Snowclone: Everythings Worse With Bees

Courtesy link.

Well, this trope name didn't age well. Snowclones were already pretty obnoxious when I launched this page years ago. Problem is, it got linked on Darths and Droids and has in excess of 3,000 inbounds. Is there anything to be done about this?

So, what's the actual problem? Sure, not the best of names, but does the name of the trope add to a serious problem?

edited 2nd Jun '12 5:01:54 PM by Feather7603

I guess the problem is that the name is "bees," and the laconic is "BEES!" So, pretty much any mention of a bee can end up here, never mind that we have distinct pages for The Swarm and Gosh Hornet.

An Amazon attack. A deadly bee weapon. Bees. My God.

Someone had to do it.

Idea: Bee Afraid Be Ver Afraid. Maybe bad if it's a pun, but any better ideas? This trope should stay.

Why not merge it with The Swarm, as a specific subtype of that trope?

Tropes are allowed to have subtropes; it's not necessarily a bad thing. If the "bee" variant of The Swarm happens often enough to be its own trope, that's fine.

It already exists. It's called Gosh Hornet. And what about the power of 1 bee or a small number of bees?

The deal is, despite the snowclone, that's really what the trope is about: not just "bees exist and are sometimes used in fiction" but "bees are terrifying, even though they're tiny." They make any situation worse, and are frequently used as a kind of esoteric go-to terror, despite their inherent goofiness.

Yeah, but when we call an article "Everything's Worse With Bees," we don't get examples describing how enemies are small but terrifying. We can anything to do with bees and things being bad.

A nazi made of bees? That's not an example of Bee Swarm Scares The Characters, it's an example of The Worm That Walks, but of course someone had to put it on this page.

A superhero who's a bee? Yeah, someone will include that too, because the hero must have acted fearsome at one point.

Shooting bees at enemies in a video game? Of course that winds up here, and the intro even (wrongly) claims that Bee-Bee Gun is a "subtrope" of this trope.

Bees don't make things worse in one case? That's an "inversion" of the trope.

And, of course, this article begs for Zero Context Examples. One consists entirely of the word "Bees?" potholed to a show's name.

I never understood the point of these "tropes" to be honest.

Work contains monkeys? —-> Everythings Better With Monkeys.

Work contains penguins? —-> Everythings Better With Penguins

Work contains protozoa? —-> Everythings Proto With Zoas

And so on.

edited 2nd Jun '12 11:33:14 PM by Anfauglith

Right. That's why I'm saying the title needs changed. Snowclones all have this problem, and that's why they have to go. So, I recommend something along the lines of:

Not The Bees; Bees, My God; Buzzing And Stinging

Or, if we're just throwing it all out the window and being right-on-the-nose, Bees Are Terrifying.

EDIT: Hey, look at that. Some enterprising meme monkey has already made one of those a redirect. Well, that makes things more straightforward then.

edited 2nd Jun '12 11:35:35 PM by Shrikesnest

Let's start by deciding this trope's definition.

Fear of bees? Bee sting? Swarm of bees?

It can't be "A swarm of angry bees chases a character" - that's Gosh Hornet.

I fail to see how a pop culture reference like Not The Bees or Bees, My God is less obnoxious than a snowclone.

Those are pop culture references?

Huh.

Yeah. First one is from the recent remake of The Wicker Man, second is from the DC comics Amazons Attack storyline.

I guess they work even if you don't know the source material, but I'm wary of naming tropes after memes. Just look at all the Haruhi Suzumiya in-jokes that new tropers don't get.

Oh, I see. I agree about avoiding memes as names.

Not The Bees sounds the best, I think.

I actually like Bee Afraid.

Not The Bees is technically said in that scene from Wicker Man, yes, but I don't think that automatically makes it a pop culture reference. At least, I don't think it will have the problems that most pop culture references have (misuse, opacity, that sort of thing.)

Bee Afraid is a little corny, but if we're worried about Not The Bees being a pop culture reference then I think it's a decent choice.

Agreed with shrikesnest on this one.

This pop culture reference does not require you to know the source material to understand it, so I think it's okay.

I like Bee Afraid because it's both a pun and illustrative of the trope.

Another thing to check: %s of examples that bees are bad/scary, bees are good/harmless, and neutral? After we get the %s, the new name should suit the results. Maybe, the current name already works.

How widespread is the misuse?

But, bees are "bad/scary" isn't a trope. It's just the criteria set out by the name "Everything's Worse With Bees." If we're okay with keeping that as the definition, we should just leave the page name as it is.

Could be a trope. Reptiles Are Abhorrent is a trope, after all.

It's probably more likely that specific subtropes are what we should be troping, but I don't think Everything's Worse With Bees is inherently Not A Trope.