Really a Useful Note: Oxbridge

Motion to close the crowner?

Oops. Fixed.

Edited by Brainulator9 on Mar 3rd 2019 at 4:14:56 AM

Don't you mean motion?

I agree. The poll seems conclusive. But what should we do with the "sub tropes" that aren't even actual tropes? Should a poll be added whether to cut them or not?

I moved the contents of Started At Oxbridge, including the list, over to Useful Notes.Oxbridge. I then cut the list per the thread.

EDIT: Started At Oxbridge is now on the Cut List.

EDIT: And it's cut.

Edited by Brainulator9 on Mar 19th 2019 at 8:55:35 AM

Started de-wicking Oxbridge (a lot of wicks already treat it like a useful note) and created Prestigious Schooling. A lot of the examples don't have a lot of context other than "character went to Oxbridge"; would appreciate help with adding context and moving. Feel free to edit the TLP draft.

Created a second draft for the concept discussed in this post: Ivy Tower. I think many of the examples on Oxbridge could fit with more context added; help needed there.

This is interesting. I occasionally added to the "Started at Oxbridge" page because I believed it did have genuine worth and value - sorry to see it go! One thing that hasn't been mentioned here - and I was stuck for a way to add it to the "Started at Oxbridge" page as it has the potential to degenerate into snark and complaining - is that for a long, long, time, comic talent nurtured by the BBC came from only two sources. On the one hand, people who'd come up through variety theatre and who had learnt their trade in live performance; and from the 1950's onwards, from Oxbridge. That was it. It was as if the BBC heirarchy considered Britain's university system consisted only of two universities. The reasons for this are not hard to work out - BBC staffers and executives also tended to come from Oxbridge, so the new and emerging comic talent they were most attuned to was from, say, Cambridge Footlights. The people who made the decisions and the comic talent would all have known of each other at Uni. You could almost suspect this was Oxbridge looking after its own - a system which, when it worked, helped some stellar comic talent to emerge, like the Pythons. But did have an unhealthy whiff of nepotism about it.

Somewhere on the page, I think in Discussion, I noted that from the 1980's onwards, other emerging talents lampshaded this - The Young Ones had its University Challenge spoof, where "Scumbag University" takes on "Footlights College, Oxbridge". This was a very big Take That! at the BBC over its institutional Oxbrigeism; Rik Mayall and Ben Elton were products of Manchester University, for instance.

It might be worth a tie-in to British Unis to mention this?

All that seems well worth adding to UsefulNotes.Oxbridge

I think a tie in with that page would be a good idea.

Where are the Bland-Name Product examples?

Fictional schools that resemble Oxford and/or Cambridge. The old Oxbridge page had a list of them. They can go to one of the proposed tropes, or Bland-Name Product/Fictional Counterpart.

Is there anything left to do here?

- Bumping for that question to be answered...

I guess the silence means no. Closing.