Everything's confusing with "EverythingsBetterWith" tropes NEW CROWNER 06/20/13: Everythings Better With Indexes

Bump. I'd like to start working on this too. Should we try to fix these within this thread, or start individual threads for possible changes?

First key to interpreting a work: Things mean things.

Individual threads, so that the page under discussion can be tagged. Also, since the various Everything's Better tropes have managed to go wrong in a bunch of different ways, trying to apply a blanket fix will simply change the errors, not fix them for many of the trope pages.

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

Okay, that sounds good.

See discussion for split/rename of Dolphins, Dolphins Everywhere.

First key to interpreting a work: Things mean things.

Wow, that's a hell of a lot of snowclones. o.o

Yeah, we really need to cut down on the number of tropes of this naming format.

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

Some of these tropes strike me as People Sit On Chairs, too. For example, "the sea has sharks in it" is not really a trope.

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

That's part of the problem.

My recollection is that originally, Everythings Better With Monkeys was meant to highlight how writers would throw a totally out-of-place monkey into random shows or comics to make it "wacky" or some such thing.

Overeager editors kept cramming new works in, though, and eventually it and its snowclones turned into just lists of every single place the given animal appears, ever. For a few things this makes sense, but generally, it doesn't — "this show has a dog in it" or "this show has a monkey in it" is not a trope. "This show uses a random, totally unexpected monkey as a 'wacky' throw-in" is a trope.

Another part of the problem is that people snowcloned it without considering what the other animals meant as tropes — Everythings Better With Monkeys goes out of its way to explain the monkey-related trope it's about, while a lot of the other ones are just "this is what a shark is", etc.

For example, just to pick one at random:

"The Lion King had the shaman-type, Rafiki, who was an African vision-having kung-fu mandrill."

...that's not an example of Everythings Better With Monkeys. He happens to be a monkey, but since the entire cast are animals, there's nothing strange about him being there, and he's not there for wackiness.

edited 4th Aug '11 11:44:44 AM by Aquillion

^ That's pretty much precisely what happened. Your memory is sound.

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

That's what I figured, looking at some of the other pages. It looks like some of the pages (Everythings Better With Cows) have already started the process by cleaning examples and throwing up a warning note. Others (Everything's Wetter with Otters, Dolphins, Dolphins Everywhere) are still in the People Sit On Chairs format and may not have been created with an actual trope in mind.

edited 4th Aug '11 11:48:22 AM by unhappyyak

First key to interpreting a work: Things mean things.

Perhaps a solution would be to keep the pages, but strip all the examples?

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

We'll definitely need to rename at least some of them to make it clearer what the trope actually is. For instance Everything's Wetter with Otters doesn't even sound like a trope, unless the trope is "otters are aquatic animals," but Everythings More Adorable With Otters might work for otters invariably being portrayed as super-cute, playful, good-guy creatures.

As the trope Dolphins, Dolphins Everywhere shows, we don't need every single one of these tropes to be a Snow Clone of "Everything's X with Y".

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

I Think Everything's Better with Spinning should probably stay as is. It's definitely a trope, and actually exists as a supertrope. The premise is that if something is spinning it's automatically more cool and action packed. You just need to look at Sailor Moon's transformations to see this trope exists. If that's not gratuitous spinning I don't know what is.

edited 4th Aug '11 2:49:19 PM by NoirGrimoir

SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)

If it's renamed it should be at least a variation of the page quote.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

Yeah, that's an awesome page quote. "Spinning is so much cooler than not spinning!"

SPATULA, Supporters of Page Altering To Urgently Lead to Amelioration (supports not going through TRS for tweaks and minor improvements.)

The trope Morally Ambiguous Ducktorate should probably be part of this project. It has nothing to do with moral ambiguity, nor with doctorates; it simply means "Everythings Better With Ducks".

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

Um, it seems to be Everythings Eviler With Ducks, which is a pretty strange trope, but possibly a valid one. (Note that I deliberately didn't look at the examples.)

Terrible name in any case.

edit: on a closer reading, I see what you mean. Still, there may be a trope in there somewhere.

edited 13th Aug '11 11:35:51 AM by Xtifr

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

Morally Ambiguous Ducktorate is "this work has a duck and it's either cute and lovable, or funny, or sinister, or even evil. Or maybe it's something else." That is not a trope.

edited 13th Aug '11 12:26:23 PM by Madrugada

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

Yeah, it tries to pretend its not just "ducks in a work" on a first reading. Fooled me. It might be salvageable by focusing on the "ducks are chaotic-neutral" aspect though. Might not. *shrug*

Speaking words of fandom: let it squee, let it squee.

While in the process of renaming Everything's Wetter with Otters, I found an egregious overuse of the "Everything's Better With..." formula on the Blacksad page. I don't have time now to fix that particular mess.

Bump. This is still a big problem, perhaps too big for TRS to tackle?

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

Some people might object to cutting all the pages at once. Can we agree on some though to cut right away? Like Everything's Creepier With Cockroaches ("This trope is dedicated to all things roachy"), Everythings Squishier With Cephalopods ("This trope is about octopodes, squid, cuttlefish, and nautiloids") and Everythings Better With Motorcycles ("This is just true").

By "strip all the examples" do you mean removing the ones crosswicked with them as well?

"The Daily Show has to be right 100% of the time; FOX News only has to be right once." - Jon Stewart

...perhaps we should have a multi-option crowner, add an option for each of a dozen of these pages, and see how many get consensus to cut?

I'm not convinced that's the best approach, but it's workable.

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!

Well if so, limit options to pages with heavy misuse, and dubious tropeworthiness.

I'm on the internet. My arguments are invalid.

Precisely. We have about a hundred of these pages, and picking ten of the worst would be a start.

Mind you, I'm not saying we must do this now; I'm offering this as an idea while waiting to see if someone has better ideas. My main objection is that several of these pages just aren't tropes - a "list of parrots in fiction" is just not something I see a point to.

That said, maybe a better idea is to move the lot of them into Just For Fun.

edited 7th Dec '11 9:04:37 PM by Spark9

Rhetorical, eh? ... Eight!