems fine to me. (They don't list examples of Anime that is hentai or animation that's Disney - it lists cases where people express the misapprehension, or cases where people are wrong.

Third: Lots of X's are Y. This is the kind I have a problem with.

If you note that lots of X are Y but say All X Are Y, you're lying. Well, no, not lying, but exaggerating. Which isn't so bad in itself maybe. But as a result, people feel compelled to list aversions, which would have been relevant were the trope omnipresent but actually aren't relevant at all, or even notable.

Besides, just because you've found that a great many X follow a certain trend, that doesn't mean you have to say all do. It just means that you've found a trope.

When someone proposes a page in the form of All X Are Y, the conversation goes something like this:

All Beers Are Ale. In fantasy, no one drinks lager. They always drink ale.

• Eg. Work A

• Eg Work B.

• Averted in work C, where they drink lager.

• Truth in Television: Many people do drink ale.
  • Also averted in Real Life by people who drink lager.

Gah.

I wonder if we can work towards a policy like:

If your page lists X's that are Y, avoid calling it All X Are Y.

edited 17th Mar '12 8:00:43 AM by Routerie

Are you secretly my sock puppet?

Are you secretly my meat puppet?

I believe we should only use this pattern when describing a common generalization. Otherwise it'll just end in tears.

I find that it's useful in one of two scenarios. 1) A character feels this way about "reality", thus making it in-universe. 2) When we have a large enough statistical distribution of characters who are both likely and not likely to fit in the Y section which requires a very large cast.

It's really just naming shorthand for "a disproportionate amount of X are Y as portrayed in specific media and genres".

But nooooooooooooo, everyone said my proposed title was too long.

Seriously, though, it's no big deal. We could do with people understanding that not every trope name has to be literal. Hyperbole is a great way to express the absurdity of insistence on literalism in language.

I am normally among the first to agree that trope names needn't be literal, but the ones that are effectively snowclones ought to be consistently used

Well, that and I dislike the way that that sort of trope gets built. While I don't have issues with the existence of statistical evidence, I don't think it works well for examples on this site at least.

I don't thing "a disproportionate amount of X are Y as portrayed in specific media and genres" is a good standard for a snowclone family. Or for an index. Or for any other subset of tropes. Because that applies to virtually every single page we have that takes the form [adjective][noun]. If [adjective][noun] appeared less often in fiction than in real life, people would object to making a page out of it at all. And someone would probably try to make one for No X Are Y.

Like the posters above, I think All X Are Y is fine when the article is about the "All X Are Y attitude." Examples would be characters thinking that all X are Y, rather than Xs being Y (or not being Y).

Also fine: pages about wide trends. Aggregate Tropes. Cases where aversions are notable but straight examples aren't.

But we shouldn't have a page called All Professors Are Absent Minded. Just call it Absent-Minded Professor. We shouldn't have a page called All Pigs Are Messy. Just call it Messy Pig. And if you have an example of a professor that's not absent-minded, or a pig that's not messy? Don't put it on the page.

I agree, and your last point is especially good.

What do you mean by "aggregate tropes"? Is it the same as Omnipresent Tropes?

Aggregate tropes are tropes that only really show up when you look at a genre or medium as a group.

For instance, not all guard dogs in fiction are German Shepherds, but if you look at say, "spy movies", it will look like All Guard Dogs Are German Shepherds, because they are vastly overrepresented compared to Dobies, Rotts and other breeds that are actually used as guard dogs. It's not a trope in any one work, it's a trope in aggregate.

The problem then arises when trying to prove that's a trope.

So I agree that this snowclone suits aggregate tropes better than other ones. But that brings up a separate problem - aggregate tropes. Particularly, creating an aggregate trope when a regular one would do.

Take All Guard Dogs Are German Shepherds. That sounds like a trope, doesn't it? Except, well, not all guard dogs are German Shepherds. So why not simply name the trope German Shepherd Guard Dog? Such a page would adequately cover the trend by which spy movies cast german shepherds as guard dogs, explaining the reasons behind it and listing all relevant examples. And unlike with All Guard Dogs Are German Shepherds, people would not feel tempted to irrelevantly list all cases when guard dogs aren't german shepherds.

"Ah," I imagine someone saying, "but the thing about aggregate tropes is that these individual appearances mean nothing in themselves. The trope is not that guard dogs are German Shepherds. The trope is that they're always German Shepherds - and the title must reflect that."

I get that. But I think that's only valid when the trope really does apply in nearly all applicable situations. If all guard dogs really are German Shepherds - that is, if the trope is so common that we list only aversions as examples. Hence my draft policy: If your page lists X's that are Y, avoid calling it All X Are Y.

I understand the spirit of these tropes are that kind of "disproportionately overrepresented" pattern, which brings to mind the like Macs in films and TV shows. I like the aggregate trope concept, is it already a thing? Because it's still a red-link.

I'm not sure what it actually is, though. It's essentially an underlying assumption, a stereotype, a small reference pool... A case of getting hijacked by a subspecies. But it's not (usually) used consciously to produce a narrative effect.

Oh, that makes sense...

edited 11th Apr '12 4:42:27 AM by Catalogue

Yeah, I've always wondered what the best way to deal with "The Majority of X are Y" tropes.

To use another example, the vast majority of dolphins in the media are bottle-nosed dolphins. I've considered troping that, but that basically becomes a list of nearly every dolphin in media, and such things have a tendency to be accused of not being tropes.

edited 15th Apr '12 12:27:43 PM by Catbert

Yeah, I don't think there's we could trope that concept with anything more than a string of No Context Examples. Unless, if the concept is truly very common, you create the page and list only non-bottlenose dolphins.

And wow - a look at YKKTW makes this format look more common that ever. The Cretaceous Is Always Doomed. Every Kid Haves Coulrophobia. All TV Is Live. All Books Begin In The Middle. All Invisible People Float. All Success Is Faustian. It's out of control!

Would anyone support a policy discouraging this wording?

Everythings Worse With Snowclones is the policy discouraging the wording.

Maybe, but I don't think people are writing these as snowclones, any more than people would phrase a trope as [adjective][noun] as a snowclone. They seem to just think that the phrasing gets the point across - the point being that "this happens a lot."